One of the friends of Brown's childhood was the Hon. James B. Grinnell, who founded the town and college in Iowa. This congressman loved to tell the story of the night when John Brown knocked at his door. Outside was a wagon, packed with slaves, whom Brown had carried across the line from Missouri. He had driven four horses at their limit of speed for a hundred miles and had no defenders, save two or three men and as many guns. "I am a dealer in wool," said the stranger, "and my name is Captain John Brown of Kansas." The first thing Mr. Grinnell did was to find a shelter for these slaves, with food and beds. The next thing was to hide the wagon and the horses in the thick grove near by. Early the next morning the news spread like wild-fire, and the settlers began to pour in. John Brown made a speech to the farmers and justified his act. The villagers were terrified lest the pursuers come any moment and burn their houses. The three Congregational ministers offered prayers, asked for help, and started out to raise money. When the night fell the slaves were rushed to the terminus of the railway and carried through to Chicago, being shipped in a freight car as sheep, to distinguish their woolly heads from the goats, named white men.
In 1855 John Brown led his five sons and their families into Kansas, to help preëmpt the State for freedom. When at length the free state voters won an election and enthroned their governor, two thousand pro-slavery men from Missouri crossed the State line, burned the little town of Lawrence, and at the point of the pistol compelled the State officials to resign; issued writs for a new election, put in a slavery governor, captured the government, and started back into Missouri. On their way they passed through Pottawatamie. It was a guerrilla warfare. When John Brown reached his son's cabin, he found the settlers preparing for flight. He denounced them as cowards, and when one urged caution, answered, "I am tired of that word Caution. It is nothing but cowardice!" Either the border ruffians had to go, or else the settlers must leave without striking a single blow in defense of their homes. A man's cabin was his castle. Without waiting for the next attack to be made, John Brown pointed the settlers to the smoking ashes of cabins already burned and to the bodies that the Missouri guerrillas had left on the ground, and took the aggressive himself. He seized five of the outlaws and killed them for their crime.