A year's border fighting in Kansas not only suddenly put thought into action, but his personal and family sacrifices intensified his visionary ambition into a stern and inflexible purpose.
[Illustration: JOHN BROWN.] It is impossible to trace exactly how and when the Harper's Ferry invasion first took practical shape in John Brown's mind, but the indications are that it grew little by little out of his Kansas experience.

His earliest collisions with the Border Ruffians occurred the spring and summer of 1856.

In the autumn of that year the United States troops dispersed his band, and generally suppressed the civil war.

In January, 1857, we find him in the Eastern States, appealing for arms and supplies to various committees and in various places, alleging that he desired to organize and equip a company of one hundred minute-men, who were "mixed up with the people of Kansas," but who should be ready on call to rush to the defense of freedom.

This appeal only partly succeeded.