[144] excepting recently, indeed, in the very valiant and venerable State of Virginia. Hitherto, the Republican leaders in the East, by every mail and numerous messengers, had earnestly and successfully counselled peace — urging the Free State men, for party purposes, to submit to outrage rather than strike an offensive blow. The insult of the Fourth of July, followed up, on the 13th of August, by the Governor's proclamation,--which practically called on the Missourians to make a new invasion,--exhausted the patience of the Northern settlers, and, in a rapid series of surprises, they soon, and with unexampled precipitation, drove the Southern invaders from all their inland strongholds. Let us follow John Brown during this eventful period. From the 4th of July till the 30th of August, he was neither idle nor inactive. With a wounded son-in-law, who had been shot at the battle of Black Jack, he left Topeka about the end of July; and, on the 5th of August, entered the camp of the organized Northern companies, then known as Jim Lane's army, at a place four miles from the northern boundary line, which the emigrants had named Plymouth, in honor of the Puritans,--who had crossed the sea for the same purpose that they were now crossing the prairie:
To make the West as they the East,A brother of John Brown's wounded son-in-law, on learning of the casualties of Black Jack, at once left North Elba, and joined the second Massachusetts Company at Buffalo. The old man rode into camp, and
The Homestead of the Free.
