James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

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X. John Brown's defence of Lawrence.

We next find our hero in the town of Lawrence, at the most perilous crisis of its history. His defence of it is still remembered with gratitude by all the brave men who witnessed and participated in it. The writer at that time was in Iowa, in charge of a train of provisions, clothing, and military supplies, furnished for the free state men by the patriotism and philanthropy of the generous North. He has, therefore, no personal knowledge of John Brown's conduct at that eventful period of the history of Lawrence; but from a friend who was an eye witness, and a brave actor in it under the command of “the mighty man of valor,” he has been furnished with the following faithful and graphic narration. Brave like his captain, but, like the old man, modest also, we are not permitted to announce his name.

On the 13th day of September, 1856, Jim Lane, with an army of some seventy-five or eighty men, pursued a number of the “enemy,” and compelled them to take shelter in some log houses at Hickory Point. These were so situated on a high, rolling prairie as to