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Memoirs of John Brown,

WRITTEN FOR REV. SAMUEL ORCUTT'S

HISTORY OF TORRINGTON, CT.

By F. B. SANBORN.

MEMORIAL VERSES,

WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING.

CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS,
JANUARY, 1878.

PRINTED BY J. MUNSELL,
ALBANY, N. Y,

MEMOIR OF JOHN BROWN.
Though there have been so many men of this name in all parts of
the world which the Anglo-Saxon race inhabit, it will readily be
known which one of them merits the great space given him in these
pages. We tell the story of a man who made his plain name known
all over the world, and who will be remembered, when it may be
that Torrington and all its history shall be forgotten, save the single
fact, that a heio was born there.
John Brown, of Kansas and Virginia (born at Torrington, May
9, 1800, died at Charlestown, West Va., Dec. 2, 1859), was the
grandson and namesake of Captain John Brown of West Simsbury,
a revolutionary officer, who died in the army of Washington. He
was also the sixth in descent from Peter Brown who came over in
the Mayflower in 1620. Of the English ancestors of this Peter Brown,
little is known. He was unmarried when he landed at Plymouth in
January, 1621, but within the next thirteen years he was twice mar
ried, and died (in 1633) leaving four children. This we learn from
that most unquestionable authority, the History of Plymouth Plant
ation left behind him in manuscript, by William Bradford, who
succeeded Carver in 1621, as governor of the colony, and died in
1657. Writing about 1650, Bradford says : " Peter Brown married
twice. By his first wife he had two children, who are living, and
both of them married, and one of them hath two children ; by his
second wife he had two more. He died about sixteen years since."
It is supposed that his first wife was named Martha, and that Mary
and Priscilla Brown were her daughters, and the two who are men
tioned by Bradford as married in 1650. In 1644 they were placed
in the care of their uncle John Brown, a leading citizen of Duxbury,
where also Peter Brown settled a few years after landing at Plymouth.
John Brown did not come over with his brother, but a few years later,
and out-lived him many years. Peter Brown died in 1633, and his
inventory of estate was presented on the 14th of October that year.
He settled ,£15 on his two daughters by the first marriage, Mary and
Priscilla, and left the remainder, no very large sum, to his widow and
her children. Of these Peter Brown, born in 1632, was the younger.

He was the ancestor of John Brown, and removed from Duxbury to
Windsor, Conn., at some time between 1650 and 1658, where he
married Mary the daughter of Jonathan Gillett.
Peter Brown the Pilgrim, is said to have been a carpenter, but
from what part of England he came is not known. His home in
Duxbury was but a few miles from Plymouth, and not far from the
hill where Miles Standish built his house, and where the Standish
monument is now seen. Brown was, no doubt, one of the soldiers
of Standish, in his miniature campaigns against the Indians. He was
probably one of the Separatists (often called Brownists from another
person of that name) who lived for some years in Holland with
Brewster, Bradford and thegood ministerof Leyden, John Robinson,
of whose life and character Bradford gives such graphic sketches.
The picture drawn ofthe Leyden pastor might serve very well for
Captain Brown himself, as we knew him in his Kansas and Virginia
expeditions, when he had his small band of chosen men about him,
and was their pastor as well as their commander. Bradford says of
John Robinson — and so might it have been said two hundred and
forty years later of John Brown :
His love was greate towards them, and his care was all ways bente for their
best good, both for soule and body; for besides his singular abilities, in divine
things (wherein he excelled), he was also very able to give directions in civili
afFairs and to foresee dangers and inconveniences; by which means he was
very helpful to their outward estates, and so was every way as a common father
unto them. And none did more offend him than those that were close and
cleaving to themselves, and retired from the commone good ; as also such as
would be stiff and rigid in matters of outward order, and invey against the
evills of others, and yet be remiss in themselves, and not so careful to express a
vertuous conversation.
Peter Brown the Pilgrim never lived in Salem, as has sometimes
been said, nor any where in New England, save in Plymouth, and
afterwards in Duxbury. His son Peter, who emigrated to Wind
sor, Conn., lived to be nearly sixty years old, and .died at Windsor,
March 9, 1692, leaving an estate of £409 to be divided among his
thirteen children. Of these children, John Brown, born at Windsor,
Jan. 8, 1668, married Elizabeth Loomis in 1691, and had eleven
children. Among these were John Brown (born in 1700 and died in
1790), who was the father and the survivor of the revolutionary.
captain, John Brown, of West Simsbury. He lived and died in
Windsor, married Mary Eggleston, and Captain John Brown, just
mentioned, the grandfather of our hero, was his oldest son, born Nov.

4, 1728. He married Hannah Owen, of Welsh descent, in 1758.
Her father was Elijah Owen of Windsor, and her first ancestor in
this country was John Owen, a Welshman who married in Windsor
in 1650, just before young Peter Brown came there from Duxbury.
A few years afterwards an Amsterdam tailor, Peter Miles or Mills,
came over to Connecticut from Holland, settled in Bloomfield, near
Windsor, and became the ancestor of John Brown's grandmother,
Ruth Mills, of West Simsbury. Thus three streams of nationality,
English, Welsh and Dutch, united in New England to form the
parentage of John Brown.
He was the oldest son of Owen Brown, who was one of the
eleven children of John Brown, the revolutionary captain and of
Hannah Owen his wife. This large family was brought up in severe
poverty by the mother, who lived to see most of her children well
established in life. One of them became a judge in Ohio, another,
John Brown of New Hartford, was a man much esteemed in that
town, and for many years deacon of the church there. One of the
daughters was the mother of Dr. Humphrey, for some years president
of Amherst college. Owen Brown was bred to the trade of tanner
and shoemaker, the same which he taught his son John. He followed
this trade while living in Torrington, which was his home for only
five or six years. He was born and bred in Simsbury (what is now
Canton), was married there to Ruth Mills, daughter of the old
minister, Rev. Gideon Mills, on the nth of February, 1793 ; then
removed to Norfolk, where his oldest child was born, July 5, 1798,
and from there came to Torrington one year later. He lived in the
old house, still standing, "a mile northwest ofthe meeting house,"
which is represented in the accompanying picture. In this house
John Brown was born, at the date already mentioned, and there his
brothers Solomon and Oliver Owen Brown were born, in 1802 and
1804. In 1805 Owen Brown migrated, with his children and others
of his family, to the Western Reserve of Ohio, and settled in the
town of Hudson, of which he was one of the principal settlers. In
that wilderness John Brown spent his childhood and youth, though
his early recollections extended also to his home in Connecticut.
This will appear from a very curious paper written by him two
years before his death, in which he mentions many incidents
of his childish years. Although it has several times been printed,
it is due to the reader, who may never have seen it, that a paper

6

so valuable in itself, and so characteristic of the writer, should here
be reprinted. It first appeared in Redpath's Life of Brown, published

BIRTH PLACE OF JOHN BROWN, TORRINGTON, MAY 9, I OOO.
in Boston in i860, having been placed in Mr. Redpath's hands by
Mrs. George L. Stearns of Medford, Mass. The lad to whom it was
addressed was then about twelve years old, and the letter was evi
dently written for his amusement and instruction, with no thought
that it would ever become public. As first printed, and as here re
produced, it is spelled, punctuated, and italicized exactly as Captain
Brown wrote it. If it thus indicates, what was probably true, that
Brown could spell no better than Claverhouse, and was as regardless
of " stops and marks " as any old Roman stone-cutter or Greek
scribe, it also shows what a piquant and forcible style he used, both
in speech and on paper. It was after hearing this paper read that
Miss Osgood, of Medford, remarked, " If Captain Brown had not
been called, in the providence of God, to a very different work, what
charming stories he could have written for young children !" The
original manuscript fills six pages of closely written letter-paper,
without division into paragraphs. It was written during the summer
when Hugh Forbes was drilling a small company of his men for the
Virginia campaign, in the western part of Iowa,

7

Fragment of an Autobiography.
Red Rock, Iowa, \z,th July, 1857.
Mr. Henry L. Stearns
My Dear Young Friend
I have not forgotten my promise to write you ; but my constant care, &
anxiety have obliged me to put it off a long time. 'I do nobflatter myself that 1
can write any thing that u ill very much interest you : bu&have concluded to
send you a short story of a certain boy of my acquajitance : & for convenience
and shortness of name, I will call him John. Hi^story will be mainly a narra
tion of follies and errors ; which it is to be hoped you may avoid; but there is
one thing connected with it, which wjjl be calculated to encourage any young
person to persevering effort: & thaus^he degree of success in accomplishing his
objects which to a great extent Sparked the course of this boy throughout my
entire acquaintance with him ; notwithstanding his moderate capacity ; & still
more moderate acquirements.
John was born May 9th 1800, at Torrington, Litchfield Co, Connecticut ;
of poor but respectable parents : a decendant on the side of his father of one of
the company of the Mayflower who landed at Plymouth 1620. His mother
was decended from a man who came at an early period to New England from
Amsterdam, in Holland. Both his Father's & his Mother's Fathers served in
the war of the revolution : His Father's Father ; died in a barn at New York
while in the service, in 1 776
I cannot tell you of any thing in the first Four years of John's life worth
mentioning save that at that early age he was tempted by Three large Brass
Pins belonging to a girl who lived in the family & stole them. In this he was
detected by his Mother; &.after having a full day to think of the wrong: re
ceived from her a thorough whipping. When he was Five years old his Father
moved to Ohio ; then a wilderness filled with wild beasts, & Indians. During
the long journey which was performed in part or mostly with an ox team ¦ he
was called on by turns to assist a boy Five years older (who had been adopted
by his Father & Mother) & learned to think he could accomplish smart things
in driving the Cows ; and riding the horses. Sometimes he met with Rattle
Snakes which were very large ; & which some of the company generally managed
to kill. After getting to Ohio in 1805 he was for some time rather afraid of
the Indians, & of their Rifles j but this soon wore off: & he used to hang
about them quite as much as was consistent with good manners ; & learned a
trifle of their talk. His Father learned to dress Deer Skins, & at 6 years old
John was installed a young Buck Skin — He was perhaps rather observing as
he ever after remembered the entire process of Deer Skin dressing ; so that he
could at any time dress his own leather such as Squirel, Raccoon, Cat, Wolf
or Dog Skins ; & also learned to make Whip Lashes : which brought him some
change at times ; & was of considerable service in many ways. — At Six years
old John began to be quite a rambler in the wild new country finding birds &
Squirels, & sometimes a wild Turkey's nest. But about this period he was
placed in the school of adversity ; which my young friend was a most neces
sary part of his early training. You may laugh when you come to read about
it; but these were sore trials to John : whose earthly, treasures were very few
& small. These were the beginning of a severe but much needed course of
discipline which he afterwards was to pass through ; & which it is to be hoped

8
has learned him before this time that the Heavenly Father sees it best to take
all the little things out of his hands which he has ever placed in them. When
John was in his Sixth year a poor Indian boy gave him a Yellow Marble the
first he had ever seen. This he thought a great deal of; & kept it a good
while ; but at last he lost it beyond recovery. // took years to heal the wound;
& I think he cried at times about it. About Five months after this he caught a
young Squirrel tearing off his tail in doing it ; & getting severely bitten at the
same time himself. He however held to the little bob tail Squirrel ; & finally
got him perfectly tamed, so that he almost idolized his pet. This too he lost ;
by its wandering away ; or by getting killed : & for a year or Two John was
in mourning ; and looking at all the Squirrels he could see to try & discover
Bob tail, if -possible. I must not neglect to tell you of a very bad t$ foolish
habbit to which John was somewhat addicted. I mean telling lies : generally
to screen himself from blame ; or from punishment. He could hot well endure
to be reproached ; & I now think had he been oftener encouraged to be entirely
frank ; by makingfrankness a kind of atonement for some of his faults ; he would
not have been so often guilty of this fault ; nor have been obliged to struggle so
long in after life with so mean a habit. John was never quarelsome ; but was
excessively fond of the hardest & roughest kind of plays ; & could never get
enough [of] them.
Indeed when for a short time he was sometimes sent to School the opportu
nity it afforded to wrestle & Snow ball & run & jump & knock off old seedy
wool hats ; offered to him almost the only compensation for the confinement,
& restraints of school. I need not tell you that with such a feeling & but little
chance of going to school at all: he did not become much of a schollar. He
would always choose to stay at home & work hard rather than be sent to
school ; & during the warm season might generally be seen barefooted Jff bare
headed : with Buck skin Breeches suspended often with one leather strap over
his shoulder but sometimes with Two. To be sent off through the wilderness
alone to very considerable distances was particularly his delight ; & in this he
was often indulged so that by the time he was Twelve years old he was sent off
more than a Hundred Miles with companies of cattle ; & he would have thought
his character much injured had he been obliged to be helped in any such job.
This was a boyish kind of feeling but characteristic however.
At Eight years old John was left a Motherless boy which loss was complete
& permanent, for notwithstanding his Father again married to a sensible, inteli-
gent, & on many accounts a very estimable woman : yet he never addopted her
in feeling: but continued to pine after his own Mother for years. This op-
perated very unfavourably uppon him ; as he was both naturally fond of
females ; & withall extremely diffident ; & deprived him of a suitable connect
ing link between the different sexes ; the want of which might under some
circumstances have proved his ruin:
When the war broke out with England, his Father soon commenced fur
nishing the troops with beef cattle, the collecting & driving of which afforded
him some opportunity for the chase (on foot) of wild steers & other cattle
through the woods. During this war he had some chance to form his own
boyish judgment of men ^ measures: & to become somewhat familiarly ac
quainted with some who have figured before the country since that time. The
effect of what he saw during the war was to so far disgust him with military
affairs that he would neither train, or drill; but paid fines; & got along like a
Quaker untill his age finally has cleared him of Military duty.

During the war with England a circumstance occurred that in the end made
him a most determined Abolitionist : & led him to declare, or Swear:
Eternal war with Slavery. He was staying for a short time with a very gen
tlemanly landlord once a United States Marshall who held a slave boy near his
own age very active, intelligent and good feeling; & to whom John was under
considerable obligation for numerous little acts of kindness. The master made
a great pet of John : brought him to table with his first company ; & friends;
called their attention to every little smart thing he said or did: & to the fact of
his being more than a hundred miles from home with a company of cattle alone ;
while the negro boy (who was fully if not more than his equal) was badly
clothed, poorly fed; y lodged in cold weather ; tsf beaten before his eyes with
Iron Shovels or any other thing that came first to hand. This brought John
to reflect on the wretched ; hopeless condition, of Fatherless & Motherless
slave children: for such children have neither Fathers nor Mothers to protect,
& provide for them. He sometimes would raise the question is God their
Father f
At the age of Ten years an old friend induced him to read a little history ;
& offered him the free use of a good library ; by ; which he acquired some
taste for reading : which formed the principle part of his early education : &
diverted him in a great measure from bad company. He by this means grew
to be very fond of the company, & conversation of old & intelligent persons,
He never attempted to dance in his life ; nor did he even learn to know one
of a pack cfi cards from another. He learned nothing of Grammer; nor did
he get at school so much knowledge of common Arithmetic as the Four ground
rules. This will give you some idea of the first Fifteen years of his life ; dur
ing which time he became very strong & large of his age & ambitious to per
form the full labour of a man ; at almost any kind of hard work. By reading
the lives of great, wise & good men their sayings, and writings ; he grew to
a dislike of vain & frivolous conversation £ff persons ; & was often gieatly obliged
by the kind manner in which older & more inteligent persons treated him at
their houses: & in conversation; which was a great relief on account of his
extreme bashfulness.
He very early in life became ambitious to excel in doing an\ thing he under
took to perform. This kind of feeling I w&uld recommend to all young per
sons both male & female : as it will certainly tend to secure admission to the
company of the more inteligent ; & better portion of every community. By
all means endeavor to excel in some laudable pursuit.
I had like to have forgotten to tell you of one of John's misfortunes which
set rather hard on him while a young boy. He had by some means perhaps
by gift of his father become the owner of a little Ewe Lamb which did finely
till it was about Two Thirds grown ; & then sickened & died. This brought
another protracted mourning season : not that he felt the pecuniary loss so much :
for that was never his disposition ; but so strong & earnest were his atach-
ments. John had been taught from earliest childhood to " fear God and keep his
commandments ; " & though quite skeptical he had always by turns felt much
serious doubt as to his future well being ; & about this time became to some ex
tent a convert to Christianity & ever after a firm believer in the divine authen
ticity of the Bible. With this book he became very familiar, & possessed a
most unusual memory of its entire contents.
Now some of the things I have been telling of; were just such as I woula
2

IO
recommend to you : & I wd like to know that you had selected these out ; &
adopted them as part of your own plan of life ; & I wish you to have some de-
'nite plan. Many seem to have none ; & others never stick to any that they
[do form. This was not the case with John. He followed up with tenacity
whatever he set about so long as it answered his general purpose : & hence he
rarely failed in some good decree to effect the things he undertook. This was
so much the case that he habitually expected to succeed in his undertakings.
With this feeling should be coupled ; the consciousness that our plans are right
in themselves.
During the period I have named John had acquired a kind of ownership to
* certain animals of some little value but as he had come to understand that the
title of minors might be a little imperfect: he had recourse to various means in
order to secure a more independent ; & perfect right of property. One of those
means was to exchange with his Father for something of far less value. Another
was trading with others persons for something his Father had never owned.
Older persons have some times found difficulty with titles.
From fifteen to Twenty years old, he spent most of his time working at the
Tanner & Currier's trade keeping Bachelors hall ; & he officiating as Cook ;
& for most of the time as forman of the establishment under his father. Dur
ing this period he found much trouble with some of the bad habits I have
mentioned & with some that I have not told you off: his concience urging him
forward with great power in this matter: but his close attention to business ; &
success in its management ; together with the way he got along with a company
i of men, & boys; made him quite a favorite with the serious & more inteligent
\portion of older persons. This was so much the case ; & secured for him so
many little notices from those he esteemed ; that his vjmjtywas_£ery muckfed
by it: & he came forward to manhood quite full oPJeif-conceit ¦ & s'erf-confi-
dKn'tT" notwithstanding his extreme bashfulness. A younger brother used some
times to remind him of this : & to repeat to him this expression which you may
somewhere find, " A King against whom there is no rising up." The habit so
early formed of being obeyed rendered him in after life too much disposed to
speak in an imperious & dictating way. From Fifteen years & upward he felt
a good deal of anxiety to learn ; but could only read & studdy a little ; both
for want of time; & on account of inflammation of the eyes. He however
managed by the help of books to make himself tolerably well acquainted with
common arithmetic ; & Surveying ; which he practiced more or less after he
was Twenty years old.
At a little past Twenty years led by his own inclination & prompted also by
his Father, he married a remarkably plain ; but neat industrious & economical
girl; of excellent character ; earnest piety; & good practical common sense ;
about one year younger than himself. This woman by her mild, frank, &
mojre than all else : by her very consistent conduct ; acquired & ever while
she lived maintained a most powerful ; & good influence over him. Her plain
but kind admonitions generally had the right effect ; without arousing his haughty
obstinate temper. John began early in life to discover a great liking to fine
( Cattle, Horses, Sheep, & Swine ; & as soon as circumstances would enable him
he began to be a practical Shepherd: it being a calling for which in early life
he had a kind of enthusiastic longing: with the idea that as a business it bid
fair to afford him the means of carrying out his greatest or principle object. I
have now given you a kind of general idea of the early life of this boy ; & if
I believed it would be worth the trouble ; or afford much interest to any good

II
feeling person : I might be tempted to tell you something of his course in after
life ; or manhood. I do not say that I will do it.
You will discover that in using up my half sheets to save paper ; I have writ
ten Two pages, so that one does not follow the other as it should. I have no
time to write it over; & but for unavoidable hindrances in traveling I can
hardly say when I should have written what I have. With an honest desire
for your best good, I subscribe myself, Your Friend J. Brown.
P. S. I had like to have forgotten to acknowledge your .contribution in aid
ofthe cause in which I serve. God Allmighty bless you ; my son. J. B.
Upon this Autobiography a few remarks may be made. It was
sent to the son of his friend, the late Major Stearns of Medford,
Mass., who, as chairman of the Massachusetts Kansas committee,
had become acquainted with John Brown in 1857, and had done
much to promote the objects he then had at heart. When it was
written, though Brown was then engaged in preparations for his at
tack on slavery in Virginia, nothing was known of that scheme by
Major Stearns or by any of Brown's Massachusetts friends. The
contributions made by Harry Stearns and by others " in aid of the
cause in which I serve," were given to help the oppressed pioneers
of Kansas whom Brown was then defending. But it seems by this
account of John Brown's childhood and youth, that his hostility to
slavery began before 1815, when he was in the habit of driving cattle
long distances in Ohio, for army supplies, during the war with Eng
land which began in 1812. One of the first important events of
that war was the surrender of Gen. Hull of Massachusetts, with his
whole force, to the British near Detroit in 1812. Owen Brown, as
a beef contractor, was with Hull's army at or just before the surrender,
accompanied by his son John. The boy, then -but twelve years old,
circulated among the American soldiers and officers and overheard
many of the conversations in camp concerning Gen. Hull and his
position. He saw much of Gen. Cass, then a captain under Hull,
and it is to him, no doubt, that allusion is made as one of those
" who have figured before the country since that time." Long after
ward (in 1857), he t0^ me c^at he overheard such mutinous con
versation from Cass, McArthur, and other officers as would have
branded them as mutineers, if he could have reported it to the Wash
ington authorities, and he had an ill opinion of Cass ever after, on
account of this incident. He believed that Gen. Hull was forced
into the false position which led to his surrender by the ill conduct
of his subordinate officers.

I 2
The town of Hudson, and the region about it was the part of Ohio
familiar to John Brown's boyhood, and the nature of his life at that
time is well described in the preceding pages. He thus entered early
upon that long course of special training for his future warfare. A
most important part of this discipline was his outdoor habit of life,
and his intimate acquaintance with all that passes in wood and field;
by day and night. This life in the open air, to which he was bred
from infancy, gave him a hunter's digestion and the keen senses of
an Indian warrior. He was remarkably clear sighted and quick of
ear, and so acute of smell, that he could perceive the frying of dough
nuts at a distance of five miles, as he once told me. The life of a
shepherd — an open air calling — was one, as he says, " for which in
early life he had a kind of enthusiastic longing." When he became
a shepherd in after years his eye was so discriminating that if a strange
sheep got into his flock of two or three thousand, he could select
the intruder without difficulty. The surveyor's art, in which he
became expert, was another calling that kept him constantly in the
open air. " As happens usually to men of romantic character," said
Emerson in 1859, " his fortunes were romantic. A shepherd and
herdsman, he learned the manners of animals, and knew the secret
signals by which animals communicate. He made his hard bed on
the mountains with them ; he learned to drive his flock through
thickets all but impassable. If he kept sheep, it was with a royal
mind." Or as Emerson had written in earlier years of another char
acter, equally romantic :
" He trode the implanted forest floor, whereon
The all-seeing sun for ages has not shone;
Where feeds the moose and walks the surly bear,
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker,
Through these green tents, by eldest nature dressed.
He roamed, content alike with man and beast,
Where darkness found him he lay glad at night,
There the red morning touched him with its light.
The timid it concerns to ask their way,
And fear what foe in caves and swamps can stray.
To make no step until the event is known,
And ills to come as evils past bemoan,
Not so the wise ; no coward watch he keeps,
To spy what danger on his pathway creeps,
Go where he will, the wise man is at home,
His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome ;
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road,
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed."

*3
John Brown early learned to submit himself to God's guidance in
all things. He experienced religion at the age of sixteen years, and
at that time joined the Congregational church in Hudson. Not long
after his mind turned towards the ministry as a profession and he
began to study with that in view.
Precisely when this took place I have not learned, but it was the
occasion of his first return to Connecticut after his emigration with
his father in 1805. Whether he then revisited Torrington is un
certain, but upon making the long journey to New England, perhaps
in company with his father, he went to take the advive of a parish
minister who had married an aunt or cousin of Owen Brown, Rev.
Jeremiah Hallock, then settled at Canton, Ct. By him John Brown
was advised to fit for college at the school of his brother, Rev. Moses
Hallock in Plainfield, Mass. The school was at that time famous
for graduating ministers and missionaries, and the poet Bryant had
been a student there some years before. Plainfield is the next town
to Cummington, where Bryant was born, and is not very far from
Amherst college, where John Brown's uncle, Rev. Dr. Heman
Humphrey, was soon after made president. No doubt the lad's hope
was to fit himself at Plainfield and then enter Amherst college —
working his way by his own efforts, as so many young men have
since done. But he was attacked with inflammation of the eyes,
which soon became so serious that he was forced to give up study,
and go back to his father's tan-yard in Hudson, from which he had
set forth for college. The time spent by him at the Plainfield school
was short, and there are few reminiscences of him at that period, but
something may be cited. In December, 1859, Heman Hallock, the
youngest son of Rev. Moses Hallock, wrote to his brother Gerard
Hallock, then editor of the New York Journal of Commerce, as
follows :
" Your youngest brother does remember John Brown, who studied at our
house. How long he lived there, or at what period, I do not know. I think
it must have been at the time of my visits to Plainfield, when I was or had
been at Amherst academy,1 perhaps in 1819 or 1820 I have the name 'John
Brown ' on my list of father's students. It is said that he was a relative of
Uncle Jeremiah Hallock's wife, and that Uncle J. directed him to Plainfield.
He was a tall, sedate, dignified young man, from twenty-two to twenty-five
years old.- He had been a tanner, and relinquished a prosperous business for

1 Afterwards Amherst college.
* This shows that he appeared older than his years, for he was really only nineteen and
perhaps not so much.

H
the purpose of intellectual improvement. He brought with him a piece of
sole leather about a foot square, which he had himself tanned, for seven years,
to re-sole his boots. He had also a piece of sheep skin which he had tanned
and of which he cut some strips, about an eighth of an inch wide, tor other
students to pull upon. Father took one string and, winding it around his
fingers, said with a triumphant turn of the eye and mouth, ' I shall snap it.
The very marked yet kind immovableness of the young man's face, on seeing
father's defeat, father's own look, and the position of people and things in the
old kitchen, somehow gave me a fixed recollection of this little incident."
John Brown set the whole nation a similar task to do in later
years. The cord that fastened the fortunes of the slave to the destiny
of the country was placed by him in the hands of the whole people.
Defenders of slavery and ofthe " Union as it was," tried to snap it,
but they failed, and the " marked but kind immovableness " of John
Brown's face looked down upon their failure, while his soul went
marching on. The anecdote was characteristic of the man, as are
most ofthe stories current about him.
Soon after Brown's return to Hudson from Massachusetts, he
married his first wife, Dianthe Lusk, who is mentioned, though not
by name, in the autobiography. The marriage took place June 21,
1820, and was terminated in August, 1832, when the wife died in
childbirth. There were six other children of this marriage, the
eldest of whom, John Brown, Jr., was born July 25, 1821 ; Jason
Brown was born January 19, 1823, Owen Brown, November 4,
1824, Ruth (now Mrs. Henry Thompson), February 18, 1829, an<^
Frederick Brown, December 21, 1830. The last named son was
killed at the fight of Osawatomie in Kansas, August 30, 1856. The
others, who were all in Kansas then with their father, are still living,
and Owen is the last survivor of the company which invaded Virginia
in October, 1859. By a second marriage with Mary Anne Day,
of Meadville, Penn., in 1833, John Brown became the father of
thirteen children, seven of whom died in childhood, two were slain
at Harper's Ferry, and four survive. These are Salmon Brown,
born October 2, 1836; Anne, born September 23, 1843; Sarah
born September 11, 1846; and Ellen, born September 25, 1854.
In all, therefore, John Brown was the father of twenty children, of
whom ten grew to manhood, and eight are still living.
Having begun thus early to " give hostages of fortune," as Lord
Bacon says, John Brown devoted himself with diligence to his occu
pation, for the support of his young family. He was a tanner and
land-surveyor at Hudson until 1826, when he removed to Richmond,

l5
near Meadville, in Pennsylvania, and there carried on the same voca
tions. He remained there until 1835, then removed to Franklin
Mills, Portage county, Ohio, and there mingled speculation in land
with his tanning. He lost heavily in the panic of 1837, and in 1839
he seems to have given up tanning, and entered upon a new pursuit,
that of wool-growing and wool-dealing. In that year he drove a herd
of cattle from Ohio to Connecticut and returned in July, 1839, with
a few sheep, the nucleus of his great flock. In 1840 he returned to
Hudson, where his father, Owen Brown, senior, still lived, and there
engaged largely in sheep-raising. His partner at first was Captain
Oviatt of Richfield, a neighboring town, and in 1842, Brown re
moved to Richfield, where he lived for two years, and where his
daughter Anne (who was with him just before the attack on Harper's
Ferry) was born. Here, too, he lost four children in less than three
weeks — Sarah aged nine ; Charles, almost six ; Peter, not quite three
and Austin, a year old. Three of these were carried out of his house
at one funeral, and were buried in the same grave, in September,
1843. The next year he left this fatal spot, and settled in Akron,
not far off; whence he removed, in 1846 to Springfield, in Massa
chusetts. It was while tending his flocks in Ohio, with his sons and
daughters about him, that he first communicated to them his purpose
of attacking slavery by force. From that time forward, a period of
twenty years, he devoted himself, not exclusively but mainly, to that
undertaking, in which he sacrificed his life. At this point, therefore,
it will be well to pause a moment and see what manner of man John
Brown had shown himself to be in the ordinary affairs of life.
He was industrious in whatever he undertook, upright and scru
pulous in his business transactions, but with a touch of eccentricity,
which showed itself particularly, his friends thought, in his deeds of
charity. While living in Pennsylvania he declined to do military
duty, and paid his fine rather than encourage war by learning the art,
resolving, as Thoreaji said in 1859, " l^at he would have nothing to
do with any war unless it were a war for liberty." He caused the
arrest of an offender of Pennsylvania, who had done him no injury,
but was, as Brown thought, a plague to the community, and while
he was in prison, Brown supplied his wants, and supported his family
until the trial, out of his own scanty earnings. One of the ap
prentices in his tan yard at that time, bears testimony to the singular
probity of his life. He refused to sell his leather until the last drop
of moisture had been dried out of it, saying that he " did not mean

i6
to sell his customers water by the pound, and reap an unjust gain."
"I have known him from boyhood through manhood," said Mr.
Oviatt of Richfield, " and he has always been distinguished for his
truthfulness and integrity; he has ever been esteemed _a very con
scientious man." Another Ohio acquaintance, who first knew him
in 1835, says, " Soon after my removal to Akron, he became a client
of mine, subsequently a resident of the township in which the town
of Akron is situated, and during a portion of the time, a member of
a Bible class taught by me. I always regarded him as a man of more
than ordinary mental capacity, of very ardent and excitable tempera
ment, of unblemished moral character ; a kind neighbor, a good
Christian, deeply imbued with religious feelings and sympathies. In
a business point of 1 view, his temperament led him into pecuniary
difficulties, but I never knew his integrity questioned by any person
whatsoever. "u He brought up his children to read the Bible daily, and
it was the book of all others with Which he was most familiar. " He
had such a perfect knowledge of it," says his daughter Ruth, " that
when any person was reading it, he would correct the least mistake.
When he would come home at night, tired out with labor, he would,
before going to bed, ask some of the family to read chapters (as was
his usual course, night and morning), and would almost always say,
' Read one of David's Psalms.' " He Was a singer himself, and
taught his children to sing psalms and hymns. Among those sung
most frequently about his fireside altar were, " Blow ye the trumpet
blow," " I'll praise my Maker with my breath," " With songs and
honors sounding loud," and " Ah, lovely appearance of death." Bun-
yan's Pilgrim and Baxter's Saint's Rest were constantly read in his
family, but the Bible took precedence of every thing. In his will
he bequeathed a Bible to each of his children, and grandchildren, and
wrote to his family a few days before his execution, " I beseech
you every one to make the Bible your daily and nightly study.
** ' Such was the man, of the best New England blood, of the stock
of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and bred up like them " in the nurture and
admonition of the Lord," who was selected by God, and knew him
self to be so chosen, to overthrow the bulwark of oppression in Ame
rica. His prayers and meditations from childhood had been leading
rftm towards this consecration of himself to a great work, and from
the year 1839 till his death he had no dearer purpose in life than to
fulfil this mission. He seems to have formed a definite plan of attacking
slavery in one of its strongholds, by force, as early as 1838, but his

'7
purpose was modified in detail afterward, and, no doubt, changed
from time to time, as the circumstances of the country changed. It
is quite probable that, in early life, John Brown, like many other f
Americans, anticipated an uprising of the slaves themselves in large^
numbers, such as had taken place in St. Domingo, during the French
Revolution. Mr. Elizur Wright, of Boston (already mentioned as a
schoolmate of John Brown at Tallmadge in Ohio), informs me that
old Squire Hudson, for whom the town so called in Ohio was named,
and who was the leading man in that section where Brown spent his
boyhood, was not only an abolitionist fifty years ago, but that he
favored forcible resistance by the slaves. Mr. Wright says that he
met Squire Hudson, one day in September, 1 83 1, coming from his
post-office, and reading a newspaper which he had just received,
and which seemed to excite him very much as he read it. As Mr.
Wright came within hearing, the old Connecticut Calvinist was ex
claiming, " Thank God for that ! I am glad of it. Thank God they
have risen at last !" Inquiring what the news was, Squire Hudson
replied, " Why the slaves have risen down in Virginia, and are fighting
for their freedom as we did for ours. I pray God they may get it."
This was the famous " Southampton massacre " of August 23, 1 83 1 ,
in which Nat Turner, with six fellow slaves, raised a revolt in South
ampton county, on the edge of the Dismal Swamp in Virginia, and
had killed more than fifty whites, without the loss of a single follower,
when his band was dispersed on the 25th of August. Turner him
self escaped arrest for eight weeks longer, but was finally captured
October 30, 1831, tried November 5, and hanged November 11,
almost exactly twenty-eight years before John Brown's execution,
December 2, 1859. If the Ohio neighbors of John Brown in 1831
thanked God for Nat Turner's revolt, no wonder that he too should
have expected and favored an armed insurrection. What he did
actually engage in, after meditating upon his plans for so many years,
was something very different, namely, a partisan warfare, led and
controlled by white men, with the purpose and hope of abolishing
slavery, state by state, without the horrors of massacre and insurrec
tion which attended the uprising of Turner in Virginia, and of the Hay-
tian negroes in 1 79 1, and which would have followed the remarkable
plot of Denmark Vesey in South Carolina in 1822 had that well-laid
scheme not been frustrated by its discovery, before the time fixed for
the outbreak. It was the peculiarity of John Brown's final plan,
that he concealed its purpose for years, and until the moment of its
3

i8
execution ; that he had so carefully thought out its details as probably
to insure its success, had he not been providentially led to strike
the first blow in a place where complete success was impossible;
and that its execution would have been found as free from the
traditional horrors of slave insurrections as the best antecedent ar
rangements could make it. In fact, it was not an insurrection in
any sense of the word, but an invasion or foray, similar in its charac
ter to that which Garibaldi was to make six months later in Sicily
for the overthrow of the infamous Bourbon tyranny there. The
Italian hero succeeded, and became dictator of the island he had con
quered ; the American hero failed for the moment, and was put to
death. But his soul went marching on, and millions of his country
men followed in his footsteps two years later, to complete the cam
paign in which Brown had led the forlorn hope. As usual, the forlorn
hope was sacrificed, but by their death the final victory was won.
In 1838, when Brown formed his plans for attacking American
slavery, and even in 1858, when he had organized an armed force
to carry them out, his scheme would have seemed mere madness to
most persons. But Brown had the spirit of his ancestors, the Pilgrim
Fathers, and entered upon his perilous undertaking with deliberate
resolution, after considering what was to be said for and against it,
as did the Pilgrims before they set forth from Holland to colonize
New England. Governor Bradford, one of their bravest leaders
and their historian, has recorded the arguments for attempting the
voyage to America, in words which will apply, with very little change,
either in spelling or of spirit, to the adventure undertaken two cen
turies and a half later, by Peter Brown's stalwart descendant, " the
last of the Puritans."
" It was answered," says Bradford in his History " that all great and honour
able actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised
and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers were
great, but not desperate ; the difficulties were many, but not invincible. For
though there were manie of them likely, yet they were not certain ; it might
be sundrie of the things feared might never befall ; others, by provident care
and the use of good means might in a great measure be prevented ; and all of
them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience might either be borne
or overcome. True it was that such attempts were not to be made and under
taken without good ground and reason; not rashly or lightly as many have done
for curiosity or hope of gaine, etc. But their condition was not ordinarie ; their
ends were good and honourable ; their calling lawfull and urgente ; and there
fore they might expecte the blessing of God in their proceeding. Yea, though

l9
they should loose their lives in this action, yet might they have comforte in the
same, and endeavors would be honourable."
The world now sees how " honorable " the " endeavors " of
Bradford and of John Brown were, and what momentous conse
quences have followed. For events in history, as all who read history
know, have their importance measured by final results, rather than
by their apparent magnitude at the moment. The passage of the
Rubicon by Caesar (about which Lucan makes so much ado, and
Plutarch tells one of his striking anecdotes), would have had no
significance but for the victories that followed it and placed the ad
venturous general at the head of the Roman empire. And again,
the assassination of Caesar, startling and dramatic as it was, had ac
tually no historical result, and only serves to mark the date of transi
tion in Rome from one form of government to another. The short
campaign of John Brown in Virginia not only possesses the dramatic
interest that belongs to a striking event, but will always be worthy of
note as the beginning of that forcible attack upon a form of slavery and
a political power which within two years afterward convulsed the whole
world with its consequences. It was the first decisive act of an in
evitable tragedy, and such were its romantic features that, in the
lapse of time, it will no doubt be gravely expounded as a myth to
those who shall read American history some centuries hence. There
seems to be no reason why John Brown, any more than William
Tell, should escape this skeptical and generalizing spirit, which trans
forms history and even biography into a record of natural science.
" King Arthur," says a recent Welch writer who resolves history
into astronomy, " is the Great Bear, and perhaps this constellation,
being so near the pole, and visibly describing its circle in a small
space, is the origin ofthe famous Round Table." Will there come
a time when the Underground rail road shall be regarded as typical of
some geologic transition, and the foray at Harper's Ferry pass for the
legendary symbol of a chemic reaction ?
John Brown was, indeed, no mythical nor in any respect dubitable
personage. It was his fortune to play a great part, but no son of
Adam was ever less theatrical in his aim, or more iutensely practical
in his result. An idealist in spirit, he was a realist in activity, and
accomplished the grand task assigned to him with a plain, forthright
sincerity which comports little with the romantic circumstances of
his life and death, He was easily and naturally great,
f< And, as the greatest only are*
In his simplicity sublime-"'

20
His character needs, therefore, only to be honestly set forth ; not
to be adorned with epithets and compliments. The chronicle of his
life is his best monument ; let us now resume this, for the sake of
pointing out some of the steps by which he prepared himself for the
last scene of this life, that drew upon him the eyes of all mankind. He
did not hasten forward towards the achievement of what he had un
dertaken, until the fulness of time had come, and he had furnished
himself with such military and general knowledge as he deemed re
quisite to the execution of his plan. He kept it steadily before him
for twenty years, educated himself and his children for it, and made
it as much a part of his household discipline as were his prayers at
morning and evening. Mr. Emerson, indeed, in his speech at Salem,
a month before Brown's death, fixes a much earlier date than I have
given for the beginning of his enterprise against slavery in Virginia.
"It was not a piece of spite or revenge, — a plot of two years or of
twenty years — but the keeping of an oath made to heaven and earth
forty-seven years before. Forty-seven years at least, though I in
cline to accept his own account of the matter, at Charlestown,
which makes the date a little older, when he said, ' This was all
settled millions of years before the world was made.' Mrs. Brown
told me in i860, that she had known his design and been pledged to
\aid it for more than twenty years ; and John Brown himself had said
|n 1857, early 'n my acquaintance with him, ' I always told her that
when the time came to. fight against slavery, that conflict would be
I the signal for our separation. She made up her mind to have me go
'long before this, and, when I did go, she got ready bandages, and
, medicine for the wounded.'"
In 1846, while in the midst of his occupations as a wool-grower
and wool-dealer, John Brown came back to New England for a few
years, and took up his abode at Springfield, in Massachusetts, not
very far from the first Connecticut home of his ancestors in Wind
sor. He went there to reside as one of the wool-dealing firm of
Perkins and Brown, and as the agent of the sheep-farmers and wool-
merchants of northern Ohio, whose interests then required, as they
thought, an agency to stand between them and the wool-manufac
turers of New England, to whom they sold their fleeces. The Ohio
wool-growers fancied that they were fleeced as well as their
flocks, in the transactions they had with the manufacturers, who
would buy wool before it was graded, pay for it at the price of a low
grade, and then sort it so as to bring themselves a large profit, exclu-

21
sive of the process of manufacturing. John Brown undertook to
prevent this, and with this view, initiated a system of grading wools
before they passed into the manufacturers' hands. The system after
ward prevailed and was successful, but the manufactcrers were too
powerful then for the western farmer. They bribed his clerk (as he
always believed), to change the marks of his wool, so that what they
paid for as a low grade, was really one degree better. This transac
tion led to several law suits, one of which was tried in Boston in the
winter of 1852—3 (after Brown had withdrawn from business in
Springfield and retired to the Adirondac woods), and it went against
him. The next year he won a similar suit, which was tried in a
New York court, and Brown always believed he should have won
in the Boston case, had it been tried upon its merits, and not settled
by a compromise between the counsel. It is worth noting that the
judge who held the court at Boston was Caleb Cushing, who was
just then invited by Franklin Pierce to leave the supreme bench of
Massachusetts and become attorney-general of the United States,
and that the counsel against Brown was Rufus Choate.
While in Springfield John Brown lived in a house in Franklin
street, a little north of the Boston and Albany rail road. His wool
warehouses were close by the rail road, and at one time contained a
great stock of Ohio wool, which had accumulated on his hands while
he was at variance, as to price and grade of wool, with his New
England customers. Wishing to make a market for his stock, and be
lieving that he could sell it in Europe to advantage, he went abroad
in 1848—9, and traversed a considerable part of England and the con
tinent, on business connected with his merchandise, but also, with an
eye to his future campaigns against slavery. He visited wool-markets
and battle fields in impartial succession, and took notice of the tricks of
trade and the maneuvers of armies with equal interest. He was then
noted among wool dealers for the delicacy of his touch in sorting the
different qualities, and his skill in testing them when submitted to
him. Give him three samples of wool, one grown in Ohio, another
in Vermont, and a third in Saxony, and he would distinguish one
from the other in the dark, by his sense of touch. Some Englishmen,
during his sojourn abroad, put this power of Brown's to the test, in
an amusing manner, one evening, in company with several English
wool dealers, each of whom had brought samples in his pocket.
Brown was giving his opinion as to the best use to which certain
grades and qualities should be put. One of the party very gravely

22
drew a sample from his pocket, handed it to the Yankee farmer, and
asked him what he would do with such wool as that. Brown took
it, and had only to roll it between his fingers to know that it had not
the minute hooks by which the fibres of wool are attached to each
other. " Gentlemen," said he, " if you have any machinery in Eng
land that will work up dog's hair, I would advise you to put this into
it." The jocose Briton had sheared a poodle and brought the fleece
in his pocket, but the laugh went against him when Brown handed
back his precious sample. His skill in trade was not so great, and
after trying the mrkets of Europe, he finally sold his Liverpool con
signments of wool at a lower price than it would have brought in
Springfield. This ill-success, and the expenses of his venture, finally
ruined his business, and in 1849 he gave it up and went to live for
some years at North Elba, where he was buried.
(In Springfield, from 1846 to 1849, J°hn Brown had the reputation
of " a quiet and peaceable citizen and a religious man." The late
Chief Justice Chapman, who said this of him in 1859, a'so wrote at
the same time ; " Mr. Brown's integrity was never doubted, and he
was honorable in all his dealings, but peculiar in many of his notions,
and adhering to them with great obstinacy. Rev. Mr. Conklin, who
"was settled in the North Congregational church, and who separated
himself in a great measure from other ministers in Springfield, be
cause he thought them culpably indifferent to the sin of slavery, was
intimate with Brown, and they sympathized in their anti-slavery
ideas. His bookkeeper tells me that Brown and his eldest son (John
Brown Jr.), used to discuss slavery by the hour in his counting room,
and he used to say that it was right for slaves to kill their masters
and escape." This son, it may be mentioned, came with some of
the other children to reside in Springfield before his father took up
his abode there. The sons went on Sundays to the little African
church, and there formed the acquaintance of a colored man, Thomas
Thomas by name, a fugitive slave from the eastern shore of Mary
land. Learning something of Thomas's history and observing his
upright and courageous character, they engaged him to work for their
father when he should come to take charge of the wool business in
Springfield. This soon happened, and John Brown sent for Thomas,
and directed him to begin work at the wool warehouse, as a porter,
the next morning. " How early shall I come ?" " We begin work
at seven," was Brown's answer, " but I wish you would come round
earlier, for I want to talk with you." Thomas went to his work the

23
next morning, between five and six ; found Brown (who was always
an early riser) waiting at the counting room for him ; and there re
ceived, instead of directions for his day's work, an invitation to join
in Brown's enterprise for the liberation of the slaves, which was
briefly explained to him, and in which Thomas agreed to join.i
Meantime he was-to work in the warehouse, and did so during the
three years that Brown remained in Springfield. During that time
he was sent by Brown to look up Madison Washington, the leader
of the courageous slaves of the vessel Creole, whom Brown wanted
as a leader among his colored recruits. But Washington, when
found, proved to be an unfit person for such a responsible place.1
It was in the hope of enlisting and drilling these colored recruits
for this company of liberators, that Brown went to live in North
Elba, among the colored men to whom Gerrit Smith had given land
among the Adirondac woods in 1848. Mr. Smith (who con
tinued to be Brown's friend from their first acquaintance in 1849,
until his death in Virginia), had inherited from his father landed
estate in more than three-fourths ofthe counties of New York. In
Essex county, among the Adirondac mountains and lakes, he
owned thousand of acres, and these he offered to give away in farms
of suitable size to such colored men as would live upon the land,
clear it, and cultivate it. On his return from England in 1849,
Brown heard of the offer, and soon presented himself, for the first
time, at the hospitable house of Mr. Smith in Peterboro, where he was
ever after a welcome visitor. By this time a small colony of colored
people had gone to North Elba to clear up the forest land given them
by Mr. Smith, and were braving the hardships of their first year in
the cold backwoods of northern New York. Brown introduced
himself to Mr. Smith and made him this proposal : " I am some
thing of a pioneer, having grown up among the woods and wild
Indians of Ohio, and am used to the climate and the way of life that
your colony find so trying ; I will take one of your farms myself,
clear it up and plant it, and show my colored neighbors how such
work should be done ; will give them work as I have occasion, look
after them in all needful ways, and be a kind of father to them." The
landlord readily consented to have such a tenant, and Brown soon

1 Thomas Thomas still lives in Springfield, and is now (May, 1&77), as he has been for
some years, the keeper of an eating house near the rail road station. He retains the most
loyal affection for John Brown, and it is from his own lips that I have had some of the above
facts concerning Brown in Spring6eld.

24
removed his family from Springfield to North Elba, where they re
mained for the greater part of the time between 1849 and 1862, and
where they lived when John Brown was attacking slavery in Kansas,
in Missouri and in Virginia. Besides the other inducements which
this rough and bleak region offered him, he considered it a good place
of refuge for his wife and younger children, when he should go on
his campaign, a place where they would not only be safe and inde
pendent, but could live frugally and both learn and practice those
habits of thrifty industry which Brown thought indispensable in
the training of children. When he went there his youngest son,
Oliver, was ten years old, and his daughters, Anna and Sarah,
were six and three years old. Ellen, his youngest child, was born
afterwards. In 1849, the great current of summer and autumn travel, which
now flows through the. Adirondac wilderness every year, had scarcely
begun to set that way. There were in North Elba few roads,
schools or churches, and only one or two good farms. The life of a
settler there was wild pioneer work; the forest was to be cut down,
and the land burnt over ; the family supplies must be produced
mainly in the household itself. The men made their own sugar from
the maple trees, which grew everywhere ; and the women spun and
wove garments for both sexes, out of the wool that was sheared from
the family flock of sheep; cows and especially sheep were the wealth
of the farmer. As Colonel Higginson mentions, the widow of Oliver
Brown, after his death at Harper's Ferry in 1859, was considered
not to be absolutely penniless, because Oliver had left her five sheep,
valued at ten dollars. Winter lingers in these forests for. six months
ofthe year, and in the short summers, neither wheat nor Indian corn
will come to maturity ; the crops are grass, oats and potatoes,
a few vegetables, and the fruit of the woods and meadows.
In the summer, for a few months, this wilderness is charming.
The mountains rise, grand and beautiful on all sides; the untamed
forest clothes their slopes and fills up the plains and valleys,' save where
the puny labors of men have here and there rescued a bit of fertile
land from its gloom. On such spots • the houses are built, and
around them grow the small cultivated crops that can endure the
climate. The wild fruits are in abundance, the woods (when I first
saw them in 1857) were full of game, and the streams and lakes of
fish. But the mode of life is rude and primitive, with no elegance, and
little that we should call comfort. Many of the dwellings are log cab-

25
ins, and in the whole township of North Elba, there was then scarcely
a house worth a thousand dollars, or one which was finished throughout.
Mrs. Brown's house, in 1857, had but two plastered rooms, yet
two families lived in it, and at my second visit, in February, i860,
two widowed women besides, whose husbands were killed at Har
per's Ferry. I slept on both occasions in a little chamber partitioned
off" with a rude frame-work, but not plastered, the walls only orna
mented with a few pictures ; and in winter the snow sifted through
the roof and fell upon the bed. I arrived at nightfall, on my second
visit, closely pursued from the shore of Lake Champlain by a snow
storm, which murmured and moaned about the chamber all night,
and in the morning I found a small snow-drift on my coverlet, and
another on the floor near my bed.1 This house had been built by
John Brown about 1850, and the great rock beside which he lies
buried, is but a few rods from its door.
One of the first things that Brown did in this wilderness was to
introduce his favorite breed of cattle there, and to exhibit them for a
prize at the annual cattle show of Essex county in September 1850.
They were a grade of Devons, and the first improved stock that had
ever been seen at the county fair. The agricultural society in its an
nual report for 1850, said "The appearance upon the grounds of a
number of very choice and beautiful Devons, from the herd of Mr.
John Brown, residing in one of our most remote and secluded towns,
attracted great attention, and added much to the interest of the fair.
The interest and admiration they excited have attracted public atten
tion to the subject, and have already resulted in the introduction of
several choice animals into this region." The same result on a much
grander scale, was observed ten years later, when John Brown ex
hibited, at the world's fair, specimens of a choicer and bigger breed of
men than had been seen lately in Virginia or New England. " We
have no doubt," added the Essex county farmers, "that this influence
upon the character of our stock will be permanent and decisive."
Let us hope the same for our country and its men.2

" The new-born babe of Oliver Brown (the captain's youngest son, who had been killed
at Harper's Ferry four months before) died in the house that night, and the poor young
mother did not long survive.
' Writing on the 30th day of September, 1850, to an inquiring correspondent, John
Brown said : " None of my cattle are pure Devons, but a mixture of that and a particular
favorite stock from Connecticut, a cross of which I much prefer to any pure English cattle
after many years experience, of different breeds. I was several months in England last season,
and saw no one stock on any farm, that would average better than my own."
4

26
Another word may here be said, before leaving this period, of
Brown's journey in Europe in 1848-9. Some letters of his from
Europe are still in existence, and it is hoped they will soon be pub
lished. The only other record of his European experiences, so far
as I know, is that noted down by me from conversations in 1857-8,
in which he told me about what he chiefly noticed abroad, the agri
cultural and military equipment of the countries he visited, and the
social condition of the people. He thought a standing army the
greatest curse to a country, because it drained away the best of the
young men, and left farming and the industrial arts to be managed
by inferior persons. The German farming, he said, was bad hus
bandry, because the farmers there did not live on their land, but in
villages, and so wasted the natural manures, which ought to go back
without diminution to the soil. He thought England the best
cultivated country he had ever seen ; but as we were driving away
one morning in 1859, fr°m the country seat of Mr. John M. Forbes
at Milton, near Boston, he told me that he had seen few houses of
rich men in England so full of beauty and comfort as this, in which
he had passed the night.1 He had followed the military career of
Napoleon with great interest, and visited some of his battlefields.
We talked of such things while driving from Concord to Medford,
to visit Mr. Stearns, one Sunday in April, 1857. He then told me
that he had kept the contest against slavery in mind while traveling
on the continent, and had made an especial study of the European
armies and battle-fields. He had examined Napoleon's positions,
and assured me that the common military theory of strong places was
unsound ; that a ravine was in truth more defensible than a hill-top.2
So it is, for an army of heroes, as Leonidas demonstrated at
Thermopylae ; but for ordinary warfare, we may believe that
Napoleon was right. Brown often witnessed the evolutions of the
Austrian troops, and declared that they could always be defeated
(as they have since been in Italy and elsewhere) by soldiers who
should maneuver more rapidly. The French soldiers he thought
well drilled, but lacking individual prowess ; for that he gave the
palm, and justly, to our own countrymen. He returned from Europe

¦ Probably he saw few of the castles and seats of the nobility and the richer gentry, which
are certainly superior to what is seen in New England.
" As we passed through West Medford he pointed out several such-defensible ravines.

27

more in love than before with American institutions, and more than
ever convinced that slavery must be destroyed. He came back poor,
for his mercantile ventures had failed ; it was not destined that he
should grow rich, as he had hoped, and thus be able to aid the op
pressed from his abundance. Ever afterwards he accepted cheerfully
the narrow path of poverty, but gave all his spare time to the work
he had at heart.
There is a phase of John Brown's life concerning which much has
been said, without at all exhausting the subject, his efforts in behalf
of the fugitive slaves who had taken refuge in the north, long before
the troubles in Kansas began. These efforts were especially active
after the passage ofthe Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, when the poor
refugees were in danger of being hunted down, even in New England,
and sent back to the bondage from which they had freed themselves
by courage or cunning. In January, 1 85 1, while Brown was
nominally a resident of the Adirondac woods, he was at his old home
in Springfield, and there formed an organization among the colored
people, many of whom were fugitives, to resist the capture of any
fugitive, no matter by what authority. The letter of instructions
given by Brown at that time to his Springfield " Gileadites," as he
called them, still exists in his handwriting, and has been once or twice
printed. It deserves to be cited here, as an authentic document,
throwing much light on the character and purposes of Brown at that
time, nearly nine years before his campaign in Virginia. Here it is,
without the signatures of the forty-five men and women who in
Springfield had enrolled themselves as liberators or " Gileadites."
" WORDS OF ADVICE.
"Branch of the United States League of Gileadites. Adopted January 15,
1851, as written and recommended by John Brown.
" ' UNION IS STRENGTH.'
" Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. The trial
for life of one bold and to some extent successful man, for defending his rights
in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy throughout the nation than the
accumulated wrongs and sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive 1
colored population. We need not mention the Greeks struggling against the
oppressive Turks, the Poles against Russia, nor the Hungarians against Austria
and Russia combined, to prove this. No jury can be found in the Northern
states that would convict a man for defending his rights to the last extremity.
This is well understood by Southern Congressmen, who insisted that the right of
trial by jury should not be granted to the fugitive. Colored people have more

28
fast friends amongst the whites than they suppose, and would have ten times
the number they now have were they but half as much in earnest to secure
their dearest rights as they are to ape the follies and extravagances of their
white neighbors, and to indulge in idle show, in ease, and in luxury. Just
think of the money expended by individuals in your behalf in the past twenty
years. Think ofthe number who have been mobbed and imprisoned on your
account Have any of you seen the Branded Hand? Do you remember the
names of Lovejoy and Torrey ?
" Should one of your number be arrested, you must collect together as quickly
as possible, so as to outnumber your adversaries who are taking an active part
against vou. Let no able-bodied man appear on the ground unequipped, or
with his weapons exposed to view ; let that be understood beforehand. Your
plans must be known only to yourself, and with the understanding that all
traitors must die, wherever caught and proven to be guilty. ' Whosoever is
fearful or afraid, let him return and part early from Mount Gilead.' (Judges,
vii chap, 3 verse; Deut., xx chap., 8 verse.) Give all cowards an oppor
tunity to show it on condition of holding their peace. Do not delay one moment
\after you are ready; you will lose alt your resolution if you do. Let the first blow
Ybe the signal for all to engage, and when engaged do not do your work by halves ;
\but make clean work with your enemies, and be sure you meddle not with any
fathers. By going about vour business quietly, you will get the job disposed of
before the number that an uproar would bring together can collect ; and you
will have the advantage of those who come out against you, for they will be
wholly unprepared with either equipments or matured plans ; all with them will
be confusion and terror. Your enemies will be slow to attack you after you
have done up the work nicely; and, if they should, they will have to encounter
your white friends as well as you, for you may safely calculate on a division of
the whites, and may by that means get to an honorable parley.
" Be firm, determined, and cool ; but let it be understood that you are not to
be driven to desperation without making it an awful dear job to others as well
as to you. Give them to know distinctly that those who live in wooden houses
should not throw fire, and that you are just as able to suffer as your white
neighbors. After effecting a rescue, if you are assailed, go into the houses of your
most prominent and influential white friends with your wives, and that will effect'
ually fasten upon them the suspicion of being connected with you, and will compel
them to make a common cause with you, whether they would otherwise live up to
their profession or not. This would leave them no choice in the matter. Some
would, doubtless, prove themselves true of their own choice ; others would
flinch. That would be taking them at their own words. You may make a
tumult in the court room where a trial is going on by burning gunpowder freely
in paper packages, if you cannot think of any better way to create a momentary
alarm, and might possibly give one or more of your enemies a hoist. But in
such case the prisoner will need to take the hint at once and bestir himself; and
so should his friends improve the opportunity for a general rush.
" A lasso might possibly be applied to a slave catcher for once with good
effect. Hold on to your weapons, and never be persuaded to leave them, part
with them, or have them far away from you. Standby one another, and by your
friends, while a drop of blood remains ; and be hanged, if you must, but tell no
tales out of school. Make no confession.

29

AGREEMENT.

"As citizens ofthe United States of America, trusting in a just and merciful
God, whose spirit and all-powerful aid we humbly implore, we will ever be
true to the flag of our beloved country, always acting under it. We whose names
are hereunto affixed do constitute ourselves a branch of the United States League
of Gileadites. That we will provide ourselves at once with suitable implements,
and will aid those who do not possess the means, if any such are disposed to
join us. We invite every colored person whose heart is engaged in the per
formance of our business, whether male or female, old or young. The duty of
the aged, infirm, and young members of the League shall be to give instant notice
to all members in case of an attack upon any of our people. We agree to have
no officers except a treasurer and secretary pro tem, until after some trial of
courage and talent of able-bodied members shall enable us to elect officers from
those who shall have rendered the most important services. Nothing but wisdom
and undaunted courage, efficiency, and general good conduct shall in any way
influence us in electing our officers."
Then follows, in the original manuscript, a code of laws or regula
tions, such as John Brown, with his methodical, forward-looking mind,
was in the habit of drawing up whenever he organized any branch of
his grand movement against slavery. Some features of this organiza
tion strikingly resemble that formed by him in Canada, in May, 1858
(the Constitution of which was captured, among his papers at Har
per's Ferry), especially the agreement that " we will ever be true to
the flag of our beloved country, always acting under it." This was
reproduced in the" Provisional Constitution of 1858," the forty-sixth
article of which reads thus : —
" Art. XLVI. These articles are not for the Overthrow of Government.
The foregoing articles shall not be construed so as in any way to encourage the
overthrow of any State Government, or of the General Government of the
United States, and look to no dissolution of the Union, but simply to amend
ment and repeal, and our flag shall be the same that our fathers fought under in
the Revolution." f
This devotion to the flag and the principles of the Revolution, the
latter as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, was fixed and
constant in Captain Brown's mind, as it had been in the hearts of
his two grandfathers who fought under Washington. He did not
believe in the possibility of dissolving the Union, would not willingly
hear it discussed,, and once said to me with the most serious emphasis,
weighing every word as he uttered it (such was his manner), "I be
lieve in the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. I
think they both mean the same thing ; and it is better that a whole
generation should pass off the earth, men, women, and children, by

3°
a violent death, than that one jot of either should fail in this country."
He acted consistently on this principle, though a man of peace from
his youth up, and inclining to the Quaker habit of not bearing arms
in time of peace. Writing to his wife at North Elba, from Spring
field, about the time he formed his "league " there, in 185 1, he
says : " Since the sending off of Long (a fugitive) from New Yoric,
I have improved my leisure hours quite busily with colored people,
here, in advising them how to act, and in giving them all the en
couragement in my power. They very much need encouragement
and advice, and some of them are so alarmed that they tell me they
cannot sleep, on account of either themselves or their wives, and
children. I can only say I think I have been enabled to do some
thing to revive their broken spirits. I want all my family to imagine
themselves in the same dreadful condition." Such was the practical
way in which he made his exegesis of that text so often on his lips
and in his heart : " Remember them that are in bonds as bound
with them." No occasion was offered of putting in practice his di
rections for resisting the seizure of fugitives in Springfield, such as
occurred soon after in Worcester and Boston, nor does it appear that
Brown was present at any of. the fugitive slave trials which disgrace '
the annals of Massachusetts, though he was with difficulty prevented
by his friends in New York, in May, 1854, from going to Boston to
head a movement for the rescue of Anthony Burns.
The career of John Brown in Kansas is the most romantic chapter
in the history of that state, and the services he rendered to the cause
of freedom there were very important. It will be remembered that
the great question in Kansas for four or five years was whether the
new territory, to which the south wished to extend slavery, should
be settled by anti-slavery men or by slave holders and their negroes.
John Brown at once saw here was an opportunity for him. Re
solved as he was and long had been, to attack slavery in its own
stronghold, he yet recognized the necessity of first checking its
growth. He therefore made his arrangements very early to establish
himself and his stalwart family in Kansas. The repeal of the Mis
souri compromise, which opened the broad prairies west of the Mis
souri river to slavery, was finally consummated on the 25th of May,
1854. At that time John Brown had seven sons and one son-in-law
living ; the youngest so.i, Oliver, was a boy of fifteen, while Watson
was but eighteen. These, with Salmon Brown, who still survived,
were children ofthe second marriage, and were neither of them mar-

31
ried at this date. Of the four sons of the first ¦tarriage who were
then living, two were married and one, Frederick, Tras engaged to be
married. Ruth, the eldest daughter, had married I&nry Thompson,
a sturdy farmer of New Hampshire origin, wholiveiAear the Brown
farm at North Elba. He was in sympathy with Brum's great pur
pose, and readily consented to join the family in Kans^k
In the winter of 1854-55 l^e f°ur older sons of jWin Brown,
John, Jason, Owen, and Frederick, living in or near Akron, Ohio,
made their arrangements to settle in Kansas, then just bpened4Eto
emigrants, and they did establish themselves the next spring inTy-
kins county, about eight miles from Osawatomie, a town afterwards
made famous by their father's defence of it, August 30, i856.%jr>pohn
Brown himself did not go to Kansas till the autumn of 1855, and in
the preceding summer, shortly before he set out to join his sons
there, he was again in Massachusetts, and saw some of his old friends
in Springfield,— -among them, Thomas, the Maryland fugitive, who
had engaged with him in the great work nine years before. He ex
pressed his belief that the struggle for the liberation of the slaves
was soon to come on, but does not seem to have made, at that time,
any special effort to enlist men for service in Kansas. Probably with
his characteristic caution, he meant first to explore the ground and
see what was necessary, and what could be done. Nor did he re
ceive any of the money which, in 1855 and 1856, was raised in
Massachusetts for the benefit of the free state men in Kansas, to the
amount of $ 100,000 and upward. He was aided by a subscription
in central New York, to which Gerrit Smith contributed, but the
amount was not large, and he and his family, for the most part, carried
on their Kansas campaign at their own charges. Before going to
Kansas he carried back his family, who had been in Ohio with him,
to his farm at North Elba, where they remained for several years
after his death.
From a paper in Brown's hand writing, found at North Elba after
his death, the biographers of the Brown family have taken these
particulars of their first setting forth as pioneers towards the state
which now holds the memory of these men so dear :
"In 1854 the four eldest sons of John Brown, named John, Jr., Jason,
Owen and Frederick (all children bv a first wife), then living in Ohio, de
termined to remove to Kansas. John, Jr., sold his place, a very desirable little
property, near Akron in Summit county. Jason Brown had a very valuable
collection of grape vines, and also of choice fruit trees which he took up and

32
shipped in boxes at a heavy cost. The other two sons held no landed property,
but both were possessed of some valuable stock (as were also the two first named)
derived from that of their father, which had been often noticed by liberal pre
miums, both in the state of New York, and also of Ohio. The two first
named, John and Jason, had both families. Owen had none. Frederick was
engaged to be married, and was to return for his wife.
In consequence of an extreme dearth in 1854, the crops in northern
Ohio were almost an entire failure, and it was decided by the four
brothers that the two youngest should take the teams, and entire stock,
cattle and horses, and move them to southwestern Illinois to winter, and
to have them on early in the spring of 1855. This was done ata very
considerable expense, and with some loss of stock to John, Jr., some of
his best stock having been stolen on the way. The wintering of the animals
was attended with great expense, and with no little suffering to the two youngest
brothers ; one of them, Owen, being to some extent a cripple from childhood,
by an injury of the right arm ; and Frederick, though a very stout man, was
subject to periodical sickness for many years, attended with insanity. It has
been stated that he was idiotic ; nothing could be more false.1 He had sub
jected himself to a most dreadful surgical operation but a short time before
starting for Kansas, which had well nigh cost him his life; and was but just
through with his confinement, when he started on his journey, pale and weak.
They were obliged to husk corn all winter, out of doors, in order to obtain
fodder for their animals. Salmon Brown, a very strong minor son of the family,
eighteen years old, was sent forward early in 1851;, to assist the two last named,
and all three arrived in Kansas early in the spring."
In such patriarchal fashion did the Browns enter the land which
they were foreordained to defend. These young men were of the
true stuff, worthy sons of such a sire. As Owen Brown said to me,
many years afterwards, so the world will say, " I never could dis
cover any symptoms of cowardice in any of those boys." All were
active, enterprising persons, fond of labor, inured to hardship, and
expecting, as their father had taught them, to earn their living with
the toil of their own hands. The narrow circumstances of the
family made it quite necessary that these young men should support
themselves somewhere. Love of freedom, love of adventure, and
a desire for independence in fortune combined to tempt the young
men, while the older brothers acted from a sense of duty. The
otlier men of the family, some with their wives, emigrated from time
to time, and though the whole nine, including Captain Brown, were
never in Kansas together, yet for a long time the father, with six
sons and his son-in-law, was there, and they all rallied to the defense
of Lawrence in May, 1856. John Brown himself went to Kansas
in the fall of 1855, having already, in the spring of that year, taken
his wife and infants back to their home in the Adirondac mountains.

• He doubtless suffered from epilepsy.

33
Late in June, 1855, he was present at an anti-slavery convention in
Syracuse, New York, where money was raised to assist him in
arming his family in Kansas. He writes to his wife, under date of
"Syracuse, June 18, 1855," as follows:
" I reached here on the first day of the convention, and I have reason to
bless God that I came ; for I have met with a most warm reception from all,
so far as I know ; and, except by a few sincere, honest peace friends, a most
hearty approval ot my intention of arming my sons and other friends in Kansas.
I received today donations amounting to a little over sixty dollars — twenty
from Gerrit Smith, five from an old British officer ; others giving smaller sums
with such earnest and affectionate expressions of their good wishes as did me
more good than money even. John's two letters were; introduced, and read
with such effect by Gerrit Smith as to draw tears from numerous eyes in the
great collection of people present. The convention has been one of the most
interesting meetings I ever attended in my life ; and I made a great addition to
the number of warm-hearted and honest friends."
Five months after this letter was written, John Brown was quietly
settled at Osawatomie. He had purchased arms with the money
given him at Syracuse, rifles and revolvers, and artillery sabres, with
which they mustered to defend Lawrence in December, 1855.
Brown and four of his sons drove up to the Free State Hotel in
Lawrence at that time, " all standing, tall and well armed, in a lumber
wagon, about the side of which stood rude pikes, made of bayonets
fastened to poles." This was his first appearance in arms among the
settlers of Kansas. These men, by no means all heroes, soon dis
covered that their new champion had other views than they. He
was no squatter, but even then " his soul went marching on." He had
come there to aid his sons and their neighbors against the Missouri
marauders ; but that was not his main purpose. He saw that Kansas
was the battle ground between slavery and freedom, and he wanted
the warfare on the right side to be something more than defensive.
He longed to attack slavery on its own ground, and there destroy it.
The time, he thought, had come to carry out his darling scheme, and
he made many enemies among the timid " free-state men " by striving
to do so.
In the disturbances of 1856 he was very prominent, particularly at
the fights of Black Jack and Osawatomie, in both of which he won
a victory over numbers far superior to his own force. He had en
listed a small band of true men, and with these, from May to Sep
tember, he ranged the Kansas prairies at intervals, executing justice
on the oppressors of the people. It was a portion of his band that
5

34
committed the so-called Potawatomie murders in May, 1856,
but Captain Brown himself was not then present, although he after
wards fully justified the act. It has often been said that he took part
in this deed, but that, he assured me more than once, was not the
fact. Although he often told his friends the story of the fight at
Black Jack on the 2d of June, 1856, it does not appear that he has
left any written account of it. It was one of his most famous en
counters, and did much to make his name feared by his enemies the
slave holders.
On the 20th of May 1856, the town of Lawrence had been
pillaged and partially destroyed by several hundred Missourians under
the command of Sheriff Jones. On the 23d Brown took the field
with a small force, and on the night of the 25th some of his party
committed the so-called Potawatomie murders, without Brown's
knowledge at the time, but with his subsequent approval. This
affair exasperated the border ruffians of Missouri, who again made
an incursion into that part of Kansas where the Brown family lived,
and succeeded in capturing the two eldest sons, John Brown Jr. and
Jason. The leader of this raid was one Henry Clay Pate, a Vir
ginian, who put heavy irons on his captives, and after keeping them
in camp for a day or two, handed them over to a body of United
States dragoons who marched them in chains to the northward, where
they were imprisoned at Lecompton, after having endured many hard
ships on the march. They were lodged in prison at Lecompton on
the 23d of June, about four weeks after their arrest, and at this time
John Brown Jr. was insane from the sufferings he had undergone,
while in the hands of the United States troops. He was at first
pinioned with a rope, one end of which was held by a mounted dragoon
with whom he was obliged to keep pace, as the company marched
rapidly under a hot sun. On reaching Tecumseh, the captives were
chained two and two, about the ankles, with a common trace chain,
padlocked at each end, and tightly clasped around the ankle. In this
condition they were marched thirty miles one day. When Captain
Brown first visited me at Concord in March 1857, less than a year
after this, he brought with him the chain his son had worn in this
march, and told the story at a public meeting in the Town Hall there.
His own words, describing the arrest, were as follows : " On or about
the 30th of May 1856, two of my sons, with several others, were
imprisoned without other crime than opposition to bogus legislation ;
and most barbarously treated for a time, one (Jason) being held about

35
one month, and the other (John) about four months. After this
arrest, both of them had their houses burned, and all their goods
consumed by the Missourians. In this burning all the eight (I and
my six sons and my son-in-law) suffered loss, and one had his oxen
stolen in addition. My son John was so affected in his mind by the
cruelties he endured while wearing this chain, that he became a
maniac." Hearing of the capture of his two eldest sons, though not then aware
of what indignities they had endured, John Brown with his men started
in pursuit of the Virginian Captain Pate, who, after giving up his
prisoners to the dragoons, had encamped, with fifty men, on a small
stream called the Black Jack creek,'near Hickory Point, within the
present town of Palmyra. This place is in the southeast corner of
Douglas county (of which Lawrence is the chief town), and is about
halfway between Lawrence, which the pro-9laverv men sacked on
the 20th of May, 1856, and Osawatomie, which they sacked on the
7th of June following. Pate had been encamped there a day or two,
among the " black-jack" oak trees which give a name to the stream,
when Captain Brown came up with him, on Monday the 2d of June,
1856. Brown's company consisted of twenty-seven men besides
himself, and the names of twenty-six of these have been carefully
preserved.1 He divided them into two parties, and commenced the
attack with the one party, while the other moved round to get a
better position. Pate was posted in a strong position, on the slope
of a ravine, and with a slight defence of wagons in front of him. By
the division of his forces, however, Captain Brown got him between
two fires, and without much exposing his own men, harassed the
enemy with rifle shots, wounded several, and drove a part of them
down into the ravine. Brown began the attack with spirit, directing
his men to lie down in the grass so that only their heads and shoulders
were exposed to the enemy's fire, and to shoot deliberately, taking
good aim, and not throwing away their fire. In this way the fight was
kept up for two or three hours, during which about half of Pate's

1 They were Samuel T. Shore, Silas More, David Hendricks, Hiram McAllister, -

Parmely, Silvester Harris, O. A. Carpenter, Augustus Shore,  Townsley (of Pota
watomie), William B. Hayden, John McWhinney, Montgomery Shore, Elkana Timmons,
T. Weiner, August Bondy, Hugh McWhinney, Charles Kaiser, Elizur Hill, William David,
B. L. Cochran, Henry Thompson, Elias Basinger, Owen Brown, Frederick Brown, Salmon
Brown, Oliver Brown. The twenty-seventh man's name was forgotten by Captain Brown,
who gave me this list.

36
force had run away or been disabled, while two-thirds of Captain
Brown's company were in good fighting condition. Just at the time
Captain Brown's son Frederick, a wild, odd youth, who was after
wards killed at Osawatomie, left the horses he was guarding in the
rear, and came upon the top of the hill overlooking the ravine, be
tween the two parties of his father's men, brandishing a huge sword
and shouting, " Come on ! come on ! the sword of the Lord and
Gideon! I have cut off all communication, come on!" Dismayed
at the supposed reinforcement, the pro-slavery men now ran away
faster than ever and Captain Pate thought it necessary to send a flag
of truce. This he did by hoisting a white handkerchief and sending
a lieutenant to inquire what all 'this firing meant. Captain Brown
met the lieutenant and said, " Are you the captain of this company ? "
" No." "Then stay with me and send your companion to call the
captain out ; I will talk with him and not with you." Thus sum
moned, Captain Pate himself appeared, saying that he was an officer
acting under orders of the United States marshal of Kansas, and he
supposed they did not intend to fight against the United States. He
was going on in this way when Brown interrupted him, saying —
" Captain, I understand exactly what you are, and do not want to
hear any more about it. Have you any proposition to make to me ?"
"Well, no — that is" —
" Very well ; I have one to make to you ; you must surrender
unconditionally." There was no resisting this demand, for Brown,
taking his pistol in hand, returned with Pate to the camp leading four
men with him to receive the surrender of the twenty-two men still
left under Pate's command. They did surrender at once, though
only eight of Brown's men were in sight at the time, and the twenty-
three gave themselves up without conditions to Brown and his eight.1
Twenty-one of these prisoners were unwounded, and might have
kept up the fight. They surrendered themselves, their twenty-three
horses, guns, ammunition, wagons, etc., and were marched off as
prisoners by Brown, who encamped with them on Middle Ottawa
creek near Prairie City, and about two miles from the present town
called Baldwin City. Here he fortified himself, and received some

1 The names of " the eight Who held out to receive the surrender of Capt. Pate and
twenty-two men," as given to me in April, 1857, by John Brown, were these; Charles
Kaiser, Elizur Hill, Wm. David, Hugh McWhinney (seventeen years old), B. L. Cochran,
Owen Brown, Salmon Brown, Oliver Brown (seventeen years old). Four of the nine were
Browns therefore, and three of these were afterwards at Harper's Ferry.

37
reinforcements — among them, John E. Cook, who was afterwards
one of his lieutenants at Harper's Ferry.
The victory of Brown at Black Jack roused the pro-slavery men
in Missouri and in Kansas to fury, while it stimulated the freemen
of Kansas to new efforts. Both parties mustered in large force
near Palmyra, and on the 5th of June a battle seemed imminent.
But Col. Sumner, who afterwards, as General Sumner, distinguished
himself in the civil war, came down with a force of United States
cavalry and put a stop to hostilities. He also sent for Captain Brown,
as soon as he heard where he was, desiring an interview. Brown
left his entrenched camp on the Ottawa, and came into the camp of
Col. Sumner, who requested him to give up Captain Pate and the
other prisoners. Brown demurred, unless they were to be tried for
highway robbery, of which, he said, they had been guilty. Col.
Sumner told him they had not been properly arrested, and must be
discharged, but he did not allow the United States marshal, who
was present, to arrest Captain Brown, and he required the armed men
on both sides to disperse. He also reprimanded Pate for having as
sumed, without proper authority, to range through the country and
make arrests ; but he allowed him and his men to receive back their
arms, which were the property of the United States, and were im
properly in their possession. Brown and his men returned home, such
of them as had homes to go to, and for a few weeks after June 7,
there were no serious disturbances. But it was impossible for Brown
and his sons to devote themselves quietly to farming as they were
requested to do. Their houses had been burnt, their farms pillaged,
and two of them held as prisoners. John Brown Jr., was not dis
charged from arrest until about the middle of September. In telling
the story of this summer of 1856, to the Massachusetts legislature,
on the 18th of February, 1857, when it was proposed to make a
state appropriation in aid of the Massachusetts men settled in Kansas,
John Brown said :
" I with my six sons and a son-in-law, was called out, and traveled, most
ofthe way on foot, to trv and save Lawrence (May 20 and 21 !, and much of
the way in the night. From that date, neither I nor my sons, nor my son-in-
law, could do any work about our homes, but lost our whole time until we
left in October ; except one of my sons, who had a few weeks to devote to the
care of his own and his brother's family, who were then without a home.1

1 Brown added, with that prosaic love of details which he had; " I believe it safe to say
that five hundred free state men lost each one hundred and twenty days, which, at $1.50
per day, would be, to say nothing of attendant losses, $90,000." This would make the
services ofthe eight Browns worth just $1,440 during that period. They were really worth

millions.

38
From about the 20th of May, hundreds of men, like ourselves, lost their whole
time, and entirely failed of securing any crop whatever."
They secured the harvest of freedom in Kansas, however, and
that was worth more than any other crop, that season. And to no
man so much as to John Brown was this result due. He was present
wherever danger threatened and, whenever he was permitted to do so,
he warded off the danger, or punished the perpetrators of crime. He
was near Topeka on the 3d and 4th of July 1856, when the free
state legislature was dispersed by federal dragoons, and was ready
then, if others had consented, to resist the arbitrary action of the
federal government. In August, he joined the forces of Gen. James
A. Lane in' northern Kansas, having first carried his wounded son-in-
law, Henry Thompson, into Iowa to be taken care of. Returning
from Iowa about the ioth of August, with Gen. Lane, he proceeded
with him to Lawrence and to Franklin, where there was some skir
mishing, and, from the middle of August to the last of September he
was in the field with his company, fighting the Missourian invaders
of Kansas. By this time his name had become a terror to them,
and wherever they were attacked, they believed he was in command.
In an appeal to the citizens of Lafayette county, Missouri, urging
them to take horses and guns and march into Kansas, David R.
Atchison, formerly United States senator from Missouri, wrote as
follows, under date of August 17, 1856 :
" On the 6th of August, the notorious Brown, with a party of three hundred
abolitionists, made an attack upon a colony of Georgians * murdering about two
hundred and twenty-five souls, one-hundred and seventy-five of whom were
women, children and slaves. Their houses were burnt to the ground, all their
property stolen, horses, cattle, clothing, money, provisions, all taken away from
them, and their plows burned to ashes.
August 1 2th, at night, three hundred abolitionists, under this same Brown,
attacked the town of Franklin, robbed, plundered and burnt, took all the arms
in town, broke open and destroyed the post office, captured the old cannon
"Sacramento" which our gallant Missourians captured in Mexico, and are now
turning its mouth against our friends
August 15th, Brown with four hundred abolitionists, mostly Lane's men,
mounted and armed, attacked Treadwell's settlement in Douglas county, num
bering about thirty men. They planted the old cannon ' Sacramento' towards
the colony and surrounded them."

'At Battersville, eight miles south east of Osawatomie, on an Indian reservation. John
Brown was at this time in Nebraska. " Preacher Stewart" really commanded the Free
State men.

39
No doubt Brown had his share in some of these attacks, which
drove some troublesome pro-slavery marauders out of Kansas, but
which led also to a formidable invasion from Missouri, under Atchison
and Gen. John W. Reid. The former was routed by Gen. Lane
on the 31st of August, and returned to Missouri ; the latter also re
turned, after a bloody fight with John Brown at Osawatomie, which
Reid captured and burned, but which he could not hold on account
of the loss inflicted on him by Brown. It was in this fight that '
Brown received the name of " Osawatomie," by which he was known
for some years afterwards. One of his questioners at Harper's Ferry,
after his capture in 1859, said, " Are you Osawatomie Brown ?" " I
tried to do my duty there," replied the old hejo. He not only did
his duty in the fight, but soon afterwards wrote an account of it,
which is so exact that it deserves to be quoted here. y
The Fight of Osawatomie.
Early in the morning of the 30th of August, the enemy's scouts approached
to within one mile and a half of the western boundary of the town of Osa
watomie. At this place my son Frederick (who was not attached to my force)
had lodged, with some four other young men from Lawrence, and a young man
named Garrison, from Middle Creek.
The scouts, led by a pro-slavery preacher named White, shot my son dead
in the road, whilst he — as I have since ascertained — supposed them to be
friendly. At the same time they butchered Mr. Garrison, and badly mangled
one of the young men from Lawrence, who came with my son, leaving him
for dead.
This was not far from sunrise. I had stopped during the night about two
and one-half miles from them, and nearly one mile from Osawatomie. I had
no organized force, but only some twelve or fifteen new recruits, who were
ordered to leave their preparations for breakfast, and follow me into the town
as soon as this news was brought to me.
As I had no means of learning correctly the force of the enemy, I placed
twelve of the recruits in a log-house, hoping we might be able to defend the
town. I then gathered some fifteen more men together, whom we armed with
guns ; and we started in the direction of the enemy. After going a few rods,
we could see them approaching the town in line of battle, about one-half a
mile off, upon a hill west of the village. I then gave up all idea of doing
more than to annoy, from the timber near the town, into which we were
all retreated, and which was filled with a thick growth of underbrush, but
had no time to recall the twelve men in the log-house, and so lost their assistance
in the fight.
At the point above named I met with Captain Cline, a very active young
man, who had with him some twelve or fifteen mounted men, and persuaded
him to go with us into the timber, on the southern shore of the Osage, or
Maraisdes-Cygnes, a little to the northwest from the village. Here the men,
numbering not more than thirty in all, were directed to scatter and secrete

4°
themselves as well as they could, and await the approach of the enemy. This
was done in full view of them (who must have seen the whole movement), and
had to be done in the utmost haste. I believe Captain Cline and some of his
men were not even dismounted in the fight, but cannot assert positively. When
the left wing of the enemy had approached to within common rifle shot, we
commenced firing ; and very soon threw the northern branch of the enemy's
line- into disorder. This continued some fifteen or twenty minutes, which
gave us an uncommon opportunity to annoy them. Captain Cline and his men
soon got out of ammunition, and retired across the river.
After the enemy rallied, we kept up our fire ; until, by the leaving of one
and another, we had but six or seven left. We then retired across the river.
We had one man killed — a Mr. Powers, from Captain Cline's company —
in the fight. One of my men, a Mr. Partridge, was shot in crossing the river.
Two or three ofthe party, who took part in the fight, are yet missing, and may
be lost or taken prisoners. Two were wounded, viz: Dr. Updegraff and a
Mr. Collis.
I cannot speak in too high terms of them, and of many others I have not
now time to mention.
One of my best men, together with myself, was struck with a partially spent
ball from the enemy, in the commencement of the fight, but we were only
bruised. The loss I refer to is one of my missing men. The loss of the
enemy, as we learn by the different statements of our own, as well as their
people, was some thirty-one or two killed, and from forty to fifty wounded.
After burning the town to ashes, and killing a Mr. Williams they had taken,
whom neither party claimed, they took a hasty leave, carrying their dead and
wounded with them. They did not attempt to cross the river, nor to search
for us, and have not since returned to look over their work.
I give this in great haste, in the midst of constant interruptions. My second
son was with me in the fight, and escaped unharmed. This I mention for the
benefit of his friends.
Old preacher White, I hear, boasts of having killed my son. Of course he is
a lion. John Brown.
Lawrence, Kansas, September 7, 1856.

In his address before the legislature in the State House at Boston,
Feb. 18, 1857, Brown added some particulars concerning his son's
death. He saidj: " I have not yet told all I saw in Kansas. I once
saw three mangled bodies, two of which were dead, and one alive, but
with twenty bullet and buckshot holes in him, after the two murdered
men had lain on the ground, to be worked at by flies, for some
eighteen hours. One of these young men was my own son." He
was not found by his father until the evening of that day, after the
retreat of the Missouri men. His death was a murder and his mur
derer was Martin White a preacher, who was then serving as a soldier
in what he called " the law and order militia," that is, the Missouri

4i
forces, which, upon entering Kansas, were made a part of the pro-
slavery territorial militia, by order of Secretary Woodson, himself a
Missouri man, who was for a few days acting governor of Kansas.
On the 12th of September, the new governor, Geary of Pennsylvania,
ordered this invading militia to disband and disperse, but they did not
obey, until they again had a taste of John Brown's quality as a com
mander. Martin White was afterwards a member1 of the pro-slavery
legislature, and during the session at Lecompton he boasted of the
killing of Frederick Brown. On his way home from the session he
was himseif waylaid and shot, according to Mr. Redpath. This was
in the winter after the fight at Osawatomie. The number of the
pro-slavery men in arms at Osawatomie on the 30th of August was
about four hundred, while John Brown had just forty-one men in his
company. On the 21st anniversary of this fight, in 1877, a monument
to Brown and his men was consecrated at Osawatomie, and the principal
speech on the occasion was made by Hon. John J. Ingalls, a senator
of the United States, from the state of Kansas.
On the 7th of September, 1855, as the above letter shows, John
Brown was at Lawrence. He went from there to Topeka, soon
after, and was on his return from there to the neighborhood of Osa
watomie, when another Missouri army invaded Kansas and came up
to destroy Lawrence. On Sunday the 14th of September, at a time
when many of the armed men of Lawrence were absent on an expe
dition to Hickory Point (where they captured a fort on this same
Sunday), the people ofthe town were alarmed by the news "that 2800
Missourians were marching down upon Lawrence with drums beating
and with eagles upon their banners." The actual number, as reported
by Gov. Geary, who visited their camp at Franklin, on Monday the
15th was 2700, and their leaders were Gen. John W. Reid, David
R. Atchison, B. F. Stringfellow, etc., — the same who had led the
invasion three weeks before. The whole number of fighting men in
Lawrence that Sunday did not exceed 200, and many of them were
unarmed. But Brown was there and soon made himself known.
He was asked to take command of the defences of the town and
though he declined, he did in fact command. Between four and five
o'clock in the afternoon he assembled the people in the main street,
and, mounted on a dry -goods box in the midst of them, he made this
speech, which is reported by one who heard him :

> From Lykins county. 6

42
Gentlemen : It is said there are two thousand five hundred Missourians doWn
at Franklin,1 and that they will be here in two hours. You can see for your
selves the smoke they are making by setting fire to the houses in that town.
Now is probably the last opportunity you will have of seeing a fight, so that
you had better do your best. If they should come up and attack us, don't yell
and make a great noise, but remain perfectly silent and still. Wait till they get
within twenty-five yards of you ; get a good object ; be .sure you see the hind
sight of your gun ; then fire. A great deal of powder and lead and very pre
cious time, is wasted by shooting too high. You had better aim at their legs,
than at their heads. In either case, be sure ofthe hind-sights of your guns. It
is from the neglect of this that I myself have so many times escaped ; for, if
all the bullets that have ever been aimed at me had hit, I should have been as
full of holes as a riddle."
After this fitting speech, which reminds one of John Stark at Bun
ker Hill and Bennington, Brown sent his small force to the few
forts and breastworks about the town, and ordered all the men who
had the far-shooting Sharpe's rifle — then a new weapon — to go out
upon the prairie, half a mile south of the town, where by this time the
invading horsemen could be seen, two miles off. After a halt for
reconnoitering purposes, the enemy made an advance upon Brown's
left, and came within half a mile of his advance guard, just as the sun
was setting. Under cover of the dusk some of them came nearer,
but the discharge of a few Sharpe's rifles, and the approach of a
brass twelve pounder cannon, which Brown ordered up to support
his riflemen, caused the enemy to turn their horses and retreat, with
out any further attempt to take the town. Captain Brown's own
modest account of this affair, in which he saved Lawrence from de
struction, is as follows :
" I know well that on or about the 14th of September, 1856, a large force
of Missourians and other ruffians, said by Gov. Geary to be two thousand seven
hundred in number, invaded the territory, burned Franklin, and while the
smoke of that place was going up behind them, they, on the same day, made
their appearance in full view of, and within about a mile of Lawrence ; and I
know of no reason why they did not attack that place, except that about one hun
dred free state men volunteered to go out, and did go out on the open plain
before the town, and give them the offer of a fight ; which, after getting scat
tering shots from our men, they declined, and retreated back towards Franklin.
/ saw that whole thing. The government troops at this time were at Lecomp
ton, a distance of twelve miles only from Lawrence, with Gov. Geary ; and
yet, notwithstanding runners had been despatched to advise him, in good'time,
of the setting out and approach of the enemy (who had to march some forty
miles to reach Lawrence), he did not, on that memorable occasion, get a single
soldier on the ground until the enemy had retreated to Franklin, and been gone
for more than five hours. This is the way he saved Lawrence."

1 A small town five miles southeast of Lawrence.

43
Being asked who commanded the Lawrence men, Brown at first
evaded the question, as if he did not understand it ; when asked a
second time, he replied, " No one — that he had himself been re
quested to take command, but refused, and only acted as their adviser."
It was by his advice, however, that the town was saved. When that
was achieved, its deliverer was hunted out of Kansas by the very troops
ofthe federal government which had neglected to prevent the Missouri
invasion. He left Lawrence for northern Kansas before the 20th of
September, traveling with his four sons, and with a fugitive slave
whom he picked up on the way. The old hero was sick, as he often
was, and travelled slowly ; appearing to be a land surveyor on a
journey. He had a light wagon in which he rode, with his surveyor's
instruments ostentatiously in sight ; a cow was tied behind the wagon,
and inside, covered up in a blanket, was the fugitive slave. Sometimes
he pitched his camp at night near the dragoons who were ordered to
arrest him, but who little suspected that the formidable fighter was
so near them in the guise of a feeble old man. At Plymouth, not
far from the Nebraska border, Mr. Redpath, in one of his journey's
through the territory, found him lying ill in a log hut, while his four
sons were camped near by. A few hours after, the dragoons, hearing
he was so near them, came up to arrest him, but he had crossed the
border into Nebraska, and was out of their reach. He went forward
till he came to Tabor in Iowa, not far northeast of Nebraska City,
and there remained among friends for two or three weeks, in Octo
ber and November. In the latter month he reached Chicago, and
made himself known to the National Kansas Committee, which then
had head quarters in that city. Afterwards he traveled eastward, to
Ohio, to Peterboro, N. Y., where he visited his friend Gerrit Smith,
to Albany and Springfield, and finally to Boston, where I first saw
him in the early part of January, 1857.
As John Brown, in the autumn of 1856, passed northward through
Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, retreating slowly and painfully out of
the land he had so stoutly defended, he left behind him the recent
grave of one of his six sons, murdered at Osawatomie. Another son
had been a prisoner and a maniac, driven wild by his hardships ; a
third son was shockingly wounded, and so was Henry Thompson,
the husband of his beloved eldest daughter, Ruth. His whole family
had been stripped of their little property, and the father himself was
destitute. So scanty was his wardrobe that he wore at Osawatomie
on the 30th of August the same garments that he had almost worn

44
out in the fight of Black Jack on the 2d of June. He had been
waging war at his own cost and risk ; and though the anti-slavery
men ofthe north had given money by the hundred thousand dollars,
to aid the Kansas farmers in their fight with slavery, scarcely a dollar
of this had reached the man who could best have used it. But he
had made himself known to his countrymen for what he was, and
began to draw to him that admiration and love which has now become
his portion forever. Afflictions, though neither light, nor for a moment,
were working out for him, as the Apostle promises, "a far more ex
ceeding and eternal weight of glory." Of this he had himself some
intimation, vouchsafed him, doubtless, by that Infinite Wisdom, which
has ordered and foreordained all that eternity can bring to pass.
"After brother John's return from Kansas," said Jeremiah Brown, "he
called on me in Ohio, and 1 urged him to go home to his family and
attend to his private affairs ; saying that I feared his course would prove
his own destruction, and that of his boys. He replied that he was
sorry I did not sympathize with him ; that he knew he was in the
line of his duty, and must pursue it, though it should destroy him and
his family ; that he was satisfied he was a chosen instrument in the hands
of God to war against slavery." This faith had sustained him in
Kansas, and it was to sustain him in his more perilous work hereafter.
When John Brown first called on me in Boston, in January 1857,
bringing a letter of introduction from my brother-in-law, Mr. George
Walker of Springfield, he was in his 57th year, and, though touched
with age and its infirmities, was still vigorous and active, and of an
aspect which would have made him distinguished anywhere among
men who know how to recognize courage and greatness of mind.
At that time he was close shaven, and no flowing beard, as in later
years, softened the force of his firm, wide mouth and his positive chin.
That beard, long and gray, which nearly all his portraits now show,
and by which he will be recognized hereafter, added a picturesque
finish to a face that was in all its features severe and masculine, yet
with a latent tenderness in them. His eyes were a piercing blue-gray.
not very large, looking out from under brows
" Of dauntless courage and considerate pride."
His hair was dark brown sprinkled with gray, short and bristling, and
shooting back from a forehead of middle height and breadth ; his nose
was aquiline, his ears were large, his frame angular, his voice deep and
metallic, his walk positive and intrepid, though somewhat slow. His
manner was modest, and in a large company even diffident ; he was by

45
no means fluent of speech, but his words were always to the point, and
his observations original, direct, and shrewd. His mien was serious
and patient rather than cheerful ; it betokened the " sad wise valor"
which Herbert praises ; but, though earnest and almost anxious, it was
never depressed. In short, he was then, to the eye of insight, what
he afterwards seemed to the world, a brave and resolved man, con
scious of a work laid upon him, and confident that he should ac
complish it. His figure was tall, slender and commanding, his bearing
military, and his garb showed a singular blending of the soldier and
the deacon. He had laid aside in Chicago the torn and faded sum
mer garments which he wore throughout his campaigns, and I saw
him at one of those rare periods in his life when his clothes were new.
He wore a complete suit of brown broadcloth or kerseymere, cut in
the fashion of a dozen years before, and giving him the air of a re
spectable deacon in a rural parish. But instead of a collar he had on
a high stock of patent leather, such as soldiers used to wear, a gray
military overcoat with a cape, similar to that afterwards worn in the
Confederate army, and a fur cap. He was, in fact, a Puritan soldier,
such as were common enough in Cro.nwell's day, but have not often
been seen since. Yet his heart was averse to bloodshed, gentle, ten
der and devout.
It was my privilege, and for a young man of twenty-six certainly
an undeserved good fortune, to make Captain Brown acquainted with
famous men who then allowed me the honor of their friendship. I
took him to the hospitable home of Theodore Parker, in Exeter place
Boston, where he met William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips ;
I introduced him to that chivalrous man, the late Dr. Howe ; and a
few months later I brought him to Concord and made him acquainted
with Emerson, Thoreau and Alcott. Upon all these men he made
a profound impression, which several of them have since declared to
the world, when his fame seemed to need the voice of a friend, and
before the echoes of his renown silenced the murmurs that the act
of a hero so often awakens. I find among my papers a letter of Dr.
Howe's sent me from New York early in 1859, when Howe and
Theodore Parker were about sailing on that voyage from which only
one of them returned. It was intended to introduce Brown to our
friend Mr. John M. Forbes, but, for some accidental reason was
never so used, and has never been published. Here it is :

46
" New York, Feb. 5, '59.
" Dear Sir :
If you would like to hear an honest, brave, keen and veteran backwoods
man disclose some plans for delivering our lands from the curse of slavery,
. the bearer will do so.
/ I think I know him well ; he is of the Puritan militant order. He is an
enthusiast, yet cool, keen and cautious. He has a martyr's spirit. He will
ask nothing of you but the pledge that you keep to yourself what he may say.
Faithfully yours,
John M. Forbes, Esq. S. G. Howe."
"He will ask nothing of you, but the pledge that you keep to your
self what he may say." This was, in fact, the attitude of John
Brown towards his friends after he returned to the eastern states
from his first Kansas campaign, but should they be moved by what
he said to give him money, or to enlist in his company, for perpetual
and active warfare upon slavery, he welcomed the recruit and ex
pressed his thanks to the contributor. In 1857, when I first saw
him, although his Virginia plans were already formed, and had been
for many years, he said nothing of them, but talked of Missouri and
Kansas. His immediate purpose was to raise a troop of horse, a
hundred men, who might retaliate upon Missouri slave-holders for
the raids they had been making into Kansas.
In 1859, when Dr. Howe wrote to Mr. Forbes, Brown had dis
closed to a few of us, his Virginia scheme, in all its main features
though not with full details. But the Missouri plan and the Vir
ginia plan were at heart the same, their object being to make slave
holding unsafe, and to give the slave a chance to fight for his free
dom under rigid discipline, and not in the wild tumult of an insur
rection. This very policy of John Brown's was adopted in 1861 by
1 Gen. Fremont, in 1862 by Abraham Lincoln, and in 1863-4, by
Secretary Stanton, after pressure from Gov. Andrew of Massachu-
. setts and other earnest men in all parts of the north. It was the
policy that finally overcame the rebellion, and put an end to the long
J civil war. John Brown led the way in this policy, and the great heart
of the people, wiser in its impulses than the statesmen in their coun-
) cils, early responded' to the appeal that John Brown had made.
j Nothing else than this made the name and fate of Brown the watch-
I word and rallying song of our armies. Hardly had the civil war
j begun in good earnest, when a regiment of Massachusetts soldiers
N with a son of Daniel Webster at their head, came marching up
State street (where, ten years before, fugitive slaves were dragged

47
back to bondage, under the flag of the United States), startling the
echoes of Boston with the new song :
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul's marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah !
Glory, glory, hallelujah !
Glory, glory, hallelujah !
His soul's marching on.
John Brown's knapsack is strapped upon his back,
And his soul's marching on.
He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord,
His soul is marching on."
The words were wild and rude, nobody knew whence they came,
nor from what pious soul the devout, militant melody first sounded
forth; but there they were, the rough, earnest words, the martial air,
wedded in one strain of popular music and sung by a million voices.
It was the requiem and the resurrection hymn of a hero, sounding
from the roused heart of the people, as the forest murmur rises when
mountain winds stir the branches of oak and pine on a thousand hill
tops of New England.
But I am anticipating the course of history, just as my brave old
friend did. His special errand to me, in 1857, an^ t0 t^le Massa
chusetts Kansas committee, of which I was then secretary, was to
provide at once for the defence of Kansas by carrying the war into
the enemy's country. During the month of January, and indeed, in a
few days after he reached Boston, he formed the acquaintance ofthe
men there whom he wished to consult, of Mr. George L. Stearns, Dr.
Cabot, Theodore Parker, Amos A. Lawrence, Judge Russell, Dr.
Howe, Mr. Garrison, and all who were then conspicuous in maintain
ing the cause ofthe Kansas pioneers. His desire was to obtain control
of some two hundred Sharpe's rifles, belonging to the Massachusetts
committee, with which to arm a force of a hundred men for the pur
pose of defending Kansas and making excursions, if necessary into
Missouri and other slave states. Keeping his Virginia plan in mind,
he yet did not communicate it to any person in Massachusetts for
more than a year; only taking pains to say that with the arms,
money, and clothing that he might get for his company, he should
act on his own responsibility, without taking orders from any com-

48 .
mittee. With this understanding, and having great confidence in
him, the Massachusetts committee, on the 8th of January, 1857,
gave him an order for taking possession of the two hundred rifles,
with their belongings, then stored at Tabor, in the southwestern
part of Iowa. This order did not authorize him to make any use of
the arms, though it appropriated five hundred dollars for his expenses in
getting possession of them ; and it was not until April 11, three months
later, that a vote was passed allowing Captain Brown to sell a hun
dred of the rifles to free state inhabitants of Kansas. At the same
time another sum of five hundred dollars was voted him, to be used
" for the relief of persons in Kansas." The arms thus placed at
his disposal were a part of those afterwards carried by him to Harper's
Ferry, and, as the true nature of the transaction by which they came,
honestly, into his possession for use in Virginia, has never been well
understood, it may here be explained.
In the winter of 1855-56 a large subscription was collected in
Boston by Dr. Samuel Cabot and others, expressly for the purchase
of arms for Kansas settlers. With this money a hundred Sharpe's
rifles and some other arms were purchased by Dr. Cabot and for
warded to Kansas early in 1856. These, however, were no part of
the arms of Captain Brown, which were purchased by the Massa
chusetts State Kansas Committee in the autumn of 1856, and for
warded, through the National Committee, having its head-quarters at
Chicago, by the Iowa and Nebraska route to Kansas. The two
hundred rifles never seem to have got farther than Tabor, where they
were lying when Captain Brown made his exit from Kansas by that
route, in November. On reaching Chicago, soon after, he appears
to have made application to Messrs. George W. Dole, J. D. Web
ster (afterwards General Webster, of General Grant's staff), and
Henry B. Hurd, the Chicago members of the National Committee,
for the custody of the rifles at Tabor. This application was not
granted, perhaps because the committee distrusted Captain Brown, per
haps because they recognized the Massachusetts committee as owners
of the arms. The Chicago committee did afterwards, however, lay
claim to the control of these rifles ; and one reason for the Massa
chusetts vote of January 8, 1857, above alluded to, was to place
them in the hands of a man who had shown his ability to protect
whatever was in his custody. Before taking actual possession of
them, Captain Brown attended a full meeting of the National Com
mittee at the Astor House in New York, January 22—25, 1857, f°r

49
the purpose of securing an appropriation from that committee for his
company of minute-men; and, in order to settle the question, which
of the two committees controlled the rifles at Tabor, he made a re
quest for those arms as a part of the appropriation. This request was
vehemently opposed by Mr. Hurd of Chicago, who expressed great
anxiety lest Brown should make incursions into Missouri or other
slave states. Mr. F. B. Sanborn, who represented Massachusetts
at the Astor House meeting, as proxy for Drs. Cabot and Howe,
supported the application of Captain Brown, which was viewed with
favor by a majority of the meeting. As a final compromise, it was
voted that the rifles at Tabor should be restored to the Massachusetts
committee, to be disposed of as they should think best ; and that an
appropriation of several thousand dollars, in money and clothing,
should be made to Captain Brown's company by the National Com
mittee. This left the Massachusetts committee at liberty to use
their own property as they saw fit, and they then gave Captain
Brown undisputed possession of the arms, subject, however, to
future votes of the Boston committee. In point of fact, though
this was not known to the committee till a year later, the rifles were
brought from Tabor to Ohio in the year 1857, anc^ remained there
till they were sent to Chambersburg by John Brown, Jr., in July,
1859, f°r use at Harper's Ferry. During the year 1857, l^e expen
ditures ofthe Massachusetts committee for the relief of the famine in
Kansas were very large ; and, as advances of money were made by
the chairman (Mr. George L. Stearns, a wealthy merchant of Bos
ton), much in excess of the current receipts, it was finally voted to
give him, in reimbursement, most of the property and assets in the
hands of the committee. Among these, pf course, were the two
hundred rifles, and it was with the consent of Mr. Stearns as owner,
but without the consent of the committee, that Brown, in 1859,
carried these rifles to Virginia.
John Brown remained in Boston "and its vicinity during the greater
part of January and February, 1857, and was there again in the early
weeks of March and of April. On the 18th of February, as above
mentioned, he made the speech, from which quotations have been
cited, before a committee of the state legislature to urge that Massa
chusetts should vote an appropriation of money in aid ofthe emigrants
from the state who had settled in Kansas. It was one of the few
speeches made by him in Massachusetts that year, and was mainly
read from his manuscript. In March he made his first visit to Con-
7

•5o
trord, where he addressed a large audience in the Town Hall, and
Spoke without notes, in a very impressive and eloquent manner.
Among his hearers were Mr. R. W. Emerson and Mr. Henry D.
Thoreau, who had met him the preceding day, under circumstances
that it may be interesting to mention, since both these gentlemen
were his warm admirers, and took up his cause when he had but few
champions among the scholars of Massachusetts. Mr. Thoreau's
noble appeal in his behalf, given at Concord on Sunday evening,
October 30, 1859, and repeated at the Tremont Temple in Boston,
November ist, was the earliest address in his praise to which the
Massachusetts public listened, as it still is the best ; and it was soon
followed by Mr. Emerson's famous mention of Brown in a Boston
lecture as one who had " made the gallows glorious, like the cross,"
and by his speech at the Tremont Temple relief meeting, November
18, 1859, at which John A. Andrew presided.
The first occasion of John Brown's visit to Concord was to speak
at the public meeting just mentioned, in March, 1857, which had
been called at my request. On the day appointed. Brown went up
from Boston at noon and dined with Mr. Thoreau, then a member
of his father's family, and residing not far from the rail road station.
The two idealists, both of them in revolt against the civil government
then established in this country, because of its base subservience to
slavery, found themselves friends from the beginning of their ac
quaintance. They sat after dinner, discussing the events of the
border warfare in Kansas, and Brown's share in them, when, as it
often happened, Mr. Emerson called at Mr. Thoreau's door on some
errand to his friend. Thus the three men first met under the same
roof, and found that they held the same opinion of what was upper
most in the mind of Brown. He did not reveal to them, either then
or later, his Virginia plans ; but he declared frankly, as he always did,
his purpose of attacking slavery, wherever it could be reached ; and
this was the sentiment of his speech at the evening meeting, when
he told the story of his Kansas life to the grandsons of the men who
began the war of the Revolution at Concord bridge. He spoke of
the murder of one of his seven sons, the imprisonment and insanity
of another ; and as he shook before his audience the chain which his
free-born son had worn, for no crime but for resisting slavery, his
words rose to thrilling eloquence, and made a wonderful impression
on his audience. From that time the Concord people were on his
side, as they afterwards testified on several occasions. He was again

51
in Concord for several days in April, 1857, ant^ on t'1's v's'f was t'le
guest of Mr. Emerson for a day Qfrom whose house he drove across '
the country to Mr. Stearns's house at Medford, one pleasant Sunday
morning in that April. The journals of Emerson, Thoreau, and,
two years later, of their friend Bronson Alcott, will bear witness to
the impression made by Captain Brown on these three founders of a
school of thought and literature.
In the latter part of March, 1857, Captain Brown, in company
with Martin F. Conway, afterwards a member of congress from
Kansas, and myself, representing the Massachusetts committee,
met by appointment at the Metropolitan Hotel in New York, and
proceeded in company to Easton, Pennsylvania, where Mr. Andrew
H. Reeder, a former governor of Kansas, was living, for the purpose
of inducing him, if possible, to return to Kansas, and become the
leader of the free state party there. The journey was undertaken at
the request of the Massachusetts committee, of which both Brown
and Conway had been agents. It resulted in nothing, for Governor
Reeder was unwilling to leave his family and his occupations at Easton
to engage again in the political contests of Kansas. Captain Brown
had quite a different conception of his own duty to his family, as
compared with his duty to the cause in which he had enlisted.
Although he had been absent from home nearly two years, he re
frained from a visit to North Elba, where his family then were, until
he had arranged all his military affairs in Boston, New York, and
Connecticut ; and he finally reached his rough mountain home late in
April. He found his daughter Ellen, whom he had left an infant in
the cradle, old enough to hear him sing his favorite hymn, " Blow ye
the trumpet, blow !" to the old tune of Lenox. " He sung all his
own children to sleep with it," writes his daughter Anne, "and some
of his grandchildren too. He seemed to be very partial to the first
verse; I think that he applied it to himself. When he was at home
(I think it was the first time he came from Kansas), he told Ellen
that he had sung it to all the rest, and must to her too. She was
afraid to go to him alone " (the poor child had forgotten her father
in his two years' absence), " so father said that I must sit with her.
He took Ellen on one knee and me on the other and sung it to us."
It was on this visit to North Elba that John Brown carried with
him the old tombstone of his grandfather, Captain John Brown, the
revolutionary soldier, from the burial place of his family in Canton,
Connecticut. He caused the name of his murdered son Frederick,

52
who fell in Kansas, to be carved on this stone, with the date of his
death, and placed it where he desired his own grave to be, beside a
huge rock on the hillside where his house stands, giving directions
that his own name and the date of his death should be inscribed there
¦too, when he should fall, as he expected in the conflict with slavery.
That stone now marks his grave and tells a story which more costly
monuments and longer inscriptions could not so well declare.
Although Capt. Brown spent the winter of 1856-57 in New Eng-
gland, he did not by any means forget or neglect his family at North
Elba, but busied himself in securing for them an addition to the two
farms in the wilderness on which his wife and his married daughter,
Mrs. Thompson, were then living. Several of his Massachusetts
friends, chief among whom were Mr. Amos A. Lawrence and Mr.
Stearns, raised a subscription of $1,000 to purchase one hundred and
sixty acres of land for division in equal portions between these farms.
Mr. Stearns contributed $260 to this fund, and Mr. Lawrence about
the same amount ; these two gentlemen having made up the sum by
which the original subscription fell short of $1,000. The connec
tion of Mr. Lawrence with this transaction, and his personal acquaint
ance with Brown in 1857, were afterwards held to imply that he
had some knowledge of Brown's plans, which was not the case.
The subscription thus raised was expended in completing the pur
chase of the tract in question, originally sold by Gerrit Smith to the
brothers of Henry Thompson, Brown's son-in-law, but which had
not been wholly paid for. In August, 1 857, as the agent of Messrs.
Stearns and Lawrence, I visited North Elba, examined the land, paid
the Thompsons their stipulated price for improvements, and to Mr.
Smith the remainder of the purchase money ; took the necessary
deeds and transferred the property to Mrs. Brown and Mrs., Thomp
son, according to the terms arranged by Captain Brown in the pre
ceding spring. At this time neither Gerrit Smith, nor Mr. Stearns,
nor myself had any knowledge of Brown's scheme for a campaign in
Virginia. But that he was preparing for it at that time is clear from
certain arrangements he had made in Connecticut in this same spring
of 1857.
It was at this date that John Brown engaged Mr. Charles Blair of
Collinsville, to make for him the thousand pikes which he carried, to
Harper's Ferry in 1859. At t'le senatorial investigation of 1859-
60, Mr. Blair told the story, and it is curious enough to be given
here, somewhat abridged. Mr. Blair testified (January 23, i860):

53
"I knew the late John Brown who was recently executed under the laws of
Virginia I made his acquaintance in the early part of 1857, in the latter part
of February or the fore part of March. He came to our place, Collinsville,
as I suppose, to visit connections who lived in our town. He himself was
born, as I have understood, at Torringford, ten miles from there, and some of
his relatives lived in a town ten miles from our village. He spoke in a public
hall one evening, and gave an account of some of his experiences in Kansas,
and, at the close of the meeting, made an appeal to the audience. After
stating the wants of many of the free settlers in Kansas, their privations
and need of clothing, etc., he made an appeal for aid, for the purpose of fur
nishing the necessaries of life, as he declared. I think there was no collection
taken up for him at that time. On the following morning, he was exhibiting
to some gentlemen who happened to be collected together in a druggist's store,
some weapons which he claimed to have taken from Captain Pate in Kansas.
Among them was a two edged dirk, with a blade about eight inches long and
he remarked that, if he had a lot of those things to attach to poles about six
feet long, they would be capital weapons of defence for the settlers of Kansas
to keep in their log-cabins, to defend themselves against any sudden attack that
might be made on them.1
" He turned to me, knowing, as I suppose, that I was engaged in edge-tool
making, and asked me what I would make them for ; what it would cost to
make 500 or 1,000 of those things, as he described them. I replied,
without much consideration, that I would make him c;oo of them for $1.25
apiece; or, if he wanted 1,000, I thought they might be made for a dollar
apiece" Brown at once contracted for 1,000 of these pikes at one dollar each,
and Mr. Blair made them for him, doing a part ofthe work in the spring
of 1857, an^ t'le rest m the summer of 1859, just before the attack
on Harper's Ferry. They were all along intended to be put in the
hands of freed slaves, for the defence of the log forts which Brown
proposed to build in Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, or wherever his
attack should finally be made. They were sent by Mr. Blair to
Chambersburg, Pa., early in September, 1859, were taken to the
Kennedy farm, and a portion of them were carried by Brown's men
across the Potomac to arm the slaves with. They were paid for in
the early summer of 1859, wlt^ money g'ven t0 Brown by Gerrit
Smith and George L. Stearns.
Notwithstanding the success attending some of his efforts in New
England in the spring of 1857, John Brown failed to raise at that
time a sufficient sum of money to equip and support his company of
mounted minute-men, and he left Massachusetts, late in April, much

1 1 remember Brown's showing me this knife of Pate's, which he was then in the habi'
of carrying in tbe leg of bis boot, in order that it might not be unpleasantly obvious. It
was what is jocularly known as an " Arkansas toothpick."

54
saddened by this failure. Before leaving Boston he wrote a brief
paper headed " Old Brown's Farewell to the Plymouth Rocks, Bun
ker Hill Monuments, Charter Oaks, and Uncle Tom's Cabins,"
in which he says he had been trying, since he came out of Kansas,
" to secure an outfit, or, in other words, the means of arming and
thoroughly equipping his regular minute men, who are mixed up with
the people of Kansas ;" but that he goes back " with a feeling of
deepest sadness that, after having exhausted his own small means,
and with his family and his brave men suffered hunger, cold, naked
ness, and some of them sickness, wounds, imprisonment in irons,
with extreme cruel treatment, and others death,  he cannot
secure, amidst all the wealth, luxury, and extravagance of this
' Heaven-exalted ' people, even the necessary supplies of the common
soldier." He had formed an elaborate plan for raising and drilling
such a company of men, and, without the knowledge of his Massa
chusetts friends, had engaged an English Garibaldian, Hugh Forbes,
whom he found giving fencing-lessons in New York, to go out with
him to Western Iowa, and there train his recruits for service in the
field against slavery. Disappointed in raising the money he had ex
pected, Captain Brown was obliged to cancel his engagement with
Forbes, who, as the event proved, was a very useless and embarrass
ing person. Forbes had traveled from New York to Tabor in Iowa,
in July and August, 1857, an(^ returned early in November, angry
and disappointed, to New York, whence he soon began to write
abusive and threatening letters, denouncing Brown, and speaking of
his plans in a way that surprised Brown's Massachusetts friends, who
had never heard of Forbes before, and who knew absolutely nothing
of the grand scheme for invading Virginia. It may be that this
quarrel with Forbes impelled Brown to impart his plans more fully
to his Massachusetts friends, or a few of them ; at any rate, he did
so impart them, early in the year 1858, and in a manner which will
be hereafter related.
It is to this period of Brown's life that the incident belongs which
Mr. Redpath alone has commemorated, and which' some have
doubted — his single interview with Charles Sumner in the spring of
1857. Mr. Redpath says :
" I visited Senator Sumner in his house in Hancock street to introduce John
Brown, then known only as a Kansas captain who had done some service in
driving back the Southern invaders. The classical orator and the guerilla chief
then met for the first time, and, I believe, for the only time in their lives. Each

. 55
was impressed with the character of the other, and they talked long and earnestly
about the struggle in the Far West.
This I recall ; but I wrote down a single sentence only that each of them
uttered on that topic.
'No,' said Brown, 'I did not intend ever to settle in Kansas unless I
happened to find my last home there.'
' In that case,' rejoined Sumner, ' yours, like mine, would be a long home.
The senator was suffering from the blows of the assassin Brooks, of South
Carolina, at this time, and lay on his bed during the whole of the interview.
The talk turned on the assault. Suddenly the old man asked Mr. Sumner :
' Have you still the coat ?'
' Yes,' replied Sumner ; ' it is in that closet. Would you like to see it?'
' Very much, indeed,' returned the captain.
Mr. Sumner rose slowly and painfully from his bed, opened a closet door
and handed the garment to John Brown. I shall never forget that impressive
picture. Mr. Sumner was bending slightly, and supported himself by resting
his hand on the bed, while Captain Brown stood erect as a pillar, holding up
the blood-smeared coat and intently scanning it. The old man said nothing,
but his lips were compressed and his eyes shone like polished steel."
In the autumn of 1857, Job" Brown was in Western Iowa, and
wrote from there to his friend Theodore Parker, on the nth of
September, enclosing an address to soldiers of the United States
army on the subject of slavery, which was written by Brown's drill
master, Hugh Forbes, and was intended to be, as Brown tells Parker,
" the first number of a series of tracts," for distribution when his
great work should really begin. It was a dull and heavy paper, like
most that Forbes wrote, and probably Parker caused Brown to know
what his opinion of it was. In the same letter, Brown says : " My
particular object in writing is to say that I am in immediate want of
$500 or $1000, for secret service and no questions_asked. I want j
the friends of freedom to ' prove me one herewith.' Will you bring I
this matter before your congregation, or exert your influence in some
way to have it, or some part of it, raised and put in the hands of
George L. Stearns Esq., Boston, subject to my order ? " Similar
letters were sent to Mr. Stearns and to me, but it was not easy in
that autumn, when business was greatly depressed by the panic of
1857, to raise money for so indefinite an object. I find that I sent
him some money, which he received on the 3d of October, and
others contributed something. But no movement was made before
winter, nor did he disclose to us his purposes. In January, 1858,
however, he suddenly left Kansas without the knowledge of his
friends there, and appeared, in the beginning of February, at the
house of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York. From there
he wrote, February 2, 1858, to Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns,

56
F. B. Sanborn, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, asking them to
aid him in raising a small sum of money to carry out " an important
measure in which the world has a deep interest." This he tells Mr.
Parker, is his only errand at the east, and he goes on ; "I have
written some of our mutual friends in regard to it, but none of them
understand my views so well as you do, and I cannot explain with
out their committing themselves more than I know of their doing. I
have heard that Parker Pillsbury, and some others in your quarter,
hold out ideas similar to those on which I act, but I have no personal
acquaintance with them, and know nothing of their influence or
means. Do you think any of our Garrisonian friends, either at Bos
ton, Worcester, or in any other place, can be induced to supply a little
straw " ifl will absolute make 'bricks ? I must beg of you to con
sider this communication strictly confidential, unless you know of
patties who will feel and act and hold their peace."1
Brown's letters of the same date and for a few weeks after, to
Col. Higginson and to me, were of a similar tenor, though rather
more explicit, but they conveyed no distinct intimation of his plans.
He wrote to Higginson, February 2, from Rochester : "lam here,
concealing my whereabouts for good reasons (as I think), not, how
ever, from any anxiety about my personal safety. I have been told
that you are both a true man and a true abolitionist, and I partly be
lieve the whole story. Last fall I undertook to raise from five hun
dred to one thousand dollars for secret service, and succeeded in
getting five hundred dollars. I now * want to get, for the perfecting
of by far the most important undertaking of my whole life, five hun
dred to eight hundred dollars within the next sixty days. I have
written Rev. Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns, and F. B. San
born, Esquires, on the subject, but do not know as either Mr.
Stearns or Mr. Sanborn are abolitionists. I suppose they are." On
the 12th of February he wrote again in response to a remark in
Higginson's reply about the Underground rail road in Kansas : " Rail
road business on a somewhat extended scale is the identical object
for which I am trying to get means. I have been connected with
that business, as commonly conducted, from my boyhood, and never let
an opportunity slip. I have been operating to some purpose the past'
season, but I now have a measure on foot that I feel sure would
awaken in you something more thaii a common interest, if you
could understand it. I have just written my friends G. L. Stearns

* Weiss 's Life of Tbtodore Parker, vol. II, pp. 163, 164.

57
and F. B. Sanborn, asking them to meet me for consultation at
Peterboro, N. Y. I am very anxious to have you come along, certain
as I feel that you will never regret having been one of the council."
It was inconvenient for any of the persons addressed to take the long
journey proposed, and on the 13th, I wrote for myself and Mr.
Stearns, inviting Brown to visit Boston, and offering to pay his traveling
expenses. To this request Brown replied, February 17th : " It would
be almost impossible for me to pass through Albany, Springfield, or
any of those parts, on my way to Boston, and not have it known ;
and my reasons for keeping quiet are such that, when I left Kansas,
I kept it from every friend there ; and I suppose it is still understood
that I am hiding somewhere in the territory ; and such will be the
idea until it comes to be generally known that I am in these parts.
I want to continue that impression as long as I can, or for the present.
I want very much to see Mr. Stearns, and also Mr. Parker, and it
may be that I can before long ; but I must decline accepting your
kind offer at present, and sorry as I am to do so, ask you both to
meet me by the middle of next week at the furthest. I wrote Mr.
Higginson of Worcester to meet me also. It may be he would come
on with you. My reasons for keeping still are sufficient to keep me
from seeing my wife and children, much as I long to do so. I will
endeavor to explain when I see you." This letter was written from
Rochester. Mr. Stearns being still unable to accept this second and pressing
request from Brown for a meeting at Peterboro, I determined to go,
and invited Colonel Higginson to join me at Worcester on the 20th.
In fact I made <he journey alone, and reached the place of meeting
on the evening of Washington's birthday, February 22d. A few
friends of Brown were there gathered, among them another Massa
chusetts man, Mr. Edwin Morton of Plymouth, now of Boston, but
then residing in the family of Mr. Gerrit Smith as tutor and private
secretary. In the long winter evening which followed, the whole
outline of Brown's campaign in Virginia was laid before the little
council, to the astonishment and almost the dismay of all present.
The constitution which he had drawn up for the government of his
men, and such territory as they might occupy, and which was found
among his papers at the Kennedy farm, was exhibited by Brown, its
provisions recited and explained, the proposed movements of his men
indicated, and the middle of May was named as the time of the at
tack. To begin this hazardous adventure he asked for but eight
8

58
hundred dollars, and would think himself rich with a thousand. Being
questioned and opposed by his friends, he laid before them in detail
his methods of organization and fortification ; of settlement in the
South, if that were possible, and of retreat through the North, if
necessary ; and his theory of the way in which such an invasion
would be received in the country at large. He desired from his
friends a patient hearing of his statements, a candid opinion concern
ing them, and, if that were favorable, then that they should co-ope
rate with him and persuade others to do so. This was the important
business which he had to communicate on the anniversary of Wash
ington's birthday.
After what has passed in the last twenty years, no one can picture
to himself the startling effect of such a plan, heard for the first time
in the dismal days of Buchanan's administration, when Floyd was
secretary of war, and Jefferson Davis and Senator Mason omnipo
tent in congress. Those who listened to Captain Brown had been
familiar with the bold plots and counter-plots of the Kansas border,
and had aided the escape of slaves in various parts of the South.
But to strike at once at the existence of slavery, by an organized
force, acting for years, if need be, on the dubious principles of guer
illa warfare, and exposed, perhaps, to the whole power of the country,
was something they had never contemplated. That was the long
meditated plan of a poor, obscure, old man, uncertain at best of
another ten years' lease of life, and yet calmly proposing an enter
prise which, if successful, might require a whole generation to
accomplish. His friends listened until late at night, proposing ob
jections and raising difficulties, but nothing shook the" purpose of the
old Puritan. To every objection he had an answer ; every difficulty
had been foreseen and provided for ; the great difficulty of all, the
apparent hopelessness of undertaking anything so vast with such
slender means, he met with the words of scripture, " If God be for
us, who can be against us ? " and " Except the Lord keep the city,
the watchman waketh but in vain."
To all suggestions of delay until a more favorable time, he would
reply, " I am nearly sixty years old ; I have desired to do this work
for many years ; if I do not begin soon, it will be too late for me."
He had made nearly all his arrangements ; he had so many hundred
weapons, so many men enlisted, all that he wanted was the small
sum of money. With that he would open his campaign with the
spring, and he did not doubt that his enterprise would pay. But

59
those who heard him, while they looked upon the success of Brown's
undertaking as a great blessing and relief to the country, felt also that
to fail, contending against such odds, might hazard for many years
the cause of freedom and union. They had not yet fully attained the
sublime faith of Brown when he said, " A few men in the right, and
knowing they are right, can overturn a king. Twenty men in the
Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in two years."
On the 23d of February, the discussion was renewed, and, as
usually happened when he had time enough, Captain Brown began to
prevail over the objections of his friends. At any rate, they saw that
they must either stand by him, or leave him to dash himself alone
against the fortress he was determined to assault. To withhold aid
would only delay, not prevent him; nothing short of betraying him to the
enemy would do that. As the sun was setting over the snowy hills ofthe
region where we met, I walked for an hour with the principal person
in our little council of war, leaving Captain Brown to discuss re
ligion with an old captain of Wellington's army who, by chance, was
a guest in the house. My companion, of equal age with Brown, and
for many years a devoted abolitionist, said, " You see how it is ; our
old friend has made up his mind to this course of action, and cannot
be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone ; we must
stand by him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for him ; you
must lay the case before your friends in Massachusetts and perhaps
they will do the same. I see no other way." For myself, I had
reached the same conclusion, and I engaged to bring the scheme at
once to the attention of the three Massachusetts men to whom Brown
had written, and also of Dr. S. G. Howe, who had sometimes favored
action almost as extreme as this proposed by Brown.
I returned to Boston on the 25th of February, and on the same
day communicated the enterprise to Theodore Parker and Colonel
Higginson. At the suggestion of Parker, Brown, who had gone to
Brooklyn, New York, was invited to visit Boston secretly, and did
so the 4th of March, taking a room at the American House, in Hano
ver street. He registered himself as "J. Brown," instead of writing
out the customary " John " in full, and remained for the most part
in his room (No. 126) during the four days of his stay. Parker was
one of the first persons to call on him, and promised aid at once.
He was deeply interested in the project, but not very sanguine of its
success. He wished to see it tried, believing that it must do good
even if it failed. John Brown remained at the American House until

6o
Monday, March 8th, when he departed for Philadelphia. On the
Friday, Saturday and Sunday intervening, he had seen at his hotel
Mr. Parker, Dr. Howe, Mr. Stearns, Mr. Wentworth Higginson
and two or three other persons. He did not think it prudent to show
himself at Mr. Parker's Sunday evening reception, on the 7th of
March, as he had done when he was in Boston the year before ; and
therefore he wrote Mr. Parker a letter which I carried to him that
afternoon, and which shall here be copied entire :
To Rev. Theodore Parker, Boston.
Boston, Mass., March 7th, 1858.
My Dear Sir, Since you know 1 have an almost countless brood of poor
hungry chickens to " scratch for," you will not reproach me for scratching
even on the Sabbath. At any rate, I trust God will not. 1 want you to under
take to provide a substitute for an address you saw last season, directed to the
officers and soldiers of the United States army. The ideas contained in that
address, I of course like, for I furnished the skeleton. I never had the ability
to clothe those ideas in language at all to satisfy myself ; and I was by no
means satisfied with the style of that address, and do not know as I can give
any correct idea of what I want. I will, however, try.
In the first place it must be short, or it will not be generally read. It must
be in the simplest or plainest language, without the least affectation of the
scholar about it, and yet be worded with great clearness, and power. The
anonymous writer must (in the language of the Paddy) be " afther others, "
and not " afther himself at all, at all." If the spirit that communicated Frank
lin's Poor Richard (or some other good spirit) would dictate, I think it would
be quite as well employed as the " dear sister spirits " have been for some years
past. The address should be appropriate, and particularly adapted to the
peculiar circumstances we anticipate, and should look to the actual change of
service from that of Satan to the service of God. It should be, in short, a
most earnest and powerful appeal to men's sense of right and to their feelings of
humanity. Soldiers are men, and no man can certainly calculate the value and
importance of getting a single " nail into old Captain Kidd's chest." It should
be provided before hand, and be ready in advance to distribute, by all persons,
male and female, who may be disposed to favor the right.
I also want a similar short address, appropriate to the peculiar circumstances,
intended for all persons, old and young, male and female, slave-holding and
non slave holding, to be sent out broadcast over the entire nation. So by
every male and female prisoner on being set at liberty, and to be read by them
during confinement. I know that men will listen and reflect too, under such
circumstances. Persons will hear your anti-slavery lectures and abolition lectures
when they have become virtually slaves themselves. The impressions made
on prisoners by kindness and plain dealing, instead of barbarous and cruel treat
ment, such as they might give, and instead of being slaughtered like, wild rep
tiles, as they might very naturally expect, are not only powerful but lasting.
Females are susceptible of being carried away entirely by the kindness of an

6i
intrepid and magnanimous soldier, even when his bare name was but a terror
the day previous. *
Now, dear sir, I have told you about as well as I know how, what I am
anxious at once to secure. Will you write the tracts, or get them written, so
that I may commence ' Colporteur ?' Very respectfully, your friend,
John Brown.
P. S. If I should never see you again, please drop me a line (enclosed to
Stephen Smith, Esq., Lombard St., Philadelphia), at once, saying whatyou will
encourage me to expect. You are at liberty to make any prudent use of this
to stir up any friend. Yours for the right, J. B.
Probably Brown was not aware how hard was the task imposed
by these masterly directions in the art of writing. It does not appear
that Parker, who was then overweighted with work, ever under
took to write the tracts desired, or that they were written by any one
else. Only one such was ever printed. It may be worth mentioning,
that Parker sent Brown from his library on this Sunday, the report
of McClellan on the European armies, which was then a new book,
and was thought likely to be of service to Brown. At the same
time Brown praised Plutarch's Lives as a book he had read with great
profit for its military and moral lessons, and particularly mentioned
the life of Sertorius, the Roman commander who so long carried on
a partisan warfare in Spain. He wished to get a few copies of Plu
tarch for his men to read in camp, and inquired particularly about
the best edition.
Although Brown communicated freely to the persons above named
his plans of attack and defence in Virginia, it is not known that he
spoke to more than one person in Boston of his purpose of surpris
ing the arsenal and. town of Harper's Ferry. Both Dr. Howe and
Mr. Stearns testified before Mason's committee, in i860, that they
were ignorant of Brown's plan of attack ; which was true so far as
the place and manner of beginning the campaign were concerned.
It is probable that in 1858, Brown had not definitely resolved to

' A Kansas paper said in 1859 : " At the sacking of Osawatomie, one of the most bit
ter pro-slavery men in Lykins county was killed. His name was Ed. Timmons. Some
time afterwards, Brown stopped at the log-house where Timmons had lived. His widow
and children were there, and in great destitution. He inquired into their wants, relieved
their distresses, and supported them until their friends in Missouri, informed, through
Brown, ofthe condition of Mrs. Timmons, had time to come to her and carry her to her
former home. Mrs. Timmons fully appreciated the great kindness thus shown her, but
never learned that Captain John Brown was her benefactor. ' '

62
seize Harper's Ferry, since, when he spoke of it to the person referred
to, he put it as a question, and did not seem to have made up his
mind to a course of action so immediately hazardous. He then
argued that it would strike great terror into the whole slaveholding
class to find that an armed force had strength enough to capture a
place so important and so near Washington ; and it was to inspire
terror, rather than to possess himself ofthe arms there, that he then
proposed to capture the arsenal. It is believed that Theodore
Parker was aware of this half-formed plan of Brown's, but it was not
communicated to his men until a year and a half later, or just before
the attack was actually made. Charles Plummer Tidd, one of
Brown's men, who escaped from Harper's Ferry, afterwards enlisted
in a Massachusetts regiment under the name of Plummer, and died
under Burnside in North Carolina, is authority for this statement.
He told me that when Brown called his small company together in
October, 1859, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, and disclosed
to them his plan for the capture of the town, they all declared that
it would be fatal to attempt it, and refused to take part in it ; even
his own sons, except Owen, being unwilling to follow their father
to what they said would be certain defeat and death. But Brown
had now decided upon his course, and adhered to it inflexibly ; he
would make the attack with a single man, if only one man would
obey him. His sons, finding their father so determined, and know
ing how impossible it was to change his purpose, first gave in their
adhesion ; they believed it to be a fatal scheme, but they would not
desert him. Gradually all the others came round to the same opin
ion, and the attack was made with precisely the result that Brown's
followers had predicted. It is probable that Tidd's statement was
true in substance, if not literally.
"On the departure of Brown from Boston in March, 1858, the five
persons mentioned — Parker, Howe, Higginson, Sanborn and
Stearns — formed themselves into a secret committee to raise for him
the money (now set at $1,000) which it was agreed should be raised
in New England. Each of the five was to raise $100, and as
much more as he could, Dr. Howe having hopes of securing a larger
subscription from his friend Mr. George R. Russell. Mr. Stearns
was made treasurer of the committee, and the small sum judged
necessary for beginning the enterprise was nearly made up, either in
money or pledges, before the ist of May, at which time Brown was
on his way from Iowa to Ohio, with the arms that had been stored

63
in Iowa, and with some of his men. He was to enlist others in
Canada about May 8th, and to strike his first blow in the latter part
of the same month. On the 28th of April, Brown was in Chicago ;
on the 2d of May at Chatham, in Canada. But, meanwhile, a for
midable obstacle had appeared. Hugh Forbes interposed again,
writing from Washington, and threatened to disclose the whole plan
to the republican leaders, and even to the government.
In these letters of April and May, Forbes insisted that Brown's
enterprise should stop, that Brown himself should be dismissed as the
leader of the movement, and Forbes be put in his place ; and these
demands were accompanied by a threat of making public the whole
transaction, so far as it had gone. To increase the difficulties of the
situation, Forbes had evidently learned, from some quarter, of the
countenance given to Brown, since the ist of March, by his Boston
committee. On the 2d of May these letters were submitted to this
committee, Howe, Parker, Sanborn and Stearns being present, and
Higginson being informed of them by mail. Parker, Sanborn and
Stearns at once said that the blow must be deferred till another year,
and in this opinion Howe partially coincided. Higginson thought
otherwise, and so did Brown, who declared that he would go for
ward, in spite of Forbes and his threats, if the money promised him
should be furnished. Here, however, another difficulty sprang up.
Forbes, early in May, carried out his threat so far as to inform Sen
ators Hale, Seward and Wilson, and Dr. Bailey, in general terms, of
Brown's purposes, and Wilson wrote to Dr. Howe, earnestly pro
testing against any such demonstration. As the rifles which had been
purchased by the Massachusetts Kansas committee and intrusted to
Brown by them were still, so far as Senator Wilson and the public
knew, the property of that committee (though really, as has been
explained, the personal property of Mr. Stearns, the chairman), it
would expose the Kansas committee, who were ignorant of Brown's
later plans, to suspicions of bad faith, if those arms were used by him
in any expedition to Virginia. This awkward complication seems
to have decided Dr. Howe in favor of postponing the attack, and both
he and Mr. Stearns, as members of the Kansas Committee, wrote
to Brown that the arms must not be used for the present, except for
the defence of Kansas. Brown saw that nothing further could then
be done, and yielded, though with regret, to the postponement.
About the 20th of May, Mr. Stearns met Brown in New York, and
arranged that hereafter the custody of the Kansas rifles should he

64
Brown's, as the agent of Stearns, the real owner, and not of the
nominal owners, the Kansas committee. On the 24th of May, a
meeting of the Boston secret committee, with one of the principal
friends of Brown's plan outside of New England, Mr. Gerrit Smith —
took place at the Revere House in Boston — Parker, Howe, Sanborn
and Stearns being present, as before ; and it was agreed that the exe
cution of the plan should be postponed till the spring of 1859. •"•
the meantime a larger sum of money — from two to three thousand
dollars — was to be raised, and Brown was to tljrow Forbes off his
track by returning to Kansas and engaging in the defence of the free-
state men on the border. The alleged property of the Kansas com
mittee was to be so transferred as to relieve that committee of all
responsibility, and the secret committee were, in future, to know
nothing in detail of Brown's plans. Brown was not himself present
at this Revere House meeting, but came to Boston the next week,
and was at the American House May 31st. Here he met all the
committee, Higginson included ; and, in the two or three days that
he stayed, the Revere House arrangement was completed. He re
ceived the sole custody ofthe arms which had belonged to the Kan
sas committee, and five hundred dollars beside ; was to go to Kansas
at once, but after that to use his own discretion ; and, though still
believing the postponement unwise, he left New England in good
spirits the first week in June.
He reached Kansas June 26th, with about ten men, and in a week
or two after was on the border, near the scenes of the Marais des
Cygnes murders of May 19th, which he has described in one of his
later letters soon to be cited, but written after he had made his incur
sion into Missouri, six months afterwards, and brought off some
fugitive slaves. In the summer he was occupied with the defence of
Kansas once more, and with plans for his next year's campaign in
Virginia. On the 28th of June, he wrote me from Lawrence a short letter
addressed to " F. B. Sanborn and Dear Friends at Boston, Worcester,
and  ,"and containing this passage: "I reached Kansas with
friends, on the 26th inst. ; came here last night, and leave here to
day for the neighborhood of late troubles. It seems the troubles are
not over yet. ... I do hope you will be in earnest now to carry out,
as soon as possible, the measure proposed in Mr. Sanborn's letter
inviting me to Boston this last spring." (This was the raising of
money for a campaign in Virginia in 1859, after l^e Kansas fighting

65
had ended.) " I hope there will be no delay of that matter. Can
you send me by express, care of E. B. Whitman, Esqr., half a dozen
or a full dozen whistles, such as I described, at once?" These
whistles were for use in making signals among his men when in night
attacks, or amid woody or mountainous regions in the day-time, and
he had both spoken and written to me about them before. They
were to be " such as are used by boatswains on ships of war ; "
and Brown thought them of great service. " Every ten men ought
to have one at least." He had also requested me to procure for him
" some little articles as marks of distinction," — badges, medals, or
the like — to be given to his men in token of good conduct. Hap
pening to be at Dr. Howe's house in South Boston one day in the
spring of 1858, the doctor (who was a chevalier ofthe Greek Legion
of Honor, for services rendered in the Greek Revolution of 1820-27),
had shown me his cross of Malta and other decorations, given by
the Legion to its members, and some of these seemed to me exactly
what Brown would want. I therefore made rude sketches of them
and showed these to Brown, who selected the Maltese cross and one
or two other designs, as suitable for his badges, but I doubt if they
were ever used for that purpose.
How well Brown looked after Kansas matters will be seen by the
following letter, a very long one for the old soldier to write :
" Missouri Line (on Kansas Side),
zoth July, 1858.
. F. B. Sanborn, Esq., and Friends at Boston and Worcester: I am
here with about ten of my men, located on the same quarter section where the
terrible murders of the 19th May were committed, called the Hamilton or
Trading Post murders. Deserted farms and dwellings lie in all directions for
some miles along the line, and the remaining inhabitants watch every ap
pearance of persons moving about, with anxious jealousy and vigilance. Four
of the persons wounded or attacked on that occasion are staying with me.
The blacksmith Snyder, who fought the murderers, with his brorher aud son,
are of the number. Old Mr. Hargrove, who was terribly wounded at the
same time, is another. The blacksmith returned here with me, and intends to
bring back his family on to his claim, within two or three days. A constant
fear of new troubles seems to prevail on both sides the line, and on both sides
are companies of armed men. Any little affair may open the quarrel afresh.
Two murders and cases of robbery are reported of late. I have also a man
"with me who fled from his family and farm in Missouri but a day or two since,
his life being threatened on account of being accused of informing Kansas men
'ofthe whereabouts of one of the murderers, who was lately taken and brought
to this side. I have concealed the fact of my presence pretty much, lest it
should tend to create excitement; but it is getting leaked out, and will soon be
9

66
known to all. As I am not here to seek or secure revenge, I do not mean to
be the first to reopen the quarrel. How soon it may be raised against me, I
cannot say, nor am I over-anxious. A portion of my men are in other neigh
borhoods. We shall soon be in great want of a small amount in a draft or
drafts on New York, to feed us. We cannot work for wages, and provisions
are not easily obtained on the frontier.
I cannot refrain from quoting or rather referring to a notice of the terrible
affair before alluded to, in an account found in the New York Tribune of May
31st, dated at Westport, May 21st. The writer says: 'From one of the
prisoners it was ascertained that a number of persons were stationed at Snyder s,
a short distance from the Post, a house built in the gorge of two mounds, and
flanked by rock walls, a fit place for robbers and murderers.' At a spring in
a rocky ravine stands a very small open blacksmith's shop, made of thin slabs
from a saw-mill. This is the only building that has ever been known to stand
there, and in that article is called a ' fortification.' It is to-day just as it was
the 19th May, — a little pent-up shop, containing Snyder's tools (what have
not been carried off") all covered with rust, — and had never been thought of
as a ' fortification ' before the poor man attempted in it his own and his
brother's and son's defense. I give this as an illustration of the truthfulness of
that whole account. It should be left to stand while it may last, and should be
known hereafter as Fort Snyder.
I may continue here for some time. Mr. Russell and other friends at New
Haven assured me before I left that, if the Lecompton abomination should pass
through congress, something could be done there to relieve me from a diffi
culty I am in, and which they understand. Will not some of my Boston
friends ' stir up their minds ' in the matter ? I do believe they would be
listened to.1
You may use this as you think best. Please let friends in New York and at
North Elba2 hear from me. I am not very stout, have much to think of and
to do, and have but little time or chance for writing. The weather of late has
been very hot. I will write you all when I can.
I believe all honest, sensible Free State men in Kansas consider George Wash
ington Brown's Herald of Freedom one of the most mischievous, traitorous
publications in the whole country.
July ZT,d. Since the previous date, another free state Missourian has been
over to see us, who reports great excitement on the other side of the line, and
that the house of Mr. Bishop (the man who fled to us) was beset during the
night after he left ; but, on finding he was not there, they left. Yesterday «
pro-slavery man from West Point (Missouri) came over, professing that he
wanted to buy Bishop's farm. I think he was a spy. He reported all quiet

1 The allusion here is probably to Brown's contract with Cjharles Blair of Collinsville,
the blacksmith who was to make the thousand pikes. Brown had engaged them in 1857,
and had paid in that year five hundred and fifty of the thousand dollars which the pikes
were to cost when finished. In 1858, Brown had not been able, for lack of money, to
complete the payment, and was afraid his contract would be forfeited and the money already
paid would be lost. He therefore communicated (as I suppose) the facts in the case to Mr.
Russell, who was then the head of a military school at New Haven, and had some assur
ance from him of money to be raised in Connecticut to meet this Connecticut contract.
3 His wife and children.

67
on the other side. At present, along this part of the line the free state men
may be said in some sense to ' possess the field,' but we deem it wise to ' be
on the alert.' Whether Missouri people are more excited through fear than
otherwise I am not yet prepared to judge. The blacksmith (Snyder) has got
his family back ; also some others have returned, and a few new settlers are
coming in. Those who fled or were driven off will pretty much lose the
season. Since we came here, about twenty-five to thirty of Governor Den
ver's men have moved a little nearer to the line, I believe.
August 6th. Have been down with ague since last date, and had no safe way
of getting off.my letter. I had lain every night without shelter, suffering from
cold rains and heavy dews, together with the oppressive heat of the days. A
few days since, Governor Denver's officer then in command bravely moved his
men on to the line, and on the next adjoining claim with us. Several of them
immediately sought opportunity to tender their service to me secretly. I, how
ever, advised them to remain where they were. Soon after I came on the
line, my right name was reported, but the majority did not credit the report.
I am getting better. You will know the true result of the election of the 2d
inst., much sooner than I shall, probably. I am in no place for correct general
information. May God bless you all. Your friend, John Brown.
Inclose in envelope directed to Augustus Wattles, Moneka, Linn County,
Kansas ; inside direct to S. Morgan."
Some of the incidents and allusions in the above letter need to be
further explained. The " Hamilton murders " are better known in
border story as the Marais des Cygnes Massacre, a tragedy which
Whittier has celebrated in verse. Near the river named by the old
French voyageurs of Louisiana " The Swan's Marsh " {Marais des
Cygnes or du Cygne), in Southern Kansas, was a little settlement of
northern farmers. As they were planting their fields and fencing
them in May, 1858, an unprovoked assault was made on them by a
party from Missouri, under the lead of three brothers named Hamilton,
from Georgia ; five farmers were killed and five wounded. The
murderers were not Missourians,' but men from farther south, who
had been in Kansas but were driven out in some of the contests of
j 856-57. They marched over in an armed band from Missouri,
gathered up their victims from the prairie farms and the lonely roads,
or took them from their cabins, formed them into a line, and shot
them down by a platoon discharge. Then the invaders gave out
word that they meant to shoot all the free state settlers in Linn
county in the same way. The farmers mustered for defense, in a
band of two hundred, near the Missouri line, and detailed a company
of mounted men to stand guard, or to ride up and down the line and
keep watch of the Hamiltons and their band. When Brown reached

68
the spot a month later, he put his own men on guard, and the
settlers went back to their work. The governor of Kansas, Denver,
also sent armed men, perhaps United States troops, to keep the
peace, and it is to these that Brown alludes as having offered to serve
under him. Brown went to the spot where the massacre took place,
assuming the name of " Captain Morgan " for the occasion, fortified
himself, and gave out that he was there to fight or be peaceable as
the other side might choose ; " they could make him as good a
neighbor or as bad as they pleased." Gradually his secret came out
and the terror of his name frightened the enemy away ; the Hamil
tons left the neighborhood, and the trouble there ceased. But Brown
himself fell sick and was obliged to take shelter for a few weeks with
his friend Wattles, at Moneka. I wrote to him early in July a letter
which reached him there, and to which he replied as follows :
Osawatomie, Kansas, ioth September,
1858.
Dear Friend, and other Friends — Your kind and very welcome letter of
the 1 1 th July was received a long time since, but I was sick at the time, and
have been ever since until now ; so that I did not even answer the letters of
my own family, or any one else, before yesterday, when 1 began to try. I am
very weak yet, but gaining well. All seems quiet now. I have been down
about six weeks. As things now look I would sav that, if you had not already
sent forward those little articles,1 do not do it. Before I was taken sick there
seemed to be every prospect of some business very soon ; and there is some
now that requires doing ; but, under all the circumstances, I think not best to
send them.
I have heard nothing direet from Forbes for months, but expeet to when I
get to Lawrence. I have but fourteen regularly employed hands, the most of
whom are now at common work, and some are sick. Much sickness prevails.
How we travel may not be best to write. I have often met the ' notorious'
Montgomery,2 and think very favorably of him.
It now looks as though but little business can be accomplished until we get
our mill into operation. I am most anxious about that, and want you to name
the earliest date possible, as near as you can learn, when you can have your
matters gathered up. Do let me hear from you on this point (as soon as consist
ent), so that I may have some idea how to arrange my business. Dear friends,
do be in earnest • the harvest we shall reap, if we are only up and doing.
13th September, 1858. Yours ofthe 25th August, containing draft of Mr.
S. for fifty dollars is received. I am most grateful for it, and to you for your
kind letter. This would have been sooner mailed but for want of stamps and
envelopes. I am gaining slowly, but hope to be on my legs soon. Have no
further news.
Mailed, September 15 th. Still weak.
 Your friend.
1 The boatswain's whistles.
2 This was James Montgomery, one of the bravest partisans on the Kansas border, and
during the civil war colonel of a black regiment in South Carolina.

69
The money which I sent to Brown, as above acknowledged, was
probably contributed by Gerrit Smith, who, first and last, gave Brown
or sent him more than a thousand dollars. Most of the smaller sums
which Brown received during the years 1858-59, I suppose, passed
through my hands, while the larger sums were paid to him directly
by Mr. Stearns or other contributors. Most of the correspondence
on this Virginia business also went through my hands ; it being
Brown's custom to write one letter to be read by the half dozen
persons with whom he desired to communicate ; and this letter
generally (by no means always) coming to me in the first instance.
My custom was to show it to Mr. Parker and Dr. Howe, when
they were at home, then to send it to Mr. Stearns, who sometimes
forwarded it to Colonel Higginson or some more distant correspondent,
and sometimes returned it to me. It appears that both the letters
just quoted came back to me in October, 1858, and were by me
forwarded to Higginson on the 13th of that month.
Colonel Higginson expressed the hope that the enterprise would
not be deferred longer that the spring of 1859, and made some con
tribution to the fund, as also did Mr. Parker and the other members
ofthe secret committee. No active movement to raise money was
undertaken, however, until the winter and spring of 1859.
In December 1858, Brown wishing to show by experiment in
Missouri what he could do in Virginia, crossed the border from Kan
sas with a few men, and brought away a party of slaves, with whom
he traveled in January and February, 1859, fr°m t^le border of
southern Kansas, through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan,
to Detroit, where he arrived March 12th, and landed his fugitives
safely in Canada. In the latter part of March, 1859, ne was at
Cleveland, where he sold publicly the horses he had brought from
Missouri. While still in Kansas he wrote this striking letter for
publication in the New York Tribune and other friendly newspapers :
John Brown's Parallels.
Trading Post, Kansas, January, 1859.
Gentlemen : You will greatly oblige a humble friend by allowing the use of
your columns while I briefly state two parallels, in my poor way.
Not one year ago eleven quiet citizens of this neighborhood, viz : William
Robertson, William Colpetzer, Amos Hall, Austin Hall, John Campbell, Asa
Snyder, Thomas Stilwell, William Hairgrove, Asa Hairgrove, Patrick Ross,
and B. L. Reed, were gathered up from their work and their homes by an
armed force und'er one Hamilton, and without trial or opportunity to speak in

7°
their own defense, were formed into line, and all but one shot — five killed
and five wounded. One fell unharmed, pretending to be dead. _ All were left
for dead. The only crime charged against them was that of being free state
men. Now, I inquire what action has ever, since the occurrence in May last,
been taken by either the president of the United States, the governor of Mis
souri, the go'vernor of Kansas, or any of their tools, or by any pro-slavery
or administration man, to ferret out and punish the perpetrators of this crime?
Now for the other parallel. On Sunday, December 19, a negro man called
Jim came over to the Osage settlement, from Missouri, and stated that he
together with his wife, two children, and another negro man, was to be sold
within a day or two, and begged for help to get away. On Monday (the fol
lowing) night, two small companies were made up to go to Missouri and forci
bly liberate the five slaves, together with other slaves. One of these companies
I assumed to direct. We proceeded to the place, surrounded the buildings,
liberated the slaves, and also took certain property supposed to belong to the
estate. We however learned before leaving, that a portion of the articles we had
taken belonged to a man living on the plantation as a tenant, and who was sup
posed to have no interest in the estate. We promptly returned to him all we
had taken. We then went lo another plantation, where we found five more
slaves, took some property and two white men. We moved all slowly away
into the territory for some distance, and then sent the white men back, telling
them to follow us as soon as they chose to do so. The other company freed
one female slave, took some property, and, as I am informed, killed one white
man (the master), who fought against the liberation.
Now for a comparison. Eleven persons are forcibly restored to their natu
ral and inalienable rights, with but one man killed, and all ' hell is stirred from
beneath.' It is currently reported that the governor of Missouri has made a
requisition upon the governor of Kansas for the delivery of all such as were
concerned in the last-named ' dreadful outrage.' The marshal of Kansas is
said to be collecting a posse of MisSTuri (not Kansas) men at West Point, in
Missouri, a little town about ten miles distant, to 'enforce the laws.' All pro-
slavery, conservative, free state, and doughface men, and administration tools,
are filled with holy horror.
Consider the two cases, and the action of the Administration party.
Respectfully yours,
John Brown.
On the 4th of March, 1859, I wrote to a friend thus : " Brown
was at Tabor (Iowa) on the 19th February, with his stock in fine
condition, as he says in a letter to G. Smith. He also says he is
ready with some new men to set his mill in operation, and seems to
be coming east for that purpose. Mr. Smith proposes to raise one
thousand dollars for him, and to contribute one hundred dollars him
self. I think a larger sum ought to be raised, but can we raise so
much as this ? Brown says he thinks any one of us who talked with
him might raise the sum if we should set about it ; perhaps this is so,
but I doubt. As a reward for what he has done, perhaps money

71
might be raised for him. At any rate he means to do the work, and
I expect to hear of him in New York within a few weeks. Dr.
Howe thinks J. F. and some others, not of our party, would help
the project if they knew of it."
Following up this last suggestion, I sounded several anti-slavery
men of wealth and influence in the spring of 1859, an(^ did obtain
some subscriptions from persons who were willing to give to a brave
man forcibly interfering with slavery, without inquiring very closely
what he would do next. But on the other hand I found that Brown's
manly action in Missouri had made some of our friends more shy of
him. When he reached Boston in May, he was invited to dine one
Saturday at the Bird Club, and there for the first time met Senator
Wilson, afterwards vice-president, who has thus described the inter
view : "The last of May, 1859, ¦"• met J°^n Brown at the Parker
House in Boston, There were a dozen persons present ; Brown
came in with somebody, and was introduced to quite a number of
gentlemen there. I was introduced to him, and he, 1 think, did not
recollect my name. I stepped aside. In a moment, after speaking
to somebody else, he came up again, and said to me that he did not
understand my name when it was mentioned. He then said, in a
very calm but firm tone, ' I understand you do not approve of my
course ;' referring, as I supposed, to his going into Missouri and
getting slaves and running them off. It was said with a great deal of
firmness of manner, and it was the first salutation after speaking to
me. I said I did not ; I believed it to be a very great injury to the
anti-slavery cause ; that I regarded every illegal act, and every im
prudent act, as being against it. I said that, if this action had been
a year or two before, it might have been followed by the invasion of
Kansas by a large number of excited people on the border, and a
great many lives might have been lost. He said he thought differ
ently, believed he had acted right, and that it would have a good in
fluence." If Brown had known Senator Wilson as well as he did
that Kansas friend who reproved him for the same cause, he would
have gone further, and given the senator the same answer ; " Brown
called in to see- me, in going out of Kansas in 1859, and I censured
him for going into Missouri and getting those slaves. He said, ' I
considered the matter well ; you will have no more attacks from Mis
souri. I shall now leave Kansas ; probably you will never see me
again. I consider it my duty to draw the scene of the excitement to some
other -part of the country.' " In this aim he certainly succeeded.

72
Even Dr. Howe who had been concerned in the Greek revolution,
the French revolution of July, 1830, and the Polish revolution of
1831, was distressed, on his return from Cuba in the spring of 1859,
to find that Brown had actually been taking the property of slave
holders with which to give their escaping slaves an outfit, and for a
time withdrew his support from the veteran, who chafed greatly at
this unexpected rebuff. I have an impression that Dr. Howe, on
his way home from Cuba (whither he accompanied Theodore Parker
in February, 1858), had journeyed through the Carolinas, and had
there accepted the splendid hospitality of Wade Hampton and other
rich planters ; and that it shocked him to think he might have been
instrumental in giving up to fire and pillage the noble mansions where
he had been entertained. If so, it was a generous relutance which
held him back from heartily entering again into John Brown's plans;
nor did he after 1858 so completely support them as before, although
he never withdrew from the secret committee, and continued to give
money to the enterprise. Parker never returned to Boston, but died
in Florence May, i860. He contributed nothing after 1858, nor
did Higginson give so much, or interest himself so warmly in the
enterprise after its first postponement.
All this would have made it more difficult, during 1859, to raise
the money which Brown needed, had it not been for the munificence
of Mr. Stearns, who, at each emergency, came forward with his in
dispensable gifts. After placing about twelve hundred dollars in
Brown's hands in the spring and summer of 1859, ne st'" continued
to aid him in one way and another, until almost the day of the out
break, which was delayed by the slowness of Brown's own move
ments during the spring and summer of 1859. I ^n^ this in one of
my letters, dated "Concord, June 4, 1859 :" " Brown has set out
on his expedition, having got some eight hundred dollars from all
sources except from Mr. Stearns, and from him the balance of two
thousand dollars ; Mr. S  being a man who, ' having put his hand
to the plow, turneth not back.' Brown left Boston for Springfield
and New York on Wednesday morning at 8 : 30, and Mr. Stearns
has probably gone to New York to-day to make final arrangements
for him. Brown means to be on the ground as soon as he can, per
haps so as to begin by the 4th of July. He could not say where he
should be for a few weeks, but letters are addressed to'him, under
cover to his son John, Jr., at West Andover, Ohio. This point is
not far from where Brown will begin, and his son will communicate

73
with him. Two of his sons will go with him. He is desirous of
getting some one to go td Canada and collect recruits for him among
the fugitives, with Harriet Tubman or alone, as the case may be."
This letter shows I had then no thought that the attack would be
made at Harper's Ferry, nor had Mr. Stearns, to whom I was then
in the habit of talking or writing about the matter every few days.
I have no doubt he knew as much as I did about the general plan.
On the 1 8th of August, Brown sent me word from Chambersburg
that he was again delayed for want of money, and must have three
hundred dollars, which I undertook to raise for him. On the 4th of
September I had sent him two hundred dollars, of which Dr. Howe
gave fifty and Gerrit Smith a hundred ; on the 14th of September,
I had all but thirty-five dollars of the remaining hundred, Colonel
Higginson having sent me twenty dollars. I think the balance was
paid by Mr. Stearns. On the 6th of October — ten days before
the attack was made — I wrote to Higginson, " The three hundred
dollars desired has been made up and received. Four or five men
will be on the ground next week, from these regions and elsewhere."
These facts were all known to Mr. Stearns, who within a fortnight
of the outbreak was in consultation with Mr. Lewis Hayden, and
other colored men of Boston, about forwarding recruits to Brown. I
think he paid some of the expenses of recruits, but am not certain.
To the unthinking public, slavery had never seemed more secure,
or more likely to continue for centuries, than in this very year 1859.
But Brown and his friends believed that it could be overthrown ;
that it must be overthrown, and that speedily, else it would destroy the
nation. Brown did not contemplate insurrection, but partisan war
fare, at first on a small scale, then more extensive. Yet he did not
shrink from the extreme consequences of his position. A man of
peace for more than fifty years of his life, he nevertheless understood
that war had its uses, and that there were worse evils than warfare
for a great principle. He more than once said to me, and doubtless
said the same to others, " I believe in the Golden Rule and the De
claration of Independence ; I think they both mean the same thing ;
and it is better that a whole generation should pass off the face of the
earth — men, women and children — by a violent death, than that
one jot of either should fail in this country. I mean exactly so sir."
He also told me that " he had much considered the matter, and had
about concluded that forcible separation of the connection between
master and slave was necessary to fit the blacks for self-government."
10

74
First a soldier, then a citizen,, was his plan with the liberated slaves.
" When they stand like men, the nation will respect them," he said ;
" it is necessary to teach them this." He looked forward, no doubt,
to years of conflict, in which the blacks, as in the later years of the
civil war, would be formed into regiments and brigades and be drilled
in the whole art of war, as were the black soldiers of Toussaint
L'Ouverture and Dessalines, in Hayti. But in' his more inspired
moments he foresaw a speedier end to the combat which he began.
Once he said, " A few men in the right, and knowing they are
right, can overturn a mighty king. Fifty men, twenty men, in the
Alleghanies, could break slavery to pieces in two years." Within
less than three years from the day he crossed the Potomac with his
twenty men, Abraham Lincoln had made his first proclamation of
emancipation. Before six years had passed, every one of the four
million slaves in our country was a free man.
The Virginia Campaign.
Until the troubles in Kansas in 1856-7, the world knew nothing
of John Brown. After that time he was well known, though not
always kept in mind, until his final adventure in Virginia, and the
remarkable scenes at the close of his life fastened the attention of
all men, and made his name as familiar to our countrymen and to
foreign nations, as are those of Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
And it was on the banks of Washington's own noble stream, the
Potomac, and among regions familiar to the great Virginian, that this
son of Connecticut achieved his highest renown. Robert Harper,
an English carpenter from the neighborhood of Oxford, who gave
his name to the romantic spot since known as " Harper's Ferry,"
was a contemporary of Washington, though somewhat older. It was
then (in 1747), a part of Lord Fairfax's broad Virginia manor, be
tween the Potomac and the Rappahannock, in which Washington, at
the request of his friend and patron Fairfax, first began work as a
land surveyor. Without waiting for the formality of a survey, Robert
Harper, who saw the advantages of the situation, determined to buy
out the squatter's cabin and claim which then occupied the locality,
paying fifty English guineas for such rights as could be possessed
under squatter law. In the year 1748, while Washington was ex
ploring and surveying the Shenandoah valley, Harper went to Lord
Fairfax's hunting lodge at Greenway Court (not far off), and obtained
a patent for the lands he had purchased. Probably the first survey

75
of this tract was made by Washington, who also is said to have
selected the Ferrv, in 1794, as the site of a national armory. The
scenery of this region has been described by Jefferson in his Notes on
Virginia, written shortly before the death of Robert Harper in 1782,
and presenting the view as it shows itself from Jefferson's rock,
above the present village of Harper's Ferry. " You stand, on a very
high point of land ; on your right comes up the Shenandoah, having
ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to find a
vent ; on your left approaches the Potomac, in quest of a passage.
also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against
the mountain, rend it asunder, and pass off to the sea. The scene
is worth a voyage across the Atlantic. Yet here are people who
have passed their lives within half a dozen miles, and have never
been to survey these monuments of a war between rivers and moun
tains which must have shaken the earth itself to its centre."
Around this junction of the two rivers, in the sixty years that
followed the death of Washington, had grown up a village of three
or four thousand inhabitants. On the northern side ofthe Potomac
rise the Maryland Heights almost perpendicular to the river's bank,
and some thirteen hundred feet above it. The Loudon Heights, across
the Shenandoah, are lower, but both ridges overtop the hill between
them, and make it untenable for an army, as was more than once
demonstrated during the civil war. Yet this hill itself eommands all
below it, and makes the town indefensible against a force occupying
that position. Therefore when John Brown, on the night of Sun
day, October 16, 1859, entered and captured Harper's Ferry, he
placed himself in a trap where he was sure to be taken, unless he
should quickly leave it. His purpose, beyond question, was to hold
the village but a few hours, make such disposal as he should think
best of the government armory and arsenal there, with its tens of
thousands of muskets and rifles, get together the principal persons of
the whole neighborhood to be detained as hostages, and then to
move forward into the mountains of Virginia, keeping open such com
munication as he could, with the mountain region of Maryland and
so with the northern states. His first mistake (and he made many
in this choice of his point of attack and his method of warfare) was
in crossing the Potomac at a place so near the cities of Washington
and Baltimore, which are distant but sixty and eighty miles respect
ively from the bridge over which he marched his men. This bridge
is used both by the Baltimore and Ohio rail road and by the travelers

76
along the public highway ; and the only approach to it from the
Maryland side is by a narrow road under the steep cliff, or by the
rail road itself. On the Virginia side there are roads leading up from
the Shenandoah valley, and both up and down the Potomac. Har
per's Ferry is indeed the Thermopylae of Virginia. Robert Lee, the
Hector of the Southern Troy, came here with, soldiers of the national
army to capture John Brown, in 1859 > ^e came i"ere again and re
peatedly as commander of the Southern armies, during the five years
that followed. His soldiers and their opponents of the Union army
canonaded, burnt, pillaged and abandoned the town, which has
never recovered from the ruin of the war. The armory workshops
are abandoned, both those beside the Potomac, where Brown fought
and was captured, and those beside the Shenandoah, where his com
rade Kagi fought and was slain. The fine houses of the officers
who directed the armory work before the war are turned over to the
directors of a school for the colored people, young and old, almost
the only thing that flourishes now at Harper's Ferry. The popula
tion of the two or three villages crowded together there is but little
more than half what it was in 1859.
Brown's attention was turned toward Harper's Ferry and the Vir
ginia counties within easy reach, not only by the natural advantages
ofthe place, and its historical associations with the heroes of Vir
ginia, but also by the number of slaves held there. In the village
itself there were few, but in Jefferson county there were four thou
sand slaves and five hundred free blacks, while the white population
was but ten thousand ; and within a range of thirty miles from the
Ferry there were perhaps twenty thousand slaves, of whom four or
five thousand were capable of bearing arms. Brown may well have
supposed that out of this population he could obtain the few hundred
recruits that he desired for the first operations of his Virginia cam
paign ; and could he have succeeded in fortifying himself in the Blue
Ridge, as he proposed, it is quite possible he would have had these
recruits. A colored clergyman, who heard him unfold his plan in
1858, at a secret meeting of colored people in one of the western
cities, reports this version of what he then said : "I design to make
a few midnight raids upon the plantations, in order to give those who
are willing among the slaves an opportunity of joining us or escap
ing; and it matters little whether we begin with many or few. Hav
ing done this for two or three times, until the neighborhood becomes
alarmed and the generality of the slaves encouraged, we will retire to

77
the fastness of the mountains; and, ever and anon, strike unexpected
though bloodless blows upon the Old Dominion ; in the mean time
sending away those slaves who may desire to go to the North. We
shall by this means conquer without bloodshed, awaken the slaves to
the possibility of escape, and frighten the slaveholders into a desire
to get rid of slavery." It was the possibility of success in such a
plan, that so alarmed the slaveholders ofthe whole South, and caused
Vallandigham of Ohio to say, as he did a few days after Brown's
capture, " Certainly it was one of the best planned and best executed
conspiracies that ever failed."
Had Brown gone forward as he proposed, he might have secured
a foothold for his operations, and it is possible that he could not only
have made slavery insecure, and emancipation desirable, but grad
ually have extended forcible emancipation over a large part of the
South. That this was a perilous undertaking, Brown and his men
well knew, but they did not believe it hopeless. Thus young Jerry
Anderson, who was killed by the side of his captain in the engine-
house at Harper's Ferry, wrote to his brother in Iowa less than three
weeks before the outhreak, in terms of great confidence.
" Our mining company will consist of between twenty five and thirty, well
equipped with tools. You can tell Uncle Dan it will be impossible for me to
visit him before next spring. If my life is spared, I will be tired of work by
that time, and I shall visit my relatives and friends in Iowa, if I can get leave
of absence. At present, I am bound by all that is honorable to continue in
the course. We go in to win, at all hazards. So if you should hear of a
failure, it will be after a desperate struggle, and loss of capital on both sides.
But that is the last of our thoughts. Everything seems to work to our hands,
and victory will surely perch upon our banner. The old man has had this
operation in view for twenty years, and last winter1 was just a hint and trial of
what could be done. This is not a large place,2 but a precious one to Uncle
Sam, as he has a great many tools here. I expect (when I start again travel
ing) to start at this place and go through the state of Virginia and on south,
just as circumstances require ; mining and prospecting, and carrying the ore
wjth us  I suppose this is the last letter I shall write before there is
something in the wind. Whether I will have a chance of sending letters then
I do not know, but when I have an opportuuity, I shall improve it. But if
you don't get any from me, don't take it for granted that I am gone up till
you know it to be so. I consider my life about as safe in one place as an
other." This letter shows the smallness of the force with which Brown

'In Missouri December 1858, whence he carried offa dozen slaves safely to Canada.
1 Harper's Ferry.

78
intended to begin his work. He would gladly have raised a hundred
men (or more) for his first operations, but he was quite ready to com
mence with thirty, hoping to increase their number by recruits from
the freed slaves and accessions from the North, both white and
black. He had several persons at the North engaged to enlist and
forward recruits, the most active of these being his son, John Brown,
Jr., then living at West Andover, Ohio. During the summer of
1859, J0'111 Brown, the younger, had visited Boston, and there made
arrangements for receiving recruits from Massachusetts.
Only one of the six colored recruits from Massachusetts reached
Harper's Ferry before the attack, and even he took no part in the
fight. The others were delayed at home, from one cause or another,
until the enterprise had failed. The same thing happened with rej
gard to a few other recruits enlisted by John Brown, Jr., or under
his direction, while a few persons, who had been counted on to join
the expedition, at last refused or hesitated to do so. Had it been de
layed, as some of the party expected, until the following spring, it is
possible that the number of men would have been increased to fifty ;
but probably no more than fifty were at any time pledged to join in this
particular expedition. Probably it would have heen unsafe to trust
more persons with the secret, which was so often on the point of being
disclosed, yet never really became public. It would appear from a
letter of John Brown, Jr., dated September 8, 1859, that he was not
informed, until early in September, that the attack would be made
in October. " I had supposed," he writes to Kagi, "that you would
not think it best to commence opening the coal banks before spring,
unless circumstances should make it imperative. However, I sup
pose the reasons are satisfactory to you."
The actual force with which Captain Brown undertook his Vir
ginia campaign consisted of twenty-three men, including himself;
but four of these never crossed the Potomac, nor had they all been
mustered together on the Kennedy farm or elsewhere. Six of them
were colored men, of whom three were fugitive slaves. In the fol
lowing list those who did not cross the river are marked with an as
terisk, and the names of the colored men are in italics. Of the whole
number only one, Owen Brown, now survives. Ten of them were
killed or died of their wounds in Virginia, seven were hanged, and
six escaped. Six of the white men were members of the Brown
family or connected with it by marriage, and five of these died in
Virginia. The list is as follows :

79
l. John Brown, commander-in-chief; 2. John Henry Kagi, adjutant, and
second in command ; 3. Aaron C. Stevens, captain ; 4. Watson Brown,
captain ; 5. Oliver Brown, captain ; 6. John E. Cook, captain ; 7. Charles
Plummer Tidd, captain ; 8. William H. Leman, lieutenant ; 9. Albert Haz-
lett, lieutenant ; 10. Owen Brown,* lieutenant ; 11. Jeremiah G. Anderson,
lieutenant; 12. Edwin Coppoc, lieutenant ; 13. William Thompson, lieuten
ant ; 14. Dauphin Thompson, lieutenant ; 15. Shields Green; 16. Danger-
field Newby; 17. John A. Copeland; 18. Osborn P. Anderson; 19. Lewis
Leary; 20. Stewart Taylor; 21. Barclay Coppoc;* 22. Francis Jackson
Merriam;* 23. John Anderson*
It will at once be seen that this company was but the skeleton of
an organization, which it was intended to fill up with recruits gath
ered from among the slaves and at the North ; hence the great dis
proportion of officers to privates. According to the general orders
issued by Brown, dated at Harper's Ferry, October 10, 1859, a
week before his capture of the town, his forces, were to be divided
into battalions of four companies, which would contain, when full,
seventy-two officers and men in each company, or two hundred and
eighty-eight in the battalion. Provision was made for officering and
arming the four companies of the first battalion, which, in the event
of Brown's success, would have been filled up as quickly as possi
ble. Each company was to be divided into bands of seven men,
under a corporal, and every two bands made a section of sixteen
men, under a sergeant. Until the companies were filled up, the
commissioned officers seem to have been intended to act as corporals
and sergeants in these bands and sections, and they did so during the
engagement at the village and the operations in Maryland and Vir
ginia. Brown's first appearance in the neighborhood of Harper's Ferry, for
the purpose of organizing his attack upon the place, was on the 30th
of June, 1859, when he went down from Chambersburg in Penn
sylvania to Hagerstown in Maryland, accompanied by his lieutenant,
Anderson. They spent the night at a tavern in Hagerstown, and
there passed for Yankees going through the mountains to search for
minerals. On the 3d of July Brown was at the Ferry with Ander
son, and his sons Watson and Oliver, and they spent that night at a
tavern in Sandy Hook, a hamlet on the Maryland side of the Potomac,
about a mile below. On the 4th of July they went up the river
road towards the house of Mr. John C. Unseld, a Maryland slave
holder, who lived in Washington county about a mile from the Ferry
on one of the mountain roads. Between eight and nine o'clock that

8o
morning, as Mr. Unseld was riding down to the Ferry, he met the
party strolling along the edge of the mountain. Falling into conver
sation with them, in the country fashion, he learned that the old man
was named Smith, that these were his sons, Watson and Oliver
Smith, and that the shorter youth was named Anderson. " Well,
gentlemen," said the Marylander, " I suppose you are out hunting
minerals, gold and silver, perhaps." " No," said Brown, " we are
out looking for land. We want to buy land ; we have a little
money, and want to make it go as far as we can. How much is
land worth an acre hereabouts ?" Being told that it "ranged from
fifteen dollars to thirty dollars in that neighborhood," he said, " That
is high ; I thought I could buy for a dollar or two an acre. " No,"
said the Marylander, " not here ; if you expect to get land for that
price, you'll have to go farther west, to Kansas, or some of those
territories where there is congress land. Where are you from !"
"The northern part of New York state." " What have you fol
lowed there ?" " Farming," said Brown ; but the frost had been so
heavy of late years it had cut off" their crops, -they could not make
anything there, so he had sold out, and thought they would come
farther south and try it awhile.
Having thus satisfied a natural curiosity, Mr. Unseld rode on,
and as we may suppose, took his morning dram among his Virginia
acquaintances. Returning, some hours afterwards, he again met
Mr. Smith and his young men not far from the same place. " I
have been looking round your country up here," said he, "and it is
a very fine country, — a pleasant place, a fine view. The land is
much better than I expected to find it ; your crops are pretty good."
As he said this he pointed to where the men had been cutting grain,
some white men and some negroes at work in the fields, as the cus
tom is there. For in Washington county there were few slaves even
then, and most of the field work was done by whites or free colored
men.1 Brown then asked if any farm in the neighborhood was for
sale. " Yes, there is a farm four miles up the road here, towards
Boonsborough, owned by the heirs of Dr. Booth Kennedy ; you can

1 In walking up the valley road to the Kennedy farm in May 1875, a distance of nearly
five miles, I saw scarcely any negroes cultivating the farms, and but one colored woman
who was working out-doors ; while I saw and talked with several white men plowing or
planting their own land. It was not very different from this in 1859, for, out of 31 000
inhabitants of Washington county then, only 1435 were slaves, while 1677 were free col
ored persons.

8i
buy that." " Can I rent it ?" said Brown ; then turning to his com
panions he said, " I think we had better rent awhile, until we get
better acquainted, so that they cannot take advantage of us in the pur
chase of land." To this they appeared to assent, and Mr. Unseld
then said, " Perhaps you can rent the Kennedy farm ; I do not
know about that, but it is for sale I know." -Brown then turned to
his sons and said, " Boys, as you are not very well, you had better
go back and tell the landlord at Sandy Hook that Oliver and I shall
not be there to dinner, but will go on up and see the Kennedy place ;
however, you can do as you please." Watson Brown looked at An
derson and then said, " We will go with you." " Well," said the
friendly Marylander, " if you will go on with me up to my house, I
can then point you the road exactly." Arrived there he invited them
to take dinner, for by this time it was nearly noon. They thanked him,
but declined, nor would they accept an invitation to " drink some
thing." "Well," said Unseld, "if you must go on, just follow up
this road along the foot of the mountain ; it is shady and pleasant,
and you will come out at a church up here about three miles. Then
you can see the Kennedy house by looking from that church right up
the road that leads to Boonsborough, or you can go right across and
get into the county road, and follow that up." Brown sat and talked
with Unseld for a while, who asked him " what he expected to
follow, up yonder at Kennedy's ? " adding that Brown " could not
more than make a living there." " Well," said Brown, " my
business has been buying up fat cattle and driving them on to the
state of New York, and we expect to engage in that again." Three
days later, the genial Unseld, again jogging to or from the Ferry,
again met the gray-bearded rustic, who said, " Well, I think that
place will suit me ; now just give me a description where I can find
the widow Kennedy and the administrator," which Unseld did. A
few days after, he once more met the new comer, and found Mr.
Smith had rented the two houses on the Kennedy farm, the farm
house, about theee hundred yards from the public road on the west
side, where, as Unseld thought, " it makes a very pretty show for a
small house," and " the cabin," which stood about as far from the
road on the east side, " hidden by shrubbery in the summer season,
pretty much."1 For the two houses, pasture for a cow and horse,

* It was at this cabin, since torn down, that Brown kept his boxes of rifles and pistols,
after they reached him from Ohio. The pikes from Connecticut, a thousand in number,
were stored in the loft or attic of the farm house, where Brown and his family lived.

82
and firewood, from July till March, Brown paid thirty-five dollars,
as he took pains to tell Unseld, showing him the receipt of the widow
Kennedy. How was it possible to doubt or mistrust a plain Yankee farmer
and cattledrover who talked in that way, and had no concealments,
no tricks, and no airs ? Evidently the Marylander did not once mis
trust him; though he rode up to the Kennedy farm nearly every
week from the middle of July till the first of October. " I just went
up to talk to the old man," said he to Senator Mason, when telling
the story before the senate committee, " but sometimes, at the
request of others, on business about selling him some horses or cows.
He was in my yard frequently, perhaps four or five times. I would
always ask him in, but he would never go in, and of course I would
not go in his house. He often invited me in ; indeed, nearly every
time I went there he asked me to go in, and remarked to me fre
quently, 'we have no chairs for you to sit on, but we have trunks
and boxes.' I declined going in, but sat on my horse and chatted
with him." Before the 20th of July he saw there " two females,"
who were Martha, the wife of Oliver Brown, and Anne, the eldest
unmarried sister of Oliver, then a girl of not quite sixteen years.
"Twice I went there," says Unseld, "and found none of the men,
but the two ladies, and I sat there on my horse — there was a high
porch on the house, and I could sit there and chat with them — and
then I rode off and left them. They told me there were none ofthe
men at home, but did not tell me where they were. One time I
went there and inquired for them, and one of the females answered
me, ' they are across there at the cabin ; you had better ride over
and see them.' I replied it did not make any difference, and I would
not bother them, and I rode back home."
I quote all this gossip because it pictures, as no description of mine
could, the quiet and drowsiness of this woodland, primitive, easy
going, hard-living population, amid the hills and mountains of Mary
land, where John Brown spent the last three months of his free life,
and gathered his forces for the battle in which he fell. It is a region
of home-keeping, honest, dull country people ; and so completely
did Brown make himself one of its denizens, that he was accepted
as part and parcel of it, even when plotting his most audacious strokes.
His wife did not visit him there, buthis daughter and daughter-in law —
a bride of the year before, a widow, a mother, and in her grave with
her infant beside her when the next winter's snows were falling —

83
made his cabin cheerful, and softened with feminine tenderness
and tact the rough features of their rustic life. Osborn Ander
son, who spent the last three weeks before the attack at the
Kennedy farm, has pictured the impression made upon him, one of
the despised people of color, by the circle in which he found himself:
" All the men concerned in the undertaking were on hand when I
arrived, except Copeland, Leary, and Merriam ; and when all had
collected, a more earnest, fearless, and determined company of men
it would be difficult to get together. I saw evidence of strong and
commanding intellect, high toned morality, and inflexibility of purpose
in the men, and a profound and holy reverence for God, united to
the most comprehensive, practical, systematic philanthropy and un
doubted bravery, in the patriarch leader. There was no milk and
water sentimentality, no offensive contempt for the negro while
working in his cause ; the pulsations of each and every heart beat in
harmony for the suffering and pleading slave. Every morning when
the noble old man was at home, he called the family around, read
from his Bible, and offered to God most fervent and touching suppli
cations for all flesh  I never heard John Brown pray, that he
did not make strong appeals to God for the deliverance of the slave.
This duty over, the men went to the loft [of the farm house], there
to remain all the day long  We were, while the ladies remained,
often relieved of much of the dullness growing out of restraint, by
their kindness. We were well supplied with grapes, paw-paws,
chestnuts, and other small fruits, besides bouquets of fall flowers,
through their thoughtful consideration."
Just before Brown expected to begin his campaign, he sent back to
their mother in the Adirondac wilderness his daughter and daughter-
in-law, under the escort of his son Oliver, who accompanied them
as far north as New York. The father soon sent after them this
touching and most characteristic letter, which he then thought might
be the last he should write to his wife and family :
Chambersburg, Pa., October i, 1859.
Dear Wife and Children all, I parted with Martha and Anne at Har
risburg, yesterday, in company with Oliver, on their way home. I trust,
before this reaches you, the women will have arrived safe. I have encourage
ment of having fifty dollars or more sent you soon, to help you to get through
the winter ; and I shall certainly do all in my power for you, and try to com
mend you always to the God of my fathers.
Perhaps you can keep your animals in good condition through the winter on
potatoes mostly, much cheaper than on any other feed. I think that would
certainly be the case if the crop is good, and is secured well and in time.
1 sent along four pair blankets, with directions for Martha to have the first

84
choice, and for Bell, Abbie, and Anne to cast lots for a choice in the three
other pairs. My reason is that I think Martha fairly entitled to particular
notice.1 To my other daughters I can only send my blessing just now. Anne, I want
you, first of all, to become a sincere, humble, earnest, and consistent Christian ;
and then acquire good and efficient business habits. S ave this letter to remember
your father by, Annie.
You must all send to John hereafter anything you want should get to us, and
you may be sure we shall all be very anxious to learn everything about your
welfare. Read the Tribune carefully. It may not always be certainly true,
however. Begin early to take good care of all your animals, and pinch them
at the close of the winter, if you must at all.
God Almighty bless and save you all ! Your affectionate husband and
father. Oliver Brown was not then twenty-one. His next older brother,
Watson, was just twenty-four, and had been married for three years
to Isabel Thompson, whose brothers, William and Dauphin Thomp
son, like her husband and brother-in-law, were killed at Harper's
Ferry. In letters to his wife at various dates from September 3d to
October 14th, Watson Brown wrote thus :
" I received your letter of September 14th, the night the girls got home, which
I was very glad to get. Oh, Bell, I do want to see you and the little fellow
[the young child born in the father's absence] very much, but I must wait.
There was a slave near here whose wife was sold off south the other day, and
he was found in Thomas Kennedy's orchard, dead, the next morning. Cannot
come home so long as such things are done here. . .
We are all eager for the work and confident of success. There was another
murder committed near our place the other day, making in all five murders
and one suicide within five miles of our place since we have lived there ; they
were all slaves, too. . . . Give my regards to all the friends, and keep up good
courage ; there is a better day a-coming. I can but commend you to yourself
and your friends, if I should never see you again. Your affectionate husband.
Watson Brown." V ' **•.
On Friday, October 14, Watson Brown, waited at Chambers
burg until it was late enough to escort the two latest recruits, John
Copeland and Lewis Leary, from the Pennsylvania line, near Mid
dletown, through Maryland to the Kennedy farm, a work which
must always be done by night, if the recruits were negroes. He
reached the farm at daybreak on the 15th, bringing the two recruits
and accompanied by Kagi. On the 16th he and his brothers, Oliver
and Owen, received their orders from Captain Brown for the night

1 Martha was the wife of Oliver, and was to be confined in March. Bell was the wife
of Watson, and the sister of William and Dauphin Thompson ; Abbie was the wife of
Salmon Brown, who stayed at home with his mother.

85
attack. Owen Brown, with Merriam and Barclay Coppoc, were to
remain at the farm as a guard till morning, when, upon the arrival
of horses and men from the Ferry, they were to move the arms by
wagon-loads to an old school -house, now destroyed, about three
miles from the Ferry, on the Maryland side. This place had been
selected a few days before by Captain Brown, and it was in fact
seized and held by Owen Brown during most ofthe 17th, while the
fighting was going on across the Potomac. Watson Brown, with
Stewart Taylor, was to hold the bridge across the Potomac, and
Oliver Brown, with William Thompson, the bridge across the
Shenandoah, a duty which they performed until the morning of the
17th, when the village of Harper's Ferry was fully in possession ot
Brown and his men. It was Watson Brown who stopped the train
for Washington, on the Baltimore and Ohio rail road, not long after
midnight on the 16th. Both Watson and Oliver were with their
father early in the afternoon of the 17th, when he repulsed the sharp
attack of the Virginia militia, after intrenching himself in the engine
house, where he was captured on Tuesday morning, the 18th.
Shortly before noon on Monday, Watson was sent out with a flag
of truce, in company with Stevens and one of Brown's hostages,
named Kitzmiller ; was fired upon and severely wounded, but re
turned to his father, while Stevens was captured.
Edwin Coppoc, writing to Captain Brown's wife from his cell in
Charlestown a month afterward, said :
" I was with your sons when they fell. Oliver lived but a very few moments
after he was shot [during the charge of Monday afternoon.] He spoke no
word, but yielded calmly to his fate. Watson was shot at ten o'clock on
Monday and died about three o'cloek on Wednesday morning. He suffered
much. Though mortallv wounded at ten o'clock, yet at three o'clock Monday
afternoon he fought bravely against the men who charged on us. When the
enemy were repulsed, and the excitement of the charge was over, he began to
sink rapidly. After we were taken prisoners he was placed in the guard-house
with me. He complained of the hardness of the bench on which he was
lying. I begged hard for a bed for him, or even a blanket, but could obtain
none. I took off my coat and placed it under him, and held his head in my
lap, in which position he died without a groan or struggle."1
¦ When in 1875 I visited Harper's Ferry, I found that it was not known there which ol
the bodies buried by the Shenandoah was that of Watson Brown, and which was Ander
son's Oliver Brown was not buried at all, but thrust roughly, after death, into a barrel,
and carried away to the medical college in Winchester. It is said that his body was there
dissected and treated with insult. At any rate, an attempt made by their mother to obtain
the bodies of her two sons,( in December, 1859, for burial at North Elba, was unsuccessful.
They have monuments at North Elba, near their father's but their bodies do not lie beside his.

86
Before the attack on Harper's Ferry, one of Brown's captains,
John E. Cook, of Connecticut, had visited the house of Colonel
Lewis Washington, great-grandson of George Washington, and
learned where to put his hand upon the sword of Frederick the Great
and the pistols of Lafayette, presented by them to General Washing
ton, and by him transmitted to his brother's descendants. With
that instinctive sense of historical association which led Brown to
make his first attack upon slavery in Virginia and amid the scenes of
Washington's early life, this liberator of the slaves had determined
to appear at their head wielding Washington's own sword, and fol
lowed by freedmen who had owed service in the Washington family.
He therefore assigned to Stevens and to Cook, as their first duty
after Harper's Ferry should be taken, to proceed to Colonel Wash
ington's plantation of Bellair, about four miles south of the Ferry,
seize him, with his arms, set free his slaves, and bring him as a
hostage to the captured town ; and he even went so far as to direct
that Osborn Anderson, a free black, should receive from Washing
ton the historical weapons. The order was executed to the let- ¦
ter, and before daybreak on Monday morning Colonel Washington
was a prisoner in the hands of Brown,1 who belted on the sword of

1 The interview between Brown and Colonel Washington (who was one of the military
staff of the governor of Virginia, and thence derived his title) is worth describing in the
words of Washington himself. " We drove to the armory gate. The person on the front
seat of the carriage said, ' All's well,' and the reply came from the sentinel at the gate
'All's well.' Then the gates were opened, and I was driven in and was received by old
Brown. He did not address me by name, but said, 'You will find a fire in here, sir ; it is
rather cool this morning.' Afterwards he came and said, ' I presume you are Mr. Wash
ington. It is too dark to see to write at this time, but when it shall have cleared off a
little and become lighter, if you have not pen and ink I will furnish them, and shall require
you to write to some of your friends to send a stout, able-bodied negro. I think after a
while, possibly I shall be able to release you, but only on condition of getting your friends to
send in a negro man as a ransom. I shall be very attentive to you, sir, for I may get the
worst of it in my first encounter, and if so, your life is worth as much as mine. My par
ticular reason for taking you first was that, as an aid to the governor of Virginia, I knew
you would endeavor to perform your duty ; and apart from that I wanted you particularly
for the moral effect it would give our cause having one of your name as a prisoner.' I sup
posed at that time, from his actions, that his force was a large one; that he was very strong.
Shortly after reaching the armory I found the sword of General Washington in old Brown's
hand. He said, ' I will take especial care of it, and shall endeavor to return it to you after
you are released.' Brown carried it is his hand all day Monday ; when the attacking party
came on, Tuesday morning, he laid it on the fire engine, and after the rescue I got it."
Colonel Washington survived the civil war, in which he took no part, but is now dead.
His widow lives in Charlestown, and has sold this sword, with other mementos of Washington,
to the state of New York.

87
Washington and wore it from that time until his own capture, twenty-
four hours after. When Virginia awoke on that October morning,
the haughty commonwealth, mother of presidents and of slaves, be
held a gray -bearded old man, wearing the sword of Washington,
standing amid the broken fetters of Virginia slaves, with a town of
three thousand Virginians, white and black, at his mercy. At no
time during the civil war, even when the national government was
pouring soldiers into the South by hundreds of thousands and eman
cipating the slaves by millions, was there greater fear and commotion
among the slaveholders than when they first learned of Brown's suc
cess at Harper's Ferry.
How simply and in what a plain country fashion Brown made his
famous foray ought to be related ; since, like all he did, it was in
keeping with his primitive and ideal character. At the Kennedy
farm house, about eight o'clock on the evening of Sunday, the 16th
of October, — -a cold and dark night, ending in rain, — Brown mus
tered his eighteen followers, saying, " Men, get on your arms ; we
will proceed to the Ferry." His horse and wagon were brought to
the door of the farm house, and some pikes, a sledge-hammer, and a
crowbar were placed in the wagon. Brown " put on his old Kansas
cap," I mounted the wagon, and said, " Come, boys ! " at the same
time driving his horse down the rude lane into the main road. His
men followed him on foot, two and two, Charles Plummer Tidd, a
Maine farmer who had joined him in Kansas, and John E. Cook
taking the lead./ At a proper time they were sent forward in ad
vance of the wagon to tear down the telegraph wires on the Mary
land side of the Potomac. The other couples walked at some
distance apart, and in silence, making no display of arms. Now and
then some of them rode beside Brown. When overtaken by any
one, the rear couple were to detain the stranger until the party had
passed on or concealed themselves, and the same order was given if
they were met by any one. The road was unfrequented that night,
and they passed down through the woods to the bridge across the
Potomac without delay or adventure. Upon entering the covered
bridge, they halted and fastened their cartridge-boxes, with forty, rounds
of ammunition, outside their coats, and brought their rifles into view.

1 This was a fur cap with a patent-leather visor, which had been bought for him in
Chicago in December, 1856, as he came from Kansas to Massachusetts. He wore also a
gray overcoat with a cape, a soldier's overcoat which had seen equal service. No shepherd-
king or peasant-captain ever went forth to war more plainly clad.

88
Kagi and Stevens were at this time at the head of the company, Tidd
and Cook having tarried in Maryland to cut the wires. As they
approached the Virginia side, the watchman who patrolled the bridge
met them and was arrested by Kagi and Stevens, who took him with
them to the armory gate, leaving Watson Brown and Stewart Taylor
to guard the bridge. The rest ofthe company proceeded with Brown,
in his wagon or on foot, to the armory gate, which was but a few
rods from the Virginia end of the bridge. There they halted, at
about half past ten o'clock, broke open the gate with the crowbar in
the wagon, rushed inside the armory yard, and seized one of the two
watchmen on duty. Brown himself, with two men, then mounted
guard at the armory gate, and the other fourteen men were sent to
different parts of the village. Oliver Brown and William Thomp
son occupied the bridge over the Shenandoah, and there arrested a
few prisoners. Kagi, with John Copeland, went up the Shenandoah
a half mile or more to that part of the armory called "the rifle
works," where he captured the watchmen, sent them to Brown,
and occupied the buildings. Edwin Coppoc and Albert Hazlett
went across the street4from the armory gate and occupied the arsenal,
which was not in the armory inclosure.

HARPER S FERRY.

All this was done quietly and without the snapping of a gun ; and
before midnight the whole village was in the possession of Brown
and his eighteen men. He then dispatched Stevens, Cook, and
others, six in all, on the turnpike towards Charlestown to bring in

89
Colonel Washington and some of his neighbors, with their slaves, as
has been already said. This was done before four o'clock in the
morning. In the mean time, at 1:30 a.m., the rail road train from
the west had reached Harper's Ferry, and a negro porter, who was
crossing the bridge to find the missing watchman, was stopped by
Watson Brown's guard. Turning to run back and refusing to halt,
he was shot and mortally wounded by one of the bridge guard, which
was now increased to three. This was the first shot fired on either
side, and was three hours after the entrance of Brown into the vil
lage. Shots were fired in return by some of the rail road men, and
then no more firing took place until after sunrise. Before sunrise
the train had been allowed to go forward, Brown and one of his men
Walking across the bridge with the conductor of the train to satisfy
him that all was safe, and that the bridge was not broken down.
The work of gathering up prisoners as hostages had also been pushed
vigorously, and before noon Brown had more than twice the number
of his own force imprisoned in the armory yard. None of his own
men were killed or captured until ten or eleven o'clock on Monday
morning, when Dangerfield Newby, the Virginia fugitive, Was shot
near the armory gate. Shortly afterward Stevens was wounded and
captured, Watson Brown was wounded, and William Thompson
was captured. For from nine o'clock (when the terrified citizens of
Harper's Ferry found a few arms and mastered courage enough to
use them) until night, the Virginians, armed and officered, had been
surrounding Brown's position, and before noon had cut off his retreat
into Maryland. During the four or five hours after daybreak, when
he might have escaped from the town, he was urged to do so by
Kagi, by Stevens, and by others ; but for one reason or another he
delayed his movements until it was too late. For twelve hours he
held the town at his mercy ; after that he was firmly caught in the
trap he had entered, and
the defeat of his foray was
only a question of a few
hours' time. He drew
back his shattered forces
into the engine-house near
the armory gate, soon after
noon, but neither his men
at the rifle works, nor those
engine house. at the arsenal across the
12

9°
street, nor his son Owen, on the Maryland side ofthe Potomac, could
join him. He fought bravely, and so did Kagi and his few men on the
bank of the Shenandoah, but the latter were all killed or captured
before the middle of the afternoon, and at evening, when Colonel
Lee arrived from Washington with a company of United States
marines, nothing was left of Brown's' band except himself and six
men, two of whom were wounded, in his weak fortress, and two
unharmed and undiscovered men, Hazlett and Osborn Anderson, in
the arsenal not far off. His enterprise had failed, and apparently
through his own fault.
His own explanation of this failure is characteristic : it was fore
ordained to be so. " All our actions," he said to one who visited
him in prison, " even all the follies that led to this disaster, were
decreed to happen ages before the world was made." He declared
at the same time that had he betaken himself to the mountains, he
could never have been captured, " for he and his men had studied
the country carefully, and knew it a hundred times better than any
ofthe inhabitants." He ascribed his ruin to his weakness in listen
ing to the entreaties of his prisoners and delaying his departure from
the captured town. " It was the first time," somebody reports him
as saying, " that I ever lost command of myself, and now I am pun
ished for it." But he soon began to see that this mistake was lead
ing him to his most glorious success, a victory such as he might
never have won in his own way. A month after his capture he
wrote thus to his old school-master in Connecticut : " I have been
a good deal disappointed, as it regards myself, in not keeping up to
my own plans ; but I now feel entirely reconciled to that, even ;
for God's plan was infinitely better, no doubt, or I should have kept
to my own. Had Samson kept to his determination of not telling
Delilah wherein his great strength lay, he would probably have never
overturned the house. I did not tell Delilah, but I was induced to
act very contrary to my better judgment ; and I have lost my two
noble boys, and other friends, if not my two eyes. But God's will,
not mine, be done." Thus his thoughts took recourse, as often
before, to the story and the fate of Samson, whose last victory over
the enemies of Israel was more than paralleled by the short and de
feated campaign of John Brown in Virginia.
The story of Brown's capture, of the slaughter of his men, of his
own fearless bearing and heroic sayings during his captivity, and of
his final martyrdom, " making the gallows glorious like the cross "

9i
all this is too familiar to be told here. It has become a part of the
world's history and literature, a new chapter added to the record of
heroism and self-devotion, a new incident in the long romance which
has been for three hundred years the history of Virginia. It was
Httle to the honor of Virginia then ; but so heavy has been the
penalty since visited on that state and her people, that we may omit
all censure upon what was done. God has judged between them
and John Brown, and His judgment, as always, will be found not
only just but merciful, since it has removed from a brave and gene
rous people the curse of human slavery. It was for this result, and
this alone, that Brown plotted and fought, prayed and died, and even
before his death he saw that his prayers would be answered.
Through his grandfather, the revolutionary captain, John Brown
was related to Dr. Humphrey, once president of Amherst college,
and to the Rev. Luther Humphrey. They were his cousins, and to
the latter, not long before his execution, Brown wrote one of those
remarkable letters which did so much, during his six weeks' impri
sonment, to change the public opinion concerning him into that
which now prevails. His conversation with Senator Mason at Har
per's Ferry and his speech to the court after his conviction are better
known than this letter (which, indeed, has seldom been printed), but
neither of them gives a nobler image ofthe " plain heroic magnitude
of mind" with which he accepted his fate and explained his course
of life. The letter also contains some touches of autobiography
which add to its value. It is as follows :
Charlestown, Jefferson Co., Va.,
jgth November, 1859.
Rev. Luther Humphrey :
My dear Friend, Your kind letter of the 12th instant is now before me.
So far as my knowledge goes as to our mutual kindred, I suppose I am the first,
since the landing of Peter Brown from the Mayflower, that has either been
sentenced to imprisonment or to the gallows. But, my dear old friend, let
not that fact alone grieve you. You cannot have forgotten how and where
our grandfather fell in 1776, and that he, too, might have perished on the
scaffold, had circumstances been but a very little different. The fact that a man
dies under the hand of an executioner (or otherwise) has but little to do with
his true character, as I suppose. John Rogers perished at the stake, a great
and good man, as I suppose; but his doing so does not prove that any other
man who has died in the same way was good or otherwise.
Whether I have any reason to " be of good cheer" (or not) in view of
my end, I can assure you that I feel so ; and I am totally blinded if I do not
really experience that strengthening and consolation you so faithfully implore
in my behalf. The God of our fathers reward your fidelity. I neither feel

9?
mortified, degraded, nor in the least ashamed of my imprisonment, jny chain,
or near prospect of death by hanging. I feel assured " that not one hair shal]
fall from my head without the will of my heavenly Father." I also feel that
I have long been endeavoring to hold exactly "such a fast as God has chosen."
See the passage in Isaiah which you have quoted.1 No part of my life has
been more happily spent than that I have spent here, and I humbly trust that
no part has been spent to better purpose. I would not say this boastingly ;
but " thanks be unto God, who giveth us the victory through infinite grace."
I should be sixty years old, were T to live to May 9, i860. I have en
joyed much of life as it is, and have been remarkably prosperous ; having early
learned to regard the welfare and prosperity of others as my own. I have
never, since I can remember, required a great amout of sleep; so that I con
clude that I have already enjoyed full an average number of working hours with
those who reach their threescore years and ten. I have not yet been driven
to the use of glasses, but can see to read and write quite comfortably. But
more than that, I have generally enjoyed remarkably good health. I might go
on to recount unnumbered and unmerited blessings, among which would be
some very severe afflictions, and those the most needed blessings of all. And
now, when I think how easily I might be left to spoil all I have done or suffered
in the cause of freedom, I hardly dare wish another voyage, even if I had the
opportunity. It is a long time since we met ; but we shall come together in our Father's
house, I trust. Let us hold fast that we already have, remembering we shall
reap in due time, if we faint not. Thanks be unto God, who giveth us the
victory through Jesus Christ our Lord. And now, my old, warm-hearted
friend, goodby ! Your affectionate cousin,
John Brown.
A few days before this letter to his cousin Humphrey he had
written to another old^friend, " I wish I could tell you about a few only
of the interesting times I here experience with different classes of
men, clergymen among others. Christ, the great captain of liberty
as well as of salvation, and who began his mission, as foretold of
him, by proclaiming it, saw fit to take from me a sword of steel after
I had carried it for a time ; but he has put another in my hand (the
sword of the Spirit) ; and I pray God to make me a faithful soldier

• The reference here is to the familiar text in the fifty-eighth chapter of the prophet, who
may be said to have foretold Brown as clearly as he predicted any event in Hebrew history.
" Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the
heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke ? Is it not
to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy
house ? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him ; and that thou hide not thyself
from thine own flesh ? . . Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer ; thou shalt
cry, and he shall say, Here I am. . . . Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many gene
rations ; and thou shalt be called, The Repairer of the breach, The Restorer of paths to
dwell in."

93
wherever he may send me-" In explanation of this passage it is to
be said that during Brown's imprisonment he was often visited by
Virginian clergymen and itinerant preachers, desirous of praying with
him and of converting him from his errors. One of these afterward
said that when he offered to pray with Brown the old man asked if
he was willing to fight, in case of need, for the freedom of the slaves.
Receiving a negative reply, Brown then said, " I will thank you to
le.ave me alone ; your prayers would be an abomination to my God."
To another he said that he " would not insult God by bowing down
in prayer with any one who had the blood of the slave on his skirts."
A Methodist preacher named March having argued to Brown in his
cell in favor of slavery as " a Christian institution," his hearer grew
impatient and replied, " My dear sir, you know nothing about
Christianity ; you will have to learn its A, B, C ; I find you
quite ignorant of what the word Christianity means." Seeing that
his visitor was disconcerted by such plain speaking, Brown added,
" I respect you as a gentleman, of course ; but it is as a heathen
gentleman." To these interviews he has alluded in some of his
letters of that period, and to a lady who visited him in prison he
said, " I do not believe I shall deny my Lord and Master, Jesus
Christ, as I should, if I denied my principles against slavery. Why,
I preach against it all the time ; Captain Avis knows I do ; " whereat
his jailer smiled and said, " Yes."
A citizen of Charlestown, named Blessing, had dressed Brown's
wounds while in prison, and had shown him other kind attentions,
for which Brown, who was very scrupulous about acknowledging
and returning favors, desired to make him some acknowledgment.
On one of the last days of November, therefore, in the last week of
his life, Brown sent for Mr. Blessing, and asked him to accept his
pocket Bible, as a token of gratitude. In this book, which was a
cheap edition in small print, much worn by use, Brown had marked
many hundred passages (bearing witness more or less directly against
human slavery) by turning down the corner of a page and by heavy
pencillings in the margin. On the fly leaves he had written this :
To Jno. F. Blessing, of Charlestown, Va., with the best wishes ofthe un
dersigned, and his sincere thanks for many acts of kindness received. There
is no commentary in the world so good, in order to a right understanding of
this blessed book, as an honest, childlike, and teachable spirit. John Brown.
Charlestown, zgth November, 1859.

94
He had written his own name as owner of the book on the op
posite page, and immediately following it was this inscription :
" The leaves were turned down by him while in prison at Charlestown.
But a small part of those passages which in the most positive language condemn
oppression and violence are marked."
Except a codicil to his will, and a note to his wife inclosing
it, the very last paper written by John Brown was this sentence,
which he handed to one of his guards in the jail on the morning of
his execution : Charlestown, Va., December z, 1859.
I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will
never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly, flattered
myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.
A week before this, Brown's friend and supporter in his Virginia
campaign, Theodore Parker, had written from Rome, to Francis
Jackson in Boston, the same declaration, to the truth of which history
has fully borne witness. " A few years ago," wrote Parker, on the
24th of November, 1859, "it did not seem difficult first to check
slavery, and then to end it, without any bloodshed. I think this
/ cannot be done now, nor ever in the future. All the great charters
of humanity have been writ in blood. I once hoped that of Ame
rican democracy would be engrossed in less costly ink ; but it is
plain now that our pilgrimage must lead through a Red sea, wherein
many a Pharaoh will go under and perish." So it happened, and not
only the Pharaohs, but the leaders of the people perished. Standing
on the battle-field at Gettysburg, just four years after the date of
Brown's letter to Humphrey (November 19, 1863), Abraham Lin
coln pronounced that immortal eulogy on those who " gave their
lives that the nation might live," in which he called upon his hearers
to resolve " that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that gov
ernment of the people, by the people and for the people, shall not
perish from the earth," — echoing in this last period the very words
of Parker, so often heard in prayer and sermon from his Boston pul-
. pit. Not long afterward Lincoln himself fell, the last great victim in
J the struggle, as John Brown had been its first great martyr. Hence
forth their names will be joined and their words will be remembered
together, the speeches of the condemned convict at Charlestown and
of the successful statesman at Gettysburg going down to posterity as

95
the highest range of eloquence in our time. But those brave men
whom Lincoln commemorated in his funeral oration went forth to
battle at the call of a great people ; they were sustained by the re
sources and by the ardor of millions. When I remember my old
friend, lonely, poor, persecuted, making a stand with his handful of
followers on the outpost of freedom, our own batteries trained upon
him as the furious enemy swept him away in the storm of their ven
geance, I see that history will justly exalt his fame above that of all
the soldiers in the civil war.
It was the mission of John Brown to show our nation the full \
height and, depth of her crime and punishment. It was not till the
tragedy of Harper's Ferry and Charlestown, that the inevitable was J
clearly seen to be inevitable. Lying in his blood, and the blood of
his sons, in that fatal town where the blood of his murderers, north
ern as well as southern, has since been so freely shed to atone for his,
the brave old soldier of the Lord uttered the oracles which this nation
must hear, though she had not sought them. " You had better, all
you people of the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement
of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner than
you are prepared for it, and the sooner you are prepared for it,
the better for you. You may dispose of me very easily ; I am nearly
disposed of now. But this question is still to be settled — this negro
question, I mean. The end of that is not yet." Simple words,
yet full of the pith and marrow of truth. Long before, he had writ
ten, " I expect nothing but to endure hardness, but I expect to win
a great victory, even though it be like the last victory of Sampson."
And this American Sampson, " a Nazarite unto God from the womb
to the day of his death," died in that " last victory," which he hoped
for, and pulled down in utter ruin our whole house of idols.
" O dearly bought revenge, yet glorious !
Living or dying thou hast fulfilled
The work for which thou wast foretold
To Israel, and now liest victorious
Among thy slain, self-killed,
Not willingly, but tangled in the fold
Of dire 'necessity ; whose law in death conjoined
Thee with thy slaughtered foes, in number more
Than all thy life had slain before."
Mr. Alcott, the Connecticut Pythagorean, who met John Brown
in Concord in 1859, 8ave t^1's description of him at one of his Bos
ton conversations in 1865 :

96
" The only time I saw the Captain, — for so he was then named, — was at
a lecture of his, given at our Town Hall. He spoke with the directness that
so became him on the Kansas troubles, modestly alluding, to the part he had
taken in those encounters. Our people heard him with favor He impressed
me as a person of surpassing sense, courage and religious earnestness. A man
of reserves, yet he inspired a confidence in his integrity and good judgment.
He seemed superior to any legal traditions, able to do his own thinking, was
an idealist, at least in matters of state, if not on all points of his religious faith.
He did not conceal his hatred of slavery, much less his readiness to strike a blow
for freedom at the fitting moment. I thought him equal to anything he should
dare, the man to dothe deed necessary to be done with the patriot's zeal,
the martyr's temper and purpose. And as I looked, it was plain that Nature
was interested in his purpose, and had intimated hers in his person. Though
but little above medium height, he seemed tall as he rose to speak, and there
was something thunderous about his brow that Brackett has caught in his bust.
His eyes were remarkable for their depth of grey bravery, as if the lion lay
couchant there, and ready to spring at the least rustling, yet they were kindly
in repose, though dauntless and determined. I am accustomed to divine men's
tempers by their voices ; his was vaulting and metallic, suggesting reserved
force and indomitable will. In short, his countenance and frame throughout
were surcharged with unmistakable power. At a later date, he cultivated the
flowing beard which gave him the soldierly air and port of an apostle. Not far
from sixty then, he seemed alert and agile, resolute and ready for any crisis.
I thought him the manliest of men, and the type synonym of the Just. Per
haps I felt more disposed to magnify his claims upon my admiration on learn
ing that he came from my native state.
The public murder of John Brown upon a Virginia gallows, fol
lowing closely after his capture of Harper's Ferry, was the first act
in the long tragedy, of which the public murder of Lincoln was the
final catastrophe :
" Bloodily closed what bloodily began,
With slaughter of that far-foreseeing man ;
Whose spirit, from the scaffold where he died,
Armies and senates could inspire and guide."
Nor is it without the deepest reason, in the fitness of things, that the
great heart of the people, in all nations, responding to the voice of
Nature, joins the names of Brown and Lincoln in the same throb of
gratitude. An American lady, who had known intimately both these
martyrs of liberty, was spending a few weeks, soon after the eman
cipation ofthe Russian serfs, in Moscow, that citadel of ancient op
pression. Entering a poor man's shop one day to purchase the icon
or picture of some Russian saint, and giving the shopkeeper to un
derstand that she was an American, he drew her with enthusiasm
into a recess of his dingy rooms, where a lamp was continually burn
ing before rude pictures of his American saints, John Brown and

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97
Abraham Lincoln, placed sidejby side for his daily worship. He had
been a serf, one of the millions whom the noble edict of Alexander
set free. Along with the czar and his patron saint, he paid religious
honors to the two American emancipators, the echoes of whose good
fame had reached him, blended sweetly in one lofty note, as they
came borne across seas and lands, from the Potomac to the Moskwa.
It was their deeds, not their words, that reached the ears of the
Russian serf, yet how imperishable are the very words of Brown!
" What avail all your scholarly accomplishments and learning, com
pared with wisdom and manhood ?" said Henry Thoreau, speaking
of John Brown, at the commemoration in North Elba, July 4, i860.
" To omit his other behavior, see what a work this comparatively
unread and unlettered man wrote within six weeks. He wrote in
prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American
book which, I think, will live longer than that. What a variety of
themes he touched on in that short space ! There are words in that
letter to his wife, respecting the education of his daughters which
deserve to be framed and hung over every mantelpiece in the land."
It seems fitting to include in this biography not the short passage
thus mentioned, but his whole last letter, which deals with graver
matters :
John Brown's Last Letter to his Family.
Charlestown Prison, Jefferson Co. Va., Nov. 30, 1859.
My dearly beloved Wife, Sons and Daughters, Every One : As I now begin
probably what is the last letter I shall ever write to any of you, I conclude to
write to all at the same time. I will mention some little matters particularly
applicable to little property concerns in another place.
I recently received a letter from my wife, from near Philadelphia, dated
Nov. zz, by which it would seem that she was about giving up the idea of
seeing me again. I had written her to come on if she felt equal to the under
taking, but I do not know that she will get my letter in time. It was on her
own account chiefly that I asked her to stay back. At first I had a most strong
desire to see her again, but there appeared to be very serious objections ; ^and
should we never meet in this life, I trust that she will in the end be satisfied it
was for the best at least, if not most for her comfort.
I am waiting the hour of my public murder with great composure of mind
and cheerfulness, feeling the strong assurance that in no other possible way
could I be used to so much advantage to the cause of God and of humanity,
and that nothing that either I or all my family have sacrificed or suffered will
be lost. The reflection that a wise and merciful, as well as just and holy, God
rules not only the affairs of this world, but of all worlds, is a rock to set our
feet upon under all circumstances — even those more severely trying ones into
which our own feelings and wrongs have placed us. / have now no doubt but
that our seeming disaster will ultimately result in the most glorious success. So,
my dear shattered and broken family, be of good cheer, and believe and trust
in God with all your heart, and with all your soul, for he doeth all things well.
13

98
Do not feel ashamed on my account, nor for one moment despair of the cause,
or grow weary of well doing. I bless God I never felt stronger confidence in
the certain and near approach of a bright morning and glorious day than I have
felt, and do now feel, since my confinement here. I am endeavoring to' return
like a poor prodigal as I am, to my Father, against whom I have always sinned,
in the hope that he may kindly and forgivingly meet me, though a very great
way off.
O, my dear wife and children ! would to God you could know how I have
been travailing in birth for you all, that no one of you may fail ofthe grace of
God through Jesus Christ ; that no one of you may be blind to the truth and
glorious light of his Word, in which life and immortality are brought to light.
I beseech you, every one, to make the Bible your daily and nightly study, with
a child-like, honest, candid, teachable spirit of love and respect for your husband
and father. And I beseech the God of my fathers to open all your eyes to
the discovery of the truth. You cannot imagine how much you may soon need
the consolations of the Christian religion. Circumstances like my own, for
more than a month past, have convinced me beyond all doubt of my own
great need of some theories treasured up when our prejudices are excited, our
vanity worked up to the highest pitch. O, do not trust your eternal all upon
the boisterous ocean without even a helm or compass to aid you in steering! I
do not ask of you to throw away your reason ; I only ask you to make a candid,
sober use of your reason.
My dear young children, will you listen to this last poor admonition of one
who can only love you? O, be determined at once to give your whole heart
to God, and let nothing shake or alter that resolution. You need have no fears
of regretting it. Do not be vain and thoughtless, but sober-minded ; and let
me entreat you all to love the whole remnant of our once great family. Try
and build up again your broken walls, and to make the utmost of every stone
that is left. Nothing can so tend to make life a blessing as the consciousness
that your life and example bless and leave others stronger. Still, it is ground
of the utmost comfort to my mind to know that so many of you as have had
the opportunity, have given some proof of your fidelity to the great family of
men. Be faithful unto death ; from the exercise of habitual love to man it can
not be very hard to love his Maker.
I must yet insert the reason for my firm belief in the divine inspiration of
the Bible, notwithstanding I am, perhaps, naturally sceptical ; certainly not
credulous. I wish all to consider it most thoroughly when you read that
blessed book, and see whether you cannot discover such evidence yourselves.
It is the purity of heart, filling our minds as well as work and actions, which
is e¥erywhere insisted on, that distinguishes it from all the other teachings, that
commends it to my conscience. Whether my heart be willing and obedient
or not, the inducement that it holds out is another reason of my convictions of
its truth and genuineness ; but I do not here omit this my last argument on the
Bible, that eternal life is what my soul is panting after this moment. I mention
this as a reason for endeavoring to leave a valuable copy of the Bible, to be
carefully preserved in remembrance of me, to so many of my posterity, instead
of some other book at equal cost.
I beseech you all to live in habitual contentment with moderate circumstances
and gains of wordly store, and earnestly to teach this to your children and
children's children after you, by example as well as precept. Be determined
to know by experience, as soon as may be, whether Bible instruction is of
divine origin or not. Be sure to owe no man any thing, but to love one
another. John Rogers wrote to his children, " Abhor that arrant whore of

99
Rome." John Brown writes to his children to abhor, with undying hatred
also, that sum of all villanies — Slavery. Remember, he that is slow to
anger is better than the mighty, and he thatruleth his spirit than he that taketh
a city. Remember also, that they, being wise, shall shine, and they that turn
many to righteousness, as the stars forever and ever.
And now, dearly beloved family, to God and the work of his grace I com
mend you all.
Your affectionate husband and father. John Brown.
And here too should stand, though earlier in date, that famous
speech of^ Brown's in court, November 2, 1859. He was not
allowed to address the people before his execution, December 2, 1859.
John Brown's Last Speech.
I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say.
In the first place, I deny every thing but what I have all along admitted —
the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a
clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when I went into Missouri, and
there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them
through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done
the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never
did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite
or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.
I have another objection : and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a
penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit
has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater
portion ofthe witnesses who have testified in this case) — had I so interfered
in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in be
half of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife dr
children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed .what I have in this
interference, it would have been all right, and every man in this Court would
have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
This Court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I
see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or, at least, the New
Testament. That teaches me that all things ' whatsoever I would that men
should do unto me, I should do even so to them.' It teaches me further, to
' remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.' I endeavored to act
up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is
any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as
I have always freely admitted I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, was
not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my
life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with
the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country
whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments — I sub
mit ; so let it be done.
Let me say one word further.
I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Con
sidering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. But
I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my in
tention and what was not. I never had any design against the life of any per
son, nor any dispositiou to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make

IOO
any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always
discouraged any idea of that kind.
Let me say, also, =• word in regard to the statements made by some of those
connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have in
duced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure
them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of them but joined
me of his own accord, and the greater pan at their own expense. A number of
them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they
came to me, and that was for the purpose I have stated.
Now I have done.
No, brave and generous old friend ! when you uttered those words
you had not " done," you had only begun. " On the day of his
translation " said Thoreau, " I heard, to be sure, that he was hung,
but I did not know what that meant; I felt no sorrow on that account.
But not for a day or two did I even hear that he was dead, and not
after any number of days shall I believe it. Of all the men who were
said to be my contemporaries, it seemed to me that John Brown
was the only one who had not died. I meet him at every turn. He
is more alive than ever he was. He has earned immortality. He
is not confined to North Elba nor to Kansas. He is no longer
working in secret. He works in public, and in the clearest light that
shines on this land." And what a work he has accomplished
already, in the few brief years since his body was carried from the
scaffold in Charlestown to its resting place beside the great rock at
North Elba ! Like " the rock Etam," upon which Samson dwelt,
his grave became his strong hold, while " his soul went marching
on." Those wfio, unlike Thoreau, had mourned his death, now
finding him risen and triumphant, were ready to chant, with Milton's
Hebrews, after that " last victory of Samson " which Brown had
foretold for himself.1 " All is best, though we oft doubt
What the unsearchable dispose
Of highest wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
Oft He seems to hide his face.
But unexpectedly returns,
And to His faithful champion hath in place
Borne witness gloriously, whence Gaza mourns,
And all that band them to resist
His uncontrollable intent ;
His servants he, with new acquist
Of true experience, from this great event,
With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
And calm of mind, all passion spent."
1 See page^5.

IOI

THE BURIAL OF JOHN BROWN.
BY WILLIAM E. CHANNING.
That day, I mind it well, we buried him,
There, in our heart of hearts ! From city's wall,
From depth of deepest woods, came up the moan,
The weariness, the wail, all that was grief,
Or could be, in a world all pain and woe.
Gone and forever gone ! the good, the just,
The patriot fervid, he who lived — to die,
As he had lived to act, — for the oppressed, the weak.
A shining stone shall be engraved for him,
Thereon a martyr's name, the last and best,
Not Rose, not Lancaster, but " For the Slave,"
Hapless and helpless, for his breaking heart,
He stood, truest and best, that hero-soul,
Old Ossawatomie !
Slow tolled those bells !
Slow and how far away, and yet too near !
Where grey Monadnoc lifts a forest front
Over low Jeffrey's pass, sunk in the vale,
(Or what seems such, to them who climb that mount),
And wide Quonaticut, the Indian's stream,
And those White hills that bend their brows in heaven ;
By seas and farthest lands, and sky and shore,
Slow tolled the weary peal, John Brown is dead !
Gone — in his prime of good and thought, and hope.
Stabbed to his heart so foully by the men,
Who wore the Southern Madness in their souls.
Yes ! like a falling star, thro' twilight's depth,
He sank in Heaven, his words were like the hues
Some gentlest eve imprints with Zephyr's touch,
And overlays the ripples of the stream,
In her last glory soothing earth to tears.
And yet that knell, his form this fatal hour,
Is swinging on the scaffold !
" Never I planned,
To kill or ravage, torture or destroy,
Not in rebellion, not to slay their foes
Incite the slave, solely to loose his cords.
'Do unto me as ye would have me do,
And in my bonds be bound, even as myself,"
By that, as far as in me I have done,
God hath not parted persons in his law.
Father ! if by thy will, I came to be
What now I am, if ever in my heart,
From my first recollection, still I felt
Thy guiding hand, be still to me, the same,

102
This lovely hour all gentleness and peace,
Ere the faint dawn has painted the dim sky,
And all her beauty sleeps upon the world.
I am at peace with all men, in my heart
I feel the quiet of thy morn, O give
Me strength of hope, and power of faith to meet
This sacrifice, I make for man, myself
A poor and sinful creature, worn and weak.
Unfailing God, our friend, O give me strength,
Truly uplift in love, renew my prayer,
Father ! pardon what I have done amiss,
These deeds were sad, they wore a troubled look,
Yet for that principle alone, of right,
I forward moved, then sanctify these acts.
May they upon the future, throw their light,
As yonder rising orb who paints the morn,
With beauteous tints of life; let them awake
The hearts of a great people, who have moved
Too sluggishly in freedom's cause, and let
My name if vain, unnoticed, be the word
To lift a struggling race, and free the Slave !
O God ! my Savior, my redeemer too,
Receive me to thyself, now that the day
Has dawned, when I must die, and those I leave
That poor and scattered remnant on the hills,
Of my contentment something breathe in them.
And let their weeping souls be filled with light,
And from their breaking hearts be heaven in view,
Seeing that they, who try for duty, so to live,
However weak, and so to die for it,
May with thee be received — "
Mild was that morn, and peaceful was the day,
When forth from his last prison, stepped this man,
Who made the Union sacred, and renewed
By heavenly deeds, the early patriot's faith, —
Forth from his cell, a wounded dying saint,
Far from his home, far from his loved-ones aid,
But closest in their hearts, — with step unshaken,
And firmly went he forth ! and as he went,
A poor devoted slave, a mother stood,
One of the race that Christ came down to love,
Bearing upon her breast, an infant-slave,
There, by the prison-gate, his blessing craved,
Softly, with angel-voice, he blessed her there,
One of his children, for whose good he lived,
His mind on heaven, his heart still loving earth !
Then, forth, that tread of soldiers with bright arms,

103
Rifles in long derision at his side,
Flashed on December sunshine, like a pall
O'er all that speechless world, cutting the cold
And hard rapacity of civil lines
Across God's sky of light, — on, with his cheerful thoughts,
That patriot fared, and sitting on the bier,
That soon should hold his silent form, he said :
" This is a country beautiful, and first
With pleasure have I seen it now." Serene,
And clear, modest and sensible,
He passed along, eyeing in peace the hills,
That urge the steep Potomac on its flight,
By old romantic wood and cliff-tower tall, —
Blue as the skies above them, far away
O'er drear Virginia's vales, — soft russet shades
The earth, and some few trees, leafless this day,
Recalling in their grace more vernal bliss.
O had the might been present in that hour !
To lift his sinking form and bear him on
With the dark race he fondly rushed to save !
O had the soul, the power acquitted then,
Its future to the world? (his name is graved,
First on the Capitol, his figure shines
Above the highest, who holds the nation's heart) ;
And now he asked : " Why are not all within the field,
Not only soldiers, but the citizens ?"
Faithful to freedom in this cruel hour.
Why were ye faithless, heavens ? Shall yon chill sky,
Wherein December's sun gleams sadly forth,
Fail to prefer one pitying look on him,
Who dies to liberate the down-trod race,
From stripes and crime, and legal butcheries,
Inexpiable, untold woes, the stake, the lash, —
Not tears, not pity, mercy, no remorse,
In those who stand around, to slay this man,
(They called him brave ; " That was my mother's lesson),"
So mild and pure, an infant without guile ! —
'Twas o'er, 'twas done, the noble, generous soul,
Now more than martyr, met a felon's doom. —
He Went
To death ! — death tor a multitude, whose hearts
Were wrung with time-worn suffering, all one pang,
And torn, like desolation's corses chill,
Across some mountain-chain, where hungry wolves
Gnaw the still quivering flesh, and reek their thirst
On hearts, quick with life's pulses, went to death,
After those words spoke on Judea's mount,
The text of love, no wild revenge or hate :
" I could have moved,

104
But there were prisoners, within my charge,
I did not fire, this came we for alone,
But this, no more, to free the Slave, 'tis right,
The poorest and the weakest, these we aid."
He stood, he could not fly,
His children fell, that loss was on his soul,
He spared the lives of them, who sought his own,
Weak as a dying infant spake great words,
Soft as an angel's voice, they clearly fall ;
" I think my friends ! you wrong both God and man,
And such as interfere in this respect,
Must act for right, to break man's galling chains,"
They answered, — " Yes,"
They felt it in their hearts, knew in their minds,
A voice sprang back from the dark centuries' folds,
" Father forgive them, they know not what they do."
They could have wept, bound up the brave man's wounds,
And set him on a throne, a hero's throne,
And triumphed him to Alabama's shores,
Or where the hot Caribbean melts her wave
Of fire and silver on the Texan's coast,
O'er Carolina's sands and rice-bound marsh,
And proud Virginia, once of Washington.
That could not be !
God's hand was on the hour, — it must not be !
Never since human breath had moulded sound,
Or given words to sense, more awful truths,
Were stretched across the strands of Fate, than those,
From that poor, simple, dying, tender soul.
It could not be ! by camp and tower, and ford,
By crashing cannon tearing down the glen,
In the lone forest, up dark mountains hoar,
On sea and land, and giaves on earth and wave,
Sons, fathers falling, doomed without a shrift,
Unburied not unknelled, came forth that voice
From the cold armory of Harper's vale,
A prophecy of woe, " Prepare, prepare,
The soonest — best, the settlement will come,
The end's not yet," a voice of woe and war, —
Where thro' their valleys dash the liberal streams,
And at day's dying hour, the purple hills
Smile in their forests at the bounteous heavens.
His seat, is vacant now
The son is gone ; his mother folds her hands,
Her hair is gray, " Yes, he was mine, 'tis just !
I gave him for the slave, that hour was God's,
The negro's blood was ours, he died for him,
(All that I loved sat in his empty chair),

io5
Died for the mother weeping o'er her child,
Torn from her bleeding arms ; the scourging lash
Striping her naked flesh, because she wept
For her young infant's life, sold on the block —
Sold ? God in heaven, yes, for her, he died !"
(Their barren fields dry shrinking in the sun,
The city's pomp is o'er, the grass grows green
Along the siient mart, the drooping flag
Fades in the hot glare of that Southern tomb).
Here, in these quiet fields, John Brown came forth,
Cradled in peace and modest competence;
In pleasant Torrington, drew first his breath,
Where swift a gleaming wave, darts Naugatuck,
And the calm hills stretch off to Wolcott's side,
Soft in their laurel clumps 'neath towers of pine,
Birthplace of kindred thought all purely reared,
Where mellow Alcott spake and fetched that strain
Of sweet, melodious converse. O ye hills !
And groves, and charming greensward meads,
Of rural Torrington, never had yet,
A more devoted soul emerged to life,
Among the baffling shades that sepulchre,
This large, afflictive, unwound web of time,
Than him, I vainly speak of.
From your force,
A child, he drew perpetual courage,
Full rich in the 'love of a good mother,
To life's adventure saintly and resigned,
Taught to serve truth, seek God and do the right !
Yes ! must there move all blessings in this air
Of dear Connecticut, o'er her green fields,
Her lone romantic hills, her torrents bold,
And yonder wave-fringed town, whence busy Yale
Pours forth such learned rivers, o'er the States.
And still, it stands, the home where he was born, —
The homely house, domestic in its style,
As he, who there first felt the wrench of time,
With sloping roof behind, with windows quaint,
And lavish chimney from its centre flung,
Shaming the villa's brick. And here he played,
A merry boy beneath the low stone wall,
Or saw the sunset fade across the lines
That suit yon happy fields. Here, as a child,
Along the meadows, where the streamlet glides,
No future condescension could reveal
The boding years, and yet remain these things ;
But he, who saw them so unconsciously
Of days in store, he may not come again,
When even the weeds and tall, neglected grass,
14

io6
Whisper their fitful surmise to the breeze,
That overtops their dreams ! Widely the day,
On this uncumbered horizon falls in
From those blue skies, a house standing so free,
In its society of light and air.
What tho* its casements rattle in the blast,
Immortal deeds within them sprang to life!
Not long his hours among his household gods,
For, far away, where bold Ohio's stream,
Pours down her volume, past Kentucky's vales,
And further yet, and in maturer years,
He spent his strength upon that prairie fight
For bleeding Kansas, when Missouri's crimes
Burnt thro' a freeman's heart and lit its flames.
There, came the sorrow o'er him, there his race
Fell at the Southern rifle, there he fought,
And with superior calmness, or swift guile
Such as a woodman's creed sweetly allows,
Thus preached a hero's truth, saintly if strong,
Wise Ossawatomie ! He knew not that, —
The day in Harper's vale. Never he heard,
Those pealing strains ascend from camp and town,
"We're marching on," unknown, unheard-of lived,
Where the dark Adirondacs fling the pine,
Up the unsounded ramparts of their chains,
And lakes, whence the wild waterfall alone,
Whirls thro' the steep-cut flume a curdling hymn.
There, as a settler on the silent lands,
Within his heart musing of many things,
His children near, their mother by his side,
(She, who walked truly with him to the end,
Soothed his affliction, staunched his wounds with love),
There, in that tranquil Elba, might have lived, —
And all that is, not been ?
Most vain that thought !
Before him lay the laws, the swift reward,
The spy, the bribe, the scoff, hunted from town
To town, bearing a charmed life, for death
Grimly prepared. And still that voice, a cry
From breaking hearts, more wretched than his own.
That simple, childlike, helpless, loving race, —
Enough, he heard it- still !
No, no, not rest,
He knew no rest, sleeping or waking none !
Holding his plough across the fresh- broke swards,
When fell his children in the prairie-fight,
Or at the good man's burial from the church,
In storm or calm, in danger or repose,

107
"Do ye for us, as we should do, for you,
We are the poor, oppressed, and you — the strong.1'
Nor aid he sought, nor force of arms nor men,
But in his daring heart, and soldier's brain,
Matched to heroic will with earnest prayers,
And those few watchful souls who knew this man,
As one, a bride, upon a summer morn,
To some sweet sacrifice of all her dower,
Devoted to the death for him she loves,
He went, not all alone !
That race kept with him,
The oppressed, the weak, those who him needed.
The souls went too, of all the martyred good,
Who died for men, stars that adorn the Past,
And light the sky of ages, lamps of fame !
And one whom he had worshiped from his birth,
The Savior ! Those too, him half-way welcomed,
Fluent and loud, 'fixed pioneers of speech,
Who poured forth abolition, and preferred
Scant reconcilement in all human souls,
To close companionship. And women,
Of tried passion, who surprised man's fortitude,
And off their silvery lips loosed the shrill breath
Of liberty into war's clarion keen,
Shaping man's rancor. With this host he passed, —
All that was acting on life's stage, he passed :
Or crowding street, or miscellaneous wain,
Towering with luxuries, the Mill whose bleach,
Was spun from bloody thread ; the Court, the Church,
Where never yet, that name of Slave was breathed,
He knew them well, twas the loud treacherous world,
He oft had dreamed of, masking Human Right,
(Pouring envenomed death, thro' life and love)
Till one man touch the cords and launch the bark,
With loud acclaim, United Liberty!
He came, he touched the cords, 'tis done !
The chain is snapt ; the vessel leaves the shore.

YALE UNIVERSliT

,3 90!