=§ 62. John Brown in Kansas (1858).=--It was during this period also that John Brown was endeavoring to put into execution his famous plan for freeing the slaves. This is interesting, not only as typical of organized efforts to free the slaves on the plantations, but also because of its connection with other phases of the slavery question, into which we shall not attempt to enter here. His idea was first to gather as large a force as possible, then, when his men were properly drilled, to run off the slaves in large numbers; to retain the brave and strong in the mountains, and to send the weak and timid to the North by the "Underground Railroad."[214] In December, 1858, Brown divided his forces into two divisions, and went into Missouri. Here he succeeded in freeing eleven slaves, and, though pursued by a far superior number of Missourians, took them safely into Kansas. The affair, by its boldness, created great excitement throughout the South. The Governor of Missouri offered three thousand dollars reward, and the President of the United States two hundred and fifty dollars, for Brown's capture; within a very short time he had succeeded in conveying himself and his eleven fugitives safely into Canada, and the horses which he had appropriated from the slaveholders in order to carry his protegés out of Kansas were afterward publicly sold by him in Ohio.[215] [Footnote 169: Mr. Quincy also states, that "about a fortnight elapsed, when I was called upon by Rufus Green Amory, a lawyer of eminence at the Boston bar in that day, who showed me a letter from a Southern slaveholder, directing him to prosecute Josiah Quincy for the penalty under the law of 1793, for obstructing the agent of the claimant in obtaining his slave under the process established by that law. Mr. Amory felt, no less than myself, the folly of such a pretence; and I never heard from him, or from any one, anything more upon the subject of prosecution. This fact, and the universal gratification which the fact appeared to give to the public, satisfied my mind, that, unless by accident, or stealth, or in some very thin settled part of the country, the law of 1793 would be forever inoperative, as the event has proved in Massachusetts."--Meeting at Faneuil Hall to protest against the Fugitive Slave Law, letter read from Josiah Quincy, Boston Atlas, Oct. 15, 1850; Goodell, Slavery and Antislavery, 232; Appendix D, No. 12.] [Footnote 170: Appendix D, No. 13.] [Footnote 171: Appendix D, No. 19.] [Footnote 172: Appendix D, No. 16.] [Footnote 173: Appendix D, No. 42.] [Footnote 174: Appendix D, No. 26.] [Footnote 175: Appendix D, No. 20.] [Footnote 176: Appendix D, No. 22.] [Footnote 177: Appendix D, No. 35.] [Footnote 178: See post, § 81.] [Footnote 179: _Ante_, § 25.] [Footnote 180: Appendix D, No. 28; see _post_, § 81.] [Footnote 181: Appendix D, No. 34.] [Footnote 182: _Ante_, § 25.] [Footnote 183: Appendix D, No. 21.] [Footnote 184: Appendix D, No. 24.]