Brown's trouble now lay in the fact that he had to leave the East and there was nothing which he could do in the West. The Free-State cause under the direction of Robinson, and his co-laborers: Goodin, Roberts, Holliday, Lane, Crawford, Brown, Deitzler, Parrott, Brooks, Dudley, Emery, Woodward, Learnard, Phillips, Conway, Wood, and many others, was progressing in an orderly and satisfactory manner toward a decisive victory at the polls. Acknowledging the receipt of Mr. Stearns's suggestions that he should go to Kansas immediately, Brown wrote him on the 13th: "I leave for the West to-day." It will be observed that he put off no fire-works, nor indulged in any exhibition in heroics on the occasion of his going to his, pretended, field of achievement. To William Barnes, of Albany, he wrote April 3d: I expect soon to return West; & to go back without even securing an outfit. I go with a _sad heart_, having failed to secure even the means of equipping; to say nothing of feeding men. I had when I returned, no more than I could peril; and could make no further sacrifice, except to go about in the attitude of a beggar: & that I have done, humiliating as it is. Proceeding slowly westward, almost aimlessly, with two wagons driven by himself and his son Owen, he worked the country he passed through for all the money and "supplies" he could secure. It was not until August 7th, that he arrived at Tabor, Iowa. "I was obliged," he said,[247] "to stop at different points on the way, and to go to others off the route to solicit help." While thus engaged, he wrote the "Autobiography"; a paper held in adoration by his biographers. It is in the form of a letter addressed to Mr. Stearns's twelve year old son, who had obtained "permission from his father to give all his pocket money to Captain Brown." It contains nothing that was unusual or extraordinary in the lives of those who wrestled with the problems and the privations which were incident to border-life during the period of Brown's youth. The paper was written for a special purpose and is valuable as an exhibit of his scheming to finance the operations he then intended to undertake in Virginia.[248]