Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

No, the man that people on all sides worried about was me, the red-headed son, the one with the crippled arm. My brothers told me this with a mixture of pride and mild concern. They reported that of all the Browns, I was viewed, as much in Lawrence as among the pro-slavers in Atchison, as the most dangerous. They said it was because I spoke to no one, except Father and my brothers, and showed no human feeling, except for a single-minded desire to exterminate the man-sellers. They were right to fear me. I was an assassin with no principle or ideology and with no apparent religion, save one: death to slavery.

My brother John, widely admired for his probity and his physical courage, had succeeded in being elected to the Free-State legislature and had been commissioned a lieutenant and given command of a militia unit, the Osawatomie Rifles, a defensive force meant to include all able-bodied anti-slavery men in and around the town of Osawatomie and Browns Station, our home territory. Father, however, insisted on withholding himself from the Rifles — no one could imagine him taking orders from John anyhow, but it was a lifelong pattern for him to keep himself separate and distinct from another man’s army. Except for Jason — who, by following John into the Rifles, had chosen the route least likely to lead to violence — the rest of us stuck with Father and viewed ourselves strictly as his men and subject to no other authority than his.

Counting Father, then, we were now a band of six: brothers Fred, Salmon, and Oliver, our brother-in-law Henry Thompson, and me. Watson was still back in North Elba, taking care of the farm and family — my old job. Here and there, at different times, we were joined by some of the more radical, quarrelsome, old-time settlers, like the Austrian Weiner and James Townley, and by the newcomers to Kansas who had heard of Captain Brown back East and wanted to fight slavery alongside him and his sons; they were mostly young hot-bloods who made their way to Lawrence and came down to Osawatomie and found our camp and rode with us awhile and then drifted over to one of the more regular militias or grew discouraged by the rigors of the life and took out a land claim and built a cabin on it and began to farm. A few stayed on with us, or came and went and came back again — those who could comply with Father’s ban on whiskey-drinking, swearing, and tobacco, who were willing to honor the Sabbath with him by listening to him preach and pray all day, and, most importantly, men who were able to subject their wills entirely to his, for he brooked no correction or argument, and he consulted no one. No one except me — who had the Old Man’s ear now and knew when to whisper into it and urge him on to action, who knew when and how to suggest retreat, who knew exactly the way to buck him up when his spirits flagged and how to calm him back to reason when his temper made him intolerant and his frustration with the peace-making cowardice and caution of others turned him into a sputtering dervish.

There was that spring greatly increased, widespread provocation amongst the pro-slavers, and threatening noises from the clans of Border Ruffians down along the Pottawatomie, and at Browns Station, especially, we were increasingly agitated and kept ourselves in a constant state of alarm, if not readiness. All the Free-Soil militias were pledged to participate strictly in defensive action, but it was growing less clear by the day as to what that term meant. Particularly in the face of constant death-threats from the settlers on the Pottawatomie — the Dutch Sherman faction, as we thought of them. They had settled that narrow, eroded gorge several years back, well before the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and thus they were mainly concerned with land-grabbing, not politics. We knew that they were using the slavery issue only to justify burning and driving us out and capturing our claims up on the more fertile open floodplain of the Marais des Cygnes, which, in their ignorance, they had passed over when they first came out from Arkansas and Tennessee.

Then one day late in April, the pro-slavery Sheriff Jones rode over from Atchison to Lawrence with a small posse of U.S. troops and apprehended six Free-Soil citizens and charged them with contempt of court for refusing to identify the leader of the party that had rescued John the previous month, that brave adventure which had led to the first Lawrence siege and stand-off. That same night, an unknown person shot Sheriff Jones outside of Lawrence as he and his troop of federal soldiers were leading their six prisoners off to Atchison. The prisoners did not flee, however, and Jones did not die of his wound. In fact, to my and Father’s astonishment, the entire town of Lawrence and its leadership were aggrieved by the shooting and publically apologized for it and condemned the unknown shooter outright.

The shooter, of course, was me. In company with the Old Man and my brothers. We had learned of the sheriff’s mission and had ridden over towards Lawrence to help oppose it, and at nightfall, a mile north of Hickory Point, had come up on the posse and prisoners on their way back to Atchison, where the six were to stand trial. There were but four soldiers in the posse and the Sheriff. The Old Man was all for throwing down on them at once and seizing their prisoners in person and delivering them safely back to Lawrence, where he said we were sure to be acclaimed as heroes, recalling, perhaps, our previous miraculous intervention.

I said to him, “No, it’s near dark. They’ll hear us coming and will run. Or else they’ll use the prisoners as hostages and put up a fight. The prisoners may be killed and the slavers escape.”

“But Jones and his men are cowards at heart;’ the Old Man argued. “They’re just conscripts. And the Lord will protect His children.” We were perched unseen in the growing darkness on a rise, hidden in a stand of black walnut trees, and Sheriff Jones’s party was heading slowly along a draw below, which led south to the crossroads of the Santa Fe Trail and the old California trail, thence north and east to Atchison. The sheriff was in the lead, and his prisoners were seated in a trap driven by one of the troopers, while the others rode along in a line behind.

“Look, it’s almost too dark to do anything at all” I pointed out. “But I can bring down the sheriff with a single shot now. The soldier-boys will panic, and the children of the Lord can escape in the confusion. We’ll pick them up later for return to Lawrence.” I got down from the wagon box and took a position behind a tree and leveled my rifle.

In a second, Father was at my side. “Hold up, son. Maybe we should think on this a bit.”

“If we think on it, the opportunity will be lost.”

I did not say it, but we both knew that if I did not drop the sheriff now, Father would once again be jumping up and down in a foaming rage, crying that nothing had been done to oppose this outrageous illegality, and he’d be blaming the men in Lawrence for their failure of nerve, instead of himself for his. I was as weary of his complaints as I was of their inaction.

He nodded approval, and I turned back to my task, aimed, and fired. Done. Sheriff Jones toppled from his horse.

A simple act. But instantly, with that shot, much changed.

With that one shot from my Sharps rifle, we shucked our identity as defenders of freedom and became full-fledged guerilla fighters. I knew it beforehand and intended it and recognized it when it happened.

Having finally gone on the offensive this way, we could no longer claim to ourselves or to anyone else that we had come out here to Kansas to farm or even to make Kansas a free state. No, it was now inescapably clear to all, but especially and most importantly to the Southerners, that we Browns were here in Kansas solely to wage war against slavery. The Missourians and pro-slavers all over the South who had been screaming for abolitionist blood, who had cried in the headlines of their newspapers, War to the knife, and knife to the hilt! were justified now. Their very lives, as much as their foul institutions, were under attack. We were their enemy now, as much as they had been ours all along.