If the robbery on the Pottawatomie were undertaken and executed in behalf of the Free-State cause, then all the horses which the Browns stole during the time they remained in Kansas, were stolen from motives of patriotism and humanity. The term "attacking slavery" was a joke in the vocabulary of these bandits. The theft of a horse was spoken of, wittily, as an "attack upon slavery" or as "fighting for freedom." On page 122 Mr. Villard stoutly says: "Where John Brown was, he led." Did he lead in these midnight murders? Were his methods and conduct throughout this bloody affair those of a hero inspired by a devotion to humanity and by the nobility of his aims; or were they characteristic of the assassin and thief, who kills and robs under cover of the night and hides his identity by flight? In view of his actions as set forth herein, it is violently illogical to suppose that in planning to murder these settlers and steal their horses, Brown's motives were unselfish; and that he was moved by the higher impulses of altruism. Yet such are the assumptions of his biographers. A public sentiment in sympathy with "the men in bondage," and excited by the fierce storm of sectional animosity prevailing during the later fifties, created, of John Brown, an altruistic hero; and his biographers have been diligent and successful in perpetuating the fiction. When these murders were committed, had the public known that they were executed in promoting the robbery of these settlers; and that Brown and his sons were a band of thieves, working jointly with another party of thieves; and that they intended to continue their thieving operations while they remained in the Territory; the metamorphosis of John Brown, the criminal into John Brown, the hero, would have been impossible. History would have dealt differently with him. CHAPTER VI BLACK JACK _There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune._ --JULIUS CAESAR, ACT IV