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Remembering John
Brown's 'Other Raid'
Thursday, June 21, 2007, The Nevada
Daily Mail, Nevada, MO
Then and Now by
Patrick Brophy
Likely most
Americans have heard of John Brown. And likely mere mention of his name
brings to most minds the image "John Brown's raid." And if anything's
added, it's almost bound be "Oh, yeah. Harpers Ferry, Va., Now West
Virginia." Yet there was another "John Brown's raid." It involved 25
raiders, not a mere 19 like that piddling Harpers Ferry affair! And it
was a success. Harpers Ferry was a fatal flop.
Likely most
modern Vernon Countians know, vaguely, Old Brown raided us too, not just
Harpers Ferry. Possibly they even cherish a gut-dislike for the old
s.o.b., handed down from the days when their forerunners suffered at his
hands, and found true bills of indictment against him and all his men,
known and unknown, for grand larceny and murder.
An aging,
restless ne'er-do-well, "a crazy man for years" according to old
acquaintances, full of muddled abolitionist zeal, Brown had long dreamed
of a raid on the South through the Appalachians, inciting the slaves to
rise up and murder their masters. Nice man.
The scheme was
far along when Brown's "military adviser," out-of-patience with the
nuttiness and the slow pay, "defected" and began leaking details. The
"Secret Six," Brown's moneymen, suffered assorted attacks of nerves and
called for indefinite postponement. Go back to Kansas, they begged
Brown, and lie low till the heat dies down.
So the year
1858 found a disgusted Brown back in Kansas, not to lie low but
determined to pull off a smaller, western version of his raid to prove
it could be done, and incidentally wreak "a sensation in the national
press." The new "free-state" government had obligingly quashed his
murder indictment for the savage Pottawatomie Massacre of 1856, but
Brown took no chances. Settling down right on the Missouri line, miles
east of his old haunts, he began for the first time to grow that famous
beard, as a disguise for what was to come.
In his "press
release," known as "John Brown's Parallels," he wrote that a Missouri
slave had sought him out with a tale of woe and a plea for rescue.
Perhaps so, but it was suspiciously just the sort of pretext Brown was
looking for, a "heaven-sent" opportunity. The next night, Dec. 20, 1858,
Brown's 25 men went galloping off, over into snowy, wintry Missouri.
Brown himself
led the main file of 15, making for the farm of his slave tipster's late
master, James Lawrence, midway between modern Stotesbury and Hume.
Harvey Hicklin, the Henry Township constable, as well as Lawrence's
son-in-law, was living in the house with his wife and children, and
would leave a revealing eyewitness account of that epochal night.
The raiders
took Lawrence's five slaves, two men, a woman, and two infants, plus all
the livestock and other property they could haul, including personal
valuables. They then moved on to the nearby Isaac Lame farm and repeated
their good works, taking five more slaves.
Meanwhile the
other file of nine men crossed the Little Osage on the Kansas side and
rode to the home of David Cruise, just south of the river and just north
of modern Stotesbury. Cruise had only two slaves, but more significantly
had a reputation for "buried gold." The spirited old man tried to defend
himself, but was felled by a revolver shot and bled to death on his
hearthstone. The raiders held a gun to young Lucinda Cruise's head and
demanded all her valuables. They left with these, "a fine new horse,"
and one female slave. The other slave, "a likeable man named George,"
had fled in terror from his would-be liberators.
Through the
bitter winter the freed slaves were escorted up around Missouri, across
Iowa, and across the Detroit River to Windsor, Ontario, where a sizeable
colony of fugitive slaves has descendants to this day.
Meanwhile
Brown was selling the stolen goods and sending the money to his family,
while the sensationalist Northern press built him up into a virtual
saint. "The name of John Brown soared aloft, and the name of David
Cruise, the old white-headed pioneer, guilty of no offense whatever,
vanished beneath the notice of idealists." The next October, Brown and
his 19 descended on Harpers Ferry. Most soon met bloody death. Brown
himself was found guilty of treason and swiftly strung up.
This spring,
Iowa's State Historic Preservation Office, as part of a program to mark
every waystation on John Brown's 1859 trek across Iowa with the fugitive
slaves, expressed interest in the Vernon County spot where it all began.
James Denny of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources responded,
"The Missouri DNR will be happy to provide a marker in Missouri for the
John Brown raid, as a cooperative venture with the Bushwhacker Museum,
the Freedom's Frontier National Historic Area, and your John Brown
signage program." The marker would be much like the Civil War plaque the
DNR placed at Deerfield last November.
In May,
Bushwhacker Museum Coordinator Terry Ramsey and this writer contacted
and met with W.A. (Art) Mullies and other area residents at the Lawrence
Cemetery, the likely spot for such a marker. James Lawrence, deceased
owner of the slaves who were John Brown's pretext for the raid, was the
first person to be buried in the cemetery. His daughter, Nancy Hicklin,
who along with her husband faced John Brown, is buried beside him.
Afterwards the
group pilgrimaged to the site of Lawrence's house, half a mile southwest
of the cemetery. Foundation stones, plus the old well, lost in a
thicket, are all that remain of the house and the rather modest
"quarters" for the five Lawrence slaves.
Douglas Jones,
of the Iowa group, is among those to commit the common error of calling
Lawrence a "planter" and his 160-acre farm a "plantation." Not only were
these words going out of use in Missouri in the 1850s, Lawrence's
probate record shows just how modest was his prosperity. John Brown's
larceny cut his gross worth, apart from real estate, exactly in half.
David Cruise was a "yeoman farmer" who by a lifetime of hard work had
amassed a bit of real estate, plus that "buried gold." (Yes, said his
son, it was really there. Brown's men got the gold out of his father's
pants, but not that buried in the floor of the saddle shed.) David
Cruise was a typical pioneer, in his day an honorable soldier. He was
anything but a "planter."
Interested
Vernon Countians look forward to working with others to mark "John
Brown's other raid," probably the most nationally significant event ever
to occur here. It will be their special brief and duty to make sure
Harvey Hicklin's concluding words, in his 1886 statement to the compiler
of The History of Vernon County, were prophetic: "I do not hold any
particular malice or prejudice on account of these old transactions. Old
things have-passed away; but the truth can never pass away."
Reprinted with
permission.
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