"Should one of your number be arrested, you must collect together as
quickly as possible, so as to outnumber your adversaries who are taking
an active part against you. Let no able-bodied man appear on the ground
unequipped, or with his weapons exposed to view: let that be understood
beforehand. Your plans must be known only to yourself, and with the
understanding that all traitors must die, wherever caught and proven to
be guilty. Whosoever is fearful or afraid, let him return and depart
early from Mount Gilead" (Judges, vii. 3; Deut. xx. 8). Give all cowards
an opportunity to show it on condition of holding their peace. Do NOT
DELAY ONE MOMENT AFTER YOU ARE READY: YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR RESOLUTION
IF YOU DO. LET THE FIRST BLOW BE THE SIGNAL FOR ALL TO ENGAGE: AND WHEN
ENGAGED DO NOT DO YOUR WORK BY HALVES, BUT MAKE CLEAN WORK WITH YOUR
ENEMIES,--AND BE SURE YOU MEDDLE NOT WITH ANY OTHERS. By going about
your business quietly, you will get the job disposed of before the
number that an uproar would bring together can collect; and you will
have the advantage of those who come out against you, for they will be
wholly unprepared with either equipments or matured plans; all with them
will be confusion and terror. Your enemies will be slow to attack you
after you have done up the work nicely; and if they should, they will
have to encounter your white friends as well as you; for you may safely
calculate on a division of the whites, and may by that means get to an
honorable parley."

He gives here a distinct suggestion of the plans and methods which he
later developed and extended.

When Kansas was opened for settlement, John Brown was fifty-four years
old. Early in the spring of 1855, five of his sons took up claims near
Osawatomie. They went, as did others, as peaceable settlers without
arms. After the election of March 30, 1855, at which armed Missourians
overawed the Kansas settlers and thus secured a unanimous pro-slavery
Legislature, the freestate men, under the leadership of Robinson, began
to import Sharp's rifles and other weapons for defense. Brown's sons
thereupon wrote to their father, describing their helpless condition and
urging him to come to their relief. In October, 1855, John Brown himself
arrived with an adequate supply of rifles and some broadswords and
revolvers. The process of organization and drill thereupon began, and
when the Wakarusa War occurred early in December, 1855, John Brown was
on hand w