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O^uyJ-     ^^-umA^oty 


[From  "The  Stormy  Petrel,"  by  kind  permission  of  the  author.  Col.  John  Bowles 
from  a  daguerreotype  taken  by  him  at  Lawrence,  Kan..  September  12th,  1856.] 


JOHN   BROWN 


AND    HIS    MEN 


With  Some  Account  of  the  Roads  They 
Traveled  to  Reach  Harper's  Ferry 


BY 

RICHARD  J.  HINTON 

MEMBER     AMERICAN    SOCIETY     IRRIGATION     ENGINEERS 

Author  of  " Handbook  to  Arizona,"  "English  Radical  Leaders,"  "Phillip 
Henry  Sheridan,"  etc.     Editor  of  "  The  Poems  by  Richard  Realf" 


REVISED    EDITION 


FUNK   &  WAGNALLS   COMPANY 

NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 


UL1 


LiBRARY  of  CONGRESS 
Two  Cany  Reived 
NOV  14  190? 
Copyrirht  Entry 

WiOS-       -«4Ma.  No. 
COPY    B. 


Copyright,  1S04,  by  the 

FUNK   &    WAGN'ALLS    COMPANY. 

rSrg'-s'.ered  at  Stationers'  Hall,  London,  England.) 

PRINTED  IN   THK  UNITED    STATES  OF  AMERICA. 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS. 


Page 

John  Brown,  1 856  (New) . . „ Frontispiece 

John  Brown,  1858-1859  (Bearded). .. .. 200 

Oliver  Brown ... .:...:. 53 

Aaron   Dwight  Stevens 99 

Albert  Hazlett .....:. ....\ 1 58 

William  Henry  Leeman 236 

Steward  Taylor 257 

Osborne  Perry   Anderson ;.  272 

Francis  Jackson  Merriam 274 

John  Edwin  Cook 275 

Dauphin  Adolphus  Thompson 283 

John  Henri  Kagi 286 

Dangerfield    Newby 290 

Edwin  Coppoc 295 

Watson    Brown 303 

Jeremiah  G.  Anderson 306 

Lewis  Sherrard  Leary. 312 

William  Thompson..-. 317 

Plan  of  Charlestown  Jail 342 

John  A.  Copeland , 508 

Barclay  Coppoc . 539 

Owen  Brown - 555 

Charles  Plummer  Tidd 559 

Fac-similes: 

Stanza,  by  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman 335 

Stanza  by  William  D.  Howells 379 

Stanza,  by  Edna  Dean  Proctor 398 

Commission  of  George  B.  Gill 486 


CONTENTS. 


Page 

A  Brief  Prelude v 

CHAPTER 

I  .—The  Man 9 

II. — Purpose  and  Plans 22 

III. — The  Kansas  Overture 39 

IV. — Shadows  from  Pottawatomie 61 

V. — Preparation  and  Change  in  Kansas 93 

VI. — John  Brown  Making  Friends 114 

VII. — Reaching  a  Culmination 153 

VIII. — Rescue  of  Missouri  Slaves 200 

IX. — Life  and  Preparation  at  the  Kennedy  Farm 229 

X.— The  Order  of  March 269 

XL— Rending  the  Fortress  Wall 285 

XI I.— Capture— Trial— Prison— Scaffold 315 

XIII. — As    Seen    by   Himself,    Family,    Neighbors,   and 

Friends 4L3 

XIV. — John  Brown's  Men — Who  They  Were 449 

XV.— Men  Who  Fought  and  Fell,  or  Escaped 528 

Appendix 583 

Index 737 


A   BRIEF   PRELUDE. 


Tt  is  the  cant  of  To-Day  to  sneer  at  Sacrifice.  It  is 
not  "scientific"  to  act  without  a  visible  reward  or 
hope  of  material  success.  It  is  "  scientific  "  to  assume 
that  "  sacrifice  "  is  but  another  and,  it  may  be,  foolish 
form  of  Self-love. 

Nevertheless,  sacrifices  are  made !  Defenders  of 
systems  always  assume  that  the  majestic  forces  of 
Religion,  the  exalted  functions  of  Order  and  Justice, 
or  those  within  the  shimmering  arena  of  Knowledge, 
belong  to  them  alone.  They  declare  that  he  who 
resists  should  die  "as  the  fool  dieth."  Perhaps  the 
lives  I  have  outlined  herein  may  help  to  prove  that 
true  and  natural  religion,  that  wisdom  and  knowledge, 
are  also  united,  not  divorced  !  This  book  may  show, 
I  hope,  that  generosity  remains  to  bless  our  human 
lives;  that  an  integral  part  of  manhood  and  woman- 
hood is  service  from  each  to  all,  for  the  life  of  each 
and  the  advancement  of  all  ! 

It  will  be  said  that  the  author  of  this  volume  holds 
a  brief  for  John  Brown  and  his  Men.  He  does  not 
deny  it;  but,  on  the  contrary,  esteems  it  to  be  an 
honor  !  He  has  endeavored,  however,  to  so  link  their 
lives  with  historical  facts  along  the  nobler  lines  of 
American  endeavor,  that  their  careers  become  asso- 
ciated with  such  loftier  purposes  and  higher  im- 
pulses, as  illustrate  that  true  and  spiritual  democracy 


Vf  JOHN    BROWN. 

which    should    in    very   truth   animate  the  American 
Federal  Republic. 

If  no  such  spirit  exists,  and  our  institutions  are  but 
a  mere  convenience  given  to  money  making  only, 
competitive  triumph  and  sociological  advancement  of 
material  conditions,  without  regard  to  ethical  aims 
or  considerations,  let  us  openly  enthrone  Plutocracy 
and  make  Mammon  the  Baal  of  our  Righteousness. 
Why  should  we  have  fought  for  the  Union,  if  Free- 
dom was  not  also  our  blessed  reward  ? 

If  it  is  the  fashion  to  sneer,  this  volume  is  not  in 
the  fashion.  If  America  means  no  more  than  Adolphe 
Thiers  said  of  the  latest  European  commonwealth: 
"  The  Republic  is  the  government  that  divides  France 
the  least  "  (and  I  do  not  decry  the  wisdom  of  that 
astute  saying);  if  it  means  only  light  taxes,  a  robust 
police,  and  the  best  armories,  guns,  and  street-drill 
for  national  guards,  let  us  deny  at  once  the  existence 
of  historical  continuity  and  assume  the  folly  of 
human  Love  and  Service  !      However: 

The  world's  saints  are  few,  and  they're  costly,  too — 
We'll  keep  sweet  their  deeds,  he  they  Rose  or  Rue  ! 
So  much  in  the  making  of  human  Woe, 
Of  insight  deep  and  tender  Love  doth  go, — 
That  more  precious  still  they  grow  to  our  view, 
Bringing  ripe  sheaves  whence  all  bitter  weeds  grew — 
As  the  tides  of  endeavor  swiftly  flow, 
At  seedlet  roots  their  lives  heroic  sow  ! 

The  Scoffers,  keen  with  hitter  jest,  wax  bold, 
While  s;id  souls  by  dull  Faith  are  growing  cold, 
As  memories  stern,  so  towering  wait 
On  the  dread  footsteps  slow  of  austere  Fate! 
What  matters?     Each  lofty  life  finds  its  goal, 
And  answering  lives  in  blood  their  names  enroll. 


A    BRIEF   PRELUDE  vil 

This  book,  then,  has  been  written  because  the 
writer  was  impelled  and  desired  to  do  it.  It  was 
planned  more  than  thirty  years  ago.  The  struggle 
for  existence,  which  is  all  that  those  leave  us  who 
pervert  the  holy  teachings  of  the  Nazarene  and  the 
noble  naturalism  of  Darwin,  into  apologies  for  econo- 
mic, political,  and  sociologic  brutalities,  provided  only 
they  exist  as  institutions,  has  heretofore  prevented  the 
writing  of  a  work  laid  on  one  as  a  duty.  These  men, 
of  whom  I  have  written,  were  for  me,  in  a  humble 
sense,  as  dear  comrades.  They  fell;  I  escaped!  In 
writing  of  them,  it  is  with  a  living  sense  of  their 
worthier  example.  There  are  holier  and  nobler  things 
in  Life  than  Life  itself.  They  are  heroic  exemplars 
of  this  ! 

I  desire  to  express  here  my  most  grateful  thanks 
for  assistance  extended  to  me  by  Mrs.  Anne  Brown- 
Adams,  Mrs.  Ruth  Brown-Thompson,  and  John 
Brown,  Jr.,  of  the  surviving  children  of  John  Brown. 
I  am  also  specially  indebted  among  others  to  George 
B.  Gill,  of  Oklahoma  (commissioned  Secretary  of 
Treasury  under  the  John  Brown-Chatham  provisional 
constitution);  to  Dr.  Thomas  Featherstonhaugh  and 
John  W.  Le  Barnes,  of  Washington;  Dr.  Alexander 
Milton  Ross,  of  Toronto,  Canada;  William  Hutchin- 
son, one  of  the  older  and  best  of  Kansas  pioneers; 
Harvey  B.  Hurd,  of  Chicago;  Horace  White,  of 
New  York;  Prof.  L.  R.  Wetherell,  of  Davenport, 
.  Iowa;  Col.  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  of  Cam- 
bridge, Mass.;  to  Edmund  C.  Stedman;  Wm.  D. 
Howells;  Edna  Dean  Proctor;  Col.  John  Bowies, 
and  Richard  Greener,  of  New  York;  Miss  Sarah 
J.   Eddy,  of   Providence,    R.    I.;    Franklin    J.   Keagy, 


Vi'i  JOHN    BROWN. 

of   Chambersburg,    Pa.;    Horatio    N.  Rust,  of  Pasa- 
dena,   Cal.,    and    Mrs.    Crowley    (sister    of    John    E. 
Cook),  of  New  York,  for  most  valuable  aid  in  remin- 
iscences, letters,  documents,  and   portraits.      I    desire 
particularly  to  give  thus  publicly  my  thanks  to  Frank 
G.  Adams,  Secretary  of  the  Kansas  Historical  Society, 
whose    untiring    responses    to    many    demands    have 
laden  me  with  gratitude,  all  the  more  pleasant,  that  I 
know  how   willingly    he   has   served  both  the  work  I 
was  doing  for  the   love   of  it  and  for  myself  person- 
ally also.     I  cannot  close  without  expressing  grateful 
thanks  to  many  whose  abiding   places   are   now  un- 
known,  but   who   years    since    placed    in    my    hands 
letters  and  other  papers  relating  to  their  dear  ones. 
These    are    the    families    and    relatives    of    the   John 
Brown    men,  outside   the  family  of  their  leader.     If 
this  volume   shall   reach   any  of  them,  they  will  find 
shortly  after  its  publication   all  of  such   papers  as  I 
have    left    in  the   Library  of   the    Kansas    Historical 
Society,   where   I   shall  place    the    same,    subject,    of 
course,  to  their  demands,  but  hoping  they  may  be  left 
permanently  to  add  to  the  valuable  collection   that 
enriches  that  Library. 

"  Maywood,"  Richard  J.  Hinton. 

Bay  Ridge,  N.  Y. 


JOHN. BROWN  AND  HIS  MEN. 


CHAPTER  I. 


THE    MAN. 


John  Brown's  birth,  ancestry,  training,  education,  pur- 
suits, niarriage,  children,  and  daily  life— His 
entrance  into  national  life  and  renown — Removal  to 
Kansas  in  1.855. 

John  Brown,  born  at  Torrington,  Connecticut, 
May  9,  1800,  was  hung  on  a  scaffold  at  Charlestown, 
West  Virginia,  Dec.  2,  1859.  The  grandson  and 
namesake  of  Captain  John  Brown,  of  West  Simsbury, 
a  Revolutionary  officer  who  died  in  the  field;  he  was 
also  the  sixth  in  descent  from  Peter  Brown  who  came 
to  New  England  in  the  Mayflower,  1620.  Peter  was 
a  carpenter,  who  married  after  he  landed  at  Ply- 
mouth. Within  thirteen  years  he  married  twice,  and 
died  in  1633,  leaving  four  children.  Writing  about 
1650  (Bradford— MSS.  "  History  of  Plymouth  Plan- 
tation," 1624-57),  Gov.  Wm.  Bradford  says:  "Peter 
Brown  by  his  first  wife  had  two  children,  who  are 
living,  and  both  of   them    married,  and  one   of   them 


to  JOHN*    BROWN. 

hath  two  children;  bv  his  second  wife  he  had  two 
more.  He  died  about  sixteen  years  since."  Mary 
and  Priscilla  were  daughters  of  the  first  wife,  and 
are  the  two  mentioned  as  married.  In  1644,  they 
were  under  the  care  of  their  uncle,  John  Brown,  a 
citizen  of  Duxburv,  where  also  Peter  Brown  settled 
a  few  years  after  landing  at  Plymouth.  John  Brown 
outlived  his  brother  Peter  many  years.  Of  his 
family  by  his  second  wife,  Peter  Brown,  born  in  1632, 
was  the  younger.  He  was  the  ancestor  of  John 
Brown  of  Osawatomie  and  Harper's  Ferry,  and 
removed  from  Duxbury  to  Windsor,  Connecticut, 
between  1650  and  1658,  where  he  married  Mary,  the 
daughter  of  Jonathan  Gillett. 

Peter  Brown  the  pilgrim,  had  his  home  in  Dux- 
bury,  not  far  from  the  hill  where  Miles  Standish 
built  his  house,  and  where  his  monument  is  now 
seen.  His  son,  Peter,  lived,  and  died,  at  Windsor, 
Connecticut,  March  9,  1692,  leaving  thirteen  children. 
Of  these,  John  Brown,  born  Jan.  8,  1668,  married 
Elizabeth  Loomis.  They  had  eleven  children,  among 
whom  were  John  Brown,  the  father  and  survivor  of 
John  Brown,  of  West  Simsbury,  who  died  in 
the  British  prison-ship  in  New  York  harbor.  He 
lived,  and  died,  at  Windsor,  married  Mary  Eggle- 
ston;  and  the  Continental  captain,  grandfather  of  the 
Kansas  fighter,  was  the  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  Peter  Brown  came  there  from  Duxbury. 

The  Browns  were,   in   fact,  a  distinguished   family 


JOHN    BROWN'S    BIRTH,    ANCESTRY,    ETC.  1 1 

when  the  sixth  in  descent  from  Peter,  the  Plymouth 
settler,  made  it  one  of  the  most  illustrious  of  the 
world.  It  had  embraced  soldiers  of  Indian  wars,  one 
hero  of  the  Revolutionary  struggle,  and  another  of  the 
War  of  1 8 1 2.  Its  men  were  workmen,  farmers,  fighters, 
townbuilders,  scholars,  preachers,  and  teachers.  The 
direct  ancestor  of  John  Brown's  mother,  Ruth  Mills, 
of  Simsbury,  was  a  Protestant  Hollander,  Peter  Van 
Huysenmuysen,  who  left  that  sturdy  land  when  the 
Spanish  Duke  of  Alva  was  harrying  it.  Settling  in 
Connecticut,  he  built  a  mill  and  earned  bread  for  his 
family.  Hence  the  name  Mills,  under  which  the 
family  passed  into  New  England  annals.  They  have 
bred  a  long  line  of  physicians,  ministers,  and  teachers. 
John  Brown  himself  might  well  be  counted,  on  the 
modern  New  York  view  of  family  place,  among  social 
"  exclusives  "  of  the  first  water. 

A  President  of  Amherst  College,  the  Rev.  Herman 
Humphrey,  D.D.,  and  the  Rev.  Luther  Humphrey, 
both  famous  Presbyterian  ministers,  were  his 
first  cousins,  being  the  sons  of  his  father's  sister. 
The  Rev.  Nathan  Brown,  editor  of  the  American 
Baptist,  and  a  famous  missionary  in  India  and  Japan, 
was  a  second  cousin.  He  translated  the  Bible  into 
Japanese.  Owen  Brown,  the  father  (who  died  in 
1857),  was  one  of  the  trustees  of  Oberlin  College,  and 
John  Brown  himself  was  associated  with  the  affairs 
thereof  for  years.  Salmon  Brown,  Owen's  brother  and 
John  Brown's  uncle,  became  a  distinguished  lawyer 
and  judge,  settling  in  Louisiana,  and  dying  there. 
There  are  a  score  or  more  of  other  names  belonging 
to  this  family,  noted  in  New  England  and  Ohio 
annals  for  learning,  character,  and  service,  as   minis- 


\i  JOHN    BROWN*. 

ters,  educators,  and  citizens.  John  Brown  repre- 
sents in  his  own  person,  then,  the  best  blood  and 
character  to  be  found  in  America.  Thus,  in  him 
mingled  three  great  racial  forces,  English  of  the 
Teutonic  or  Saxon  type,  the  Welsh  or  ancient  British 
stock,  and  the  sturdy,  independent  Hollander,  all 
vitalized  by  the  mighty  conflicts  for  the  supremacy 
of  civic  freedom  and  liberty  of  conscience,  in  the 
Protestant  struggle  of  the  Old  World,  the  founding 
of  New  England,  and  the  fiery  endurance  of  the  War 
for  Independence. 

John  Brown  was  the  oldest  son  of  Owen  Brown, 
himself  one  of  eleven  children  born  to  the  Revolution- 
ary captain  and  Hannah  Owen,  his  wife.  The 
grandmother  lived  to  see  most  of  her  own  children 
well  established  in  life.  One  of  them  became  a 
judge  in  Ohio;  another,  John,  of  New  Hartford,  was 
a  man  much  esteemed,  and  a  deacon  of  the  church 
there.  A  daughter  was  the  mother  of  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Humphrey.  Owen  Brown  became  a  tanner  and 
shoemaker,  the  same  trade  he  taught  his  famous 
son.  Owen,  born  and  bred  in  Simsbury  (now  Can- 
ton), Connecticut,  was  married  there  to  Ruth  Mills, 
daughter  of  the  old  minister,  Rev.  Gideon  Mills,  on 
the  nth  of  February,  1793;  they  then  removed  to 
Norfolk,  where  his  oldest  child  was  born,  July  5, 
1798,  and  one  year  later  moved  to  Torrington.  John 
Brown  was  born  there,  also  his  brothers,  Solomon 
and  Oliver  Owen,  in  1800,  1802,  and  1804.  In  1805 
the  father  migrated,  with  his  children  and  others  of 
the  family,  to  the  Western  Reserve,  Ohio,  settling  in 
the  town  of  Hudson.  In  the  wilderness  John  Brown 
spent    his    childhood    and    youth,    though    his    early 


JOHN    BROWN'S    BIRTH,    ANCESTRY,    ETC.  13 

recollections  extended  also  to  his  Connecticut  home. 
Hudson  was  a  notable  community  of  sturdy  Ameri- 
can people  of  anti-slavery  convictions.1 

At  sixteen  John  Brown  joined  the  Congregational 
Church  in  Hudson.  Desiring  to  study  for  the  minis- 
try, he  probably  revisited  Torrington  in  order  to 
obtain  advice  of  Jeremiah  Hallock,  who  had  married 
a  relation.  By  him  John  Brown  was  advised  to  fit 
for  college  at  the  school  of  his  brother,  Rev.  Moses 
Hallock,  Plainfield,  Massachusetts.  His  uncle,  Her- 
mann Hallock,  D.D.,  was  soon  after  made  president 
of  Amherst  College,  to  which  the  sturdy  student 
would  have  gone,  but  for  a  serious  inflammation 
of  the  eyes  from  overstudy,  compelling  him  to  go 
back  to  his  father's1  tanyard  in  Hudson.  In  De- 
cember, 1859,  Hermann  Hallock,  the  youngest  son 
Gerard,  of  the  Rev.  Moses  Hallock,  wrote  his  brother 
editor  of  the  New  York  Journal  of  Commerce,  as 
follows: 

"  Your  youngest  brother  does  remember  John 
Brown,  who  studied  at  our  house.  He  was  a  tall, 
dignified  young  man.  He  had  been  a  tanner,  and 
relinquished  a  prosperous  business  for  the  purpose  of 
intellectual  improvement." 

Soon  after  John  Brown's  return  to  Hudson,  Ohio, 
he  married  his  first  wife,  Dianthe  Lusk,  June  21, 
1820.  She  died  in  childbirth,  August,  1832.  There 
were  six  other  children  of  this  marriage,  the  eldest  of 
whom,  John   Brown,  Jr.,  was  born  July   25,  1821;  he 


1  See  Appendix  for  the   autobiography   written  for  the  son  of 
George  L.  Stearns,  of  Boston,  Massachusetts. 


14  JOHN    BROWN. 

still  lives,  residing  at  Put-in-Bay  Island,  Lake  Erie, 
Ohio;  Jason  Brown,  living  at  Pasadena,  California, 
was  born  January  19,  1823;  Owen  Brown,  born 
November  4,  1824,  died  in  1S90;  Ruth  (Mrs.  Henry 
Thompson),  now  living  at  Pasadena,  February  18, 
1829;  and  Frederick  Brown,  December 21,  1839,  killed 
at  Osawatomie,  Kansas,  August  30,  1856.  By  a 
second  marriage  with  Mary  Anne  Day,  of  Meadville, 
Pennsylvania,  in  1833,  John  Brown  became  the  father 
of  thirteen  children,  seven  of  whom  died  in  child- 
hood; two,  Watson  and  Oliver,  were  slain  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  and  four  others  have  survived.  These  are 
Salmon  Brown,  born  October  2,  1836;  Anne,  born 
September  23,  1843;  Sarah,  born  September  11,  1846; 
and  Ellen,  born  September  25,  1854.  Anne,  Sarah, 
and  Ellen  live  in  Santa  Cruz  and  Humboldt  Counties, 
California ;  Salmon  recently  removed  from  Red 
Bluffs  to  Washington,  near  Tacoma.  They  are  all 
married  and  have  families.  In  all,  John  Brown  was 
the  father  of  twenty  children,  seven  of  whom  are  still 
living.  The  living  grandchildren  number  twenty-six. 
John  Brown  was  farmer,  tanner,  and  land  surveyor 
at  Hudson,  Ohio,  until  1826,  then  at  Richmond,  near 
Meadville,  Pennsylvania,  residing  there  until  1835. 
He  then  removed  to  Franklin  Mills,  Portage  County, 
Ohio,  where  he  also  speculated  in  land.  He  lost 
heavily  in  the  panic  of  1837,  and  in  1839  entered  upon 
a  new  pursuit — that  of  wool-growing  and  dealing; 
driving  also  in  that  year  a  herd  of  cattle  from  Ohio 
to  Connecticut.  There  he  purchased  a  few  sheep,  the 
nucleus  of  what  became  a  great  flock.  In  1840  he 
returned  to  Hudson,  where  his  father,  Owen  Brown, 
lived  until  1856.     In    1842   Brown    removed   to  Rich- 


JOHN    BROWN'S    BIRTH,    ANCESTRY,    ETC.  1 5 

field,  and  here  his  daughter,  Anne,  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,  about  a  year  old.  Three 
were  buried  in  one  grave  and  on  the  same  date,  a 
September  day,  in  1843.  1  ne  next  year  he  moved  to 
Akron,  and  in  1846  to  Springfield,  in  Massachusetts. 
He  went  there  as  a  member  of  the  firm  of  Perkins 
&  Brown,  and  also  as  the  agent  of  the  sheep- 
farmers  and  wool-merchants  of  northern  Ohio,  whose 
products  were  then  sold  wholly  to  New  England 
manufacturers.  John  Brown,  to  prevent  loss  to  them 
by  uniform  low  grading,  initiated  the  system  of  grad- 
ing wools,  since  then  generally  adopted.  The  manu- 
facturers were  too  powerful  for  the  Western  farmer. 
They  bribed  his  clerk  (as  he  always  believed)  to 
change  the  wool  marks,  so  that  the  stock  was  all  paid 
for  as  low  grade.  This  led  to  several  lawsuits,  one 
of  which  was  tried  and  decided  against  him  at 
Boston  in  the  winter  of  1852-53,  after  Brown  had 
withdrawn  from  the  business  and  was  living  in  the 
Adirondacks.  The  next  year  he  won  a  similar  suit 
in  a  New  York  court,  and  always  believed  he  would 
have  won  the  Boston  case  but  for  the  action  of  the 
counsel  in  compromising  the  same.  The  Boston  judge 
was  Caleb  Cushing,  and  Rufus  Choate  was  of  counsel 
against  Brown. 

In  Springfield,  John  Brown  lived  in  a  very  modest 
house  on  Franklin  street,  just  north  of  the  Boston  and 
Albany  Railroad,  and  his  warehouses  were  close  by. 
Frederick  Douglass  visited  him  there  in  1847.  Wish- 
ing to  make  a  market  for  a  large  stock  of  Ohio  wool 
then  on  hand,  and  b'elieving  that  he  could  sell  it  in 


1 6  JOHN    BROWN. 

Europe  to  advantage,  he  went  there  in  1848-49,  travers- 
ing a  considerable  part  of  England  and  the  continent 
on  that  business.  He  visited  both  wool  markets  and 
battlefields  in  impartial  succession.  Among  dealers 
he  was  noted  for  the  delicacy  of  his  touch  in  sorting 
different  qualities,  and  for  skill  in  testing  them  when 
submitted  to  him.  After  trying  the  markets  of  Europe, 
he  finally  sold  his  Liverpool  consignment  at  a  lower 
price  than  it  would  have  brought  in  Springfield.  His 
ill  success,  added  to  the  expense  of  his  trip,  finally 
ruined  this  business,  and  in  1849  ne  gave  it  up  and 
went  to  live,  where  he  was  afterwards  buried,  at  North 
Elba,  Essex  County,  New  York. 

It  was  in  the  hope  of  enlisting  and  drilling  recruits 
for  his  projected  company  of  liberators  that  John 
Brown  went  to  live  among  the  colored  men  to  whom 
Gerritt  Smith  had  given  land  in  the  Adirondack 
woods.  Mr.  Smith  had  inherited  from  his  father 
landed  estate  in  more  than  three-fourths  of  the  coun- 
ties of  New  York.  In  Essex,  he  owned  several  thou- 
sand acres.  Farms  were  offered  to  such  colored  men 
as  would  live  upon  the  land,  clear,  and  cultivate  it. 
On  returning  from  England  in  1849,  Brown  heard  of 
the  offer,  and  soon  presented  himself  to  Mr.  Smith  in 
Peterboro.  A  small  colony  of  colored  people  had  al- 
ready gone  to  North  Elba  to  clear  up  the  forest  land 
given  them.  Brown  made  to  Mr.  Smith  this  pro- 
posal: "  I  am  something  of  a  pioneer,  having  grown 
up  among  the  woods  and  wilds  of  Ohio,  and  I  am  used 
to  the  way  of  life  that  your  colony  find  so  trying;  I 
will  take  one  of  the  farms  myself,  clear  and  plant  it, 
and  show  my  colored  neighbors  how  such  work  should 
be  done,  will  give  them  work  as  I  have  occasion,  look 


JOHN    BROWNS    BIRTH,    ANCESTRY,    ETC.  1 7 

after  them  in  all  needful  ways,  and  be  a  kind  of  father 
to  them." 

Mr.  Smith  readily  consented,  and  John  Brown  soon 
removed  with  his  family  from  Springfield  to  North 
Elba.1  They  lived  there  most  of  the  time  between 
1849  and  1862,  and  altogether,  while  their  father  was 
attacking  slavery  in  Kansas,  Missouri,  and  Virginia. 
Besides  other  inducements  which  this  region  offered 
him,  John  Brown  considered  it  a  place  of  refuge  for 
his  wife  and  younger  children,  where  they  would  not 
only  be  safe  and  independent,  but  could  live  frugally. 
When  he  went  there  his  youngest  son,  Oliver,  was  ten 
years  old,  Anne  and  Sarah  were  six  and  three  years 
old.  Ellen,  his  youngest  child,  was  born  at  North 
Elba. 

In  1849,  there  were  in  Essex  County  but  few  roads, 
schools,  and  churches,  and  only  a  few  good  farms. 
The  life  of  the  settler  at  North  Elba  was  pioneer 
work;  the  forest  had  to  be  cut  down  and  the  land 
burnt  over;  the  family  supplies  must  be  produced, 
mainly,  within  the  household  itself.  Sugar  was  made 
from  the  maple  trees;  from  the  wool  they  raised,  the 
women  spun  and  wove  garments;  sheep  and  cows  es- 
pecially were  the  farmer's  wealth.  Winter  continues 
for  six  months  of  the  year;  the  short  summer  crops 
are  grass,  oats,  and  potatoes,  a  few  vegetables,  and 
the  wild  fruit  of  the  woods  and  meadows.  In  the 
whole  township  of  North  Elba,  Mr.  Sanborn  says  of 
his  first  visit  there  in  1857,  there  was  scarcely  a  house 
worth  a  thousand  dollars,  or  one  which  was  finished 


1  See  Appendix  for  description  of  a  visit  there  in  the  early  'fifties, 
written  by  Richard  H.  Dana,  and  published  in  the  Atlantic, 
2 


x8  JOHN    BROWN. 

throughout.  Mrs.  Brown's  dwelling  had  but  two 
plastered  rooms,  yet  two  families  lived  in  it.  This 
house  had  been  built  by  John  Brown  about  1850,  in 
the  shadow  almost  of  the  great  rock  beside  which  he 
lies  buried.  John  Brown  introduced  his  favorite 
breed  of  cattle,  and  exhibited  them  at  the  annual 
show  of  Essex  County  in  September,  1850.  They 
were  a  grade  of  Devons  mixed  with  a  particular  Con- 
necticut stock,  and  the  first  improved  breed  that  had 
been  at  the  county  fair. 

Of  the  four  sons  of  his  first  marriage  who  were 
then  living,  two  were  married,  and  one,  Frederick,  was 
engaged.  Ruth,  the  eldest  daughter,  had  married 
Henry  Thompson,  a  sturdy  farmer  of  New  Hampshire 
origin,  who  lived  near  the  Brown  farm  at  North  Elba. 
He  was  in  sympathy  with,  and  readily  consented 
to  join  the  family  in  Kansas.  Two  of  his  brothers 
were  killed  at  Harper's  Ferry,  and  Watson  Brown's 
wife  was  their  sister.  She  is  still  living  in  Wisconsin, 
married  to  Salmon  Brown,  a  cousin. 

In  the  winter  of  1854-55  the  four  older  sons  of  John 
Brown  (John,  Jason,  Owen,  and  Frederick),  with  their 
half  brother  Salmon,  living  either  in  or  near  Akron, 
Ohio,  made  arrangements  to  settle  in  Kansas.  They 
established  themselves  the  next  spring  in  Lykins 
County,  about  eight  miles  from  Osawatomie.  From 
there  they  wrote  their  father,  asking  his  aid.  Soon 
after  an  anti-slavery  meeting  was  held  at  Utica,  New 
York,  on  behalf  of  the  settlement  of  Kansas  as  a  free 
State.  In  this  convention  John  Brown  participated. 
He  was  described  as  a  gentleman  standing  six  feet  in 
his  boots,  of  thin  face  and  dark  complexion,  with 
flowing  beard  and  gray  hair,  lithe  and    straight,  and 


JOHN    BROWNS    BIRTH,    ANCESTRY,    ETC.  19 

about  sixty  years  of  age,  being  then  but  fifty-five.  In 
his  address  he  spoke  of  four  sons  already  settled  in 
Kansas,  and  of  three  others  (Salmon,  Watson,  and 
Oliver)  who  wished  to  join  them,  but  were  unable  to 
pay  their  way  to  the  Territory.  John  Brown,  refer- 
ring to  the  declaration  of  the  assembly  that  it  was 
Abolition  in  sentiment,  urged  that  something  practical 
be  done,  and  reminded  them  that  "  without  the  shed- 
ding of  blood  there  is  no  remission  of  sin."  The  will 
of  the  Puritan  was  finding  speech.  He  asked  for  arms 
for  the  sons  already  in  Kansas,  reading  letters  from 
the  two  eldest  that  gave  evidence  of  the  violent  spirit 
of  the  pro-slavery  people.  John  Brown  pledged  him- 
self to  go  to  Kansas  with  his  three  remaining  sons, 
and  "  to  make  a  good  report  of  their  doings  ";  this  he 
certainly  did.  The  funds  were  provided  for  the  ex- 
penses of  this  segment  of  the  Brown  family  to  enter 
upon  the  harvest  field.  On  the  next  day,  Gerritt 
Smith  in  open  session  presented  John  Brown  with 
seven  muskets  and  bayonets,  seven  voltaic  repeating 
pistols,  and  seven  short  broadswords — such  as  were 
then  worn  by  artillerymen  or  sailors;  a  small  purse 
was  also  given  him, — sixty  dollars  had  been  collected 
the  day  before.  The  presentation  of  arms  was  a  con- 
stant feature  of  Kansas  meetings  of  that  period 
on  both  sides  of  Mason  and  Dixon's  line.  John 
Brown's  sons  were  already  making  their  mark  on  the 
free-State  records.  They  had  selected  claims — four 
of  them — and  the  elder  brothers,  John,  Jr.,  and  Jason, 
with  Frederick,  were  serving  in  free-State  conven- 
tions. John,  Jr.,  was  also  elected  to  the  free-State 
Legislature,  which  convened  soon  after  at  Topeka.  He 
and  Frederick  were  delegates  to  the  Big  Springs  Con- 


20  JOHN    BROWN. 

vention,  September  5th;  Charles  Robinson,  James 
Blood,  G.  W.  Brown,  and  others  of  the  few  older 
citizens  of  Kansas,  who  have  since  made  themselves 
unpleasantly  conspicuous  by  malicious  attacks  and 
sometimes  scurrilous  abuse  of  "  Old  John  Brown," 
were  also  present.  Happily  for  the  hero's  name  and 
family,  it  was  found  at  Big  Springs  that  there  was  no 
relationship  between  an  editorial  defamer  and  the 
fighting  farmer  of  the  same  name.  John  Brown  and 
his  kin  were,  at  least,  spared  that  degradation.  The 
two  elder  brothers  were  at  Topeka  in  the  same  month 
and  year,  assisting  in  framing  the  famous  free-State 
Constitution,  known  in  political  history  by  the  name 
of  its  birthplace — Topeka.  They  both  opposed  the 
"  black  law "  or  negro-exclusion  feature  of  the  in- 
strument, while  heartily  sustaining  the  free-State  pro- 
visions. 

John  Brown  himself  arrived  at  the  family  settle- 
ment on  the  Pottawatomie,1  during  the  first  week  of 
October,  1855.  The  movement  of  his  elder  sons  to 
settle  in  Kansas  was  projected  by  John,  Jr.,  in  the 
early  days  of  January,  1855.  At  that  time  their  father, 
while  bidding  them  "God-speed,"  declared  that  his 
field  of  labor  "was  elsewhere."  But  the  later  call 
from  Kansas  was  that  of  duty,  and  he  cheerfully 
responded.  John  Brown  had  found  the  opening  place. 
For  him  the  ruddy  lights  were  rising,  and  the  mystic 
shadows  were  gathering.  Up  to  this  date  his  modest, 
quiet,  orderly  life  had  given  little  objective  expres- 
sion to  the  heroic   forces  which,  subjectively,  the  ag- 


1  See  Appendix  for  letters  by  John  Brown,  Jr.,  describing  their 
new  home. 


JOHN    BROWN'S    BIRTH,    ANCESTRY,    ETC.  21 

gressions  and  oppressions  of  chattel  slavery  had  been 
punctuating.  For  the  first  time  a  free  hand,  untram- 
meled  by  compromise  or  party  restraint,  that  "feared 
God  so  much  that  it  did  not  fear  man,"  was  writing 
large  a  bold  interrogation  mark  against  the  record 
of  Southern  domination.  It  was  also  to  write  the 
answer  thereto.  From  and  after  that  October  day  in 
1855,  Jonn  Brown  was  to  punctuate  American  history, 
with  the  dynamic  acts  of  a  life  unawed  by  power  and 
untrammeled  by  policy. 


CHAPTER  II. 

PURPOSE    AND    PLANS. 

His  earliest  friends  and  confidants — Wife  and  sons  are 
vowed  to  the  struggle — His  colored  allies — Frederick 
Douglass  s  account  of  the  flans — Steadfast  devotion 
of  the  family — Life  at  Springfield  and  North  Elba 
— On  the  Kansas  threshold. 

Mary,  his  wife,  was  John  Brown's  first  confidant 
and  ally.  His  earliest  recruits  were  sons  of  his  loins. 
His  faithful  assistants  were  the  daughters  who  had 
grown  to  years  of  discretion  amid  the  plain  living 
and  high  thinking  so  characteristic  of  this  unique 
family.  The  husband  of  Ruth  was  one  of  her  father's 
Kansas  soldiers  and  is  now  in  elder  years  the  reve- 
rential supporter  of  his  memory.  The  family  from 
which  Henry  Thompson  came — plain,  simple,  rustic 
farmers  of  Northern  New  York — gave  their  sons  and 
daughters  as  readily  to  the  fight  as  John  Brown's 
children  accepted  in  love  their  father's  unflinching 
faith  and  fortitude.  The  sons'  wives  murmured  no 
more  than  the  sons,  and  the  widows  of  Oliver  and 
Watson  went  to  the  grave  or  bore  their  sorrow  un- 
flinchingly. John  Brown's  detractors  never  take  this 
marvelous  tally  into  account.  Unbending,  simple, 
and  Puritanical,  living  hard,  as  severe  in  demands  as 
his  morals  were  stern,  amid  the  nation's  years  of 
growing  power  and  wealth  that  have  led  to  personal 
display  and  social  unrest,  John  Brown's  wife,  sons,  and 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS.  23 

daughters,  have  followed  without  hesitation  in  his 
"  path  of  thorns."  Among  the  large  number  of  pub- 
lished letters,  written  only  for  each  others'  eyes,  and 
as  exigencies  arose,  there  can  be  found  but  one  of 
complaint  against  the  father,  and  that  appears  to 
relate  to  a  trivial  rebellion  of  Owen,  when  a  youth. 
John  Brown's  friends  were  found,  first  and  most 
faithful,  within  his  own  household.  They  did,  and 
have  to  the  end,  believed  in  him,  wholly  and  utterly. 
They  would  not  have  done  so  had  he  not  been 
wholly  worthy. 

It  was  in  1839,  at  Franklin,  Pennsylvania,  that  John 
Brown  first  announced  his  conviction  that  by  blood 
atonement  alone  could  chattel  slavery  be  destroyed. 
De  Toqueville,  like  Jefferson,  had  already  partially 
realized  this  as  a  result  not  of  an  ideal  but  of 
conditions.  It  was  then  that  he  declared  his  purpose 
to  live  and  to  be  with  those  in  bonds,  as  if  bound  with 
them,  even  unto  the  bitter  and  bloody  end.  His 
three  eldest  sons  were  John,  Jr.,  nineteen,  Jason, 
seventeen,  and  Owen,  sixteen  years  of  age  respect- 
ively. There  was  a  colored  preacher,  named  Fayette, 
visiting  Brown  about  that  time.  He  was  intrusted  with 
the  purpose  and  place,  and  with  John  Brown's  wife 
and  three  sons,  took  the  obligation  of  assistance  and 
secrecy.  It  is  more  than  probable  that  this  strong, 
simple  man,  did  not  hide  his  convictions,  as  long  as 
they  were  unformulated  in  deed.  In  the  twenty  years 
that  followed  the  family  announcement  and  prayer 
unto  the  day  when  dying,  he  proved  that  America, 
like  Rome,  could  destroy  Spartacus,  John  Brown  was 
not  silent,  but  bore  his  testimony  alike  to  wrong 
and   remedy,  to  fitting  persons  and  at  proper  times. 


24  JOHN    BROWN. 

John  Brown,  Jr.,  records,  that  the  only  time  he  ever 
saw  his  father  kneel  in  prayer  was  when  he  first 
vowed  himself  and  them  to  attack  slavery  by  force. 
The  pilgrim  grimly  held  the  ark  of  the  covenant 
upright  when  he  prayed  to  his  Creator.-  It  was  not 
pride  but  a  rigid  humility  which  thus  est  -  -cd  the 
handiwork  of  the  Father.  Still,  the  sou  n  travail 
over  the  slave,  bowed  itself  to  the  dust  in  mourning 
for  the  Republic  dishonored  by  slavery.  It  is  worth 
while  recalling  that  it  was  to  Franklin  that  Owen 
Brown  steered  across  the  rough  laurel-clad  spurs  of 
the  Pennsylvania  Alleghanies  when,  with  Tidd  and 
the  younger  Coppoc,  he  escaped  in  October  and 
November  of  1859,  from  the  shadow  land  of  the 
slave-driver  and  kidnapper  to  the  shadowed  depots 
of  the  underground  railway  in  Western  Pennsylvania 
and  Northern  Ohio.  It  was  at  Meadville,  near  by, 
that  John  Brown  was  practically  refused  church 
fellowship  because  he  insisted  on  breaking  sacra- 
mental bread  with  the  fugitive,  and  held  the  brother 
in  bronze  the  equal  before  God  of  him  whose  hue 
was  lighter.  It  was  here,  also,  that  the  Puritan  tanner 
refused  to  do  militia  duty,  and  denounced  war,  pay- 
ing his  fine  for  the  same.  John  Brown  never  joined 
a  church  thereafter,  and  obeyed  henceforth  no  man's 
order  as  a  soldier.  A  leader  of  men  and  a  born 
strategist,  he  was  also  a  student  of  warfare.  Von 
Hoist  says,  in  his  admirable  monograph,  that  no  one 
would  have  gone  to  John  Brown  for  a  criticism  of 
Napoleon.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  thoroughly  able 
to  have  given  keen  and  incisive  opinions  on  that 
commander's  campaigns.  Colonel  Philips,  of  Kansas, 
has  given  evidence    of  the  careful  study  he  had  made 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS.  ^5 

of  the  career  of  Spartacus.1  He  read  alike  of  the 
guerilla  warfare  of  Spain  and  the  Caucasus,  and 
could  discuss  aptly  the  movements  of  the  Haytian 
freedmen,  as  well  as  the  marching  and  maneuvers  of 
European  armies.  John  Brown  equipped  his  brain 
as  weu'  his  conscience.  He  made  a  special  study 
of  how  tc  iibsist  men,  learning  to  make  a  little  go 
far  in  the  commissariat — a  knowledge  which  stood 
him  in  good  stead  in  Kansas.  And  he  was  always 
conscious  of  his  own  power  as  one  called  to  direct 
and  lead.  He  begun  to  both  think  and  write,  as  well 
as  to  prepare.  During  the  following  ten  years 
he  prepared2  the  ''League  of  Gileadites";  a  paper 
on  "  Sambo,"  and  addresses  to  non-slave-holding 
whites  and  to  soldiers,  among  other  matter.  How 
many  knew  of  his  purpose  outside  of  the  home 
life  from  1839  to  1858,  it  would  not  be  easy  to 
ascertain.  A  score  or  so  of  strong,  brave  colored 
men — Garnett,  Gloucester,  Loguen,  Douglass,  and, 
later,  the  Langstons,  with  Still,  Baptiste,  Reynolds, 
and  others,  who  kept  guard  for  the  fugitive  on  the 
line  of  "  Mason  and  Dixon,"  or  that  of  the  Canadas, 
knew  of  the  Ohio  farmer  and  Massachusetts  wool- 
dealer,  who  in  a  quiet,  unbending  way,  was  preparing 
to  precipitate  a  conflict  to  make  of  Jefferson's  Decla- 
ration a  practical  fact,  and  of  Hamilton  and  Frank- 
lin s  Constitution  something  more  than  a  mere  ver- 
bal phantasmagoria.  In  1839  the  air  was  charged 
with  vital  interest.  The  rugged  old  squire,  after 
whom  the  Ohio  town  of  Hudson  was  named,  typified 
one    side  when   he  rejoiced   at  the  news  of  a  slave- 


1  See  Appendix.     2  Ditto. 


26  JOHN    BROWN. 

insurrection;  and  the  constant  conflict  between  slave 
catcher  and  fugitive  along  the  dividing  lines  of  North 
and  South,  expressed  another.  The  opposite  view  of 
anti-slavery  agitation  and  work  to  that  held  by  John 
Brown  was  rising  rapidly  into  intellectual  power. 
Still,  the  industrial  North  however  aroused,  was  at 
heart  peace-loving  as  well  as  profit-seeking.  So  the 
Quaker  conception  of  non-resistance  readily  became 
accepted  as  a  worthy  alternative  to  the  passion  created 
by  knowledge  of  oppression.  That  form  of  action 
was  presented  as  the  only  means  of  forwarding  a 
crusade  which  inflamed  the  moral  sensibilities. 
These  are  always  the  heralds  of  force,  and  play  the 
role  of  couriers  in  the  declaration  of  war.  The  South 
was  saved  from  conflagration  by  the  underground 
railroad.  Mr.  Garrison  watered  the  consuming  fires 
while  he  declared  slavery  to  be  piracy  and  murder; 
making  the  Constitution  to  be  "a  covenant  with 
Death  and  an  agreement  with  Hell."  The  flames 
thus  ignited  he  would  have  restrained  by  withes  of 
straw.  Wendell  Phillips  presented  the  role  of  system- 
atic agitation,  and  binding  the  Anglo-Saxon  instinct  of 
order  to  the  human  passion  of  resistance  to  wrong, 
pointed,  through  his  matchless  oratory,  the  way 
for  the  great  political  forces  of  nationality  and 
freedom.  Conflagrations  are  not  quenched  by  attar 
of  roses.  John  Brown  said:  ''Talk  was  a  national 
institution,  but  it  did  not  help  the  slave."  The 
Puritan  argued  from  the  individual  to  the  institu- 
tion, and  felt,  in  seeking  to  defend  the  former,  he 
was  saving  the  latter  from  the  wreck  and  ruin  in- 
justice brings  to  nations  as  surely  as  vice  does  to 
persons. 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS.  -  27 

The  South  knew  better  than  Garrison  thought,  and 
steadily  prepared  to  fight.  Chattel  bondage  com- 
bined with  the  cotton-gin  to  coin  Southern  fortunes, 
and  at  the  same  time  to  breed  bankruptcy.  The 
Southern  .States  gained  political  power  by  holding 
human  "property."  Extension  of  bondage  controlled 
the  public  policy,  and  the  oppressor  satin  the  judg- 
ment seat.  Still,  the  impossible  became  the  efficient, 
and  the  unexpected  happened. 

John  Brown  moved  to  Springfield,  Massachusetts, 
as  a  wool-dealer.  He  fought  the  house  of  Amos  A. 
Lawrence  in  business,  and  long  afterwards  Mr  Law- 
rence, after  arousing  the  free-State  men  to  fight, 
joined  Brown's  defamers  in  seeking  to  assail  his  mem- 
ory. The  warehouseman  carried  on  a  propaganda 
as  well  as  business.  There  was,  thirty  years  since,  a 
daguerreotype,  in  possession,  I  think,  of  the  North 
Elba  household,  which  showed  John  Brown  and  a 
colored  man,  presumably  Thomas,1  a  porter  he  em- 
ployed and  trusted,  in  which  the  latter  carried  a  small 
banneret,  lettered  "  S.  P.  W." — letters  signifying 
"Subterranean  Pass  Way."  Brown's  hand  is  on  the 
colored  man's  shoulder.  Mr.  Sanborn's  biography  is 
the  authority  for  the  statement  of  Thomas's  early 
knowledge  of  Captain  Brown's  purposes.  Frederick 
Douglass  tells  his  own  story  in  that  exquisite  Eng- 
lish, of  which  the  renowned  slave,  fugitive,  freedman, 
orator,  statesman,  diplomat,  and  American  citizen,  is 
so  perfect  a  master.  He  has  given  me  authority  to 
use  as  I  wish  this  account,  and   I  gladly  avail   myself 


1  Thomas  Thomas  recently  died  at  Springfield,  111.      He  was  in 
•\he  service  of  Mr.  Lincoln  after  his  first  election  until  his  death- 


28  JOHN    BROWN. 

thereof,  while  gratefully  acknowledging  the  favor. 
Frederick  Douglass's  narrative  is  the  earliest  in  time 
of  knowledge,  as  it  is  also  a  most  cogent  account  of 
John  Brown's  views  and  plans.  The  first  public  ac- 
count was  prepared,  however,  by  me,  under  the  title 
of  "  Some  Shadows  Before,"  as  a  chapter  in  James 
Redpath's  book,  published  early  in  i860.1  It  is  one 
of  the  few  prizes  of  a  busy  life  that  Mr.  Emerson,  as 
stated  by  Henry  D.  Thoreau,  declared  this  paper  of 
mine  to  be  "as  positive  a  contribution  to  American 
history  as  John  Brown's  autobiography  (also  first 
presented  by  Mr.  Redpath)  was  to  the  historical 
literature  of  the  English  language." 

Soon  after  Frederick  Douglass  returned  from  his 
first  visit  to  England  and  had  begun  and  successfully 
carried  on  at  Rochester,  New  York,  the  publication 
and  editorship  of  the  North  Star,  he  spent  a  night  and 
a  day  under  the  roof  of  a  man  whose  character  and  con- 
versation, and  whose  objects  and  aims  in  life  made  a 
very  deep  impression2  on  his  mind.  Other  colored 
men  of  prominence,  and  Douglass  names  Loguen  and 
Garnett  especially,  in  speaking  of  him,  would  drop 
their  "  voices  to  a  whisper,"  and  what  they  said  made 
Frederick  "very  eager  to  see  and  know  him."  Being 
invited  to  his  home  at  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  for 
it  was  John  Brown  they  spoke  of,  Mr.  Douglass  went 
there  in  1847.  He  was  surprised  at  the  remarkable 
plainness  in  which  the  Browns  lived,  as  the  head  of 
the  family  was  to  all  appearance  a  prosperous  mer- 


1  See  Appendix. 

9  Life  and  Times  of  Frederick  Douglass,  pp.  337"43.  Chap.  8; 
383-85,  Chap.  10.     De  Wolf,  Fiske  &  Co.,  Boston.     1893. 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS.  29 

chant  doing  a  considerable  business.  Their  dwelling 
was  a  small  frame  house  on  a  back  street,  in  a  neigh- 
borhood chiefly  occupied  by  laboring  men  and 
mechanics,  and  the  inside  was  plainer  even  than  the 
outside.  In  this  house,  writes  Mr.  Douglass,  "there 
were  no  disguises,  no  illusions,  no  make-believes. 
Everything  implied  stern  truth,  solid  purpose,  and 
rigid  economy."  Of  the  head  of  that  house,  says 
the  negro  statesman,  "  he  was,  indeed,  the  master  of 
it,  as  he  would  have  been  of  any  one  in  it  if  they  only 
stayed  long  enough.  .  .  .  He  fulfilled  St.  Paul's 
idea  of  the  head  of  the  family.  His  wife  believed  in 
him,  and  his  children  observed  him  with  reverence." 
His  arguments,  adds  Douglass,  "  seemed  to  convince 
all,  his  appeals  touched  all,  and  his  will  impressed 
all."  This,  too,  because  he  was  a  man  of  truth  and 
hid  not  where  he  trusted.  Evidently  the  family  heard 
what  he  had  to  say  to  Frederick  Douglass,  and  this 
illustrates  another  notable  fact:  none  of  that  family 
ever  talked  outside  of  their  own  circle,  and,  indeed, 
not  often  within  it,  of  the  vowed  aim  of  all  their 
lives.  In  their  several  degrees,  each  simple  soul  was 
wedded  to  ideas,  and  there  never  came  to  them 
thought  of  heroism  or  virtue;  it  was  their  daily  life 
to  be  both  heroic  and  virtuous.  They  have  never 
posed  for  plaudits.  Mr.  Douglass  writes  that  after 
the  meal  of  "  beef  soup,  cabbage,  and  potatoes," 
which  was  placed  before  his  guest  and  family,  John 
Brown  "  cautiously  approached  the  subject;  .  .  . 
he  seemed  to  apprehend  opposition  to  his  views.  He 
denounced  slavery  in  look  and  language  fierce  and 
bitter,  thought  that  slave-holders  had  forfeited  their 
right   to  live,  that  the  slaves  had  the  right  to  gain 


30  JOHN    BROWN. 

their  liberty  in  any  way  they  could,  did  not  believe 
that  moral  sausion  would  ever  liberate  the  slaves,  or 
that  political  action  would  abolish  the  system.  .  .  . 
He  had  been  for  some  time  looking  for  colored  men 
to  whom  he  could  safely  reveal  his  secret."  His 
plan  had,  writes  Mr.  Douglass,  "  much  to  commend 
it."  There  was  no  thought  of  a  general  slave  rising, 
much  less  a  "  general  slaughter  of  the  masters." 
"  Insurrection "  would  defeat  the  object  he  had  in 
view,  but  John  Brown,  says  Mr.  Douglass,  "  did 
contemplate  the  creating  of  an  armed  force  which 
should  act  in  the  very  heart  of  the  South."  He 
designed  using  the  Appalachian  range,  and  declared 
that  in  them  defensive  posts  could  be  made  and 
camps  established  into  which  selected  slaves  could 
be  recruited  or  taken,  and  from  which  then  raids 
would  soon  "  destroy  the  money  value  of  slave  prop- 
erty." The  logic  and  sagacity  of  this  idea  may  be 
realized,  when  it  is  recalled  that  the  Nat  Turner 
Virginian  outbreak,  in  183 1,  almost  frightened  the 
people  of  that  commonwealth  into  emancipation. 
Only  three  votes  stood  between  the  affirmative  and 
negative  of  a  constitutional  convention.  John  Brown's 
attack  on  Harper's  Ferry  reduced  the  value  of  Vir- 
ginian slave-property  by  $10,000,000,  and  cost  the  State 
an  expenditure  of  about  $200,000,  most  of  it  spent  on 
absurd  acts,  designed  chiefly  "  to  fire  the  Southern 
heart,"  and  not  at  all  to  affect  Abolition  activity. 

"  My  plan,"  said  John  Brown  to  Frederick  Douglass 
in  1847,  "is  to  take  at  first  about  twenty-five  picked 
men,  and  begin  on  a  small  scale;  supply  them  with 
arms  and  ammunition,  and  post  them  by  squads  of 
five   on  a  line  of  twenty-five   miles.     The   most  per- 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS.  31 

suasive  and  judicious  of  these  shall  go  down  to  the 
fields  from  time  to  time,  as  opportunity  offers,  and 
induce  the  slaves  to  join  them,  seeking  and  selecting 
the  restless  and  daring."  With  care  and  skill  he 
deemed  that  one  hundred  good  men  could  be  gotten 
together,  able  to  live  hardily,  well  armed,  and  quick  to 
seize  all  advantages.  His  original  twenty-five  would 
supply  competent  partisan  leaders.  When  his  one 
hundred  were  secured,  entrenched  in  the  mountains, 
whose  Virginian  portion  he  knew  well  from  having 
surveyed  for  Oberlin  College,  in  1840,  the  lands  that 
had  been  granted  that  institution,  the  area  of  work 
would  be  extended,  slaves  run  off  in  large  numbers 
and  from  various  directions,  while  retaining  the  hardy 
and  brave  fighting  men.  Of  course,  he  designed  to 
subsist  on  the  slave-holders.  "  If  the  slaves  could  in 
this  way  be  driven  out  of  one  county,"  he  said,  "the 
whole  system  would  be  weakened  in  that  State." 
Bloodhounds  might  be  employed,  but  they  could  be 
killed  as  well  as  the  hunters.  He  did  not  believe  that 
over  any  considerable  area,  the  means  of  subsistence 
could  be  cut  off.  Besides  such  men  as  he  would  train 
could  carry  subsistence  enough  for  several  days. 
They  would  live  on  game,  could  make  jerked  beef, 
find  roots,  use  the  wild  fruits.  Unnecessary  fighting 
was  no  part  of  John  Brown's  plan.  Evasion  as  well 
as  resistance;  strategy  equally  with  combat;  this  was 
to  be  the  rule.  When  attacked,  resistance  was  to  be 
made  as  costly  as  possible.  His  field  was  to  begin  at 
the  northern  section  of  the  southern  Appalachian 
range,  not  necessarily  at  Harper's  Ferry,  though  from 
the  outset  he  undoubtedly  had  that  point  in  view  as 
a  place  of  possible  attack.     He  anticipated  also  being 


32  JOHN    BROWN. 

able  to  arrange  for  sympathetic  assistance  along  the 
border  of  Pennsylvania,  and,  when  the  progress  of  the 
movement  warranted,  along  the  Ohio  also.  Mr. 
Douglass  gave  favorable  judgment  so  far  as  the  prac- 
ticability of  disturbing  slavery  in  Maryland  and  Vir- 
ginia was  concerned.  He  also  saw  that  though 
"John  Brown  should  be  driven  out  of  the  mountains" 
(or  even  slain),  that  "a  new  fact  would  be  developed 
by  which  the  nation  would  be  kept  awake  to  the 
existence  of  slavery."  Hence,  he  says,  "  I  assented  to 
John  Brown's  scheme  or  plan  of  running-off  slaves." 

This  was  the  key  to  the  letters  on  the  daguerreotype 
— S.  P.  W.  It  explains  also  the  misapprehension  of 
Brown's  movement  expressed  by  Major  Martin  R. 
Delany,  in  the  pleasant  biography  of  that  notable 
colored  savant,  physician,  and  Union  soldier,  who 
called  the  Chatham  (Canada)  Convention  together  in 
1858.  Major  Delany  declared,  through  his  biographer, 
Frank  Rollins  (Mrs.  Whipper,  of  South  Carolina),  that 
John  Brown  did  not  state  that  his  operations  were  to 
be  in  Virginia,  but  left  only  the  impression  that  the 
project  was  but  a  more  systematic  and  enlarged  run- 
ning-off of  fugitive  slaves.  John  Brown  never  de- 
signed throwing  his  life  away  in  such  an  enterprise. 
He  would  help  the  bondman  to  flee  as  he  did  in  his 
Missouri  raid,  in  December,  1858,  and,  having  done  so, 
he  would  not  be  content  except  he  knew  they  were  in 
safety.  His  purpose  was  not  to  populate  a  Queen's 
colony,  but  to  save  a  Republic. 

To  fully  understand  John  Brown  and  his  Harper's 
Ferry  raid,  one  must  comprehend  something  of  the 
conditions  that  existed  during  the  years  in  which  he 
brooded  over  it.    Neither  railroad  nor  telegraphs  had 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS.  33 

to  any  large  extent  penetrated  the  Atlantic  coast 
range.  Very  few  towns  of  any  size  or  importance 
existed  near  them  or  within  their  borders.  A  mobil- 
ized State  force  was  unknown,  either  of  armed  police, 
country  militia,  or  national  guard  organizations.  The 
negro  was  not  so  rigidly  watched  as  was  the  case  in  the 
next  decade.  The  mountaineer  and  non-slave-holder 
knew  that  in  the  Carolinas  and  Virginia  he  and  his 
had  been  for  half  a  century  deliberately  pressed  back 
and  forced  out  of  the  eastern  Piedmont  region;  were 
obliged  to  retreat  to  less  fertile  mountain  fields 
and  valleys,  while  the  schoolhouse  faded  with  the  low- 
land farms.  The  strategical  value  of  the  Appalachian 
range,  from  the  border  of  Pennsylvania  southward, 
was  instinctively  signaled  by  Congress  at  the  earlier 
stages  of  the  Civil  War  in  the  creation  of  the  State  of 
West  Virginia,  and  by  the  Executive  in  stubborn 
holding  of  the  same  at  the  heaviest  of  cost  in  blood 
and  treasure.  The  Union  holding  of  the  upper  por- 
tion of  that  range,  was  the  possession  of  an  armed 
and  fortified  promontory  jutting  into  the  furious  sea 
of  rebellion.  It  would  have  been  a  comparatively 
easy  task  then,  given  the  acceptance  of  purpose  and 
policy,  to  have  at  any  time,  between  1830  and  1850, 
placed  a  small  body  of  trained  men  in  that  remark- 
able mountain  formation  which  flows  south  from  the 
Potomac  and  Ohio  to  the  northern  uplands  of  Florida, 
and  projects  westward  as  the  Blue  Ridge,  Cumber- 
land, Missionary  Ridge,  and  Lookout  ranges,  into 
Tennessee,  southern  Kentucky,  and  northern  Georgia. 
The  ranges  that  split  the  rebel  territory  in  twain,  and 
the  holding  or  successful  invasion  of  which  marked 
the  rise  and   fall  of  Confederate  and  Union  fortune, 

3 


34  JOHN    BROWN. 

would  have  been,  under  John  Brown's  original  plans, 
a  veritable  land  of  refuge.  Harriet  Tubman,  "  the 
general  of  us  all,"  as  John  Brown  expressed  it  to 
Wendell  Phillips  in  1858,  made  these  mountains  the 
road  by  which  she  aided  and  guided  over  two  thou- 
sand of  her  enslaved  race  from  bondage  to  comparative 
freedom.  The  limestone  formations  of  Kentucky  are 
full  of  mountain  caves — places  which,  till  emancipa- 
tion came,  often  served  the  needs  of  flying  fugitives. 
John  Brown  had  seen  or  heard  of  all  these  things. 
He  had  studied  the  census,  and  knew  the  resources  of 
the  region  in  which  he  designed  to  operate.  I  have 
had  in  my  possession  a  memorandum,  prepared  by 
Owen  Brown,  quaintly  written  with  signs  and  abbre- 
viations of  his  own,  which  lets  in  considerable  light 
upon  the  extent  of  the  observations  made.  Much  of 
this  material  was  based  upon  the  information  of  fugi- 
tive slaves.  It  relates  largely  to  roads,  location  of 
plantations,  and  character  of  neighborhood  supplies. 
The  seven  maps  of  slave  States,  with  statistics  packed 
on  their  margins,  which  were  found  in  the  carpet-bag 
of  papers,  etc.,  and  captured  by  the  Virginians,  showed 
to  Governor  Wise  and  his  councillors,  that  Captain 
Brown  had  contemplated  more  than  the  scare  made 
by  the  attack  at  Harper's  Ferry. 

Captain  Brown  did  not  loiter  over  his  plans,  except 
as  want  of  means  compelled  inaction.  In  Springfield 
he  set  to  work  upon  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive  Slave 
Law:  to  systematize  resistance  thereto.  He  organized 
the  League  of  Gileadites,1  and  went  also  to  Syracuse 
to   aid   in    the    rescue  of   "  Jerry," — a   fugitive   slave 

1  See  Appendix. 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS  35 

whose  case  made  a  famous  row  at  the  time.  In  all 
these  matters  it  was  his  aim  to  find  fit  persons  for  the 
enterprise  over  which  he  steadily  brooded.  For  this 
purpose  in  the  main,  he  removed  himself  and  family 
to  North  Elba,  in  the  picturesque  but  severe  Adiron- 
dack region.  He  hoped  to  find  fighters  among  the 
colored  farmers.  Gerritt  Smith  was  settling  there,  and 
he  was  necessitated  by  business  failure  also  to  econo- 
mize more  closely.  When  he  went  to  Europe  on  his 
wool-selling  venture  of  1850,  he  did  not,  one  may  be 
sure,  lose  sight  or  thought  of  the  purpose  he  held. 
In  Great  Britain,  Germany,  Austria,  and  France,  he 
visited  forts,  studied  plans  and  ordnance,  carefully 
looked  at  soldiers  and  their  equipments;  above  all  he 
inquired  into  moral,  social,  and  economic  conditions 
or  results.  More  and  more  he  clearly  drew  the  lines 
he  would  follow  in  the  struggle  to  which  he  was 
pledged  without  questioning.  He  had  ideas  in  con- 
nection with  defensive  works,  that  bore  on  them  the 
stamp  of  practical  capacity.  I  saw  and  examined  in 
Kagi's  hands  plans  of  John  Brown,  drawn  by  himself, 
for  the  mountain  forts.  They  were  to  be  used  in  ra- 
vines or  "  draws  "  when  so  situated  that  passage  from 
one  to  another  could  be  made.  It  was  intended  to 
conceal  them  by  trees  and  thickets,  place  them  on  hill- 
sides, and  otherwise  arrange  them  as  ambuscades.  I 
do  not  know  what  became  of  these  papers,  but  pre- 
sume, from  expressions  in  the  newspapers  of  the 
period,  that  they  also  were  found  stowed  away  in  the 
captured  carpet-bag.  Frederick  Douglass  '  says  of  a 
visit  made  to  him   at  Rochester   in  1859,  by  Captain 


1  Life  and  Times  of  Frederick  Douglass,  pp.  386-87. 


36  JOHN    BROWN. 

Brown,  that  the  latter  "  soon  after  his  coming,  asked 
me  to  get  him  two  smoothly  planed  boards,  upon 
which  he  would  illustrate  with  a  pair  of  dividers,  by 
a  drawing,  the  plan  of  fortification  which  he  meant  to 
adopt  in  the  mountains.  .  .  .  These  forts  were  to  be. 
so  arranged  as  to  connect  one  with  the  other,  by  secret 
passages,  so  that  if  one  were  carried,  another  could  be 
easily  fallen  back  upon."  In  his  Kansas  warfare  Cap- 
tain Brown  would,  as  at  Black  Jack,  seek  a  ravine  for 
concealment  and  from  which  to  make  his  first  attack. 
His  tactics  were  the  reverse  then,  as  a  rule,  of  such  as 
govern  regular  army  operations  when  conducted  on 
a  considerable  scale. 

From  1847  to  1855  no  mention  has  been  found  be- 
yond the  family  circle  of  John  Brown's  purposes  and 
plans.  Much  of  that  time  was  spent  on  the  lonely 
mountain  farm  at  North  Elba,  or  at  Troy  and  Utica, 
New  York,  in  pursuing  the  lawsuits  which  had  fol- 
lowed his  failure  in  the  wool  business  at  Springfield, 
Massachusetts.  It  is  singular,  in  view  of  the  subse- 
quent relations  of  Amos  A.  Lawrence  to  John 
Brown's  Kansas  activities,  and  his  later  denunciation 
of  the  old  fighter's  memory,  under  the  inspiration  of 
ex-Governor  Charles  Robinson's  morbid  and  morti- 
fied ambition,  as  well  as  of  Eli  Thayer's  collapse  as  a 
public  man,  that  John  Brown's  wool  venture,  bank- 
ruptcy, and  subsequent  severe  poverty,  should  have 
directly  resulted  from  the  trade  combination  of  which 
the  Lawrence  wool  dealing  and  manufacturing  firm 
of  New  England,  were  the  center.  The  Ohio  firm  of 
Perkins  &  Brown  was.  organized,  as  sheep-growers, 
raising  good  breeds  and  fine  wool,  and  subsequently 
undertaking  to  deal  in  American  wools   as  presented 


PURPOSE    AND    PLANS.  37 

for  market,  under  the  system  of  graded  qualities 
which  John  Brown  first  invented.  The  wool  tariff 
and  its  custom  service  was  practically  based  upon  the 
idea  of  the  Ohio  sheep  farmer.  In  the  Springfield 
warehouse,  the  wool  bales  consigned  to  John  Brown 
were  tagged  and  marked  to  indicate  their  grade.  In 
some  way,  these  marks  were  removed  or  obliterated 
(John  Brown  believed  by  bribery  of  his  clerk)  so  that 
all  the  wool  was  sold  as  of  one  grade,  and  that,  too, 
of  a  low  class.  The  New  England  dealers  and  manu- 
facturers had  steadily  monopolized  the  market  by 
this  practice  of  rating  American  wool  in  but  one  low 
class  or  grade.  John  Brown  broke  it  up,  but  his 
opponents  broke  him  up  also.  He  afterwards  en- 
tered suit  against  the  buyers,  won  the  New  York 
case  and  lost  the  one  conducted  in  Boston,  because 
of  compromise  made  without  his  authority,  as  he 
claimed,  by  his  lawyers.  His  New  York  lawyers  tes- 
tified after  he  became  famous  alike,  to  the  transpa- 
rently honest  character  of  his  business  advice  and 
action  and  to  the  earnestness  also  with  which  he 
watched  the  progress  of  the  fugitive  slave  agitation, 
then  at  its  height.  In  1854  he  was  only  prevented  by 
threat  of  throwing  up  his  case  on  the  lawyers'  part, 
at  a  critical  moment  therein  of  carrying  out  his  desire 
to  leave  Utica  for  Boston  to  participate  in  the 
Anthony  Burns  rescue  excitement.  The  Kansas  and 
Nebraska  struggle  went  on,  and  closed  not  until  John 
Brown  was  long  dead.  But,  "  His  soul  went  march- 
ing on."  At  the  head  of  battling  armies,  in  the  up- 
roar of  hilarious  camps,  amid  the  solemn  savagery  of 
the  battle  shock,  flaming  with  its  mighty  "  Halle- 
lujah Chorus  "  through  all  the  thundering  octaves  of 


38  JOHN    BROWN. 

embattled  conflict.  It  was  the  sign  of  human  devo- 
tion, the  unbridled  recognition  of  courage  blent  and 
blending  with  lofty  conviction.  It  was  the  song  of 
praise  fiercely  tinged  with  that  of  the  fighter,  as  when 
Jeff.  Davis  and  the  "  sour  apple  tree  "  were  brought 
figuratively  into  juxtaposition.  It  was  the  anthem 
of  reverence,  the  choral  shout  of  defiance,  the  jubilee 
of  victory.     John  Brown's  work  was  still  a-doing. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE. 

Slavery  under  arms— Freedom  arousing — Slow  advance 
and  savage  persecution — John  Brown  s  friends  and 
foes — delations  of  the  hero  to  the  conflict — Recruits 
who  came;  confidants  who  sustained — What  is  said — 
Service  without  murmtcr  made  or  plaudits  gained. 

John  Brown  was  not  old  as  the  years  go.  He 
should  have  been  in  his  prime  on  entering  Kansas. 
But  repression  tells,  endurance  wears,  and  the  con- 
flicts of  the  soul  leave  scars  that  are  the  most  indel- 
ible. John  Brown,  who  had  never  been  young  with 
the  pride  of  May,  or  known  the  joyous  riot  of  June, 
was  older  than  his  fifty-five  years  when  called  to 
action  in  that  fateful  summer  of  1855.  He  knew  the 
summons  of  God  had  come  at  last,  and  he  was  ready. 
With  the  captain  were  his  sons,  John,  Jason,  Owen, 
Frederick,  Oliver,  Salmon,  Watson,  his  son-in-law, 
Henry  Thompson,  and  his  brothers-in-law,  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Adair,  who  is  still  living  at  Osawatomie,  Kansas, 
and  Mr.  Orson  Day,  his  wife's  brother  ;  Ruth,  his 
eldest  daughter,  Wealthy  and  Ellen,  the  wives  of  John, 
Jr.,  and  Jason,  with  children — one  having  died  while 
these  emigrants  were  passing  through  Missouri.  At 
first  they  were  refused  permission   to  bury  the  little 


40  JOHN    BROWN. 

body  there,  and  finally  had  to  bring  it  on  to  Kansas. 
These  eight  fighting  men  were  a  host  in  themselves. 
To  their  camp  came  James  H.  Holmes,  a  well-edu- 
cated New  Yorker,  fresh  from  college;  August  Bondi, 
European  engineer  and  soldier;  Charley  Kaiser,  one 
also  of  the  brothers  of  Susan  B.  Anthony  (there  were 
two  in  Kansas);  the  Partridge  boys,  John  Bowles 
and  his  brother  William  ;  Dr.  Updegraft,  John 
Ritchie,  H.  H.  Williams,  and  a  few  others.  Augustus 
Wattles,  O.  B.  Brown,  the  founder  of  Osawatomie, 
James  Hanway,  E.  B.  Whitman,  James  Montgomery, 
with  one  or  two  more  comprised  nearly  all  who,  after 
that  first  year,  became  identified  with  John  Brown. 
Some  of  them  were  advisers,  not  fighters.  All  the 
earnest  men  on  the  free-state  side, — that  is,  those  who 
were  not  temporizing  for  real-estate  deals,  political 
advancement,  or  color-hating  propensities, — held  John 
Brown  in  the  sincerest  respect.  So  far,  however,  as 
possessing  his  confidence  as  to  ultimate  designs,  after 
all  these  intervening  years  of  research,  I  fail  to  learn 
of  more  than  four  or  five  persons,  except  those  who 
went  out  with  him  from  Kansas  to  Iowa,  and  finally 
as  to  the  most  of  them,  to  Virginia  itself.  William  A. 
Phillips,  besides  myself,  is  the  only  one  of  the  Kansas 
men  who  has  presented  a  connected  account  of  any 
such  knowledge.  Most  of  the  regular  Northern  cor- 
respondents who  were  present  in  the  Kansas  fighting 
years — as  Phillips,  of  the  New  York  Tribune;  Red- 
path,  of  the  Missouri  Democrat;  Wm.  Hutchinson, 
S.  F.  Tappan,  and  Mr.  Winchell,  of  the  New  York 
Times;  John  Henri  Kagi,  of  the  New  York  Post; 
Hugh  Young,  of  the  New  York  Tribune  and  Pennsyl- 
vania papers;  Anderson,  of  the  Boston  Advertiser,  and 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  41 

tnyself  of  the  Boston  Traveller  and  Chicago  Tribune, 
with  a  score  of  others  who  alternated  letter-writing 
with  farm-making  or  town-building,  and  some  fight- 
ing when  that  was  required, — were  earnest  supporters 
of  John  Brown.  Most  of  us  believed  in  striking 
back  on  Missouri  and  slavery,  and  we  wrote  and 
fought  on  those  lines.  But  we  knew  nothing  till  1857 
or  1858  of  the  reserved  Alleghany  campaign  or  of 
Harper's  Ferry  attacks.  James  Redpath  affirmed 
that  he  went  to  Kansas,  hoping  to  foment  slave  insur- 
rections.1 That,  as  stated,  was  probably  an  after- 
thought, but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he,  like  John 
Brown,  fully  believed  that  American  slavery  would 
go  down  amid  a  sea  of  blood.  Perhaps  I  was  the 
only  other  correspondent  of  that  date  who  openly 
announced  his  adhesion  to  the  task  of  fighting  slav- 
ery with  every  weapon  obtainable.  There  is  no 
accessible  evidence  that  others  went  to  Kansas  with 
any  such  opinions  already  formed.  What  they 
accepted  as  the  coin  of  that  bloody  mintage  is 
another  matter.  Deliberate  misrepresentation  from 
men  animated  by  disappointed  ambition  has  been  so 
gross  that  it  is  essential  to  say  these  things  in  order 
to  comprehend  some  of  the  forces  that  were  affecting- 
John  Brown's  career.  The  Northern  correspondents 
who  have  assailed  or  criticised  us  were  merely  "  birds 
of  passage,"  who  took  what  was  told  them  as  gospel, 
or  came  later,  like  Albert  D.  Richardson  or  Edmund 
Babb.  Professor  Spring  or  David  N.  Utter  belong 
to  the  later  and  second-hand  regime.  The  men 
in  the  breach  never  assailed  John  Brown. 


1   The  Roving  Editor.     New  York  City.     1858. 


42  JOHN    BROWN. 

No  one,  who  knows  the  history  and  internal  affairs 
of  Kansas  from  1854  down  to  1866,  can  have  the 
slightest  doubt  as  to  the  motives  that  animate 
Charles  Robinson.  The  people  of  Kansas  after  elect- 
ing him  Governor,  have  never  been  moved  to  intrust 
him  with  any  other  elective  office.  His  rival  in  their 
regard,  the  late  General  James  H.  Lane,  once  secured 
the  coveted  prize  of  a  United  States  Senatorship,  and, 
with  all  the  faults  acknowledged  as  making  part  of 
his  character,  his  memory  as  their  dead  servant  is 
more  fragrant  than  the  living  aroma  that  identifies 
Mr.  Robinson.  The  same  galled  pride  of  place  which 
aroused  hostility  to  Lane  also  animates  the  attacks 
on  Captain  John  Brown's  name  and  memory.  Mr. 
Eli  Thayer,  of  Massachusetts,  is  "  tarred  with  the 
same  stick,"  in  that  he  realizes  that  his  emigrant  aid 
organization  has  not  given  him  that  high  rank  in 
current  history  which  his  own  conception  of  its 
merits  and  of  its  author's  ability,  would  have  required. 
It  is  hardly  worth  while  to  refer  to  other  writers  who 
have  attempted  to  whitewash  and  rehabilitate  border- 
ruffian  leaders  and  pro-slavery  chiefs  by  minimizing 
the  character  or  services  of  nearly  all  the  active 
Kansas  men  of  the  free-state  and  war  period  who 
did  not  happen  to  belong  to  the  personal  entourage 
of  the  ex-Governor.  Historical  accuracy  is  illustrated 
by  the  manner  in  which  they  sneer  at  and  have 
sought  to  belittle  men  who,  if  not  always  acting  as 
God's  children  should  do,  were  always,  during  those 
ten  stern  years  of  savage  conflict,  on  God's  side. 
Charles  Robinson  said  in  1881,  on  retiring  from 
the  presidency  of  the  Kansas  Historical  Society  : 
"  The  time  for  writing  the  true  history  of  Kansas  has 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  43 

not  yet  arrived,  and  will  not  arrive  till  the  historian 
shall  be  so  far  removed  from  the  actors  and  passions 
of  the  hour  as  to  be  able  to  calmly  survey  the  whole 
field,  and  clearly  discern,  not  only  events,  but  causes 
and  effects  as  well." 

It  is  a  pity  that  the  ex-Governor  should  have  for- 
gotten his  own  admirable  maxim,  and  left  thereby  a 
blot  on  the  fame  of  Kansas  by  the  book  which  he  has 
recently  had  published. 

Before  John  Brown  reached  Kansas,  the  slavocrats 
had  twice  invaded  the  Territory  in  force,  men  had  been 
slain  for  opinion's  sake,  and  a  code  of  infamous 
enactments,  which  made  it  a  penal  offense  to  think  of 
freedom,  or  to  speak,  write,  or  act  in  its  behalf;  which 
dictated  ball  and  chain  with  hard  labor  for  teaching 
negroes  to  read,  or  to  print  anything  against  slavery, 
had  been  forced  by  arms  upon  the  people.  Shortly 
after  his  arrival  other  free-state  men  were  slain, 
cabins  were  burned,  stock  stolen,  towns  raided,  courts 
packed  and  used  for  oppression,  armed  forces  weie 
raised  in  the  South.  Missouri,  as  a  State,  and  by  its 
citizens  individually,  was  invading  the  Territory,  and 
highways  of  travel,  such  as  the  Missouri  river,  were 
impeded.  The  mails  were  robbed,  and  people  left  the 
Territory  in  dread  of  murder.  And  at  the  beginning, 
not  over  one  in  six  of  the  free-state  settlers  owned 
weapons,  while  all  the  pro-slavery  people,  whether 
settlers  or  invaders,  came  armed  to  the  teeth.  A  great 
pro-slavery  organization  flourished,  and  secret  societies 
were  active  in  carrying  out  the  designs  of  nullifiers 
and  secessionists.  The  army  of  the  United  States 
was  as  openly  used  as  the  courts  to  suppress  free- 
State  resistance.     If  its  officers  were  better  than  their 


44  JOHN    BROWN. 

instructions,  which  was  not  always  the  case,  it  was  due 
to  the  decencies  inculcated  by  their  professional 
training  rather  than  by  their  honor  as  servants 
of  a  democratic  commonwealth.  Violence  on  be- 
half of  slavery  was  found  on  every  side.  Resist- 
ance, slowly  rising,  became  a  natural  consequence. 
John  Brown's  brain  had  forecast  these  condi- 
tions, and  required  him  to  utilize  the  results  there- 
of. Other  men  talked  revolution,  but  they  trem- 
bled at  deeds.  It  is  beyond  question  that  all  the 
hours  of  the  Kansas  struggle  were  as  replete  with 
intended  treason  on  the  part  of  the  pro-slavery 
leaders,  as  that  its  latter  days  saw  the  growth  of 
fighters  for  freedom  who  realized  fully  that  the  exist- 
ence of  slavery  was  a  perpetual  menace  to  the  Repub- 
lic, and  who  were  unwilling  to  accept  as  duty  the  dicta 
which  would  make  them  serve  slavery  or  imperil  the 
Union.  Charles  Robinson  understood  this  as  well  as 
John  Brown  when  he  told  William  A.  Phillips,  on  his 
leaving  Kansas  in  the  second  week  of  May,  1856,  that 
he  designed  going  to  the  governors  of  the  Northern 
States,  and  urging  upon  them  the  necessity  of  imme- 
diate oreanization  for  armed  resistance  to  the  South 
and  its  aggressions.  The  conservative  newspaper 
man  combated  the  free-state  leader's  idea,  but  to  no 
avail.  The  latter  went,  was  made  prisoner  at  Kansas 
City,  brought  back  to  Lecompton,  and  released 
through  the  fighting  men.  He  now  lives  in  his  old 
age  to  deride  John  Brown  and  intimate  that  Phillips 
was  too  radical  in  1 856.1 


1  "  There  was  only  one   proposal,"  wrote  Col.  Win.  A.  Phillips, 
that  ever  came  to  my  knowledge   that  even  looked   like  revolti- 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  45 

John  Brown's  first  appearance  at  Lawrence  made 
him  at  once  a  conspicuous  figure.  Free-state  confi- 
dence was  not  lessened  by  the  defeat  of  Henry  Clay 
Pate,  of  Black  Jack,  or  by  the  fear  which,  after  the 
Pottawatomie  slaying,  dwelt  in  every  border-ruffian 
camp,  and' at  the  threshold  of  all  their  strongholds. 
Osawatomie  was  a  dear  victory  for  the  invaders. 
The  forty-live  free-state  men  against  four  hundred 
ruffians  could  not  be  expected  to  do  the  impossible, 
though  they  showed  that  they  tried  to,  in  the  slaying 
and  wounding:  of  as  manv  of  their  assailants  as  them- 
selves  numbered.  John  Brown  showed  no  insubor- 
dination or  ambition  in  sinking  his  identity  at  the 
Washington  Creek  and  the  Titus  Camp  affairs, 
neither  did  he  at  the  last  defense  of  Lawrence  on  the 
15th  of  September,  1856,  unless  the  caustic  contempt 


tion  in  the  country.  I  believed  it  then,  as  I  have  believed  it  ever, 
to  be  a  mere  crotchet  in  one  man's  brain,  and  one,  too,  in  which 
he  was  not  sincere.  That  man  was  Charles  Robinson.  You  per- 
haps remember  just  before  the  sack  of  Lawrence  by  the  border 
ruffians  (May,  1S56)  that  Robinson  started  East.  I  for  one  could 
not  understand  why  he  should  want  to  leave  at  such  a  time,  and 
urged  him  strenuously  to  stay,  and  when  pressed  for  a  reason  for 
his  departure,  he  told  me  he  saw  the  whole  country  was  going  to 
be  involved  in  civil  war,  and  that  he  was  going  to  the  free  States  to 
arouse  the  governors  and  the  people  of  them  to  arm,  so  that  when 
an  army  came  on  us,  another  could  strike  our  enemies  elsewhere, 
if  necessary  at  Washington.  ...  I  spent  some  time  urging 
on  him  that  the  difficulties  never  need,  or  ought,  to  occupy  such 
proportions.  .  .  .  When  he  left,  I  for  the  first  time  began  to 
lose  confidence  in  the  man,  and  thought  then,  as  I  do  now,  that  all 
the  story  about  going  to  the  free  States  was  a  mere  pretense  to 
get  away  from  the  danger."  [Extract  from  letter  of  Win.  A. 
Phillips  to  James  Redpath,  from  Lawrence,  Kansas,  dated  Feb. 
24,  iS6o,  and  published  in  the  New  York  Herald,  April  20,  i860.] 


46  JOHN     BROWN. 

expressed  for  mere  words  by  the  remark  that  I  re- 
ported at  the  time  of  "great  cry  and  little  wool;  all 
talk  and  no  cider,"  made  as  he  left  a  council  where 
no  one  agreed  to  aid  in  organizing  on  the  street  that 
resistance  to  the  Missouri  invaders  which  the  people 
of  Lawrence  were  expecting,  can  be  so  considered. 
It  has  not  been  my  intention  to  place  recollections  of 
my  own  at  the  fore,  but  rather  to  use  them  as  only  in- 
spiring and  connecting  this  narrative.  But  as  I  was 
a  part  of  the  conflict  under  consideration,  and  others 
are  busy  in  derogation  of  those  who,  having  passed 
beyond,  are  unable  to  correct  misrepresentations,  I 
may  surely  be  pardoned  if  some  things  are  said  upon 
my  personal  knowledge  : 

I  was  in  Lawrence  on  the  15th  of  September,  1856, 
and  ready  to  do  my  share  of  its  defense.  During  the 
forenoon  we  heard  of  the  border-ruffian  advance  to- 
wards Franklin,  six  miles  south  of  the  little  town.  Of 
course,  it  was  known  also  that  the  free-state  "  lead- 
ers," among  whom  John  Brown  never  counted  him- 
self, were  sending  frantic  messages  to  Governor 
Geary,  then  at  Lecompton,  eleven  miles  distant. 
That  functionary  had  announced  his  determination 
to  stop  the  fighting  and  protect  the  people.  He  ful- 
filled the  former  by  arresting  Colonel  Harvey  and  a 
free-state  force  under  his  command  on  its  return 
from  Hickory  Point,  a  border-ruffian  camp  north  of 
the  Kaw  river  and  west  of  Atchison.  But  the  latter 
he  almost  failed  to  do,  as  it  took  him  all  day  to  reach 
Lawrence  and  the  Missourians  under  Reid  (the  com- 
ander  in  the  attack  on  Osawatomie,  August  30)  had 
already  burned  the  cabins  of  free-state  men,  run  off 
their   stock,  and    murdered   one  of  them,  Mr.  David 


THE    KANSAS    OVEPTURE.  47 

Buffum,  an  unarmed  cripple,  who  lived  within  eight 
miles  of  Lecompton  and  who  was  slain  during  the 
afternoon,  almost  in  sight  of  Geary's  slow-moving 
escort.  The  Governor  had  ten  hours  in  which  to 
have  reached  Lawrence.  Certainly,  that  gallant 
Union  soldier  would  never  after  have  achieved  his 
deserved  reputation  as  a  fighter  and  commander  if 
he  had  shown  no  more  alacrity  than  in  serving  Law- 
rence at  the  rate  of  one  mile  per  hour  on  the  15th  of 
September,  1856.  At  that  date,  I  was  the  only  cor- 
respondent in  the  town.  By  that,  I  mean  the  only 
one  who  was  following  that  line  of  work  exclusively. 
The  night  before  I  returned  from  Topeka  where  I  had 
been  sent  by  Colonel  Harvey,  on  whose  staff  as  a 
free-state  commander  I  was  serving.  My  detail  had. 
reference  to  warning  Colonel  Whipple  (Aaron  D. 
Stevens),  who  had  moved  northward  with  a  small 
command  to  meet  an  incoming  body  of  Northern 
men,  of  the  Federal  Governor's  avowed  intentions  to 
arrest  these  emigrants.  On  my  return  I  heard  of 
Captain  Brown,  whom  I  had  already  twice  met, 
being  in  the  neighborhood  of  Lawrence,  and  by 
request  of  Charles  Robinson,  in  conference  with  him- 
self and  others  of  the  civil  leaders.  General  Lane 
had  already  left  for  Nebraska  to  avoid  complications 
with  Geary  and  the  Federal  authority,  and  it  was 
understood  that  John  Brown  would  also  "  disappear." 
John,  Jr.,  and  Jason,  his  elder  sons,  who  had  been 
held  prisoners  by  the  United  States  troops,  were  in 
Lawrence  with  G.  W.  Brown,  G.  W.  Deitzler,  Judge 
Smith,  Gaius  Jenkins,  and  Charles  Robinson,  who  had 
been  hurriedly  discharged  by  Judge  Cato,  after 
General  Lane  and  the  free-state  force  had  "  demon- 


48  JOHN     BROWN. 

strated  "  a  few  days  before  in  front  of  Lecompton. 
The  recollection  is  very  distinct  to  me  of  the  pro- 
ceedings of  September  15th.  But  I  am  not  left  to 
my  memory,  however,  for  there  lies  before  me  as  I 
write,  my  Boston  Traveller  letters  of  that  date  and 
the  16th,  written  on  the  spot,  and  also  the  journal  I 
kept  in  those  days  of  youthful  enthusiasm.  Besides 
these  authorities,  I  am  strengthened  by  the  recollec- 
tions of  Col.  John  Bowles,  now  resident  in  New  York 
City,  and  then  a  young,  talented,  and  devoted 
free-state  man,  whose  brother  William  was  a  victim 
of  the  poor  fare,  bad  treatment,  and  imprisonment  of 
Harvey's  command,  held  as  prisoners  by  Geary  for 
several  months.  The  elder  brother  died  at  Lecomp- 
ton; both  were  Kentuckians  and  slave-holders,  too, 
by  inheritance.  They  emancipated  their  slaves. 
John  Bowles  became  a  Union  soldier,  and,  like  myself, 
was  a  commissioned  officer  (lieutenant-colonel)  in  the 
first  body  of  colored  men  lawfully  enlisted  to  fight 
(1862)  for  the  Union.1  Colonel  Bowles  was  on  the 
street  with  his  rifle,  and  was  among  the  dozen  young 
men,  similarly  armed,  "  directed  "  by  Captain  Brown 
to  take  charge  of  the  stone  breastwork  on  Mount 
Oread,  the  right  of  our  position,  and  where  the  State 
University  now  stands.  John  Brown  appeared  on 
Massachusetts  street  about  one  o'clock.  I  walked 
with  him  (he  asked  me  for  the  place  of  meeting)  to  a 


1  The  First  Kansas  Colored  Vol.  Inf'y.  afterward  (1864)  the 
Seventy-Ninth  IT.  S.  C.  I.  James  M.  Williams,  Colonel;  John 
Bowles,  Lieutenant-Colonel;  Richard  Ward,  Major;  Adjutant, 
Richard  J.  Hinton.  First  enlistment,  August  6,  1862  First 
appointment  to  recruit  colored  men,  to  Lieutenant  Hinton, 
August  4th. 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  49 

large  stone  building  on  the  corner  of  Winthrop  street, 
and  just  opposite  the  ruins  of  the  Eldridge  or  Free- 
State  Hotel.  In  this  building  were  assembled  a 
number  of  "leading  "  citizens  of  the  town,  engaged 
in  talking  about  the  "  situation."  I  stood  by  Captain 
Brown's  side  as  he  listened,  briefly  and  impatiently, 
refusing  to  participate  in  the  "jackdaw  parliament," 
and  went  out  with  him  on  to  the  street  where  about 
three  hundred  men,  boys,  and  women  were  gathered, 
with  such  arms  as  they  possessed.  Among  them  were 
a  portion  of  the  "  Stubbs,"  under,  I  think,  a  Captain 
Cracklin,  who  now  hastens  to  declare  that  John  Brown 
had  no  "  command  "  and  did  nothing.  Among  the 
talking  counselors  I  recall  Mr.  James  Blood,  who,  in 
1884,  twenty-eight  years  after,  and  when  Captain 
Brown  had  been  dead  a  quarter  of  a  century,  went  into 
cold  type  to  argue  that  the  old  fighter  was  an  unneces- 
sary slayer  of  men  or  a  monomaniac.  I  recall  him  lis- 
tening, also  with  G.  W.  Brown  and  others,  who  have 
since  assailed  John  Brown's  memory,  with  muskets  or 
long  rifles  in  their  hands,  as  the  Captain  mounted  a 
dry-goods  box  and  addressed  the  excited  people.  I 
reported  that  speech,  and  I  find  it  printed  in  my  old 
newspaper  letter.1 


1  Gentlemen — It  is  said  there  are  twenty-five  hundred  Missour- 
ians  down  at  Franklin,  and  that  they  will  be  here  in  two  hours. 
You  can  see  for  yourselves  the  smoke  they  are  making  by  setting 
fire  to  the  houses  in  that  town.  This  is  probably  the  last  oppor- 
tunity 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 

4 


cjo  JOHN    BROWN. 

Most  of  us  took  position  in  one  or  the  other  of  the 
two  circular  earthworks  that  had  been  made  under 
General  Lane's  directions  the  winter  before.  Major 
Abbott  was  supposed  to  be  in  general  command  and 
doubtless  consulted  freely  with  Captain  Brown.  Cap- 
tain Sam  Walker  was  out,  I  find  by  my  notes,  wTith  a 
small  mounted  force,  watching  Reid's  forces,  and  at 
the  same  time  looking  for  Geary's  approach.  The 
"  Stubbs,"  or  that  portion  of  a  company  who  were  in 
the  town  were  armed  with  Sharpe's  rifles  that  Amos 
A.  Lawrence,  of  Massachusetts,  had  purchased  early 
in  1855,  and  sent  by  Mr.  Abbott  to  Kansas  for  use  in 
fighting  the  Missourians.  Dr.  Samuel  Cabot,  of 
Boston,  about  the  same  time  paid  for  and  sent  through 
Mr.  G.  W.  Deitzler  (afterwards  Brigadier-General 
United  States  Volunteers),  one  hundred  Sharpe's 
rifles.  Frederick  Law  Olmstead,  of  New  York,  with 
the  aid  of  other  gentlemen,  sent  by  Major  Abbott, 
rifles,  revolvers,  and  one  twelve-pound  howitzer.  All 
of  these  arms  were  solicited  by  Robinson,  Blood, 
G.  W.  Brown,  and  others  now  attacking  the  memory  of 
Brown  and  Lane  for  revolutionary  action,  and  of  the 
leading  newspaper-writers  also,  as  advocating  retalia- 
tion on  Missouri  and  attacks  upon  Federal  authority 
and  the  Union.  These  arms  were  in  Kansas  two 
months  before  the  sons  of  Captain  Brown  settled 
there,  and  men  had  been  drilled  in   their  use  for  the 


of  powder  and  lead  and  very  precious  time  is  wasted  by  shooting 
too  high.  You  had  better  aim  at  their  legs  than  at  their  heads.  In 
either  case,  be  sure  of  the  hind  sight  of  your  gun.  It  is  for  this 
reason  that  I  myself  have  so  many  times  escaped,  for,  if  all  the 
bullets  which  have  ever  been  aimed  at  me  had  hit  me,  I  would 
have  been  as  full  of  holes  as  a  riddle. 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  5 1 

purpose  of  resisting  "  alleged  "  Federal  laws,  at  least 
three  or  four  months  in  advance  of  Captain  Brown's 
own  arrival  in  Kansas.  When  I  read  the  foolish  ac- 
cusations made  against  the  facts  of  history,  I  wonder 
that  intelligent  men  like  Charles  Robinson  can  forget 
so  easily  their  own  acts  and  commitments.  But,  to 
return  to  whether  John  Brown  aided  or  not  in  the 
defense  of  Lawrence.  The  Stubbsdetachmentmarched, 
by  his  suggestion,  to  an  advanced  point  on  the  ex- 
treme left  of  our  position  where  their  long-range  car- 
bines could  be  used  effectively  against  Reid's  ad- 
vance from  Franklin.  The  party  of  which  John 
Bowles  was  a  member  went  on  a  run  to  Mount  Oread, 
and  then  I  find  that  Captain  Brown  came  to  the  earth- 
work where  I  was  stationed.  J.  W.  Brown,  one  of 
his  persistent  defamers,  was  there  with  a  United  States 
musket  in  his  hand;  I  remember  two  or  three  women, 
also  armed,  with  others  who  were  running  bullets  at 
a  little  fire.  The  Captain  asked  in  a  loud  voice  if  any 
of  us  had  Sharpe's  rifles.  On  response  he  cried 
"Come  out,  quick."  We  never  had  an  order  or  re- 
quest from  any  one  else  but  John  Brown,  and  some 
ten  or  twelve  responded.  Others  came  from  the  street 
and  adjacent  works,  and  about  twenty-five  or  thirty 
so  armed — all  young  men,  as  far  as  I  now  recall, — 
marched  after  Captain  Brown  who  led  us  to  a  slight 
ridge  on  the  level  prairie  about  one-third  of  a  mile 
away.  There  we  were  aligned  and  ordered  by  him  to 
lie  down  behind  the  ridge  and  watch  the  advance  of  a 
party  of  about  three  hundred  horsemen  we  could  see 
coming  towards  us  from  the  Wakarusa.  We  lay  there, 
some  five  or  six  feet  apart,  while  John  Brown,  in  full 
sight  with  a  revolver  in  his  hand,  walked  slowly  up  and 


52  JOHN    BROWN. 

down  giving  us  directions  in  the  event  of  firing  being 
required.  We  heard  some  shots  from  Mount  Oread 
and  from  a  field  to  the  East  also  where  the  Stubbs 
where.  This  firing  confused  the  Missourians  of  whom 
some  were  wounded.  Then,  as  the  horsemen  were 
coming  within  our  range,  a  commotion  on  the  Cali- 
fornia Road,  indicated  the  arrival  of  Governor  Geary 
with  two  companies  of  United  States  dragoons,  under 
Lieut. -Col.  Phillip  St.  George  Cooke,  a  gallant  Vir- 
ginian, who  remained  faithful  in  after  years  to  his  flag 
and  country.  He  was  a  courtly  old  gentleman,  fair 
and  loyal,  and  I  owe  an  apology  to  his  name  for  some 
harsh  things  written  at  that  period.  I  think  Captain 
Sackett,  afterwards  Inspector-General  U.  S.  A.,  was  in 
command  of  one  of  the  squadrons.  At  the  sight  of 
the  "  regulars  "  coming  down  Reid's  advance  retreated, 
the  town  was  saved,  the  fight  did  not  come  off,  and 
John  Brown  "  disappeared,"  having  by  his  presence 
and  encouragement,  at  least,  prepared  the  way  for 
stubborn  defense.  He  always  said  he  did  not  "com- 
mand"; so  far  as  my  knowledge  goes,  no  one  else 
did.  I  remember  how  the  Governor  and  his  troops 
failed  to  prevent  the  sky  being  reddened  in  those  sun- 
down hours  with  fiercer  hues  than  even  a  prairie  sun- 
set brings,  for  the  Missourians  in  their  baffled  rage 
set  to  work  to  burn  every  free-state  cabin  and  build- 
ing in  sight.  Late  that  evening  I  was  ordered  to 
ride  with  a  message  of  warning  to  the  Captain, 
and  taking  the  prairie— the  road  not  being  very  safe 
for  travel — I  recall  most  vividly  stumbling  on  John 
Brown's  bivouac,  several  miles  west  of  Lawrence.  He 
had  left  immediately  on  Geary's  arrival,  disappear- 
ing as  suddenly  as  he  had  appeared  that  day.     With 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE. 


53 


him  were  John,  Jr.,  Jason,  Salmon,  and  Oliver,  if  I 
recall  aright.  They  had  a  small  wagon  and  one 
horse,  and  with  them  was  a  fugitive  slave,  whom  some 
of  us  kept  hidden  about  Lawrence  for  several  days 
before,  while  the  black-law  men  threatened  arrest 
and  return,  and  the  so-called  anti-slavery  leaders  were 
asserting  he  had  been  sent  into 
the  town  to  embroil  us  under 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  with  the 
Federal  authorities  direct.  I 
had  carried  him  out  of  the  town 
one  night,  before  my  first  Topeka 
detail,  and  left  him  at  a  settler's 
near  the  California  road,  where 
John  Brown's  party  found  and 
took  care  of  him.  He  made  his 
escape  to  Iowa.  This  episode  is 
something  of  a  digression,  I 
know,  but  its  telling  will  be 
borne  with,  as  it  illustrates  a 
condition  of  affairs  in  Kansas 
now  being  actively  denied  and 
derided.       To  resume,  however, 

during  the  spring  and  summer  of  1856,  the  pro- 
slavery  people  had  occupied  the  Missouri  River  route 
to  Kansas,  driving  back  during  April,  May,  and  June 
several  parties  of  Northern  emigrants.  There  were  on 
the  road  other  parties,  with  one  of  which  I  was  con- 
nected, and  it  was  decided  to  make  our  way  through 
Iowa  and  across  Nebraska,  entering  Kansas  on  the 
north,  and,  if  necessary,  fight  our  way  through  to  the 
Kaw  river.  General  Lane  and  other  free-state  lead- 
ers, who  had  escaped  the  general  assault  by  Missouri 


OLIVER   BROWN. 


tj4  JOHN    BROWN. 

border  ruffians  and  the  Buford  contingent  from  other 
slave  States,  were  raising  emigrants  in  the  Northern 
States.  During  the  last  week  of  July  and  the  first 
days  of  August,  1856,  about  twelve  hundred  men  were 
encamped  on  Camp  Creek,  a  few  miles  from  Nebraska 
City,  Nebraska,  near  the  preemption  claim,  then  oc- 
cupied by  the  father  and  sister  of  John  Henri  Kagi, 
afterwards  Brown's  chief  confidant  and  assistant. 

The  dispersal  of  the  Topeka  Legislature  occurred 
on  the  4th  of  July.  Captain  Brown,  whose  limited 
means  were  nearly  exhausted,  decided  to  take  his 
severely  wounded  son-in-law,  Henry  Thompson,  and 
the  two  crippled  and  hurt  sons,  Owen  and  Salmon — 
all  of  them  injured  at  the  Black  Jack  engagement  on 
the  2d  of  June — to  western  Iowa,  and  then  return  him- 
self to  the  field  of  action.  The  organized  free-state 
men  set  about  "  blazing  "  a  road  from  the  Kaw  River 
at  Topeka  to  the  Nebraska  line  due  north,  near 
where  Falls  City  now  stands.  Aaron  D.  Stevens, 
then  known  as  "Colonel  Whipple,"  and  as  command- 
er of  the  second  or  Topeka  free-state  regiment,  was 
engaged  on  this  work.  It  was  an  absolute  necessity 
to  open  the  same.  The  chief  free-state  settlements 
of  Kansas  were  then  cut  off  and  practically  sur- 
rounded. They  could  only  be  succored  by  the  bold 
flanking  movement,  which,  with  insufficent  commis- 
sariat and  a  very  inadequate  ordnance,  gathered  its 
recruits,  mostly  young,  from  Massachusetts  and  New 
York  to  Wisconsin  and  Iowa,  to  rescue  the  free-state 
people.  After  leaving  Iowa  City,  the  last  railroad 
station  to  the  West,  we  marched  nearly  six  hundred 
miles  to  Lawrence.  The  armed  pro-slavery  forces  held 
the  eastern  line  of  Kansas  through  slave  Missouri,  and 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  55 

had  flanked  and  surrounded  the  free-state   communi- 
ties from  the  Missouri   border  at  the  south  and  just 
below  Osawatomie,   to   Atchison   on   the    north    and 
upon   the    Missouri    river.       In   the    huge    semicircle 
thus  indicated,  the  towns  of  Osawatomie,  Lawrence, 
Leavenworth,  and  Topeka,    with    the    raw  farms  or 
settlements  about  them,  were  all  embraced.     Within 
this  arc    were  also   the  border-ruffian    settlements   of 
Franklin,    Paola,     Lecompton,    Indianola,     Osawkee, 
Hickory    Point,  and   Kickapoo,  while    Leavenworth, 
though  near  by  them,  had  had   a  strong  minority  of 
free-state   men.     The  line  thus  indicated,  was  almost 
completed  and  held  by  fortified  camps  occupied  by 
Buford's    Alabamians    and    Georgians  ;    Atchison's, 
Stringfellow's,  and   Reid's  Missourians.       Lane    had 
practically  planned  the  overland  march,  and  pressed 
it  upon  the  National  Kansas  Committee,  at  Chicago. 
The    Massachusetts    Committee,    of    which     Stearns, 
Higginson,     Cabot,     Russel,     Howe,     and     Sanborn 
(afterwards   John   Brown's   friends)    were    the    more 
active   members,  aided   the   Chicago  movement,  and 
somehow    the    men    got  through.     The  company  of 
which  I,  a  young  printer  and  reporter,  was  a  member, 
raised  principally  in    Boston  and  Worcester  County, 
was  armed  with  Sharpe's  rifles.      My  own  weapons 
were  given  to  me  by  Theodore  Parker  and  Dr.  Henry 
Channing.     The  Massachusetts  Committee  furnished 
transportation  and  arms,  and  we  all  signed   a  pledge 
to    become    bona-fide   settlers   in    Kansas.     Thaddeus 
Hyatt,  president   of  the  National  Kansas  Committee, 
bought  and  presented  each  of  us  with  an  Allen  re- 
volver on  our  arrival  in  New  York,  and  I  took  charge 
of    fifteen    hundred    Springfield    muskets.       At  Iowa 


56  JOHN    BROWN. 

City,  1,500  United  States  guns  were  taken  from  the 
State  arsenal,  the  key  of  which  was  conveniently  left 
accessible  to  my  hands  on  Governor  (afterwards  Sen- 
ator) Grimes's  desk.  Arms  were  also  obtained  for 
Lane's  men  from  an  arsenal  at  Ottawa,  Illinois. 
Several  hundred  Sharpe's  rifles  and  Colt's  revolvers 
were  taken  from  Massachusetts  and  other  emigrants 
at  Lexington,  Missouri,  which  were  replevined  next 
year  by  those  who  held  the  evidence  of  ownership. 
These  weapons  were  distributed  to  free-state  men 
enrolled  in  1857,  for  the  purpose  of  resisting  the 
Lecompton  Constitution  movement.  Other  arms, 
including  400  Hall's  rifles,  made  at  the  works  where 
Kagi,  Leeman,  and  Leary  were  killed  two  years  later, 
were  subsequently  brought  in.  There  were  also  two 
or  three  12-pound  guns,  which  subsequently  helped 
to  make  the  first  battery  served  in  the  War  for  the 
Union  by  Kansas  Volunteers.  At  the  Nebraska 
camps  many  persons,  then,  or  subsequently,  of  some 
historical  note,  were  assembled  during  1856.  Besides 
Gen.  J.  H.  Lane,  Edmund  Ross,  afterwards  United 
States  Senator  from  Kansas  and  then  Governor  of 
New  Mexico,  was  in  charge  of  a  Wisconsin  party. 

A  young-man  of  the  name  of  La  Grange,  who  sub- 
sequently as  colonel  of  the  First  Wisconsin  Cavalry 
assisted  in  the  capture  of  Jefferson  Davis,  was  also  at 
Camp  Creek.  To  it,  while  we  were  there,  came  as 
inspecting  visitors,  Thaddeus  Hyatt,  of  New  York, 
a  famous  inventor;  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe,  of  Boston, 
and  Horace  White,  then  of  Chicago,  and  now  one  of 
the  editors  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post.  Among 
others  present  then  or  shortly  after  was  Edward 
Daniel,  a  distinguished  geologist  and  afterwards  the 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  57 

first  commander  of  the  First  Wisconsin  Cavalry; 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  preacher,  agitator, 
fighter,  soldier,  poet,  and  author;  James  Redpath, 
journalist  and  editor,  and  S.  C.  Pomeroy,  subsequently 
United  States  Senator  from  Kansas.  These  are  only 
a  few  of  the  names  that  memory  recalls.  During 
that  last  week  in  July,  James  H.  Lane,  disguised  as  Mr. 
"  Joe  "  Cook,  with  Capt.  John  Brown,  who  was  known 
as  "  Isaac  Smith,"  under  Sam  Walker's  escort  went 
southward.  Lane  was  furnished  with  means,  and 
aided  to  enter  Kansas  only  upon  the  understanding 
with  the  National  Committeemen  that  he  would 
avoid  any  collision  with  Federal  authority,  officials,  or 
troops,  pledging  himself,  as  he  subsequently  did,  to 
leave  Kansas  whenever  seriously  threatened  with 
arrest.  This  is  a  fact  that  I  state  upon  personal 
knowledge.  It  was  well  understood  that  there  was 
danger  in  Lane's  immediate  command,  several  hun- 
dred in  number,  breaking  up  for  want  of  means. 
Lane  himself  was  under  indictment  for  "  constructive 
treason."  The  National  Kansas  Committeemen  then 
in  our  camp  held  the  point  of  vantage  which  this  fact 
insured.  For  the  sake  of  national  peace,  then  seri- 
ously endangered  by  the  necessity  of  breaking  up  the 
pro-slavery  forces,  it  was  well  to  agree. 

It  is  part  of  the  verities  in  relation  to  Kansas  and 
John  Brown  to  say  at  this  point  that  whoever  planned 
the  summer  campaign  of  1856,  breaking  up  the 
pro-slavery  encampments  at  Franklin,  Washington 
Creek,  the  Titus  Camp  near  Lecompton,  Hickory 
Point,  Osavvkee,  and  Indianola,  and  compelling  the 
subservient  pro-Southern  administration  of  Franklin 
Pierce    to  send  to    Kansas    a  Northern  Democrat  as 


tj8  JOHN     BROWN. 

Governor,  who  would  and  did  endeavor  vigorously 
to  somewhat  impartially  keep  the  peace,  it  was  not 
the  free-state  "  treason  "  prisoners  held  by  the  United 
States  troops  at  their  camp  adjoining  Lecompton. 
Their  release  was  a  part  of  the  campaign,  sedulously 
forced  to  that  point  by  General  Lane,  who  retired  as 
he  came,  with  a  small  escort  when  this  work  was 
accomplished.  Sifting  the  testimony  at  this  late 
date,  as  thoroughly  as  I  am  able,  it  appears  that 
Lane  was  the  prime  organizer,  as  he  certainly  was  the 
chief  leader  in  that  nine  or  ten  weeks  of  marvelous 
activity,  which  saw  a  sufficient  force  of  earnest  men 
gathered,  armed,  and  marched  into  Kansas  from  all 
parts  of  the  North,  and  a  carefully  planned  conspir- 
acy of  aggression,  backed  by  Federal  acquiescence 
and  official  power,  beaten,  overthrown,  stamped  out, 
and  practically  driven  away.  The  attacks  on  Osa- 
watomie  and  Lawrence  when  Lane  was  retiring, 
though  severe,  were  but  flickerings  of  the  fires  he  and 
his  coadjutors  had  scattered,  without  any  more  aid 
than  words  from  the  gentlemen  held  as  prisoners  at 
Lecompton,  on  charges  of  "constructive  treason," 
usurpation  of  office,  etc.1 


'In  May,  1856,  Chief  Justice  Lecompte,  sitting  in  the  United 
States  Court  at  Lecompton,  charged  a  Federal  Grand  Jury  as 
follows  : 

"  This  Territory  was  organized  by  an  Act  of  Congress.     .     . 
It  has  a  Legislature  in  pursuance  of  that  organic  act,"  and,  "  being 
an   instrument   of   Congress  it  has  passed  laics.     These 

la7vs,  therefore,  are  of  United  States  authority  and  making,  and  all 
that  resist  these  laws  resist  the  power  and  authority  of  the  United 
States,  and  are  therefore  guilty  of  high  treason."  Further  on  he 
declared  that  for  all  combinations  to  resist,  and  all  aiding  in  them, 
the  Grand  Jury  must  "  find bills  for  constructive  treason"     Upon 


THE    KANSAS    OVERTURE.  59 

On  his  way  out  of  Kansas,  during  the  last  two 
weeks  of  September,  1856,  John  Brown  traveled  part 
>f  the  road  with  deputy  United  States  marshals  and 
troops  sent  to  arrest  him,  as  well  as  to  intercept  the 
second  body  of  Northern  emigrants,  whom  the  Mis- 
souri ruffians'  seizure  of  the  river  route  had  compelled 
to  march  overland  in  Iowa  from  the  Mississippi.  The 
irresting  parties  had  no  idea  that  this  sickly  old  man 
writh  his  sons,  also  sick,  could  be  the  formidable  par- 
lisan  leader  they  all  dreaded.  Colonel  Whipple 
JAaron  D.  Stevens)  was  moving  northward  also  with 
an  armed  free-state  party,  on  parallel  lines,  but  avoid- 
ing observation  from  the  Federal  force.  Captain 
Brown  was  in  Nebraska  before  the  beaten  deputies 
learned  of  his  escape.  He  was  in  the  Iowa  and  Ne- 
braska camps  of  the  Northern  train  commanded  by 
Col.  Shaler  Eldridge,  S.  C.  Pomeroy,  Samuel  F. 
Tappan,  Parsons,  James  Redpath,  and  others.  The 
Iowa  muskets,  under  charge  of  Pardee  Butler,  a  North- 
ern preacher  who  had  been  run  out  of  Kansas  by  bor- 
der ruffians  at  Atchison,  had  already  got  through  in 
safety.  It  fell  to  my  lot  to  meet  and  convoy  Butler 
to  Topeka.  Governor  Geary's  policy  at  that  date  was 
to  save  the  Democratic  party,  and  bring  about  the 
election  of  James  Buchanan.  By  worrying  the 
free-state  movements,  and  by  the  aid  of  coffee-pot 
colored  election   returns  of  Pennsylvania,  that  party 


this  charge  that  Grand  Jury  did  with  the  Judge  revive  Jeffrey's 
doctrine,  and  brought  in  a  number  of  indictments  against  individu- 
als, including  Charles  Robinson,  and  also  bills  against  the  free- 
^tate  hotel  and  printing-offices  in  the  town  of  Lawrence,  which  a 
few  days  later  were  destroyed.  [Sanborn's  "  Public  Life  of  John 
Brown,"  pp.  237.] 


60  JOHN     BROWN. 

was  successful  in  giving  incipient  rebellion  four  years 
more  in  which  to  prepare  for  an  outbreak.  Governor 
Grimes,  the  stalwart  Executive  of  Iowa,  waited  until 
after  the  Presidential  election,  and  then  in  the  late 
winter  notified  the  Governor  of  Missouri,  that  Iowa 
proposed  to  make  the  Missouri  river  "run  unvexed" 
to  its  junction  with  the  Mississippi,  unless  he  should 
call  off  the  ruffian  people  of  his  own  State  from  im- 
peding that  line  of  travel. 

There  were  several  things  to  do  in  western  Iowa  be- 
fore Captain  Brown  could  take  up  his  next  role.    His 
enfeebled  boys  had  to  be  cared  for.    Owen  and  Watson 
were  left  at  Tabor.    John  and  Jason  returned  to  Ohio, 
in  which  State  they  once  more  made  homes.     Oliver 
and  Salmon  Brown,  with  Henry  and  William  Thomp 
son,  accompanied  Captain  Brown  to  Chicago,  whence 
the  Thompsons   and    Oliver   went   at  once  to  North 
Elba.     Captain  Browm  remained  some  days  to  confer 
with  the  officers  of  the  National  Kansas  Aid  Commit 
tee,  whose  headquarters  were  in  that  city.     At  Tabor 
Iowa,   a   number  of  old   arms    and    equipments  ha 
been  left  by  the   Northern  train   under  Pomeroy  and 
Eldridge.      Captain    Brown    asked    for   and  was    re- 
fused  their   custody.     Later,   with   the   third   Mass 
chusetts  colony  under  Mr.  Parsons,  there  was  brough 
to  and   left  at  Tabor  200   Sharpe's   rifles,  etc.     Thes 
arms   afterwards   came  under  Captain   Brown's   con 
trol,  and  were  the   rifles  captured   by  Virginia  afte 
the  defeat  at  Harper's  Ferry. 

\[ote. — Since   this  chapter  was  written,  and  just  as  this  bool 
was  finished,  Charles  Robinson,  whose  career  and  criticisms  are 
animaverted  upon,  has  died.      If  time  had  permitted  the  tone,  n< 
the  facts,  might  have  been  modified. — R.  J.  H. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE. 

A  startling  deed — The  staying  of  Jive  men — Its  causes 
and  its  effects — Aggressions  of  the  slave-power — Pre- 
liminary  to  Kansas  outrages — A  conspiracy  against 
the  Nation — John  Browns  views  of  duty — The 
roads  to  Harper  s  Ferry — Who  the  slain  men  were — 
The  border  ruffians  appalled — How  the  critics  assail 
and  falsify — An  incident  at  Lawrence — Opinions  of 
contemporaries. 

During  the  night  of  May  24,  1856,  five  men — 
William  Sherman,  Allen  Wilkinson,  and  three  others, 
named  Doyle,  father  and  two  sons,  were  taken  after 
midnight  from  their  beds  by  armed  men,  wrho  said 
they  were  of  the  "  Northern  army."  They  were  made 
to  go  a  short  distance  from  their  cabins,  and  there 
slain  by  those  who  had  captured  them.  Their  bodies 
were  found  at  daylight,  the  skulls  having  been  split 
open,  evidently  by  a  heavy  broad  weapon  which 
pierced  at  once  to  the  brains  of  the  men.  Only  one 
shot  was  fired.  The  slayers  were  eight  in  number. 
One  was  an  elderly  man  who  was  directing,  though 
not  otherwise   personally  active.     The  only  descrip- 


62  JOHN     BROWN. 

tion  of  the  leader  of  the  "  Northern  "  band  is  given 
in  the  testimony  of  John  Doyle  and  Louisa  Jane  Wil- 
kinson, as  presented  in  a  report  made  by  the  minor- 
ity member,  Representative  Oliver,  of  Missouri,  of  a 
Committee  of  the  United  States  House  of  Repre- 
sentatives. John  Doyle  in  his  testimony,  uses  the 
following  language:  "An  old  man  commanded  the 
party  ;  he  was  dark  compiexioned,  and  his  face  was 
slim."  Louisa  Jane  Wilkinson  says  :  "  The  old  man 
who  seemed  to  be  commander  wore  soiled  clothes, 
and  a  straw  hat  pulled  down  over  his  face.  He 
spoke  quick,  is  a  tall,  narrow-faced,  elderly  man.  ' 
There  is  no  other  description  given.1 

Another  member  of  the  party  does  not  appear  to 
have  been  actively  engaged,  though  of  late  years  he 
has  repaired  that  sluggishness  by  becoming  the 
instrument  of  those  who  find  a  congenial  occupation 
in  assailing  the  memory  and  fame  of  the  leader  in 
this  tragedy.     Stated  thus  in  the  plainest  of  words, 


1  In  the  Thirty-fourth  Congress,  the  House  of  Representatives 
passed  into  the  hands  of  the  anti-Nebraska  party.  N.  P.  Banks 
was  elected  Speaker.  One  of  the  first  ac's  was  to  provide  for 
(March  19,  1856)  a  committee  to  investigate  the  border- ruffian 
invasion  of  Kansas,  at  the  Territorial  election  just  held.  Lewis  D. 
Campbell,  of  Ohio,  and  William  Howard,  of  Michigan,  Repub- 
licans, with  Mordecai  Oliver,  of  Missouri,  Democrat,  were,  on  the 
24th,  appointed  such  committee.  On  the  251I1,  Representative 
Campbell  declined  service,  and  Representative  John  Sherman  was 
named  in  his  place.  It  was  this  committee  that  was  in  Leaven- 
worth when  the  transaction  at  Pottawatomie  occurred.  The  com- 
mittee never  made  any  investigation.  No  evidence  was  ever  taken 
at  any  of  its  sessions.  The  ex-parte  affidavits  referred  to,  were 
inserted  by  Mr.  Oliver,  in  a  minority  report.  They  have  no  legaj 
status  ;  still  no  one  disputes  their  general  correctness. 


SHADOWS     FROM     POTTAWATOMIE.  63 

this  was  the  deed  of  May  24,  1856,  which  is  known  in 
the  free-state  annals  of  Kansas  and  of  anti-slavery 
resistance  as  the  "  Pottawatomie  Massacre."  I  do 
not  intend  to  excuse,  defend,  or  extenuate  as  to 
guilt  or  innocence  therein,  nor  to  detract  by  any 
rhetorical  effort  from  the  simple  sternness  and  sever- 
ity of  the  deed.  It  will  be  my  purpose,  however,  to 
give  with  equal  plainness  both  cause  and  effect. 

From  the  bivouac  of  the  free-state  farmers  and 
settlers  enrolled  under  John  Brown,  Jr.,  as  "  The 
Pottawatomie  Rifles,"  then  en  route  to  the  assistance 
of  Lawrence,  eight  determined  men  are  known'  to 
have  retraced  their  march  from  Captain  Shore's 
dwelling  on  Ottawa  Creek,  back  to  the  Pottawatomie, 
where  they  had  settled  as  well  as  the  men  who  were 
slain.  These  eight  men,  like  their  comrades  in  the 
free-state  company,  had  "news"  of  the  pro-slavery 
doings  from  the  settlement.  The  eight  men  were 
armed  with  breechloading  rifles  and  repeating  re- 
volvers, while  seven  of  them  carried  short,  broad, 
heavy  swords,  such  as  artillerymen  of  the  United 
States  army  then  used  as  side-arms.  The  men  who 
left  the  camp  within  twenty  miles  of  the  scene  of  death 
were,  as  is  now  known,  John  Brown;  with  four  of  his 
sons — Owen,  Frederick,  Salmon,  and  Oliver;  a  son-in- 
law,  Henry  Thompson;  Theodore  Weiner,  a  German- 
American  settler  and  merchant,  and  James  Townsley, 
a  Marylander,  identified  as  a  settler  with  the  free-state 
cause.  The  swords  were  sharpened  before  leaving 
camp,  and  their  departure  was  greeted  with  cheers 
by  their  comrades.  Information  had  just  been  re- 
ceived of  threatened  assaults  upon  the  families  who 
had  been  left  behind  by  the  free-state  volunteers. 


64  JOHN    BROWN. 

The  men  were  slain,  and  the  act  was  deliberately 
done.  There  never  was  any  doubt  of  that.  It  was  a 
question  for  some  years  whether  or  not  the  act  was 
done  under  the  influence  of,  and  by  the  direct  orders 
of  John  Brown.  No  one  now  doubts  that  it  was.  In 
passing  judgment,  then,  on  this  startling  deed,  the 
issue  is  to  be  made  on  motive  and  purpose,  on  cause 
and  effect.  If  it  were  dictated  by  a  supreme  need,  in 
order  to  save  other  lives,  or  if  it  were  also  the  over- 
weening necessity  of  a  situation  based  upon  actual 
warfare,  alive  with  all  its  imperatives,  while  the 
results  wrought  righteous  advantage  to  the  cause  of 
Freedom,  then  in  deadly  peril,  the  verities  must  reach 
a  conclusion  in  no  sense  detracting  from  the  lofty 
moral  standard  of  the  grim  and  sturdy  Puritan 
fighter.  Let  us  examine  this  severe  act,  then,  in  the 
light  of  all  that  has  since  occurred,  and  with  the 
relief  from  secrecy  which  time  has  wrought  to  our 
advantage. 

After  thirty-eight  years  of  perspective  have  been 
gained,  we  may  look  all  around  the  act  and  decide 
without  heat  or  partisanship.  During  those  years 
also,  this  nation  has  passed  through  strangely  clarify- 
ing experiences,  which  have  made  very  clear  the  ter- 
rible righteousness  of  forces  of  which  ordinarily  we 
stand  appalled.  There  are  many  worse  things  in 
human  history  than  the  taking  of  human  life.  It  may 
be  that  in  days  of  millennial  joy,  if  they  ever  come, 
that  the  race  can  put  behind  it  all  darkness  of  strife, 
all  shadows  of  conflict,  all  the  lurid  scarlet  in  whose 
deep  currents  we  now  see  the  great  forces  that  have 
often  made  life  worth  living.  Even  altruistic  halos 
may  gain   reflected   luster   from    the   blood   of  atone- 


SHADOWS  FROM  POTTAWATOMIE.  65 

ment.  The  currents  of  life  are  not  made  of  perfumes. 
War  is  a  stern  teacher;  a  sterner  master.  When  its 
wrath  is  righteous,  may  it  not  be  most  just  ?  When 
governed  by  conviction  and  engaged  in  human  service, 
its  seeming  is  actual  and  without  question;  its  inflex- 
ible decision  may  justly  be  implacable.  There  are 
some  things  more  sacred  than  life  itself:  as  when  sacri- 
lege attempts  to  destroy  the  Ark  of  the  Covenant  ! 

With  the  passage  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  in 
May,  1820,  there  begun  a  long  series  of  slave-holding 
aggressions,  which  culminated  politically  in  the  enact- 
ment of  the  "  Nebraska  Bill."  The  compromise  of 
1820 — repealed  in  1854 — declared: 

"  That  in  all  that  territory,  ceded  by  France  to  the 
United  States  under  the  name  of  Louisiana,  which 
lies  north  of  360  39'  North  Latitude,  not  included  within 
the  limits  of  the  State  contemplated  by  this  Act,  slav- 
ery and  involuntary  servitude,  otherwise  than  as  the 
punishment  of  crime,  shall  be,  and  is,  for  ever 
prohibited." 

John  Brown  was  in  his  twentieth  year  when  this 
Missouri  Compromise  was  hailed  by  the  slaveholders 
as  a  triumph.  Good  people  in  the  North  believed  it 
would  settle  peacefully  a  great  issue.  Within  a  few 
years  Missouri,  with  the  aid  of  a  National  Administra- 
tion, violated  it  with  impunity  and  almost  unnoticed. 
The  Platte  purchase  became  a  breeding-ground  for 
border  ruffians.  Dedicated  to  free  soil  in  1820,  stolen 
to  slavery  in  the  early  'thirties,  it  was,  during  the  Civil 
War,  the  supporter  of  bushwhacking  and  a  hotbed  of 
secession  sympathy.  The  young  man,  turned  from 
the  pulpit  training  he  sought  by  an  affection  of  the 
5 


66  JOHN     BROWN. 

eyes,  became  farmer,  tanner,  and  merchant;  above  all 
he  watched  and  brooded  over  the  course  of  events. 
To  him  the  Declaration  of  Independence  was  almost 
as  sacred  as  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  and  the  Gospel 
of  Christ.  Each  of  the  long  line  of  aggressions  by 
slavery  left,  therefore,  enduring  impressions  on  his 
mental  character.  They  came  rapidly:  South  Caro- 
lina nullification;  campaigns  against  Indians  for  the 
surrender  of  "  marooned  "  negroes  ;  the  forcible  re- 
moval of  Indian  tribes  beyond  the  Mississippi  and 
the  Missouri,  in  order  that  slave  territory  might  be 
organized  or  the  central  continental  movement  of 
Northern  settlers  might  be  checked;  the  seizure  and 
annexation  of  Texas;  the  War  with  Mexico  and  the 
spoliation  of  her  territory;  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive 
Slave  Law  as  offset  to  the  admission  of  California  as  a 
free  State,  and  finally  the  rending  of  the  Compromise 
of  1820,  by  the"  so-called  "squatter-sovereignty" 
dodge  as  the  central  feature  of  the  Nebraska  Act. 
None  of  the  other  dark  and  lurid  incidents  of  that 
third  of  a  century  seemed  to  have  escaped  the  notice 
of  John  Brown.  I  heard  him  tell  one  evening  at  the 
home  of  Augustus  Wattles,  Moneka,  Kansas,  the 
obscure  and  forgotten  stories  of  "Isaac,"  "Denmark 
Vessy,"  "  Nat  Turner,"  and  the  "  Cumberland  Re- 
gion "  insurrectionary  affairs  in  South  Carolina,  Vir- 
ginia, and  Tennessee.  He  showed  himself  perfectly 
familiar  with  the  sometime  resistance  to  slave- 
catchers  in  Pennsylvania,  and  he  knew  the  story  of 
Hayti  and  Jamaica,  too,  by  heart.  The  murder  of 
Owen  Lovejoy  was  a  part  of  his  own  experience, 
and  he  had  seen  the  principal  riots  against  the 
Abolitionists.      As  an  illustration  of  how  he  had  fol- 


SHADOWS  FROM  POTTAWATOMIE.  67 

lowed  the  political  workings  of  the 'slave-power,  he 
called  Mr.  Wattles's  attention  to  the  policy  which 
covered  Kansas  more  than  any  other  part  of  the  trans- 
Missouri  region  with  Indians  removed  from  Ohio, 
Michigan,  Illinois,  Indiana,  and  other  States,  and 
stated  that  for  over  twenty-five  years  but  one  man  of 
Northern  birth  had  been  appointed  Indian  agent  to 
any  one  of  the  dozen  tribes  living  within  the  section 
then  organized  as  the  Territories  of  Kansas  and  Ne- 
braska ;  a  large  portion  of  Colorado  and  Wyoming 
being  then  included.  That  one  man,  a  Mr.  Gay,  was 
agent  to  the  Shawnees.  He  was  one  of  the  earlier 
victims  of  border-ruffian  disorder. 

It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  for  John  Brown 
the  Kansas  conflict  was  but  an  episode.  It  drew 
him  aside  from  his  main  design,  an  attack  on 
slavery  for  the  purpose  of  making  the  "institution" 
unsafe,  from  the  Appalachian  mountains  in  Vir- 
ginia. The  peril  of  his  sons  and  their  families, 
who  were  settlers  in  the  prairie  territory  and  the  daily 
augmenting  possibility  of  an  outbreak  against  slavery 
itself  being  precipitated  there,  took  him  to  Kansas, 
There  was  the  increasing  possibility  also  of  finding 
recruits.  John  Brown  had  decided  for  himself  that 
the  slave-power  designed  to  destroy  the  Republic. 
Did  not  crowding  events  justify  that  conclusion  ?  He 
was  also  sure,  that  the  people  of  the  free  States  were 
more  alarmed  at  their  own  peace  being  disturbed 
than,  at  the  danger  of  the  Union.  He  decided  for 
himself,  by  the  severe  processes  of  his  own  stern  con- 
science, that  his  duty  as  a  Christian  lay  with  those  in 
bondage,  and  that,  as  a  citizen,  whatever  might  be  the 
individual   cost,    the   Republic   had    to    be  defended. 


68  JOHN     BROWN. 

The  closer  one  proceeds  with  analytical  inquiry  into 
this  chrystalline  personality,  and  the  means  for  such 
analysis  are  abundant,  the  more  evident  it  is  that  the 
Puritan  farmer  considered  himself  in  all  his  purposes 
and  the  acts  that  blossomed  from  them,  as  obeying 
the  highest  obligations  of  citizenship,  and  fulfilling, 
not  the  promptings  of  his  personal  zealotry,  but  the 
direct  obligations  due  from  a  man  to  his  God,  his 
fellows,  and  to  his  country.  Nor  did  he  misapprehend 
the  possible  penalties,  but  to  him  the  slave-holder  was 
a  traitor  to  the  Republic  and  slavery  was  organized 
treason  to  its  institutions.  As  I  have  already  sug- 
gested, his  close  study  of  current  American  history 
taught  him  the  existence  of  a  deliberate  design  to 
work  the  overthrow  of  the  Federal  Union.  For  years 
before  Kansas  was  opened  to  settlement  the  Knights 
of  the  Golden  Circle  had  been  systematically  organ- 
ized throughout  western  Missouri.  Their  offshoot, 
the  Blue  Lodges,  were  organized  in  1854,  in  order  to 
invade  Kansas,  carry  elections,  and  make  thereof 
another  slave  State.  The  Constitution  was  in  his  eyes 
being  steadily  violated.  Was  he  not  right  in  that 
regard  ?  To  him  as  a  Christian,  if  Christ  were  love,  He 
also  wore  a  weapon  and  smote  the  money-changers.  If 
God  were  embodied  mercy,  He  was  also  the  enthroned 
Jehovah — "  Judge  of  the  quick  and  the  dead."  If  men 
were  the  creatures  of  their  conditions,  they  were  to  him 
also  and  supremely  the  choosers  of  their  own  path; 
responsible  for  what  they  knowingly  left  undone,  as 
well  as  whatsoever  they  did  in  daily  life  and  action. 
John  Brown  saw  also  with  a  marvelous  precision  that 
seemed  like  the  mystic's  flame,  the  startling  course 
of   sequences  and   events.     He  could   not,  therefore, 


SHADOWS  FROM  POTTAWATOMIE.  69 

act  otherwise;  nor  could  he  fail  to  see  the  grim  sever- 
ity of  the  conflict.  Perceiving,  he  dared  not  turn 
aside  for  political  gain  or  philosophical  methods.  This 
man  lived  his  convictions,  he  did  not  dream  that  they 
were  available  only  when  convenient.  Neither  poli- 
tician nor  agitator  could  change  him;  he  judged  by 
but  one  thing;  did  they,  like  his  compass,  point  to 
the  North  ?  That  compass  "wobbled,"  he  said,  but 
as  the  needle  settled  it  always  pointed  to  the  North 
Pole. 

In  Kansas  the  free-state  politicians  were  bold  at 
times,  in  words  at  least.  Reeder,  the  kindly,  weak, 
but  well-meaning  Pennsylvania  Democrat,  who  had 
been  sent  to  Kansas  as  Governor  by  President  Pierce, 
declared,  as  he  felt  the  barbarous  aggressions  of  the 
slave-power,  as  early  as  October,  1855,  that — "When 
other  resources  fail,  there  still  remains  to  us  the  steady 
eye  and  the  strong  arm,  and  we  must  conquer  or 
mingle  the  bodies  of  the  oppressors  with  those  of  the 
oppressed  upon  the  soil  which  the  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence no  longer  protects."  Andrew  H.  Reeder, 
to  his  credit  be  it  said,  never  indulged  in  subsequent 
verbal  denunciations  of  the  man  who  did  "  mingle  the 
bodies  of  the  oppressors  with  those  of  the  oppressed." 
That  weakness  was  left  in  the  main  to  some  members 
of  the  New  England  Emigrant  Aid  Society,  whose 
organizers,  officers,  and  leaders  had,  as  the  preced- 
ing chapter  shows,  sent  to  Kansas,  several  months 
before  John  Brown  entered  the  Territory,  rifles,  re- 
volvers, and  cannon,  with  which  to  enable  free-state 
men  to  defend  themselves  or  to  slay  the  assassians  of 
their  fellow  settlers.  Before  Captain  John  Brown 
entered  Kansas,  the  eight  hundred  legal  voters  of  the 


70  JOHN    BROWN. 

Territory  had  been  overridden  by  the  invasion  of  more 
than  four  thousand  Missourians  who  occupied  the  polls 
and  elected  a  citizen  of  Texas  as  delegate  to  Congress 
from  Kansas.  Before  John  Brown's  sons  had  started  for 
the  West,  and  before  even  Eli  Thayer,  Edward  Everett 
Hale,  Amos  A.  Lawrence,  Thomas  H.  Webb,  and  other 
men  in  New  England  had  organized  the  Emigrant 
Aid  Society,  which,  within  certain  definite  lines,  did 
excellent  work  for  free  Kansas,  the  South  Carolina 
nullifiers  had  publicly  organized  an  association  to  aid 
"  armed  "  emigration  to  Kansas. 

When  the  first  legal  election  was  called  in  Kansas, 
John  Brown  had  taken  no  public  step  beyond  appear- 
ing with  his  sons  four  months  before  in  defense  of 
Lawrence,  yet,  in  March,  1855,  over  six  thousand 
armed  Missourians  marched  into  Kansas  and  took  pos- 
session of  the  polls.  The  enrolled  legal  voters  num- 
bered 2,905.  The  invaders  overrode  the  citizens, 
defied  the  Governor,  and  made  a  code  of  slave-sus- 
taining laws,1  equaled  only  in  atrocity  by  the  codes 
for  the  control  of  the  freed  people  which  were  adopted 
in  South  Carolina,  Mississippi,  and  the  other  South- 
ern States,  and  which  President  Johnson  sought  to 
"  restore  "  direct  from  the  blistering  furnace  of  civil 
war. 

After  the  election  outrage  of  March,  1855,  and  the 
subsequent  determination  of  the  free-state  people, 
as  a  body,  to  refuse  obedience  to  the  draconian  code 
that  Missouri  had  fashioned  for  Kansas,  it  soon  be- 
came evident  that  the  secession  leaders  in  the  slave 
States  were  determined  to  push   their   cause   to   the 


1  See  Appendix  for  extracts  from  "  The  Border-Ruffian  Code." 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  7 1 

perilous  verge  of  civil    war.     A  force  of   about  seven 
hundred  armed  men  was  raised,  chiefly  in  the  cotton 
States,  and  placed  under  the  command  of  one  Buford, 
an  Alabama  fire-eater.     From   Arkansas,  Texas,  and 
Louisiana,  there    also    came   several   smaller   bodies, 
who,  as  they  had  their  rendezvous  at  Fort  Scott,  the 
chief  pro-Southern  town  in  Kansas,  outside  of  Leaven- 
worth and  Lecompton,  were  not  as  well  known  and 
conspicuous    as    their    confreres   in    the    central  and 
northern   sections.       From  early  in  April,  1856,  until 
the  increasing  free-state  power  caused  them  to  begin 
retiring  about  the  following  October,  there  were  cer- 
tainly in  the  Territory  never  less  than  an   organized 
force  of  from  one  thousand  to  fifteen  hundred  armed 
men  whose  residences  were  elsewhere  than  in  Kansas. 
A  score  of  free-state  assassinations,   which  included 
Dow,    R.   P.    Brown,    Barber,    and    others    not    nec- 
essary   to  name,   had    already   reddened    the    record 
of  the  two  years'  occupancy  of  the  Territory.     Hun- 
dreds of  cases  of  robbery  and  personal  violence  were 
known   to   have  occurred.     Not  a  single  unmolested 
or  non-blockaded  way   into  the    Territory  could  be 
found  except  on  the  northern  or  Nebraska  line.     The 
Missouri  river  was  closed  to  the  travel  of  free-state 
settlers.     The   mails  were  regularly  stopped,  opened 
and  often  robbed.     Free-state  men  were  maltreated, 
robbed,  and  threatened   with  death,  their  dwellings 
plundered  and   burned,   the   women   of  their  house- 
holds threatened,  abused,  and  even  assaulted.     There 
are  hundreds  of  authenticated  cases  with  a  recital  of 
which   it   is   not   necessary   to    cumber    these    pages. 
The  troops  of  the  United  States  were   often  used  to 
enforce  pretended  legalities.     It  became  the  custom 


>]2  JOHN    BROWN. 

of  the  officers  and  judges  of  the  Federal  Courts  to 
cause  the  indictment  and  attempt  the  arrest  of  all 
free-state  men  whose  courage,  activity,  and  ability 
fitted  them  to  advise  or  lead  their  neighbors.  John, 
Jr.,  and  Jason,  elder  sons  of  Captain  Brown,  were 
both  indicted  for  "usurpation  of  office,"  before  the 
Pottawatomie  slaying  took  place.  Their  offense  con- 
sisted in  being  elected  legislators  under  a  State  con- 
stitution which  was  never  made  operative.  Up  to 
the  sacking  of  Lawrence  on  the  21st  of  May,  1856, 
three  days  before  the  tragedy  under  review,  there  had 
not  been  any  really  resistant  act  or  deed  perpetrated 
by  the  free-state  men,  except  the  rescue  of  Branson 
and  the  wounding  in  Lawrence  of  Sheriff  Jones,  the 
pro-slavery  leader.  This  latter  was  a  personal  act 
committed  by  one  man,  and  without  any  consulta- 
tion with  others.  They  had  prepared  to  resist 
oppression,  and  to  defend  themselves  against  the 
border-ruffian  laws.  No  one  need  assume  that  the 
free-state  men  were  saints.  If  they  carried  wings 
they  were  not  those  of  angels.  When  they  did  strike 
back,  it  was  done  very  effectually.  The  hammer  of 
Thor  when  applied  to  the  heads  of  ruffians  made 
something  crack.     Why  not  ? 

Summed  up,  then,  the  general  situation  when  the 
pro-slavery  men  on  Pottawatomie  Creek  were  slain, 
was  this:  The  Federal  judiciary  was  declaring  that,  as 
there  was  no  right  whatever  (as  afterwards  affirmed  by 
Dred  Scott  decision)  to  prohibit  the  taking  of  slaves 
into  any  Federal  Territory,  agitation  against  as  well  as 
resistance  thereto,  was  nothing  less  than  treason  to 
the  United  States,  while  to  advise  or  agitate  on  the 
same  line  was  "  constructive  treason."  This  strained 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  73 

revival  of  Judge  Jeffries's  infamous  doctrine  was 
formulated  by  Chief-Justice  Lecompte  of  the  Federal 
Court,  relative  to  whom  Captain  Brown  once  said 
that  he  "  had  earned  the  right  to  be  hanged,"  and 
that  "  if  the  Lord  had  ever  delivered  Judge  Lecompte 
into  his  hands,  it  would  have  required  the  Lord  God 
Himself  to  have  taken  the  Judge  out  of  his  (Brown's) 
hands."  The  Captain  was  not  without  humor  of  the 
grimmer  sort.  The  Territorial  Executive  was  a  dis- 
sipated instrument  of  the  slave-power.  A  militia 
force  had  been  organized,  on  paper  at  least,  with 
two  major-generals  and  four  brigadiers,  all  resi- 
dents of  Missouri.  Ninety-five  of  the  officers  and 
eighty  per  cent,  of  the  Falstaffian  rank  and  file  were 
actually  resident  in  Missouri;  and,  when  summoned  by 
Jones,  Stringfellow,  Calhoun,  Donaldson  &  Co.,  came 
direct  from  Platte,  Jackson,  Clay,  Lafayette,  and 
other  Missouri  counties,  bearing  the  arms  of  that 
State,  or  rather  those  the  United  States  had  assigned 
to  it,  and  sometimes  even  wearing  the  State  uniform. 
They  were  headed,  too,  by  David  R.  Atchison,  a 
United  States  Senator  from  Missouri,  and,  at  the 
period  now  under  review,  presiding  member  of  the 
United  States  Senate,  and,  therefore,  in  the  absence 
of  Mr.  King,  acting  Vice-President  of  the  United 
States.  The  Senator  was  the  leader  of  the  ultra 
wing  of  the  Missouri  Democracy,  and  the  bitter  oppo- 
nent of  Thomas  H.  Benton  and  his  following.  Benton 
was  equally  as  hostile  to  nullification  and  its  advo- 
cates. He  was  the  advocate  of  Continental  Unity,  as 
then  comprehended.  Some  of  his  declarations  during 
the  early  'fifties  now  read  like  prophecies.  The  lead- 
ing newspaper  on  his  side,  the  Democrat,  of  St.  Louis. 


74  JOHN    BROWN. 

was   the  fast  and   wise  friend,  too,  of   the   free-State 
men,  from  1854  to  i860,  as  it  was  also  the   loyal  and 
gallant  advocate  of  the  Union  against  all  comers  in  the 
five  following  years  of  the    bitterest    civil   and   even 
neighborhood    warfare,    which    any    section    of    the 
'  Union  was  compelled  to  wage.    Missouri  was  the  hot- 
bed   of    pro-slavery    aggression,    violence,    and    final 
organized  resistance  to  the  Union.     It  is  not  essential 
to  give   details  of  all   these   acts  in  order  to  indicate 
the  roads  that  the  slave-power  blazed  and  made  wide 
for  John  Brown  and  his  men  to  travel  upon  in  reaching 
Harper's  Ferry.  All  that  is  suggested  in  this  narrative 
can  be  established,  if  disputed,  "  by  bell  and  book."  It 
is  not  essential  to  parade  the  acts  of  resistance  thereto 
or  to  hold  up  the  resisters — all  of  them— as  priests  or 
heroes.     But  it  is  essential  to  maintain  for  the  truth 
of    history,   that   the  free-state  men   were   never  the 
aggressors,  and   it   is  certainly  unnecessary  to    exalt 
the  horn  of  special  manliness  for  pro-slavery  leaders. 
As  persons,  apart  from  opinions,  they  may  be  regarded 
as   no  worse  than  their  neighbors  who  differed.     But 
opinions   shape  conduct,  nevertheless.     It  is  too  late 
in  the  day    to  measure   great  events  by  peanut  criti- 
cisms.    Still   less    is    it   writing    history     in    fairness 
to    carp    and   sneer    at   or  minimize    the    characters, 
acts,   services,  and    even   the  sufferings,  of  the   men 
who  on  the  right  side  made  that  history  what  it  is. 
It  has  been  too  much  a  fashion  in  later  Kansas  to  find 
fault    only     with    those   whose    unselfish     and    early 
services    aided    in    making    that    State    a    free    com- 
monwealth.    Let   me  give   a   striking   illustration  of 
this.     The   savage    incidents  it  relates,  too,  occurred 
five  days  before  the  Pottawatomie  slaying,  temporarily, 


SHADOWS  FROM  POTTAWATOMIE.  75 

at  least,  awed  the   border  ruffians  into  a  trembling 
peace,  and  startled  alike  the  brave  and  timid  in  free- 
state   ranks   with  a   triumphant,  yet  serious,  feeling, 
that  on  their  side  at  least  a  Man  had  arrived.   In  that 
portion  of  his  readable,  if  not  always  fair  or  discrim- 
inating little  volume,  which  treats  of  the   sacking  of 
Lawrence   on   May  21,  1856,1  Professor  Spring  writes 
of  incidents  occurring   on   the  19th  of  May,  two  days 
before    the    actual    raid,   and    while   the    "  conserva- 
tive "  free-state   leaders   in   Lawrence  were  advising 
the  young  men   of   the  "  Stubbs  Rifle  "  company   to 
make  no  resistance  to  the  armed  Missourians  gathering 
at  Franklin,  six  miles  from  the  little  city  on  the  Kaw. 
Mr.  Spring  shows  himself  in   his  presentation   more 
concerned  in  censuring  those  whose   manhood  coun- 
seled resistance   to  murder  than  he  does  in  character- 
izing with  just  indignation  the  purveyors,  to  use  his 
own   elegant  comparison,  of  "  abolition    wolf  meat." 
Here    is   the    incident,  as    told    thirty  years  after  by 
the  professor: 

"  A  detachment  of  the  United  States  marshal's 
posse  (May  19)  shot  a  young  man — mainly  for  the 
sensation  and  satisfaction  of  killing  an  Abolitionist. 
Three  adventurous  fellows,  presumably  intoxicated  (the 
italics  are  mine,  not  Mr.  Spring's)  on  hearing  the 
news,  snatched  their  weapons,  dashed  out  of  Law- 
rence to  hunt  the  scoundrels,  and  begun  a  fusilade 
upon  the  first  travelers  they  e?icountered  without  any  pre- 
liminary investigation.  The  expedition  tur?ied  ont  unfor- 
tunate for  the  assailants.  Another  Abolitionist  was 
turned  into  wolf  meat." 


Kansas,"  Commonwealth  Series,  Boston. 


76  JOHN    BROWN'. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  refrain  from  wrath  upon 
reading  so  contemptuous  and  cynical  an  account  of  an 
incident  in  regard  to  which  the  author  might  readily 
find,  even  at  this  date,  a  hundred  living  citizens  of 
Lawrence — his  neighbors — who  would  have  told  him 
the  simple  facts.  Here  they  are,  based  upon  personal 
knowledge  on  my  part,  and  confirmed  by  two  of  those 
of  the  "  adventurous  fellows"  who  went  out  to  find 
the  murderers  of  an  inoffensive  young  man,  named 
Jones,  sustained  also  by  the  narrative  of  the  New 
York  Herald's  Kansas  correspondent  at  the  time,  and 
found  in  the  columns  of  that  journal;  by  the  story  of 
Col.  Wm.  A.  Phillips,  as  printed  in  the  New  York 
Tribune,  and  somewhat  later  in  his  interesting  volume 
on  "The  Conquest  of  Kansas."  I  have  also  examined 
accounts  published  in  the  Missouri  border  papers  of 
that  date,  and  in  the  Kansas  Squatter  Sovereign,  of  At- 
chison, and  the  Leavenworth  Herald,  which  exulted 
openly  over  the  murder  of  twTo  young  abolitionists, 
Jones  and  Stewart.  These  sources  of  information, 
except  those  of  a  personal  nature,  were  and  are  acces- 
sible, I  presume,  to  Professor  Spring  as  to  myself. 
But,  as  to  the  actual  facts: 

Several  miles  directly  south  of  Lawrence  on  the 
Wakarusa,  a  small  branch  of  the  Kaw  River,  was 
"Blanton's,"  a  free-state  settlement.  It  is  quite  famous 
in  the  stormy  annals  of  that  period.  It  was  here  that 
a  blacksmith,  named  Dow,  was  murdered  by  one  Cole- 
man, a  deputy  United  States  marshal  and  deputy 
sheriff  under  the  bogus  laws.  The  famous  rescue  of 
Jacob  Branson  by  other  free-state  men,  from  Sheriff 
Jones's  posse,  which  superinduced  the  Wakarusa  War, 
occurred  in  the  Blanton  settlement.     One  of  the  free- 


SHADOWS  FROM  POTTAWATOMIE.  77 

state  leaders, — Major  Abbott,  who  had  been  sent 
twelve  months  before  by  Charles  Robinson,  James 
Blood,  and  other  conservative  free-state  chiefs,  to 
obtain  from  Amos  A.  Lawrence,  Eli  Thayer,  and  other 
Eastern  friends,  the  breech-loading  rifles,  etc.,  which 
enabled  the  free-state  men  to  make  a  successful  resist- 
ance,— resided  in  the  Blanton  settlement.  A  bridge 
across  the  stream,  so  named,  was  indicted  as  a  nuisance 
by  a  border-ruffian  grand  jury,  convened  and  charged 
by  United  States  Judge  Lecompte.  Its  destruction 
was  a  part  of  the  work  for  the  doing  of  which  a  posse 
of  2,500  Missourians  had  been  summoned  to  the 
neighborhood  of  Lawrence.  There  was  in  the  Blan- 
ton  settlement  a  widow  and  son,  named  Jones, — the 
latter  was  a  quiet,  inoffensive,  but  courageous  young 
man  of  about  twenty.  Mr.  Jones,  on  the  day  of  his 
death  (May  19,  1856),  was  at  Blanton's  store,  purchas- 
ing some  groceries.  A  party  from  Franklin  were 
there,  embracing  among  them  the  murderer  of  Dow, 
Deputy  Marshal  Coleman,  with  another  known  assas- 
sin, named,  if  I  recollect  aright,  Cosgrove.  Some 
abusive  words  and  threats  were  aimed  at  Jones.  On 
his  part  there  is  not  a  particle  of  proof  as  to  any 
cause  of  offense.  Though  he  had  a  small  revolver  in 
his  possession  he  made  no  demonstration,  but  as 
quickly  as  he  could  gathered  his  goods  and  walked 
out  of  the  store.  There  was  no  reason  whatever  for 
singling  him  out  for  assassination,  but  as  he  quietly 
turned  his  back  on  his  assailants  and  walked  on  to 
Blanton's  bridge,  he  was  shot  and  instantly  killed. 
Most  of  the  free-state  men  were  absent  doing  guard 
duty  in  Lawrence.  The  murderers  mounted  and  rode 
westward   towards  Lecompton.       Word   was  sent  to 


78  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  free-state  headquarters,  and  early  in  the  after- 
noon the  body  of  young  Jones  was  carried  to  Law- 
rence in  a  farm  wagon.  Of  course,  it  created  great 
excitement  and  indignation.  Three  "  adventurous  fel- 
lows " — all  young  men  of  less  than  twenty-five  years 
of  age — left  the  town  to  overtake  and  capture,  if  they 
could,  Coleman  and  his  gang.  They  went  without 
orders  from  the  free-state  committee,  but  their  leav- 
ing was  seen  and  their  errand  known  and  approved 
of  by  all  who  saw  them  leave.  These  young  men  were 
John  Edwin  Cook,  lawyer,  Charles  Lenhart,  printer, 
and  Mr.  Stewart,  a  medical  student  from  western 
New  York,  related,  I  believe,  to  the  family  of  Alvin 
Stewart,  once  lieutenant  governor  of  the  Empire 
State  and  then  a  well-known  anti-slavery  politician. 
Of  these  three  men,  two  had  never  used  any  intoxi- 
cating liquor,  and  the  third,  "Charley  "  Lenhart,  left 
the  "case  "  at  which  he  was  working  in  the  Herald  of 
Freedom  office,  a  perfectly  sober  man,  when  the  body 
of  young  Jones  was  brought  to  rest  on  Massachusetts 
street.  Cook  and  Stewart  had  not  been  long  in  the 
Territory.  The  former  came  with  ample  means  for 
his  own  expenses.  Mr.  Stewart  was  employed  (at  his 
own  cost)  in  copying  the  laws  which  had  been  pre- 
pared by  the  Topeka  Legislature  in  the  vain  hope 
that  even  squatter  sovereignty  might  be  used  in  re- 
moving the  Missouri  rule.  Cook  was  hung  at  Char- 
lestown,  Va.,  on  the  6th  of  December,  1859,  for  par- 
ticipation in  the  Harper's  Ferry  raid.  Cook,  like  Sfe-- 
vens,  Hazlett,  Coppoc,  Copeland,.  and  Green,  were- 
tried  for  insurrection  and  murder. 

John  Brown  was  tried  for  treason  against  a  State  of 
which,  hewas  not  a.  resident,  and,  therefore,  under  the. 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  79 

State-sovereignty  doctrine,  one  to  which  he  owned 
no  allegiance.  The  land  of  Washington  and  Jefferson 
had  the  "  honor,"  then,  of  hanging  the  American 
Spartacus  as  a  traitor.  He  is  the  only  American  so 
condemned  and  executed.  Charles  Lenhart  died  in 
1862,  as  a  lieutenant  in  the  Union  army.  Mr.  Stewart 
was  slain  by  murderer  Coleman.  It  occurred  in  this 
wise  :  The  fact  was  known  that  the  assassins  of  Jones 
had  ridden  towards  Lecompton,  and  as  Cook  and 
Lenhart  both  told  me  within  two  months  after 
the  Jones  and  Stewart  murders,  it  was  believed  that 
they  would  soon  return  to  their  Franklin  camp. 
Stewart,  Cook,  and  Lenhart,  well  armed,  went  to- 
wards the  old  California  trail  or  road,  where  about  a 
mile  south  of  Lawrence  it  crossed  the  lower  portion 
of  Mount  Oread  and  made  a  highway  to  Franklin. 
They  stationed  themselves  at  this  point  and  had  been 
there  about  thirty  minutes,  when  three  men  riding 
mules  were  seen  coming.down  the  road.  Their  ani- 
mals, clothing,  and  arms,  indicated  they  were  Missou- 
rians,  and  as  they  rode  nearer,  Coleman,  at  least,  was 
recognized.  But  a  moment  before  the  young  free- 
state  men  had  decided  to  return  to  Lawrence.  Hesi- 
tating briefly  as  to  what  should  be  done  (the  mounted 
ruffians  having  evidently  prepared  for  conflict),  Stew- 
art impulsively  ended  the  doubt  by  stepping  forward 
but  without  raising  his  Sharp's  rifle,  and  asked — 
"  Where  are  you  going,  gentlemen  ?  "  The  response 
was  immediate.  A  gun  was  raised  and  fired  as 
Coleman  shouted  "We're  going  to  Franklin  and 
you're  going  to  hell  "  Stewart  fell  dead  as  a  bullet 
crashed  through  his  forehead  and  entered  his  brain. 
The  assassins  put  spurs  to  their  animals,  and  dashed 


8o  JOHN    BROWN. 

on  to  Franklin,  followed  by  Cook  and  Lenhart,  fir- 
ing as  they  run.  One  shot  from  Cook's  rifle  wounded 
the  murderer  Coleman,  who  dropped  his  rifle. 
Lenhart  also  wounded  another.  But  the  assassins 
escaped,  and  the  two  gallant  young  men,  whose  mem- 
ories are  so  shamelessly  blackened  by  the  later  "  his- 
torian," returned  to  Lawrence  with  the  dead  body  of 
their  friend.  Is  any  further  comment  necessary  than 
this  plain  statement  ?  I  think  not.  These  incidents,  and 
such  as  these,  are  of  those  that  led  up  to  the  slaying 
on  the  Pottawatomie.  The  very  air  of  the  Territory 
was  reeking  with  murder.  If  the  statement  is  ques- 
tioned, "The  Conquest  of  Kansas"  (1856,  pp.  286) 
by  William  A.  Phillips,  will  stand  for  proof. 

On  Pottawatomie  Creek,  near  where  John  Brown's 
four  sons,  his  son-in-law,  Thompson,  and  a  brother- 
in-law,  Mr.  Orson  Day,  had  made  their  land  entries 
and  settlement,  one  of  the  pro-slavery  camps  had 
also  been  established.  It  w^as  but  a  short  distance 
from  the  Missouri  border.  Above  it  was  the  pro- 
slavery  town  of  Paola,  and  nearer  to  it  the  free-State 
town  of  Osawatomie.  There  is  abundant  evidence 
to  show  that  this  post  was  an  important  link  in  the 
pro-slavery  campaign  of  that  summer.  The  free-State 
settlers  south  of  the  Pottawatomie  were  compara- 
tively few.  Fort  Scott  was  left  to  take  care  of  them. 
Practically,  "  Dutch  Henry's  Crossing,"  as  the  pro- 
Southern  settlement  was  named,  became  the  first  at 
the  southern  end  of  the  border-ruffian  arc,  which  was 
forming  to  inclose  the  important  free-State  settle- 
ments; the  Missouri  border,  from  Bates  County  north 
to  about  St.  Joseph,  on  the  river,  being  the  base  of 
the  arc,  or  string  of  the  bow.      Captain  Brown   knew 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  8 1 

clearly  that  the  border-ruffian  forces  were  but  pup- 
pets moved  on  the  board  of  secession  politics,  and 
this  understanding  far  more  than  any  personal  threats 
or  possibilities,  moulded  his  acts.  He  kept  himself 
thoroughly  well  informed  of  their  purposes.  Up  to 
the  first  sacking  of  Lawrence  (the  second  occurred 
under  Ouantrill  in  August,  1863),  the  Captain  was 
comparatively  unknown  in  the  Territory.  His  only 
public  appearance  was  the  one  described  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter,  when  with  his  sons  he  went  to  the 
defense  of  Lawrence  in  December,  1855.  But  at 
Osawatomie,  and  among  the  free-state  settlers  on 
the  Pottawatomie,  this  grave,  quiet  man  was  regarded 
with  increasing  confidence.  He  made  no  preparations 
for  a  continued  residence,  and  was  constantly  moving 
about,  often  appearing  in  Missouri  and  along  the 
border  with  one  horse  and  a  small  wagon,  loaded  with 
surveying  instruments.  He  was  presumed  to  be  a 
United  States  deputy  surveyor  and,  therefore,  "  sound 
on  the  goose  "  by  all  the  Southern  men  in  whose 
camps  he  was  constantly  appearing.  He  allowed 
them  to  think  as  they  wished,  shaping  his  replies  to 
questions,  so  as  to  add  to  their  confidence.  Salmon 
and  Oliver,  his  two  younger  sons,  generally  accom- 
panied him.  In  this  way,  during  the  earl)r  spring 
months,  he  became  thoroughly  posted  not  only  on  the 
purposes  of  the  invaders,  but  as  to  the  agents  they  de- 
pended upon.  "Dutch  Henry's  Crossing"  was  their 
initiative  post  south  of  the  Kansas  River.  Henry  and 
William  Sherman  were  South  Germans.  Henry,  for 
some  time  before  the  Territory  was  opened  to  settlers, 
had  been  employed  by  Ottawa  Jones,  the  leading 
member  of  an  Indian  tribe,  so  named,  who  were  civile 
6 


82  JOHN    BROWN. 

ized  and  Christian.  Jones  was  an  excellent  farmer 
and  a  valuable  man.  Educated,  and  married  to  a 
white  woman,  formerly  a  missionary  teacher,  he  was 
always  an  open  helper  of  the  free-state  men,  and 
Captain  Brown  soon  became  his  friend.  "  Dutch 
Henry  "  had  left  "  Ottawa  "  before  the  troubles  began. 
He  and  his  brotherWilliam  took  up  claims,  and  opened 
asmallgrocery  andgroggery.  He  was  soon  suspected 
of  stealing  stock  and  doing  other  disreputable  acts. 
Both  men  were  violent,  ruffianly,  and  brutal.  They 
were  constantly  insulting  the  free-state  women  and 
making  odious  threats  against  them.  Allen  Wilkin- 
son was  a  man  of  some  education  and  a  Marylander. 
He  was  at  first  disposed  to  be  a  "  black  law  "  free- 
state  man,  and  his  wife  did  what  she  couid  to  keep 
him  from  the  bad  influences  at  Sherman's.  He  was 
flattered  into  becoming  actively  pro-slavery  and  had 
been  elected  to  the  Shawnee  Legislature — the  body 
that  enacted  a  slave  code.  The  Doyles  were  a 
shiftless  set,  of  the  ruder  and  more  brutal  "  poor 
white  "  sort,  and  they  were  used  as  tools  that  had  an 
edge  on  them.1     To   this   nucleus   came  others,  until 


1  Henry  Thompson,  now  residing  at  Pasadena,  California, 
writes  me  recently,  in  relation  to  the  elder  Doyle,  that  "  in  Kansas 
in  1855,  when  the  fall  election  came  off,  I,  with  others  of  our 
company,  went  to  the  polling- place  on  the  Pottawatomie,  thinking 
there  might  be  trouble.  .  .  .  On  the  way  home  I  walked 
about  two  miles  with  old  man  Doyle  and  others.  Doyle  had  a 
great  many  things  to  say  about  the  *  nigger,'  declaring  they  had 
no  human  feelings  and  did  not  know  anything.  I  told  him  I  had 
seen  colored  men  as  much  smarter  then  he  was  as  he  was  smarter 
than  his  little  dog.  Doyle  said  that  was  incendiary  language  and 
I  would  pay  for  it.  So,  in  the  spring  of  1856,  when  they  held 
their  bogus  court  at  Dutch  Henry's.    Doyle  swore  out  a  warrant  for 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  83 

the  Sherman's  place  was  the  center  of  proposed  oper- 
ations against  the  free-state  people  and  cause.  These 
operations  did  not  materialize,  because  the  material 
was  missing.  The  Federal  Judge,  Cato,  held  court 
there,  and  from  among  its  frequenters,  the  larger 
number  of  whom  were  residents  of  border  Missouri, 
were  gathered  the  grand  juries,  so-called,  that  pre- 
sented indictments  against  John  and  Jason  Brown, 
H.  H.  Williams,  of  Osawatomie,  and  other  free-state 
men  who  had  become  prominent. 

The  summary  removal  of  Judge  Cato,  who  pre- 
sided, was  afterwards  demanded  by  Governor  Geary 
because  of  his  aiding  to  prevent  the  arrest  of  the 
murderer  Coleman,  who,  besides  slaying  Dow  and 
Stewart,  was  also  a  party  to  the  killing  of  David 
Buffum. 

No  one  knew  these  pro-slavery  agents  so  well  as 
Captain  John  Brown.  Scores  of  pages  might  be 
filled  with  evidence  of  this,  but  one  statement  will  be 
sufficient.  In  conversation  with  E.  A.  Coleman,  now 
living  near  Lawrence,  Captain  Brown  in  reply  to 
questions  about  some  of  the  circumstances  that 
doubtless  led  more  directly  to  the  Pottawatomie  slay- 
ing, said  in  1856  in  the  Coleman  cabin  near  Osawa- 
tomie and  just  before  the  battle  thereof: 

"  Mr.  Coleman,  I  will  tell  you  all  about  it.  I  had 
heard  that  these  men  were  coming  to  the  cabin  that 


my  arrest.  When  we  beard  of  it,  we  held  a  little  council  and 
decided  it  best  for  me  to  go  and  give  myself  up.  Salmon  Brown 
went  with  me  as  dispatcher,  so  if  they  served  the  warrant  on  me, 
the  others  of  our  company  were  to  come  into  court  and  hand  me 
two  revolvers.  The  court  was  to  be  summarily  adjourned,  but 
the  court  had  weakened  and  left  before  I  got  there." 


84  JOHN    BROWN. 

my  son  and  I  were  staying  in,  .  .  .  to  set  fire  to 
it  and  shoot  us  as  we  ran  out.  Now,  that  was  not 
proof  enough  for  me;  but  I  thought  I  would  satisfy 
myself.  ...  I  was  an  old  surveyer,  so  I  disguised 
myself,  took  two  men  with  me  to  carry  the  chain,  and 
a  flagman.  The  (section)  lines  not  being  run,  I  knew 
that  as  soon  as  they  saw  me  they  would  come  out  to 
find  where  their  lines  would  come.  And  taking  a 
book  out  of  his  pocket,"  the  Coleman  story  proceeds 
with  "  Here  is  what  every  man  said  that  was  killed. 
I  ran  my  lines  close  to  each  man's  house.  The  first 
that  came  out  said,  'Is  that  my  line,  sir?'  I  replied, 
'  I  cannot  tell;  I  am  running  test  lines.'  I  then  said, 
*  You  have  a  fine  country  here;  great  pity  you  have 
so  many  Abolitionists  in  it.'  'Yes,  but,  by  God,  we 
will  soon  clean  them  out,'  he  said.  I  kept  looking 
through  my  instrument,  making  motions  to  the  flag- 
man to  move  either  way,  and  at  the  same  time  I 
wrote  every  word  that  was  said.  Then  I  said,  '  I  hear 
that  there  are  some  bad  men  here  by  the  name  of 
Brown.'  'Yes,  there  are;  but  next  Wednesday  night 
we  will  kill  them.'  So  I  ran  the  lines  by  each  one  of 
their  houses,  and  I  took  down  every  word;  and  here 
it  is,  word  for  word,  by  each  one." 

At  the  camp,  en  route  to  Lawrence,  intelligence  was 
received  of  the  burning  of  Mr.  Theodore  Weiner's 
house  and  store,  with  abundant  proofs  of  a  general 
advance  against  the  influential  free-state  settlers 
along  the  Pottawatomie  Creek.  It  was  known  that 
the  honor  as  well  as  the  lives  of  the  women  were  in 
peril.  In  after  years  I  heard  some  narrations  as  to 
this  that  were  sufficient  to  set  any  man's  blood  on 
fire.     Among  others  who  fled  hastily  for  security  to 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  85 

Osawatomie,  after  the  younger  John  Brown's  com- 
pany had  left  for  Lawrence,  were  the  wives  of  John, 
Jr.,  and  Jason  Brown,  as  well  as  members  of  the 
Partridge  and  Updegraft,  with  other  families.  James 
G.  Blunt,  then  a  practising  physician  in  that  section, 
and  afterwards  a  major-general  of  volunteers,  with 
a  distinguished  record,  on  whose  staff  I  served  for 
two  years,  told  me  of  the  continued  unrest  and  dread 
that  preceded  the  24th  of  May,  and  of  the  quiet  and 
peace  that  for  a  considerable  period  followed  there- 
after. I  never  heard  a  free-state  citizen  of  that  sec- 
tion among  the  scores  personally  known  to  me,  depre- 
cate the  act  of  death  with  which  John  Brown's  name 
is  there  associated.  I  have  known  some  of  them  to 
evade  the  expression  of  an  opinion.  In  fact,  the  only 
upright  and  honorable  free-state  citizen  I  have  known 
as  always  declaring  the  "Pottawatomie  Massacre" 
to  have  been  unwarranted,  was  the  gallant  Col.  Sam- 
uel Walker,  of  Lawrence.  But,  he  never  made  his 
view  a  cause  of  attack  upon  John  Brown's  honesty  of 
purpose  or  integrity  of  character.  He  held  the  act 
to  be  such  a  case  of  mental  aberration  or  fanaticism  as 
one,  for  example,  in  criticising  Calvin,  might  con- 
sider the  burning  of  Servetus.  Col.  Walker  left  per- 
sonal reflections  to  men  inside  of  his  own  lines  who 
cared  more  for  partisan  success,  or  personal  profit 
and  advancement,  than  they  did  for  conscience  and 
unselfish  service.  Some  attempt  has  been  made  to 
have  it  appear  that  John  Brown  in  striking  the  Pot- 
tawatomie blow  was  obeying  the  dictates  or  sugges- 
tions of  a  secret  free-state  order  or  council.  There 
is  absolutely  no  proof  of  such  a  thing,  and  I  do  not 
believe  it  to   be   in  any  way   credible.      Reference  is 


86  JOHN    BROWN. 

made  to  this  rumor  so  as  to  call  attention  to  a  series 
of  "  half  truths  "  that  have  been  made  to  do  duty  as 
"whole  falsehoods"  ever  since  i860.  These  were 
started,  as  far  as  they  have  a  place  in  this  history  of 
events  under  consideration,  by  ex-Governor  Charles 
Robinson,  in  his  volunteered  testimony  before  the 
Senate  Committee's  "  Inquiry  into  the  Harper's  Ferry 
Raid."  In  that  testimony,  as  printed  at  the  time  in 
the  New  York  Herald  and  other  papers,  Dr.  Robin- 
son spoke  of  a  secret  order  among  free-state  men 
known,  as  he  said,  as  "  The  Danites."  He  declared, 
that  he  was  not  a  member  of  it,  but  that  James  H. 
Lane  (his  rival  for  political  preferment)  was.  He 
mentions  also  John  Brown's  sons,  James  Redpath, 
Wm.  A.  Phillips,  J.  H.  Kagi,  killed  at  Harper's  Ferry, 
and  myself.  When  his  testimony  appeared,  Colonel 
Phillips,  Mr.  Redpath,  and  myself  denied  fully  all  of 
Robinson's  statements.  He  never  answered  our 
proven  denials.  But  there  was  a  "  League  of  Free- 
dom "  organized  in  Kansas,  in  the  fall  or  early  winter 
of  1855,  and  Dr.  Charles  Robinson,  then  chief  agent  of 
the  New  England  Emigrant  Aid  Society,  residing  in 
Lawrence,  was,  as  I  have  good  reason  for  saying,  its 
first  chief  or  commander.  I  have  in  my  possession  a 
paper  marked  "Confidential,"  written  by  a  well-known 
and  still  prominent  citizen  of  Kansas,  who  states  this 
position  of  Robinson  to  be  a  fact,  and  claims  for  him- 
self to  have  served  as  the  first  secretary.  This  witness 
states  that  the  original  minutes  are  all  in  his  poses- 
sion,  and  that  they  will  at  some  future  day  be  depos- 
ited with  the  State  Historical  Society.  In  writing  of 
11  Dutch  Henry's  "  character,  he  says,  that  a  messenger 
started  and  failed  to  reach  the  camp  of  the  Pottawa- 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  87 

tomie  Rifles  with  a  request  for  the  striking  of  some 
blow  that  would  compel  a  pause  on  the  part  of  the 
border-ruffian  assailants.  ' 

John  Brown  Jr.,  has  declared  in  recent  years  that  a 


1  Henry  Sherman,  or  "  Dutch  Henry,"  as  he  was  called,  lived  on 
Pottawatomie  Creek  and  kept  a  store  or  saloon.  It  had  become  the 
rendezvous  for  the  Doyles  and  others  who  were  known  as  border 
ruffians,  spies,  thieves,  and  murderers.  It  was  through  them  the 
Missourians  gained  all  information  concerning  the  condition  of  the 
free-state  men.  At  this  particular  time,  the  country  was  full  of 
such  ruffians,  who  had  come  up  here  to  murder  our  people  and 
burn  our  homes.  These  men  were  most  active  and  bold.  They 
ordered  free-state  men  to  leave  under  pain  of  death  if  they  failed 
to  comply.  While  our  men  were  under  arms  and  in  camp,  these 
marauders  went  to  the  homes  of  the  settlers,  where  there  was  no 
one  but  women  and  children;  they  were  abusive  and  indecent.  On 
one  occasion  they  so  frightened  one  woman  who  was  quick  with 
child  that  she  gave  premature  birth  to  it  and  came  near  dying. 
These  conditions  were  reported,  and  a  council  was  called,  the 
whole  matter  was  discussed,  and  after  a  full  investigation,  it  was 
decided  that  "  Dutch  Henry"  and  his  whole  gang  should  be  put 
to  death,  as  an  example  and  warning  to  the  many  murderers  who 
infested  the  Territory  at  that  time.  It  was  believed  their  crimes 
merited  it,  and  the  safety  of  the  free-state  community  demanded 
it.  I  do  not  say  that  John  Brown's  party  were  chosen  ;  probably 
the  decision  was  anticipated.  I  do  say  we  decided  that  it  must  be 
done.  The  execution  of  these  men  was  the  dawn  of  peace  in 
Kansas.  There  was  no  more  murdering  except  by  ruffians  attached 
to  forces  coming  over  in  large  numbers.  House-burning  was  done 
only  under  similar  circumstances.  Pro-slavery  men  who  where 
not  border  ruffians,  and  there  were  a  goodly  number,  were  soon 
ready  to  aid  in  the  protection  of  free-state  men.  They  asked  and 
were  never  denied  protection  by  the  latter.  It  was  the  great  be- 
ginning of  the  glorious  ending  in  Kansas.  I  justified  it  then,  so 
did  Robinson  and  everybody  else.  I  have  had  no  reason  to  change 
my  mind  upon  that  subject  since. 


88 


JOHN    BROWN. 


night    or    two    before    the   last   attack   on    Lawrence 
(September  15,  1856),  Dr.  Robinson  in  his  own  house 
told    his   father   that  the   Pottawatomie  slaying   was 
entirely  justifiable,  and   that  more  of  the  same   sort 
should  be  done.     Captain  Brown  grimly  advised  the 
doctor    that    if   he    had   any   such   jobs   on   hand    he 
should  do  them  himself.     The  "  League  of  Freedom  " 
was  designed  only  to  enable  the  harassed  free-state 
men  to  know  each  other,  to  aid  in  protection  and  to 
assist  in  rapid  gathering  for  defense.     There  was  no 
obligation   taken   of  a  wrong   or   violent    character; 
there  was  ho  disloyalty  in  its  pledges,  and   on  the 
whole,  as  I  now   recollect,  it  was   less  forceful   even 
than  the  Union  League  of  America,  which  became  so 
powerful  in  the  war  period.     That  League  seems  to 
have  followed  the  Kansas  outline.   I  distinctly  remem- 
ber that  the  badge  of  recognition  was  for  both  bodies 
the  same — a  little  piece  of  black  tape  or  ribbon  worn 
in  a  button  hole  or  at  the  throat.    The  Kansas  League 
was  formed  into  units  or  councils  of  ten.     That's  all 
I  recall,  except  that  I  know  that  it  was  as  a  factor  of 
no  great  consequence.      The  actors,  and  no  "  Danite  " 
order,  alone  bear  the  direct  responsibility  of  the  Pot- 
tawatomie slaying;    and   as  every  sincere  and  active 
Kansas  free-state  man  of  that  period,  but  one,  of  whom 
I  have  any  knowledge,  indorsed  or  acquiesced  in  the 
deed  and  its  results,  they  must  all  accept  a  share  of 
responsibility.     Charles  Robinson  declared  that  the 
effect  was  to  strike  terror  into  the  hearts  of  pro-slavery 
men;  that  their  "party  could   take  no  exception   to 
it  as    they  had  inaugurated  the  war."       He    asked: 
"  But  was  John   Brown   at   heart   a  murderer  in  this 
butchery?     I   think   not.     He  worshiped  the  God  of 


SHADOWS  FROM  POTTAWATOMIE.  89 

Joshua  and  David,  who  ordered  all  the  enemies  of 
his  people  to  be  slaughtered;  .  .  .  and  every- 
thing that  breathed."1  In  December,  1859,  three  and 
a  half  years  after  the  event,  Dr.  Robinson,  at  a  public 
meeting  in  Lawrence,  supported  resolutions  declaring 
that  said  transaction  was  not  unjustifiable,  but  "  that 
it  was  performed  from  the  sad  necessity  which  ex- 
isted at  the  time  to  defend  the  lives  and  liberties  of 
the  settlers  of  that  region."  Again,  at  the  unveiling 
of  John  Brown's  monument  at  Osawatomie,  August 
30,  1877,  twenty-one  years  after  the  Pottawatomie 
slaying,  Charles  Robinson,  in  his  dedicatory  speech, 
declared  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  party:  "They  were 
men  of  conviction,  though  death  stared  them  in  the 
face.  .  .  .  The  soul  of  John  Brown  was  the  in- 
spiration of  the  Union  armies  in  the  emancipation 
war.  .  .  .  To  the  superficial  observer,  John  Brown 
was  a  failure.  So  was  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  Both 
suffered  ignominious  death  as  traitors  to  the  Govern- 
ment, yet  one  is  now  hailed  as  the  Saviour  of  the  world 
from  sin,  and  the  other  of  a  race  from  bondage." 

Eli  Thayer,  who,  like  Governor  Robinson,  has  been 
lavish  in  defamatory  abuse  of  John  Brown,  knew  well 
the  story  of  Pottawatomie  and  all  that  it  suggested, 
vet  up  to  1858  he  was  the  open  and  apparently  sincere 
admirer  of  the  Puritan  fighter.  In  May  of  1857  he 
paid  for  and  made  Captain  Brown  a  present  of  a 
large  gun,  carrying  a  two-ounce  ball,  which  had 
been  manufactured  at  Worcester  for  Captain  Brown's 
use  by  the  Massachusetts  Arms  Company.  The  re- 
ceipted bill  made  out  to  Eli  Thayer  was  indorsed  and 


1  Topeka  Commonwealth,  1879. 


gO  JOHN     BROWN. 

signed  on  the  back  in  his  own  handwriting  as  follows: 

"Presented  to  my  friend,  Captain  John  Brown,  for 
use  in  the  cause  of  Freedom.  Eli  Thayer." 

This  document  was  in  my  possession  in  i860,  and 
was  used  in  the  campaign  of  that  year  against  Eli 
Thayer's  candidacy  for  Congress.  He  was  running 
as  an  Independent,  and  part  of  his  stock-in-trade  was 
denunciation  of  John  Brown's  character  and  memory. 

Perhaps  no  single  piece  of  evidence  will  more 
clearly  show  the  immediate  effect  of  the  Pottawatomie 
blow,  than  the  following  letter  by  one  who  is  known 
as  the, lieutenant-colonel  of  the  First  Colorado  Cav- 
alry, and,  after  the  War,  as  one  of  the  Indian  Peace 
Commissioners,  appointed  by  President  Grant.  At  the 
date  of  the  slaying  there  was  considerable  commotion 
throughout  the  Territory.  A  party  of  Northern  emi- 
grants which  had  left  Illinois  for  Kansas  by  the  Mis- 
souri River,  had  been  turned  back  at  Leavenworth 
by  Buford's  men.  The  Oliver  Congressional  Com- 
mittee was  in  session  at  Leavenworth.  Threats  of 
driving  out  all  Northern  men  were  freely  made. 
Colonel  Samuel  F.  Tappan  says: 

"In  the  summer  of  1856,  I  was  at  Leavenworth  as 
clerk  of  the  Congressional  Committee,  investigating 
free-state  affairs.  A  reign  of  terror  prevailed,  free- 
state  men,  women,  and  children,  were  forcibly  driven 
from  their  homes,  put  upon  steamers,  and  sent  down 
the  river.  Free-state  men  were  arrested  by  a  mob 
of  Buford  men,  and  imprisoned  in  the  basement  of  a 
warehouse.  Miles  Moore,  M.  J.  Parrott,  Charles 
Robinson,  Judge  Wakefield,  and  others,  were  also  held 
as  prisoners  in  the  city.    This  continued  until  one  after- 


SHADOWS    FROM    POTTAWATOMIE.  9I 

noon  the  Herald  (General  Easton,  editor)  published 
an  extra  about  six  inches  long — giving  an  account  of 
the  horrible  murder  by  John  Brown,  of  Wilkinson  and 
six  [four]  others,  on  Pottawatomie  Creek,  Southeast- 
ern Kansas.  This  put  a  stop  to  further  demands  upon 
free- state  men,  and  they  were  all  soon  after  released. 
The  Buford  men  remained  quiet,  no  longer  appear- 
ing in  the  street  under  arms.  In  a  few  days  I  took 
passage  in  mail-coach  for  Lawrence,  with  S.  C.  Smith. 
Mr.  Weibling,  who  had  been  a  prisoner,  drove  the 
team,  Judge  Wakefield,  having  been  released,  was 
also  on  the  coach,  and  we  drove  to  Lawrence  without 
further  trouble." 

So  much  is  certain:  The  men  who  were  slain  rep- 
resented the  worst  elements  arrayed  in  behalf  of  slav- 
ery, and  engaged  in  harrying  the  free-state  settlers; 
the  results  of  the  deed  wreie  immediately  and  per- 
manently beneficial,  and  the  most  of  those  who  have 
since  defamed  and  assailed  the  name  and  fame  of  John 
Brown  under  pretense  of  being  shocked  by  the  Potta- 
watomie tragedy,  were  conspicuous  in  earlier  days  in 
eulogizing  the  man  they  now  assail.  It  is  an  act  not 
to  be  judged  by  soft  "  lutings  of  my  lady's  chamber," 
or  the  usual  conventionalities  of  peaceful  periods. 
Those  who  are  shocked  always  at  the  shedding  of 
blood  will  shudder  when  reading  the  story.  Those 
who  comprehend  that  evolution  includes  cataclysm 
as  well  as  continuity,  will  realize  the  nature  of  the 
forces  in  issue,  and  decide  as  their  own  conception  of 
events  and  their  righteousness  may  determine.  Those 
who  lived  through  those  titanic  days,  and  stood  for 
freedom,  will  have  no  doubt  in  ranging  themselves. 
For  John  Brown  himself,  no  one  who  understands  the 


92  JOHN    BROWN. 

conditions  then  existing  will  offer  apology  or  excuse. 
The  act  done  proved  to  be  a  potential  one  in  the  win- 
ning of  free  institutions  for  Kansas.  And  that  is 
what  they  have  to  deal  with.  John  Brown  always 
declared  that  the  people  of  Kansas  would  surely 
sustain  and  justify  the  deed  done  on  the  24th  of  May, 
1856.  The  marble  statue  erected  in  his  honor  at 
Osawatomie  is  in  evidence  of  the  faith  that  was  in  him. 
For  himself,  while  never  acknowledging  participation 
in  the  Pottawatomie  slaying,  he  never  denied  it  either. 
He  always  declared,  however,  that,  as  he  avowed  a 
belief  in  its  righteousness,  he  could  not,  therefore, 
avoid  a  personal  responsibility  for  the  deed.  This 
has  been  the  attitude  of  every  honorable  free-state 
man  in  Kansas.  To  avoid  now  would  be  cowardice 
indeed.  Time  has  lifted  the  shadows,  but  it  has  not 
dulled  the  memory. 


CHAPTER  V. 

PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS. 

John  Brown  leaves  the  Territory — Through  Nebraska 
and  Iowa  to  Chicago — Governor  Geary  and  the 
Northern  emigrants — Free-state  prisoners  serving  as 
his  body  guard — How  they  were  ill-treated — The 
political  conflicts — Serving  Territorial  power —  The 
Lecompton  and  Leavenworth  Constitutions — Ballot- 
box  frauds — John  Brown  in  Iowa  and  Kansas 
again — A  new  leaf  turned. 

The  Missourians  suddenly  retired  from  Lawrence 
on  the  evening  of  Sept.  15,  1856.  They  had  failed  in 
their  avowed  design  of  "  wiping  cut  "  the  town;  first, 
because  the  courage  of  its  residents  combined  with 
John  Brown's  presence,  gave  definite  direction  to  the 
defense;  and,  second,  because  the  Democratic  fear  of 
Fremont's  election  compelled  the  interference  of 
Governor  John  W.  Geary.  But  he  made  no  effort  to 
prevent  the  malign  pro-slavery  force  from  wreaking 
such  vengance  as  they  were  able  when  retreating, 
in  the  burning  of  every  free-state  cabin  in  sight. 
Memory  still  recalls  the  scene.  Two  squadrons  of 
United  States  dragoons,  commanded  by  Lieut. -Col. 
Phillip  St.  George  Cooke,  surrounded  the  Governor 
while  occupying  the  crown  of  Mount  Oread,  a  small 
range  of  hills  upon  which  now  stands  the  State  uni- 


94  JOHN    BROWN. 

versity  buildings.  At  that  time  it  was  occupied  only 
by  a  rude  circular  wall  of  earth  and  stone  thrown  up 
for  defensive  purposes.  Capt.  Samuel  Walker  was 
conversing  with  Geary.  Soon  after  he  was  ap- 
pointed acting  sheriff  of  Douglas  County.  All  free- 
state  men  esteemed  Captain  Walker,  but  many  of 
them  did  not  like  the  appointment,  because  it  in- 
volved a  recognition  of  the  "  bogus  laws."  The  sun- 
set's glow  faded  swiftly  from  the  western  sky,  as  a  low 
soughing  wind  arose.  The  shadows  were  made  lurid 
by  the  red  flames  of  a  dozen  fires  that  could  be  seen, 
marking  the  retreat  to  the  Missouri  border  of  the 
pro-slavery  force.  All  of  us  were  impatient,  for  mur- 
der had  been  committed.  Rapine  was  free,  yet  the 
Governor  was  slow.  His  severe  manner  showed  he 
felt  the  full  importance  of  his  strange  position,  while 
it  also  made  manifest  his  mental  attitude  towards  the 
free-state  people.  Hostile  and  unfriendly  then,  we 
knew  soon  after  that  he  was  at  heart  of  genuine  stuff. 
Doubtless  he  realized  that  he  had  by  not  pressing 
the  Missouri  invaders,  saved  for  the  time  being  that 
Union,  for  whose  defense  and  preservation  he  after- 
wards fought  so  gallantly  and  served  so  well  as  sol- 
dier and  commander.  Had  Lawrence  been  destroyed 
that  day,  the  North  would  have  arisen  in  its  wrath, 
Fremont  would  have  been  elected  President,  and  the 
South  would  doubtless  have  revolted  four  years 
earlier  than  it  did.  There  were  men  in  the  pro- 
slavery  camp  and  councils  in  Kansas  who  steadily 
sought  to  precipitate  that  issue.  It  needed,  however, 
the  crucial  test  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  sacrifice  to 
educate  the  awakening  North  to  a  fuller  measure 
of  the  work  before  it. 


PREPARATION     AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  Qt; 

John  Brown,  under  the  friendly  shadows,  left  the 
town  he  had  helped  to  save,  no  longer  to  him  and  his 
a  friendly  refuge.  John,  Jr.,  and  Jason,  were  with 
him,  also  a  fugitive  slave,  hidden  in  the  ricketty  one- 
horse  wagon  that  Captain  Brown  had  moved  about 
in  when  appearing  as  a  United  States  land  surveyor. 
Two  others  probably  joined  him  at  Topeka.  They 
were  Charles  P.  Tidd  and  William  H.  Leeman,  after- 
wards known  to  be  with  him  at  Tabor,  Iowa.  Owen 
I  Brown  had  been  left  at  Tabor,  when  Captain  Brown 
went  to  Iowa,  and  returned  to  Kansas  in  the  preced- 
ing August.  This  trip  was  made  in  order  to  convey 
Henry  Thompson,  wounded  at  the  Black  Jack  fight, 
with  Owen  and  Salmon,  who  were  also  injured  by 
accidents  at  the  same  time.  Owen  was  on  his  way 
to  meet  his  father,  and  did  not  get  to  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Lawrence  until  long  after  dark.  He  had  an 
arduous  task  in  the  night  to  locate  the  bivouac  of  his 
father  and  brothers.  The  presence  of  a  fugitive  slave 
in  the  party  made  necessary  more  than  usual  caution. 
Captain  Walker  directed  me,  after  the  Governor  and 
his  escort  made  camp  and  found  shelter  for  the  night, 
to  find  John  Brown's  camp,  or  at  least  to  overtake 
him  by  the  time  he  should  reach  Topeka,  giving  him 
warning  of  an  attempt  to  arrest.  I  found  them  early 
in  the  morning,  and  shared  with  the  party  their  break- 
fast of  roasted  corn  ears,  lean  beef  toasted  over  a  little 
fire,  and  corn-coffee.  In  those  days  such  parties  never 
traveled  the  highway,  avoided  the  cabins,  and  at  night 
usually  camped  without  fire  in  sheltered  ravines. 

At  Topeka,  the  center  of  interest  then  because  of  the 
incoming  Northern  emigrants,  the  policy  of  the  new 
( iovernor  was  soon  made  known.     He  sought  to,  and 


96  JOHN    BROWN. 

did    divide    free-state    councils,    inducing    conserva- 
tives, like  Captain  Walker,  to  cooperate  in   securing 
what  was  alleged  to  be  peace,  but  which  in  reality  only- 
made  oppression   more   difficult   to   resist.     He    then 
directed  his  efforts  to  the  arresting  or  scattering  of  the 
men,  organized  in  the  Northern  emigrant  trains,  that 
were  coming  to  the  Territory  by  way  of  the  long  land 
route  through  Iowa  and  Nebraska.     The  nearest  rail- 
road stations  to  Kansas  at  that  time  were  Iowa  City, 
Iowa,  to  the  north  and   east,  and  Jefferson  City,  Mis- 
souri, to   the   south,  each   about   four  hundred   miles 
distant.     The   Missouri  River,  from   St.  Louis  to  St. 
Joseph,  was  in  the  hands  of  the  pro-slavery  forces  and 
practically    closed    to    free    navigation,  the    Federal 
authorities    passively    cooperating.      A    number    of 
Eastern    and    Northern    emigrant    parties   had    been 
turned  back  thereon,  and  their  arms  and  other  goods 
taken  from    them.     The    Sharp's    rifles,  which    John 
Brown  afterwards  transported  to  Virginia,  were  origi- 
nally shipped,  after  purchase  by  George  L.  Stearns, 
from    Massachusetts   for   Kansas   via    St.    Louis   and 
Kansas  City.    They  were  stopped  on  the  road  and  sent 
to  Iowa  City,  whence  some  one  of  the  agents   of  the 
National     Kansas     Aid    Committee,     probably    Mr. 
W.  M.  F.  Amy,  had  them   forwarded  with  other  sup- 
plies   to    Tabor,    a    few    miles   from   Nebraska    City. 
Mr.  John   Jones  received    and   warehoused    them    at 
Tabor.     It   is  not   generally   known,  but   it   is  a  fact 
nevertheless,  that  there  were  from  1856  to  1858  more 
slaves   in   southern    Nebraska  than   in    Kansas  itself. 
Less   than  a  hundred  were   brought   there,  and   most 
of  them   were    conveyed    to    the    north    star    section 
soon  after.     The  first  attempt  to  cross  the  Missouri 


PREPARATION     AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  97 

river  by  the  new  route  was  made  by  the  Massachu- 
setts party,  under  charge  of  Martin  Stowell,  of  which 
I  was  a  member.  We  were  the  advance  guard  in 
July,  1856,  of  "  Jim  "  Lane's  hastily  gathered  com- 
mand. The  Nebraska  City  ferry  was  worked  by  a 
southern  settler,  named  Nuckolds,  who  iiad  brought 
slaves  there  and  who  declared  that  our  company 
should  not  cross.  Three  of  us,  who  were  mounted, 
rode  down,  called  and  got  the  ferry  over  to  the  Iowa 
or  eastern  side  of  the  river,  with  Nuckolds  himself  in 
charge,  and  we  held  it  there  until  our  little  company 
of  sixty-five  young  men  with  three  wagons  were 
ferried  over.  These  incidents  are  only  mentioned 
to  show  the  nature  of  the  obstacles.  Mr.  Nuckolds 
yielded  to  our  persuasive  force,  aided  by  that  of  his 
neighbors,  many  of  whom  were  free-state  in  sym- 
pathy, and,  perhaps,  even  more  by  the  profit  he  found 
in  the  large  ferriage  tolls  we  promptly  paid.  Briga- 
dier-General Persifer  Smith,  U.  S.  A.,  was  in  com- 
mand, with  headquarters  in  Fort  Leavenworth,  from 
early  in  1856  until  the  spring  of  1857,  had  spies 
in  our  camps.  Southern  by  birth  and  associations, 
he  leaned  certainly  to  that  side.  Colonel  Sumner,  a 
cousin  of  Senator  Sumner  (then  a  helpless  invalid 
from  the  bludgeon  of  Preston  Brooks,  of  South 
Carolina),  was  actively  commanding  in  the  field.  He 
is  remembered  with  admiring  gratitude  for  fair  play. 
It  is  not  designed  to  suggest,  however,  that  General 
Smith  was  intentionally  and  deliberately  partisan, 
but  he  treated  the  Northern  emigrants  as  marauders, 
armed  to  disturb  the  peace,  and  regarded  the  South- 
ern and  Missouri  forces  as  composed  of  gentlemen, 
engaged,  though  in  mistaken  ways,  in  the  assertion  of 
7 


98  JOHN    BROWN. 

their  rights.  This  seems  to  be  the  attitude  of  some 
of  our  local  historians,  who  ought  to  know  better.1 

Governor  Geary  for  a  time  held  a  somewhat  simi- 
lar attitude  as  to  our  newcomers,  though  he  could 
not  be  in  sympathy  with  the  brawling  border-ruffian 
element,  by  which  at  Lecompton  he  was  at  once  sur- 
rounded. Indeed,  he  earl)''  exhibited  genuine  manli- 
ness by  rejecting  their  advice  and  declining  personal 
association  with  them.  So  marked  grew  the  diver- 
gence that  within  less  than  three  monlhs  the  border- 
ruffian  leaders  at  Lecompton  were  seeking  some  pre- 
text for  his  assassination.  Perhaps  Gen.  Persifer 
Smith's  tendencies  were  shown  in  no  more  marked 
way  than  by  his  treatment  of  Governor  Geary,  whose 
demand  for  troops,  needed  in  order  to  prevent  that 
assault  on  himself  and  authority,  he  even  rudely  de- 
clined to  recognize.  That  Geary  passed  this  peril 
safely  was  mainly  due  to  the  fact  that  a  number  of 
free-state  men  were  being  nominally  held  as  prison- 
ers at  Lecompton.     But  of  this  in  another  place. 

After  the  arrival  in  July  and  August,  1856,  from  the 


1  Among  our  army  officers  in  Kansas  during  the  free-state  pre- 
lude, were  many  of  the  most  distinguished  corps  and  division  com- 
manders, on  both  sides  of  the  subsequent  Civil  War.  General 
Smith,  Col.  Joseph  E.  Johnston,  Captain  Longstreet,  Lieutenant 
Mcintosh,  Captain  Anderson,  I  recall  as  noted  Confederate  offi- 
cers. Cols.  Sumner  and  St.  George  CooUe,  Majors  Thomas, 
Sedge  wick,  and  David  Hunter,  Captains  Wm.  B.  Wood,  Sackett, 
and  Nathaniel  Lyon,  are  some  of  those  who  made  fame  as  soldiers 
and  renown  as  Union  commanders.  And  singularly,  too,  the 
harshest  and  most  unfair  of  them  all  in  his  personal  attitude  and 
action  in  dealing  with  free-state  men  was  a  fine  soldier,  now 
relieved  with  rank  as  Major-General  of  Volunteers  and  Brigadier 
General  of  Regulars,  after  a  notable  career  as  a  corps  commander. 


PREPARATION    AND     CHANGE    IN    KANSAS. 


99 


Northern  and  Eastern  States  of  over  one  thousand 
additional  free-state  men,  the  conditions  of  the  con- 
flict favorably  changed.  The  effort  then  begun  to  dis- 
integrate the  free-state  party.  It  had  so  far  deliber- 
ately avoided  either  Republican  or  Democratic  affili- 
ations. With  the  repulse  at  Lawrence,  the  victorious 
fighters,  Lane,  Harvey,  Brown,  and  others,  quickly 
disappeared.  This  was  in  accord  with  the  politic 
demands  of  the  National  Kansas  Committeemen, 
who  demanded  non-resistance  to  Federal  authority 
as  a  condition  of  organized  North- 
ern support.  General  Lane  left  for 
Nebraska  as  soon  as  Geary's  arrival 
at  Kansas  City  was  known.  He 
was  escorted  out  of  Kansas  by  a 
small  force  commanded  by  Colonel 
Whipple  —  the  name  by  which 
Aaron  D wight  Stevens1  was  known 
in  Kansas.  He  was  the  fighting 
free-state  leader  at  Topeka,  and  to 
him  was  entrusted  a  defense  of  the 
open  road  to  Nebraska  and  Iowa. 

On  John  Brown's  arrival  at 
Tabor,  in  the  middle  of  August, 
Henry  and  William  Thompson, 
with  Salmon  and  Oliver  Brown,  started  at  once  for 
their  Adirondack  homes,  glad  to  get  away  from  war's 
disorder.  For  a  considerable  period  thereafter,  they 
were  disinclined  to  proceed  any  further  in  their 
leader's  course.  On  the  second  trip  north,  Captain 
Brown  and  party  camped  near  or  passed  the  lines  of 


AARON    DWIGHT    STEVENS. 


1  Hung  at  Charlestown,  Va.,  March,  16,  i860. 

L  Of  C 


IOO  JOHN    BROWN. 

United  States  cavalry,  engaged  in  efforts  to  arrest 
him.  Colonel  Whipple  with  his  command  marched 
on  parallel  lines,  but  kept  out  of  sight,  arriving  in 
Nebraska  in  time  to  meet  the  Northern  emigrants 
who  were  organized  and  marching  under  Colonel 
Eldredge,  of  Lawrence;  S.  C.  Pomeroy,  afterwards 
United  States  Senator;  Samuel  F.  Tappan,  and  James 
Redpath.  Preston  B.  Plumb  was  also  making  his 
third  attempt  to  enter  Kansas,  the  State  which  sent 
him  to  the  United  States  Senate  in  after  years,  he 
having  twice  before  been  taken  prisoner  by  Missouri- 
ans  and  compelled  to  return  to  Ohio.  John  Brown 
left  Topeka  later  (Sept.  20th)  and  moved  with  less 
rapidity  than  Lane,  avoiding  also  the  emigrant 
trains.  His  son  Watson,  then  a  youth  of  seventeen, 
had  left  North  Elba  for  Iowa  on  the  arrival  home  of 
his  brothers,  but  he  missed  his  father  and  turned 
eastward  before  the  latter's  arrival  early  in  October  at 
Tabor.  Captain  Brown  proceeded  direct  to  Chicago, 
where  he  arrived  on  the  25th  or  26th  of  October. 
After  conferring  with  the  National  Committee,  there 
began  the  plan  of  agitation  which  finally  led  directly 
to  Harper's  Ferry.  He  had  framed  definite  plans, 
the  character  of  which  will  develop  in  this  narrative. 
While  John  Brown  was  making  his  way  eastward 
on  a  missionary  tour  for  "  Beecher's  Bibles  "  (Sharpe's 
rifles)  and  money  to  sustain  further  active  operations, 
affairs  in  Kansas  became  more  complex  and  also 
quite  serious  in  character.  The  "  Executive  Minutes  " 
of  Gov.  John  W.  Geary,  published  by  the  State  His- 
torical Society  of  Kansas,  within  a  few  years,  shed 
considerable  light  on  the  passing  events  of  the  period 
under  review, 


PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  IOI 

One  startling  reminder  of  border-ruffian  domination, 
threatening  renewal  of  strife  for  more  than  the  year 
following  Governor  Geary's  arrival  in  the  middle  of 
September,  1856,  was  an  alleged  law  passed  by  the 
Shawnee  Mission  Legislature,1  providing  for  the  con- 
vening of  a  so-called  constitutional  convention  at 
Lecompton,  the  Territorial  capital,  with  sixty  dele- 
gates. These  were  apportioned  so  as  to  allow  of 
electing  four-fifths  of  the  delegates  from  counties 
controlled  by  Missouri  votes.  In  an  apportion- 
ment for  Territorial  Legislature,  nineteen  Southern 
counties  were  given  but  three  representatives,  three 
counties  containing  the  bulk  of  free-state  voters 
were  given  nine,  while  seven  pro-slavery  counties 
with  one-half  of  their  population  were  given  twenty- 
four  members.  Attempts  were  made  to  induce  the 
Governor  to  authorize  and  recognize  the  arming  of 
small  bodies  as  militia  for  the  purpose  of  preventing 
any  election  outbreaks.  The  leaders  were  to  be  pro- 
slavery  partisans  like  Henry  Clay  Pate,  and  men  of  the 
same  type.     Geary  did   not  yield  to  this  request,  nor 


1  The  Shawnee  Mission  was  partly  in  Missouri  and  partly  in 
Kansas,  this  segment  being  on  the  Shawnee  reservation  in  Johnson 
County.  The  missionary  was  a  Southern  Methodist,  and  a  violent 
pro-slavery  man.  Governor  Reeder  convened  the  first  Legislature 
at  Pawnee  City,  Riley  County,  the  center  of  the  Territory.  The 
War  Department,  Jefferson  Davis,  Secretary,  decided  that  Pawnee 
was  on  the  military  reservation  of  Fort  Riley.  Colonel  Mont- 
gomery was  cashiered,  and  unjustly,  for  it  has  since  been  found 
that  it  was  not  on  the  reservation  at  all.  The  general  belief  in 
Kansas  was  that  if  Colonel  Montgomery  had  been  "  sound  on  the 
goose,"  i.  e.,  slavery,  he  would  not  have  been  cashiered.  The 
Missourians  immediately  after  organizing,  adjourned  to  the 
Shawnee  Mission  and  there  went  on  with  their  work. 


102  JOHN    BROWN. 

did  he  to  the  demand  of  the  United  States  marshal,  J 
Donelson,  of  South  Carolina,  for  an  escort  of  tweni 
dragoons  to  enable  him  to  arrest  a  number  of  active 
free-state  men,  charged  with  resisting  the  border- 
ruffian  code.  The  Governor  expressed  his  aversion  to 
the  use  of  troops  in  serving  civil  processes,  and,  on  that 
ground,  declined.  Among  those  to  be  so  arrested  may 
be  found  the  name  of  Charles  W.  Moffett,  one  of  John 
Brown's  Regulars,  and  a  member  of  the  party  who 
drilled  twelve  months  later  at  Springdale,  Iowa,  for 
the  Virginia  raid.  These  rebuffs  to  the  unqualified 
ruffian  elements  soon  gave  breathing  space  lobona-fide 
settlers  on  both  sides.  At  Lecompton  the  situation 
was  complicated  by  the  holding  as  prisoners  of  101 
free-state  men,  who  had  left  Lawrence  under  Colonel 
Harvey,  on  the  12th  of  September,  for  the  purpose  of 
attacking  a  fortified  camp  of  Buford's  men,  located 
at  Hickory  Point,  some  thirty  miles  northeast  of 
Lawrence.  A  squadron  of  dragoons,  under  Captain 
Wood,  left  Lecompton  on  the  14th  to  intercept  Har- 
vey, but  did  not  meet  and  capture  his  command  till 
the  job  they  started  to  do  had  been  fully  completed. 
The  captured  free-state  force  consisted,  as  the  Geary 
minutes  state,  of  101  prisoners,  a  brass  cannon,  seven 
wagons,  and  a  large  quantity  of  arms  and  munitions 
of  war.  The  prisoners  were  conveyed  to  the  encamp- 
ment of  the  United  States  troops.' 

1  List  of  Prisoners  confined  at  Lecompton,  K.  T. ,  Sept.  27,  1856. 
and  bound  over  on  the  charge  of  murder  in  the  first  degree: — 

C.  H.  Calkins,  Bangor,  Me.;  Thos.  Bickerton,  Portland,  Me.; 
F.  B.  Swift,  Brunswick,  Me.;  Win.  Butler,  Cook  Co.,  N.  H.;  J. 
F.  Tabor,  Howland,  Vt. ;  J.  L.  King,  Brattleboro',  Vt. ;  O.  M. 
Marsh,  Woodstock,  Vt.;  Stafford  J.  Pratt,  Boston,  Mass.;  W.  N. 
Bent,    Dorchester,  Mass.;  D.    H.  Montague,  Springfield,   Mass.; 


PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  IO3 

Kagi.  was  the  correspondent  of  the  New  York 
Evening  Post  and  the  National  Era,  Washington, 
D.  C.  He  and  Moffett  were  afterwards  members  at 
different  periods  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  party.  Will- 
iam Bowles  was  the  brother  of  Col.  John  Bowles,  to 
whom  the  readers  of  this  work  are  indebted  for  the 
new  portrait  of  Captain  Brown,  published  herein. 
Among  this  list  are  many  names  of  men  who  after- 
wards distinguished  themselves  in  the  Union  army. 
The  arrest,  confinement,   trial,   and  conviction    with 


A.  W.  Dole,  Fiichburg,  Mass.;  Howard  York,  W.  Brookfield, 
Mass.;  C.  L.  Preston,  Worcester,  Mass.;  "Major"  Soley,  Wor- 
cester, Mass.;  A.  H.  Parker,  Clinton,  Mass.;  Geo.  S.  Leonard, 
Franklin,  Mass.;  Eli  D.  Lyman,  South  Hadley,  Mass.;  L.  D. 
Coleman,  Southampton,  Mass.;  Henry  Heard,  Lowell,  Mass., 
Ed.  Whipple,  Providence,  R.  I.;  Wra.  Owen,  Central  Falls,  R.  I.; 
Alonzo  Crawford,  Union,  Conn.;  C.  C.  Hyde,  Hornellsville, 
N  Y.;  Jared  Carter,  Saratoga,  N.  Y. ;  Chester  Hay,  Madison  Co., 
N.  Y.;  Theo.  J.  Dickinson,  Newbury,  N.  Y.;  Jas.  R.  White,  New 
York  City,  N.  Y.;  A.  Cutter,  Central  Falls,  N.  Y. ;  Henry  N. 
Dunlap,  Buffalo,  N.  Y. ;  Geo.  H.  Powers,  Oneida  Co.,  N.  Y., 
Chas.  J.  Archinbole,  Buffalo,  N.  Y. ;  John  J.  Howell,  Utica, 
N.  Y.;  Jas.  B.  Haynes,  Philadelphia,  Pa.;  Jas.  J.  Bower,  Chester 
Co.,  Pa.;  T.  P.  Brown,  Alleghany  Co.,  Pa.;  Thos.  J.  Porterfield, 
(aged  67),  Preble  Co.,  O.;  Henry  H.  Easter,  Highland  Co.,  O.; 
E.  R.  Farley,  Morrow  Co.,  O. ;  Wm.  Ware,  Preble  Co.,  O. ;  Ed. 
Collingham,  Preble  Co.,  O.;  S.  Vogelsang,  Columbiana  Co.,  O. ; 
Josiah  G.  Fuller,  Oberlin,  O. ;  Alfred  J.  Payne,  Cuyahoga  Co.,  O. ; 
Thos.  Bowers,  Ross  Co.,  O. ;  J.  T.  Yunker,  Coshocton  Co.,  O  ; 
Albert  F.  Baker,  Lake  Co.,  O. ;  Chas.  Sexton,  Oberlin,  O. ;  J.  N. 
Thompson,  St.  Joseph  Co.,  Mich.;  Orville  Thompson,  St.  Joseph 
Co.,  Mich.;  Roswell  Hutchins,  Oakland  Co.,  Mich.;  John  W. 
Stone,  Detroit,  Mich.;  Sam'l  Stuart,  Detroit,  Mich.;  Sam'l  Dol- 
man, Grant  Co.,  Ind.;  A.  G.  Patrick,  Greencastle  Ind.;  John 
Ritchie,  Franklin,  Ind.;  Henry  Knowles,  Huntington  Co.,  Ind.; 
Henry  Hoover,  Huntington  Co.,  Ind.;   Nath.  Griffith,  Huntington 


104  JOHN    BROWN. 

subsequent  treatment,  had  a  serious  effect  on  public 
affairs  and  greatly  intensified  the  Northern  sentiment 
on  behalf  of  the  free-state  cause.  Their  former 
residences  show  how  wide  the  range  of  sentiment 
must  have  been.  The  permitted  escape  of  assassins 
like  Coleman,  who  had  shot  down  unarmed  or  unre- 
sisting men  like  Dow,  Jones,  Buffum,  and  others,  too 
vividly  contrasted  with  the  brutal  starvation  of  men 
who  had  met  in  open  day  an  enemy  under  arms,  and, 
after  a  six  hours'  combat,  captured  them  in  three 
heavily  built  log  cabins,  each  side  losing  one  man  in 


Co.,  Ind.,  Jas.  Siuex,  Wayne  Co.,  Ind.,  Eph.  Bainter,  Henry  Co.; 
John  Laurie,  White  Co.,  Lid.;  Wm.  Eptograft,  Fulton  Co.,  Ind.; 
Thomas  Kemp,  Tippecanoe  Co.,  Ind.;  W.  G.  Portet,  White  Co., 
Ind.;  Jesse  Pyle,  Schuyler  Co.,  111.;  A.  D.  Roy,  Lyndon,  111.; 
Geo.  Smith,  Ogle  Co.,  111.;  Geo.  Nebb,  Bloomington,  111.;  Justice 
Ketchum,  Bloomington,  111.;  Geo.  Pinney,  Joliet,  111.;  Thos. 
Leeson,  Rock  Island,  111.;  Gilbert  Tower,  Lake  Co.,  111.;  Jeremiah 
Jordan,  Ogle  Co.,  111.;  Thos.  Aliff,  Carlisle,  111.;  Adam  Bower, 
Schuyler  Co.,  III.;  J.  M.  Cole,  St.  Clair  Co.,  111.;  Aaron  M. 
Humphrey,  Kendall  Co.,  111.;  Wm.  Cline,  Peoria,  111.;  Isaac 
Gray,  Chicago,  111.;  A.  S.  Gates,  Hamilton,  111.;  Phineas Stevens, 
Bloomingdale,  111.;  Jas.  Connelly,  Lake  Co.,  111.;  W.  O.  Fisher, 
Madison  Co.,  111.;  John  White,  Lasalle  Co.,  111.;  Thos.  Hankins, 
Dover,  111.;  W.  H.  Gill,  Elizabeth,  111.;  Louis  Remiatte,  Tazewell 
Co.,  111.;  R.  D.  Nicholls,  Jefferson  Co.,  Wis.;  Robt.  M.  Nown, 
Racine  Co. ,  Wis. ;  C.  S.  Gleason,  Albany,  Wis.;  W.  Florentine, 
Jefferson  Co.,  Wis.;  Ed.  Jenkins,  Spring  Prairie,  Wis.;  G.  O. 
Eberhart,  Muscatine,  la. ;  Oliver  C.  Lewis,  Davenport,  la.;  Ed. 
Jacobs,  Mahaskie  Co.,  la.;  M.  Kincle,  Davenport,  la.;  Oliver 
Langworihy,  Poweshiek,  la.;  Jacob  Fisher,  Jefferson  City,  la.;  E. 
R.  Moffett,  Bristolville,  la. ;  Wm.  Kerr,  Washington,  la.;  Wm. 
Reyman,  Cooper  Co.,  la.;  J.  H.  Kagi,  Nebraska;  Wm.  Bowles, 
St.  Charles  Co.,  Mo.;  David  Patrick,  Lafayette  Co.,  Mo.;  Jos. 
Hicks,  Platte  Co.,  Mo.;  Thos.  Vainer,  Buchanan  Co.,  Mo.;  J,  H. 
York,  Buchanan  Co.,  Mo. 


PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  I05 

the  fight.  It  was  not  until  the  middle  of  March  that 
our  men  were  released  under  "  pardons  "  issued  by- 
Governor  Geary.  It  was  the  writer's  good  fortune  to 
carry  the  printed  blanks  from  Lawrence  to  Geary's 
office  and  assist  in  the  necessary  clerical  work  in  fill- 
ing them  up.  Some  twenty  of  the  prisoners  had  pre- 
viously been  transferred  from  Lecompton  to  Tecum- 
seh,  within  a  few  miles  of  Topeka.  A  brief  visit 
there  under  cover  of  night  by  some  citizens  of 
Topeka,  which  may  possibly  have  included  a  gentle- 
man who  afterwards  served  first  as  United  States 
Senator  and  subsequently  as  Governor  of  one  of  the 
Territories,  speedily  achieved  a  big  hole  in  the  base- 
ment wall  of  the  Tecumseh  court-house  through 
which  our  men  walked  to  freedom.  The  nature  of 
the  treatment  given  these  prisoners  may  be  seen  from 
the  following  transcript  of  a  diary  now  in  my  posses- 
sion.    It  is  worth  reading.1 


1  Monday,  Sept.  20. — Received  no  rations  from  United  States 
camp, — moved  to  Lecompton.  Received  at  5  o'clock  one  sack  of 
shorts  baked  into  bread, — one  ditto  not  made  into  bread;  75  lbs. 
of  bacon,  6  candles; — 103  men — no  coffer  or  sugar. 

Tuesday  evening. — One  sack  of  shorts,  103  lbs.  of  bacon,  4  lbs.  of 
coffee,  6  do.  of  sugar,  8  or  10  do.  of  salt;  1  do.  of  saleratus,  1  gall. 
of  molasses; — 103  men. 

Wednesday  evening. — One  sack  of  shorts,  5  lbs.  of  coffee,  5  do.  of 
sugar,  one  gall,  of  molasses,  1  lb.  of  saleratus; — 105  men. 

Thursday  evening. — One  sack  of  flour,  50  lbs.  of  bacon,  6  lbs.  of 
coffee,  no  sugar,  1  lb.  of  saleratus,  1  qrt.  of  vinegar,  3  candles,  1 
gall,  of  molasses;  no  provisions  brought  after  dark. 

Friday ,  2  o'clock. — Called  on  the  sergeant  of  the  guard  for  pro- 
visions, was  informed  that  he  had  spoken  to  the  Marshal,  and  that 
we  were  curtailed  to  two  meals  per  day.  Half-past  4  the  Marshal 
came;  brought   50  lbs.  of  bacon,  fore-quarter  of  beef — about  no 


106  JOHN    BROWN. 

After  a  short  detention  in  the  military  camp,  the 
hundred  prisoners  were  huddled  into  a  large  log- 
cabin,  not  fit  for  an  abiding-place  for  even  a  score. 
Colonel  Titus,  a  notorious  pro-slavery  driver,  was 
placed  in  charge  as  jailer.  Some  of  the  number 
escaped.  William  Bowles,  for  one,  had  this  oppor- 
tunity, but  he  refused  to  leave  his  companions,  even 
though  his  brother  was  near  to  aid  him.  The  gallant 
young  man  died  from  the  confinement  and  semi- 
starvation  to  which  he  was  subjected.  These  priva- 
tions superinduced  ship's  fever  and  pneumonia.  One 
of  his  companions  was  a  physician,  but  without 
medicines  of  any  kind.  All  help  was  refused.  A  fee 
of  $10  in   gold   was   sent   to  a  pro-slavery  physician, 


lbs.;  125  lbs.  of  flour,  1  bushel  green  beans  in  the  pod,  1  qrt.  of  vin- 
egar, 6  lbs.  of  coffee,  no  salt,  no  sugar;  we  got  about  1  quart  of 
salt  from  a  neighbor.  7  o'clock. — Fresh  arrival  of  9  prisoners. 
Marshal  brought  3  candles  for  the  whole  amount  of  us,  n  1  men. 
Furnished  15  mattrasses  to  sleep  upon. 

Saturday. — Received  28  lbs.  of  beef,  125  lbs.  of  flour,  1  small 
sack  of  salt,  I  gall,  of  molasses,  1  qt.  of  vinegar,  6  lbs.  of  coffee; — 
in  men.  Spoke  to  Marshal  in  behalf  of  9  men  brought  here 
yesterday,  who  had  no  blankets,  was  told  that  it  was  impossible 
to  furnish  any  for  them.  He  afterwards  brought  3  quilts  for 
them. 

Sunday. — About  100  lbs.  of  beef — much  damaged,  125  lbs.  of 
flour,  6  lbs.  of  coffee,  ]/2  lb.  of  saleratus,  1  peck  of  beans,  3candles, 
4  lbs   of  sugar. 

We  give  the  above  as  the  amount  of  provisions  received  by  the 
prisoners  since  coming  to  Lecompton,  and  are  willing  to  make 
oath  to  the  same. 

E.  R.  Falley, 
Artemus  H.  Parker, 
Commissaries  for  the   prisoners,  to  distribute   the   provisions  fur- 
nished for  the  same. 


PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  107 

one  Dr.  J.  N.  O.  P.  Wood,  and  he  not  only  refused  to 
attend,  but  sent  word  to  the  effect,  "that  he  would 
see  every  damned  Yankee  prisoner  dead  and  in  hell 
before  he  would  either  come  or  send  any  medicine 
for  their  relief."  Shortly  after  William  Bowles  died. 
The  two  brothers  were  of  Kentucky  birth.  John 
early  became  anti-slavery  in  conviction.  Both  inher- 
ited a  few  slaves,  and  when  they  moved  to  Missouri, 
the  younger  brother  emancipated  his.  William,  who 
went  with  John  to  Kansas,  soon  followed  his  example, 
and  became  also  a  faithful  free-state  citizen.  John 
Bowles  was  early  in  the  volunteer  service,  and,  as 
a  lieutenant  in  a  Kansas  cavalry  regiment,  was  in 
association  with  other  company  officers,  the  active 
cause  in  bringing  about  an  important  public  policy. 
Capt.  J.  M.  Williams,  Lieut.  John  Bowles,  and  Capt. 
Henry  Seamen,  of  the  Fifth  Kansas,  were  on  detached 
service  and  during  it  were  ordered  by  their  colonel 
to  return  to  their  master  one  or  more  fugitive  slaves 
who  had  found  refuge  in  their  lines.  The  order  was 
disobeyed  (this  was  early  in  1862),  and  the  three  offi- 
cers were  placed  and  kept  under  arrest  for  several 
months.  The  incident  created  excitement,  was  dis- 
cussed in  Congress,  and  Henry  Wilson,  as  chairman 
of  the  Senate  Military  Committee,  brought  in  a  bill, 
which  became  law,  enacting  a  new  article  of  war, 
forbidding  the  use  of  the  army  or  navy  in  the  cap- 
ture or  return  of  fugitive  slaves.  John  Bowles  was 
made  a  field  officer  in  the  first  regiment  of  colored 
men  raised  during  the  War  for  the  Union.  Capt. 
James  M.  Williams  became  its  colonel,  and  the  writer 
had  the  honor  to  be  the  first  adjutant,  as  well  as  to 
legally  enlist   the   first   man   of  color.      This  seems  a 


108  JOHN    BROWN. 

digression,  but  it  illustrates  how  the  roads  to  Har- 
per's Ferry  were  made.  It  may  not  be  out  of  place 
to  mention  here  that  William,  the  brother  of  John  A. 
Copeland,  one  of  the  colored  men  hung  by  Virginia, 
December  16,  1859,  was  one  of  four  men  of  color, 
'commissioned  and  mustered,  by  order  of  the  War 
Department,  to  command  a  light  battery  manned  by 
colored  soldiers.  These  four  were  the  only  men  of 
their  race  commissioned  as  line  officers,  and  actually 
fighting  as  such  in  the  field,  as  they  did  during  the 
Price  Missouri  campaign  of  1864. 

To  return  to  Lecompton,  Governor  Geary's  grow- 
ing insight  into  the   pro-slavery  conspiracy  and  the 
character  of  the  tools  it  used,  soon  made  his  residence 
there,  not  only  uncomfortable,  but  very  unsafe.    And 
it    is    an    undoubted    fact    that    the    free-state    men, 
retained  as  prisoners  and  convicted  by  a  border-ruffian 
court  of  murder  or  other  crimes,  practically  were  the 
only   men   in   Lecompton  he   could    depend  upon  to 
prevent  his  assassination.     A  fair-minded  man,  Ken- 
tuckian  by  birth,  was  substituted  for  Titus,  and  arms 
were   introduced   into  the  log-prison.       Signals  were 
arranged  by  which,  if  any  attack  or  alarm  was  aimed 
or  made  at   the  dwelling   near  by,  where   Governor 
Geary  had  his  executive  office  and  residence,  the  free- 
state    prisoners    could     immediately    march    to    his 
defense.     While  the  Lecompton  Constitutional  Con- 
vention was  in   session   during  this  period,  the  chief 
reason  felt  for  being  safe   in  attendance  thereon  by 
the  free-state  correspondents  was  the  vicinity  of  the 
prison  and  its  armed  inmates  to  the  Convention  Hall, 
reeking    with    abuse   and    threats    from    the   lips    of 
the   acknowledged    assassins,    aimed    more    or    less 


PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  109 

directly  at  the  busy  men  who  were  educating  the 
North  to  the  real  condition  of  affairs.  The  commer- 
cial free-state  politicians  and  writers  who  have  since 
those  days  falsified  the  record  and  abused  the  men 
whose  unflinching  work  made  it  possible  for  them  to 
be  safe  in  trade  and  real-estate  jobbery,  were  soon  after 
seen  aiding  the  Governors  in  these  early  efforts1  to 
divide  the  free-state  ranks  on  the  vital  issue  of  recogni- 
tion of  the  slave  code  made  by  the  Missouri  invaders, 
and  then  enforced  chiefly  by  the  armed  men  Buford  had 
brought  from  the  further  South,  in  the  guise  of  the 
United  States  marshals  and  court  posses.  Governor 
Geary  soon  saw  the  futility  of  tampering  with  our 
integrity  or  dealing  with  the  enemies  of  Kansas.  As  a 
result  he  was  compelled  to  retire  from  the  Executive 
office  and  Territory.  Settlers  from  the  North  came 
pouring  in  by  the  thousands  and,  ere  the  spring  of 
1857  awoke,  at  least  twelve  to  fifteen  thousand  free 
citizens  were  added  to  the  population.  Naturally, 
town  booms  arose,  and  the  want  of  titles  or  means  of 
perfecting  them,  as  well  as  other  administrative  agen- 
cies, became  seriously  felt.  The  divergencies  thus 
created  were  doubtless  inevitable.  Business  accepts 
expediency  as  its  rule.  Barter  and  profit  control  its 
action.  The  dispute  made  hot  contention.  Every 
attempt  to  get  around  the  trouble  was  regarded  by 
Geary's  successor,  Gov.  Robert  J.  Walker,  and  the 
secretary,  Frederick  P.  Stanton,  ex-Congressman,  of 
Tennessee  (both  very  able  gentlemen,  who  finally 
became    friends    of     the     free-state    cause),    as    an 


1  Geary  did  a  little  in  that  direction,  but  Walker  and  Denver^ 
who  followed,  were  active. 


HO  JOHN     BROWN. 

evidence  of  the  conspiracy,  they  were  told,  ex- 
isted to  put  into  force  by  piecemeal  the  Topeka 
Constitution.  It  is  a  long  and  interesting  record 
—that  of  the  years  1857-58  in  Kansas, — but  its 
details  belong  in  the  main  to  a  full  and  fair,  but  as 
yet  unwritten  history  of  Kansas,  not  to  these  pages, 
designed  only  to  sketch  the  course  of  events.  John 
Brown  was-  kept  faithfully  advised  in  his  Eastern 
agitation  of  the  various  phases  of  the  Kansas  strife. 
Among  the  more  active  of  the  radical  section  of  the 
free-state  party  were  several  of  the  young  men  who 
afterwards  followed  him  to  Iowa,  Canada,  and  Vir- 
ginia. Kagi,  Realf,  and  Cook  especially  were  active 
as  correspondents  for  the  Eastern  and  Northern  press. 
They  were  also  always  ready,  with  other  of  the 
Captain's  friends,  for  any  needed  service.  The 
divergent  elements,  led  by  Charles  Robinson,  G.  W. 
Brown,  and  others,  were  quite  prominent  and  more 
successful.  The  Lecompton  Constitutional  Conven- 
tion finished  its  unwholsome  labors,  and  the  need 
of  preventing  its  being  forced  upon  the  majority  by 
the  machinery  of  the  pro-southern  minority,  sustained 
more  or  less  effectively  by  Federal  influences,  were 
soon  beyond  dispute.  It  was  decided  at  last  to  obtain 
the  needed  power  by  voting  under  the  "  bogus  laws" 
of  the  Territory — a  proposition,  which,  of  course,  met 
the  stoutest  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  younger 
and  more  radical  wing.  The  voting  was  done,  and 
the  Territorial  Legislature  was  seized,  and  as  a  first 
result  the  repeal  of  the  bogus  code  immediately  fol- 
lowed. An  Act,  providing  for  a  Constitutional  Con- 
vention, was  then  passed.  The  Topeka  instrument, 
which  had  done  its  work  as  a  means  of  holding  the 


PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  Ill 

free-state  cause  together,  was  abandoned  and  buried 
for  good.  The  abandonment  was  somewhat  indecently 
done  on  the  part  of  those  who  had  been  the  chief 
beneficiaries  of  that  movement.  Charles  Robinson, 
the  Governor  chosen  thereunder,  did  not  even  recog- 
nize its  final  session.  He  was  too  busy  with  certain 
real-estate  and  town-booming  operations,  to  con- 
cern himself  with  funeral  services  over  a  gallant  effort 
of  freemen.  He  was,  of  course,  active  enough  in  the 
movement  to  secure  real-estate  titles.  Looking  back 
over  the  intervening  years,  it  may  well  be  recognized 
that  no  other  method  than  the  one  that  succeeded 
could  have  been  adopted.  But  that  fact  made  it  then 
no  less  difficult  to  accept.  Of  course,  the  adoption  of 
such  civic  methods  soon  demoralized  the  foes  of 
free  Kansas  also.  The  new  Constitutional  Conven- 
tion met  at  Leavenworth  and  drafted  a  Constitu- 
tion, quite  superior  in  many  respects  to  that  of 
Topeka.  Provision  was  made  to  elect  a  State  Legis- 
lature and  a  full  set  of  officers  under  it. 

The  pro-slavery  Lecompton  Constitution  was  not 
to  be  submitted  to  the  voters,  but  was  sent  to  Con- 
gress direct  for  acceptance.  But  an  election  for  State 
officers  under  it  had  been  provided.  This  the  free- 
state  men  decided  to  capture.  An  election  to  vote 
on  the  Leavenworth  Constitution  and  to  choose  the 
officers  and  legislature  thereof  was  decided  upon.  It 
was  also  determined  to  put  up  the  same  men  under 
the  Lecompton  election,  so  that  if  Congress  consented 
to  the  proposed  iniquity  of  admitting  the  State  under 
the  pro-slavery  instrument  without  the  people's  con- 
sent and  against  their  unrecorded,  yet  well-known 
opposition,  the  men  chosen  for  the    Leavenworth  in- 


II2  JOHN    BROWN. 

strument  would  be  in  control.  The  State  being  ad- 
mitted to  the  Union,  it  was  argued  that  a  peaceful 
revolution  could  be  at  once  achieved,  by  the  substitu- 
tion of  the  free-state  for  the  pro-slavery  Constitution, 
the  installation  of  officers,  and  the  selection  of  United 
States  Senators.  As  the  free-state  voters  numbered 
fully  ten  to  one  in  the  fall  of  1858,  the  programme 
was  certain  to  succeed  if  fraud  did  not  intervene.  Steps 
were  taken  to  meet  the  issues  that  might  arise  there- 
from. The  Territorial  Legislature  passed  laws  provid- 
ing for  a  military  organization.  This  they  placed 
under  command  of  James  H.  Lane,  and  it  was  known 
as  "  The  Ballot  Box  Guards."  It  was  formidable,  on 
paper  at  least,  and  doubtless  would  have  done  its  se- 
lected work  had  the  occasion  really  arisen. 

John  Brown  was  in  western  Iowa,  sick  in  body  and 
disappointed  because  of  the  non-receipt  of  means  he 
anticipated,  harassed,  too,  by  the  efforts  that  were 
making  from  Kansas  to  get  possession  of  the  arms, 
munitions,  and  supplies  stored  at  Tabor,  and  which 
had  been  placed  under  his  control  in  Massachusetts. 
He  had  another  use  than  arming  Lane's  men  with 
them,  as  he  did  not  believe  that  the  real  danger  to 
Kansas  was  over  or  could  be  met  in  the  way  pro- 
posed. So,  partly  from  sickness  and  partly  from  the 
desire  to  avoid  being  complicated  with  "  authority," 
he  did  not  respond  to  the  urgent  requests  for  his 
presence  in  Kansas,  made  in  September  and  October, 
1858.  He  did  not  appear  till  November,  and  then 
only  made  his  presence  known  to  a  trusted  few  at 
Lawrence  and  Topeka.  He  gathered  rapidly  the 
nucleus  of  the  party  that  went  to  Chatham  and  Har- 
per's Ferry,  to  make  Time's  sounding-board  ring  with 


PREPARATION    AND    CHANGE    IN    KANSAS.  113 

the  echoes  of  their  footsteps  and  the  impact  of  their 
deeds. 

The  Kansas  elections  passed  over  without  blood- 
shed, though  the  turmoil  was  fierce  and  the  attempts 
at  frauds  by  the  Lecomptonites  among  the  most  stu- 
pendous in  any  political  history, — prior  at  least  to 
these  later  days  when  the  suffrages  of  a  whole  race 
of  voters  are  practically  made  nugatory  and  of  no 
avail.  The  Kansas  processes  were  more  clumsy, 
however.  Polling  places  with  a  dozen  or  twenty 
voters  were  made  to  return,  by  the  aid  of  city  direc- 
tories, from  one  thousand  to  three  thousand  votes 
each — all,  of  course,  in  support  of  the  pro-slavery 
side.  The  Territorial  machinery  was  in  free-state 
hands  and  all  the  election  officers  that  did  not  run 
away  were  speedily  arrested.  Governor  Walker  re- 
jected these  returns,  and  thereby  prevented  an  out- 
break which  would  have  utterly  wiped  out  the  ag- 
gressive remnant  in  Kansas  of  the  pro-slavery  power, 
while  it  probably  would  also  have  involved  us  with 
the  Federal  authorities,  bringing  on  another  period  of 
civil  strife.  This  chapter  of  Kansas  history  came  to 
an  end  with  the  action  of  the  next  session  of  Con- 
gress, in  submitting  the  Lecompton  Constitution  to 
the  voters  of  Kansas,  who,  of  course,  overwhelmingly 
and  contemptuously  trampled  it  out  of  sight  under 
their  ballots  of  rejection.  It  opened  another  chapter 
in  the  story  of  John  Brown  and  his  men.  To  make 
this  clear  it  will  be  necessary  to  go  back  over  the 
same  year  and  trace  the  Captain's  movements  in  the 
East  and  North — a  year  so  fruitful  as  it  was  of  forces 
that  led  with  the  irresistibility  of  fate  to  the  deed  he 
had  to  do — the  blow  it  was  given  him  to  strike  ! 
8 


CHAPTER   VI. 

JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS. 

Movements  eastward — The  National  Kansas  Committee — 
Paper  by  Harvey  B.  Hurd — Letters  of  Horace  White 

—  What  the  political  fighters  meant — How  John 
Brown  was,  and  was  not  aided — The  work  of  the 
Massachusetts  Aid  Committee  —  George  Luther 
Stearns,  Theodore  Parker,  Frank  B.  Sanborn  and 
other  men  of  Boston  —  John  Brown  s  letter  of  auto- 
biography— Lowell  and  Emerson  vs.  Hay  and  Nicolay 

—  Where  John  Brown  got  his  money  and  his  arms — 
His  active  ititierary — Return  to  Lowa — Supplies 
found  there — Hugh  Forbes,  the  English  Garibal- 
dian  —  His  relations  with,  and  conduct  to  John 
Brown. 

With  John  Brown's  arrival  in  Chicago,  October, 
1856,  accompanied  by  his  son  Owen,  there  begun  a 
more  definite  development  of  the  purposes  and  plans 
he  had  so  long  conceived.  The  reputation  gained  in 
Kansas  opened  many  doors  and  won  confidence  for 
him  in  the  minds  of  men  of  position  and  even  re- 
nown. The  whole  country  was  quickened,  and  the 
Northern  States,  especially,  were  vibrating  with  a 
sense  of  danger  to  institutions,  freedom,  and  union, 
such  as  had  never  before  been  felt.  The  overture  of 
Kansas  sternly  preluded  the  vaster  movements  of  the 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  115 

coming  slave-holder's  rebellion.  John  Brown  real- 
ized that  if  he  openly  expressed  his  ideas  or  his  pur- 
poses, in  their  entirety,  he  would  repel  more  than  he 
gained.  But  he  knew  that  standing-room  had  been 
achieved.  The  attacks  made  by  slavery  familiarized 
other  minds  with  the  need  of  answering  with  blows 
for  freedom.  His  first  purpose  was  to  confer  with 
the  National  Kansas  Committee,  through  its  executive 
body,  resident  in  Chicago.  In  fact,  that  Committee 
had  already  sent  both  to  Kansas  and  Iowa,  asking  the 
Captain  to  visit  their  headquarters  at  Chicago.  This 
National  Committee  had  been  selected  in  the  preced- 
ing summer  at  a  convention  held  in  Buffalo,  New 
York,  which  was  called  to  consider  the  means  most 
available  and  necessary  for  the  protection  and  aid  of 
the  free-state  people  of  Kansas,  and  of  the  bodies  of 
ardent  Northern  emigrants  who  were  preparing  to 
join  them.  Thaddeus  Hyatt,  of  New  York,  a  well- 
known  inventor  and  manufacturer,  who  is  still  living 
in  his  seventy-eighth  year,  and  still  working,  I 
believe,  on  the  problem  of  aerial  navigation,  was 
made  chairman  of  the  Committee.  A  son-in-law  of 
Thurlow  Weed,  Mr.  Barnes,  of  Albany,  was  chosen 
secretary  of  the  Buffalo  Convention.  Horace  White, 
now  editor  of  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  then  on  the 
editorial  staff  of  the  Chicago  Tribune,  was  an  active 
official  of  the  Committee  ;  Harvey  B.  Hurd,  a  well- 
known  lawyer,  and  now  professor  in  a  famous  law 
school  of  Chicago,  was  secretary  of  the  Executive 
Committee  ;  George  W.  Dole  was  treasurer,  and 
J  D.  Webster,  afterwards  brigadier-general  and  chief 
of  artillery  on  the  staff  of  General  W.  T.  Sherman, 
throughout  his  campaigns  in  the  Central  and  Coast 


Il6  JOHN    BROWN. 

States  of  the  South  during  the  Civil  War,  was  vice- 
chairman.  I  am  indebted  to  Mr.  Hurd  for  an  inter- 
esting paper  which  will  in  large  part  be  given  in  this 
chapter.  The  first  evidence  of  his  arrival,  is  found 
in  letters  of  General  Webster  and  Horace  White,  bear- 
ing date  respectively  the  25th  and  26th  of  October. 
In  one  of  them  is  the  significant  remark  that  "  Cap- 
tain Brown  says  the  immediate  introduction  of  the 
supplies  is  not  of  much  consequence  compared  to  the 
danger  of  losing  them,"  a  suggestion  which  illustrated 
his  practical  sagacity,  as  will  be  seen  from  what  fol- 
lows. 

Horace  White's  letter  mentions  to  Captain  Brown 
that  "  Theodore  Parker,  of  Boston,"  was  at  the 
Briggs  House  and  wished  to  meet  him.  This  was 
an  introduction  as  significant  as  any  one  of  the  not- 
able incidents,  which,  begun,  from  that  time  forward 
crowded  upon  John  Brown's  days.  Hitherto  the 
Puritan  fighter  had  been,  outside  Kansas,  known  only 
to  a  few  colored  men  and  women  of  character,  and  to 
his  fast  friend,  Hon.  Gerrit  Smith,  of  Peterboro,  New 
York,  as  one  of  the  most  vigorous  and  determined  of 
resistant  Abolitionists. 

In  order  to  apprehend  more  fully  the  conditions 
which  affected,  shaped,  or  marred  the  mission  he  had 
undertaken  it  will  be  necessary  to  briefly  sketch  some 
of  the  movements  which  the  National  and  other 
Northern  Kansas  Aid  Committees  had  set  in  opera- 
tion or  had  then  in  progress  at  the  time  of  John 
Brown's  first  appearance  in  Chicago.  At  that  date 
(last  of  October,  1856)  several  armed  emigrant  trains 
were  congregated  in  Nebraska,  on  the  northern  bor- 
der of  Kansas.     Among  other  members  were  Richard 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  117 

Realf,  George  B.  Gill  and  Barclay  Coppoc,  the  first 
of  whom  was  named  at  Chatham,  Canada,  eighteen 
months  later  as  secretary  of  state  for  the  provisional 
government  formed  there,  the  second  was  commis- 
sioned as  secretary  of  the  treasury,  and  the  third  ac- 
companied the  Captain  to  Harper's  Ferry  just  three 
years  later.  Among  the  leaders  of  the  Northern  com- 
mands were  James  Redpath,  John  Brown's  first  biog- 
rapher, and  P.  B.  Plumb,  who,  as  a  Senator  from 
Kansas,  afterwards  defended  and  eulogized  him  on 
the  floor  of  the  United  States  Senate.  There  were 
also  with  the  trains,  among  others,  Thomas  Went- 
worth  Higginson,  author,  preacher,  soldier,  poet — 
always  faithful  to  the  same  ideal  of  American  liberty 
that  John  Brown  died  for — and  who,  with  Theodore 
Parker,  George  Luther  Stearns,  Dr.  Samuel  G.  Howe, 
Frank  B.  Sanborn,  the  later  and  authorized  (by  his 
family)  biographer  of  John  Brown,  and  Gerrit  Smith, 
formed  later  a  council  of  friends  to  aid  the  Captain  in 
his  final  efforts.  I  believe  Mr.  Sanborn  visited  Kansas 
about  that  date,  and  I  know  that  Thaddeus  Hyatt, 
with  W.  M.  F.  Amy,  of  Illinois,  afterwards  a  Governor 
of  New  Mexico,  then  the  general  agent  of  the  Na- 
tional Kansas  Committee,  were  then  or  soon  after  en 
route  to  Kansas.  Horace  White  visited  Kansas  also. 
General  Lane  was  in  Iowa  making  speeches,  filled 
with  his  peculiar,  flashing,  and  exciting  oratory. 
Watson  Brown,  ^/  route  to  Kansas,  writes  the  family 
at  North  Elba  from  St.  Charles,  Iowa,  under  date  of 
October  30,  1856,  that  "  We  are  in  the  company  of  a 
train  of  Kansas  teams  loaded  with  Sharpe's  rifles  and 
cannon.  I  heard  a  report  that  father  had  gone  east. 
We  travel  very  slow;  you  can  write  to  us  at  Tabor. 


u8 


JOHN    BROWN. 


On  our  way  we  saw  Gerrit  Smith,  F.  Douglass,  and 
other  old  friends.     We  have  each  a  Sharpe's  rifle."  ' 

Finding,  on  arrival  at  Tabor,  that  his  father  had 
gone  eastward,  Watson  returned  to  Chicago  and  soon 
rejoined  him,  going  home  later  to  North  Elba.  It  is 
not  possible  to  do  more  than  outline  the  crowding  in- 
cidents of  that  winter. 

Captain  Brown  spent  about  two  of  the  five  weeks  that 
passed  between  his  last  active  appearance  at  Lawrence, 
Kansas,  and  his  reporting  in  Chicago,  at  Tabor,  Spring- 
dale,  and  Iowa  City.  I  am  greatly  indebted  to  Prof. 
L.  H.  Wetherell,  of  Davenport,  Iowa,  for  very  inter- 
esting data  relating  to  John  Brown  and  his  men  dur- 
ing this  and  their  subsequent  visits  to  Iowa.  The 
first  visit  was  made  on  this  journey  to  the  Springdale 
Quaker  settlement  in  Cedar  County,  where,  just  a 
year  later,  the  Captain  housed  for  several  weeks  eleven 
of  the  original  Harper's  Ferry  party,  and  in  which 
place  four  of  his  associates  were  found  and  recruited. 
At  the  burial  of  Owen  Brown,  Pasadena,  California,  in 
1892,  one  of  the  pall-bearers  was  Mr.  James  O.  Towns- 
end,  a  liberal  Quaker,  formerly  the  landlord  of  the 
''Traveller's  Rest,"  West  Branch,  ten  miles  east  of 
Iowa  City.  Mr.  Wetherell  describes  Captain  Brown 
riding  up  to  the  little  roadside  inn,  a  spare,  gaunt 
figure  on  a  gaunt,  spare  mule.  After  dismounting,  the 
traveler  asked  the  landlord: 

"  Have  you  ever  heard  of  John  Brown,  of  Kansas  ?" 

Mr.  Townsend  eyed  him  sharply  without  reply. 
Having  thus  satisfied  himself  that  the  question  iden- 
tified the  person,  he  took  out  a  piece  of  chalk  from  his 


1  Sanborn's  "  Life  and  Lelteis  of  John  Brown,"  p.    341. 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  H9 

vest  pocket  and  deliberately  took  Brown's  hat  off  and 
marked  on  it  a  large  X;  as  deliberately  he  marked 
Brown's  back  with  a  XX,  and  ended  by  chalking  a 
large  one  on  the  mule's  back,  saying  as  he  put  the 
chalk  back  in  his  pocket  : 

"Just  put  the  animal  into  the  stable  and  walk  right 
into  the  house.     Thou  art  surely  welcome." 

And  Captain  Brown  was  always  a  welcome  guest  at 
the  "  Traveller's  Rest."  Literally  of  Mr.  Townsend  it 
could  be  said  he  fulfilled  the  injunction  of  the  Saviour: 
"  I  was  a  stranger  and  ye  took  me  in;  I  was  a-hun- 
gered  and  a-thirst  and  ye  gave  me  meat  and  to 
drink." 

Captain  Brown's  first  advice  at  Chicago  was  char- 
acteristic. By  "  supplies  "  were  meant  the  arms — 
Sharpe's  and  Hall's  rifles.  An  Illinois  party  managed 
to  avoid  spoliation  at  Lexington,  Missouri,  but  on 
arrival  at  Leavenworth,  Kansas,  their  arms  were  seized 
and  themselves  driven  back.  Several  hundred  Hall's 
rifles,  from  the  gun-factory  at  Harper's  Ferry,  whose 
seizure  was  one  of  the  objective  points  in  John  Brown's 
plans,  at  which  Kagi,  Leeman,  and  Leary  lost  their 
lives,  were  taken  from  this  party.  The  late  Senator 
Preston  B.  Plumb  was  a  member  thereof.  He  re- 
fused to  go  back  when  ordered,  came  ashore  at 
Leavenworth;  being  threatened  with  lynching  on  the 
streets  he  was  rescued  by  Nicholas  V.  Smith  (who 
married  one  of  Horace  Greeley's  daughters)  and  his 
brother-in-law,  Col.  Hampton  P.  Johnson,  afterwards 
the  first  Kansas  soldier  killed  for  the  Union  in  a  con- 
flict with  Missouri  rebels.  The  Plumb  incident  was 
brought  to  an  end  by  the  news  of  the  Pottawatomie 
slaying,  which,  for  the  time  being,  proved  a  complete 


120  JOHN    BROWN. 

deterrent  to  border  ruffian  enterprise.     The  emigrants 
going   to    Kansas  by  the  land   route  were  always  in 
danger  of  having  their  arms  taken  by  the  United  States 
troops    under  orders  from  the  deputy  marshal  sent 
with  them   by  Governor  Geary.      In  fact,  some  four 
hundred   Hall's   carbines  were  so   seized.     All    these 
weapons  were  afterwards  recovered.     A  bill  of  sale 
was  made  to  some  competent  party,  whose   name  is 
not  recalled,  and  the    rifles,  etc.,  held  at  Lexington 
were  obtained  by  legal  process,  and  brought  to  Kansas 
in  the   summer  of   1857.     With  the   Northern   trains, 
under  Red  path,  Parsons,  Eldridge,  and  Pomeroy,  were 
several  guns,  twelve-pound  howitzers — three  in  all,  I 
think.     These  were  buried   near  the  northern  border 
of  Kansas,  to  prevent  seizure  by  the  troops,  and  were 
afterwards  brought    into  Kansas  when   the  struggle 
against  the  Lecompton  constitution  assumed  the  pros- 
pect of  renewed  belligerency.     In  December,  1857,  the 
fraudulent  election  on  the  slavery  clause  of  that  instru- 
ment was  held.     The  people    at  Leavenworth,  Law- 
rence, knowing  what  was  designed,  took  steps  at  once 
to  recover  their  property.     The  guns  at  Leavenworth 
were  replevined  under  a  bill  of  sale  made  to  a  promi- 
nent free-state    citizen  there.     Those  at  Lecompton 
were  taken  from  a  cellar  wherein  they  .were  stored, 
while  the  acting  Governor,  J.  W.  Denver,  whose  office 
was  in  the  same  building,  was   engaged  in  conversa- 
tion upon  a  pretended  matter  of  business.     This  trans- 
action had  its  amusing  as  well  as  dangerous  aspect, 
and  I  remember  laughing  with  great  gusto  at  General 
Denver's  anger  when  he  found  out  he  was  tricked. 
This  did  not  occur  until  the  loaded  wagon  was  about 
to    drive   off.       Direst    threats    of    legal   action  were 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  121 

huried  at  us,  but  none  was  taken,  for  the  Governor 
found  on  inquiry  that  he  was  virtually  a  party  to 
holding  stolen  property.  It  is  no  wonder  that  John 
Brown  advised  as  he  did  in  the  face  of  the  Federal 
interference. 

The  conditions  grew  complex.  Naturally  gentlemen 
charged  with  a  grave  responsibility  like  that  taken  on 
the  shoulders  of  the  Kansas  National  Committee,  grew 
cautious  in  the  presence  of  a  personality  so  simple  and 
positive  as  John  Brown's.  The  party  political  condi- 
tions were  also  of  the  gravest  character.  At  this  late 
date  perhaps  no  fairer  presentation  of  the  disputed 
attitude  of  the  National  Committee  can  be  given  than 
is  found  in  the  communication  sent  me,  under  date  of 
October  i,  1892,  by  Mr.  Harvey  B.   Hurd.     He  says: 

"  The  organization  of  the  National  Kansas  Committee  was 
authorized  by  a  convention  held  in  Buffalo  in  the  summer  of 
1856.  An  earlier  one  had  been  held  in  Cleveland  for  the  same 
purpose,  but  adjourned  to  meet  later  in  Buffalo.  This  was 
presided  over  by  Governor  Reeder,  and  was  very  fully  attended, 
something  like  five  hundred  delegates  being  present.  The  pur- 
pose was  to  take  charge  of  the  contest  then  raging  in  Kansas,  and 
conduct  it  on  behalf  of  the  North.  State  Committees  were 
formed,  and  it  was  the  intention  to  have  the  States  divided  into 
districts,  each  under  a  district  committee,  and  this  was  carried 
out  to  a  considerable  extent.  There  was  a  pretty  general  organiza- 
tion of  the  North,  its  head  being  the  National  Committee.  More 
specifically,  that  Committee  took  charge  of  the  contest  in  Kansas, 
as  well  as  of  the  aid  which  the  North  furnished,  and  therefore, 
had  much  to  do  with  the  organizing  of  such  military  companies 
in  Kansas  as  were  necessary,  and  the  furnishing  arms,  pro- 
visions, clothing,  and  the  like,  for  military  operations,  as  well 
as  for  the  purpose  of  settling  the  Territory,  the  ultimate  object 
being  to  control  it  with  free-state  settlers,  and  carry  forward  a 


122  JOHN     BROWN. 

free-state  government  to  success.  The  National  Kansas  Com- 
mittee had  a  dep6t  at  Mt.  Pleasant,  Iowa,  where  it  furnished 
horses,  wagons,  provisions,  and  arms  for  emigrants,  and  or- 
ganized them  into  companies,  with  such  commanders  as  were 
necessary  to  put  them  in  shape  to  defend  themselves  against 
attacks  from  the  pro-slavery  forces.  Our  emigrants  were  for- 
warded by  way  of  Tabor,  Iowa,  and  through  Nebraska,  down 
into  Kansas,  Lawrence  being  their  objective  point.  Some  of 
the  arms  which  were  purchased  for  these  emigrants  were  fur- 
nished by  the  Massachusetts  State  Committee,  notably  200 
Sharpens  rifles.  The  latter  were  forwarded  as  far  as  Tabor,  and 
were  there  at  the  time  they  were  voted  to  John  Brown,  I  do 
not  remember  of  the  Massachusetts  Committee  or  any  com- 
mittee other  than  the  National  Committee  furnishing  any  other 
arms  directly.1  What  other  arms  were  furnished  were  bought 
by  the  National  Committee,  and  furnished  directly  to  emigrants. 
The  Committee  bought  many  Colt's  revolvers. 

"  An  accurate  account  of  the  moneys  received  and  expended 
by  the  National  Kansas  Committee  was  kept  at  the  time,  but 
the  books  of  account,  with  the  other  records  and  papers  of  the 
Committee,  were  destroyed  by  the  Chicago  fire  of  1871.  My 
recollection  of  the  amount  of  money  contributed  and  expended 
by  the  Committee  is  in  round  numbers  $100,000.  There  was 
contributed  besides  money  a  large  amount  of  clothing.  This 
was  gathered  or  made-up  by  local  town  committees  and  for- 
warded through  the  State  Committees  to  the  National  Com- 
mittee, and  by  the  National  Committee  to  its  agents  in  Kansas, 


1  Arms  were  furnished  by  local  committees  and  individuals  in 
New  York,  New  Hampshire,  Pennsylvania,  Illinois,  Ohio,  and 
Wisconsin,  to  the  writer's  personal  knowledge.  Thaddeus  Hyatt, 
for  example,  presented  each  member  of  the  Massachusetts  com- 
pany to  which  I  belonged,  with  a  revolver  upon  their  arrival  at 
New  York.  Several  cases  of  Springfield  muskets,  received  in 
New  York,  were  placed  by  T.  W.  Higginson,  then  a  Unitarian 
minister,  resident  in  Worcester,  Mass. ,  and  by  Mr.  Hyatt,  of  New 
York,  in  my  charge  to  convey  to  Kansas,  which  was  safely  done. 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  123 

where  it  was  distributed.  No  fair  estimate  can  at  present  be 
made  of  the  value  of  this  clothing.  I  think  it  equaled  the  cash 
contribution. 

"John  Brown  never  had  any  close  official  relation  with  the 
National  Committee.  He  was  often  at  the  Committee's  head- 
quarters, and  the  Committee  supplied  him  with  some  money,1 
and  provisions  and  clothing  at  times.  At  the  meeting  of  the 
National  Committee,  held  at  the  Astor  House,  in  January, 
1857,  a  proposition  was  made  by  one  of  the  representatives  of 
the  Massachusetts  Committee  to  furnish  John  Brown  with  the 
arms  and  money  to  organize  and  drill  military  companies  in 
Kansas,  and  to  have  them  in  readiness  in  any  emergency,  such 
as  invasions  from  Missouri.  I  was  fearful  that  Mr.  Brown's 
design  was  to  invade  Missouri  or  some  other  slave  State,  for 
the  purpose  of  bringing  on  a  contest  between  the  North  and  the 
South.'*'    Gerrit  Smith  had  said  in  the  Buffalo  Convention,  '  that 


1  Only  $150  in  all. 

-This  suggestion  is  probably  the  result  of  after  knowledge- 
born  of  the  fact  that  John  Brown  did  at  later  dates  invade  both 
Missouri  and  Virginia.  The  real  fear  of  the  National  Kansas 
Committee  was  that  Captain  Brown  or  some  other  Kansas  man, 
who  was  genuinely  anti-slavery  in  feeling,  would  carry  resistance 
to  the  bogus  laws  or  the  Fugitive  Slave  Act  far  enough  to  get  into 
direct  collision  with  the  Federal,  authorities  in  the  beleaguered 
Territory.  All  idea  of  a  possible  invasion  was  an  afterthought, 
outside  a  very  small  number  of  Kansas  men.  In  August,  1856, 
General  Lane  was  compelled  to  promise  Thaddeus  Hyatt  and 
others  of  the  National  Committee,  when  the  Northern  emigrants 
were  concentrated  in  Nebraska,  that  he  would  so  conduct  the  cam- 
paign then  pending,  against  the  border-ruffian  forces  harrying  the 
Kansas  free-state  settlements,  as  to  avoid  in  every  possible  way  a 
direct  collision  with  the  Governor  or  United  States  Judges,  before 
the  means  would  be  furnished  to  move  forward  the  1,200  men 
waiting  impatiently  to  enter  Kansas.  Lane  did  as  he  promised. 
He  demonstrated  against,  but  did  not  attack,  Lecompton,  still 
bringing  about  the  release  thereby  of  the  so-called  "treason" 
prisoners  in  the  United  States  camp.     When  the  troops  were  sent 


124  JOHN    BROWN. 

slavery  would  never  be  peacefully  abolished,  but  must  be 
washed  out  with  blood,'  and  he  advocated  such  a  course  on  the 
part  of  the  Committee  as  would  bring  on  open  hostilities  be- 
tween the  North  and  the  South.  It  was  my  opinion  at  the  time 
that  John  Brown  and  Gerrit  Smith  were  in  full  accord,  and 
that  Mr.  Brown  believed  that  that  was  the  only  way  to  abolish 
slavery.  One  of  his  purposes  was  to  bring  on  that  contest.  I 
therefore  opposed  the  Committee  granting  the  request  unless 
Mr.  Brown  would  pledge  himself  not  to  invade  a  slave  State. 
Mr.  Brown  was  called  in  before  the  Committee,  and  asked  if  it 
was  his  intention  to  invade  a  slave  State  ;  to  which  he  replied, 
that  he  would  not  disclose  to  the  Committee  his  intentions ; 
that  most  of  those  present  knew  him  well,  and  they  would  have 
to  trust  to  him  in  that  matter.  If  they  were  not  willing  to  do 
that,  he  advised  them  not  to  grant  him  anything.  The  Massa- 
chusetts Committee  thereupon  requested  to  be  permitted  to 
withdraw  the  200  Sharpe's  rifles,  then  at  Tabor,  from  the 
National  Committee,  for  the  purpose  of  turning  them  over  to 
Mr.  Brown,  and  the  National  Committee  voted  to  return  them, 
and  did  so.  They  went  into  the  hands  of  John  Brown,  and 
were  the  same  that  were  afterwards  found  at  Harper's  Ferry. 
The  Committee  did  also  at  that  meeting  vote  to  John  Brown 
$5,000  in  money  and  some  clothing.  The  latter  was  furnished 
to  him  in  Kansas  by  the  agent  of  the  Committee,  Mr.  Whit- 
man, but  no  money  was  given  to  him  then.  When  he  drew 
upon  the  Committee,  the  Committee  was  out  of  funds  and 
never  had  the  money  to  meet  his  drafts.  That  happened  in 
this  way :  At  the  same  meeting  at  the  Astor  House,  the  Com- 


against  him  he  disappeared.  Under  his  orders,  when  the  United 
States  marshal,  'guarded  by  dragoons  under  Captain  Sackett, 
came  into  Lawrence  to  arrest  Lane  and  others,  no  one  said  "  yea" 
or  "  nay,"  but  only  stood  laughing  at  the  marshal  and  cheering 
the  troops.  The  National  Kansas  Committee  carried  Fremont's 
election  on  their  shoulders,  just  as  Governor  Geary  believed  on 
his  arrival  in  Kansas  that  the  election  of  Buchanan  depended 
upon  him. 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  1 25 

mittee  hacj  already  voted  to  make  an  arrangement  with  the 
steamboat  owners  on  the  Missouri  river  and  railroads  through- 
out the  country  to  sell  through  tickets  from  all  principal  cities 
in  the  North  to  emigrants  in  the  spring  of  1857,  by  way  of  St. 
Louis  and  the  Missouri  river.  They  also  voted  to  purchase 
seeds  for  Kansas,  to  be  forwarded  as  soon  as  it  could  be  done, 
and  all  the  money  in  the  National  Committee's  hands  was  ex- 
pended in  the  making  of  such  arrangements  for  the  transporta- 
tion of  settlers,  and  in  purchasing  and  forwarding  the  needed 
seeds.  A  hundred  tons  of  seeds  were  purchased  and  sent  to 
Lawrence  by  a  steamboat,  purchased  for  that  purpose.1  The 
large  emigration  which  took  place  early  in  1857  as  the  result 
of  the  through-ticket  arrangement,  really  settled  the  Kansas 
contest. 

"  In  consequence  of  the  Committee's  failure  to  pay  Mr. 
Brown's  drafts  on  account  of  the  $5,000  appropriation,  Gerrit 
Smith  came  to  Chicago  to  see  me.  He  was  very  much  offended 
because  the  Committee  did  not  pay  the  drafts,  but  he  was  told 
that  they  had  not  the  means  with  which  to  meet  them,  and 
there  was  no  other  way  but  to  let  them  be  protested.  Drafts 
to  the  amount  of  $500  were  given  to  some  person  in  Connec- 
ticut,'2 who,  as  I  afterward  understood,  had  made  some  pijkes, 
or  same  other  implements  of  warfare,  for  Mr.  Brown.  He  drew 
for  about  five  hundred  dollars,  but  his  drafts  not  being  paid,  he 
did  not  draw  any  others. 

"  The  National  Committee's  operations  substantially  closed 
with  the  distribution  of  the  seeds,  clothing,  arms,  etc.,  in  the 
spring  and  summer  of  1857.  The  seeds  were  given  out  to  the 
settlers  on  their  receipts,  promising  to  return  the  amount  in 
kind,  when  their  crops  should  come  in  ;  but  these  obligations 
were  never  enforced. 

"  Mr.  Brown   did  not,  as   I   understand   it,  remove  the  200 


1  Thaddeus  Hyatt  advanced  the  money  for  this. 

2  Charles  W.  Blair,  of  Collinsville,  by  whom  the  pikes  captured 


at  Harper's  Ferry,  in  1859,  were  manufactured. 


126  JOHN     BROWN. 

rifles  from  Tabor  until  the  winter  of  1 857-58, *  about  the  time 
that  he  came  East  from  Kansas  by  way  of  Iowa  and  went  to 
Canada,  where  he  organized  his  raid  upon  Virginia.  I  saw  him 
while  he  was  then  in  Chicago,  at  that  time,  and  talked  with  him 
to  some  extent  about  his  operations  in  Kansas  and  his  future 
purposes.  He  had  a  paper  about  which  he  wished  to  consult 
me,  some  parts  of  which  he  read  to  me.  I  afterwards  found 
that  it  was  a  draft  of  the  constitution  which  he  intended  to 
have  adopted  if  it  became  necessary  to  form  a  government,  as 
the  result  of  his  prospective  operations  in  Virginia.  He  was 
exceedingly  thin  and  worn  at  that  time,  and  I  remarked  to  him 
that  he  was  looking  very  feeble  and  much  older  than  his  years 
(fifty-eight),  to  which  he  replied  :  '  Yes,  but  I  feel  that  I  have  a 
work  to  perform,  and  I  must  be  expeditious  if  I  am  to  do  it.'  I 
have  no  doubt  now,  he  had  reference  to  his  then  contemplated 
movements.  I  talked  to  him  some  about  his  operations  in 
Kansas,  and  what  the  newspapers  had  said  in  his  justification  ; 
that  he  had  suffered  a  good  deal  at  the  hands  of  the  border 
ruffians.  This  plea  of  justification  seemed  to  grieve  him  and 
he  said  to  me,  '  I  wish  you  would,  wheneveryou  have  an  oppor- 
tunity, contradict  that  idea.  I  have  done  nothing  out  of  revenge 
or  because  I  considered  that  I  have  suffered  in  any  way.  All 
that  I  have  done  has  been  through  my  desire  to  do  justice  by 
this  oppressed  race — the  negro  slaves.  I  consider  it  beneath 
any  man  to  avenge  himself.'  These  are  not  the  exact  words, 
but  are  substantially  what  he  said  to  me  in  1858.  Mr.  Brown 
was  at  the  time  very  poorly  clad,  and  a  number  of  his  friends 
got  together  and  raised  a  purse  for  the  purpose  of  buying  him 
a  new  outfit.  As  I  was  the  nearest  to  Brown's  size  and  form, 
I  went  and  bought  the  clothes,  had  them  fitted  to  myself,  and 
sent  them  to  him,  he  not  daring  to  go  on  to  the  street  at  the 
time,  there  being  an  offer  out  by  the  President  of  $3,000  reward 
for  his  arrest. '2 


1  He  moved  them  from  Tabor  to  Springdale  in  December,  1857, 
and  to  northern  Ohio  in  Apiil.  1858. 

2  Mr.  Hurd  is  mistaken  as  to  the  date  of  last  seeing  John  Brown. 
It  was  during  the  early  part  of  February,  1859,  when  he  was  en 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  I  27 

"There  was,  during  the  entire  operations  of  the  National 
Committee,  an  element  having  some  influence  before  the  Com- 
mittee, pressing  for  more  aggressive  operations  on  their  part — 
to  carry  the  war  into  the  enemy's  camp — but  those  having  the 
conduct  of  the  affairs  were  unanimous  in  their  determination 
to  stand  on  the  defensive  alone,  and  to  confine  their  operations 
to  the  protection  of  the  free-state  settlers  in  Kansas,  so  as  to 
prevent  them  from  being  driven  out  or  overpowered.  That  was 
the  whole  sum  and  substance  of  the  policy  upon  which  the 
Committee  acted.  The  Executive  Committee,  having  the 
matter  in  charge  at  Chicago,  were  J.  D.  Webster  (afterwards 
General),  vice-president  of  the  Committee ;  George  \V.  Dole, 
treasurer,  and  myself  as  secretary.  I  gave  my  entire  time  to 
the  business  of  the  Committee,  and  perhaps  more  than  any 
other  managed  its  affairs." 

Horace  White,  in  letters  of  recent  date,  recalls  some 
details  of  value  as  to  the  relations  of  Captain  John 
Brown  and  the  National  Kansas  Committee  of  which 
he  was  so  efficient  an  officer.  It  is  apparent  from  all 
evidence  obtainable  that  the  anti-slavery  soldier  was 
invited  to  confer  with  that  Committee,  as  he  was  also 
when  in  New  York  early  in  January,  1857,  asked  to 
visit  Boston  and  counsel  with  the  Massachusetts  Kan- 
sas Committee.  In  this  connection  it  may  be  well  to 
state  that  outside  of  Mr.  White's  letters  no  evidence 
whatever  appears  that  John  Brown  personally  solic- 
ited the  custody,  control  or  gift  of  any  of  the  supplies, 
whether  consisting  of  arms,  clothing,  tools,  camp 
equipage  or  teams,  that  had  been  raised  exclusively  for 
the  service  of  Kansas  and  the  free-state  cause.     Such 


route  to  Canada,  removing  the  eleven  fugitive  slaves  rescued  by 
him  from  Missouri,  Christmas  Eve,  1858.  The  document  partially 
read  was  already  adopted  at  the  Chatham  Convention,  May,  1858. 
The  suit  Mr.  Hurd  purchased  is  the  one  the  Captain  wore  when 
taken  at   Harper's  Ferry. 


128  JOHN    BROWN. 

materials  or  supplies  as  passed  into  his  hands  came 
there  as  a  volunteer  act.  The  explanation  of  this 
seeming  contradiction  is  found  in  the  probability  that 
Gerrit  Smith  was  active  in  securing  for  the  Captain 
such  control.  The  close  relations  between  the  two 
friends  will  easily  account  for  the  statement  made  by 
Mr.  White.  The  motion  to  appropriate  $5,000  to  Cap- 
tain Brown  was  made  by  the  Vermont  committeeman, 
B.  B.  Newton,  of  St.  Albans.  This  $5,000  was  never 
paid.  Authority  wras  given  Captain  Brown  to  draw 
for  $500  thereof,  and  his  drafts  for  that  amount  were 
dishonored  in  the  following  April.  All  the  money  he 
received  from  this  body  was  $150.  Of  course  the 
want  of  funds  on  the  Committee's  part  was  a  suffi- 
ciently peremptory  reason,  but  there  can  be  little 
doubt  either  that  it  was  a  convenient  and  gratifying  one 
also,  to  the  committeemen  who  were  openly  opposed 
to  the  purposes  and  policy  of  action  which  they  felt 
rather  than  knew  that  John  Brown  was  in  favor  of 
carrying  out.  When  the  National  Committee  ceased 
to  exist,  soon  after  the  January  meeting  at  the  Astor 
House,  New  York  City,  a  quantity  of  supplies,  chiefly 
clothing,  bedding,  and  camp  utensils,  became  John 
Brown's  property  under  the  terms  of  their  res- 
olutions, or  by  reason  of  their  being  actually  under 
the  control  of  the  Massachusetts  Committee.  Of  the 
twenty-five  Colt's  revolvers  sent  to  Kansas  in  Septem- 
ber, 1856,  for  John  Brown's  use,  fifteen  of  which  had 
been  loaned  out  to  various  free-state  men  in  need  of 
arms,1  the    Captain  recovered  ten  or  twelve.     Other 


1  One  of  these  revolvers  thus  passed  into  my  possession  and  sub- 
sequently I  accounted  for  the  same  to  Captain  Brown  himself.  It 
was  lost  in  my  army  service  three  years  later. 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING     FRIENDS.  129 

articles  of  no  great  money  value  were  also  obtained 
by  him  at  Tabor  and  Ottumwa,  Iowa,  where  they  had 
been  stored,  and  subsequently  used  or  sold  to  enable 
him  in  part  to  care  for  his  company  in  1857-58,  and  the 
fugitive  slaves  he  carried  to  Canada  early  in  1859.  It 
is  doubtful  if  all  he  ever  received  from  or  through  the 
National  Committee  exceeded  in  value  a  total  of  one 
thousand  dollars.1 

Under  date  of  September  17,  1892,  Horace  White 
writes  that  the  National  Committee  "  had  some  arms 
on  hand  after  the  struggle  was  over  "  (that  is,  that  por- 
tion of  the  free-state  conflict  which  ended  with  1856); 
"  Brown  applied  for  them,  and  Hurd,  on  behalf  of  the 
Committee,  required  him  to  promise  that  he  would 
not  use  them  to  make  war  on  slavery  in  the  States.3 
This   he    would    not  do.     So  the  Committee  handed 


1  A  proposition  was  made  at  the  New  York  meeting  for  the 
equipment  of  a  company  of  fifty  picked  men  for  special  serv- 
ice under  John  Brown.  The  Captain's  modest  estimate  for 
camp  service  and  teams,  two  of  the  latter,  amounted  to  $1,774. 
Later  in  the  year  the  Massachusetts  Committee,  through  Mr. 
Stearns,  in  a  letter  dated  May  18,  1857,  writing  to  Thaddeus  Hyatt 
as  chairman  of  the  National  Committee,  stated  that  a  grant  of  $100,- 
000  was  to  be  asked  from  the  State  Legislature,  for  Kansas  relief, 
and  that  a  secret  force  should  be  organized  under  John  Brown, 
strictly  defensive  in  character.  A  fund  should  also  be  raised  in  aid  of 
settlers  who  might  have  been  impoverished  through  the  pro-slavery 
war.  Mr.  Stearns  mentions  $13,000  as  the  money  value  of  arms, 
materials,  etc.,  entrusted  to  John  Brown.  Thaddeus  Hyatt  re- 
cently told  me  of  his  surprise  at  getting  that  letter.  He  contributed 
personally,  but  the  Committee  did  not. 

2  This  suggestion  probably  results  from  that  blurring  of  memory 
which  time  makes  with  us  all.  No  one  had  any  thought  whatever 
at  that  dale  (1857),  that  John  Brown  dreamed  of  attacking  else- 
where than  in  Missouri  and  only  as  a  retaliatory  measure  for  Kansas. 

9 


130  JOHN     BROWN. 

the  arms  back  to  the  Massachusetts  Committee  from 
whom  they  were  received."  After  teferring  to  the 
action  of  the  latter  party  in  donating  arms  and  money 
to  Captain  Brown,  Mr.  White  continues:  "  But  my 
recollection  is  that  his  (Brown's)  principal  supply  of 
money  came  from  Gerrit  Smith." 

But  any  responsibility  for  that  must  rest  chiefly  upon 
George  L.  Stearns,  who  manfully  accepted  it  when 
giving  ;  though  Gerrit  Smith  was  the  next  largest 
contributor.  As  near  as  can  be  estimated  the  money 
received  by  Brown  could  not  have  exceeded  $12,- 
000,  while  the  supplies,  arms,  etc.,  furnished  may  have 
cost  $10,000  more.  Of  course  there  wrere  smaller  con- 
tributions and  support  coming  on,  but  if  the  total  es- 
timate be  placed  at  $25,000,  for  the  period  between  the 
15th  of  September,  1856,  when  he  left  Lawrence,  Kan- 
sas, and  the  16th  of  October,  1859,  when  he  moved  on 
Harper's  Ferry,  Virginia,  with  twenty-one  men,  it  will 
certainly  cover  all  of  the  outlay  except  that  of  time, 
labor,  and  lives.  And  of  this  total  John  Brown  ex- 
pended not  one  cent  for  personal  expenses,  outside  of 
the  very  moderate  amounts  required  to  enable  him  to 
keep  at  his  work.  He  was  in  those  days  always  eco- 
nomical to  the  verge  of  penuriousness,  regarding  the 
moneys  in  his  hand  as  a  trust.  During  those  three  years 
of  "storm  and  stress,"  the  North  Elba  family  mainly 
provided  for  their  own  wants,  with  the  exception  of  a 
sum  of  $1,000  raised  from  private  contributions  in  the 
East  made  by  Gerrit  Smith,  G.  L.  Stearns,  Amos  A. 
Lawrence,  Dr.  Howe,  Dr.  Cabot,  Theodore  Parker, 
and  a  few  others,  which  amount  was  expended  in  the 
payments  of  debts  incurred  by  reason  of  the  Adiron- 
dack family's  sacrifices  for  Kansas.     Debts  were  paid 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS. 


131 


and  the  humble  dwelling  at  North  Elba  was  iu  some 
degree  repaired  and  made  more  habitable.  That  was 
all.1  The  largest  contributors,  then,  to  John  Brown's 
enterprises  were  certainly  George  L.  Stearns  and 
Gerrit  Smith.  Francis  Jackson  Merriam,  his  latest 
recruit  at  the  Kennedy  farm,  who  gav&  $600  as  well 
as  his  services,  was  doubtless  the  next  largest  contrib- 
utor. Mr.  and  Mrs.  Stearns  were  devotedly  generous 
for  they  placed,  during  the  early  summer  of  1857,  at 
some  personal  inconvenience,  the  sum  of  $7,000  to 
John  Brown's  credit.  It  was  never  drawn  against,  as 
the  Captain  did  not  feel  that  when  conditions 
changed  from  those  under  which  he  considered  the 
generous  proffer  to  have  been  made,  that  he  had  the 
right  to  use  any  of  it,  no  matter  what  the  need  may 
have  been.  The  Medford  family,  however,  certainly 
gave  in  arms  and  cash  not  less  than  $7,500,  and  possi- 
bly more,  to  John  Brown  and  his  cause. 

In  a  later  letter,  bearing  date  October  6,  1892,  Mr. 
White  makes  quite  clear  the  matter  of  the  purchase 
of  arms  from  the  funds  of  the  National  Committee. 
He  says: 

"A  meeting  was  held  in  New  York,  January  25, 
1857,  at  which  a  statement  of  money  received  and  ex- 


1  A  large  number  of  personal  and  family  letters  are  preserved  in 
the  archives  of  the  Kansas  Historical  Society,  many  of  which  are 
printed  in  Mr.  Sanborn's  volume;  there  are  also  memoranda  of 
receipts  and  expenditures.  Of  all  these  I  find  only  five  references 
to  money  sent  to  Mrs.  Brown  or  to  North  Elba,  the  total  being 
but  $403. 10.  lam  not  quite  sure  that  the  whole  of  the  $1,000 
promised  to  relieve  the  homestead  was  really  obtained.  Mr.  Amos 
A.  Lawrence  raised  $550,  and  probably  Mr.  Stearns  and  Gerrit 
Smith  gave  the  balance. 


132  JOHN     BROWN. 

pended  was  read  by  me  and  published  in  the  New 
York  Tribune.  The  expenditures  of  the  Committee, 
were  made  in  the  way  of  outfitting  emigrant  trains  in 
Iowa,  paying  freight  on  clothing  and  other  articles 
forwarded,  and  incidentals.  According  to  my  recol- 
lection, no  money  was  expended  by  the  National  Commit- 
tee for  arms,  but  arms  passed  through  our  hands  from  the 
Massachusetts  Committee. ! 

"  My  report  contains  an  apparent  discrepancy.  It 
speaks  of  763  packages  of  clothing  as  received,  but  of 
only  400  boxes  forwarded.  I  happen  to  remember 
that  the  balance  was  stored  for  the  winter  in  a  barn 
or  house  owned  by  W.  M.  F.  Amy,  at  Bloomington, 
Illinios.2  The  Committee  voted  $5,000  to  Brown  at 
the  New  York  meeting  for  any  defensive  measures  that 
may  become  necessary,  but  when  the  time  came  for 
paying  it  they  were  out  of  funds." 

The  total  received  by  the  National  Committee,  as 
given  in  the  report  published  in  the  New  York 
Tribune  of  January  27,  1857,  show  cash  receipts  of 
$85,196.46.  Of  this,  Massachusetts  contributed  $26,- 
107.17,  and  New  York  $33,707.39.  Of  the  latter  sum 
the  largest  part  was  raised  by  the  Tribune.  The  fif- 
teen free  States  all  contributed,  though  New  England 
and  New  York  bore  two-thirds.    In  all,  762  packages  of 


1  Mr.  Sanborn  makes  it  clear  also  in  his  "  Life  of  John  Brown," 
and  it  agrees  with  my  own  recollection  of  instructions  from  Mr. 
Higginson  and  Mr.  Hyatt  with  regard  to  arms  sent  to  Kansas. 

2  A  considerable  amount  of  that  clothing  reached  Kansas  early 
in  the  spring  on  the  little  steamboat.  Mr.  Hurd  writes:  Messrs. 
Hyatt  and  Amy  came  up  from  St.  Louis  on  it.  Realf  and  myself 
met  it  at  Kansas  City,  and  were  on  board  during  the  trip  up  the 
Kansas  River  to  Lawrence, 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  I33 

clothing,  etc.,  were  contributed.  The  estimated  value 
of  all  contributions  through  the  National  Committee 
was  not  less  than  $200,000  ;  as  much  more  was  con- 
tributed and  expended  through  the  several  States  or 
direct  by  individuals. 

John  Brown  left  Chicago  early  in  December,  visit- 
ing Albany,  Rochester,  and  Peterboro  ;  also,  North 
Elba,  for  a  few  days.  He  was  at  the  Astor  House, 
New  York  City,  on  the  25th  of  January,  1857  ;  and 
from  thence  went  to  Boston,  being  the  guest,  for 
the  time,  of  Judge  Russell  and  Dr.  Thayer,  in  that 
city,  and  of  George  L.  Stearns,  at  Medford.  He  also 
visited  Concord,  having  met  Mr.  Sanborn  at  Theodore 
Parker's  house.  He  doubtless  met  Wendell  Phillips, 
T.  W.  Higginson,  and  other  anti-slavery  people, 
though  he  rather  avoided  such  personal  publicity  and 
acquaintance.  James  Redpath  was  married  and  living 
in  Boston.  At  Worcester,  where  Eli  Thayer  resided, 
he  wTas  a  frequent  visitor.  The  well-laden  archives 
of  the  Kansas  Historical  Society,  at  Topeka,  give  in 
the  personal  and  family  letters,  as  well  as  in  other 
manuscripts  belonging  to  its  large  and  valuable  col- 
lection of  John  Brown  papers,  the  close  and  frequent 
intimacy,  among  others,  of  Captain  Brown  and  Eli 
Thayer;  one,  too,  of  decided  admiration  on  the  lat- 
ter's  part.  Mr.  Thayer  evidently  aided  the  equip- 
ment of  the  Captain  to  the  extent  of  his  ability,  by 
way  of  facilitating,  at  least  with  his  purse  and  credit, 
the  procurement  and  repair  of  arms.  The  demand 
for  Sharpe's  rifles  had  stimulated  the  manufacture 
of  that  very  serviceable  type  of  weapon.  The  Allen 
rifle,  manufactured  at  Worcester,  was  one  of  the  im- 
provements thereon.     Mr.  Thayer,  up  to  the  close  of 


134  JOHN     BROWN. 

1857,  maintained  very  friendly  relations  with  John 
Brown.  He  knew  as  much  then  as  he  did  subse- 
quently of  the  story  of  the  Pottawatomie  slaying. 
Yet  he  could  write  upon  a  bill  receipted  by  Allen  & 
Wheelock,  that  the  gun  it  called  for  was  presented  to 
his  friend  John  Brown  for  use  in  the  "  Cause  of  Free- 
dom," and  he  could  advise  also  that  the  company  or 
command  which  John  Brown  proposed  to  organize, 
and  for  the  procurement  of  arms  on  behalf  of  which 
he  was  striving,  should  be  called  "  The  Neighbors," 
as  representing  the  scriptural  story  of  the  man  who 
fell  among  thieves  and  was  succored  by  the  con- 
temned Samaritan,  white  the  Levite  and  Pharisee 
passed  by  on  the  other  side.  In  1880,  Eli  Thayer 
stated  to  G.  \V.  Brown,  of  Rockford,  111.,  a  constant 
assailant  of  Captain  Brown's  name  and  memory,  that 
"  not  long  before  his  attack  on  the  United  States 
arsenal,  he  (Brown)  came  to  my  house  to  ask  for 
arms  ...  to  protect  some  free-state  settlements 
in  Kansas,"  etc.  As  Captain  Brown  did  not  see  or 
call  upon  Eli  Thayer  at  any  date  after  May  or  June, 
1857, — two  and  a  half  years — the  value  of  Mr.  Thayer's 
"  Memoirs  "  as  an  authority  falls  far  below  par.  John 
Brown  certainly  qonceived  of  Eli  Thayer  as  his  friend 
as  late  as  the  spring  of  1859,  for  he  so  wrote  of  him 
at  that  period  to  his  son  John.  Nor  is  Mr.  Thayer 
seen  of  record  to  have"  been  anywhere  unfriendly  to 
John  Brown's  acts  or  character  until  after  he  failed 
of  election  to  Congress  in  i860,  when  he  ran  as  an 
Independent  and  in  opposition  to  the  Republican 
nominee  in  the  Worcester,  Mass.,  district. 

All  over  the   North,  especially   in    the   more  active 
centers  of  Republican   political   activity,  John  Brown 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  1 35 

found    friendly   sympathizers,  a   good    deal   of  verbal 
encouragement,   and — a    small    degree    of    pecuniary 
assistance.     Yet,  no  one  who  came  into  close  contact 
with  him  could   doubt   but  that   he  held  firmly  to  a 
grim  purpose,  and  that  at  some  date,  not  far  distant, 
he  would  probably  be  heard  from  by  way  of  a  direct 
attack  on  slavery.     There  never  was  any  disguise  on 
the  Captain's  part  that,  in  his  opinion,  the  only  effect- 
ual policy  would  be  to  "carry  the  war  into  Africa." 
But  talk  was  cheap.     In  nothing  more  distinctly,  too, 
is  the  intellectual  quality  of  the  Captain  shown  than 
by  the  fact  that  he  measured  all  this  at  no  more  value 
than  it  deserved.     Nor  was  he  ever  thereby  led  into 
giving  his  confidence.     This  was  due,  not  because  he 
did  not  esteem  in  their  places,  men  of  the  weight  and 
influence   of    Sumner,  Wilson,  Greeley,  Chase,  et  al., 
as  that  he  intellectually  perceived    that  the  methods 
he  would  pursue  must  be  entirely  unapproved  of  by 
them.     To  him  they  were  all  instruments.     The  anal- 
ogy holds  good,  however,  that   he   held   no   kindred 
sympathy  or  association  with  the  methods  of  the  non- 
resistant  Abolitionists  or  their  unflinching  antagonism 
to  any  form  of  direct  action  other  than  that  of  agita- 
tion.    John    Brown   was   always  a  devoted    Unionist. 
He   would   never  have    consented   to    its    dissolution 
without    fighting.       He    was    organizing   a    forcible 
attack  on  slavery,  because  without   question   he  held 
the  conviction  that  slavery  was  an  organized   menace 
to  the  existence  of  the  American  Republic.     Without 
freedom,  it  could  not  justly  exist;   with  slavery  it  was 
always  in  peril;  slavery  must,  therefore,  be  destroyed: 
first,  because  it  was  a  crime  against   human   life  and 
the  law  of  God,  and,  therefore,  as  a  corollary,  always 


I36  JOHN     BROWN. 

a  menace  to  free  government,  the  Constitution,  and 
the  Union.  This  comprised  John  Brown's  simple, 
stern  political  creed;  the  one  upon  which  he  acted 
with  unwavering  fidelity  "even  unto  death."  May  he 
not,  therefore,  be  classed  as  a  Unionist  of  Unionists, 
a  Loyalist  of  Loyalists,  without  evasion  or  guile  ? 
Naturally,  such  directness  made  him  out  of  place  in 
party  politics.  Expediencies  he  could  not  recognize; 
he  never  accepted  them  nor  was  with  them,  and  the 
shortsighted  capacity  of  the  pro-slavery  politicians, 
in  endeavoring,  after  Harper's  Ferry,  to  establish  a 
connection  between  that  action  and  the  parliamentary 
leaders  of  Northern  politics,  was  ridiculous  enough 
to  breed  Homeric  laughter.  It  certainly  intensified, 
not  reacted,  on  the  opinions  assailed.  A  letter,  pub- 
lished in  the  New  York  Tribune,  from  the  pen  of 
Richard  Realf,  bearing  date  January  30,  i860,  shortly 
after  his  escape  from  the  South,  expresses  quite  forc- 
ibly and,  I  believe,  correctly,  the  opinions  of  John 
Brown  as  to  political  action  and  the  Republican  party. 
It  will  not  be  out  of  place,  then,  to  append  some 
extracts  from  this  paper.1 


'"To  the  Editor  of  the  'New  York  Tribune':  Sir — 
Permit  me,  who  have  barely  escaped  from  being  lynched  as  an 
Abolitionist  in  the  South,  only  to  find  myself  denounced  as  a 
recreant  apostate  in  the  North,  and  who,  therefore,  can  hardly  be 
suspected  of  bidding  for  sympathy  from  either  section,  to  say  a 
word  or  two  in  answer  to  the  allegation,  asserted  with  so  much 
heat  and  clamor,  '  that  the  Harper's  Ferry  insurrection  of  John 
Brown  was  the  natural,  legitimate,  and  inevitable  consequence  of 
the  teachings  of  the  Republican  party.'  In  contradicting  and  dis- 
proving this  charge,  I  am  moved,  not  by  any  particular  regard  for 
Republicanism,  nor  any  particular  hatred  of  Democracy,  but  only 
by  a  desire  to  do  justice  to  the   memory  of  John   Brown.     .     .     . 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  137 

The  meeting  of  John  Brown  and  George  Luther 
Stearns,  the  Boston  merchant,  marked  for  the 
anti-slavery  fighter  and  idealist  the  beginning  of  a 
momentous  end.  I  hold  that  it  was  an  event  of  deep 
national  importance  also.  Without  Mr.  Stearns's 
friendship  and  cooperation,  the  blow  struck  at  Harper's 
Ferry  would  probably  have  never  been  delivered,  as 
the  means  would  doubtless  have  been  lacking.  The 
Boston  merchant  was  a  leading  spirit  among  the  prom- 
inent men  who  gathered  around  Theodore  Parker  and 
the  Twenty-eighth  Congregational  Church,  of  which 
that    independent    Unitarian   preacher,    scholar,  and 


The  charge  thus  alleged  is  wholly  and  altogether  untrue,  and  this 
for  the  simple  reason,  that  the  movement  of  John  Brown  was  con- 
ceived and  originated  at  least  a  score  of  years  antecedent  to  the 
formation  of  the  Republican  party.  .  .  .  The  Republican  party 
had  no  existence  until  1S54  (ar>d  no  national  organization  till  1856). 
The  statement,  therefore,  that  the  incursion  into  Virginia  resulted 
as  a  consequence  of  the  inculcated  doctrines  of  Republicanism,  is 
now  disproven.  Nor  was  Brown  himself,  nor  were  any  of  his 
coadjutors  committed  to  the  Republican  creed.  Henry  Wilson, 
in  1857,  advised  that  the  free-state  party  in  Kansas  secure  the 
Legislature  to  themselves  by  voting  under  the  provision  of  the 
Lecompton  Constitution.  The  advice  was  taken,  and  the  result 
predicted  was  achieved.  Not  one  of  Brown' s  original  party  voted. 
Some  of  us  were  at  the  time  correspondents  of  the  Eastern  press; 
and  in  the  interim  between  the  Grasshopper  Falls  Convention, 
1851  (when  it  was  decided  upon  to  vote),  and  the  day  on 
which  the  election  occurred  (in  1851),  we  opposed  the  action  of 
the  party  in  every  possible  way,  by  speeches,  and  in  every  avail- 
able manner. 

"Once  more:  the  only  representative  of  Republicanism  who 
received  any  inkling  of  John  Brown's  plans,  learned  them  from  a 
hostile  quarter,  and  took  immediate  steps  to  put  it  out  of  Brown's 
power  to  commit  any  illegal  act  whatever.  I  allude  to  Senator 
Wilson,  and  his  letter  to  Dr.  Howe,  of  Boston." 


!^8  JOHN     BROWN. 

agitator,  was  the  pastor.  The  Music  Hall  congrega- 
tion and  fraternity  embraced,  with  the  Parker  house- 
hold, more  or  less  actively,  very  many  of  the  cultured 
men  and  women  of  Boston,  often  too  within  the  pale 
of  the  orthodox  churches  who  were  strongly,  even 
passionately,  anti-slavery,  but  who  could  not  satisfy 
themselves  with  the  policy  of  non-unionism  and  non- 
resistance  advocated  by  the  American  Anti-Slavery 
Society.  They  were  the  backbone  of  resistance  to  the 
rendition  of  fugitive  slaves;  they  were  found  active  as 
Conscience  Whigs,  early  Free  Soilers,  and  foremost  in 
younger  Republican  ranks.  But  the  men  who  were 
inspired  by  Theodore  Parker  or  aided  to  sustain  him, 
were  always  something  more  than  political  workers. 
They  were  positively  and  practically  anti-slavery, 
helping  every  phase  of  agitation  and  effort.  Their 
circle  also  included  some  of  the  ablest  business  men 
of  New  England.  Great  railroad  systems  in  the  West 
received  their  incentive  and  initiative  in  the  discus- 
sions constantly  going  on  at  Mr.  Parker's  residence. 
The  lyceum  system  was  then  in  its  largest  vogue  ;  a 
magnificent  educator  of  Northern  intellect  and  senti- 
ment. Theodore  Parker  shared  with  Wendell  Phillips 
and  Henry  Ward  Beecher  its  leading  honors,  and  he 
was  also  its  chief  sacrifice,  as  the  labor  and  exposure 
of  travel  and  lecturing  undoubtedly  hastened  his  un- 
timely death.  It  was  the  wide  knowledge  which  was 
thus  acquired  of  the  new  West,  then  opening,  that 
aided  in  broadening  New  England's  business  enter- 
prise. To  the  intense  interest  aroused  by  the  Kansas 
struggle  was  in  great  part  due  the  great  investment 
and  sagacious  direction  that  created  the  enlargement 
of  the  railroads  running  to  Missouri  from  Chicago,  the 


JOHN     BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  I39 

early  construction  of  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  rail- 
road, the  beginning  of  the  great  Santa  Fe  system  and 
also  of  the  now  vast  network  of  roads  in  Iowa  and 
Nebraska,  as  well  as  of  northern  Missouri  and  Kansas. 
The  free-state  struggle,  like  the  Civil  War,  vastly 
quickened  enterprise.  And  out  of  the  Music  Hall 
Sundays, "  Parker's  Thursdays  "  at  home,  the  Stearns's 
country  home,  and  the  headquarters  of  the  Emigrant 
Aid  Society,  with  the  personal  efforts,  intellectually 
quickening  as  they  were,  of  lawyers  like  Russell  and 
Andrews,  active  scholars  like  Howe,  Cabot,  Thayer, 
Bowditch,  and  scores  of  others,  an  influence  went  that 
did  very  much  to  prepare  New  England  and  the  great 
North  for  the  mighty  struggle  that  was  impending. 
Parker,  a  pulpit  Socrates,  was  always  questioning  the 
oracles,  and  as  he  was  sincerity  itself,  grandly  human 
to  the  core  of  his  being,  the  Delphian  soul  always 
responded.  John  Brown  came,  passed  through,  and 
went  away,  leaving  behind  him  an  impression  of  a  per- 
sonality so  simply  true,  a  character  so  sternly  yet  im- 
personally fixed,  a  brain  so  honest  and  clear,  and  a 
courage  so  unfailing,  that  none  who  met  him,  however 
slightly,  failed  to  be  affected  as  if  by  the  "  moving 
of  waters";  the  passing  of  an  unquestioned  human 
force.  Some  were  small  enough  to  fear  him;  a  few 
have  since  been  false  enough  to  defame  a  life  they 
could  not  comprehend;  but  all  of  them  felt  his  pres- 
ence as  that  of  an  Ithuriel  spear,  touching  to  the  very 
core  of  things.  Among  the  noblest  and  sanest  of  all, 
George  Luther  Stearns  and  his  wife  Mary  must  be 
counted  as  the  foremost. 

Mr.   Stearns  met  John   Brown   for  the  first  time    in 
December,  1856,  and  at  once  invited  him  to  Boston. 


1/ 


I40  JOHN    BROWN. 

They  met  again  on  the  street  near  to  the  rooms  of  the 
Massachusetts  Kansas  Committee.  It  was  Mr.  Stearns 
who  introduced  Frank  B.  Sanborn  to  John  Brown. 
On  the  first  Sunday  in  January, 1857,  John  Brown  went 
to  the  Music  Hall  to  hear  Theodore  Parker  preach.  He 
was  there  introduced  to  Mrs.  Mary  E.  Stearns,1  who 
survives  her  noble  husband  and  now  resides  near 
Boston,  at  Tuft's  College.  Their  home  was  then  at 
Medford.  Mrs.  Stearns  is  the  niece  of  Lydia  Maria 
Child,  a  well-known  and  most  graceful  authoress, 
whose  pen  was  also  and  always  at  the  service  of 
anti-slavery  work  and  ideas.  John  Brown's  first  visit 
to  Medford  was  made  on  the  second  Sunday  in  Jan- 
uary, 1857.  The  eldest  son,  Henry,  was  naturally 
attracted  to  the  old  hero,  to  whom,  apart  from  a  rea- 
sonable curiosity,  all  children  and  young  people  were 
irresistibly  drawn.  As  he  was  telling  of  the  privations 
endured  by  Kansas  families,  Henry,  a  boy  of  thirteen, 
brought  to  him  a  little  hoard  of  pocket  money,  and,  as 
he  put  it  into  the  Captain's  hands,  asked  if  he  would 
buy  something  needed  "  for  the  Kansas  children,"  and 
added,  as  the  grave  old  man  thanked  him:  "  Captain 
Brown,  will  you  not  write  me,  sometime,  what  sort  of 
a  little  boy  you  were?"2  This  was  the  origin  of  a 
remarkable  composition,  which  if,  as  the  writer  some- 
time over-modestly  declared:  "  I  know  no  more  of 
grammar  than  one  of  that  farmer's  calves  " — plainly 
shows  that  he  was  of  those  in  whom  plain  living  and 
high  thinking  make  the  noblest  of  spiritual  and  intel- 
lectual utterances. 


1  See  Mrs.  Stearns's  interesting  paper  on  "  George  L.  Stearns  and 
John  Brown  "  in  the  closing  pages  of  the  appendix  to  this  volume. 

2  Sanborn's  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown,"  p.  18. 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS,  141 

James  Russell  Lowell  has,  it  is  stated,  pronounced 
the  Brown  letter  to  Henry  L.  Stearns  "  one  of  the 
finest  pieces  of  autobiography  extant."  '  Ralph 
"Waldo  Emerson  is  reported  to  have  declared  that  this 
paper  of  John  Brown  was  "  a  positive  contribution 
to  literature."  He  also  regarded  "  in  the  deliberative 
reflection  of  after  years,"  the  Virginian  court-room  ad- 
dress, coupling  it  with  Lincoln's  Gettysburg  speech  as 
of  "the  most  eloquent  words  of  the  present  century." 
Yet,  the  latest  biographers  of  Abraham  Lincoln  have 
traveled  far  out  of  their  road  on  narrow  bypaths  to 
sneer  at  John  Brown;  discrediting  his  services  in  Kan- 
sas, decrying  him  as  a  man  "  of  little  wisdom,"  with  a 
"crude  visionary  ideality,"  "  ambitious  to  irritation;" 
as  "  clean,  but  coarse;  honest,  but  rude";  with  a  cour- 
age that  "  partook  of  the  recklessness  of  insanity,"  and 
of  a  "military  ability,  too  insignificant  even  for  ridi- 
cule." Messrs  Hay  and  Nicolay,  themselves  among  the 
more  stupendous  failures  as  biographers  and  histo- 
rians in  the  face  of  the  greatest  of  personality  and  sub- 
jects that  human  history  has  offered,  to  competent 
capacity,  have  succeeded  in  their  unnecessarily  ex- 
tended diatribe  on  John  Brown,  and  indeed,  too,  of  all 
the  preluding  struggle  which  gave  to  Abraham  Lincoln 
his  exalted  opportunity,  in  making  plain  the  smug 
limits  of  their  own  mental  obtuseness.  John  Brown's 
reputation  can  stand  that  critical  judgment  far  better 
than  their  literary  capacity  can  the  making  of  it. 

It  is  difficult  to  give  a  correct  account  of  the  money 
raised  in  the  service  of  Kansas.     But  the  figures  given 


1(,John  Brown,"    by  Herman  Von  Hoist,  Boston,  1889.     Ap- 
pendix, p.  221,  by  Editor  Frank  L.  Stearns. 


!42  JOHN    BROWN. 

by  Mr.  Sanborn  in  his  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John 
Brown,"  must  be  taken  as  fairly  approximating  the 
facts.  The  National  Committee  is  credited,  as  already 
stated,  with  raising  and  disbursing  $85,196.46  in 
money,and  in  clothing,  supplies,  etc.,  to  the  estimated 
value  of  $110,000.  The  Massachusetts  Committee 
raised  chiefly  through  Mr.  Stearns's  exertions  $48,000 
in  money;  Mrs.  Stearns,  in  supplies,  at  least  $30,000 
more.  Thaddeus  Hyatt  probably  gave  $3,000  for  the 
purchase  of  arms,  etc.,  outside  of  his  contributions  to 
the  National  Committee.  Previous  to  the  formation 
of  the  National  Committee,  six  hundred  Sharpe's 
rifles  were  purchased  by  Amos  A.  Lawrence,  Dr. 
Samuel  G.  Cabot,  Frederick  Law  Olmstead  and 
others;  also  two  12-pound  howitzers,  and  several 
hundred  revolvers;  all  these  were  sent  to  Kansas,  at 
a  cost  in  all  of  about  $20,000.  After  the  sacking  of 
Lawrence,  in  May,  1856,  when  there  really  was  the 
appearance  of  civil  war,  the  purchase  of  arms  and  the 
equipment  of  intending  settlers  from  the  free  States, 
was  an  avowed  and  open  policy.  In  Massachusetts,  a 
second  and  more  private  committee  was  formed  to 
purchase  arms  and  otherwise  provide  for  defense  and 
resistance;  the  public  body  chosen  at  a  Fanueil  Hall 
meeting  having  virtually  agreed  not  to  spend  money 
for  that  purpose.  In  this,  as  in  the  general  com- 
mittee, Mr.  Stearns  was  the  pervading  spirit.  T.  W. 
Higginson,  Sanborn,  Howe,  Russell,  Thayer,  and  the 
Cabots  were  all  active.  Many  others,  doubtless,  came 
to  the  inner  circle  from  time  to  time.  It  would  seem 
to  be  not  an  extravagant  statement,  to  estimate  that 
the  total  expenditure  for  arms  and  other  needed 
supplies  for  free  Kansas  cost  in  the  vicinity  of  half  a 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  143 

million  dollars,  before  the  books  were  sealed  in  such 
uneasy  peace  as  preceded  the  actual  outbreak  of 
civil  war.  In  the  foregoing  figures  the  contributions 
to  John  Brown  are  not  included.  The  arms  purchased 
for  that  summer's  campaign,  so  far  as  they  can  be 
traced,  consisted  of  368  Sharpe's  rifles,  used  to  equip 
three  companies  of  New  England  emigrants,  250  more 
(of  which  200  were  purchased  by  Mr.  Stearns,  never 
taken  into  Kansas  and  afterwards  carried  to  Virginia 
bv  John  Brown).  In  all,  there  were  certainly  bought 
for  Kansas,  between  the  summer  of  1855  and  the  fall 
of  1856,  at  least  1,200  Sharpe's  rifles,  400  Hall's  car- 
bines, 1,500  United  States  Springfield  muskets,  four 
12-pound  guns,  and  not  less  than  2,500  revolvers. 
Besides  these  about  2,000  United  States  muskets  were 
obtained  in  Iowa  and  Illinois  for  free-state  use.  Of 
the  Sharpe's  carbines,  200,  as  already  stated,  came 
under  John  Brown's  control  and  were  not  taken  into 
Kansas  at  all. 

From  the  departure  of  Captain  Brown  in  September, 
1856,  to  his  brief  and  almost  secret  return  to  Kansas 
early  in  November,  1857,  his  days  were  filled  with 
ceaseless  efforts.  John  Brown's  itinerary  alone  is  start- 
ling. There  were  weeks  of  severe  fatigue  as  well  as 
wearying  danger,  following  his  departure  east  after 
the  last  attack  on  Lawrence.  His  visit  to  Chicago  in 
the  last  week  of  October  was  rapidly  followed  by  trips 
to  New  York,  Boston,  and  western  Massachusetts. 
Before  the  Astor  House  meeting  with  the  National 
Committee  during  the  last  of  January,  1857,  he  had 
previously  conferred  at  length  with  the  Massachusetts 
Kansas  Committee  in  Boston,  arranged  for  the  cus- 
tody of  the    Stearns  rifles,  that  were  captured  by  Vir- 


144  JOHN    BROWN. 

ginia  in  1859,  made  the  acquaintance  of  most  of  those 
who  thereafter  faithfully  aided  him  in  his  work,  went 
to  Vermont,  where,  at  Vergennes,  he  probably  met 
one  of  his  sons,1  stopped  at  Peterboro,  Rochester,  and 
Albany,  and  hastened  to  Boston,  so  that  on  the  18th 
of  February  he  was  able  to  address  the  Massachusetts 
House  of  Representatives  on  behalf  of  Kansas.  Feb- 
ruary, March,  April,  and  May  saw  him  in  Connecticut, 
visiting  and  speaking  at  Hartford,  New  Haven  and 
elsewhere.  At  Collinsville  he  made  with  Charles  Blair 
a  contract  for  the  manufacture  of  1,000  pikes,  900  of 
which  were  captured  by  Virginia,  and  also  arranged 
for  the  removal  to  North  Elba,  of  the  tombstone  over 
his  Revolutionary  grandfather's  grave,  that  has  since 
become  renowned  in  this  man's  remarkable  life-story. 
He  was  at  Worcester  and  Springfield,  Akron  (Ohio), 
and  back  in  New  York  in  the  last  of  May.  He  made 
his  appeal  to  the  "  Friends  of  Freedom  "  through  the 
Tribune  in  April,  and  issued  the  quaint  "  Farewell  to 
Bunker  Hill  and  Plymouth  Rock,"  which  indicated  in 
its  tone  how  sharply  he  felt  his  comparative  failure  to 
get  the  amount  of  pecuniary  assistance  he  needed. 
From  Kansas  reports  were  steadily  coining  of  the  Le- 
compton  Constitution  movement  and  the  dangerous 
conditions  it  was  creating.  The  necessity  was  upon 
him  of  being  near  to,  if  not  within,  the  Territory,  and 
early  in  June,  with  his  son  Owen,  he  left  Hudson, 
Ohio,  and  soon  after  appeared  in  Iowa,  fitting  out  for 
his  tedious  overland  journey  at  or  near  Iowa  City. 
Two  wagons  and  teams  were  purchased,  the   Captain 


1  The  constant  threat  of  arrest  under  Federal  territorial  war- 
rants compelled  him  to  refrain  from  visiting  his  home  during  the 
entire  period  occupied  by  the  movements  under  review. 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  145 

driving  one,  and  Owen  the  other.  They  were  three 
weeks  on  the  road  to  Tabor,  camping  in  their  wagons 
and  living,  as  the  Captain  wrote  to  Mr.  Sanborn,  on 
herring,  soda  crackers,  sweetened  water,  a  little  milk 
and  a  few  eggs.  Yet  he  paid  for  the  outfit  $780,  and 
could,  but  for  that  conscientiousness  which  permitted 
all  for  the  cause  and  only  the  barest  of  necessities  for 
himself,  have  afforded  at  least  decent  food.  This  was 
not  nearness  of  habit  though,  but  a  strained  honesty 
of  purpose.  The  Browns  reached  Tabor  the  first 
week  in  August,  a  letter  dated  the  8th  being  the 
first  knowledge  of  his  arrival.  Several  importunate 
letters  and  messages  from  General  Lane  and 
other  Kansas  friends,  urging  the  need  of  his 
presence,  awaited  him  at  Tabor.  Richard  Realf  had 
been  sent  up  in  July  with  some  funds,  which  he  left 
there.  Hugh  Forbes,  the  English  Garibaldian  with 
whom  Captain  Brown  made  a  contract  that  caused 
much  subsequent  trouble,  appears  personally  for  the 
first  time  by  joining  the  Browns  at  Tabor.  Mention 
is  made  of  his  "  instructions  "  in  letters  dated  during 
September  and  October.  He  must  have  returned 
east  in  November,  1857,  as  the  results  of  his  disagree- 
ments with  John  Brown,  for  the  latter  was  by  the 
middle  of  that  month  on  his  way  to  central  Kansas. 
The  Captain  had  already  sent  to  Concord  (Mr.  San- 
born being  the  correspondent  selected  between  him- 
self and  the  other  friends  who  had  subscribed  to  his 
efforts  and  expenses),  an  account  of  his  expenditures 
with  an  inventory  of  the  goods  which  he  found  in 
storage  in  Iowa  City  and  with  John  Jones  at  Tabor.1 

1  Of  property  forwarded  by  the  National  Committee  and  which 
Captain   Brown    never   removed,  he    itemizes:  One    brass    piece, 
IO 


I46  JOHN    BROWN. 

The  earlier  details,  relating  to  John  Brown's  rela- 
tions with  Hugh  Forbes  are  now  unknown.  The 
latter  was  then  a  man  of  about  forty-five  years  of 
age,  an  Englishman  by  birth,  who  had  lived  at  Siena, 
Italy,  doing  business  as  a  silk  merchant.  He  was  a 
man  of  good  education  and  considerable  accomplish- 
ments, being  a  good  linguist,  an  excellent  master-at- 
arms,  and  a  fair  military  engineer.  This  statement  is 
made  on  the  authority  of  General  Garibaldi's  chief 
of  staff,  in  the  Sicilian  and  Neapolitan  campaign, 
Wm.  De  Rohan,  an  American  who  knew  Hugh 
Forbes,  and  for  years  a  close  friend  of  this  writer. 
Forbes  early  in  his  Italian  life  identified  himself  with 
the  "  Young  Italy  "  party,  and  was  a  trusted  agent  of 
both  Mazzini  and  Garibaldi.  He  participated  in  the 
campaigns  of  1848-49,  and  showed  himself  a  man  of 
courage  and  some  ability.  With  defeat  he  had  of 
course,  to  leave  Italy,  and  for  a  time  lived  in  Paris,  then 
in  London,  and  some  time  in  1855  or  1856,  he  came  to 


complete;  one  damaged  gun-carriage,  some  ammunition,  seventy- 
five  old  United  States  rifles  and  muskets,  and  twelve  sabres.  There 
were  also  twelve  boxes  and  barrels  of  clothing  and  bedding,  three 
hand  grist-mills,  some  powder  and  lead.  At  Iowa  City  he  had 
obtained  eleven  blankets,  nine  tents  complete,  three  sets  of  tent- 
poles,  and  three  axes,  with  the  addition  of  an  order  for  fifty  dol- 
lars, given  him  in  Chicago  by  Mr.  Hurd,  to  be  expended  in  wagon 
covers,  ropes,  etc.  These  embrace  all  the  material  from  the 
National  Committee  he  then  received.  The  Stearns  goods  con- 
sisted of  194  Sharpe's  carbines  complete,  with  3,300  ball  cartridges, 
and  necessary  primers.  He  had,  besides,  two  repeating  rifles,  two 
Colt's  revolvers,  a  two-ounce  gun,  a  few  of  the  arms  he  carried  into 
Kansas  in  1855,  two  wagons  and  four  horses,  with  about  five 
hundred  dollars  in  money.  This  was  all  of  the  outfit  he  possessed 
for  his  gteat  enterprise, 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING     FRIENDS.  T47 

New  York.  The  Italian  and  Garibaldian  men  were 
all  on  the  side  of  the  North  and  the  Union.  But 
Forbes,  evidently,  did  not  understand  our  politics. 
He  mistook  the  ferment  and  sympathetic  excitement 
in  favor  of  Kansas  for  a  deep-seated  revolutionary 
sentiment  in  favor  of  freeing  the  slave  by  force  of 
arms,  if  necessary.  The  arming  of  Northern  emi- 
grants en  route  to  Kansas,  he  accepted  as  a  counter- 
part to  the  probable  arming  of  the  negroes,  and  evi- 
dently, as  his  letters  of  complaint  against  John  Brown 
show,  he  regarded  the  bold  antagonism,  expressed  in 
speeches  and  newspapers,  of  Republicans  to  the  pro- 
slavery  Democracy  and  its  actions,  as  an  undoubted 
proof  of  the  drift  of  the  North  towards  open  and 
armed  resistance  to  the  aggressions  of  the  slave-power. 
No  doubt  such  a  feeling  was  manifested  in  very  intel- 
ligent and  influential  circles.  Men  did  talk  boldly  in 
those  days  of  the  need  of  forcible  resistance;  but  it 
was  not  for  the  slave  they  talked,  but  for  the  free 
States  and  the  institutions  of  the  land.  In  the  notable 
coteries,  where  European  refugees  of  '48  were  re- 
ceived, such  a  man  as  Hugh  Forbes  would  be  made 
welcome.  And  he  undoubtedly  was.  Probably, 
also,  he  used  his  pen,  as  well  as  his  skill  as  a  swords- 
man, to  maintain  himself,  wife,  and  daughter.  What  is 
more  likely  than  that  John  Brown,  who  could  not  but 
have  perceived  from  his  twelve  months'  experience  of 
partisan  warfare  in  Kansas,  as  he  well  knew  theoreti- 
cally from  his  years  of  silent  study,  observation,  and 
planning,  the  need  of  competent  men  to  train  and 
direct,  may  have  cautiously  suggested  this  need  to 
some  of  the  many  persons  he  came  in  contact  with. 
There  were  men  connected  with  the  New  York  Tribune, 


148  JOHN    BROWN. 

for  example,  who  knew  Colonel  Forbes.  His  name 
may  thus  have  been  mentioned,  and  an  introduction 
followed.  John  Brown  had  a  system  of  his  own  as 
to  field  defenses,  drill,  and  discipline.  Such  matters 
would  be  at  once  discussed.  Then  all  that  followed 
is  simple  enough.  Forbes  was  familiar  with  the  plans 
of  the  European  revolutionary  organizations  and 
leaders.  Among  their  instrumentalities  were  plans  of 
street-fighting,  guerilla  and  irregular  warfare,  which 
had  been  systematized  by  a  French  or  Italian  general 
officer  of  considerable  ability,  who  had  identified  him- 
self with  the  European  republican  organization.  This 
system  he  embodied  in  a  bulky  "  Manual,"  and  Hugh 
Forbes  proposed  to  condense  and  translate  the  same 
into  English.  Probably  this  proposition  was  first 
made  to  John  Brown,  who  agreed  to  bear  the  expenses 
of  the  printing,  etc.  It  was  for  this  purpose  that  most 
of  the  $600  drawn  by  Forbes  from  John  Brown  through 
a  banker  of  Hartford,  Connecticut,  in  the  spring  and 
early  summer  of  1857,  was  expended.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  accuse  Hugh  Forbes  of  treachery,  any  more 
than  it  is  to  assume  that  John  Brown  acted  in  this 
matter  with  less  than  the  careful  prudence  he  always 
showed  in  monetary  dealings.  It  is  more  necessary  to 
get  at  the  actual  situation,  and  then  for  the  critics,  who 
desire  to  understand  and  not  merely  accuse  or  make 
a  telling  point,  to  put  themselves  in  the  other  man's 
place.  Since  the  gun  at  Fort  Sumter  was  fired  at 
the  Union,  people  in  our  modern  world,  Americans 
included,  have  made  huge  strides  in  the  use  and  sys- 
tematization  of  destructive  forces  and  arms.  But 
before  that  date  we  knew  but  very  little,  less,  too,  on 
this  side  of  the  Atlantic  than  was  known  on  the  other. 


JOHN    BROWN    MAKING    FRIENDS.  I49 

If  this  view  is  correct  it  will  not  be  difficult  to  under- 
stand why  John  Brown  trusted  Hugh  Forbes  whose 
"Manual  of  the  Patriotic  Volunteer"  was  a  useful 
book  for  those  who  were  thinking,  studying,  and  long- 
ing to  act  against  slavery,  or  to  defend  Kansas  against 
its  assailants,  as  many  of  us  were  in  those  days.1  As  to 
paying  Colonel  Forbes  a  certain  monthly  sum, Captain 
Brown  used  his  own  judgment,  which,  granting  his 
premises  and  purposes,  was  not  so  far  out  of  the  way. 
Forbes  had  no  means  and  certainly  no  pecuniary 
credit.  He  had  current  expenses  that  pressed  upon 
him,  and  only  by  regular  earning  could  he  maintain 
his  wife  and  daughter.  John  Brown,  while  reducing 
his  personal  burdens  to  the  cost  of  covering  the  nar- 
rowest margin,  had  more  than  a  fair  knowledge  of 
conditions  other  than  those  to  which  he  voluntarily 
limited  himself.  While  always  apart  from  it,  he  was 
still  a  man  of  the  world,  having  traveled  widely, 
transacted  large  business  affairs,  and  of  later  years 
mingled  with  those  who  represented  culture  and  em- 
bodied refinement  in  the  best  of  senses.  It  is  part  of 
his  title  to  leadership  in  his  chosen  path  that  he  should 
apprehend  the  limits  of  men  who  infringed  upon  it. 
All  this  is  not  designed  to  defend  Hugh  Forbes,  but 
only  to  show  how  John  Brown  and  himself  came  to- 
gether and  how  they  also  rudely  separated. 

At  Tabor,  in  all  probability,  as  to  their  disagreement, 
John  Brown  must  have  given  Colonel  Forbes  his  entire 
confidence,  so  far  as  naming  to  him,  as  he  had  done  to 
Frederick  Douglass,  in  1847,  and  to  a  few  others  of  his 


1  My  copy  of   the  "  Manual  "  was  burned  with   other  books   and 
property  in  Lawrence  at  the  time  of  the  Quantrell  raid  in  1863. 


I50  JOHN     BROWN. 

race  before  and  after  that  date,  the  place  or  region  in 
and  from  which  he  designed  to  attack  slavery.  It  is 
very  evident  that  this  was  not  at  all  the  idea  which 
Hugh  Forbes  had  associated  with  the  expected  move- 
ment. John  Brown  was  of  course  very  set— dogmatic 
indeed — on  his  own  lines.  He  knew  what  he  wanted  to 
do.  The  more  his  purposes  are  studied  in  connection 
with  the  environment  and  times  in  which  he  lived,  the 
more  must  the  unprejudiced  student,  separating  him- 
self from  his  own  conceptions  and  trying  to  under- 
stand the  growth  of  so  strange  a  personality,  so 
unique  and  noble  a  character,  be  convinced  that  if  his 
intended  Virginian  foray  had  been  undertaken  at 
such  time  and  circumstances  as  can  be  reasonably 
conceived  of  as  possible,  that  there  was  from  the  point 
of  view  of  endangering  slavery  and  making  it  wholly 
insecure,  far  more  than  a  mere  probability  of  success. 
Hugh  Forbes  could  not  see  that.  He,  too,  was  dog- 
matic, and  possessed  with  a  great  self-pride,  as  his  as- 
sociate Garibaldian  has  stated.  He  might,  therefore, 
readily  come  to  the  conclusion  that  he  had  been 
"  used  " — not  fairly  dealt  with — when  he  found  John 
Brown's  plans  so  different  from  those  which  he,  Hugh 
Forbes,  had  worked  out  for  him  in  his  own  mind. 

Certain  it  is  they  parted.  There  is  no  evidence  to 
show  that  it  was  in  anger.  Whether  John  Brown 
expected  to  find  Forbes  still  at  Tabor,  on  his  early 
return  from  Kansas  with  the  eleven  associates  he 
brought  with  him  to  study  in  the  school  and  "  Manual 
of  the  Patriotic  Volunteer,"  cannot  now  be  ascer- 
tained. From  later  letters  of  advice  to  John  Brown, 
Jr.,  then  living  in  Ohio,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  Cap- 
tain  thought   Forbes   might  still   be  won  over.     One 


JOHN    BROWN     MAKING     FRIENDS.  I  -  I 

letter  indicates  that  his  son  had  seen  the  Garibaldian 
and  was  certainly  corresponding  with  him.  There  is 
not  an  angry  or  reproachful  word  of  reference  to 
Forbes's  attitude;  there  is  shrewd  advice  as  to  trying 
to  mollify  his  anger  and  threatened  exposures.  It 
must  also  be  said  that  there  is  not  a  particle  of  evi- 
dence to  prove  that  Colonel  Forbes  went  over  to  "  the 
enemy,"  as  he  must  have  understood  that  term.  His 
letters  of  angry  complaint  to  Senators  Henry  Wilson 
and  Charles  Sumner,  Horace  Greeley,  Dr.  Howe,  and 
others,  are  all  explainable,  though  not  justifiable,  upon 
the  hypothesis  suggested  herein — that  in  Forbes's 
opinion  the  leaders  of  Northern  political  agitation 
were  all  more  or  less  approving  of  Captain  Brown's 
course  and  were  covertly,  at  least,  sustaining  him 
therein.  If  Forbes  believed  also  that  there  was  a 
distinct  apprehension  (and  some  purpose  to  definitely 
prepare  therefor)  of  a  Northern  outbreak  "all  along 
the  line,"  there  is  another  explanation  of  the  earnest- 
ness and  even  passionate  nature  of  his  warning  and 
demanding  letters.  John  Brown  did  not  stoop  to 
mourn  over  the  spilled  milk,  or  waste  time  and  energy 
by  useless  regrets.  He  endeavored  to  temporize,  and 
then,  when  that  was  impossible,  made  another  move 
which  threw  Forbes  and  others  off  the  scent.  There 
is  no  excuse,  however,  for  Forbes's  demands  but  des- 
perate necessities.  His  own  conceptions,  largely  self- 
imposed  though  they  were,  of  the  work  he  had  ex- 
pected to  be  engaged  upon,  must  be  considered  in 
making  up  judgment.  He  began  to  write  wildly 
about  John  Brown's  course  in  the  winter  of  1857-58, 
compelling  thereby  the  movement  from  Chatham  to 
Kansas  in   the  following  summer,  and   then   he    dis- 


152  JOHN    BROWN. 

appeared  wholly  from  our  vision,  until  October,  1859, 
and  later  when  he  was  reported  in  command  of  a 
fortress  under  Garibaldi,  at  or  near  Messina,  Sicily. 
An  attack  was  made  on  him  by  some  American  news- 
papers,1 and,  owing  to  that  publicity  he  fell  into  con- 
siderable discredit,  dying  soon  from  exposure  and 
wounds,  hastened  doubtless  by  the  mental  mortifica- 
tion he  underwent.  Hugh  Forbes  was  not  of  the 
higher  type.  He  was  very  human  in  his  weakness, 
but  it  remains  true  that  he  did  good  service  else- 
where in  the  cause  of  human  freedom,  and  that  must 
in  all  generosity  be  weighed  in  his  favor.  John 
Brown  cast  no  stone  at  him.  Others  can  afford  to  let 
his  memory  rest.  He  did  not  send  the  warning  letter 
of  August,  1859,  to  Mr.  Floyd,  Buchanan's  Secretary 
of  War,  for  that  act  was  left  to  an  American  to 
perform. 

1  The  strongest  criticism  came  from  Horace  Greeley's  pen,  and 
was  published  in  the  N.  Y.  Tribune,  upon  which  I  find  also  Col. 
Forbes  to  have  been  occasionally  employed  as  a  translator. — 
R.J.  H. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION. 

The  Chatham,  Canada,  Convention — The  refuge  of  the 
fugitives — Movements  in  the  East — Telling  Gerrit 
Smith  and  Frank  B.  Sanborn  of  his  intention  to  raid 
slavery —  The  six  friends  and  councilors — Martin  R. 
Delaneys  misapprehension — "  The  League  of  Liberty' 
— Dr.  Ross,  of  Canada —  What  was  meant  by  the  Pro- 
visional Constitution — Hugh  Forbes  and  his  evil  acts 
— Delay  almost  fatal — Throwing  Forbes  off  the  see  fit 
—  The  Lecompton  Constitution — Massacre  of  free- 
state  men — Reuniting  the  little  band. 

John  Brown  arrived  at  the  farm  of  Mr.  Whitman, 
near  Lawrence,  on  the  5th  November.  On  the  next 
day  he  sent  for  John  E.  Cook  and  myself.  At  that 
date  I  was  temporarily  absent  and  had  also  concluded 
a  contract  for  twelve  months'  newspaper  work. 
Richard  Realf  and  Luke  F.  Parsons  were  named  to 
John  Brown  by  John  E.  Cook.  On  the  14th  Cook, 
Realf,  and  Parsons  reached  Topeka,  joining  John 
Brown  there,  leaving  almost  immediately  for  Tabor, 
Iowa,  with  "  Colonel  Whipple,"  as  Aaron  D.  Stevens 
was  then  known,  Charles  W.  Moffett,  from  Montour, 
Iowa,  and  Richard  Richardson,  an  intelligent  man  of 
color,  who  had  the  year  before  been  assisted  from 
slavery  in  Missouri.     After  reaching  Canada,  however. 


i54  John  brown. 

in  May,  1858,  he  does  not  again  appear  in  the  record. 
Captain  Brown's  presence  in  Kansas  at  this  period  was 
known  to  a  very  few  persons.  The  status  of  the  Ter- 
ritory was  by  no  means  a  settled  one,  owing  to  the 
pendency  of  the  Lecompton  Constitution,  and  it  was 
a  favorable  element  on  the  free-state  side  to  have  it 
believed  that  John  Brown  was  supposed  to  be  mys- 
teriously hovering  along  the  northern  line.  The  active 
resistance  at  this  period  of  James  Montgomery,  after- 
wards colonel  of  the  Second  South  Carolina  Colored 
Volunteers,  to  the  policy  of  voting  under  the  "  bogus 
laws,"  was  keeping  southern  Kansas  in  a  state  of  fer- 
ment, which  had,  however,  a  sufficient  basis  in  the  exist- 
ence of  plots  and  ruffianly  efforts  to  drive  free-state  set- 
tlers in  that  section  from  their  public  land  entries  and 
settlements.'    From  Tabor  John  Brown  soon  moved  to 


1  There  were  other  questions  embraced  in  the  opposition  to 
voting  for  State  officers  under  the  Lecompton  Constitution,  besides 
that  of  the  recognition  of  the  "  bogus  laws"  it  directly  involved. 
In  Southern  Kansas,  especially,  the  so-called  "black  law"  free- 
state  Democracy  had  a  stronghold.  To  some  extent  the  leaders  of 
this  faction  were  more  unfair  than  were  the  pro-slavery  party 
proper.  A  movement  was  on  foot  at  this  time  to  break  down  the 
real  free-state  party,  by  substituting  for  it  a  so-called  Democratic 
one,  which  would  have  virtually  served  all  the  interests  of  the  slave- 
power,  without  having  "  chattelism  "  actually  established.  Some 
of  the  more  sagacious  pro-slavery  men  had  ere  this  realized  the 
impossibility  of  making  Kansas  a  slave  Slate.  The  special  obsta- 
cles to  this  Democratic  movement  were  the  John  Brown  feeling, 
though  the  Captain  had  no  partisan  relations  whatever;  Captain 
Montgomery's  defense  of  the  free-state  settlers,  and  the  untiring 
hostility  of  the  Northern  newspaper  correspondents  of  1S55— '6— '7. 
They  were  not  many  in  numbers;  their  pens  actually  shaped  the 
policy  of  the  free-soil  and  anli-Lecompton  press.  Governor 
Robert  J.    Walker   found   this  out  when   he   first   bent  his  astute 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  I55 

Springdale,  the  Quaker  community  lie  had  selected 
for  temporary  residence.  When  assembled  the  party 
consisted  of  John  Brown  himself,  his  son  Owen,  Aaron 
Dwight  Stevens,  John  Henri  Kagi,  John  Edwin  Cook, 
Richard  Realf,  Charles  Plummer  Tidd, William  Henry 
Leeman,  Luke  F.  Parsons,  Charles  W.  Moffett,  with 
Richard  Richardson,  colored,  eleven  in  all.  John 
Brown  departed  almost  immediately  for  the  East, 
leaving  Stevens  in  charge  as  military  instructor.  Be- 
fore spring  came  the  company  was  strengthened  by 
the  accession  of  George  B.  Gill,  Steward  Taylor, 
Edwin  and  Barclay  Coppoc.  George  B.  Gill  and 
Barclay  Coppoc  had  entered  Kansas  the  previous  year 
with  the  Eldridge-Perry  emigrant  trains  and  had  met 
therein  Richard  Realf  and  others;  also  met  John 
Brown  coming  out,  and  finding  Stevens  on  the  road 
guarding  the  trains  into  Kansas. 

Owen  Brown's  diary  locates  the  arrival  of  Hugh 
Forbes  at  Tabor  on  August  9th.  He  writes  of  reading 
for  the  first  time  "  The  Manual  of  the  Patriotic  Volun- 
teers," and  mentions  also  George  Plummer  Tidd 
under  the  name  of  Carpenter.  On  the  4th  of 
November  Owen  writes  that  he  was  thirty-three  years 
old.     A    few    davs  later    he   mentions    the  arrival  of 


intellect  lo  the  task  of  making  a  free-stale  Democracy.  Some 
among  ns  may  have  considered  the  courage  of  the  Republican 
party  as  not  up  to  the  measure  of  its  occasion  or  duty,  but  there 
was  no  hesitation  in  sustaining  it  as  against  an  administration 
Democracy  and  "squatter  sovereignty."  In  this  way  the  cor- 
respondents earned  the  bitter  hatred  of  G.  W.  Brown,  Eli  Thayer, 
and  others  it  is  utterly  useless  to  name.  They  certainly  have  been 
entitled  by  service  to  something  different  from  the  "  cold  shoul- 
der," historically  speaking,  which  is  all  their  work  has  in  the  main 
received  from  Kansas  writers  of  later  years. 


156  JOHN    BROWN. 

"  eleven  desperadoes,"  as  he  jestingly  termed  his  father 
and  their  new  comrades. 

John  Henri  Kagi,  who  had  visited  a  short  time 
at  Camp  Creek,  Nebraska,  with  his  father  and  sister, 
soon  joined  the  command,  and  remained  with  it  until 
the  Chatham,  Canada,  movement  was  made  in  April. 
The  Sharpe's  rifles,  revolvers,  ammunition  and  other 
material  which  Captain  Brown  had  found  at  Tabor 
and  taken  possession  of  were  shipped  as  freight  to 
northern  Ohio  in  John  Brown,  Jr.'s,  care.  The  orig- 
inal intention  was  to  take  part  of  the  men  to  Ashta- 
bula County,  Ohio,  Hugh  Forbes  being  expected  to  be 
in  charge  there,  and  Colonel  Whipple  (Stevens) 
remain  behind  among  the  Iowa  Quakers.  With  the 
withdrawal  of  Forbes,  concentration  in  Iowa  was  the 
most  reasonable  plan.  The  men  were  boarded  by  the 
Maxsons  at  the  very  small  rate  of  one  dollar  each  per 
week,1  the  entire  cost  of  their  winter's  residence  not 
exceeding  $250.  Most  of  the  men  did  some  work 
in  addition  to  the  drilling  and  gun  practice  they  regu- 
larly followed.  Stevens,  a  very  competent  drillmaster 
and  swordsman,  found  apt  pupils.  Cook,  who  was 
almost  a  phenomenal  marksman  and  had  a  passion 
for  firearms,  readily  led  the  record  at  the  target. 
Stevens  had  served  several  years  as  a  United  States 
dragoon  at  frontier  posts,  and  had  learned  much  of 
rough  campaigning.  His  lessons  were  all  of  a  prac- 
tical order.  There  was  no  attempt  to  make  a  secret 
of  their  drilling,  and  as  Gill  shows  and  Cook  stated  in 
his  "  confession,"  the  neighborhood  folks  all  under- 
stood that  this  band  of  earnest  young  men  were  pre- 


1  See  the  account  given  by  George  B.  Gill  in  the  Appendix. 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  157 

paring    for    something  far  out   of  the   ordinary.     Of 
course  Kansas  was  presumed  to  be  the  objective  point. 
But  generally  the  impression  prevailed  that  when  the 
party  moved  again  it  would  be  somewhere    in  the  di- 
rection of  the  slave  States.     The  atmosphere  of  those 
days  was  charged  with  disturbance.     It  is  difficult  to 
determine  how  many  of  the  party  actually  knew  that 
John  Brown    designed  to  invade  Virginia.     All    the 
testimony  goes  to  show  that  it  is  most  probable  that 
not  until   after  the  assembling  at  the  Maryland  farm 
in   1859  was  there  a   full,   definite   announcement  of 
Harper's  Ferry  as  the  objective  point.     That  he  fully 
explained  his   purpose   to  make   reprisals  on  slavery 
wherever  the   opportunity    offered    is    without  ques- 
tion, but  except  to  Owen,   who   was  vowed    to    the 
work  in  his  early  youth,  and  Kagi,  who  informed  me 
at  Osawatomie   in  July,  1858,  that  Brown  gave  him 
his  fullest  confidence  upon  their  second   interview  at 
Topeka  in  1857,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
among  the  men  the  details  of  the  intended  movement 
were  matters  of  after  confidence.     My  own  experience 
illustrates  this  :     I  was  absent  from  Lawrence  when 
John  Brown  recruited   his   little   company.     He   had 
left  already  for  Iowa  before  I  returned.     I  met  Realf 
just  as  he  was  leaving,  and  we  talked  without  reserve, 
he  assuring  me  that  the  purpose  was  just  to  prepare  a 
fighting  nucleus  for  resisting  the   enforcement  of  the 
Lecompton  Constitution,  which  it  was  then  expected 
Congress  might  try  to  impose  upon  us.     Through  this 
advantage  was  to  be  taken  of  the  agitation  to  prepare 
for  a  movement  against  slavery  in  Missouri,  Arkansas, 
the  Indian   Territory  and  possibly    Louisiana.       At 
Kagi's  request  (with  whom  I  maintained  for  nearly  two 


i58 


JOHN    BROWN. 


years  an  important,  if  irregular,  correspondence),  I  be- 
gan a  systematic  investigation  of  the  conditions,  roads 
and  topography  of  the  Southwest,  visiting  a  good  deal 
of  the  Indian  Territory,  with  portions  of  southwest 
Missouri,  western  Arkansas,  and  northern  Texas, 
also,  under  the  guise  of  examining  railroad  routes, 
etc.     The  letters  I  wrote  Kagi  from  time  to  time  were 

signed  William  Harrison  bv  an 
understanding  with  him.  It  was 
this  name  Albert  Hazlett  gave 
when  taken  prisoner  at  Carlisle, 
Pennsylvania,  and,  with  John  E. 
Cook  at  Chambersburg,  was  il- 
legally extradited  to  Virginia. 
Under  it  he  was  tried  at  Charles- 
town,  and  executed  in  the  follow- 
ing March,  i860.  It  will  be  re- 
called by  those  familiar  with  the 
drama  of  events  that  John  Brown 
always  declined  publicly  to  recog- 
nize Hazlett,  after  the  latter  was 
imprisoned  at  Charlestown,  as 
one  of  his  men.  He  did  not 
wish  to  throw  any  obstacles  in  the  way  of  his  pos- 
sible escape  before  the  Virginia  courts.1      It  was  un- 


ALBERT    HAZLETT. 


1  The  only  witness  before  the  Virginian  Court  who  swore  to 
Albert  Hazlett's  presence  in  the  Harper's  Ferry  fight  was  a  man 
named  Barry,  an  Irish-American  schoolmaster,  whose  life  Hazlett 
is  reported  to  have  saved.  This  statement  is  made  on  the  author- 
ity of  George  Alfred  Townsend,  who  gives  it  as  coming  from 
Barry  himself.  The  latter  is  the  author  of  the  pamphlet  on 
Harper's  Ferry,  published  under  the  name  of  "Josephus"as 
author,  referred  to  and  quoted  in  other  chapters. 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  159 

doubtedly  the  signature  to  my  letters  that  made  him 
use  the  name  of  Harrison  when  arrested.  These 
letters  were  captured  in  the  carpet-bag  at  the  Virginia 
schoolhouse,  and  Governor  Wise  himself  told  me 
at  Richmond  in  1857,  that  two  were  secretly  litho- 
graphed and  sent  to  many  leading  men  of  the  South 
and  Southwest  as  evidence  of  the  plots  that  were 
being  formed.  It  is  to  be  presumed  that  these  were  two 
that  gave  an  account  of  discontent  among  the  slaves 
in  southwest  Arkansas,  northwest  Louisiana,  and 
those  held  by  the  Choctaw,  Chickasaw,  and  Cherokee 
Indians;  planning  at  the  same  time  to  ferment  an  out- 
break among  them,  aided  by  Kansas  men,  led,  perhaps, 
by  Captain  Montgomery.  These  things  are  recalled  in 
connection  with  the  open  drilling  within  a  Northern 
State  of  a  body  of  men,  however  small  in  numbers, 
having  the  avowed  purpose  of  carrying  the  free-state 
war  into  the  Africa  of  slavery  itself.  They  serve  to 
prove  how  charged  and  vital  was  the  public  mental- 
ity in  those  days.  A  conflict  seems  to  have  been 
expected,  denounced  or  tolerated  by  all  sides.  It  was 
this  condition  that  enabled  John  Brown  to  hold  his 
small  force  together  without  the  fullest  confidence  to 
them  on  his  part,  and,  at  the  same  time,  keep  from 
active  suspicion  the  public  feeling  around  himself  and 
party.  The  roads  they  traveled  would  never  have 
been  so  accessible  but  for  the  currents  that  were  set 
in  vibration  by  the  aggressions  of  the  slave-holders, 
their  leaders,  and  politicians. 

Hugh  Forbes  must  have  left  Tabor  immediately 
after  Captain  Brown  left  for  Kansas,  for  he  was  at 
Rochester,  New  York,  in  the  latter  part  of  November. 
The  latter  with   his  party  arrived   at  Springdale,  and 


l6o  JOHN     BROWN. 

himself  moved  eastward  about  the  20th  instant,  called 
chiefly  by  the  fact  that  Forbes  had  already  begun  a 
campaign  against  his  chief.1  His  earlier  letters  were 
addressed  to  Dr.  Howe,  Senator  Sumner,  and  some 
other  of  the  more  radical  anti-slavery  men.  He  de- 
manded that  Brown  be  withdrawn  from  command, 
and  that  he  himself  or  some  other  person  be  placed 
in  charge.  Evidently  he  thought  there  was  a  political 
revolutionary  conspiracy  on  foot.  Of  course  such 
letters  produced  commotion  and  caused  annoyance. 
Dr.  Howe  seems  to  have  been  most  seriously  affected 
by  them.  Forbes  had  received  sufficient  confidences 
from  John  Brown  to  be  able  to  apprehend  some  of 
the  weaker  points,  or  rather  he  knew  where  the 
joints  in  the  armor  were.  The  fact  that  the  Cap- 
tain's "  tools"  were  apparently  the  ''property"  of  the 
Massachusetts  Kansas  Committee,  and  that  Brown  had 
been  made  their  "agent,"  would  seem  to  have  caused 
a  fear  that  that  body  might  be  charged  with  a 
breach  of  trust  if  Forbes's  allegations  should  become 
public  property.  There  is  no  evidence  that  Messrs. 
Stearns,  Howe,  Parker,  Gerrit  Smith,  Sanborn,  Hig- 
ginson,  or  even  Senator  Sumner — who  knew  nothing 
of  the  Committee's  work  except  by  hearsay — were 
troubled  as  to  reprisals  on  slavery  itself.  Mr.  Stearns 
certainly  was  not,  nor  Higginson,  Sanborn,  Parker. 
Dr.  Howe,  sometimes  overwrought  by  the  multiplicity 
of  his  laborious  duties,  was  evidently  excited  by  the 
possibility  of  reflections  on  the  integrity  of  the  Kansas 
Aid  Committee,  of  which  he  had  been  an  active  mem- 
ber.   As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  material  in  John  Brown's 

1  I  am  here  indebted  chiefly  to  Mr.  Sanborn's  "  Life  and  Letters 
of  John  Brown,"  Chap.  XII.,  pp.  418,  et  al.x  for  dates,  etc. 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  l6l 

possession  as  "agent"  was  not  the  property  of  any 
committee,  but  of  George  L.  Stearns,  who  had  paid 
for  and  owned  it.  The  relations  of  the  Massachu- 
setts Committee  were  protected  by  later  letters  (May, 
1858)  from  Mr.  Stearns,  as  chairman,  notifying  John 
Brown  that  said  arms  were  to  be  used  only  "  for  the 
defense  of  Kansas,"  and  shortly  after  their  final  dis- 
position wras  made  by  his  absolute  and  personal  gift 
of  them  to  John  Brown  direct.  This  action  was  not 
had,  however,  till  Hugh  Forbes  found  that  his  letters 
to  the  more  intimate  friends  of  Captain  Brown  in 
Massachusetts  did  not  produce  the  effect  he  sought, 
and  he  had  begun  to  extend  his  correspondence  of 
assailment  to  public  men  like  Senators  Wilson,  Hale, 
and  Seward,  as  well  as  to  Horace  Greeley  and  William 
Cullen  Bryant,  having  evidently  been  posted  on  the 
idea  that  they  as  party  and  political  leaders  could 
have  no  relations  with  direct  attacks  on  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the 
aim  of  the  new  politics,  its  party,  and  policy,  was 
simply  to  denationalize  slavery  :  John  Brown's  pur- 
pose to  render  it  unsafe  and  dangerous  to  hold  slaves 
by  attacks  which  would  show  the  system's  inherent 
weakness.  He  had  no  theory  to  substitute  therefor, 
except  that  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence;  and 
his  convictions  that  constitutional  provisions  guard- 
ing and  preserving,  or  aiming  to,  the  rights  of  the 
individual  and  of  the  citizen,  were  more  potential 
than  evasive  and  temporary  compromises.  Natu- 
rally, however,  the  organizers  and  leaders  of  the  new 
party,  already  realizing  that  success  was  before  them, 
dreaded  all  action  by  the  "fanatics"  of  the  day. 
Every  period  hcis  its  sneer.  That  was  the  way  it 
1 1 


162  JOHN    BROWN. 

sounded  then.  Now  the  term  is  "  crank,"  or  worse. 
Ethics  are  brushed  aside  for  "practical  "  success,  and 
faith  is  lost  in  sacerdotalism.  Plutocracy  loves  cere- 
mony, and  hierarchical  forms  are  the  natural  product 
of  class  and  privilege.  The  fanatics  are  denounced  ; 
the  cranks  are  derided,  but  lo  !  Time  changes,  and 
the  "  practical "  men  who  have  feared  or  sneered, 
become  the  active  administrators  of  the  ideas  and 
ideals  they  denounced  and  derided.  The  administra- 
tors "win";  the  others  fail  of  personal  reward  and 
often  even  of  recognition.  But  the  work  they  do 
goes  on.      So  it  was  with  John  Brown. 

The  Captain  left  Iowa  late  in  December.  Letters 
had  reached  him  there,  at  Springdale,  and  at  West 
Andover,  Ohio,  very  early  in  January,  with  accounts 
of  the  Boston-wise  perturbations.  Forbes  was  at 
Rochester,  N.  Y.,  in  November,  calling  on  Frederick 
Douglass,  presenting  a  letter  from  Captain  Brown. 
Mr.  Douglass  says  he  was  not  favorably  impressed, 
but  he  took  him  to  a  hotel  and  paid  his  bill  while 
there.  He  also  gave  him  a  little  money,  and  through 
a  German  lady  friend  he  received  introductions  also 
to  other  Germans  in  New  York.  For  a  short  period 
he  did  not  attack  John  Brown,  but  that  reticence  soon 
wore  off.  Mr.  Douglass  did  not  hesitate  to  say  that 
Forbes  betrayed  the  movement  to  the  authorities  at 
Washington.  In  that,  however,  I  believe  he  was  mis- 
taken. There  are  details  of  this  imbroglio  which 
tend  to  show  that  Colonel  Forbes  must  have  about 
this  time  got  into  relations  with  a  small  coterie  of 
clever  colored  men  in  New  York  City,  revolving 
around  a  well-known  physician  of  that  race,  now  de- 
ceased, who   were    notoriously   at   variance   with    the 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  163 

efforts  and  associations  of  many  others  of  their  race 
leaders.  They  held  the  theory  that  it  was  the  duty 
of  all  educated  colored  men  to  mould  their  people 
into  separate  and  violent  resistance.  In  their  minds 
the  reaction  to  race  oppression  and  outrage  led  to 
a  counter  race  contempt,  antagonism,  and  rage. 
They  wanted  no  help  from  white  men,  and  some  of 
them  spent  a  good  deal  of  misdirected  intellectual 
effort  in  the  endeavor  to  prove  that  somewhere  in  the 
historic  past  their  race  had  been  one  of  the  ruling 
forces  of  the  world.  They  did  not  realize  that  it 
mattered  not  to  them  if  it  ever  had;  the  living  issues 
were  the  potential  ones  of  present  wrong-doing  and 
oppression,  hurting  the  wrong-doer  as  well  as  the 
wronged  ones.  From  such  sources  as  these,  limited 
though  they  were,  Hugh  Forbes  received  many  hints 
of  possible  relations,  which  his  imperfect  conception 
of  American  affairs  turned  into  remarks  that  very 
naturally  assumed  a  malignant  aspect  when  put  into 
letters  to  prominent  men. 

A  letter  of  John  Brown  to  his  son  John,  written  at 
Rochester  to  West  Andover,  Ohio,  early  in  February, 
shows  the  manner  in  which  he  was  disposed  to  deal 
with  Forbes.1     At  this  date  Captain   Brown  was  fully 


1  After  referring  lo  a  letter  from  the  Garibaldian,  of  January 
27th,  the  Captain  outlines  a  reply  to  be  written  to  Forbes  by  John, 
saying:  "  I  am  anxious  lo  draw  him  out  more  fully,  and  would  also 
like  to  keep  him  a  little  encouraged  and  avoid  an  open  rupture  for 
a  few  7ueeks  at  any  rate."  He  then  adds:  Suppose  you  write 
Forbes  thus: 

"Your  letter  to  my  father,  .  .  .  after  mature  reflection,  I 
have  decided  to  return  to  you,  as  I  am  unwilling  he  should,  with 
all  his  other  cares,  ...  be  vexed  with  what  I  am  apprehen- 
sive he  will  accept  as  highly  offensive  and  insulting,  while  I    know 


164  JOHN    BROWN. 

bent  on  delivering  his  intended  blow,  and  came  to  the 
East  determined  to  strain  every  nerve  to  obtain  the 
moderate  means  needed  to  begin  with.  He  realized 
that  his  handful  of  keen-witted,  brave,  and  devoted 
young  men,  then  at  Springdale,  while  heated  through 
to  the  annealing  point  by  the  furnace  of  Kansas  war- 
fare, were  liable  to  all  the  cooling  influences  of  their 
years  and  temperaments,  and  such  modifying  con- 
ditions as  the  shifting  phases  of  Time  might  readily 
bring  to  bear  on  them.  He  wanted  to  strike.  Besides 
he  desired  to  use  the  colored  people  if  possible.   It  must 


he  is  disposed  to  do  all  he  consistently  can  for  you  .  .  .  unless 
you  are  yourself  the  cause  of  his  disgust."  The  letter  then  sug- 
gests the  statement  that  he,  John,  understands  from  his  father, 
that  $600  or  "  six  months'  pay"  had  already  been  advanced  in  the 
face  of  his  own  disappointments,  "  to  enable  "  Forbes  to  "  provide 
for  his  family."  The  contract  was  to  be  $100  per  month  as  long 
as  Forbes  continued  to  serve.  "  Now,"  continues  the  draft  of 
the  letter  to  John  Brown,  Jr.,  "you  (Forbes)  undertake  to 
instruct  him  (Brown)  to  say  that  he  had  positively  engaged  you 
for  one  year.  I  fear  he  will  not  accept  it  well  to  be  asked  or  told 
to  state  what  he  considers  an  untruth"  The  draft  adds  that  he, 
Captain  Brown,  will  hardly  take  kindly  to  be  instructed  as  to  how 
he  should  transact  "  his  own  business  and  correspondence."  Refer- 
ence is  made  to  "  the  seemingly  spiteful  letters  "  Forbes  owns  to 
have  written  as  having  not  only  done  himself  "  great  injury,"  but 
"  also  weakened  him  (Captain  Brown)  with  his  friends  to  whom 
they  were  sent."  This  draft  is  a  very  shrewd  yet  kindly  forbearing 
with  all,  and  closes  with  suggesting  that  a  draft  of  $40  may  be  sent 
to  him  (Forbes)  if  the  rebuke  intended  had  its  effect.  It  closes  by 
saying,  "  I  do  not  mean  to  dictate  to  you  as  he  does  to  me,  but  I 
am  anxious  to  understand  him  fully  before  we  go  any  further,  and 
shall  be  glad  of  the  earliest  information  of  the  result."  No  reply  is 
alluded  to,  and  presumably  therefore,  as  the  facts  show,  the  "  re- 
buke "  had  no  effect. — "Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown,"  pp. 
432-34. 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  165 

have  been  within  the  brooding,  observant  purview  of 
his  perceptive  brain  to  understand  that  they,  too, 
growing  in  apprehension  of  larger  political  growth, 
were  likely  to  feel  their  personal  animosity  lessened. 
Knowing  their  helplessness  as  a  despised  minority 
they  might  grow  timid,  more  or  less  disposed  to  wait 
upon  the  changes  that  the  rising  tide  of  northern  opin- 
ion would  bring  in  favorable  drifts  towards  them. 
John  Brown  comprehended  with  undaunted  clearness 
that  respect  was  only  won  by  compelling  it.  A  blow 
for  freedom  was  always  a  victory.  That  was  his  view. 
So  he  pushed  forward  on  the  hard  and  stern  road  he 
had  blazed  for  himself. 

At  Rochester  in  January  and  February,  staying  at 
the  Douglass  House  for  three  weeks,  where  he  wrote 
industriously,  combating  the  mischief  Forbes's  at- 
tacks were  doing.  He  was  urged  to  visit  Boston,  but 
thought  it  not  safe  for  him  to  pass  through  Albany 
and  Springfield,  where  he  was  so  well  known.  An 
extract  of  a  letter  to  Thomas  W.  Higginson  shows 
generally  how  he  was  pressing  his  friends  to  the  con- 
clusion of  such  assistance  as  he  needs.  Evidently 
Higginson  had  suggested  underground  railroad 
work  on  a  scale  larger  than  was  then  practised.  It 
was  in  him  to  do  that,  as  he  was  always  open  to  the 
direct  conception  of  resistance  to  oppression  and  the 
duty  of  each  of  us  to  aid  therein.  Here  is  John 
Brown's  suggestive  note: 

"Railroad  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  boyhood,  and  never  let 
an  opportunity  slip.     I  have  been   operating  to  some 


1 66  JOHN    BROWN. 

purpose  the  past  season,  but  I  now  have  a  measure  on 
foot  that  I  feel  sure  would  awaken  in  you  something 
more  than  a  common  interest  if  you  could  understand 
it.  I  have  just  written  my  friends  G.  L.  Stearns  and 
F.  B.  Sanborn,  asking  them  to  meet  me  for  consulta- 
tion at  Peterboro,  New  York." 

It  was  in  Peterboro,  New  York,  at  the  home  of 
Gerrit  Smith,  that  the  definite  direction  of  John 
Brown  was  made  known  to  the  friends  who  had  so 
far  aided.  They  were  indeed  few  in  numbers.  All 
of  the  Emigrant  Aid  Society  organizers  had  fallen. 
John  Brown  himself  still  clung  to  the  belief  that  Eli 
Thayer  might  "hook  on  his  team,"  as  he  later  sug- 
gested to  John,  Jr.,  when  planning  out  some  trips  of 
observation  and  inquiry.  His  experience  with  Amos 
A.  Lawrence,  especially  over  the  matter  of  the  North 
Elba  homestead  and  the  $1,000  to  be  raised  for  its 
protection,  did  not  induce  any  desire  to  ask  his  aid. 
He  had  never  sought  assistance  from  the  Abolition- 
ists proper — that  is,  the  Garrisonians.  And  of  course 
the  National  Kansas  Committee  people  were  of  no 
avail.  The  two  sources  of  monetary  support  open  to 
him,  were  Gerrit  Smith,  his  personal  friend  as  well 
as  faithful  anti-slavery  ally,  and  the  very  small  coterie 
of  Boston  gentlemen,  whose  names  are  linked  for- 
ever with  his  own.  Frank  B.  Sanborn  arrived  at 
Mr.  Smith's  residence  on  the  evening  of  February  22, 
1858,  representing  also  Messrs.  Stearns,  Parker,  Howe, 
and  Higginson.  It  was  on  this  occasion  that  John 
Brown  unfolded  in  detail  the  fulness  of  his  purpose, 
with  the  possible  reservation  of  not  in  words  naming 
Harper's  Ferry,  though  his  general  purport  must 
have    led    directly    thereto.       Of    the    three    persons 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  1 67 

to  whom  this  high-wrought  conception  was  thus 
presented,  Gerrit  Smith  and  Frank  B  Sanborn  do 
not  appear  to  have  accepted  it  unquestioningly.1 
According  to  Mr.  Sanborn's  very  interesting  account, 
the  conference  lasted  till  after  midnight,  and  began 
again  briefly  on  the  morrow,  being  concluded  by 
Gerrit  Smith  saying: 

"  You  see  how  it  is;  our  dear  old  friend  has  made 
up  his  mind  to  this  course  and  cannot  be  turned  from 
it.  We  cannot  give  him  up  to  die  alone  ;  we  must 
support  him." 

Captain  Brown  had  named  $800,  even  $500,  as  the 
extent  of  his  need.  Then  $1,000  was  decided  upon, 
and  Mr.  Sanborn  left  on  the  24th  for  Boston,  to 
present  the  matter  and  raise  the  balance  of  the 
amount.       Mr.     Smith's    share    became    $500    before 


1  Mr.  Sanborn  mentioned  Edwin  Morton  as  one  who  was  con- 
fided in.  At  the  time  that  gentleman  was  an  inmate  of  Mr. 
Smith's  house  as  a  tutor  to  his  sons,  and  he  acted  also  as  secre- 
tary or  confidential  amanuensis.  Captain  Brown,  Mr.  Smith,  and 
Mr.  Sanborn  adjourned  to  Mr.  Morion's  room.  He  was  a  class- 
male  of  Mr.  Sanborn,  and,  in  the  familiar  relations  he  bore,  had 
necessarily  to  be  trusted.  But  there  is  no  other  evidence  than 
this  of  Mr.  Morton's  association  with  the  movement.  Mr.  Smith, 
after  the  blow  was  struck  at  Harper's  Ferry,  had  a  severe  recur- 
rence of  a  nervous  trouble  he  had  been  afflicted  with  at  the  time  of 
the  long  legislative  struggle  in  the  United  States  House  of  Rep- 
resentatives over  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  in  1S54, 
and  was  sent  again  to  the  institution  in  which  he  was  first  treated. 
The  family  deemed  it  wise  to  send  Mr.  Morton  to  Europe  for  two 
years.  No  one  in  Massachusetts- or  Kansas,  or  in  John  Brown's 
home  circle,  seems,  besides  Mr.  Sanborn,  to  have  considered  Mr. 
Morton  as  directly  identified.  John  Brown,  Jr..  in  letters  during 
1659,  speaks  of  once  meeting  and  talking  with  him. 


l68  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  conclusion  was  reached.  In  Boston,  Parker 
agreed,  thought  the  matter  worth  trying,  though  ex- 
cept for  effect  on  opinion,  he  did  not  believe  it  would 
accomplish  much.  Dr.  Howe  accepted  the  idea  with 
earnestness.  He  never  doubted  that  within  the  lines 
to  be  worked  upon,  were  real  military  possibilities,  and 
that  it  was  not  necessarily  a  foredoomed  failure.  Mr. 
Stearns  accepted,  with  an  utterly  loyal  belief  in  the 
old  covenanter.  Higginson  also  held  the  same  view, 
and  Mr.  Sanborn  almost  decided  to  take  a  personal 
share  in  the  movement.  To  those  who  knew  him 
then,  the  wonder  is  that  he  was  not  found  at  the  Ken- 
nedy Farm.  John  Brown,  however,  knew  that  some 
men  were  more  valuable  alive  just  then,  than  they 
would  be  as  sacrifices. 

From  the  23d  of  February  the  Captain  was  a  busy 
man.  The  "  freight  "  stored  at  Conneaut,  Ohio,  about 
which  embarrassing  questions  were  arising,  had  to  be 
placed  where  John,  Jr.,  and  Jason,  could  control  it. 
Letters  were  written  from  North  Elba,  asking  Ruth 
that  Henry,  her  husband,  might  "go  to  school  " — join 
in  the  pending  raid.  The  incident  had  a  pathetic 
ending  in  inducing  Oliver  and  Watson  to  volunteer 
on  that  which  was  their  death-errand.  On  the  4th 
of  March,  the  Captain  was  in  Boston,  stopping  at  the 
American  House,  where  he  was  visited  by  all  his  little 
circle  of  friends.  While  they  resolved  themselves 
into  a  committee  of  aid  and  advice,  Sanborn  is  con- 
vinced '  that  Harper's  Ferry  was  never  named  as  the 
first   or  chief  point  of    attack.     On    leaving  Boston, 


1  See  Chapter  XII.  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown." 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  169 

March  8th,  he  carried  with  him  $500  in  gold  and 
assurances  of  other  support.  He  passed  through  New 
York  on  the  2d,  preferring  to  go  round  rather  than 
take  the  risk  of  being  recognized  in  western  Massa- 
chusetts. On  the  10th  of  March,  Frederick  Douglass, 
Henry  Highland  Garnet,  of  New  York,  Stephen 
Smith  and  William  Still,  of  Philadelphia,  with  John 
Brown,  Jr.,  met  the  Captain  in  conference  at  the 
dwelling  of  either  Smith  or  Still.  Others  may  have 
been  present,  but  their  names  are  nowhere  given. 

Earlier  letters  to  his  eldest  son  show  in  part  what 
must  have  been  discussed,  among  other  matters,  at 
the  Philadelphia  meetings.  On  the  4th  of  February, 
the  Captain  wrote  John,  that:  "I  have  been  thinking 
that  I  would  like  to  have  you  make  a  trip  to  Bedford, 
Chambersburg,  Gettysburg,  and  Uniontown,  in  Penn- 
sylvania, traveling  slowly  along,  and  inquiring  of 
every  man  on  the  way,  or  every  family  of  the  right 
stripe,  and  getting  acquainted  with  them  as  much  as 
you  could.  When  you  look  at  the  location  of  those 
places,  you  will  readily  perceive  the  advantage  of 
getting  up  some  acquaintance  in  those  parts." 

He  further  advised  with  his  son  to  visit  Washing- 
ton and  see  certain  Congressmen,  with  the  hope  of 
"getting  some  money  for  secret  service  ";  and  then 
he  continued, — "  You  can  say  to  our  friends  that  I  am 
out  from  Kansas  for  that  express  purpose."  In  subse- 
quent letters  he  withdrew  the  Washington  suggestion, 
remarking  that  he  had  but  little  "faith  in  princes." 
He  mentions,  however,  that  Anson  Butiingame 
gave  him  $50;  and  then  he  directs  John  to  go  to 
Hagerstown,  Martinsburg,  and  eve?i  to  Harper  s  Ferry 
itself  in    pursuing   the   inquiries   he  desired  to  have 


170  JOHN    BROWN. 

made.  Of  course,  the  object  of  these  was  to  find  out 
the  underground  railroad  routes  and  stations,  to  as- 
certain the  persons  who  were  actually  to  be  relied 
upon,  places  to  stop  at,  means  of  conveyance,  and 
especially  to  learn  of  the  colored  men  who  could  be 
trusted.  The  Philadelphia  conference  must  have 
gone  over  this  ground  with  the  two  Browns,  and  the 
experience  of  those  who  were  the  most  active  of  U. 
G.  R.  R.  directors  in  that  section,  could  not  but 
have  been  very  useful.  In  the  early  part  of  April, 
John  Brown  visited  St.  Catherine,  Ingersoll,  Hamil- 
ton, and  Chatham,  in  Canada  West,  to  prepare  for  the 
convention  he  wished  to  convene  just  before  he  en- 
tered on  his  active  work.  He  was  also  reported  at 
Sandusky,  Ohio,  and  Detroit,  Michigan.  A  visit  had 
been  made  to  North  Elba,  and  it  was  arranged,  that 
Henry  Thompson  should  manage  both  farms,  while 
Oliver  and  Watson  would  "go  to  school"  with  their 
father.  The  Captain  was  hastening  his  steps  in 
order  to  return  to  Iowa  and  bring  his  men  on  to 
Chatham,  and  from  there,  as  he  then  expected,  to  the 
border  of  Virginia,  to  begin  working  out  the  serious 
aim  of  his  life. 

John  Brown's  purpose  in  calling  and  holding 
the  convention  at  Chatham,  Canada  West,  was  in 
harmony  with  the  conception  and  plans  he  had 
evolved.  There  was  a  large  number  of  colored  resi- 
dents under  the  British  flag.  They  were  mainly  fugi- 
tive slaves;  among  wiiom  necessarily  were  many  bold, 
even  daring  men.  In  the  section,  of  which  Chatham 
was  one  of  the  centers,  considerable  direction  had 
been  given  to  the  settlement  of  these  people.  There 
were   among   them  (and  still  are)    a   good    many  far- 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  171 

mers,  mechanics,  storekeepers,  as  well  as  laborers.  It 
would  not  be  correct  to  say  that  no  prejudice  existed 
against  them,  but  it  was  not  strong  enough,  as  in  the 
land  from  which  they  fled,  to  prevent  industry  and 
sobriety  from  having  a  fair  chance,  while  intelligence, 
well  directed,  made  its  way  to  civic  and  business  rec- 
ognition. There  were  probably  not  less  than  75,000 
fugitive  residents  in  Canada  West  at  the  time  of  the 
Chatham  gathering.  Their  presence,  well-ordered 
lives,  and  fair  degree  of  prosperity,  had  brought  also 
to  live  with  them  as  doctors,  clergymen,  teachers, 
lawyers,  printers,  surveyors,  etc.,  educated  freemen 
of  their  own  race.  Martin  R.  Delany,  a  physician, 
editor,  ethnologist,  and  naturalist,  was  one  of  them. 
Mr.  Holden,  a  well-trained  surveyor  and  civil  engi- 
neer, at  whose  residence  in  Chatham,  John  Brown 
stayed,  the  Rev.  William  Charles  Munroe,  Osborne 
Perry  Anderson,  and  others, were  among  these  helpers. 
Dr.  Alexander  M.  Ross,  of  Toronto,  Canada,  phy- 
sician and  ornithologist,  who  is  still  living,  honored 
by  all  who  know  him,  then  a  young  (white)  man 
who  devoted  himself  for  years  to  aiding  the  Ameri- 
can slave,  was  a  frequent  visitor  to  this  section,  tie 
was  a  faithful  friend  of  John  Brown,  efficient  as  an 
ally  also,  seeking  to.serve  under  all  conditions  of  need 
and  peril.  But  it  was  not  simply  the  presence  of 
these  forces  which  took  John  Brown  to  Chatham.  As 
one  may  naturally  understand,  looking  at  conditions 
then  existing,  there  existed  something  of  an  organiza- 
tion to  assist  fugitives  and  of  resistance  to  their 
masters.  It  was  found  all  along  the  Lake  borders 
from  Syracuse,  New  York,  to  Detroit,  Michigan.  As 
none  but  colored  men  were  admitted   into  direct  and 


172  JOHN    BROWN. 

active  membership  with  this  "  League  of  Freedom," 
it  is  quite  difficult  to  trace  its  workings,  or  know  how 
far  its  ramifications  extended.  One  of  the  most  in- 
teresting phases  of  slave  life,  so  far  as  the  whites  were 
enabled  to  see  or  impinge  upon  it,  was  the  extent  and 
Vapidity  of  communication  among  them.  Four  geo- 
graphical lines  seem  to  have  been  chiefly  followed. 
One  was  that  of  the  coast  south  of  the  Potomac, 
whose  almost  continuous  line  of  swamps  from  the 
vicinity  of  Norfolk,  Va.,  to  the  northern  border  of 
Florida  afforded  a  refuge  for  many  who  could  not 
escape  and  became  "  marooned "  in  their  depths, 
while  giving  facility  to  the  more  enduring  to  work 
their  way  out  to  the  North  Star  land.  The  great 
Appalachian  range  and  its  abutting  mountains  were 
long  a  rugged,  lonely,  but  comparatively  safe  route 
to  freedom.  It  was  used,  too,  for  many  years.  Doubt- 
less, a  knowledge  of  that  fact,  for  John  Brown  was 
always  an  active  underground  railroad  man,  had  very 
much  to  do,  apart  from  its  immediate  use  strategi- 
cally considered,  with  the  Captain's  decision  to  begin 
operations  therein.  Harriet  Tubman,  whom  John 
Brown  met  for  the  first  time  at  St.  Catherine's  in 
March  or  April,  1858,  was  a  constant  user  of  the  Appa- 
lachian route,  in  her  efforts  to  aid  escaping  slaves. 
"  Moses,"  as  Mrs.  Tubman  was  called  by  her  own 
people,  was  a  most  remarkable  black  woman,  un- 
lettered and  very  negrine,  but  with  a  great  degree  of 
intelligence  and  perceptive  insight,  amazing  courage, 
and  a  simple  steadfastness  of  devotion  which  lifts  her 
career  into  the  ranks  of  heroism.  Herself  a  fugitive 
slave,  she  devoted  her  life  after  her  own  freedom  was 
won,  to  the  work  of   aiding   others  to  escape,,     First 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION. 


J73 


and  last  Harriet  brought  out  several  thousand  slaves.1 
John  Brown  always  called  her  "General,"  and  once 
introduced  her  to  Wendell  Phillips  by  saying  "  I 
bring  you  one  of  the  best  and  bravest  persons  on  this 
continent — General  Tubman,  as  we  call  her."  Will- 
iam Lambert,  who  died  in  Detroit  a  few  years  since, 
being  very  nearly  one  hundred  years  old,  was  another 
of  those  of  the  race  who  devoted  themselves  to  the 
work  for  which  John  Brown  hoped  to  strike  a  cul- 
minating blow.  Between  1829  and  1862 — thirty-three 
years — William  is  reported  to  have  aided  in  the  es- 
cape of  30,000  slaves.  He  lived  in  Detroit,  and  was 
one  of  the  foremost  representatives  of  his  people  in 
both  Michigan  and  Ontario.  Underground-railroad 
operations  culminating  chiefly  at  Cleveland,  San- 
dusky, and  Detroit,  led  by  broad  and  defined  routes 
through  Ohio,  to  the  border  of  Kentucky.  Through 
that  State,  into  the  heart  of  the  Cumberland  Moun- 
tains, northern  Georgia,  east  Tennessee,  and  north- 
ern Alabama,  the  limestone  caves  of  the  region  served 
a  useful  purpose.  And  it  is  a  fact  that  the  colored 
people  living  in  Ohio  were  often  bolder  and  more  de- 
termined than  was  the  rule  elsewhere.  The  Ohio- 
Kentucky  routes  probably  served  more  fugitives  than 
others  in  the  North.  The  valley  of  the  Mississippi 
was  the  most  westerly  channel,  until  Kansas  opened 
a  bolder  way  of  escape  from  the  Southwest  slave 
section.  John  Brown  knew  whatever  was  to  be  known 
of   all   this   unrest,  and   he  also   must  have  known  of 


1  "  Harriet— The  Moses  of  her  People."  By  Sarah  H.  Bradford. 
George  R.  Lockwood,  New  York,  1SS6.  Mrs.' Tubman  is  Still 
living  at  Auburn,  N.   Y 


1^4  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  existence  of  the  secret  organization  which  George 
B.  Gill  mentions'  (see  Appendix)  in  his  interesting 
paper.  This  organization  served  a  purpose  of  some 
value  to  the  Government  in  the  earlier  parts  of  the 
Civil  War,  a  fact,  that  lies  within  my  own  knowledge, 
and  then  fell  into  disuse,  as  the  hours  moved  swifter 
to  the  one  in  which  the  gateway  of  the  Union  swung 
aside,  and  the   pathway  of   the  Law  opened,  to  allow 


1  A  letter  from  Dr.  Alexander  Milton  Ross,  bearing  date  To- 
ronto, January  21st,  1893,  contains  two  points  of  interest.  The 
first  is  that  relative  to  the  lime  of  moving  on  Harper's  Ferry.  Dr. 
Ross  writes:  "  On  the  occasion  of  my  last  interview  with  John 
Brown  I  asked  him  directly — '  When  do  you  intend  to  begin  your 
work?'  After  a  moment's  reflection  he  replied  in  these  words,  as 
near  as  my  recollection  serves  me:  'God  willing,  I  shall  move 
between  the  15th  and  27th  of  October.'  I  replied:  'Then  you  will 
wish  me  to  be  in  Richmond  between  the  15th  and  27th  !'  He  said: 
'  Yes,  not  later  than  the  27th.'  " 

"  Now,  in  reference  to  the  '  Liberty  League  ' — I  was  one  of  their 
members  at  large — Gerrit  Smith  and  Lewis  Tappan  were  the 
others.  As  to  the  actual  members  I  had  very  little  acquaintance. 
I  knew  of  George  J.  Reynolds,  of  Hamilton  (Sandusky  also), 
George  W.  Brown  and  Glover  Harrison,  of  this  city  (Toronto). 
The  branch  of  the  League  in  Upper  Canada  had  no  connection 
with  the  armed  and  drilled  men  along  the  United  States  border, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  help  the  slaves  to  escape  to  Canada.  Of 
course,  I  knew  many  of  them — Liberators,  as  they  were  called — 
from  Erie  to  Sandusky  and  Cleveland.  I  never  had  much  in  them 
and  but  little  to  do  with  the  organization,  always  fearing  treachery. 
I  never  had  any  military  taste  or  predilection,  and  but  little  to  do 
with  armed  men.  Except  to  my  friends,  I  was  not  known  as  Doctor 
Ross,  and  my  friends  took  pains  to  shield  me."  ...  I  fre- 
quently heard  the  slaves  speak  of  insurrectionary  movements  in 
progress,  but  never  anything  definite.  The  slaves  were  very 
simple,  childlike,  and  superstitious — ready  to  believe  anything  told 
them  by  those  in  their  confidence." 


RKACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION1.  1 75 

the  colored  American  to  reach  emancipation  and 
citizenship. 

These  were  some  of  the  forces  John  Brown  hoped 
without  doubt  to  use.  He  never  expected  any  more 
aid  from  them  than  that  which  would  give  a  first  im- 
petus. Had  he  got  away  from  Harper's  Ferry  and 
kept  in  the  mountains  for  a  brief  period,  no  doubt 
exists  whatever  in  my  mind,  that  there  would  have 
been  more  or  less  sporadic  outbreaks  along  the  cen- 
tral lines  I  have  suggested.  The  underground  rail- 
roaders from  Ohio  and  in  Kentucky  could  not  have 
kept  out  of  the  struggle. 

The  home  of  Isaac  Holden,  Chatham,  Canada  West, 
is  an  old-fashioned  red  brick,  two-storied,  comfort- 
able-looking dwelling-house,  nearly  square,  with  brick 
gables  higher  than  the  roof,  having  a  broad,  outside 
chimney  at  each  end,  with  the  side  to  the  street. 
Five  low,  broad  windows  light  the  parlor  floor,  one 
portion  of  which  John  Brown  occupied.  Mr.  Holden, 
who  had  resided  twenty-five  years  in  Canada  at  the 
time  of  this  visit,  is  a  native  of  Louisiana,  a  man  of 
means  and  liberal  education.  It  was  in  John  Brown's 
room  that  a  committee  met  to  examine  the  constitu- 
tion. Dr.  Delany  was  chairman,  and  J.  II.  Kagi  and 
Osborne  P.  Anderson  acted  as  secretaries.  The 
meetings  of  the  convention  itself  were  held  in  a 
Baptist  Church,  of  which  Mr.  Munroe  was  the  pastor. 
Osborne  P.  Anderson  describes  some  of  the  incidents 
as  follows: 

"  The  first  visit  of  John  Brown  to  Chatham  was  in  April,  1858. 
Wherever  he  went  around,  although  an  entire  stranger,  he 
made  a  profound  impression  upon  those  who  saw  or  became 
acquainted  with  him.   Some  supposed  him  a  staid  hut  modern- 


176  JOHN    BROWN. 

ized  Quaker,  others  a  solid  business  man  from  '  somewhere,' 
and  without  question  a  philanthropist.  His  long  white  beard, 
thoughtful  and  reverend  brow  and  physiognomy,  his  sturdy, 
measured  tread,  as  he  circulated  about  with  hands  under  the 
pendant  coat  skirts  of  plain  brown  tweed,  with  other  garments 
to  match,  revived  to  those  honored  with  his  acquaintance  and 
knowing  of  his  history,  the  memory  of  a  Puritan  of  the  most 
exalted  type."     ("  A  Voice  from  Harper's  Ferry,"  1861,  p.  9.) 

Dr.  Delany  in  the  Rollins  biography  gives  a  more 
detailed  account.  The  doctor's  statement  seems  to 
be  at  variance  with  those  made  by  Anderson,  Gill, 
Realf,  and  Moffett,  who  were  present.  It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  Captain  Brown  had  not  only 
alternative  methods  of  action  in  his  own  mind,  but 
ample  reason  for  not  drawing  the  close  attention  even 
of  friends  to  the  one  which  he  most  desired  to  put 
into  operation,  viz.,  an  attack  on  Harper's  Ferry 
itself.  In  the  first  place,  he  knew  that  Forbes  had 
sources  of  information,  and  was  disposed  to  use  them 
adversely  to  success,  and,  next,  he  never  felt  sure  of 
the  way  in  which  his  daring  conception  would  be  re- 
ceived. * 

The  "  Subterranean  Pass  Way  "  represented  ideas 
and  methods  in  accord  with  and  enlarging  the  work 
on  the  underground  railroad.  The  essential  dif- 
ference was  that,  the  rescued  fugitives  or  runaways 
should  be  planted  in  or  near  to  a  Northern  or  Western 
community  and  not  brought  under  the  British  flag. 
One  purpose  was  to  educate  Northern  people  to  de- 
fend fugitives,  and  the  other  would  have  been  to  teach 
the  runaways  to  defend  themselves.  No  report  exists 
from  any  other  source  of  any  such  plan   having  been 


1  See  Appendix  for  extract  from  the  Delany  biography. 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  177 

discussed  within  the  Chatham  Convention  itself.  I 
have  talked  it  over  with  Gill  and  Realf  who  were 
actively  participating;  incidentally  I  have  asked  Tidd 
and  Osborne  P.  Anderson,  but  from  none  did  I  ever 
gather  the  idea  of  any  discussion,  as  Dr.  Delany 
intimates.  Yet  it  doubtless  occurred,  and  in  all 
probability  within  the  preliminary  committee  meet- 
ing. The  convention  talk  was  general.  It  is  also 
certain  that  more  criticism  and  resistant  views  came 
from  colored  men  in  the  body  than  ever  appears  to  have 
been  urged  at  any  time  by  the  white  men  (except 
Hugh  Forbes),  who  were  knowing  to  Captain 
Brown's  purposes  or  associated  with  him.  It  is  also 
a  fact  that  he  received  very  little  of  the  aid  it  was 
presumable  he  had  a  right  to  expect  from  colored 
men.  Osborne  P.  Anderson  was  the  only  man  of  his 
race  who  reported  from  Canada,  none  of  those  who 
had  Brown's  confidence  to  a  greater  or  lesser  degree 
were  on  hand  at  the  Kennedy  farm,  the  two  Ohio 
(Oberlin)  recruits  being  the  fruits  of  a  near  and  pre- 
ceding fugitive  slave  excitement.  It  is  not  necessary 
to  comment  on  this;  it  is  essential  though  to  state 
the  fact. 

John  Brown  was  at  Springdale,  Iowa,  on  the  27th 
of  April,  1858,  having  arrived  from  Canada,  via  Chi- 
cago, on  the  25th,  for  the  purpose  of  removing  east- 
ward his  "band  of  shepherds,"  as  he  termed  them,  or 
"surveyors,"  as  they  termed  themselves.  At  this 
date  the  Boston  and  Peterboro  friends,  according  to 
Mr.  Sanborn,  expected  to  hear  of  "his  flock  "  being 
turned  "loose  about  the  15th  of  May."  J.  H.  Kagi, 
C.  P.  Tidd,  and  L.  F.  Parsons  had  preceded  by  a  few 
days  the  main  body,  which   left  West   Liberty  on  the 

12 


I78  JOHN    BROWN. 

27th.     At  Chatham,  where   the}'  arrived  on  the  30th 
inst.,    they    were    joined    by    these  three    associates. 
There  were  in  all  of  the   Brown  party,  including   the 
Captain    himself,    thirteen    persons,    one    being    col- 
ored.    The  convention    did   not  assemble  till  the  8th 
of  May,  and  there  were  only  forty-six  present,  twelve 
of    whom    were    white    men.      The    others    were    all 
colored  men;    Doctor  Delany  being  the  only  one  of 
any  wide  reputation.     There   is  no  evidence  to  show 
that    Douglass,     Loguen,    Garnet,    Stephen     Smith, 
Gloucester,  Langston,  or  others  of  the  prominent  men 
of  color  in  the  States  who  knew  John    Brown,  were 
invited  to  the  Chatham  meeting.    It  is  doubtful  if  their 
appearance  would  have  been  wise,  as  it  would  assur- 
edly have  been  commented  on  and  aroused  suspicion. 
But  the   singular  fact  remains,   looked   at   in   either 
way,  whether  asked   or  not,  that  their  influence  had 
no    visible    representation    or    presence.      John    and 
Owen    Brown,    father   and    son,    John     Henri    Kagi, 
Aaron  Dwight  Stevens,  still  known  as  Charles  Whip- 
ple,  John    Edwin   Cook,  Richard    Realf,  George    B. 
Gill,  Charles  Plummer  Tidd,  William  Henry  Leeman, 
Charles  W.  Moffett,  Luke   F.  Parsons,  all  of  Kansas, 
and   Steward  Taylor,  of  Canada,  who  had  joined  in 
Iowa;  twelve  in  all.      Richard  Richardson,  a  member 
of  this  party,   was    a    colored    man.     The    remaining 
members,  thirty-three,  were  all  colored.    The  president 
of  the  convention,  William  Charles  Munroe,  was  pastor 
of  the  church    in    which    the   sessions  were   held    on 
Saturday    the    8th    and    Monday    the    10th    of    May. 
Other    delegates    were    Dr.    Martin    A.    Delany,  and 
Alfred  Whipper,  Pennsylvania;  William  Lambert  and 
I.  D.  Shadd,  of  Detroit,  Michigan;  James  H.  Harris, 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  179 

of  Cleveland,  Ohio  (after  the  war  a  Representative 
in  Congress  for  two  terms  from  North  Carolina);  G. 
J.  Reynolds,  J.  C.  Grant,  A.  J.  Smith,  James  M.  Jones, 
M.  F.  Bailey,  S.  Hunton,  John  J.  Jackson,  Jeremiah 
Anderson,  James  M.  Bell,  Alfred  M.Ellsworth,  James 
W.  Purnell,  George  Aiken,  Stephen  Dettin,  Thomas 
Hickerson,  John  Cannel,  Robinson  Alexander, 
Thomas  F.  Cary,  Thomas  M.  Kinnard,  Robert  Van 
Vauken, Thomas  M.  Stringer,  John  A.  Thomas  (be- 
lieved to  be  John  Brown's  earlier  confidant  and  em- 
ploye at  Springfield,  Massachusetts,  afterwards  em- 
ployed by  Abraham  Lincoln  in  his  Illinois  home  and 
at  the  White  House  also;  he  died  recently  at  Spring- 
field, Illinois);  Robert  Newman,  Charles  Smith,  Simon 
Fislin,  Isaac  Holden,  and  James  Smith;  making 
thirty-four  colored  and  twelve  white  members.  John 
Henri  Kagi  was  made  secretary.  The  entire  proceed- 
ings did  not  occupy  over  fifteen  hours  in  both  days, 
and  practically  consisted  of  ratifying  what  had  already 
been  agreed  upon  in  the  various  conferences  field 
during  the  preceding  three  weeks.1  The  points  of 
difference  were  of  no  great  consequence,  except  one. 
That  was  a  discussion  of  the.  forty-sixth  article  of 
the  proposed  Constitution,  which  reads  as  follows  : 

THE  ARTICLES  NOT  FOR  THE  OVERTHROW  OF  GOVERN- 
MENT. 

"  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 


J  See  Appendix  for  minutes  of  proceedings. 


l8o  JOHN    BROWN. 

Union,  but  simply  to  Amendment  and  Repeal.  And 
our  flag  shall  be  the  same  that  our  Fathers  fought 
under  in  the  Revolution." 

The  motion  to  strike  this  out  came  from  George  J. 
Reynolds.  He  is  mentioned  both  by  Dr.  Ross  and 
Mr.  Gill,  as  a  leading  member  of  the  "  League  of 
Liberty."  When  John  Brown,  Jr.,  was  engaged  during 
August  and  September  of  the  next  year  in  the  effort 
to  get  the  Chatham  Convention  men  together  for  the 
Harper's  Ferry  movement,  he  wrote  from  Sandusky, 
Ohio,  to  Kagi  at  Chambersburg,  Pennsylvania,  that  the 
"  Coppersmith  "  was  "one  of  those  men  who  must  be 
obtained  if  possible."  This  reference  is  understood 
to  be  to  Mr.  Reynolds.  In  the  discussion  which  fol- 
lowed, Reynolds  was  the  only  advocate  of  the  motion. 
Dr.  Delany,  Elder  Munroe,  and  Mr.  Kennard,  all  col- 
ored, were  strenuous  in  opposing;  and  Captain  Brown 
Kagi,  and  Realf  made  earnest  argument  against  the 
motion.  Article  XLVI.  was  in  fact  the  keynote  of 
John  Brown's  position.  He  was  defending  the  Union 
and  the  Government  under  it,  threatened  as  he  reas- 
oned, by  the  existence  of  chattel  slavery,  having,  un- 
der misapprehended  provisions,  political  powers 
which  necessitated  and  encouraged  the  formation 
of  a  dangerous  and  continuous  pro-slavery  conspiracy. 
The  presence  of  this  Article  makes  consistent  the 
declaration  subsequently  embodied  in  his  last  speech 
in  the  Virginia  Court,  in  response  to  the  usual  ques- 
tion "  Why  sentence  should  not  be  passed  upon 
him?"  In  that  reply  he  declared,  as  will  be  seen, 
that  he  had  not  "  raised"  insurrection,  committed 
"treason,"  incited  to  "civil  war,"  or  "instructed" 
slaves   to  kill  their  masters.     Right  or  wrong,  as  he 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  l8l 

may  be  judged,  it  is  necessary  to  apprehend  clearly, 
in  order  to  estimate  justly,  the  mental  processes  of 
this  remarkable  personality.  Certainly,  there  is  noth- 
ing anarchistic  in  them.  The  "roads"  John  Brown 
mapped  out  and  which  he  sought  to  travel,  carried, 
in  his  mind  at  least,  the  highest  respect  for  law,  and 
recognized  to  the  full  the  responsibility  to  social 
order  and  equity.  The  difference  between  him  (as  he 
saw  it)  and  the  established  "  disorder,"  was  that  the 
latter  had  its  strength  in  wrong-doing,  and  threatened 
free  institutions  to  the  degree  that  the  reserved  rights 
of  the  citizen  could  justly  be  called  upon  for  resist- 
ance. Kennedy's  motion  had  the  support  only  of  his 
own  vote.  Messrs.  Kagi  and  Realf  were  particularly 
vigorous  and  eloquent  in  their  arguments,  as  Gill  and 
others  report. 

John  Brown  made  the  opening  and  principal  speech 
of  the  convention.  No  orator,  certainly  no  rhetori- 
cian, yet  he  was  sententious,  logical,  direct,  very  apt 
in  illustration,  and,  like  all  men  of  intellectual  reserve, 
brooding  usually  on  solitude  and  silence  over  large 
issues,  quite  aphoristic  and  terse  in  expression.  John 
Brown  had  read  well  and  thought  clearly  within  the 
deep  lines  his  brain  and  character  wrought  out  for 
action.1     In   his    evidence  before   the    United    States 


1  In  childhood,  youth,  and  manhood  the  Bible  was  his  constant 
study.  Mr.  Gill  says  that  a  volume  of  the  "Sayings  of  Confucius," 
was  one  of  his  later  favorites.  He  read  "  Pilgrim's  Progress," 
the  "Life  of  Franklin,"  "  ^Esop's  Fables,"  "  Plutarch's  Lives," 
"  Biography  of  Washington,"  all  Revolutionary  material,  and 
made  a  study  of  Marion  and  Sumpter's  careers,  "Napoleon  and  His 
Marshals,"  Baxter's  "  Saints'  Rest,"  "  Herodotus,"  "  Josephus," 
and  several  theological  works.  He  read  the  newspapers  and  was 
well  informed  in  current  history  and  invention. 


l82  JOHN    BROWN. 

Senate  Committee  on  the  "  Harper's  Ferry  Invasion," 
that  was  the  way  in  which  the  Virginian  and  the 
Southern  Statesmen  put  it  in  order  to  maintain  the 
idea  of  John  Brown's  movement  being-  concerted  with 
the  aid  of  Republican  and  Northern  leaders.  Richard 
Realf  thus  outlined  John  Brown's  opening  speech  in 
the  Chatham  Convention.  His  report  is  no  doubt 
substantially  correct,  though  more  rhetorical  in  tone 
than  were  the  Captain's  actual  words.  Estimating 
the  quality  and  temper  of  the  latter,  especially  at  a 
"  supreme  moment  "  like  this  one,  it  may  readily  be  ac- 
cepted that  John  Brown's  actual  speech  was  far  more 
vigorous  and  striking  even  than  is  shown  in  the  pic- 
turesque report  of  his  poet  follower. 

"  John  Brown,  on  rising,"  said  Realf  to  the  Committee  (p.  96- 
97  of  Report),  "stated  that  for  twenty  or  thirty  years  the  idea 
had  possessed  him  like  a  passion  of  giving  liberty  to  the  slaves. 
He  stated  immediately  thereafter,  that  he  made  a  journey  to 
England  in  1851,  in  which  year  he  took  to  the  International 
Exhibition  at  London  samples  of  wool  from  Ohio,  during  which 
period  he  made  a  tour  upon  the  European  continent,  inspecting 
all  fortifications,  and  especially  all  earthwork  forts  which  he 
could  find,  with  a  view,  as  he  stated,  of  applying  the  knowledge 
thus  gained,  with  modifications  and  inventions  of  his  own,  to 
such  a  mountain  warfare  as  he  thereafter  spoke  upon  in  the 
United  States.  John  Brown  stated,  moreover,  that  he  had  not 
been  indebted  to  anybody  for  the  suggestion  of  this  plan  ;  that 
it  arose  spontaneously  in  his  own  mind  ;  that  through  a  series 
of  from  twenty  to  thirty  years  it  had  gradually  formed  and 
developed  itself  into  shape  and  plan.  He  stated  that  he  had 
read  all  the  books  upon  insurrectionary  warfare  which  he  could 
lay  his  hands  upon — the  Roman  warfare  ;  the  successful  oppo- 
sition of  the  Spanish  chieftains  during  the  period  when  Spain 
was  a  Roman  province  ;  how  with  ten  thousand  men  divided 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  183 

and  subdivided  into  small  companies,  acting  simultaneously, 
yet  separately,  they  withstood  the  whole  consolidated  power  of 
the  Roman  Empire  through  a  number  of  years.  In  addition 
to  this,  he  said  he  had  become  very  familiar  with  the  successful 
warfare  waged  by  Schamyl,  the  Circassian  chief,  against  the 
Russians;  he  had  posted  himself  in  relation  to  the  wars  of 
Toussaint  L'Overture,  and  the  other  phases  of  the  wars  in 
Hayti  and  the  islands  round  about;  and  from  all  these  things 
he  had  drawn  the  conclusion,  believing,  as  he  stated  there  he 
did  believe,  and  as  we  all  (if  I  may  judge  from  myself)  believed, 
that  upon  the  first  intimation  of  a  plan  formed  for  the  liberation 
of  the  slaves,  they  would  immediately  rise  all  over  the  Southern 
States.  He  supposed  that  they  would  come  into  the  mountains 
to  join  him,  where  he  proposed  to  work,  and  that  by  flocking 
to  his  standard  they  would  enable  him  (by  making  the  line  of 
mountains  which  cuts  diagonally  through  Maryland  and  Vir- 
ginia down  through  the  Southern  States  into  Tennessee  and 
Alabama,  the  base  of  his  operations)  to  act  upon  the  planta- 
tions on  the  plains  lying  on  each  side  of  that  range  of  moun- 
tains, and  we  should  be  able  to  establish  ourselves  in  the  fast- 
nesses, and  if  any  hostile  action  (as  would  be)  were  taken 
against  us,  either  by  the  militia  of  the  separate  States,  or  by 
the  armies  of  the  United  States,  we  proposed  to  defeat  first  the 
militia,  and  next,  if  it  were  possible,  the  troops  of  the  United 
States,  and  then  organize  the  freed  blacks  under  this  .provision- 
al constitution,  which  would  carve  out  for  the  locality  of  its 
jurisdiction  all  that  mountainous  region  in  which  the  blacks 
were  to  be  established,  and  in  which  they  were  to  be  taught 
the  useful  and  mechanical  arts,  and  to  be  instructed  in  all  the 
business  of  life.  Schools  were  also  to  be  established,  and  so 
on.     That  was  it. 

"The  negroes  were  to  constitute  the  soldiers.  John  Brown 
expected  that  all  the  free  negroes  in  the  Northern  States  would 
immediately  flock  to  his  standard.  He  expected  that  all  the 
slaves  in  the  Southern  States  would  do  the  same.  He  believed, 
too,  that  as  many  of  the  free  negroes  in  Canada  as  could 
accompany  him,  would  do  so. 


184  JOHN    BROWN. 

"  The  slaveholders  were  to  be  taken  as  hostages,  if  they 
refused  to  let  their  slaves  go.  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that 
they  were  to  be  killed;  they  were  not  to  be.  They  were  to  be 
held  as  hostages  for  the  safe  treatment  of  any  prisoners  of 
John  Brown's  who  might  fall  into  the  hands  of  hostile  parties. 

"  All  the  non-slaveholders  were  to  be  protected.  Those 
who  would  not  join  the  organization  of  John  Brown,  but  who 
would  not  oppose  it,  were  to  be  protected ;  but  those  who  did 
oppose  it  were  to  be  treated  as  the  slaveholders  themselves. 

"  John  Brown  said,"  continued  Realf,  summing  up  the  pro- 
ceedings, "that  he  believed  a  successful  incursion  could  be 
made  ;  that  it  could  be  successfully  maintained  ;  that  the  sev- 
eral slave  States  could  be  forced  (from  the  position  in  which 
they  found  themselves)  to  recognize  the  freedom  of  those  who 
had  been  slaves  within  their  respective  limits;  that  immediately 
such  recognitions  were  made,  then  the  places  of  all  officers 
elected  under  this  provisional  constitution  became  vacant,  and 
new  elections  were  to  be  made.  Moreover,  no  salaries  were 
to  be  paid  to  the  officeholders  under  this  constitution.  It  was 
purely  out  of  that  which  we  supposed  to  be  philanthropy — love 
for  the  slave.  Moreover,  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose,  as  Cook  in 
his  confession  has  stated — and  I  now  get  away  from  John 
Brown's  speech — that  at  the  period  of  that  convention  the 
people  present  took  an  oath  to  support  that  constitution.  They 
did  no  such  thing.  Dr.  Delany,  of  whom  I  have  spoken,  pro- 
posed, immediately  the  convention  was  organized,  that  an  oath 
should  be  taken  by  all  who  were  present,  not  to  divulge  any  of 
the  proceedings  that  might  transpire,  whereupon  John  Brown 
rose  and  stated  his  objections  to  such  an  oath.  He  had  him- 
self conscientious  scruples  against  taking  an  oath,  and  all  he 
requested  was  a  promise  that  any  person  who  should  thereafter 
divulge  any  of  the  proceedings  that  might  transpire,  agreed  to 
forfeit  the  protection  which  that  organization  could  extend 
over  him." 

George  B.  Gill  gives  briefly  his  recollections,  written 
to  me,  as  follows: 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  185 

"  William  Munroe,  as  president  of  the  convention,  signed  the 
commissions  issued.  The  sessions  were  not  fully  harmonious. 
There  were  some  small  points  of  difference,  which  were  satis- 
factorily adjusted  in  the  end.  I  only  remember  a  few  of  the 
colored  men ;  amongst  them  was  Dr.  M.  R.  Delany,  J.  J. 
Jackson,  Wm.  C.  Munroe,  of  Chatham,  G.  J.  Reynolds,  of  San- 
dusky City.  The  only  whites  present  were  members  of  our 
party.  The  most  of  us  at  that  time  did  not  appreciate  the 
necessity  of  keeping  journals.  I  am,  however,  indebted  to  ab- 
breviated notes  for  the  precision  in  my  memory  on  many  points. 

"  The  main  business  of  the  convention  was  the  adoption  of 
a  constitution,  which  Brown  had  already  prepared,  and  the  or- 
ganization of  a  provisional  government  under  that  instrument. 
The  election  of  officers  occurred  on  the  10th.  John  Brown 
was,  of  course,  elected  commander-in-chief,  Kagi,  secretary  of 
war,  Realf,  secretary  of  state,  the  treasurer  was  Owen  Brown, 
and  the  secretary  of  the  treasury  was  George  B.  Gill.  Members 
of  congress  chosen  were  Alfred  M.  Ellsworth  and  Osborne  P. 
Anderson,  colored.  I  am  sure  that  Brown  did  not  communi- 
cate the  details  of  his  plans  to  the  members  of  the  convention, 
more  than  in  a  very  general  way.  Indeed,  I  do  not  now  remem- 
ber that  he  gave  them  any  more  than  the  impressions  which 
they  could  gather  from  the  methods  of  organization.  From 
those  who  were  directly  connected  with  his  movements  he 
solicited  plans  and  methods — including  localities — of  operations 
in  writing.  Of  course,  we  had  an  almost  precise  knowledge 
of  his  methods,  but  all  of  us  perhaps  did  not  know  just  the 
locality  selected  by  him,  or,  if  knowing,  did  not  comprehend  the 
resources  and  surroundings." 

Had  John  Brown  been  able  to  have  moved  at  once 
from  Canada  to  Harper's  Ferry,  the  result  would 
have  been  more  startling  than  even  when  the  blow 
did  come.  The  delay  was  caused  by  Hugh  Forbes's 
leiter  of  exposure  to  Senator  Henry  Wilson  and  some 
other  leading  politicians.  Mr.  Wilson  bestirred  him- 
self actively.     He  had  been  in  Kansas  some  months 


l86  JOHN    BROWN. 

before,  and  knew  the  intense  hostility  that  existed, 
and  heard  both  approval  and  adverse  criticism  of 
Captain  Brown's  views  of  aggression.  He  also  appre- 
hended clearly  the  spirit  of  influential  persons  in 
Massachusetts.  There  was  no  escape  from  his  de- 
mands on  the  members  of  the  Kansas  Aid  Committee, 
even  though  it  was  practically  defunct.  Mr.  Stearns 
felt  compelled,  under  pressure,  to  inform  Captain 
Brown  that  he  must  not  use  the  "  tools  "  in  his  pos- 
session except  "  in  the  defense  of  Kansas."  He  was 
also  notified  that  an  agent  would  come  to  Chatham 
to  see  him.  This  policy  was  changed,  and  John 
Brown  arranged  a  visit  to  Boston.  "  The  news," 
says  Osborne  P.  Anderson,  in  "  A  Voice  from  Harper's 
Ferry"  (p.  16),  "caused  an  entire  change  in  the 
programme  for  a  time.  The  old  gentleman  went  one 
way,  the  young  men  another,  but  ultimately  to  meet 
in  Kansas,  where  the  summer  was  spent."  Specula- 
tion may  be  idle,  but  it  is  reasonably  certain  that  the 
movement  would,  had  it  then  taken  place,  have  been 
bolder  and  with  more  men  in  it,  as  there  was  then 
unquestioned  earnestness  in  Canada  and  along  the 
lake  borders.  Superficial  students,  failing  to  put 
themselves  in  the  other  man's  place,  condemn  as  in- 
sanely inadequate  John  Brown's  force,  while  his 
organization  has  been  derided  as  absurd.  The  fairest 
criticism  yet  published  is  found  in  the  admirable 
monograph  on   "John   Brown,"   by   Dr.   Von    Hoist.1 


1  "John  Brown,"  by  Dr.  Hermann  Von  Hoist,  professor  at  the 
University  of  Frieberg,  in  Baden  (not  of  Slate  University,  Madi- 
son, Wis.),  author  of  "  The  Constitutional  History  of  the  United 
States,"  edited  by  Frank  Preston  Stearns.  Boston:  Cupples  & 
Reed,  1889.     Pp.  109-112. 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  187 

That  able  historical  writer  speaks  of  the  "Provisional 
Constitution"  as  "a  confused  medley  of  absurd 
because  absolutely  inapplicable  forms,  and  of  meas- 
ures well  calculated  for  the  end  in  view, — of  sound 
common  sense  and  of  absurd  systematizing;  of  cool 
computation  and  of  inconceivable  overestimates  of 
the  resources  at  hand;  of  true,  keen-sighted  human- 
ity and  of  reckless  severity."  It  was  insane  "  to 
create  such  a  Government  and  to  want  to  carry  on 
such  a  war,"  while  declaring  there  "was  no  intention 
of  overthrowing  existing  Governments.  But  the 
Chatham  men  certainly  "saw  farther  than  their 
noses,"  in  seeking  to  provide  for  the  negro  slaves, 
they  designed  to  consider  as  "  men  and  citizens."  It 
was  entirely  rational  to  form  and  "  create  a  strong 
organization  "  and  "  sensible  to  appoint  a  supreme 
commander,"  though  absurd  to  suppose  "that  a  little 
band,  .  .  .  without  influence,  should  secretly  put 
their  heads  together,  ...  to  give  a  constitution 
to  the  United  States;  "  this  latter  being,  with  all  due 
deference  to  Von  Hoist,  exactly  what  they  did  not 
intend  or  mean  to  attempt  doing.  The  absurdity  of 
copying  the  offices  of  the  Federal  Constitution  is  very 
palpable  to  the  critics,  but  the  logic  of  it  is  not  quite 
so  plain.  To  one  who  understands  that  John  Brown 
was  above  all  other  things  a  plain,  believing,  Ameri- 
can citizen,  there  was  the  common-sense  thought 
that  with  the  impressible  people  to  be  dealt  with  and 
controlled,  large  forms  and  sounding  names  or  titles 
were  of  value,  especially  if  they  led  to  such  direct 
connection  with  patriotic  terms  and  ideas  as  might 
be  likely  to  affect  the  minds  of  other  sympathetic 
persons.    Dr.  Von  Hoist,  strangely  enough  in  the  light 


l8S  JOHN    BROWN. 

of  the  Franco-Prussian  war,  regards  as  severe  pro- 
visions for  taking  from  all  who  held  slaves  willingly, 
and  from  those  who  assisted  them,  all  they  possessed, 
whether  in  free  or  in  slave-holding  States." 

The  recognition  of  "  any  kind  of  neutrality,"  the 
enforcement  of  "fair  trial,"  provisions  against"  all 
useless  destruction  of  property,"  and  forbidding  the 
use  of  ill  words  or  abuse  of  "defeated  enemy,"  are 
esteemed  by  him  as  proofs  of  humanity.  What  Von 
Hoist  fails  to  see  is,  that  these  seemingly  petty 
and  even  contradictory  details  were  all  used  upon 
shrewd  conceptions  of  the  limitations  of  the  people 
to  be  freed,  and  a  clear  understanding  of  the  con' 
ditions  that  would  exist  in  such  fugitive  camps  as 
should  be  created.  Even  the  learned  doctor  sees  the 
significance  of  providing  for  "  bringing  together  again 
of  separated  families,  for  schools,  and  for  the  further- 
ance of  '  personal  cleanliness.'  " 

In  all  criticism,  the  one  palpable  omission  is  the 
failure  to  perceive  how  far  removed  John  Brown's 
mental  processes  were  from  revolutionary  bias  or 
lawless  intent.  The  trouble  is,  and  strangely,  too, 
that  the  fact  seems  the  hardest  one  to  understand,  that 
John  Brown  actually  believed  in  the  idea  of  freedom, 
just  as  he  believed  in  the  existence  of  God.  There 
was  no  "  if,"  "  but,"  or  "  and  ";  no  qualification  for 
him  in  one  or  the  other  matters  of  faith.  Without 
question,  he  accepted  as  a  conviction  the  idea  that 
the  real  and  actual  purpose  of  the  Federal  Constitu- 
tion, and  of  the  Union  formed  under  it,  was  to  "  estab- 
lish justice,"  "  maintain  peace,"  and  "promote  public 
tranquility."  He  could  not  and  did  not  conceive  of 
it  as  merely  a  mechanism  for  courts,  a  machine  for 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  189 

money-making,  a  means  only  for  opening  new  lands 
and  building  more  towns;  something  by  which  debts 
could  be  collected  and  order  maintained,  plus  the 
constable  and  the  cannon.  This  was  not  John  Brown's 
conception.  It  is  no  wonder,  therefore,  that  he  was 
deemed  "  insane." 

It  will  be  observed  in  the  papers  adopted  and  plans 
proposed  at  Chatham,  that  certain  objects  were  defi- 
nitely kept  in  view: 

First.  That  slavery  was  in  derogation  of  the 
Republic  and  contrary  to  just  law,  its  righteous  inter- 
pretation, and  to  the  purposes  of  the  American  Union. 

Second.  That,  therefore,  it  was  slaveholders,  not 
liberators,  who  were  traitors  and  rebels.  Hence  John 
Brown's  justification  of  his  constitution  and  his 
denial,  when  on  trial,  of  having  raised  an  insurrection. 

Third.  His  purpose  to  organize  authority  among 
his  adherents.  With  this  idea  in  view,  the  simple 
organization  John  Brown  projected  is  seen  to  be 
admirably  adapted  for  the  conditions  he  anticipated 
creating — a  widely  scattered  state  of  resistance  among 
an  untrained  but  willing  set  of  people,  to  a  system  of 
oppression, — then  resistance  being  presumed  to  be  set 
in  conditions  half,  leaning  to  their  own  views  and 
necessities. 

Fourth.  The  military  plans  can  be  seen  by  the 
flexible  form  of  organization,  seen  in  "  General 
Order  No.  i,"1  to  be  adapted  to  'an  insurgent  war- 
fare. The  bands,  sections,  platoons,  and  companies 
were  designed  to  act  separately  or  together.  In 
this    will   also  be  seen  some  explanation  of  why  an 

1  See  Appendix. 


190  JOHN    BROWN. 

attack  was  made  with  so  small  a  force.  Each  one  of 
that  band  was  fitted  for  some  separate  command, 
however  small.  If  the  best  slaves  had  joined  the  lib- 
erators, and  they,  as  originally  designed,  had  gone 
into  the  Alleghany  Mountains,  and  not  been  cooped 
up  in  the  Harper's  Ferry  cul  de  sac,  how  soon  would 
they  have  been  subdued?  It  is  reasonably  assured 
that  a  number  of  neighborhood  negroes  did  know  of 
Brown's  intention.  At  least  they  knew  something  was 
in  the  air.  Osborne  P.  Anderson  declares,1  that  visits 
were  made  to  plantations,  "  and  the  slaves  rejoiced. 
At  the  slaves'  quarters  there  was  apparently  a  gen- 
eral jubilee,  and  they  stepped  forward  manfully, 
without  impressing  or  coaxing.  In  one  case  only  was 
there  any  hesitation.  A  dark-complexioned,  free-born 
man  refused  to  take  up  arms.  .  .  .  Of  the  slaves 
who  followed  us  to  the  Ferry,  some  were  sent  to  help 
remove  stores,  and  the  others,  .  .  .  furnished  by 
me  with  pikes,  acted  as  a  guard  to  the  prisoners,  to 
prevent  their  escape."  Captain  Brown's  purpose  was 
to  make  of  his  white  men,  and  of  others  as  soon  as 
possible,  independent  commanders  of  some  small 
detachments. 

The  Chatham  Convention  adjourned  on  the  10th 
of  May,  1858.  An  active  and  acrid  correspondence 
had  been  progressing  while  the  "  Liberators  "  were 
in  council.  A  letter  of  Hugh  Forbes,  dated  May  5th, 
showed  that  he  followed  somewhat  closely  each  of 
the  next  moves.  John  Brown  on  the  14th  wrote  his 
eldest  son  to  watch  him  close  and  forward  all  details. 


1  "  A  Voice  from  Harper's  Ferry,"  Boston,  1861,  p.  60. 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  I9I 

Following  Mr.  Sanborn's  narrative  '  it  is  stated  that  G. 
L.  Stearns  and  Theodore  Parker  were  for  postponing 
for  a  year.  Mr.  Sanborn  was  in  doubt;  T.  W.  Higgin- 
son  in  favor  of  immediate  action;  Dr.  Howe,  on  the  9th 
of  May,  held  the  same  view;  on  the  18th  he  demanded 
immediate  postponement  ;  Gerrit  Smith  on  the  7th 
wished  to  go  no  further;  Higginson,  and  probably 
Howe,  suggested  that  "  when  the  thing  is  well  started, 
who  cares  what  he  (Forbes)  will  say." 

Steps  were  taken  on  May  20th  to  change  the  loca- 
tion of  the  arms  and  material,  for  "  reasons  that  can- 
not be  written."  A  meeting  of  the  Captain's  friends, 
Messrs.  Smith,  Stearns,  Howe,  Parker,  Higginson,  and 
Sanborn  was  held  at  the  Revere  House,  Boston,  on 
the  24th  of  May,  when,  as  Mr.  Sanborn  writes,  it  was 
"  resolved  that  Brown  ought  to  go  to  Kansas  at  once." 
On  the  31st  inst.,  the  Captain  reached  Boston.  He 
was  full  of  regret  and  much  discouraged  by  the 
assumed  necessity  of  postponement.  The  Revere 
House  meeting  decided  that  no  effort  should  be  made 
till  the  next  winter,  when  a  considerable  sum, from  two 
thousand  to  three  thousand  dollars,  would  be  raised. 
Brown,  in  the  meantime,  according  to  the  notes  made 
by  Col.  Higginson2  at  the  time,  was  "  to  blind  Forbes 
by  going  to  Kansas,  and  to  transfer  the  property  so  as 
to  relieve  the  Massachusetts  Kansas  Committee  of  re- 
sponsibility, and  they  in  future  were  not  to  know  his 
plans."  To  all  this,  the  Captain  objected  that  his 
force  would  be  demoralized;  "it  would  not  cost 
twenty-five  dollars   apiece   to   move  his  thirteen  men 


1  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown,"  p.  460,  et  al. 

2  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown,"  p.  464. 


I92  JOHN    BROWN. 

from  Ohio;  "  he  would  start  if  he  had  but  three  hun 
dred  dollars.  The  knowledge  Forbes  could  give  to 
his  opponents  "would  be  injurious,  for  he  wished  " 
them  "  to  underrate  him,  but  still  .  .  .  the  in- 
creased terror  produced  wTould  perhaps  counterbal- 
ance this,  and  it  would  not  make  much  difference. 
If  he  had  the  means,  he  would  not  lose  a  day." 
Higginson's  report  is  undoubtedly  a  faithful  one, 
and  those  who  knew  him  then  can  realize  that  his 
own  views  were  coincident  with  Brown's.  Still,  the 
latter  said  he  did  not  wish  his  friends  to  think  him 
"  reckless,"  as  they  "  held  the  purse,  he  was  powerless 
without  them,"  that  some  of  them  were  "  not  men  of 
action,"  and  had  allowed  themselves  "  to  be  intimi- 
dated "  by  "  Senator  Wilson's  letter."  The  Chatham 
episode  had  cost  him  nearly  all  his  funds;  so  he  was 
obliged  to  submit.  Looking  back,  one  can  perceive 
that  for  what  he  was  aiming  at,  and  others  were  sym- 
pathizing with,  John  Brown  was  right  and  they  were 
wrong.  The  blow  may  have  been  severer  and  longer 
fought.  Its  direct  effect  as  a  blow  would  have  been 
more  immediate  and  widely  extended;  its  moral 
effect  would  doubtless  have  been  much  less,  and  no 
one  can  now  judge  with  any  reasonableness  as  to 
what  might  have  been  the  political  consequences  fol- 
lowing a  continued  and  far-spread  slave  uprising. 
The  Boston  incident  closed,  however,  with  Captain 
Brown  leaving  for  the  West  on  the  3d  of  June  "in 
good  spirits,"  with  $500  in  gold,  and  liberty  from  Mr. 
Stearns,  their  legal  owner,  to  retain  all  the  arms  as 
his  own  property.  Doubtless  his  willingness  to  re- 
turn to  Kansas,  apart  from  the  need  of  confusing 
Forbes,  which  that  movement  most  effectually   did, 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  193 

was  due  to  a  real  emergency  that  had   arisen  in  the 
much-harried  Territory. 

The  Lecompton  Constitution  still  cast  its  por- 
tentous shadow  along  the  path  of  the  free-state 
people.  Though  rejected  in  different  ways, — the 
people,  in  order  to  accomplish  this  peacefully,  having 
even  "stooped  to  conquer,"  by  voting  under  the 
fraudulent  Missouri  code  ; — yet  the  national  pro- 
slavery  administration  and  party  had  endeavored  in 
Congress  to  force  the  admission  of  Kansas  under  it 
as  a  slave  State.  They  failed  finally  in  this.  A  com- 
promise measure,  known  as  the  "  English  bill  "  was 
adopted  on  the  18th  of  May,  by  which  the  Governor 
of  Kansas  (James  \V.  Denver)  was  to  appoint  a  day 
for  voting  for  or  against  the  wretched  instrument. 
The  Governor  soon  after  named  August  2d  for  the 
polling  of  this  foregone  conclusion.1 


1  The  votes  cast  upon  the  final  effort  to  force  slavery  upon  Kan- 
sas are  instructive.  They  were:  Election  of  delegates  to  Lecomp- 
ton Constitutional  Convention  (apportionment  fraudulent),  June 
T5.  I857t  2,200  votes.  Election  of  State  officers  under  the  Lecomp- 
ton Constitution,  Dec.  21,  1857;  vote  for  or  against  slavery  6,143, 
with  569  against;  fraudulent  vote  proven,  3,006.  The  free-state 
men  did  not  vote  on  the  Constitution,  but  elected  a  majority  of 
the  Legislature;  their  vote  on  State  ticket  and  Member  of  Congress 
averaged,  6,908;  the  pro-slavery  vote  nominally  averaged  6,509,  a 
numerical  free-state  majority  of  399.  The  Constitution  itself  was 
not  submitted,  and  Congress  was  asked  to  provide  for  that,  or, 
better  still,  to  reject  the  whole  instrument;  and,  judging  by  the  un- 
challenged votes  on  the  question  "  with"  or  "  without  "  slavery, 
the  actual  pro-slavery  vote  in  1S57  was  3,733.  But  there  were 
many  small  frauds  perpetrated,  and  2,500  would  be  a  liberal 
number.  The  Territorial  Legislature  (free-state)  ordered  an  elec- 
tion on  the  Lecompton  Constitution,  and    it   was   held   January  4, 


i94 


JOHN    BROWN. 


But  this  was  not  all,  nor  the  chief  incident  which 
decided  John  Brown's  friends  and  John  Brown  himself, 
that  it  was  a  duty  as  well  as  the  best  policy  for  him 
to  return  forthwith  to  Kansas.  On  the  18th  of  May, 
along  the  eastern  border  of  Linn  County,  southern 
Kansas,  eleven  peaceable,  unarmed  citizens,  at  work 
in  field,  forge,  and  dwelling,  or  on  the  unthreatened 
highway,  were  suddenly  captured  at  different  points 
within  a  small  radius  by  an  armed  band  of  twenty- 
five  men,  who  appeared  to  rise  as  it  were  from  the 
ground,  so  sudden  and  unexpected  was  their  presence 
and  action.  I  speak  from  personal  knowledge  of  the 
terrible  deed,  known  as  the  "  Marais  des  Cygnes" 
massacre.  The  twenty-five  armed  men  were  a  rem- 
nant of  the  Buford  gang  of  two  years  before.  They 
were  led  by  one  Charles  Hamilton,  who  was  with 
most  of  his  associates  openly  sheltered  at  Fort  Smith, 
Arkansas,  and  whose  terrible  and  unqualified  act  of 
assassination  was  boastingly  defended  all  along  the 
southwest  slave  borders.1 


1858;  vole  was  as  follows:  against  10,226;  for,  with  slavery  138, 
without  25;  total  10,389.  Congress  submitted  the  instrument  over 
again  by  act  signed  May  18,  1858,  and  under  it  a  vote  was  had 
August  2d.  It  stood  for  it  I.7S8;  against  it  11,300;  free-stale  ma- 
jority, 9,512. 

1  The  names  of  all  the  assassins  are  not  at  my  hands.  The  Hon. 
D.  W.  Wilder  ("  Annals  of  Kansas,"  p.  183)  gives  from  "  Kansas 
in  1858,"  William  P.  Tomlinson,  the  following  names  :  Charles 
A.  Hamilton,  Dr.  John  Hamilton,  Algernon  Hamilton  (three 
brothers),  Luke  and  William  Yealock,  Thomas  Jackson,  James 
Tate,  Lewis  Henderson,  W.  B.  Brockett,  Harlin,  Beech,  and  Mat- 
tock. The  names  of  the  other  thirteen  scoundrels  appear  to  be 
l„st — a  fate  that  is  meritled.  The  Hamiltons  were  men  of  edu- 
cation, residing,  I  believe,  at  or  near  West  Point,  Mo. ;  all  of  them 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  195 

These  inoffensive  men,  eleven  in  number,  were 
marched  to  a  point  near  the  Snyder  forge,  an  open 
log  building, — sometimes  called  by  the  frightened  cor- 
respondents and  politicians  of  those  days,  "  Snyder's 
Fort," — there  made  to  stand  in  line,  while  a  volley 
was  fired  into  them,  killing  five  outright,  and  wound- 
ing five  others  very  severely.  It  was  a  lovely  after- 
noon, and  the  scene  of  murder  is  the  centre  of  a 
landscape  remarkable  for  its  placid  features  and  rural 
beauty.  The  deed  startled  the  country;  the  North, 
slow  of  anger,  was  roused  to  passionate  heat;  the  free- 
state  people,  who  were  divided  into  savage  factions, 
melted  and  fused  together  again  under  a  common 
horror  and  a  single  purpose.  Robert  B.  Mitchell,  a 
leading  free-state  conservative,  rode  with  James 
Montgomery,  the  fighting  radical  of  southern  Kansas, 
in  the  endeavor  to  overtake  the  Hamilton  gang.  At 
Fort  Scott,  just  before  this  deed,  Sheriff  Samuel  J. 
Walker,  of  Douglass  county,  acting  as  deputy  United 
States  marshal,   had    placed    Montgomery   under  ar- 


were,  I  believe,  killed  as  Confederate  guerillas  in  the  Civil  War, 
and  one  was  slain  in  combat  in  the  Price  campaign  of  1864,  at  or 
near  the  point  of  the  murder  in  1858 — the  Chateau  Trading  Post. 
The  eleven  free-state  men,  all  quiet  citizens,  were:  William  Ro- 
bertson, William  Colpetzer,  Patrick  Ross,  Thomas  Stillwell,  John 
F.  Campbell — killed  at  the  first  fire; — Asa  and  William  Hairgrove, 
Charles  Snyder,  Amos  Hall,  and  Charles  F.  Reed,  a  Methodist 
circuit  rider  and  preacher.  These  were  all  severely  wounded 
by  the  same  fire.  Amos  Hall  fell  unhurt  when  the  other  volley 
was  fired,  and,  feigningdeath,  escaped  unhurt,  to  be  sholtodeath, 
as  stated  in  the  "Annals  of  Kansas,"  after  in  some  later  border 
trouble.  The  two  Hairgroves  were  natives  of  Georgia.  Mr.  Snyder 
was  a  border-state  man;  none  of  the  assailed  party  were  identified 
with  the  radical  wing  of  the  free-state  men. 


I96  JOHN    BROWN. 

rest,  for  acts  previously  done  in  defense  of  his  neigh- 
bors' and  his  own  rights.  At  the  same  time  leaders  of 
the  ruffian  element  were  also  arrested  by  this  same  cool 
and  fearless  officer.  Montgomery  was  released  on  his 
parole;  the  United  States  Court  discharged  the  pro- 
slavery  criminals.  No  reward  was  -offered  by  any 
authority  for  the  capture  of  the  Hamilton  murderers. 
The  Governor  of  Missouri  did  not  feel  his  jurisdiction 
outraged,  and  the  President  offered  no  reward.  The 
Governor  of  Kansas  contented  himself  with  placating 
the  angered  citizens,  not  in  pursuing  the  assassins. 
When,  however,  seven  months  later,  John  Brown  res- 
cued eleven  slaves  from  their  Missouri  masters,  and 
Aaron  D.  Stevens  slew  one  of  these  while  he  was  in 
the  act  of  leveling  a  revolver  on  him,  the  Governor 
of  Missouri  hastened  to  put  a  price  on  John  Brown; 
President  Buchanan  offered  a  reward  for  his  capture; 
United  States  marshals  and  posses  were  sent  after 
him,  while  the  army  of  the  United  States  was  required 
to  join  in  the  pursuit  by  Governor  Medary,  of  Kansas. 
In  the  one  case,  the  lives  of  non-slave-holding  "  poor 
whites  "  alone  were  sacrificed  to  the  malignant  pas- 
sions of  the  "  chivalry,"  while  in  the  other  the  sacred 
rights  of  property  in  human  flesh  and  blood  was 
sternly  assailed  by  armed  "Abolitionists."  The 
Hamilton  gang  coolly  and  without  haste  made  their 
way  further  south.  I  learned  of  their  movements  day 
after  day,  and  soon  after  saw  the  leading  assassin 
strutting  as  a  hero  in  the  streets  of  Fort  Smith, 
Arkansas.  One  of  the  most  stirring  of  John  G.  Whit- 
tier's  lyrics  is  that  of  "  Le  Marais  du  Cygne,"  ("  The 
Swamp  of  the  Swan  ")  a  picturesque  name  given  to 
the   portion   of   the  Osage  River  valley   by  the  early 


REACHING    TO    A    CULMINATION.  197 

French  voyageurs,  who  served  at  Chotteau's  Trading 
Post,  close  by  which  the  terrible  deed  occurred.  The 
closing  stanzas  of  Whittier's  poem  have  that  pro- 
phetic tone,  which  in  the  supreme  moments  of  human 
conflict,  always  make  the  true  poet  a  seer — proclaim- 
ing what  will  be.     How  prescient  are  the  words: 

"  Not  in  vain  on  the  dial 

The  shade  moves  along 
To  point  the  great  contrasts 

Of  right  and  of  wrong ; 
Free  homes  and  free  altars, 

And  fields  of  ripe  food  ; 
The  reeds  of  the  swan's  march 

Whose  bloom  is  of  blood. 

"  On  the  lintels  of  Kansas 

That  blood  shall  not  dry; 
Henceforth  the  bad  angel 

Shall  harmless  go  by  ; 
Henceforth  to  the  sunset 

Unchecked  on  her  way, 
Shall  liberty  follow 

The  march  of  the  day." 

The  John  Brown  men  were  scattered  after  the  ad- 
journment of  the  Chatham  Convention,  a  little  dis- 
couraged, too,  as  Steward  Taylor  wrote  on  the 
13th  of  May  to  Dr.  H.  C.  Gill  at  Tabor,  Iowa,  by  the 
aspect  of  what  was  "  the  most  critical  point"  in  their 
endeavors.  Owen  Brown  went  to  visit  his  brother 
Jason  at  Akron,  Ohio.  Cook  left  Cleveland  for  the 
neighborhood  of  Harper's  Ferry.  Realf  left  for  New 
York,  and  from  there  went  to  England,  not  to  be 
heard  of  or  from  again   until  arrested  in  Texas,  dur- 


198 


JOHN    BROWN. 


ing  the  winter  of  1859-60.  Gill,  who  tells  the  story 
elsewhere  in  a  simple  narrative  full  also  of  uncon- 
scious art,  went  to  work  in  a  Shaker  settlement,  prob- 
ably Lebanon,  Ohio,  where  Tidd  was  already  em- 
ployed. Steward  Taylor  went  to  Illinois  where  he 
had  acquaintances.  Kagi  and  Stevens  waited  Brown's 
return  at  Cleveland.  Parsons  and  Moffett  stayed  a 
short  time  in  northern  Ohio,  and  then  departed  for 
Iowa.  Leeman  got  some  work  to  do  in  Ashtabula 
County.  John  Brown  left  Boston,  as  already  stated, 
on  the  3d  of  June,  proceeding  to  Vermont,  where  he 
was  joined  by  his  son  John,  and  both  went  to  the 
North  Elba  homestead  for  a  very  short  visit.  Kagi, 
Stevens,  Leeman,  Gill,  Parsons,  Moffett,  and  Owen 
were  gathered  up  and  the  party  pushed  through  to 
Kansas,  arriving  at  Lawrence  on  the  25th  of  June. 
On  that  day  and  the  following  one,  Captain  Brown 
was  the  guest  of  James  Redpath  and  myself,  at  the 
Whitney  Hotel.  How  he  blazed  his  road  from 
southern  Kansas  and  Missouri  through  Canada  back 
to  Harper's  Ferry,  must,  with  the  four  months  of  the 
life  at  Kennedy  Farm,  be  told  in  bold  outline  in  the 
next  succeeding  pages. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES. 

Out  of  the  "jaws  of  death  " — John  Brown  as  he  looked 
in  Kansas  in  i8jd  and  1838 — Affairs  along  the 
southwest  border  of  Missouri  —  Intrigues  and  dis- 
sensions in  both  parties  —  Captain  James  Mont- 
gomery— John  Brown  and  "  So?ne  Shadows  Before  " 
—  Snyder's  Fort  —  Harrying  each  other — Pro- 
Slavery  kidnappers  and  free-state  raiders  —  Fort 
Scott  affairs  —  Firing  on  troops  —  John  B roam's 
first  band  of  freed  people  —  From  Missouri  to 
Kansas. 

John  Brown  in  1858  presented  a  somewhat  dif- 
ferent aspect  to  that  which  first  impressed  me  in 
1856.  Yet  the  figure  was  the  same.  The  picturesque 
portrait  of  him  found  in  this  volume,  gives  a  full  con- 
ception of  the  fighting  farmer  that  he  was.  The  one 
with  the  beard  recalls  the  deeper  ensemble  left  on 
memory,  of  his  appearance  in  the  summer  and  fall  of 
1858. 

On  the  Northern  emigrants'  march  of  1856  to  the  aid 
of  their  fellows  at  Lawrence,  Topeka,  and  other 
Kansas  free-state  settlements,  it  fell  to  my  lot  to  be 
one  of  a  small  company  doing  rear  guard  duty  near 
the   Nebraska  line.     But   three  days   before  we   had 


200 


JOHN     BROWN. 


led   the   general   advance  across  the  northern  line  of 
Kansas   from   Nebraska,  appeals  had  been  made  that 

no  arms  were  to 
be  openly  carried. 
Our  little  com- , 
pany,  under  Martin 
Stowell  and  my- 
self,rebelled, claim- 
ing the  right  as 
we  phrased  it,  to 
carry  our  weapons 
without  conceal- 
ment, and  we  did 
it.  In  that  advance 
party  were  two  of 
the  men  afterwards 
slain  in  the  Har- 
per's Ferry  fight. 
One  was  William 
Henry1  Leeman,  a 
boy  of  eighteen 
years,  from  Maine, 
who  had  been 
working  as  a  shoe- 
operator  in  Massa- 
chusetts, and  joined 
in  June,  1856,  at 
Worcester, Dr.  Cut- 
ter's party  of  Mas- 
sachusetts men.     He  turned  back  with  them  at  Lex- 


JOHX    BROWN    AT   THE   AGE    OF    58. 


1  His  middle  name,  as  designated  by  his  parents,  was  "  Pillsbury," 
his  mother's  maiden  name.  He  afterward  adopted  "  Henry  "  and 
they  acquiesced. 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  201 

ington,  Mo.,  and  then  came  up  the  Mississippi  River 
from  St.  Louis  to  Davenport,  Iowa,  where  he  entered 
our  party,  which  had  determined  to  march  across 
Iowa  and  southern  Nebraska  into  Kansas,  where  he 
found  his  way  to  John  Brown  and  Osawatomie.  The 
other  one  was  William  Thompson,  of  North  Elba, 
New  York.  Henry,  his  elder  brother,  the  husband  of 
Ruth  Brown,  was  with  John  Brown  in  Kansas  and  had 
been  severely  wounded  at  the  Black  Jack  fight,  June 
the  second.  William  left  the  Adirondacks  immediately 
on  receiving  the  news  and  joined  our  party  at  Buffalo, 
as  we  were  taking  the  Plymouth  Rock  steamer  for 
Detroit  on  our  westward  way.  The  camp  where  my 
first  meeting  with  John  Brown  occurred  was  also 
named   Plymouth. 

"  Have  you  a  man  in  your  camp,  named  William 
Thompson?  You  are  from  Massachusetts,  young 
man,  I  believe,  and  Mr.  Thompson  joined  you  at 
Buffalo." 

These  words  were  addressed  to  me  by  an  elderly 
man,  riding  on  a  worn-looking,  gaunt  gray  horse.  It 
was  on  a  late  July  day  and  in  its  hottest  hours.  I  had 
been  idly  watching  a  wagon  and  one  horse,  toiling 
slowly  northward  across  the  prairie,  along  the  emi- 
grant trail  that  had  been  marked  out  by  free-state 
men  under  command  of  "  Sam  "  Walker  and  Aaron  D. 
Stevens,  who  was  then  known  as  "Colonel  Whipple." 
Three  days  before,  when  we  crossed  the  Kansas  line, 
Sharpe's  rifles  on  shoulders  and  Colt's  revolvers  at 
hips,  a  small  party  of  mounted  men  was  drawn  up 
on  the  line  to  welcome  us.  "  Colonel  Whipple,"  who 
was  in  command  as  we  proudly  marched  by — for,  well 
I  remember,  we  all   thought  the  fate   of  the   Nation 


202  JOHN     BROWN. 

was  on  our  shoulders — gave  the  order  in  a  ringing 
voice  : 

"  Present  arms!  " 

It  was  done,  and  we  cheered.  We  then  heard, 
"  What  are  you  doing  here,  men  ?  "  in  the  same,  clear 
voice. 

"  Holding  town-meeting,"  was  the  swift  reply  from 
his  own  following. 

''Where's  your  ballot  box?"  was  the  next  question, 
and  "  Here "  was  the  loud  response,  as  each  man 
brought  his  hand  down  on  his  Sharpe's  rifle,  which 
rang  with  the  blow.  This  was  a  formula  gotten-up 
for  identification  and  encouragement. 

John  Brown,  whose  name  the  young  and  ardent 
had  begun  to  conjure  with  and  swear  by,  had  been 
described  to  me.  So,  as  I  heard  the  question,  I  looked 
up  and  met  the  full,  strong  gaze  of  a  pair  of  lumi- 
nous, questioning  eyes.  Somehow,  I  instinctively 
knew  this  was  John  Brown,  and  with  that  name  I 
replied,  saying  that  Thompson  was  in  our  company. 
It  was  a  long,  rugged-featured  face  I  saw.  A  tall, 
sinewy  figure,  too, — he  had  dismounted — five  feet 
eleven,  I  estimated;  with  square  shoulders,  narrow 
flank,  sinewy  and  deep-chested.  A  frame,  full  of 
nervous  power,  but  not  impressing  one  especially 
with  muscular  vigor.  The  impression  left  by  the 
pose  and  the  figure  was  that  of  reserve,  endurance, 
and  quiet  strength.  The  questioning  voice-tones  were 
mellow,  magnetic,  and  grave.  On  the  weather-worn 
face  was  a  stubby,  short,  gray  beard,  evidently  of 
recent  growth.  John  Brown  never  wore  a  beard,  as  a 
usual  habit,  till  the  attacks  of  Hugh  Forbes  seemed 
to  make  necessary  a  change  in  his  usual  appearance. 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  203 

The  lower  portion  of  the  jaws  was  sharp  rather  than 
broad,  ending  in  a  square,  firm,  but  not  heavy  chin. 
The  mouth  was  close  set  and  wide,  deep  lined,  firmly 
held.  It  looked  like  that  of  a  man  who  was  swift  to 
act.  The  eyes  first  struck  me,  because  they  had  in 
them  an  expression  I  had  already  begun  to  associate 
with  all  the  free-state  men  I  met;  that  was  one  of 
steadfast  alertness,  keen,  sharp  observation, — the  look 
of  the  uncowed  man  in  constant  danger  and  always 
on  the  watch,  in  some  respects  the  "  hunted  "  look. 
It  was  the  look  seen  in  later  days  of  war,  in  the  eyes 
of  men  employed  as  scouts  or  secret  service.  I  am 
not  saying  these  things  from  memory  alone,  for  an 
old  manuscript  journal  of  the  period  has  been  drawn 
upon  and  I  am  transcribing  in  the  main  the  impres- 
sions then  more  effusively  written.  I  had  an  excel- 
lent opportunity  for  making  a  rapid  mental  sketch. 
The  face  was  long,  as  I  have  said;  the  cheek  bones 
prominent — privation  and  fatigue  doubtless  made 
this  more  apparent.  John  Brown's  roman  nose  was 
a  very  distinctive  feature.  Its  shape  was  fine,  the 
bridge  well  marked,  while  the  lines  were  long,  wide 
at  the  bridge,  broad,  and  rather  thin  at  the  nostrils. 
It  has  been  stated  by  a  competent  physiologist  that 
this  organ  is  a  distinctive  trait  of  the  Brown  family 
and  was  perceptible  in  the  revolutionary  ancestor,  as 
it  is  slightly  less  accented  in  John  Brown,  Jr.'s,  feat- 
ures. Our  Captain's  "roman"  was  masterful,  not 
domineering  or  inquisitive  in  expression.  The  root- 
space  was  broad,  and  the  gray,  bushy  eyebrows  were 
well  defined  and  moderately  arched.  The  eyes,  not 
large,  were  deep  set,  blue-gray  in  color,  darkening 
almost    to  blackness  at  times.     The  impression  was 


204  JOHN     BROWN. 

not  that  of  a  flashing  glance;  it  was  not  one  that 
lighted-up  suddenly  and  quickly;  it  was  a  steady 
luminous  look,  which  inquired,  but  did  not  attack 
or  disturb.  They  left  on  me  always  an  impres- 
sion of  deep  kindliness,  as  well  as  penetration. 
Yet  I  recall  it  as  one  impersonal  and  withdrawn 
in  character.  They  took  in  at  once,  not  only  the 
person  addressed,  but  all  the  surroundings.  The 
head  also  was  both  long  and  broad,  and  carried  well 
forward  on  a  long  sinewy  neck.  The  forehead  seemed 
to  be  a  low  one  at  first  glance,  but  it  could  soon  be 
noted  that  this  impression  was  due  to  the  short,  gray 
hair  that  grew  down  somewhat  the  front  of  a  broad, 
well-developed  cerebrum.  The  perceptions  were  finely 
marked,  and  the  space  from  the  ears  forward  and 
upward  was  quite  deep,  even  remarkably  so.  This 
figure — unarmed,  poorly  clad,  with  coarse  linen 
trousers  tucked  into  high,  heavy  cowhide  boots,  with 
heavy  spurs  on  their  heels,  a  cotton  shirt  open  at  the 
throat,  a  long  torn  linen  duster,  and  a  bewrayed  chip 
straw  hat  he  held  in  his  hand  as  he  waited  for 
Thompson  to  reach  us,  made  up  the  outward  garb 
and  appearance  of  John  Brown  when  I  first  met  him. 
In  ten  minutes  his  mounted  figure  disappeared  over 
the  north  horizon.  With  him  went  William  Thomp- 
son;— blond,  sturdy,  yellow-bearded,  bold,  generous; 
a  loud-voiced,  fun-making  young  fellow  of  but  twenty- 
two — and  I  never  saw  him  again.  He  was  done  to 
death  in  the  Shenandoah  River,  while  clinging,  a 
wounded  man,,  to  a  pier  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  rail- 
road bridge,  from  which  he  had  been  thrown,  after 
being  taken  prisoner  and  then  dragged  out  of 
Foulke's  Hotel  for   wanton   butchery.     John   Brown 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  205 

was  met  a  second  and  third  time  that  year  near 
Osawatomie  and  at  Lawrence.  At  the  latter  place 
I  heard  and  saw  him  in  action,  and  his  voice,  though 
a  little  sterner,  seemed  to  me  no  louder  or  harsher  in 
tone  than  when  I  first  heard  his  question  in  northern 
Kansas.  At  Lawrence,  too,  I  first  remarked  his  dis- 
tinctive walk.  His  feet  were  set  firmly  to  the  ground; 
the  whole  form  moved  steadily  onward,  never  sway- 
ing, but  walking  as  if  on  a  visible  line,  prearranged 
for  the  occasion.  Every  one  gave  way;  a  crowd 
parted  like  the  waters  when  a  strongly-driven  boat 
presses  through.  Yet  the  movement  never  seemed 
an  assertive  one,  never  left  an  impression  of  mere 
push  or  aggressiveness.  The  next  time  we  met 
was  on  the  25th  of  June,  1858,  at  a  hotel  in  Law- 
rence. In  those  two  years  he  had  aged  more  than 
Time  required.  He  was  past  fifty-six  at  the  first 
meeting,  and  had  just  passed  his  fifty-eighth  birthday,1 
when  he  was  seated  between  James  Redpath  and 
myself  at  that  dinner-table.  I  can  hardly  define  the 
difference  in  impression  that  remains  in  memory, 
unless  by  terms  which  may  seem  overstrained.  But 
I  venture  to  say  that,  in  1858,  John  Brown  looked  to 
me  as  a  "Prophet"  might  have  done;  in  1856,  he 
certainly  embodied  the  "  Fighter."  Under  no  cir- 
cumstances could  he  ever  have  appeared  common- 
place. The  heavy,  gray  beard,  almost  snow-white, 
lent  a  degree  of  dignity*  as  well  as  a  grave  pictur- 
esqueness  to  his  face  and  figure.  This  was  enhanced 
by  a  slower  movement,  manners  of  simple  distinction, 
and  a  grave,  reticent  dignity  of  speech,   which  tran- 


1  John  Brown  was  born  May  9,  1801. 


206 


JOHN     BROWN. 


scended  the  terseness  of  the  fighting  summer  days. 
This  impression  was  greatly  deepened  at  the  meeting 
had  with  him  at  Osawatomie,  in  the  August  follow- 
ing, when  by  his  direction  Kagi  gave  me  a  full  insight 
into  the  whole  enterprise,  place,  and  purpose.1 

Affairs  in  southern  Kansas,  apart  from  the  Hamil- 
ton massacre  atrocity,  were  in  a  state  of  seething  tur- 
bulence, and  had  been  so,  more  or  less  pronounced, 
ever  since  the  summer  of  1856.  In  large  degree 
southeast  Kansas,  below  the  Pottawatomie  basin,  had 
not  been  very  favorably  affected  by  the  free  state 
triumphs  of  1856.  Fort  Scott,  formerly  an  army 
post,  had  been  disposed  of  to  pro-slavery  speculators 
for  a  small  sum.  The  buildings  alone  substantial 
stone  and  frame  post  and  headquarters,  were  worth 
the  sum  given,  even  as  old  material,  while  the  reser- 
vation land  was  simply  given  away.  A  Federal  land- 
office  was  established,  and  Clark,  the  murderer  of 
Barber,  a  bold  and  violent  Missourian,  was  the  most 
active  pro-slavery  leader.  Blake  Little  was  made 
receiver.  Later,  a  superannuated  Democratic  politic- 
ian of   Michigan,    was   made   land   register    in   defer- 


1  See  Appendix  for  paper  entitled  "Some  Shadows  Before." 
"  Five  years  before,  when  tliey  first  went  to  Kansas,  the  father  and 
sons  had  a  plan  of  going  to  Louisiana,  trying  this  same  project, 
and  then  retreating  into  Texas  with  the  liberated  slaves.  Nurtured 
on  it  so  long,  for  years  sacrificing  to  it  all  the  other  objects  of  life, 
the  thought  of  its  failuie  never  crossed  their  mind;  and  it  is  an 
extraordinary  fact  that  when  the  disastrous  news  first  came  to 
North  Elba,  the  family  utterly  refused  to  believe  it,  and  were 
saved  from  suffering  by  that  incredulity  till  the  arrival  of  the  next 
weekly  mail."  Account  of  a  visit  to  the  John  Brown  household, 
November,  1859,  by  Thomas  We nt worth  Higginson. 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  207 

ence  probably  to  the  slightly  growing  strength  of  a 
presumed  sentiment  among  members  of  that  party 
who  were  originally  from  free  States.  Since  Bourbon, 
Anderson,  Allen,  McGee,  and  Coffee  counties  were 
iess  affected  than  others  by  the  violent  outbreaks  of 
1856,  as  the  border  ruffians  had  things  their  own 
way,  a  considerable  number  of  so-called  conserva- 
tive free-state  settlers — men  chiefly  from  border 
slave  or  western  States — had  taken  "  claims  "  in  the 
Osage,  Marmaton,  Neosho,  and  other  small  valleys 
of  the  counties  named.  So  also  did  the  pro-slavery 
men  from  Missouri  and  Arkansas.  Many  of  Buford's 
men  filed  upon  preemption  claims  in  that  district,  and 
generally,  too,  upon  those  from  which  other  men  had 
been  driven.  There  were  also  Indian  trust  lands 
ordered  to  be  sold  by  the  ruling  Buchanan  admin- 
istration, which,  being  located  on  the  western  border 
of  Missouri,  afforded  occasion  for  the  combining  and 
gathering  of  some  of  the  worst  elements  left  over 
from  the  savager  days  of  the  free-state  struggle. 
Later,  too,  a  few  free  colored  people  from  the  Indian 
Territory,  southwest  Missouri,  and  Arkansas,  began 
to  quietly  settle  in  this  section.  Among  them  were 
farmers  of  some  means;  all  were  quiet  and  inoffen- 
sive. The  chief  cause  of  their  appearance  was  that 
growing  ill-will  shown  in  neighborhood  feeling  and 
State  law,  by  which  they  wrere  unfavorably  affected. 
The  history  of  the  few  years  immediately  preceding 
the  slaveholder's  rebellion  is  deeply  marked  with  the 
harsh  treatment  of  this  unfortunate  class.  The  dis 
bandment  of  border-ruffian  gangs,  forced  by  the 
political  necessities  of  the  party  in  power,  gave  zest 
to   land-jobs,  claim-jumping,  and   later  to   negro-kid- 


208  JOHN    BROWN. 

napping  as  a  business,  wherever  the  more  radical 
free-state  feeling  was  not  strong  enough  to  be  a  per- 
sistent menace  to  such  action.  From  this  same  class 
came  at  a  later  day  (and  quite  as  naturally  as  they 
had  become  manstealers  from  1857  to  i860),  most  of 
the  leaders- of  the  guerilla  bands  who  infested  west- 
ern and  central  Missouri,  and  harried  the  Kansas 
border  during  the  Civil  War,  writing  in  fire  and  blood 
a  record  of  atrocity  so  fearful  that  for  the  sake  of  a 
common  nationality  it  is  better  that  no  full  record 
exists  nor  can  be  made. 

Resistance  came.  Fort  Scott,  as  shown,  became 
the  seat  of  pro-slavery  hostility,  just  in  proportion  as 
the  power  for  evil  diminished  in  other  localities.  The 
free-state  settlers,  who  had  been  driven  or  kept  out 
of  southern  Kansas  from  the  spring  of  1856  to  that 
of  1857,  begun  to  return  and  to  settle  in  that  section. 
At  once  violence  became  rampant.  The  free-state 
land  claimants  found  themselves  insulted  and  out- 
raged by  the  public  officials,  arrested  on  false  charges, 
and  in  personal  danger  whenever  they  went  to  Fort 
Scott.  Appeals  were  made  in  August  and  September, 
1857,  to  free-state  friends  at  Lawrence  and  elsewhere, 
and  volunteers  soon  appeared.  A  squatter's  tribunal 
was  organized.  It  is  not  essential  to  this  narrative  to 
give  details.  The  fact  that  the  more  violent  of  the 
Missouri  and  Buford  politicians  and  leaders  made 
their  headquarters  at  Fort  Scott  and  Paris,  while 
free-state  black  law  and  ''conservative"  Democratic 
politicians  were  numerous  at  the  county  seats  of 
other  counties.  Intensified  quarrels  and  fighting 
soon  ensued.  It  is  not  necessary  to  either  defend  or 
narrate    the    history    of   free-state    resistance.     It   is 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  209 

necessary  to  bear  in  mind,  however,  that  the  worst 
residuum  of  the  pro-slavery  force  were  in  power.  Fed- 
eral interference  was  called  for,  and  the  disturbances 
arose  from  their  usurpation  of  land  claims.  The 
more  daring  free-state  men  rallied  around  Captain 
James  Montgomery,  who,  in  the  fall  of  1857,  occupied 
the  place  which  had  fallen  the  year  before  on  John 
Brown.  His  arrest  was  ordered,  attacks  were  made 
on  his  cabin,  and  resisted.  Warrants  were  issued, 
and  finally  troops  were  sent  to  execute  the  same. 
An  attempt  was  made  by  Blake  Little,  in  December, 
1857,  to  arrest  and  break  up  the  squatter's  court.  A 
fight  ensued,  but  no  one  was  killed  and  the  marshal 
retired  without  any  prisoners.  Montgomery  opposed 
voting  for  State  officers  under  the  Lecompton  Con- 
stitution, which  was  voted  upon  "for"  and  "against" 
under  Territorial  enactment,  passed  by  the  free-state 
majority,  who,  under  the  advice  of  Senator  Henry 
Wilson  and  other  friends,  had  "stooped  to  conquer," 
and  thereby  captured  the  Territorial  legislative 
power.  The  Radicals  did  not  vote  as  a  rule.  Mont- 
gomery is  charged  with  having  forcibly  broken  up 
the  voting  at  his  precinct. 

Southern  Kansas  affairs  grew  warmer  as  1858 
lengthened.  In  April  following,  Captain  Anderson, 
with  his  squadron,  followed  Montgomery  and  his 
men  up  the  Marmaton  and  Little  Sugar  valleys  for 
the  purpose  of  arresting  them.  Montgomery,  occu- 
pying a  strong  defensible  position,  turned  and  fired 
upon  the  pursuers,  killing  one  soldier,  wounding 
another,  and  the  captain,  too.  This  is  the  first  and 
only  time  that  the  free-state  men  actually  resisted 
United  States  troops.     This,  in  all  probability,  would 

14 


2IO  JOHN    BROWN. 

not  have  been  done,  but  for  the  notorious  fact  that 
Anderson  and  his  troopers1  were  practically  a  gang  of 
pro-slavery  partisans,  not  acting  as  a  lawful  posse. 
Indeed,  the  proceedings  of  that  period  at  Fort  Scott 
and  vicinity  afford  reasonable  grounds  for  the  belief 
that  the  leading  men  in  the  pro-southern  councils, 
who  were  at  heart  disunionists /<?/-  se,  were  endeavor- 
ing by  violent  persecutions,  under  the  pretense  of 
law,  to  embroil  free-state  people  in  a  conflict  with 
United  States  authority.2  A  short  time  before  Cap- 
tain Montgomery's  cabin  was  surrounded  and 
attacked  with  firearms,  after  the  inmates  were  sup- 
posed to  have  retired  (I  was  a  guest  therein  at  the 
time),  a  supposition  which  cost  the  life  of  one  of  the 
assailants,  at  least.  About  the  same  time,  a  pro- 
slavery  occupant  of  a  Marmaton  claim,  first  settled 
on  by  a  free-state  man  (the  validity  of  whose  entry 
was  finally  favorably  decided  by  the  General  Land 
Office  on  appeal)  who  had  called  in  a  force  from  Fort 
Scott  to  drive  away  the  free-state  claimant,  on  being 
visited  by  a  posse  from  the  squatter  court,  fired  at 
once  on  those  who  knocked  and  was  himself  killed 
by  a  rifle  shot  from  Montgomery.  These  facts  are 
only  recalled  to  illustrate  the  existing  conditions  and 
to  show  how  the  "  Swamp  of  the  Swan  "  assassina- 
tions were  led  up  to  by  acts  of  rapine,  violence,  and 
resistance.  In  such  scenes  as  these,  Barclay  Coppoc, 
Jeremiah  G.  Anderson,  and  Albert  Hazlett,  begun  to 

1  A  number  of  Bu ford's  men  enlisted  as  dragoons. 

-Jeremiah  G.  Anderson  and  Albert  Hazlett,  both  emigrants  of 
the  winter  of  1856-57,  were  active  members  of  Captain  Mont- 
gomery's company.  I  was  myself  a  witness  of  many  of  these 
scenes. 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  211 

traverse  the  roads  which  led  them  to  Harper's  Ferry 
and,  for  two  of  them,  to  death  in  Virginia. 

The  promotion  of  James  W.  Denver  from  Secre- 
tary to  the  position  of  Governor,  was  first  followed 
by  renewed  efforts  to  arrest  Captain  Montgomery, 
and  whether  or  not  that  was  any  direct  embolden- 
ment  of  the  infuriated  ruffians,  the  failure  to  arrest 
was  followed  in  three  days  by  the  killing  and  wound- 
ing at  the  trading-post,  Linn  County,  of  the  eleven 
victims  of  the  Hamilton  fury  and  bloodthirstiness. 
Immediately  following,  some  arrests  were  made  in 
connection  with  the  trading-post  crime,  and  for  the 
two  preceding  assassinations  of  Denton  and  Hedrick, 
near  Fort  Scott.  The  arrested  men  were  immedi- 
ately released  at  Fort  Scott,  and  Montgomery  made, 
June  6th,  a  raid  on  the  place.  The  assassins  got 
away,  and  nothing  more  fatal  occurred  than  an  ex- 
change of  shots.  The  partisan  support  by  the  pro- 
slavery  court  seems  to  have  alarmed  the  Territorial 
executive.  Governor  Denver  moved  on  Bourbon 
County.1 

Returning  to  John  Brown's  movements,  my  journal 


1  Governor  Denver  left  Lawrence  June  gth  with  Charles  Robin- 
son, Judge  John  Wright,  A.  D.  Richardson  {Boston  Journal), 
Lewis  M.  Tappan,  Edmund  Babb  {Cincinnati  Gazette),  and  others, 
for  Fort  Scott.  Montgomery  joined  the  party  at  Moueka.  The 
Governor's  terms  of  peace  are  thus  reported  : 

i.  The  withdrawal  of  United  States  troops  from  Fort  Scott. 
2.  The  election  of  new  county  officers  in  Bourbon  County.  3.  The 
stationing  of  troops  along  the  Missouri  frontier  to  protect  the 
settlers  of  the  Territory  from  invasion.  4,  The  suspension  of  the 
execution  of  all  old  writs  until  their  legitimacy  is  authenticated  be- 
fore   the    proper  tribunal.      5.   The    abandonment    of    the  field  by 


212  JOHN     BROWN. 

states  that  he  remained  in  Lawrence  from  his  arrival 
on  the  25th  of  June  to  the  morning  of  the  27th,  when, 
with  Kagi,  the  only  one  of  his  party  who  then  accom- 
panied him,  he  left  for  Osawatomie.  By  invitation  I 
afterwards  visited  him  at  the  house  of  his  brother-in- 
law,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Adair.1  A  letter  to  "  F.  B.  Sanborn, 
and  Friends  at  Boston  and  Worcester,"  bearing  dates 
July  20th,  the  23d,  and  the  6th  of  August,  gives  an 
account  of  his  movements.  I  reproduce  in  part 
from  Mr.  Sanborn's  volume  the  essential  details.  The 
address  is  "  Missouri  Line  (on  Kansas  Side),"  and  it 
states  that  "  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."  The  ten 
men  were  his  son  Owen,  John  Henry  Kagi,  Aaron 
Dwight  Stevens,  Charles  Plummer  Tidd,  William 
Henry  Leeman,  George  B.  Gill,  of  the  original  Kan- 
sas-Springdale,  Iowa,  party,  with  four  others,  were 
men  who  escaped  with  their  lives  from  Hamilton's 
murderous  arms.  These  were  the  two  Hairgroves, 
the  blacksmith,  Snyder,  and  John  Mickel  or  Michael. 
The  Captain  assumed  the  name  of  "  Shubel  Morgan," 


Montgomery  and  his  men,  and  all   other  parties   of  armed   men, 
whether  free-state  or  pro-slavery. 

Montgomery  immediately  accepted  these  terms.  At  Fort 
Scott,  Governor  Denver  and  Judge  Wright  made  speeches.  The 
pro-slavery  men  were  dissatisfied  with  the  first,  and  threatened 
violence  over  the  latter.  The  Governor  left  on  June  16th;  Mont- 
gomery then  disbanded;  the  United  States  troops  left  Fort  Scott, 
and  Captain  Weaver,  United  States  Army,  was  stationed  on  the 
Missouri  border  in  Linn  County. — "Annals  of  Kansas,"  D.  H. 
Wilder.     (The  truce  was  not  of  long  duration,  however.) 

1  See  Appendix  for  my  paper,  "Some  Shadows  Before." 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  213 

and  fourteen  persons  signed  the  roll  of  his  new  com- 
pany.1 Captain  Brown  vividly  described  the  prevail- 
ing feeling  of  terror,  when  he  said:  "  Deserted  farms 
and  dwellings  lie  in  all  directions  for  some  miles 
along  the  line,  and  the  remaining  inhabitants  watch 
every  one  moving  about  with  anxious  jealousy  and 
vigilance."  "Any  little  affair,"  continued  the  Cap- 
tain, "  may  open  the  quarrel  afresh.  ...  I  have 
concealed  the  fact  of  my  presence  pretty  much,  lest 
it  should  tend  to  increase  excitement;  but  it  is  getting 
leaked  out,  and  will  soon  be  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-anx- 
ious." He  then  refers  to  misrepresentations  in  the 
New  York  Tribune,  under  date  from  West  port,  Mis- 
souri, as  to  the  existence  of  an  alleged  fort,  called 
"  Snyder's."  It  was  said,  in  the  Westport  letter,  that 
it  was  "  a  house  built  in  the  gorge  of  two  mounds, 
and  flanked  by  rock  walls,  a  fit  place  for  robbers  and 
murderers."  This  was  the  place  the  Captain  was 
occupying,  and  he  thus  described  it:  "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,  yet  it  is  called  a  '  fortification.'  It  is  to-day 
just  as  it  was  the  19th  of  May, — a  little  pent-up  shop, 
containing  Snyder's  tools  (what  have  not  been  carried 
off),  all    covered    with    rust, — and    had    never    been 


1  See  Appendix  for  Enrollment  and  Rules  of  the  "  Shubel 
Morgan"  Company.  These  rules  should  be  carefully  read,  as 
expressing  the  spirit  of  all  John  Brown's  movements. 


214  JOHN     BROWN. 

thought  of  as  a  '  fortification  '  before  the  poor  man 
attempted  to  use  it  in  his  own  and  his  brother's  and 
his  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." 

The  Captain's  letter,  under  date  of  July  23d, 
describes  a  renewal  of  excitement,  threatening  an 
attack  on  a  free-state  Missourian,  named  Bishop. 
The  letter  says:  "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." 

In  the  closing  paragraph,  under  date  of  August  6th, 
John  Brown  describes  his  exposures  and  privations, 
being  down  with  the  ague,  having  "  lain  every  night 
without  shelter,  suffering  from  cold  rains  and  heavy 
dews,  together  with  the  oppressive  heat  of  the  days." 
The  armed  posse  stationed  on  the  line  by  Gov.  Den- 
ver, moved  to  and  encamped  on  the  quarter  section 
adjoining  Snyder's,  which  the  Captain  was  occupying. 
He  wrote:  "Several  of  them  immediately  sought 
opportunity  to  tender  their  service  to  me  secretly.  I, 
however,  advised  them  to  remain  where  they  were. 
Soon  after  I  came  on  the  line,  my  right  name  was  re- 
ported, but  the  majority  did  not  credit  the  report." 

Shortly  after  this  last  date  he  returned  to  Mr. 
Adair's,  where  I  found  him  early  in  September,  still 
quite    feeble    from    the    effects   of    congestive    chills. 


RESCUE    OF   MISSOURI    SLAVES.  215 

During  this  time  the  Lecompton  Constitution  elec- 
tion, as  already  reported,  came  off,  creating  fresh  dis- 
order and  bringing  warrants  with  posses  from  Fort 
Scott  to  arrest  Montgomery  and  his  men.  It  must  be 
borne  in  mind  that  if  there  were  dissensions  as  to  the 
policy  of  the  free-state  people,  there  were  also  very 
ragged-edged  ones  within  the  pro-slavery  camp. 
From  the  first,  as  already  pointed  out,  there  was  a 
distinct  and  keen-witted  faction  determined  to  force 
their  issue  to  the  verge  of  destructive  fight.  They 
were  playing  "  to  fire  the  Southern  heart  "  with  Kan- 
sas free-state  outrages,  just  as  twelve  months  or  so 
later,  Governor  Wise,  of  Virginia,  was  doing  with  the 
Harper's  Ferry  prisoners  and  material  in  his  hands. 
The  object  was  disunion,  pure  and  simple.  And  at 
this  time,  the  movement  centered  in  Fort  Scott.  The 
leaders  still  held  Federal  offices,  and  were  able  to  so 
harry  the  free-state  farmers  as  to  force  them  to 
gi eater  lengths.  Then  there  were  the  loose  and  irre- 
sponsible on  both  sides.  Those  of  the  Missouri  bor- 
der turned  kidnappers,  like  William  C.  Quantrill 
(afterwards  known  as  guerilla  and  wholesale  assassin), 
and  murderers  like  the  Hamiltons;  while  on  the  free- 
state  side  were  men  ready  to  risk  their  own  lives  and 
the  peace  of  the  community,  to  free  a  negro  and  con- 
vey a  pro-slavery  horse  or  mule  to  their  own  use  or 
profit.  John  Brown  and  James  Montgomery  are  not 
to  be  so  recorded,  though  at  times  men  served  with 
them  both  who  were  adepts  at  such  actions.  The 
essential  difference,  however,  was  that  the  one  would 
help  a  slave  to  escape,  even  if  they  would  not  steal  a 
horse,  while  the  other  type  would  rather  murder  a 
free-state  man  than  kidnap  a  negro,  even  into  bond- 


2l6  JOHN    BROWN. 

age,  and  the  latter  was  their  usual  avocation.  Politi- 
cally, then,  a  considerable  element  in  the  pro-slavery 
party  within  Kansas  were  willing  to  surrender  the 
idea  of  a  slave  State  for  the  maintenance  of  Demo- 
cratic power.  Mr.  Buchanan  was  advised  by  these 
shrewder  men,  the  Stringfellows,  Eastin,  Henderson 
&  Co.,  to  let  the  extreme  Southern  wing  go,  and  build 
up  a  Northern  or  black-law  Democratic  party.  He 
would  not  do  it,  and  after  him  came  the  deluge  !  It 
is  not  possible,  then,  to  understand  the  situation  in  the 
fall  of  1858,  without  keeping  these  issues  in  view. 
John  Brown  understood  and  sought  to  use  them.  To 
a  certain  extent  he  did,  acting  only  so  far  as  it  could 
aid  the  spread  of  growing  hostility  to  the  slave-power. 
Members  of  his  party  were  more  active  than  himself. 
Stevens  was  several  times  threatened  with  attack  at 
Snyder's.  He  refused  to  do  anything  but  fight,  and,  by 
his  bold  attitude  with  a  few  men,  caused  the  retreat  of 
a  larger  body.  Kagi  was  with  Montgomery  a  good 
deal  of  the  time.  In  the  beginning  of  November,  the 
latter's  cabin  was  fired  into.  Kagi  was  a  guest  at  the 
time  and  assisted  in  its  successful  defense.  Tidd 
was  also  on  hand.  Gill  was  mainly  with  the  Captain. 
Stevens  held  "  Snyder's  Fort."  Jeremiah  G.  Ander- 
son and  Albert  Hazlett  were  usually  under  Mont- 
gomery's command.  The  former  was  several  times 
in  arrest.  Leeman  remained  with  Stevens.  The 
Captain  was  chiefly  at  Osawatomie  or  Moneka,  visit- 
ing with  the  Wattles  at  the  latter  place.  The  Fort 
Scott  pro-slavery  policy  culminated  on  the  25th  of 
November  in  the  arrest  and  chaining  of  a  farmer 
named  B.  M.  Rice,  under  charge  of  murder,  but 
whose  real  offense  was  giving,  as  alleged,  information 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  217 

to  Capt.  James  Montgomery.  A  meeting  was  called 
on  the  30th  by  the  free-state  people  of  Bourbon 
County,  Montgomery  attending.  The  sheriff  started 
to  arrest  "  Old  Brown  "  on  the  same  day.  He  was 
living  on  the  Snyder  place  with  four  of  his  men.  The 
Captain  had  left  for  Osawatomie  unaware  of  this  pro- 
posed call.  One  hundred  men  were  in  the  sheriff's 
posse,  and  on  their  arrival  at  "  Snyder's,"  a  demand 
for  surrender  was  made.  Stevens  declared  he  would 
fight  all  of  them,  and  prepared  with  three  others  to 
resist  Sheriff  McDaniel,  who  retired  in  good  order. 
The  next  eighteen  days  were  filled  with  excitement, 
ending  on  the  16th  of  December,  with  Montgomery's 
capture  of  Fort  Scott,  rescue  of  Ben  Rice,  and  the 
killing  of  Blake  Little,  the  pro-southern  leader. 
Kagi,  Hazlett,  Tidd,  J.  G.  Anderson,  of  the  Harper's 
Ferry  party,  were  certainly  active  in  this  affair. 

For  some  days  there  was  a  lull,  and  then  came  a 
startling  event,  which  I  shall  leave  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal actors  therein,  George  B.  Gill,  to  describe.  In 
letters  to  me,  recently  revised,  he  says: 

"  We  occupied  a  log  building  on  a  claim  owned  by  Mont- 
gomery's mother-in-law  on  the  Little  Sugar  creek,  and  but  a 
short  distance  from  his  own  dwelling.  Our  family  consisted  of 
Brown,  Kagi,  Tidd,  and  Stevens — Montgomery  was  with  us 
occasionally  at  night.  We  threw  up  some  earth  as  a  barri- 
cade on  the  outside,  and  made  a  few  concealed  loopholes 
between  the  logs  in  the  house  and  called  it  a  fort.  On  the 
13th  of  November  Montgomery,  with  his  friends,  our  little 
company  included,  visited  Paris,  the  county  seat  of  Linn,  in 
search  of  a  supposed  indictment  said  to  have  been  found  by 
the  Grand  Jury.  Brown  accompanied  us  to  the  outskirts  of 
the  town,  saying  that  he  would  hold  himself  in  readiness  if 
needed.    Later,  Captain  Brown,  accompanied  by  myself,  visited 


2l8  JOHN     BROWN. 

Osawatomie.  We  returned  December  ist.  During  our 
absence  a  demonstration  was  made  against  our  fort  by  Mound 
City  parties.  This  demonstration  emanated  from  a  public 
meeting  held  for  the  avowed  purpose  of  creating  sentiment 
against  Montgomery.  On  the  16th  of  December  Montgomery 
invaded  Fort  Scott  and  released  Ben  Rice,  in  which  melee  a 
deputy  United  States  marshal,  J.  Blake  Little,  was  killed. 
Brown's  party  participated,  but  Brown  himself  remained  at 
the  Little  Sugar  creek  rendezvous. 

"  Returning  from  Fort  Scott,  we  stopped  at  a  settlement  on 
the  Little  Osage.  With  the  exception  of  Jerry  Anderson,  I 
only  remember  the  names  of  two  of  the  residents  of  that 
locality.  One  was  Captain  Bain,  the  other  was  a  brother 
of  Jerry  Anderson.  On  the  Sunday  following  the  expedition 
to  Fort  Scott,  as  I  was  scouting  down  the  line,  I  ran  across  a 
colored  man,  whose  ostensible  purpose  was  the  selling  of 
brooms.  He  soon  solved  the  problem  as  to  the  propriety  of 
making  a  confidant  of  me,  and  I  found  that  his  name  was  Jim 
Daniels ;  that  his  wife,  self,  and  babies  belonged  to  an  estate, 
and  were  to  be  sold  at  an  administrator's  sale  in  the  immediate 
future.  His  present  business  was  not  the  selling  of  brooms 
particularly,  but  to  find  help  to  get  himself,  family,  and  a  few 
friends  in  the  vicinity  away  from  these  threatened  conditions. 
Daniels  was  a  fine-looking  mulatto.  I  immediately  hunted  up 
Brown,  and  it  was  soon  arranged  to  go  the  following  night 
and  give  what  assistance  we  could.  I  am  sure  that  Brown,  in 
his  mind,  was  just  then  waiting  for  something  to  turn  up  ;  or, 
in  his  way  of  thinking,  was  expecting  or  hoping  that  God 
would  provide  him  a  basis  of  action.  When  this  came,  he 
hailed  it  as  heaven-sent.  Arrangements  were  made  for  Brown 
and  his  party  to  visit  Hicklan's  (the  name  of  Daniels's  owner) 
and  others  on  the  north  side  of  the  Little  Osage,  Missouri, 
while  Stevens  was  to  take  a  small  party  and  bring  in  one  or 
more  applicants  from  the  south  side.  Brown's  party  numbered 
about  a  dozen.  Doctor,  afterwards  Colonel,  Jenisson, 
"  Pickles,"  a  reckless  young  fellow  of  the  section,  and  a  couple 
of  Dr.  Ayres's  sons,  being  among  the  number.     J.  G.  Anderson 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  219 

Ckilled  at  Harper's  Ferry)  was  also  with  Brown.  Stevens 
was  accompanied  by  Tidd,  Hazlett,  and  others,  to  the  number 
of  eight.  On  the  night  of  the  20th  of  December  we  wended 
our  way  slowly  down  into  Missouri,  first  stopping  at  Hicklan's, 
with  whom  Daniels  and  family  were  staying.  Hicklan,  I 
think,  had  an  interest  in  the  estate,  his  wife  being  one  of  the 
heirs,  but  they  were  living  on  the  farm  at  this  time  simply  as 
tenants.  It  required  a  nice  discrimination  to  tell  his  individual 
property  from  that  belonging  to  the  estate.  All  of  the  personal 
property  belonging  to  the  estate  that  he  could  find,  Brown 
intended  to  take  as  being  owned  by  the  slaves,  having  surely 
been  bought  with  their  labor.  In  his  view,  they  were  entitled 
to  all  the  proceeds  of  their  labor.  He  would  have  taken  the 
real  estate  as  well  if  he  had  the  facilities  for  moving  it  across 
the  country  to  Canada.  He  reasoned  that  they,  the  slaves, 
were  the  creators  of  the  whole,  and* were  entitled  to  it,  not  only 
as  their  own,  but  from  necessity,  for  they  must  have  a  convey- 
ance and  also  something"  to  dispose  of  in  order  to  raise  funds 
to  defray  the  expenses  of  the  long  overland  trip.  Captain 
Brown  had  no  means  of  his  own  to  do  this  for  them. 

"  Daniels  was  intrusted  with  the  arrangements  on  the  outside, 
as  he  was  apparently  the  soul  of  honor,  and  a  good  friend  of 
Hicklan,  who,  I  believe,  was  a  very  fair  man  and,  perhaps,  a 
very  good  one.  Daniels  was  very  careful  that  nothing  belong- 
ing to  Hicklan  should  be  taken  or  interfered  with.  It  was  also 
Brown's  intention  that  nothing,  if  possible,  should  be  touched 
that  did  not  in  his  estimation  belong  to  the  slaves. 

'•  I  was  intrusted  with  this  matter  in  the  house,  and  I  then 
declared  that  Hicklan's  effects  should  not  be  touched.  I 
soon  discovered  that  watches  and  other  articles  were  being 
taken  by  unscrupulous  members  of  our  party.  Brown  caused 
an  immediate  disgorgement.  Hicklan  himself  was  consulted 
as  to  what  property  belonged  to  him  and  what  belonged  to  the 
estate;  his  word  being  invariably  relied  upon.  If  he  had  any 
property  taken  it  was  by  some  sneak  thief  in  defiance  of  the 
most  explicit  orders  and  our  utmost  care.  The  party  was 
hastily  gathered  and  the  selections  were  not  perfect. 


220  JOHN     BROWN. 

"  From  the  Lawrence  estate  were  taken  Daniels's  wife,  with 
their  two  children  and  two  other  chattels  ;  also  a  yoke  of  cattle, 
two  horses,  a  large  old  Conestago  wagon,  beds  and  bedding, 
with  clothes  and  personal  effects. 

"  From  Hicklan's  we  went  direct  to  LaRue's,  whose  house 
was  surrounded.  We  found  them  in  bed  and  asleep.  The  old 
man  being  awakened  with  the  usual  '  Hallo' ;  which,  when  re- 
plied to  by  '  What's  wanted,'  was  answered  by  the  old  Captain 
stating  the  business  thus  tersely:  'We  have  come  after  your 
negroes  and  their  properly;  will  you  surrender  or  fight  ?  ' 

"  I  think  that  they  had  been  rather  looking  for  such  a  com- 
pany and  were  prepared  to  receive  us,  as  we  found  in  a  few 
minutes  that  there  were  several  men  inside  with  plenty  of  arms. 
The  immediate  reply  was  '  We'll  fight.'  '  All  right,'  said 
Captain  Brown,  'we'll  smoke  you  out,  then.' 

"This  would  have  been  attempted  forthwith,  as  there  was 
plenty  of  fire  in  the  negro  quarters,  had  they  not  very  quickly 
reconsidered  their  decision  and  surrendered.  From  this  place 
was  taken  five  more  negroes,  some  clothing,  bedding,  and 
other  personal  effects,  another  yoke  of  cattle,  wagon  and 
several  horses.  The  horses  taken  from  LaRue's  were  probably 
never  seen  by  Brown.  He  heard  of  them  afterwards,  no  doubt, 
but  that  would  be  about  all.  Jenisson  undoubtedly  rode  one 
of  them  away.  Two  or  three  of  the  white  men  were  carried 
with  us  several  miles  into  Kansas  and  then  released,  with  the 
suggestion  from  Brown  that  '  You  can  follow  us  just  as  soon 
as  you  like.'  One  of  them  remarked  in  reply,  'I'll  follow 
home;  that  is  just  about  what  I'll  do.'  It  was  a  very  cold 
night,  but  to  our  contrabands  the  conditions  produced  a  genial 
warmth  not  indorsed  by  the  thermometer.  One  of  the  women 
pitied  '  poor  marsa  !  he's  in  a  bad  fix  ;  hogs  not  killed,  corn  not 
shucked,  and  niggers  all  gone.'  One,  who  was  driving  the 
oxen,  inquired  the  distance  to  Canada.  He  was  told  that  it 
was  only  about  fifteen  hundred  miles.  '  Oh,  golly ;  we  'uns 
never  get  dar  before  spring  ! '  he  exclaimed  as  he  brought  the 
whip  down  on  the  oxen,  shouting  'Git  up  dar,  buck;  bung 
along!'     Daniels  himself  was  very  thoughtful,  realizing  to  the 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  22  1 

fullest  extent  the  clangers  of  the  situation.     The  others  seemed 
to  have  implicit  confidence  in  their  protectors. 

"On  meeting  the  other  party  in  the  morning  we  learned  that 
they  had  succeeded  in  getting  the  contraband  '  Jane  '  that  they 
had  gone  after,  and  that  Stevens,  much  to  Brown's  sorrow, 
had  killed  Mr.  Cruise,  the  so-called  owner  of  Jane.     The  inci- 
dent was  told  to  me  by  several  of  the  party  immediately  after. 
They  gained  access  to  Cruise's  house  by  representing  them- 
selves  to    be   pro-slavery    friends.      After    gaining    entrance 
Stevens  informed  them  of  their  business,  and  demanded  his 
surrender,  when  he  attempted  to  draw  a  revolver,  which  was 
conveniently  near.     One  of  his  children  had  been  playing  with 
a   ribbon   or    string   and    had   created    an   obstruction,  or  an 
entanglement,  which  gave  Stevens  an  advantage  and  he  saved 
himself  by  killing  Cruise  at  the  first  shot.     I  had   no   personal 
knowledge  of  Cruise,  but  he  was  represented  as  one  of  the  most 
active  enemies  of  the  free-state  cause,  and  as  having  accumu- 
lated much  property  through  raids  into  Kansas.     As  reported, 
he  was  absolutely   notorious.     His   wife   was   seemingly   not 
much  surprised,  for  she  said  that  she  had  often  told  him  that  if 
he  didn't  behave  himself  he  would  get  killed  sooner  or   later. 
The  negroes  were  taken  first  to  Augustus  Wattles's,  from  there 
to  Mendenhall's  and  Adair's,  close  to  Osawatomie,  but  were 
finally  landed  in  some  cabins,  close  to  Garnett,  under  the  care 
of  Doctor  (afterwards  Major-General)  James  G.  Blount.     We 
then  returned  to  Captain  Bain's,  and,  in  anticipation  of  being 
hunted    by   the    Missourians,    Captain    Brown    commenced   a 
system  of  earthworks  in  a  naturally  inaccessible  position  on 
the  Little  Osage,  close  to  Bain's  house.    The  position,  properly 
defended,  would  have  been  well-nigh  impregnable,  and  could 
have  been    held    by  a  handful  against  a  small  army,  without 
artillery.     Rumors  of  all  kinds  were  thick  and  warlike,  and, 
while  waiting  for  the  Missourians,  a  friendly  messenger  from 
higher  up  the  Osage  reached  our  camp  in  the  night  with  the 
information   that   the   conservative    free-state    men,    under   a 
prominent  local  leader,  were  organizing  to  either  kill  Captain 
Brown   or   hand   him   over   to   the   Missourians.      The    State 


222  JOHN     BROWN. 

authorities  there  had  by  this  time  offered  a  reward  for  him  and 
his  men. 

"  Brown,  in  the  estimation  of  these  free-state  men,  -had 
exceeded  his  privileges  by  invading  Missouri  and  interfering 
with  the  divine  institution  of  slavery.  Their  code  confined  all 
their  motions  to  the  defensive.  Missouri  might  invade  Kansas, 
but  Kansas  must  not  invade  Missouri;  pro-slavery  men  might 
cross  the  line  and  steal  from,  harass,  or  murder  free  state 
settlers,  yet  free-state  men  must  not  retaliate  by  crossing  the 
line,  and  must  be  very  careful  not  to  insult  the  slave  interest.1 
Neither  Missourians  nor  •  conservative '  free-state  men,  how- 
ever, came  to  trouble  us.  The  company  up  the  Osage  dis- 
covered that  another  company  had  formed  in  the  rear,  which 
would  have  given  them  especial  attention  had  they  moved 
towards  us.  Besides,  Montgomery  was  still  a  power  behind 
the  throne ;  apparently  out  of  the  arena,  yet  ready  in  case  of 
need   to  give   Brown  his  active  support.     Brown  at  this  time 


1  As  one  result  of  all  these  conflicting  conditions  and  disturb- 
ances, an  agreement  was  entered  into  after  a  conference  at 
Moneka,  Mr.  Wattles  acting  as  peacemaker.  It  was  at  this  time, 
when  Mr.  Wattles  and  other  friends  urged  upon  the  Captain  that 
Kansas  was  too  greatly  harassed,  that  the  latter  replied  :  "  He 
would  soon  remove  the  seat  of  the  trouble  elsewhere."  The 
following  is  a  copy  of  the  agreement  made  : 

"  We,  the  undersigned  citizens  of  Kansas  and  Missouri,  Jan. 
I,   1859: 

"  1.  All  criminal  proceedings  for  any  action  connected  with 
politics  to  be  quashed. 

"2.  All  active  political  men,  who  have  been  'forcibly  driven 
from  the  Territory  for  their  crimes  ...  to  remain  away.' 
This  did  not  apply  to  those  '  voluntarily  '  leaving  *  through  fear.' 

"  3.   No  troops  or  posse  to  be  sent  out. 

"  4.  All  parties  shall  in  good  faith  discontinue  acts  of  robbery, 
theft,  or  violence  of  any  kind — on  account  of  '  political  differ- 
ences.' 

Augustus  Wattles,  John  Brown,  William  Aulderson, 
James  Montgomery,  O.  P.  Bain,  and  others. 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  223 

wrote  his  famous  parallels,1  and  was  exceedingly  anxious  to 
move  north  at  the  safest  time  for  traveling"  with  the  colored 
people.  It  was  found  impossible  to  move  them  in  considera- 
tion of  Daniels's  wife,  she  having  given  birth  to  a  boy,  who 
was  christened  'John  Brown'  Daniels.  Dr.  Blount,  who 
had  attended  her,  began  to  grow  weary  under  the  care,  and 
sent  a  messenger  to  have  them  moved  as  soon  as  possible. 

"It  must  have  been  on  or  about  the  20th  of  January,  1859,  that 
we  left  Garnett.  Captain  Brown  and  myself  were  alone  with 
the  colored  folks." 

Mr.  Gill  then  mentions  Ottawa  Jones's,  Brown's  Indian 
friend,  Major  Abbott's,  and  a  Mr.  Grover's,  near  Lawrence, 
as  some  of  their  stopping-places.  From  Grover's  point  John 
Brown  visited  Lawrence,  sold  the  oxen,  which  were  probably 
butchered  there,  and  hired  a  team  or  two  to  help  the  party 
through  as  far  as  Tabor,  one  of  the  teams  eventually  going  as 
far  as  Springdale,  Iowa.  At  Lawrence  the  old  man  arranged 
his  finances,  mostly  from  the  sale  of  the  cattle  however.2 

"  The  colored  folks  cooked,"  continues  Mr.  Gill,  "a  supply  of 
provisions,  mostly  obtained  through  the  generosity  of  the 
Grovers  and  Abbotts.  I  remained  with  the  colored  folks  while 
Brown  attended  to  his  business  in  town.  We  left  Grover's  on 
the  evening  of  the  28th  of  January,  I  still  being  guide  and  guard, 
riding  a  fine  stallion,  which  Brown  had  given  Hazlett  a  forty 
acre  land  warrant  for.  The  land  warrant  Gerrit  Smith  had 
sent  Brown,  and  the  stallion  Hazlett  had  picked  up  clown  in 
Missouri.  Brown  afterwards  sold  it  at  auction,  in  Cleveland, 
Ohio.  About  midnight,  and  somewhere  opposite  Lecompton, 
on  our  way  to  Topeka,  I  noticed  men  behind  a  fence.  Of  course 
I  could  not  tell  how  many.  Going  to  the  wagon  in  which  the 
old  man  rode,  I  acquainted  him  with  the  fact.  He  was  dozing 
when  I  spoke,  but  my  news  woke  him  up.     He  told  me  to  keep 


1  See  Appendix. 

2  It  was  at  this  time  that  Captain  Brown  had  his  last  interview, 
and  most  remarkable  interview,  with  William  A.  Phillips.  (See 
Appendix.) 


224  JOHN     BROWN. 

a  good  lookout.  No  one  troubled  us,  however,  but  I  found  out 
afterwards  from  some  prisoners  we  took  at  Holton,  that  they 
had  actually  ambushed  us,  but  could  not  conceive  of  ours  being 
the  outfit  that  they  were  looking  for,  until  it  was  too  late,  no 
oxen,  no  guards,  or  if  there  were  guards  they  were  behind  and 
of  an  unknown  quantity,  and  it  might  be  unsafe  to  stop  us,  or 
it  might  be  a  stragetic  movement  of  some  kind  to  take  them  in. 
They  waited  to  see  and  missed  us.  At  Topeka,  Stevens  joined 
us,  and  I  stopped  to  rest  with  John  Ritchie.  On  the  29th  the 
fugitives  passed  through  and  w'ere  stopped  a  little  north  of 
Holton,  on  what  was  then  known  as  Spring  Creek.  A  mes- 
senger was  hurried  back  by  Mr.  Wasson,  living  there,  to 
Topeka,  and  Col.  Ritchie  quickly  raised  a  force,  reaching  Holton 
in  the  afternoon  of  the  31st,  We  found  Brown  and  Stevens 
with  the  colored  folks  and  teamsters  in  log  houses  with  one 
prisoner.  We  immediately  organized  and  advanced  towards 
the  ford  or  crossing  which  was  in  possession  of  the  supposed 
posse  who  were  drilling  on  its  banks.  The  stream  was  very 
high  and  almost  unfordable.  We  succeeded  in  crossing,  how- 
ever, and  taking  several  prisoners  without  any  one  getting  hurt. 
This  was  known  as  the  Battle  of  the  Spurs.  The  piisoners  we 
kept  a  day  or  two  and  then  allowed  them  to  go  home  on  foot. 
It  was  these  prisoners  that  it  was  reported  were  made  by 
Brown  to  kneel  and  pray.  There  was  no  truth  in  this  what- 
ever, as  I  guarded  the  prisoners  myself.  One  of  the  prisoners, 
to  show  his  bravado,  commenced  to  swear  as  only  a  first-class 
expert  could  do.  The  old  man  hearing  him  said, '  Tut,  tut,  you 
are  not  doing  right,  for  if  there  is  a  God,  it  is  wrong  to  speak 
His  name  in  that  way ;  if  there  is  none  it  is  certainly  very  foolish.' 
"  One  of  our  boys  also  undertook  to  show  his  bravery  by 
abusing  the  prisoners.  The  Captain  read  him  a  lecture  on 
the  cowardice  of  insulting  a  man  unable  to  defend  himself. 
Some  of  the  Topeka  party  accompanied  us  to  Tabor,  Iowa. 
We  understood  at  this  time  that  troops  were  in  our  rear  in 
Kansas,  and  that  there  probably  would  be  squads  of  armed  and 
organized  parties  to  either  kill,  arrest,  or  otherwise  retard  our 
advance.     We  stopped  over  night  at  a  Nebraska  Indian  settle- 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  225 

ment  (the  Otoes),  and  slept  in  their  houses.  In  the  morning 
the  river  had  risen,  and  the  ice  floated  free  from  each  shore. 
We  felled  trees  and  bridged  from  the  shore  to  the  ice,  drawing 
our  wagons  over  by  hand  and  leading  the  horses.  Previous  to 
passing  through  Nebraska  City,  I  had,  in  consequence  of  the 
cold,  walked  behind  the  train.  Being  in  quite  a  crippled  con- 
dition, I  got  some  distance  behind  ;  or  it  is  possible  that 
the  drivers  were  hurrying  up,  as  it  was  growing  dark.  At  any 
rate,  I  found  myself  intercepted  by  three  scouts.  In  my  efforts 
to  throw  them  off,  I  claimed  to  be  traveling  south,  which  I  suc- 
ceeded in  doing,  but  it  delayed  my  getting  into  the  city  until 
about  ten  o'clock.  Our  folks  had  then  crossed  on  the  ice  and 
passed  on,  I  stopped  over  night  with  Kagi's  brother-in-law, 
Mr.  Mayhew,  but  had  some  difficulty  in  rinding  him,  having 
had  to  inquire  some.  A  letter  from  there  shortly  afterwards 
stated  that  I  had  not  been  gone  the  next  morning  more  than 
fifteen  minutes,  before  the  house  was  surrounded  by  about  fifty 
men,  being  a  marshal's  posse  in  search  of  us.  Arriving  at 
Dr.  Blanchard's,  midway,  perhaps,  between  Nebraska  City, 
at  which  place  Brown  and  party  had  stopped,  I  found  that  the 
posse  had  preceded  me,  and  searched  thoroughly,  even  moving 
bookcases  and  cupboards  out  from  the  wall,  to  see  that  there 
were  no  secret  recesses  to  hold  underground  travelers.  How  I 
missed  coming  into  contact  with  them,  or  how  Brown's  party 
missed  them,  can  only  be  accounted  for  on  the  supposition  that 
different  roads  were  traveled.  On  the  night  of  the  fifth  of 
February,  1859,  we  arrived  at  Tabor,  where  we  stayed  until  the 
nth.  At  this  place,  meetings  were  held,  and  resolutions 
passed,  denouncing  Brown,  his  party,  and  actions.  Yet  Tabor 
had  been  the  starting-point  for  the  free-state  movements  in 
western  Iowa,  and  the  people  continued  to  aid  us. 

"  Leaving  that  place  on  the  nth,  we  took  up  our  line  of  march 
for  Springdale,  stopping  at  Toole's  the  night  of  the  12th,  Lewis's 
Mills  the  13th,  Porter's  tavern,  Grove  City,  the  14th,  Dalman- 
utha,  the  15th,  at  Murray's,  Aurora,  on  the  16th,  Jordan's  on 
the  17th,  and,  about  noon  on  the  ^ 8th,  passed  through  Des  Moines 
City,  stopping  quite   a  while  in  the  streets,  Kagi   hunting  up 


226  JOHN    BROWN. 

Editor  Teesdale,  of  the  Register,  an  acquaintance  of  his  ;  he 
also  proved  to  be  an  old  acquaintance  of  Brown.  Mr.  Tees- 
dale  paid  our  ferriage  across  the  Des  Moines  River.  On  the 
night  of  the  18th  we  stopped  at  Hawley's,  on  the  19th  at  Dick- 
erson's,  and  on  the  20th  reached  Grinnell,  at  which  place  our 
welcome  was  enthusiastic,  Mr.  J.  B.  Grinnell,  afterwards  in 
Congress,  personally  superintending  the  reception.1  On  the 
25th  we  reached  Springdale,  going  through  Iowa  City  some 
time  during  the  forenoon.     No  efforts  having  been  made  to 


1  Reception  of  Brown  and  Party  at  Grinnell,  Iowa.  [In 
the  handwriting  of  Captain  Brown  is  the  following  memoranda 
now  among  the  records  of  the  Kansas  State  Historical  Society  :] 

"  1.   Whole  party  and  teams  kept  for  two  days  free  of  cost. 

"  2.   Sundry  articles  of  clothing  given  to  the  captives. 

"  3.   Bread,  meat,  cake,  pies,  etc.,  prepared  for  or.r  journey. 

"  4.  Full  houses  for  two  nights  in  succession,  at  which  meetings 
Brown  and  Kagi  spoke  and  were  loudly  cheered,  and  fully  in- 
dorsed. Three  Congregational  clergymen  attended  the  meeting 
on  Sabbath  evening  (notice  of  which  was  given  out  from  the  pul- 
pit); all  of  them  look  part  in  justifying  our  course,  and  in  urging 
for  contributions  in  our  behalf.  There  was  no  dissenting  speaker 
present  at  either  meeting.  Mr.  Grinnell  spoke  at  length,  and  has 
since  labored  to  secure  us  a  free  and  safe  conveyance  to  Chicago, 
and  effected  it. 

"  5.   Contributions  in  cash  amounting  to  $26.50. 

"6.  Last,  but  not  least,  public  thanksgiving  to  Almighty  God, 
offered  by  Mr.  Giitmell,  in  behalf  of  the  whole  company,  for  His 
great  mercy  and  protecting  care,  with  prayers  for  a  continuance 
of  these  Blessings. 

"  As  the  action  of  Tabor  friends  has  been  published  in  the  news- 
papers by  some  of  her  people  (as  I  suppose),  would  not  friend 
Gaston,  or  some  other  friend,  give  publicity  to  the  above? 

"  Respectfully  your  friend, 

"  John  Brown. 

"  P.  S. — Our  reception  here  among  the  Quaker  friends  has 
been  most  cordial.  Yours  iruly,  J.  Bf 

"  Springfield,  Iowa,  26th  Feb. ,  1859." 


RESCUE    OF    MISSOURI    SLAVES.  227 

conceal  our  movements  after  entering  Iowa,  rumors  came  of  an 
intended  attempt  to  capture  Captain  Brown  and  the  negroes. 
A  building  was  selected  to  keep  the  latter  in.  There  was 
scarcely  any  necessity  for  guards,  as  the  whole  community  was 
alert,  and  any  attempt  to  invade  Springdale  would  have  most 
likely  proven  very  disastrous  to  the  intruders.  West  Liberty, 
a  railroad  town  seven  miles  south  of  Springdale,  was  a  very 
hotbed  of  Abolitionists,  and  in  full  sympathy  with  Brown's  idea." 

Mr.  Gill  left  the  party  at  West  Liberty  on  the  ioth 
inst.,  as  health  gave  out  and  inflammatory  rheumatism 
prevented  further  travel  on  his  part.  One  of  the 
Kansas  escort  accompanied  the  party  to  Crookes's  in 
Iowa,  and  others  left  at  Tabor. 

After  leaving  Iowa  there  was  very  little  of  special 
interest  until  arrival  at  Detroit  and  transfer  to  Canada. 
Of  course,  vigilant  care  had  to  be  exercised-  On  the 
12th  day  of  March,  1859,  he  saw  his  band  of  freed 
people,  augmented  to  twelve  by  the  birth  of  a  boy 
while  camping  near  Dr.  James  G.  Blunt's  place  on 
the  Pottawatomie  in  the  Januaryr  preceding,  carried 
in  safety  from  Detroit  to  Windsor.  John  Brown,  the 
baby  born  in  freedom,  and  bearing  the  name  of  his 
emancipator,  still  lives  in  Windsor,  having,  it  has 
been  stated,  never  set  foot  in  the  United  States.  The 
Missouri  freed  people  are  nearly  all  living,  doing  well, 
and  having  large  families  about  them.  Of  course, 
Captain  Brown's  successful  raid  met  severe  criticism 
on  all  sides,  and  to  some  extent,  too,  among  a  few  of 
his  Massachusetts  friends.  Neither  Gerrit  Smith  nor 
George  L.  Stearns  were  counted  among  the  critics. 
In  Detroit,  Captain  Brown  met  Frederick  Douglass, 
who  happened  to  be  engaged  for  a  lyceum  lecture 
there.  A  little  meeting  was  held  at  the  dwelling  of 
a  Mr.  William  Webb,  and  a  report  has  been   made  of 


2  28  JOHN     BROWN. 

sharp  disagreements  between  John  Brown  and  the 
colored  orator  and  editor.  Mr.  Douglass  assures  me 
nothing  of  the  sort  occurred.  John  Brown  girdecl  up 
his  loins  again,  and  with  his  purse  a  little  replenished 
by  Eastern  friends,  started  once  more  on  the  culminat- 
ing work  of  his  life.  With  him  at  Detroit  and  en  route 
to  Cleveland,  Ohio,  were  his  son  Owen,  Kagi,  Stevens, 
Leeman,  Tidd,  Hazlett,  Edwin  Coppoc,  J.  G.  An- 
derson, and  Barclay  Coppoc  of  those  that  finally  went 
down  into  the  valley  of  shadows.  Steward  Taylor 
was  waiting  and  working  in  Illinois,  and  Cook  was  in 
Virginia,  ready  for  work.  The  hour  was  coming 
fast. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

LIFE    AND    PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM. 

Friends  in  southern  Kansas  and  Iowa — Safe  arrival  of 
his  freed  people  in  Canada — Meeting  a  fid  speeches  in 
Cleveland — Where  the  men  went  and  what  they  did — 
John  Brown  at  home  in  North  Elba — Peterboro  and 
Boston — On  the  borders  of  slavery — The  Kennedy 
farm  and  the  hiring — Gathering  there — Life  within 
— Mrs.  Anne  Brown- Adams  the  last  survivor — Mar- 
tha Brown — Oliver  s  girl  wife — John  Brown,  Jr., 
in  Canada —-Shipping  the  freight — Kagi  at  Cha in- 
ter sburg —  Frederick  Douglass  and  Shields  Green  — 
Arrival  of  Osborne  P.  Anderson  and  Francis  J. 
Merriam — Return  of  Anne  and  Martha  to  North 
Elba — John  E.  Cook — A  curious  despatch — "  The 
shot  heard  round  the  world." 

John  Brown's  second  and  last  campaign  in  Kansas 
left  behind  warm  and  enduring  friendships.  He  car- 
ried to  his  grave,  less  than  a  year  beyond  the  day 
when  its  prairies,  made  sacred  with  human  passions 
and  human  woes,  faded  from  his  vision,  a  sense  of 
enduring  regard  and  honor,  which  has  since  made 
itself  felt  in  many  a  brave  tribute.  The  real  free-state 
men  of   southern  Kansas   have   never  given    a  single 


230  JOHN     BROWN. 

recruit  to  the  detractors  of  Captain  Brown.  "  I  shall 
remove  the  seat  of  disturbance  from  Kansas,"  were 
his  last  words  to  the  "  Squire,"  as  he  always  termed 
his  old  and  trusted  friend,  Augustus  Wattles,  of 
Moneka.  Truly,  he  did  remove  it  across  the  Con- 
tinent to  the  Alleghanies  and  down  to  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico,  and  in  removing  it  he  aided  beyond  words 
in  making  a  Nation  without  a  slave  and  a  Union 
without  a  foe.  The  meaning  of  the  remark  was  well 
understood,  though  nothing  would  be  known  defi- 
nitely of  place  and  plan.  That  John  Brown  would  be 
heard  from  again  was  certain  to  all,  as  was  learned 
when,  in  the  spring  of  1859,  I  last  visited  that  sec- 
tion. Among  John  Brown's  friends  and  supporters 
many  became  noted  in  the  stormier  years  that  fol- 
lowed. Among  the  rank  and  file,  I  recall  the  Hair- 
groves  and  Snyder,  shot  in  the  Marais  du  Cygne 
atrocity,  as  gallant  Union  soldiers.  Dr.  James  G. 
Blunt  was  a  prominent  major-general  of  volunteers; 
James  Montgomery  a  colonel  of  colored  troops  in 
South  Carolina  ;  Dr.  Jenison  commanded  a  regiment 
of  cavalry;  James  Hanway  was  a  district  judge;  H. 
H.  Williams  a  major  of  volunteers;  Drs.  Ayres  and 
Gilpatrick  army-surgeons;  John  Ritchie,  at  Topeka, 
a  colonel,  while  William  A.  Phillips,  editor,  author, 
lawyer,  commanded  a  loyal  Indian  brigade  of  Chero- 
kees  and  Creeks,  and  John  Bowles  was  lieutenant- 
colonel  of  colored  infantry.  There  were  no  doubters, 
cowards,  or  trimmers  among  John  Brown's  Kansas 
friends  when  the  war  issues  finally  came.  But  the 
personal  regard  and  friendship  of  the  two  Wattles 
families,  at  Moneka,  Levin  County,  with  the  unbending 
Puritan  leader,  was  an  incident  almost  idyllic  in  char- 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  23 1 

acter.  Their  homes  were  always  open  to  him  and  his 
men,  while  the  Captain  was  loved  by  the  charming 
group  of  girls  who  made  them  so  attractive. 

Augustus  and  John  Wattles  were  of  Quaker  origin. 
They  were  refined,  scholarly,  cultivated.  Augustus, 
being  more  a  man  of  affairs  than  his  brother,  John, 
who  took  no  public  part  in  Kansas  matters,  though  a 
devoted  anti-slavery  man.  He  was  a  musician  of  fine 
ability — the  inventor  of  a  system  of  musical  notation, 
once  in  considerable  use.  His  brother  was  lawyer, 
farmer,  and  editor.  They  came  from  the  famous 
free-soil  district  in  Indiana,  which  so  long  sent 
George  W.  Julian  to  Congress.  Both  had  been  iden- 
tified as  advocates  and  writers  with  the  dreams  of 
social  equity  and  organization,  so  early  advanced  by 
the  late  Albert  Brisbane,  the  disciple  of  Fourier  and 
Josiah  Warren,  author  of  an  almost-forgotten  form  of 
Bellamyism.  Among  such  groups  as  these  John 
Brown  seems  always  to  have  been  understood^  yet  he 
was  apart  from  them  all.  On  his  way  out  he  met 
William  A.  Phillips  at  Lawrence,  holding  with  him 
the  last  of  a  series  of  remarkable  conversations;  which 
are  reprinted  in  the  Appendix  to  this  volume.  John 
Bowles,  then  about  to  start  for  California,  held  a  long 
and  confidential  talk  with  him  and  Kagi  being 
intrusted  with  the  general  outline  and  location  of 
the  movement  that  was  made  ten  months  later  in 
Virginia.  In  Iowa,  the  foremost  Republicans  and 
anti  slavery  citizens,  while  ostensibty  shaking  their 
heads — a  la  politician  style,  as  at  Tabor,  where  they 
first  cared  for  his  party,  and  then  resolved  that  it  was 
very  wrong  to  help  a  human  being  to  freedom,  if  he 
or  she  happened  to  be  dark-skinned  and  African  in  de- 


232  JOHN    BROWN. 

scent — to  the  Governor  and  his  staff ;  leading  men  like 
Hiram  Price,  J.  B.  Grinnel,  Wm.  Penn  Clarke,  Senator 
Grimes's  sons; — editors,  lawyers,  officials,  prospective 
Congressmen  and  soldiers  of  future  prominence,  vied 
with  each  other  in  helping  forward  the  liberator  and 
his  party.  In  Chicago,  his  presence  was  widely 
known,  and,  though  an  "  outlaw  "  with  two  rewards 
for  his  arrest,  aggregating  $3,250,  no  one  seemed  to 
be  deterred  from  making  him  welcome.  No  attempt 
at  arrest,  no  threat  even,  came  to  his  ears,  in  either 
Chicago,  Detroit,  or  Cleveland.  The  United  States 
marshal  of  northern  Ohio  did  not  attempt  an  arrest, 
though  a  Federal  reward  was  offered,  but  when 
Captain  Brown  was  captured  and  lay,  with  five 
wounds,  on  the  bare  floor  of  the  United  States 
armory  guardroom,  he  was  among  the  earliest  of 
political  visitors  from  the  North,  seeking,  if  possible, 
to  glean  from  expected  weakness  an  admission 
against  Joshua  R.  Giddings,  Ralph  M.  Plumb,  or 
some  others  of  the  anti-slavery  men  of  the  Western 
Reserve. 

To  Cleveland  John  Brown  shipped  the  mules  for 
which  he  had  traded  the  oxen  taken  in  Missouri  from 
the  estate  of  the  slave-owners,  and  which  had  been 
used  in  transporting  his  band  of  freed  people  to 
"  Canaan's  happy  land,"  as  they  had  joyfully  styled 
the  far-off  north  land  to  which  they  were  bound, 
when  leaving  Missouri.  The  stallion,,  which  had  been 
purchased  from  Hazlett  and  been  ridden  by  the  Cap- 
tain on  his  long  journey  with  two  or  three  other 
travel-worn  horses,  and  perhaps  the  two  wagons  used, 
were  on  hand.  His  small  funds  were  divided  as  far  as 
possible   with   the    rescued   when    they  were    left  in 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  233 

Canada,  and  it  was  decided  to  sell  the  property.  This 
was  done  on  the  public  street  by  Captain  Brown  him- 
self, who  also  gave  due  notice  of  the  facts  connected 
with  them.  An  amusing  incident  was  narrated  in  a 
newspaper  interview  years  after  about  Judge  Carter, 
of  Ohio,  Chief-Justice  of  the  District  of  Columbia. 
The  Judge  was  narrowly  critical  of  John  Brown,  who 
had  called  upon  him  the  day  after  the  Cleveland  sale, 
of  which  he  gave  the  lawyer  full  particulars,  drily 
remarking  "and  they  (the  animals)  brought  good 
prices',  too."  The  lawyer  bought  a  pair  of  mules — at 
second  hand,  he  was  careful  to  say.  The  amount  was 
given  to  me  afterwards  at  several  hundred  dollars, 
and  I  find  a  note  thereof  among  memorabilia  of  the 
Cleveland  visit,  which  was  on  the  23d  of  March. 
That  evening,  a  well-attended  meeting  was  held  at 
Chapin's  Hall,  a  small  admission  fee  being  charged. 

The  speakers  were  John  Henri  Kagi  and  John 
Brown,  the  former  making  the  first  address,  while  the 
latter  in  his  speech  made  a  significant  declaration, 
which  I  afterwards  copied  from  the  Cleveland  Leader  s 
report  of  the  same.  Interest  turning  on  events  in 
southern  Kansas,  Kagi  gave  a  rapid  review  of  their 
history,  showing  the  border-ruffian  outrages  of  1856; 
the  land-settler  persecutions  and  the  official  injustice 
the  free-state  entrymen  were  subjected  to;  the  con- 
stant "nagging"  of  the  Blake-Little-Clark-Ransom 
pro-southern  gang,  with  the  view  of  producing  retali- 
ation by  free-state  men,  the  unfair  interference  by  the 
Executive  usually  on  the  pro-southern  side;  the  send- 
ing of  picked  squadrons  of  dragoons  with  Southern 
sympathy  against  Montgomery  and  his  men;  the  con- 
stant forays,  kidnapping,  etc.,  from  Missouri,  with  the 


234  JOHN    BROWN. 

constant  violations  of  all  agreements  made  for  peace, 
the  culminating  atrocities  of  the  Hamilton  gang.  Kagi 
was  a  strong,  logical,  convincing,  even  eloquent, 
speaker,  with  a  fine  presence  and  a  good  command  of 
language.  He  knew  the  subject,  and  did  not  seek  to 
either  evade  or  defend  the  actions  of  free-state  men. 
He  simply  showed  what  they  were  and  how  they  came 
to  be,  leaving  his  audience  to  decide  the  ethics  thereof. 
Kagi's  description  of  the  one-sided  fights,  ending  in 
the  Southerners'  flight  were  amusing  and  pleased  the 
audience 

Captain  Brown's  speech  was  like  himself, — direct, 
to  'the  point,  unequivocal,  and  animated,  with  his 
stern  conviction  of  righteousness.  He  was  capable 
of  grouping  his  points  well,  and,  from  a  mere  brief, 
presenting  a  close,  connected  statement.  He  told  the 
audience  that  his  purpose  in  charging  an  admission 
fee  was  to  aid  in  reimbursing  the  expenses  of  his 
recent  effort.  Although  he  had  been  threatened 
abundantly  during  his  last  visit  to  Kansas,  he  had  not 
been  engaged  in  any  fight.  Some  of  his  young 
men,  however,  had  bettered  the  instructions  of 
the  Southern  men.  He  was  now  an  outlaw,  with  a 
price  on  his  head.  The  fact  did  not  inconvenience 
him  or  cause  any  loss  of  sleep.  He  should  never  sub- 
mit to  an  arrest,  as  he  had  nothing  to  gain  by  submis- 
sion. This  recalls  the  fact  that  Mrs.  Brown  said  just 
previous  to  the  execution  of  her  husband,  that  it  had 
always  been  her  feeling,  as  well  as  the  Captain's,  that 
if  he  was  ever  defeated,  he  should  be  killed  rather 
than  made  a  prisoner.  In  referring  to  his  position, 
John  Brown  grimly  remarked,  that  he  "  should  settle 
all  questions  on  the  spot,  if  any  attempt  was  made  to 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  235 

take  him."  His  purpose  in  liberating  the  Missouri 
bondsmen  was  to  make  familiar  a  direct  blow  at 
slavery.  He  laid  it  down  as  a  platform  for  himself, 
that  he  considered  it  his  duty  to  liberate  the  slave 
wherever  he  had  an  opportunity,  fie  was  a  thorough- 
going Abolitionist.  In  referring  to  his  life  and  actions 
in  Kansas,  he  said  that  he,  John  Brown,  "  never  lifted 
a  finger  toward  any  one  whom  he  did  not  know 
was  a  violent  persecutor  of  the  free-state  men. 
He  had  never  killed  any  body,  although  on  some  occasion 
lie  had  shown  the  young  men  how  some  things  might 
be  done  as  well  as  others,  and  they  had  done  the  business.1 
He  had  never  destroyed  the  value  of  an  ear  of  corn, 
and  had  never  set  fire  to  a  pro-slavery  man's  house  or 
property,  and  had  never  by  his  own  action  driven  out 
pro-slavery  men  from  the  Territory,  but,  if  occasion 
demanded  it,  he  would  drive  them  into  the  ground 
like  a  stake-fence,  where  they  would  remain  perma- 
nent settlers."  These  grim  declarations  were  probably 
in  reply  to  charges  and  attacks  made  in  the  current 
Democratic  newspapers.  The  Captain  continued,  as 
reported:  "Further,  he  had  yet  to  learn  of  any  pro- 
slavery  man  being  arrested  or  punished  for  any  crime, 
while  free-state  men  were  slain  even  for  the  crime  of 
having  opinions,  as  was  his  son  Frederick,  the  partic- 
ulars of  whose  slaying  at  Osawatomie  he  narrated." 
The  speeches  and  meeting  were  a  remarkable  success, 
and  even  the  Democratic  papers  treated  it  fairly  in 
their  reports. 


1  This  report  was  obtained  by  me  in  i860  from  a  Cleveland 
paper,  I  believe  the  Leader,  and  the  copy  in  my  handwriting  is 
before  me  as  I  write. 


236 


John  brown. 


From  Cleveland,  Ohio,  after  short  visits  with  his 
sons,  John,  Jr.,  at  West  Andover,  and  Jason,  at  Akron, 
in  the  same  State,  Captain  Brown,  with  J.  G.  Ander- 
son, left  for  his  home  at  North  Elba.  The  remainder 
of  the  party  which  had  accompanied  him  as  far  as 
Detroit  now  provided  for  themselves  at  various  points. 
Owen   Brown    remained    until   July   at  Akron,    with 

his  brother  Jason.  Aaron  D. 
Stevens,  as  Charles  Whipple, 
went  to  West  Andover,  where 
he  was  employed  by  Mr.  Lind- 
sey  on  his  farm  until  the  follow- 
ing August.  W.  H.  Leeman  got 
work  at  Lindenville,  nearby, 
making  whips  in  a  factory  there. 
The  two  Coppocs,  Edwin  and 
Barclay,  went  to  Medina  and 
Salem,  where  they  had  relatives, 
and  remained  working  until 
August,  when  they  were  sum- 
moned to  the  Kennedy  Farm. 
Albert  Hazlett  returned  to  his 
home  at  Indiana,  Pennsylvania,  where  he  got  employ- 
ment till  August.  C.  P.  Tidd  remained  in  the  vicinity 
of  Cleveland,  while  J.  H.  Kagi  divided  his  time  until 
late  in  June,  when  he  went  to  Pennsylvania,  between 
Cleveland,  West  Andover,  and  Oberlin,  being  occu- 
pied, while  waiting  for  the  Captain's  last  return  from 
the  East,  in  looking  after  the  freight  shipments  (/.  e. 
the  arms,  etc.)  which  had  been  sent  from  Iowa  to 
Conneaut,  Ohio,  and  in  watching  the  progress  of  the 
Price  fugitive  slave  rescue  case,  in  which  a  number  of 
noted  persons,  professors  at  Oberlin,  and  others,  were 


WILLIAM    HENRY    LEEMAN. 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM. 


237 


involved.  Several  of  them  were  imprisoned  in  Cleve- 
land, and  Kagi  and  Tidd  planned  with  others  taking 
them  out.  The  State  of  Ohio,  however,  intervened 
by  arresting  the  Kentucky  slave-catchers,  when  they 
came  to  testify  against  the  rescuers,  upon  the  very 
plain  ground  that  the  original  capture  of  the  alleged 
fugitive  Price,  was  in  reality  a  kidnapping,  done  with- 
out regard  to  the  Federal  law  and  in  clear  contra- 
vention of  State  laws.  Their  arrests  brought  about  a 
settlement  of  the  whole  affair,  by  which  fugitive  and 
rescuers  were  discharged,  and  the  Kentuckians  very 
gladly  availed  themselves  of  a  chance  to  get  out  of 
Ohio.  Kagi  acted  as  the  correspondent  of  the  New 
York  Tribune  and  also  wrote  for  the  Cleveland 
Leader.  Steward  Taylor  was  still  in  Illinois,  not  hav- 
ing gone  to  Kansas  with  the  others. 

Early  in  April,  John  Brown,  accompanied  by  his 
faithful  aide,  J.  G.  Anderson,  was  in  Rochester,  and 
from  the  nth  to  the  14th  at  Peterboro,  a  guest  of 
Gerrit  Smith.  The  latter  gave  him  $200.  On  the 
14th  he  started  for  North  Elba,  having  been  at  his 
home  but  once  in  two  years.  At  this  visit  arrange- 
ments were  made  for  Oliver  to  join  him  at  an  early 
day,  and  Watson  later  in  the  summer,  after  his  wife 
Isabella's  confinement.  Martha,  Oliver's  wife,  and 
Anne  Brown,  the  second  daughter,  it  was  afterwards 
arranged,  were  to  go  to  the  Maryland  farm  as  house- 
keepers. The  Captain  remained  at  home  for  about 
two  weeks,  and  then  left  for  Massachusetts.  He  was 
at  Concord,  the  guest  of  Mr.  Sanborn,  on  the  7th  of 
May,  remaining  till  his  fifty-ninth  birthday,  when 
he  left  for  Boston.  He  met  John  M.  Forbes  and  a 
few  other  well-known  men  at  this  visit  for  the   first 


238  JOHN    BROWN. 

time,  and  received,  with  what  Gerrit  Smith  sent, 
about  $500  in  all.  At  Concord  he  attended  and  spoke 
at  a  meeting  held  to  hear  him.  Mr.  Sanborn  in' his 
volume  (pp.  564-65)  quotes  Emerson,  and  Thoreau, 
and  Alcott;  the  latter  as  writing  in  his  journal  in 
part  as  follows: 

"Concord,  May  8,  1859. — This  evening  I  heard  Captain 
Brown  speak,  at  the  Town  Hall,  on  Kansas  affairs.  .  .  . 
He  tells  his  story  with  surpassing  simplicity  and  sense.  Our 
best  people  listen  to  his  words — Emerson,  Thoreau,  Judge 
Hoar  (afterwards  Attorney-General  under  Grant,  and  Con- 
gressman). .  .  .  Some  of  them  contributed  in  aid  of  his 
plans,  without  asking  particulars,  such  confidence  does  he 
inspire  in  his  integrity  and  abilities.  .  .  .  He  is  San- 
born's guest,  and  stays  for  a  day  only.  A  young  man  named 
Anderson  accompanies  him.  They  go  armed,  I  am  told,  and 
will  defend  themselves  if  necessary.  .  .  .  The  Captain 
leaves  much  in  the  dark  concerning  his  destination  and  designs 
for  the  coming  months,  yet  he  does  not  conceal  .  .  .  his 
readiness  to  strike  a  blow  for  freedom  at  the  proper  moment. 
I  infer  it  is  his  intention  to  run  off  as  many  slaves  as  he  can, 
and  so  render  that  property  insecure  to  the  master." 

From  Boston  to   New  York1  and  Eastern  Pennsyl- 


1  Among  ihe  manuscript  letters  in  my  possession,  chiefly  written 
by  the  men,  I  find  two  from  J.  G.  Anderson  to  his  brother,  Dr. 
John  B.  Anderson,  of  Springdale,  Iowa.  The  Doctor  had  served 
in  southern  Kansas,  and  was  trusted,  so  that  "  Jerry"  Anderson 
wrote  quite  freely.  A  letter  of  June  17th,  from  West  Andover, 
Ohio,  describes  their  travels.  The  first  three  weeks  were  spent  at 
Peterboro,  North  Elba,  N.  Y.,  and  in  Boston  and  vicinity.  In 
New  York  City  four  days,  and  the  young  Western  farmer  gives  a 
naive  description  of  the  impressions  he  received.  He  visited 
Brooklyn,  met  John  Hopper,  son  of  Isaac  T.  Hopper,  the  Quaker 
philanthropist,  Dr.  George  B.  Cheever,  and  also  saw  Henry  Ward 
Beecher  on  a  street  car,  whom  he  described  as  "  a  very  common- 
looking    man    with  very  coarse   features,  but  showing  undoubted 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  239 

vania  and  Ohio  by  the  middle  of  June.  Arrange- 
ments were  to  complete  the  pikes  ordered  in  1857  of 
Charles  W.  Blair,  of  Collinsville,  Conn.  They  were 
partly  paid  for  then,  and  Captain  Brown  paid  the 
balance,  $300,  ordering  them  finished  as  rapidly  as 
possible,  and  shipped  to  Isaac  Smith  &  Sons,  Cham- 
bersburg,  Pa.,  where  Kagi  was  mainly  found  until 
the  last  of  September.  These  "  tools  "  did  not  reach 
the  Maryland  farm  until  late  in  September,  where 
they  were  stored,  950  of  them,  in  the  attic  of  the  Ken- 
nedy dwelling.  The  Sharpe's  rifles  and  other  articles 
filled  fifteen  heavy  boxes.  Curiosity  had  been  aroused 
as  to  Iheir  contents  at  Conneaut.  John  Brown,  Jr., 
removed  them  to  West  Andover  and  theYi  to  Harts- 
town,  Crawford  Co.,  Pennsylvania,  July  27th,  shipping 
by  canal  to  Chambersburg,  from  whence  they  were 
removed  early  in  September  to  the  Kennedy  Farm.  A 
log  cabin,  belonging  to  the  place,  just  across  the  road 
from    the    house    was    used    for    storage.      William 


good  sense," — a  knockdown  sort  of  characterization  that.  A  visit 
to  Joshua  R.  Giddings  at  Jefferson,  Ohio,  is  mentioned,  and  then 
"  Jerry  "  writes  : 

"  This  is  an  age  of  miracles.  I  wouldn't  be  surprised  if  you 
should  hear  of  me  being  in  some  place  before  long.  We  are  going 
to  start  from  here  next  Monday  (June  19th) for  Cleveland,  from  there 
across  Pennsylvania  to  the  border  of  Virginia,  on  a  surveying  expedi- 
tion. I  think  I  shall  write  to  you  from  that  region  in  a  few  weeks. 
You  need  not  be  uneasy  about  us  stealing  niggers,  for  that  is  not  our 
business,  but  be  patient,  and  in  due  time  you  will  be  apprised  of 
our  business,  and  how  we  succeed.  Our  theory  is  new,  but  un- 
doubtedly good,  practicable,  and  perfectly  safe  and  simple,  but  I 
jjdge  when  we  put  it  into  practice,  it  will  astonish  the  world  and 
mankind  in  general.  We  called  on  Fred.  Douglass  again  as 
we  passed  through  Rochester;  he  is  to  be  one  of  us," 


240  JOHN    BROWN. 

Thompson,  Watson  Brown,  and  Jeremiah  G.  Ander- 
son slept  therein  after  the  tools  arrived,  partly  as  a 
guard,  and  as  a  place  of  defense  in  the  event  of  any 
attack  or  danger.  Captain  Brown  arrived  at  Cham- 
bersburg  early  in  June,  and  with  his  sons  Oliver 
and  Owen,  or  "  Jerry  "  Anderson,  made  observation 
trips  along  the  border,  or  went  to  Pittsburgh,  Cleve- 
land, and  Philadelphia  on  business.  On  the  30th  of 
June,  with  Owen,  Oliver,  and  Anderson  he  went  to 
Hagerstown  and  Sandy  Hook,  Maryland,  and  on  the 
2d  of  July  they  were  in  Harper's  Ferry  itself.  Cook 
was  living  there,  and  knew  of  the  Captain's  visits. 
Interviews  were  had,  care  being  taken  not  to  appear 
too  public'  and  familiar.  The  party  were  supposed 
to  be  prospecting  for  minerals.  Out  in  the  country, 
however,  they  were  cattlemen  from  northern  New 
York,  looking  for  grazing  land,  on  which  to  fatten 
their  lean  stock.  In  an  article  on  "  The  Virginia 
Campaign,"  published  in  The  Atlantic,  December, 
1875,  Mr.  F.  B.  Sanborn  gave  an  interesting  account 
of  the  finding  of  the  Kennedy  Farm,  in  Washington 
County,  Maryland,  but  four  miles  from  Harper's  Ferry, 
which  was  rented  for  a  year  for  $35.  Starting  out 
from  Sandy  Hook,  where  they  had  stayed  the  night 
before,  on  the  4th  of  July  they  went  up  the  river 
road  toward  the  house  of  Mr.  John  C.  Unseld,  a  Mary- 
land slaveholder,  who  lived  but  a  mile  from  the 
Ferry,  on  one  of  the  mountain  roads. 

"Between  eight  and  nine  o'clock  that  morning,  as  Mr. 
Unseld  was  riding  down  to  the  Ferry,  he  met  the  party  stroll- 
ing along  the  edge  of  the  mountain.  Falling  into  conversa- 
tion with  them,  in  the  country  fashion,  he  learned  that  the 
old  man  was  named  $mith,  that  these  were  his  sons,  Watson 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  24I 

and  Oliver  Smith,  and  that  the  other  youth  was  named  Ander- 
son. '  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  followed  there?' 
'  Farming,'  said  Brown ;  but  the  frost  had  been  so  heavy  of 
late  years  it  had  cut  off  their  crops ;  they  could  not  make  any- 
thing there,  so  they  had  sold  out,  and  thought  they  would  come 
farther  South  and  try  it  a  while.  Having  thus  satisfied  a 
natural  curiosity,  Mr.  Unseld  rode  on.  Returning  some  hours 
afterward,  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 
custom  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.  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  buy  that.'  '  Can  I  rent 
it  ?  '  said  Brown  ;  then  turning  to  his  companions  he  said,  '  I 
think  we  had  better  rent  a  while,  until  we  get  better  acquainted, 
so  that  they  cannot  take  advantage  of  us  in  the  purchase  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 
16 


242  JOHN    BROWN. 

again  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 
look  at  the  Kennedy  place ;  however,  you  can  do  as  you 
please.'  Watson  Brown  looked  at  Anderson  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 
something.'  '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  look- 
ing from  that  church  right  up  the  road  that  leads  to  Boons- 
borough,  or  you  can  go  right  across  and  get  into  the  country 
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  make  a 
living  there.'  'Well,'  said  Brown,  'my  business  has  been  buy- 
ing up  fat  cattle  and  driving  them  on  to  the  State  of  New 
York,  and  we  expect  to  engage  in  that  again.'  Three  days  later 
(July  7th),  the  genial  Unseld,  jogging  to  or  from  the  Ferry,  again 
met  the  gray-haired  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  three  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.' 
For  the  two  houses,  pasture  for  a  cow  and  horse,  and  fire- 
wood, from  July  till  March,  Brown  paid  thirty-five  dollars,  as 
he  took  pains  to  tell  Unseld,  showing  him  the  receipt  of  the 
widow  Kennedy." 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  243 

The  Booth-Kennedy  family  lived  at  Sharpsburg, 
where  Lee  had  his  headquarters  when  the  battle  of 
Antietam  was  fought.  The  Confederates  named  it 
after  the  Maryland  village.  .The  Maryland  farmer 
testified  before  the  United  States  Senate's  Committee 
on  "  the  Harper's  Ferry  Invasion."  The  name  of  the 
Virginian  Senator's  Committee  should  be  borne  in 
mind,  as  a  peculiar  piece  of  direct  evidence  of  the 
manner  in  which  Mason,  Davis,  Wise  &  Co.  were 
working  towards  revolution  by  firing  the  Southern 
heart  with  systematic  misrepresentation  of  the 
relations  of  the  North  to  the  John  Brown  raid.  Mr. 
Unseld  said  that  he  did  "  not  once  mistrust  him, 
though  he  rode  up  to  the  Kennedy  Farm  nearly 
every  week  from  the  middle  of  July  till  the  ist  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  fre- 
quently, 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 
quentlv,  "  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.  Both  of  them 
were  but  girls  in  their  seventeenth  years,  as  they  were  born  in 
1843.  "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  of  the  men  at  home,  but  did  not  tell  me 


244  JOHN    BROWN. 

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. '" 

The  region  is  semi-mountainous,  and  is  still  sparsely 
settled.  Within  three  years  after  John  Brown's  ad- 
vent, it  passed  into  national  history  as  the  scene  of 
McClellan's  defeat  of  Lee.  Across  it  passed  in  part 
the  great  armies  that  met  in  a  decisive  battle  shock 
at  Gettysburg.  But  it  will  always  be  recalled  more 
readily  as  the  location  of  John  Brown's  final  prepara- 
tions for  the  Harper's  Ferry  attack,  which  sent  the 
old  lighter's  soul  "  marching  on  "  until  chattel  slav- 
ery, by  the  will  of  the  Nation  and  the  fearful  cost  of 
civil  war  was  abolished  in  the  land.  It  is  ruggedly 
picturesque,  quiet,  rural,  well  wooded,  and  with  no 
great  stretches  of  open,  arable  lands.  The  section 
is  quiet,  the  residents  are  easy-going  and  the  land- 
scape is  the  most  attractive  thing  connected  there- 
with. Of  late  years  it  has  become  somewhat  noted 
for  the  summer  residences  of  well-to-do  families, 
chiefly  from  Washington  and  Baltimore.  Osborne 
Perry  Anderson,  in  "  A  Voice  from  Harper's  Ferry," 
wrote  that  "  To  a  passer-by  the  house  and  its  sur- 
roundings presented  but  indifferent  attractions. 
Any  log  (frame)  tenement  of  equal  dimensions  would 
be  as  likely  to  attract  attention.  Rough,  unsightly, 
and  aged,  it  was  only  those  privileged  to  enter  and 
tarry  for  a  long  time  and  to  penetrate  the  mysteries 
of  the  two  rooms  it  contained  —  kitchen,  parlor, 
dining-room  below,  and  the  spacious  chamber,  attic, 
storeroom,  prison,  drilling-room,  comprised  in  the  loft 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  245 

above — who  could  tell  how  we  lived  at  Kennedy 
Farm  ? " 

The  question  may  in  a  fair  fashion  be  answered,  as 
besides  other  sources,  I  am  fortunately  endowed 
with  permission  to  use  the  vivid  recollections  of  Anne 
Brown  (now  Mrs.  Adams,  of  Petralia,  Humboldt 
County, California,  and  the  mother  of  six  children,  who 
was  called  by  her  father  his  "  watch  dog")  who  has 
written  me  valuable  notes  and  memoranda,  full,  as  I 
name  them,  of  thumb-nail  sketches,  which  illustrate 
the  scenes  of  that  summer,  and  the  men,  too,  who 
were  actors  in  them.  Coming  from  the  only  survivor 
of  the  little  band  who  lived  at  the  Kennedy  Farm,1 
these  recollections  have  a  special  biographical  and 
historical  significance. 

Anne  Brown  and  Martha  Evelyn,  the  loving  young 
wife  of  Oliver,  who  was  as  much  slain  as  if  she  had 
fallen  by  a  Virginian  bullet,  arrived  at  the  Maryland 
camp  in  the  third  week  in  July.  "  Josephus,"  the 
Harper's  Ferry  annalist  often  quoted  in  these  pages, 
says,  that  the  Captain  and  his  sons,  with  Jerry 
Anderson,  first  boarded  with  Mr.  Osmond  Bulter,  at 
Sandy  Hook,  Maryland.  The  Virginian  pamphleteer 
adds,    "their    conduct    was    unexceptionable.     They 


1  It  is  necessary  to  emphasize  the  fact  that  Anne  Brown  Adams 
is  the  only  one  alive  of  the  Kennedy  Farm  party.  Besides  George 
B.  Gill  and  Charles  W.  Moffett,  of  Iowa  and  Kansas,  there  are 
none  alive  of  those  who  went  "  to  school  "  at  Springdale,  Iowa, 
and  participated  in  the  Chatham,  Canada,  Convention,  in  1857-58, 
unless  it  be  Richard  Richardson,  a  colored  man,  of  whom  I  learn 
nothing.  Others  are  living  who  were  actively  aiding  and  trusted 
by  John  Brown,  but  these  named  were  actually  at  the  farm,  in  the 
tight,  or  trained  therefor. 


246  JOHN    BROWN. 

paid  in  gold  for  whatever  they  purchased,  and  as 
their  manners  were  courteous  to  all,  they  were,  on 
the  whole,  very  popular."  Kagi  came  down  from 
Chambersburg,  and  remained  two  or  three  days  with 
them  at  Sandy  Hook,  but  his  likeness  to  the  Virginian 
"  Keagys,"  as  his  uncle's  family  were  called  in  the 
neighborhood,  compelled  him  to  make  a  quick  retreat 
to  Chambersburg.  He  was  born  in  southern  Ohio,  his 
father  having  removed  from  the  Shenandoah  Valley, 
but  himself  went  to  school,  and  taught  also  in  the  sec- 
tion, when  about  sixteen  years  old.  He  distinguished 
himself  even  then  by  assisting  a  fugitive  slave,  and 
was  obliged  to  return  to  his  father's  home  in  Ohio. 
There  was  danger  that  he  would  be  recognized.  A 
memorandum  in  John  Brown's  handwriting  found  in 
the  captured  carpet-bag  and  printed  in  a  State  docu- 
ment some  time  after,  gives  a  good  idea  of  Captain 
Brown's  care  for  details.  It  was  evidently  written 
for  Kagi's  guidance,  and  on  the  back  of  it  a  rough, 
topographical  road  sketch,  with  the  names  of  the 
towns  in  Kagi's  own  handwriting.  John  Brown 
wrote: 

"  Look  for  letters  directed  to  JohnHenrie;  at  Chambersburg 
inquire  for  letters  (there)  directed  to  J.  Smith  &  Sons;  for 
Isaac  Smith  inquire  for  freight  at  the  depot,  at  Chambersburg, 
for  J.  Smith  &  Sons;  and  write  them  at  Harper's  Ferry  as  soon 
as  any  does  come.  See  Mr.  Henry  Watson,  at  Chambersburg, 
and  find  out  if  the  Tribune  comes  on.1  Have  Mr.  Watson  and 
his  reliable  friends  get  ready  to  receive  company  (about  this 
time  Leary  and  Copeland  were  to  arrive  from  Oberlin,  Ohio, 
Anderson  and  others  from  Canada  were  expected).  Get  Mr. 
Watson  to  make  you  acquainted  with  his  reliable  friends,  hit 


1  A  memorandum  exists  of  a  subscription  of  $3  sent  early  in  June. 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  247 

do  not  appear  to  be  anywise  thick  with  them  ;  and  do  not  often 
be  seen  with  any  sue//  man.  Get  Mr.  Watson  to  find  out  if  he 
can,  a  trusty  man  or  men  to  stop  with  at  Hagerstown  (if  any 
such  there  be),  as  Mr.  (Thomas)  Henrie  (A.  D.  Stevens)  has 
gone  there.  Write  Tidcl  to  come  to  Chambersburg,  by  Pitts- 
burg and  Harrisburg,  at  once.  He  can  stop  off  the  Pittsburg 
road  at  Hudson  and  go  to  Jason's  (Akron)  for  his  trunk.  Write 
Carpenter  (Edwin  Coppoc  probably)  and  Hazlett  that  we  are  all 
right  and  ready  as  soon  as  we  can  get  our  boarding-house 
fixed  ;  when  we  will  write  them  to  come  on  and  by  what  route. 
I  will  pay  Hazlett  the  money  he  advanced  to  Anderson 
for  expenses  traveling.  Find  yourself  a  comfortable,  cheap 
boarding-house  at  once.  Write  J.  Smith  &  Sons,  at  Harper's 
Ferry.  Inquire  after  your  four  Cleveland  friends,  and  have 
them  come  on  to  Chambersburg  if  they  are  on  the  way ;  if  not 
on  the  road  let  them  wait  till  we  get  a  little  better  prepared. 
Be  careful  what  you  write  to  all  persons.  Do  not  send  or  bring 
any  more  persons  here  until  we  advise  you  of  our  readiness  to 
board  them." 

The  "  four  Cleveland  friends''  referred  in  all  prob- 
ability to  colored  men:  Lewis  Sherrard  Leary,  and 
John  A.  Copeland,  of  Oberlin,  who  did  report  for 
duty;  Charles  Langston  and  James  H.  Harris,  of 
Cleveland,  who  were  for  some  reason  unable  to  come. 
The  date  of  the  foregoing  must  have  been  about  the 
10th  or  12th  of  July,  as  about  that  time  Kagi  first 
appeared  in  Chambersburg,  and  letters  began  to  reach 
different  parties  pledged  to  the  enterprise.  I  received 
inquiries  relating  to  Richard  Realf  and  Charles  W. 
Leonhardt,  of  whom  further  mention  will  be  made. 

Oliver  Brown  was  sent  at  the  same  time  that  Kagi 
left  for  Pennsylvania  to  North  Elba,  to  bring  his 
wife  and  Anne  to  Maryland.  On  their  return  to  the 
Adirondack  homestead,  seventeen  days  before  the 
outbreak,  Oliver  escorted   them  as  far  as  Trov,  New 


248  JOHN    BROWN. 

York,  where,  on  the  2d  of  October  (Sunday),  they 
parted  to  meet  no  more  on  earth.  Mrs.  Adams 
describes  the  love  of  the  young  couple  as  an  exquisite 
thing,  so  happy  were  they  "  in  the  enjoyment  of  each 
other,  that  they  did  not  feel  the  need  of  much  of  this 
world's  goods."  They  were  married  on  the  7th  of 
April,  1858,  he  being  but  nineteen  and  she  but  six- 
teen. Their  married  life  lasted  only  a  few  months, 
nearly  three  of  which  were  spent  at  the  Maryland 
Farm,  in  the  shadow  almost  of  Death.  Martha  was 
cook  and  housekeeper,  and  Anne  aided  as  best  she 
could,  her  chief  duty  being,  as  she  writes,  to  serve  as 
"  outside  guard,"  and  to  meet  all  who  called,  parley 
long  enough  on  porch  and  steps  for  those  inside  to 
remove  all  suspicious  things.  If  surprised  while  eat- 
ing, the  men  would  each  seize  his  dishes  and  food, 
and  then  the  table-cloth,  quietly  going  upstairs,  till 
the  visitor  had  left.  Her  father  demanded  "constant 
watchfulness  "  on  her  part;  others  could  help  with 
the  housework,  and  the  men  aided  in  turn.  She  sat 
on  porch  or  at  inside  door,  sewing  or  reading,  with  a 
constant  lookout  on  the  road,  listening  to  the  katydids 
and  whippoorwills.  "  I  used  to  enjoy  watching  the 
fireflies,"  she  writes,  "  in  the  evening  and  looking  at 
the  lights  and  shadows  on  those  fine  old  trees  and  the 
mountain  ridge  upon  moonlight  nights." 

By  the  first  week  in  August,  then,  there  were  assem- 
bled the  brothers  Owen,  Oliver,  and  Watson  Brown, 
William  and  Dauphin  Thompson,  Edwin  and  Barclay 
Coppoc,  C.  P.  Tidd,  J.  G.  Anderson,  and  Aaron  D. 
Stevens;  while  close  after  came  Albert  Hazlett,  Will- 
iam H.  Leeman,  and  Steward  Taylor.  Captain 
Brown  and  one  of  his  sons,  usually  Watson,  were  away 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  249 

a  good  deal  of  the  time.  Owen,  at  first,  was  on  the 
road  between  Chambersburg,  Hagerstown,  and  Har- 
per's Ferry,  the  farm  being  in  general  charge  of  ship- 
ment, both  men  and  freight.  Kagi  remained  at 
Chambersburg,  under  the  name  of  "John  Henri." 
He  boarded  at  the  house  of  Mrs.  Ritner,  the  widow 
of  a  famous  ex-governor  of  Pennsylvania,  known  in 
State  history  as  being  a  sturdy  man  of  anti-slavery 
sentiment  and  the  first  organizer  of  free  or  public 
schools,  also  as  an  early  friend  and  political  associate 
of  the  "  great  commoner."  Thaddeus  Stevens,  "  Isaac 
Smith,"  and  his  sons  also  stopped  at  Mrs.  Ritner's. 
Occasionally  Tidd,  Merriam,  and  one  or  two  others 
stopped  there  ;  Mrs.  Virginia  Cook,  also  most  of 
the  men,  as  they  arrived,  went  to  Bedford  or  Hagers- 
town. The  colored  men  were  chiefly  booked  at 
Chambersburg  by  Henry  Watson,  a  trusted  colored 
agent  of  the  "  underground  railroad." 
.  "  The  pictures  of  the  men  do  not  do  them  justice," 
writes  Mrs.  Adams;  "  Oliver  Brown,  Edwin  Coppoc, 
J.  G.  Anderson,  and  John  H.  Kagi,  whose  faces  are 
given  as  shaven,  all  had  full  beards  at  the  Kennedy 
Farm,  and  were  really  handsome  men.  Cook  had  a 
mustache,  and  Leeman  a  mustache  and  imperial. 
They  were  all,"  writes  Mrs.  Brown  Adams,  "  much 
better  looking  than  the  pictures  convey  an  idea  of." 
The  Oliver  Brown  picture  was  taken  before  he  went 
to  Kansas  in  1855,  when  he  was  but  seventeen. 

"All  questions  on  religion  or  any  other  subject 
were  very  freely  discussed  b)?"  the  men,  and  father 
always  took  an  interested  part  in  the  discussions,  and 
encouraged  every  one  to  express  his  opinion  on 
any    subject,  no   matter  whether  he  agreed  with  him 


250  JOHN    BROWN. 

or  not.  Stevens  had  a  copy  of  Paine's  '  Age  of 
Reason  '  there;  that  was  read  by  some  of  the  men  and 
discussed.  Father  subscribed  for  the  Baltimore  Sun, 
and  Kagi  used  to  send  down  a  bundle  of  papers  and 
magazines  from  Chambersburg  when  the  wagon  went 
up.  They  had  a  manual  of  military  tactics  that  was 
studied  a  good  deal.1  Cook  obtained  directions  for 
browning  or  coloring  rifle-barrels  in  the  arsenal  at 
Harper's  Ferry,  and  the  men  spent  a  part  of  the  time 
in  this  work  on  their  Sharpe's  rifle-barrels,  making 
belts,  pistol  holsters,  etc.  They  also  played  checkers, 
cards,  and  other  games,  and  sang  a  deal  of  the  time. 
Stevens  and  Tidd  were  very  fine  singers,  the  former 
having  an  excellent  baritone.  They  often  sang  '  All 
the  Old  Folks  Are  Gone,'  substituting  *  All  the  Dear 
Ones'  for  the  first  words;  'Faded  Flowers,'  and 
1  Nearer  My  God  to  Thee.'  " 

The  live  stock  consisted  of  a  mule  and  "  Cuff,"  a 
mongrel  pup,  but  very  vigilant  and  noisy  when  any 
stranger  or  a  neighbor  appeared.  There  was  no  cow 
or  chicken,  and  very  little  furniture.  Boxes  were 
used  for  seats,  and  the  men  slept  on  the  floor,  camp 
fashion,  in  the  large  room  upstairs.  A  small  log- 
building  across  the  road  was  later  on  used  by  several 
of  the  men.  Some  housekeeping  articles  had  been 
brought  from  North  Elba,  and  a  few  purchased  at 
Chambersburg.  A  stout,  though  small,  wagon  and 
a  mule  was  their  only  conveyance,  and  by  its  means 
the  198  Sharpe's  rifles  and  belongings,  with  950  pikes, 
shipped  from  Connecticut  and  Ohio  to  "Isaac  Smith 


1  Forbes's  "  Patriotic  Volunteer."  W.  H.  Tinson,  printer,  43-45 
Centre  street,  New  York.     1657. 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY     FARM.  25 1 

&  Sons  "  at  Chambersburg,  were  brought  from  there 
via  Hagerstovvn  to  the  Farm.  The  section  of  Penn- 
sylvania, over  which  they  passed  was  then  a  more 
dangerous  one  to  them  than  the  neighborhood  of 
Harper's  Ferry  itself.  "Hunting  niggers"  was  a 
regular  occupation  at  that  date,  and  small,  "  covered  " 
wagons  were  often  objects  of  suspicion,  as  fugitive 
slaves  were  occasionally  so  transported,  so  as  to  en- 
able the  friendly  Quaker,  Dunker,  or  colored  farmer 
along  the  route  to  declare  they  had  not  seen  any 
fugitive.  Provisions  could  be  taken  by  drivers  to 
these  wagons,  and  no  one  appeared  at  all  but  the 
driver.  Usually  the  movements  of  colored  men  were 
made  on  foot.  Mrs.  Adams  describes  an  incident 
which  occurred  about  the  19th  or  20th  of  August. 

"  When  Owen  was  bringing  Shields  Green  down  to  the  farm 
some  men  got  after  them  and  they  were  chased  into  the  woods. 
While  the  pursuers  went  back  for  reinforcements,  Owen  took 
Green  on  his  back  and  swam  across  the  river.  As  they  were 
traveling  south,  the  slave-hunters  did  not  look  in  that  direc- 
tion, naturally  supposing  Green  to  be  a  fugitive  making  his 
way  to  the  North  Star.  After  that  Owen  staid  at  the  farm,  for 
fear  he  might  be  recognized.  The  Captain  with  his  son  Watson 
or  J.  G.  Anderson  made  the  journeys  to  and  from  Chambers 
burg  to  the  Kennedy  farm,  rendered  necessary  by  the  removal 
of  their  freight,  some  of  which  remained  at  the  Pennsylvania 
town,  and  was  discovered  there  after  the  blow  was  struck. 
The  Kansas  recruit,  whose  arrival  at  Hagerstown,  on  the  14th 
of  October,  is  elsewhere  mentioned,  was  sent  back  therefrom 
to  Chambersburg  by  Captain  Brown  and  Kagi  who  had  met 
him  with  instructions  to  ship  this  freight.  He  had  the  means 
to  obtain  a  team  for  that  purpose.  He  reached  too  late  on  the 
15th  to  attend  to  any  business,  and  the  16th,  being  Sunday,  he 
kept  close  out  of  the  town  in  the  dwelling  of  a  trusted  colored 
man.     The  next  the  news  of  the  attack  came,  and  the  Kansan 


252  JOHN    BROWN. 

made  his  way  to  Harrisburg  and' Cincinnati,  thence  returning 
East.  He  has  since  accounted,  in  his  own  mind,  and  from 
greater  familiarity  with  the  details  of  events,  for  the  condition 
in  which  he  was  placed,  by  the  possibility  of  Kagi's  desire  to 
save  his  life,  for  that  heroic  soul  had  no  doubt  of  personal 
defeat.  On  a  letter  summoning  him  (the  Kansas  man),  the 
23d  and  the  25th  of  October  was  named  as  the  beginning 
of  operations.  The  dispatch  of  the  15th,  however,  may  have 
had  the  effect  of  determining  a  sudden  movement.  A 
horse  and  mule  with  a  small  covered  wagon  formed  their  only 
quartermaster  train.  One  would  drive  and  the  other  ride, 
before  or  behind,  so  as  to  keep  a  lookout  for  suspicious  move- 
ments. People  along  the  road  were  beginning  to  be  very 
inquisitive,  often  stopping  them  and  asking  questions  as  to 
their  business.  Kagi  being  well  known  in  this  section,  having 
resided  as  a  boy  in  the  upper  Shenandoah  Valley  with  an  uncle, 
and  got  himself  into  trouble  too,  by  aiding  a  slave  to  escape, 
was  compelled  to  remain  most  of  the  time  at  Chambersburg. 
The  Browns,  with  "  Jerry  "  Anderson  and  himself,  first  boarded 
at  Sandy  Springs." 

While  the  strange,  quiet  life  at  the  farm  went  on, 
John  Brown  was  busy  through  the  correspondence 
of  Kagi  from  Chambersburg  in  bringing  together  his 
entire  band.  Several  letters  of  inquiry  about  Realf 
had  already  reached  me  in  Boston  and  Kansas,  and  I 
referred  them  to  William  Hutchinson,  of  Lawrence, 
Kansas,  Thaddeus  Hyatt,  and  Charles  Yeaton,  of  New 
York.  During  my  stay  in  Boston  in  the  fall  and  winter 
of  1858,  I  outlined  to  James  Redpath  and  Francis 
Jackson  Merriam  the  plan  of  attack  on  slavery  with- 
out, however,  at  the  time  naming  Harper's  Ferry  to 
either  of  them.  In  a  letter  from  Kansas  to  Merriam, 
during  the  spring  of  1859,  I  told  him  of  the  point  of 
assault,  and  advised  him,  if  I  now  remember  aright, 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY     FARM.  253 

that  lie  ask  Mr.  Sanborn  to  put  him  in  communica- 
tion with  Captain  Brown.  Mr.  Redpath  never  knew 
till  the  telegraph  brought  the  startling  news  from 
Virginia  on  the  17th  of  October,  1859.  C.  W.  Moffelt, 
at  Montaur,  Iowa,  and  George  B.  Gill,  then  with  his 
brother,  Dr.  Gill,  at  Springdale,  and  still  suffering 
from  the  rheumatic  fever  he  got  during  the  slave 
rescue  trip  from  Missouri  to  Iowa,  were  written  to. 
Luke  F.  Parsons  was  also  addressed,  but  it  was  learned, 
that  he  had  withdrawn  entirely  under  the  advice  of 
Col.  Wm.  A.  Phillips,  settling  at  Salina,  Kansas. 
Another  person  addressed  was  Charles  W.  Leonhardt, 
a  Polish  gentlemen  from  Posen,  Prussia.  The  Slav 
"ski "  had  been  dropped  from  his  name  when  he  first 
came  to  the  United  States  about  185 1  or  '52.  He  was 
a  member  of  a  well-to-do  family  of  old  Polish  stock, 
who  had  been  educated  for  a  Prussian  soldier  and 
had  served  as  lieutenant  in  some  guard  corps  at 
Berlin.  He  was  very  handsome,  dark,  with  black 
silken  hair,  fine  eyes,  prominent  features,  and  a  sol- 
dierly aspect.  In  1848  he  joined  the  German  and 
Polish  revolutionists,  and  soon  after  found  his  way 
with  Dembrowski  and  the  Polish  army  to  Hungary, 
where  he  served  against  Russia.  He  was  made  a 
staff  officer  with  the  rank  of  colonel,  serving  with 
Klapka,  distinguishing  himself  for  great  gallantry. 
Leonhardt  escaped  to  Turkey  with  his  general,  and 
came  to  America  when  Kossuth  did.  He  became 
fluent  and  eloquent  too  in  his  command  of  English. 
During  the  fall  of  1856  Leonhardt  arrived  in  Kansas. 
He  wrote  for  German,  American,  and  other  papers, 
and  commenced  the  study  of  law.  He  was  an  enthu- 
siastic anti-slavery  man,  active  in  helping  fugitives, 


254  JOHN    BROWN. 

became  well  known  as  a  free-state  speaker,  and  iden- 
tified himself  with  Montgomery  in   1858  and  '59.     At 
this  time  he  became  known  to  Kagi,  and  through  him 
to  Captain   Brown.     It   is  certain  that  he  agreed  to 
serve  and  was  entrusted  with  the   plan  and  intended 
movement.   Early  in  1859  Leonhardt  removed  to  Cin- 
cinnati and  entered  as  astudent  and  clerk  the  office  of 
Chase    (Salmon    P.)    and    Ball.      During  subsequent 
months    Colonel    Leonhardt    received    several    notes 
from     Kagi,     as    he    himself    informed     me    shortly 
after    the    Harper's    Ferry    attack.     Edmund     Babb, 
an   editorial   writer   on   the    Cincinnati    Gazette,   now 
dead   I   believe,   had    been   in    Kansas    two  or    three 
times  during  the  troubles  that  followed  the  arrival  of 
Governor  Geary.   I  recall  his  first  arrival  at  Lawrence, 
Kansas,  in  December  or  January,   1856-57;  he  was  a 
close  friend  of  Leonhardt.     From  the  first,  as  a  Kan- 
sas correspondent,  Babb  was  critical,  censorious,  and 
carping,  decrying  the  journalists  and  other   men  who 
had   been    "  in   the   breach  "    for    the    preceding  two 
years.      He    personally    identified    himself    with    the 
views  of   Charles   Robinson   and   George  W.   Brown, 
editor  of  the   Herald  of  Freedom,  who  was  especially 
hostile  to  all  other  Northern  newspaper  men,  or  "  letter- 
writers,"  as  they  were  then  termed.   Mr.  Babb  was  with 
Governor  Denver  in  1858,  when  that  Executive  visited 
southern  Kansas  to  stop  the  Fort  Scott  Blake  Little- 
Montgomery  troubles.     His  correspondence,  though 
written    to   a   strong    Republican    paper,  was  always 
hostile   in    tone    to   the   resistant   free-state   men  and 
their  actions.      Leonhardt,   a  generous  soul,  was  apt 
to  trust  those  about  him.      He   gave  me  distinctly  to 
understand  that  he  made  a  confidant  of  his  editorial. 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  255 

friend,  after  receiving  early  in  August  letters  from 
both  "Isaac  Smith"  (John  Brown),  and  John  Henri 
(Kagi)  from  Chambersburg,  Pa.,  informing  him  that 
the  "  mines"  were  ready,  and  the  "  workmen  "  needed. 
These  were  the  terms  agreed  upon  between  Kagi  and 
myself,  as  well  as  to  Leonhardt  and  the  others.  Almost 
immediately  after  confidence  was  given  to  Mr.  Babb 
the  following  letter  was  sent  to  John  B.  Floyd,  sec- 
retary of  war,  who,  it  will  be  recalled,  took  no  notice 
of  the  same.  He  was  probably  too  much  engaged 
himself  in  preparing  for  a  coming  civil  war  by  a 
systematic  distribution  of  United  States  arms  and 
munitions  from  Northern  to  Southern  Government 
arsenals,  to  take  any  notice  of  the  Cincinnati  warning. 
Here  is  the  letter: 

Cincinnati,  August  20,  1859. 
SIR — I  have  lately  received  information  of  a  movement  of  so 
great  importance  that  I  feel  it  my  duty  to  impart  it- to  you  with- 
out delay.  I  have  discovered  the  existence  of  a  secret  associ- 
ation, having  for  its  object  the  liberation  of  the  slaves  at  the 
South  by  a  general  insurrection.  The  leader  of  the  movement 
is  "  old  John  Brown,"  late  of  Kansas.  He  has  been  in  Canada 
during  the  winter,  drilling  the  negroes  there,  and  they  are  only 
waiting  his  word  to  start  for  the  South  to  assist  the  slaves. 
They  have  one  of  their  leading  men  (a  white  man)  in  an  armory 
in  Maryland, — where  it  is  situated  I  have  not  been  able  to 
learn.  As  soon  as  everything  is  ready,  those  of  their  number 
who  are  in  the  Northern  States  and  Canada  are  to  come  in 
small  companies  to  their  rendezvous,  which  is  in  the  mountains 
of  Virginia.  They  will  pass  down  through  Pennsylvania  and 
Maryland,  and  enter  Virginia  at  Harper's  Ferry.  Brown  left 
the  North  about  three  or  four  weeks  ago,  and  will  arm  the 
negroes  and  strike  the  blow  in  a  few  weeks  ;  so  that  whatever 
is  done  must  be  done  at  once.  They  have  a  large  quantity  of 
arms  at  their  rendezvous,  and  are  probably  distributing  them 


256  JOHN     BROWN. 

already.  As  I  am  not  fully  in  their  confidence,  this  is  all  the 
information  I  can  give  you.  I  dare  not  sign  my  name  to  this, 
but  trust  that  you  will  not  disregard  the  warning  on  that 
account. 

What  this  letter  contains  is,  in  effect,  what  I  under- 
stood from  Colonel  Leonhardt,  that  he  told  Edmund 
Babb.  The  latter  then,  and  successfully  too,  labored 
with  the  law  student  not  to  go  further  in  the  John 
Brown  movement.  At  the  time,  inquiring  in  Cincin- 
nati also  among  earnest  anti-slavery  friends  as  to  Mr 
Babb's  standing  on  matters  of  direct  help  to  fugitives, 
etc..  and  with  the  reluctant  belief,  too,  of  his  friend 
Leonhardt  behind  me,  I  soon  after  made  public  the 
allegation  that  Edmund  Babb  wrote  the  letter  to  Sec- 
retary Floyd.  I  still  hold  that  view,  and  repeat  it 
now  as  part  of  the  narrative,  without  the  slightest 
feeling  one  way  or  the  other  relative  to  the  person 
whom  I  believe  wrote  the  same.  Mr.  Babb  never 
denied  the  authorship,  though  that  is  not,  of  course, 
conclusive  or  affirmative.  Captain  Brown  knew 
nothing  whatever  of  this  letter  and  of  the  peril  it 
indicated,  until  his  attack  and  defeat  caused  its  pub- 
lication. 

It  is  almost  startling  now,  in  view  of  the  many 
statements  to  relatives  and  friends,  that  were  made 
in  letters  written  during  this  period  by  members  of 
the  party,  as  well  as  the  great  public  interest  that 
attended  John  Brown's  movements,  that  there  was 
not  an  undue  exposure  and  arrest  of  the  whole  party. 
I  have  in  my  possession  a  score  of  letters  from 
Anderson,  Leeman,  and  Taylor,  very  plainly  setting 
forth  the  general  purpose.  Anderson,  it  is  evident, 
was  better  informed   than   most  of   them  as  to  the 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM. 


257 


place  and  date.  In  visits  after  the  war  to  London 
County  and  other  parts  of  the  valley  of  Virginia,  I 
gathered  many  details  of  Cook's  movements,  as  a 
writing-teacher,  map  and  book  agent,  etc.,  and  of  his 
rather  loose  talk.  He  never  concealed  his  identity  with 
the  Kansas  free-state  cause,  and  was  quite  open,  at 
least  among  the  Quaker  and  Dunker  farmers  of  that 
section,  in  declaring  that  there  might  be  "disturb- 
ance" or  "  active  uneasiness  "  among  the  "darkies." 
In  one  letter  Leeman  tells  his 
mother  he  is  in  Virginia,  en- 
gaged in  a  movement  to  attack 
slavery  at  Harper's  Ferry. 
Steward  Taylor  was  engaged  in 
writing  farewells  to  intimate 
friends  and  his  brother,  and 
letters  found  in  the  carpet-bag, 
captured  in  Virginia,  shows  that 
even  Tidd  had  been  very  frank 
in  his  hints  to  his  brother  and 
sister  as  early  as  1858.  Some 
of  these  matters  reached  John 
Brown  and  aroused  his  anxiety, 
if  not  anger.  The  sharpest  let- 
ter from  his  pen  I  have  seen  was 

written  to  Kagi,  though  not  designed  for  him,  and  is 
as  follows: 


STEWARD   TAYLOR. 


"Washington,  Md.,  nth  August,  1859. 
"J.  Henrie,  Esq.: 

"  Dear  Sir — I  got  along  Tuesday  evening  all  right  ;  with 
letters,  etc.  I  do  hope  all  corresponding  except  on  business  of 
the  Co.  will  be  droped  for  the  present.  If  every  one  must 
write  some^/W;  or  some  other  extra  friend,  telling  or  shoing 

17 


258  JOHN    BROWN. 

our  location  ;  and  telling  (as  some  have  done)  all  about  our  mat- 
ters ;  we  might  as  well  get  the  whole  published  at  once.,  in  the 
New  York  Herald.  Any  person  is  a  stupid  fool  who  expects 
hisfriends  to  keep  for  Aim;  that  which  he  cannot  keep  himself. 
All  our  friends  have  each  got  their  special  friends;  and  they 
again  have  theirs;  and  it  would  not  be  right  to  lay  the  burden 
of  keeping  a  secret  on  any  one  ;  at  the  end  of  a  long  string.  I 
could  tell  you  of  some  reasons  I  have  for  feeling  rather  keenly 
on  this  point.  I  do  not  say  this  on  account  of  any  tale- bearing 
that  I  accuse  any — you  of.  Three  more  hands  came  on  from 
North  Elba  on  Saturday  last.  Be  sure  to  let  me  know  of  any- 
thing of  interest. 

"Yours  in  Truth." 

There  is  another  fact  to  account  for  the  feeling  this 
letter  manifests.  At  this  time  there  was  evidently  con- 
siderable and  earnest  discussion  in  progress  at  the 
Kennedy  Farm.  The  men  there  were  made  acquainted 
with  the  fact  that  John  Brown  intended  to  first  cap- 
ture Harper's  Ferry  Even  his  own  sons  did  not 
regard  it  as  a  wise  or  practicable  step.  Mrs.  Adams's 
memoranda  gives  warrant  to  this.  It  would  seem  as 
if  the  men  had  a  desire  to  only  repeat  but  on  a  larger 
scale  the  Missouri  episode  and  run  off  a  large  body 
of  fugitive  slaves.  The  discussions  were  "warm." 
Even  his  sons  Owen,  Oliver,  and  Watson,  unwillingly 
consented  to  the  attack  on  Harper's  Ferry.  Kagi 
came  down  from  Chambersburg  to  take  part  in  that 
decision.  Cook  was  also  present  from  Harper's  Ferry. 
Charles  P.  Tidd  got  so  warm,  writes  Mrs.  Adams, 
that  he  left  the  farm  and  went  down  to  Cook's  dwell- 
ing near  Harper's  Ferry  "  to  let  his  wrath  cool  off." 
He  remained  away  for  over  a  week.  Kagi,  when 
telling  me  of  the  plan,  had  emphasized  the  intention 
of  getting  out   of    the    place    before    the    frightened 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  259 

people  could  get  organized  for  an  attack  in  force. 
This,  as  we  know,  was  not  done.  Cook  favored  the 
capture  quite  forcibly,  and  made  many  visits  to 
examine  and  report  on  the  Government  buildings, 
their  contents,  weak  or  strong  points,  habits  of  their 
watchmen,  and  other  matters  of  value.  Kagi,  the 
adjutant-general,  did  not  oppose  Captain  Brown. 
Stevens,  Anderson,  Leeman  seem  also  to  have  been 
with  their  leader.  Owen,  Oliver,  and  Watson,  all  men 
of  ability,  Oliver  especially,  had  visited  the  Ferry  quite 
often,  and  saw  readily  what  a  deathtrap  it  might  be- 
come. This  brave,  clean-souled  lover  and  husband, 
young  and  ardent,  with  a  beautiful  girl-wife  near 
him,  closed  the  discussion,  for  the  sons  at  least,  with 
the  remark:  "We  must  not  let  our  father  die  alone." 
The  Captain  had  declared  that  he  would  go  to  the 
Ferry  with  the  half  dozen,  who  had  signified  that  they, 
at  least,  would  follow  him  anywhere  and  under  all 
conditions.  He  also  proposed  to  resign  the  com- 
mand and  follow  Kagi,  Stevens,  or  whoever  the  men 
might  choose.  On  that  question  their  vote  was  a 
united  negative.  The  following  letter  was  written  two 
days  before  Frederick  Douglass  and  Captain  Brown 
had  their  last  meeting  in  the  old  stone  quarry,  near 
Chambersburg. 

Here  it  is: 

Harper's  Ferry,  August  18,  1859. 

Dear  Sir — We  have  all  agreed  to  sustain  your 
decisions,  until  you  have  proved  incompetent,  and 
many  of  us  will  adhere  to  your  decisions  so  long  as 
you  will.     Your  friend  Owen  Smith.1 


1  For  "  Smith  "  we  should,  of  course,  read  "  Brown," 


260  JOHN    BROWN. 

"The  men  generally,''  writes  Mrs.  Adams,  "did  not 
know  that  the  raid  on  the  Government  works  was 
part  of  the  'plan'  until  after  they  arrived  at  the 
farm  in  the  beginning  of  August.  We  knew,"  she 
writes,  "  that  he  had  planned  the  taking  of  Harper's 
Ferry  long  before  he  or  any  member  of  his  family 
ever  went  to  Kansas.  It  was  father's  original  plan, 
as  we  used  to  call  it,  to  take  Harper's  Ferry  at  the 
outset,  to  secure  firearms  to  arm  the  slaves,  and  to 
strike  terror  into  the  hearts  of  the  slaveholders;  then 
to  immediately  start  for  the  plantations,  gather  up 
the  negroes,  and  retreat  to  the  mountains;  send  out 
armed  squads  from  there  to  gather  more,  and  event- 
ually to  spread  out  his  forces  until  the  slaves  would 
come  to  them,  or  the  slaveholders  would  surrender 
them  to  gain  peace.  He  expected  .  .  .  that  if 
they  had  intelligent  white  leaders  that  they  would  be 
prevailed  on  to  rise  and  secure  their  freedom  without 
revenging  their  wrongs,  and  with  very  little  blood- 
shed. .  .  .  He  changed  his  plan  as  to  the  places 
for  commencing  while  in  Kansas,  and  at  one  time 
thought  of  going  down  to  the  vicinity  of  New  Orleans 
and  working  north  from  there."  ' 

John  Brown,  Jr.,  begun  active  work  "hiving  the 
bees,"  as  his  father  told  Frederick  Douglass,  at 
Chambersburg,  he  wished  him  to  do;  after  shipping 
the   precious  freight  of   tools,   etc.,   the  Captain  had 


1  This  may  account  for  a  series  of  memoranda  relative  to  Louis- 
iana slave  plantations,  routes,  etc.,  which,  in  Owen's  peculiar 
hand,  are  nor/  in  possession  of  Mrs.  Ruth  Thompson,  the  eldest 
sister.  It  may  also  account  for  Kagi  suggesting  to  me  the  trips  I 
made  into  the  Indian  Territory  and  even  further  south,  reporting 
observations  to  him  by  letter. 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  261 

procured  with  such  labored  efforts,  July  and  part  of 
August  was  taken  up  with  this  work.  The  first  trip 
was  made  to  Boston,  August  ioth,  where  he  succeeded 
in  raising  about  two  hundred  dollars.  He  wrote  Kagi 
from  Syracuse,  under  date  of  August  17th,  that  he 
dined  at  Medford,  with  George  L.  Stearns,  who  said 
as  he  left:  "  Tell  friend  Isaac  that  we  have  the  fullest 
confidence  in  his  endeavor,  whatever  may  be  the 
result."  John  Brown,  Jr.,  adds:  "  I  have  met  with  no 
man  on  whom,  I  think,  more  implicit  reliance  can  be 
placed."  Of  other  Boston  friends  whom  he  met  or 
had  communication  with,  he  says;  "  Our  cause  is 
their  cause  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word."  On  the 
same  day  he  sends  a  brief  note  from  Rochester,  an- 
nouncing that  Frederick  Douglass  had  left  via  New 
York  and  Philadelphia,  to  meet  "  friend  Isaac."  He 
also  states  "  That  other  young  friend  went  on  from 
here,  to  visit  you  yesterday,"  referring  to  the  negro 
Shields  Green,  whom  Douglass  had  enlisted  in  his 
place.  John  Brown,  Jr.,  then  went  northward  to 
Canada  West,  taking  with  him  a  colored  man,  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Loguen,  of  Syracuse,  of  whom  he  afterwards 
wrote  as  "too  fat"  for  real  use.  St.  Catherine, 
Hamilton,  Chatham,  London,  Buxton,  and  Windsor 
were  all  visited.  Branches  of  the  League,  of  which 
mention  has  been  made  in  chapter  seven,  were 
organized.  John's  letters  are  full  of  information,  but 
all  of  them  indicate  delay  on  the  part  of  the  small 
number  relied  upon.  He  was  in  Detroit,  conferring 
with  De  Baptiste,  and  at  Sandusky  and  Cleveland, 
urging  others  to  work  and  assist.  In  a  letter  from 
Sandusky  to  "John  Henri"  (Kagi),  bearing  date 
August  27th,  John,  Jr.,  writes  of  "  a  coppersmith,"  sup- 


262  JOHN    BROWN. 

posed  to  be  Reynolds,  who  was  at  the  Chatham  Con- 
vention and  one  of  the  sharpest  of  would  be  fighters, 
saying,  "  I  think  he  is  one  of  those  men  who  must  be 
obtained  if  possible,"  but  he  had  been  out  of  work, 
and  now  "has  a  job,  which  he  cannot  leave  until 
finished."  At  another  man's  "  an  association  "  was 
formed,  "  the  business  of  which  is  to  hunt  up  good 
workmen  and  raise  the  means  among  themselves  to 
send  them  forward."  None  of  these  things  material- 
ized. John,  Jr.  believed  that  "  they  will  take  hold 
and  do  something."  At  Chatham  "  I  met  a  hearty 
response,"  he  writes  and  that's  all,  except  that  the 
brave,  modest,  reticent  O.  P.  Anderson,  paid  his  own 
way  and  reported  for  duty  shortly  after.  Robinson 
.Alexander,  also  a  member  of  the  Chatham  Convention, 
"thinks,"  writes  John,  "he  can  now  close  out  by  1st 
November,  and  in  the  meantime  to  prove  his  devo- 
tion will  furnish  means  to  help  on  two  or  three  him- 
self." But  if  he  did  that,  they  fell  by  the  wayside  some- 
where. Mr.  Holden,  also  a  member  of  the  conven- 
tion, had  "gone  to  the  Frazier  River,"  British  Colum- 
bia. Even  Richard  Richardson,  the  fugitive,  who 
had  been  helped  out  of  Missouri,  and  wras  afterward 
one  of  the  men  "  at  school  "  in  Iowa  and  a  member 
of  the  Chatham  Convention,  was  "away  harvesting  " 
All,  indeed,  appeared  to  be  otherwise  busy  or  to  mis- 
apprehend. Canada,  and  the  freed  refugees  therein, 
proved  a  broken  reed,  indeed.  Harriet  Tubman, 
"the  General  of  us  all,"  fell  sick  and  could  not  travel. 
Frederick  Douglass's  refusal  to  finally  join  the  enter- 
prise has  never,  to  me,  appeared  to  warrant  adverse 
criticism.  His  position  before  the  land  justified,  in 
1859,  a  choice  between  both  conditions,  nor  failed  of 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  263 

endeavor.  Certainly  he  was  doing  a  large  work, 
compelling,  by  his  intellectual  power  and  eloquence, 
a  fast-growing  recognition  for  the  oppressed  race,  of 
which  he  was  an  able  leader.  He  might  well  weigh, 
as  he  did,  the  question  of  casting  this  upon  the 
"hazard  of  a  die."  The  "logic  of  events"  at  least 
has  justified  Frederick  Douglass,  and  his  faithful 
services  must  silence  critics  ;  those  at  least  who  also 
had  the  opportunity  and  did  not  follow  John  Brown. 
On  the  2d  of  September  John,  Jr.,  writes  again  to 
"John  Henri,"  dating  from  his  home  at  West  Andover. 

In  this  he  mentions  sending  letters  to  Canada 
points,  and  says  that  "friend  L — y  (Leary),  of  Ob — 
(erlin)  will  be  on  hand  soon."  He  brought  a  recruit, 
too,  in  the  person  of  John  A.  Copeland  "  C.  H.  L — n 
(Langston)  will  do  all  he  can,  but  his  health  is  bad." 
Another  one  has  "  married  a  wife  and  cannot  come." 
So  had  Oliver  Brown,  but  he  had  never  been  a  slave. 
John,  Jr.,  inquires  as  to  the  "frame  of  mind"  in 
which  the  Rochester  friend  (Frederick  Douglass) 
returned.  On  the  8th  of  September,  another  letter 
reaches  Kagi,  in  which  John,  Jr.,  says:  "  I  had  sup- 
posed you  would  not  think  it  best  to  commence 
operations  opening  the  coal  banks  before  spring,  un- 
less circumstances  should  make  important."  This  mis- 
apprehension, if  such  it  was,  seems  to  have  been  the 
cause  of  delays  on  the  Canada  side.  I  do  not  myself 
believe  that  beyond  a  dozen  in  all,  there  was  any 
real  expectation  of  competent  recruits  arriving.  Mrs. 
Adams's  statements  confirm  this  view. 

Reasons  grew  for  pressing  to  a  conclusion.  Dis- 
bandment  was  not  hinted  at  even  ;  a  forward  move- 
ment was  therefore  necessarv.    Life  in  the  little  farm- 


264  JOHN    BROWN. 

house  went  on,  becoming  almost  unbearable  at  times  ; 
the  men,  who,  in  spite  of  their  devotion,  good  humor, 
and  discipline,  necessarily  feeling  the  vigorous  caution 
and  confinement  demanded  by  it  Their  singing  was 
a  great  relief  when  it  could  be  indulged;  Stevens  and 
Tidd  especially  having  fine  voices,  the  former  being 
an  excellent  baritone  of  superior  timbre  Among 
their  favorite  songs  were  "  All  the  Dear  Folk  have 
Gone,"  "  Faded  Flowers"  and  'Nearer  My  God  to 
Thee/'  No  spiritual  "  seances "  were  held  at 
Kennedy's,  at  least  while  Anne  and  Martha  were 
there.  John  Brown  was  always  good  to  his  neigh- 
bors, and  his  acts  of  personal  kindness  and  charity, 
as  well  as  his  skill  as  veterinarian  with  sick  cattle 
and  horses,  are  remembered  to  this  day,  and  have 
become  parts  of  the  neighborhood  traditions.  At 
the  "  Ferry,'*  he  and  his  sons  became  favorites,  and 
were  noted  for  their  courtesy  and  willingness  to 
oblige.  Owen  especially  used  to  spend  hours  in  talk- 
ing with  the  railroad  men  and  others,  learning  there- 
by, without  arousing  suspicions,  of  the  people,  topog- 
raphy, the  best  and  worst  slaveholders,  and  of  the 
"  tools,"  etc.,  in  the  United  States  Arsenal.  Cook  at 
this  time  was  constantly  on  the  move,  selling  maps 
through  the  country  as  an  excuse.  The  people 
around  the  Kennedy  Farm  were  mainly  of  the  Dun- 
ker  sect  or  church,  and  of  a  division  therein  which 
were  non-resistant  and  did  not  believe  in  slavery. 
Captain  Brown  used  to  go  nearly  every  evening  to  a 
little  church  close  by,  and  join  with  these  quaint  people 
in  their  religious  exercises,  often  exhorting  or  preach- 
ing to  the  small  congregation.  Mrs.  Adams  says  of  the 
result  of  one  of  these  occasions: 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  265 

"  There  was  a  family  of  poor  people  who  lived  near  by  who 
had  rented  the  garden  on  the  Kennedy  place,  directly  back  of 
the  house.  The  little  barefooted  woman  and  four  small  chil- 
dren (she  carried  the  youngest  in  her  arms)  would  all  come 
trooping  over  to  the  garden  at  all  hours  of  the  day,  and,  at 
times,  several  times  during  the  day.  Nearly  always  they  would 
come  up  the  steps  and  into  the  house  and  stay  a  short  time. 
This  made  it  very  troublesome  for  us,  compelling  the  men, 
when  she  came  in  sight  at  meal  times,  to  gather  up  the  victuals 
and  table-cloth  and  quietly  disappear  up  stairs.  One  Saturday 
father  and  I  went  to  a  religious  (Dunker)  meeting  that  was 
held  in  a  grove  near  the  schoolhouse,  and  the  folks  left  at  home 
forgot  to  keep  a  sharp  lookout  for  Mrs.  Heiffmaster,  and  she 
stole  into  the  house  before  they  saw  her,  and  saw  Shields 
Green  (that  must  have  been  in  September),  Barclay  Coppoc, 
and  Will  Leeman.  And  another  time  after  that  she  saw  C.  P. 
Tidd  standing  on  the  porch.  She  thought  these  strangers  were 
running  off  negroes  to  the  North.  I  used  to  give  her  everything 
she  wanted  or  asked  for  to  keep  her  on  good  terms,  but  we 
were  in  constant  fear  that  she  was  either  a  spy  or  would  betray 
us.  It  was  like  standing  on  a  powder  magazine,  after  a  slow 
match  had  been  lighted." 

The  Pennsylvania  border  was  more  suspicious.  It 
floated  slowly  over  to  Maryland,  and  rumors  began  to 
be  heard  of  possible  domiciliary  visits,  of  calls  by  the 
sheriff,  and  other  symptoms  of  distrust.  They  did  not 
crystallize  into  action,  but  it  is  most  probable  that  an 
exposure  of  some  sort  must  have  soon  occurred,  if 
Captain  Brown  had  not  himself  made  the  same.  The 
men  themselves  were  overstrained.  The  exaltation 
they  were  feeling  would  have  broken  and  fallen  down. 
"One  day,  while  we  were  alone  in  the  yard,"  writes 
Mrs.  Adams,  "Owen  remarked  as  he  looked  up  at  the 
house — 'If  we  succeed,  some  day  there  will  be  a 
United   States  flag  over  this    house — if    we  do  not, 


206  JOHN    BROWN. 

it    will    be    considered    a    den    of    land     pirates    and 
thieves. 

On  the  29th  of  September,  the  two  young  and 
brave  women  left  the  Kennedy  Farm  for  North  Elba. 
Martha's  babe  was  born,  and  died  five  months  after, 
and  in  a  few  days  she  parted  with  life  also.  Oliver 
escorted  them  to  Troy,  and  then  returned  direct. 
Virginia  Cook,  the  wife  of  John  Edwin,  spent  one 
night,  the  13th  of  October,  on  her  way  from  her  home 
to  Chambersburg,  where  she  was  left  with  her  babe 
almost  destitute  for  some  days.  When  Anne  and 
Martha,  with  Oliver,  were  on  their  way  to  Chambers- 
burg to  take  the  train  and  ere  they  had  left  Maryland, 
a  constable,  or  deputy  sheriff,  rode  up  and  compelled 
Oliver  to  stop,  while  he  searched  the  little  wagon. 
When  the  train  reached  Harrisburg,  the  three  young 
folks  met  their  father  and  Kagi,  returning  from  Phila- 
delphia, and  there  in  the  depot  bade  them  farewell, — 
the  last  one  as  it  proved.  It  was  difficult  to  make  any 
of  the  Brown  family  believe  their  father's  plan  was  to 
prove  a  failure.  When  the  startling  news  reached 
them  at  North  Elba,  and  it  came  in  even  worse  than 
the  actual  shape,  they  could  not  be  induced  to  give  it 
full  credence. 

The  last  of  the  party  closed  in.  Osborne  P.  Ander- 
son arrived  at  Chambersburg  on  the  16th,  and  reached 
the  farm  on  the  25th  of  September.  Dangerfield 
Newby,  who  had  been  living  in  a  border  town  of 
Pennsylvania,  was  on  hand,  Captain  Brown,  Kagi, 
Leary,  and  Copeland  alone  were  absent.  The  two 
last  arrived  v.  n  the  2d  of  October.  Merriam  reported 
at  Philadelphia  on  the  10th  or  nth  of  the  last  month, 
met  Captain  Brown   there,  and,  after  conference,  left 


PREPARATION    AT    THE    KENNEDY    FARM.  267 

immediately  for  Baltimore,  where  he  purchased  a 
large  amount  of  primers  and  caps.  The  dealer  testi- 
fied afterwards  that  he  supposed  the  purchase  to  be 
for  some  filibustering  expedition.  On  the  15th,  Mer- 
riam  arrived  at  the  Kennedy  Farm.  From  Harper's 
Ferry  he  sent  the  following  inexplicable  dispatch: 

Harper's  Ferry,  Oct.  15,  1859. 
Lewis   Hayden,1  Secretary   of   State's   Office,  State   House, 
Boston. 

Orders  disobeyed.     Conditions  broken.     Pay  S.  immediately 

balance    of  my  money.     Allow   no   further  expenses.     Recall 

money  advanced,  if  not  sent. 

Francis  J.  Merriam. 

The  meaning  of  this  dispatch  is  unknown.  It  can 
only  be  conjecturall\T  understood.  There  is  not  the 
slightest  ground  for  supposing  it  to  relate  to  any  dis- 
satisfaction with  Captain  Brown.  Merriam  brought 
with  him  to  the  point  at  which  he  first  met  John 
Brown  several  hundred  dollars  in  gold,  and  trans- 
ferred to  him  in  large  part  what  he  did  not  expend  at 
Baltimore  on  the  13th  or  14th  of  October  in  the 
purchase  of  40,000  Sharpe's  rifle  primers  and  per- 
cussion caps,  etc.  It  is  evident,  therefore,  that  the 
message  could  not  have  referred  to  affairs  at  the 
Marvland  rendezvous,  and  must  have  related  to  some 
undue  gossip  or  complaints  made  in  Boston.  The 
five  men  of  color  that  Lewis  Hayden  states  agreed 
to,  but  did  not  go  to  join  John  Brown,  were  to  have 
traveled  on  funds  advanced  by  Frank  J.  Merriam,  who 
had  drawn  $600  from  his  uncle  before  he  left  Boston, 
leaving  part  of  it  with  Mr  Hayden.     My  information, 

1  A  well-known  colored  man,  of  Boston,  now  deceased,  himself 
a  fugitive  slave. 


268  JOHN    BROWN. 

though  not  quite  verified,  goes  to  show  that  he  gave 
and  spent  for  Captain  Brown  and  the  enterprise 
about  $400  in  all  ;  fortunately  retaining  some  for 
himself,  thus  enabling  him  to  make  his  escape  from 
Chambersburg  north  to  Canada,  after  the  defeat. 

Frank  B.  Sanborn  (on  the  authority  of  Hayden 
himself),  in  an  Atlantic  article,  December,  1875  ("The 
Virginia  Campaign  of  John  Brown "),  states  that 
Lewis  Hayderi  was  informed  of  the  movement  by 
John  Brown,  Jr.,  after  conferring  with  Mr.  Stearns 
and  Dr.  House  in  June,  1859,  of  his  father's  purposes 
and  plans.     The  Atlantic  article  says: 

"  Mr.  Hayden  entered  warmly  into  the  work,  and  undertook 
to  enlist  a  few  colored  men  in  Massachusetts.  .  .  .  Accord- 
ing to  his  recollections  he  did  enlist  six  such  recruits  .  .  . 
only  one  .  .  .  reached  Harper's  Ferry,  hefore  the  attack, 
and  even  he  took  no  part  in  the  fight."  In  a  footnote  to  the 
same  article,  it  is  said,  on  Mr.  Hayden's  authority,  that  "  John 
Anderson  was  a  different  person  from  Osborne  (Perry)  Ander- 
son;  that  he  was  the  only  one  of  the  colored  recruits  from 
Massachusetts  who  reached  Harper's  Ferry,  but  that  he  took 
no  part  in  the  fight  and  returned  to  Boston,  where  he  has  since 
died."  [I  have  been  unable  to  find  the  slightest  trace  of  such  a 
person. — R.  J.  H.] 

This  much  is  certain,  that  with  the  arrival  of  the 
Boston  recruit,  Francis  J.  Merriam,  the  tally  was 
closed,  the  list  put  away,  the  die  was  cast !  Within 
thirty  hours,  at  sunrise  of  the  17th  of  October,  1859, 
a  "  shot  was  fired  "  that,  like  that  of  the  embattled 
farmers  of  Concord  and  Lexington,  eighty-two  years 
before,  led,  too,  by  the  grandfather  of  the  Reverend 
Theodore  Parker,  one  of  John  Brown's  warmest 
friends,  "  echoed  round  the  world." 


CHAPTER  X. 

"THE  order  of  march." 

Gathering  the  last  recruits — Date  of  assault — Was  it 
changed?  —  Arrivals  from  Canada  —  Ohio — The 
young  Bosto?iiati — A  colored  man  who  cantwt  be 
traced — Lewis  Hay  den  and  John  Brown,  Jr.,  as 
recruiting  agents — The  Kansas  notification — Night 
rides  from  Chamber  sburg  to  Hagerstown — The  last 
Sunday  services  at  the  farm — A  council  of  war — 
Assignments  to  duty — Dow?i  the  moonlit  road. 

The  movement  upon  Harper's  Ferry  begun  at  eight 
in  the  evening  of  the  16th  of  October,  that  being  the 
hour  at  which  the  little  band  assumed  their  weapons 
and  left  the  Kennedy  farm.  John  Brown  returned 
from  Philadelphia  via  Hagerstown,  during  the  night  of 
the  14th,  reaching  the  farm  early  in  the  forenoon  of 
the  15th.  All  who  participated  in  the  attack  answered 
the  roll  call.  It  remains  uncertain  whether  the  actual 
blow  was  suddenly  decided  on  or  not.  Dr.  A.  M. 
Ross,  of  Toronto,  Canada,  states  that  he  was  notified 
that  the  blow  was  to  be  delivered  between  the  15th 
and  27th,  and,  according  to  a  previous  understanding, 
the  doctor  went  to  Richmond  and  was  in  that  city 
when  the  startling  news  arrived.  John  Brown,  Jr., 
evidently  did  not  anticipate  as  early  a  movement. 
His  letters  from  Canada,  found  in  the  captured  car- 


270  JOHN     BROWN. 

pet-bag,  showed  that  there  were  colored  men  from 
Canada  and  Ohio  who  expected  and  were  preparing 
to  join  during  the  last  week  of  October.  One  hand 
from  Kansas  reported  to  Captain  Brown  himself, 
between  the  10th  and  14th,  while  the  latter  was 
absent  from  the  farm.  This  Western  man  was  sent 
to  Hagerstown  and  Chambersburg,  receiving  a  dis- 
tinct impression  that  a  week  would  elapse  before 
positive  action.  He  managed  to  remain  from  the 
15th  to  the  18th  in  the  neighborhood;  and  then,  find- 
ing it  impossible  to  assist  in  any  direct  way  the 
party  headed  by  Owen  Brown  who  had  escaped  into 
the  laurel  hills  of  southern  Pennsylvania,  successfully 
made  his  way  to  Cincinnati,  returning  immediately 
to  the  border  counties  of  Pennsylvania.  As  a  news- 
paper correspondent,  being  recognized  or  suspected 
of  being,  moreover,  a  "Kansas"  man — not  a  safe 
designation  in  those  days, — he  soon  left  for  Harris- 
burg  and  Cleveland,  and  finally  went  to  Boston. 

Details  multiply  to  show  that  "Isaac  Smith's" 
appearance,  with  the  presence  of  Owen  Brown  and 
his  brothers  and  of  Jerry  Anderson,  in  such  a  quiet 
neighborhood  and  upon  so  small  a  farm,  excited 
active  suspicions  among  those  who  were  always  alert 
to  guard  the  interests  of  slavery.  The  presence  of  a 
colored  man  at  the  farm-house,  known  as  it  was, 
according  to  Dauphin  Thompson's  letter,  could  but 
excite  alarm.  The  Pennsylvania  border  was  a  more 
dangerous  neighborhood  than  that  of  Maryland. 
The  "peculiar  institution,"  as  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson 
once  wittily  termed  chattelism,  was  never  without 
assets,  however,  when  assault  was  threatened  or  dan- 
gers feared.    A  large  draft  of  alarm  was  always  ready 


"the  order  of  march."  271 

for  discount.     The  type  of  Pennsylvanians  by  whom 
Cook   and    Hazlett    were   afterwards    done  to  death, 
were  as  "  mediumistic  "  as  the  border  slaves  and  free 
people  of  color.      In  Maryland,  county  peace  officers 
were    somewhat    anxiously    inquiring    about    "Isaac 
Smith   &   Sons,"   a   mining   firm  that  did  not  mine — 
cattle  buyers  who  were  not  trading  in  stock.     Annie 
Brown    (Mrs.    Adams),   whom    her   father    called    his 
"  little  watch-dog,"  because  so  vigilant  when  at  the 
farm,  recalls  in  her  California  home  that,  when  she  and 
Isabel,  her  brother  Watson's  wife,  left  the   Kennedy 
farm  for  North  Elba,  nearly  a  month  before  the  out- 
break,  that  persons  were  already  prying  about  the 
place.     James  Redpath 1    puts  the  expected  date   as 
the  24th  of  October.      He  was  in  communication  with 
Lewis  Hayden  and   Francis  J.  Merriam,  and  had,  as 
he  wrote,  all  the  current  data  at  command.     During 
August,  I  received  at  Leavenworth,  from  J.  H.  Kagi, 
a    letter    referring    to    a    proposed    "expedition"    to 
"  Central    America,"    being    about    to   start    later   in 
October.     From    "  Isaac    Smith "  there    came  to   me 
in   the  middle  of  September,  bearing  date  at  Cham- 
bersburg,  a  brief  note  by  which   I  was  notified   that 
"  mining  operations  "   would  begin    in  October,  and 
that  if  I  still   wished  to  enter  upon  the  speculation/ 
I  should    report    by    the    middle    of    that    montlwat 
a    point    named.       Under    the    tense    excitement    of 
that    period,    I    destroyed    this    note,  and    have  ever 
since  been  apologizing  to  myself  for  the  only  bit  of 
fear  or  evasion  as   to   my  own    feelings   or  purposes, 
of  which  I  was  in  any  way  guilty  during  all  the  fierce 


"  Public  Life  of  Capt.  John  Brown,"  Boston,  i860. 


272 


JOHN    BROWN. 


days  that  followed   the    17th   of  October,   1859.     In 
subsequent  conversation  with  Charles  Plummer  Tidd, 
while  in   northern  Ohio,  and  later  with  Barclay  Cop- 
poc  in  Boston  and  at  North  Elba,  the  following  July, 
I  had  my  view  strengthened  into  conviction,  that  the 
final  order  to  move  was  based  upon  a  sudden  emer- 
gency.    Osborne   Perry  Anderson's  graphic  and  in- 
valuable   little    monograph    "  A 
Voice    From    Harper's    Ferry," 
must    after    all    be  the  best  au- 
thority.    Summarizing  his  testi- 
mony, he    states   that,  after  his 
own   arrival    at    Chambersburg, 
Pa.,  from  Chatham,  Canada,  on 
the     16th    of    September,    1859, 
there   was  a  council   or  confer- 
ence  held,  presumably  at    Mrs. 
Ritter's,      the      boarding-house 
where  "  Isaac  Smith"  and  "John 
Henri  "    always     put     up,    and 
where    boarded    also    the    Car- 
penters    (the      two      Coppocs), 
George  Plummer  (Tidd),Watson 
and    Oliver    "Smith"    (Brown), 
and  to  which  Mrs.  Virginia  Cook,  the  young  wife  of  that 
abolition  partisan,  went  on  the  night  of  the  12th  or  13th 
of  October,  from  Martinsburg,  via  Hagerstown,  Md. 
The  colored  hands  were  usually  accommodated,  it  is 
presumed,  by  men  of  that  race,   like  Henry    Watson, 
the    barber.      There    were    ethers    who    tilled    small 
areas  of  land  and   worked   "  round,"   that  could  also 
De  depended  upon.    Mr.  Anderson,  in  conversation  at 
Washington  during  1870,  estimated  that  mere  were  at 


OSBORNE    PERRY   ANDERSON. 


W 

wv 


"the  order  of  march."  273 

least  one  hundred  and  fifty  actively  informed  slaves. 
He  spent  eight  days  at  Chambersburg.  On  the  20th 
and  24th,  conferences  as  before  referred  to,  weie 
held,  and  upon  the  latter  date  Anderson  started  afoot 
for  Middletovvn,  a  village  on  the  borders  of  Maryland 
and  Pennsylvania.  He  arrived  there  at  dark  and 
found  Captain  Brown  awaiting  him  in  a  one-horse 
covered  wagon  he  used.  The  underground  railway 
work  of  that  border  was  usually  done  in  such 
vehicles,  when  "  Walker's  express  "  was  not  employed. 
It  was  this  little  experience  that  helped  Anderson  to 
escape.  If  the  party  which  Owen  Brown  afterwards 
led,  had  taken  the  same  general  direction  northwards 
that  Anderson  did,  probably  all  of  them  would  have 
got  away.  Cook's  anxiety  to  get  news  of  his  young 
wife,  then  at  Chambersburg,  and  Owen  Brown's 
knowledge  of  western  Pennsylvania,  led  to  the 
route,  west  and  south  of  the  range — the  road  watched 
by  the  professional  kidnappers  and  fugitive  slave- 
hunters  of  those  days — which  they  finally  followed. 
Hazlitt's  divergence  at  Chambersburg  from  the 
north  star  line,  also  led  to  his  arrest  at  Carlisle. 
But  to  return  to  Anderson's  experiences. 

After  meeting  Captain  Brown  on  the  outskirts 
of  Middletown,  they  drove  at  once  to  the  Kennedy 
Farm,  arriving  there  about  daybreak.  As  a  neces- 
sary precaution  against  surprise  all  the  four  colored 
men  who  went  from  the  North  to  the  farm  and 
ferry  made  the  journey  from  Chambersburg  to  the 
Kennedy  Farm  in  the  night.  Anderson  says:  "A 
more  earnest,  fearless,  determined  company  of  men 
it  would  be  difficult  to  get  together."  On  the  12th 
of  October  John  A.  Copeland  and  Lewis  Sherrard 
18 


*74 


JOHN    BROWN. 


Leary,  colored  men  from  Oberlin,  Ohio,  arrived  at 
Chambersburg.  Captain  Brown  on  the  ioth  or  nth 
of  October  was  in  Philadelphia,  meeting  F.  J.  Mer- 
riam  there,  and  sending  him  over  to  Baltimore  to  buy- 
gun  caps,  rifle  primers,  tools,  etc.  Why  these  were 
not  purchased  in  Philadelphia  has  never  been  ex- 
plained. The  large  quantity  of  40,000  caps  Merriam 
purchased  aroused  suspicion  of  a  filibustering  move- 
ment and  almost  caused  his  arrest.  Some  days  be- 
fore, Merriam,  who  had  learned 
from  me  a  few  months  previously 
of  the  proposed  attack  on  slavery, 
was  met  on  a  Boston  street  and 
asked  by  Lewis  Hayden  for  $600, 
which  was  furnished,  Merriam  well 
knowing  it  was  intended  for  "  secret 
service  "purposes.  Lewis  Hayden 
always  said  one  "  John  Anderson," 
a  colored  man,  went  from  Boston 
and  never  returned.  Mr.  Sanborn 
in  his  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John 
Brown "  gives  this  name.  But  I 
have  never  been  able  to  trace  any 
such  person,  and  if  John  Anderson 
did  go  to  join  John  Brown,  he 
must  have  been  slain  on  the  road  after  the  fight 
commenced. 

The  party  who  assembled  then  in  council  at  the 
Kennedy  Farm  after  the  Captain  returned  from  the 
little  Winebrenarian  (Dunker)  chapel  and  the  evening 
prayer-meeting  therein,  consisted  of  John  Brown  and 
his  three  sons — Owen,  Oliver,  and  Watson;  William 
and  Adolphus  Dauphin  Thompson,  brothers  of  Henry, 


FRANCIS    JACKSON    MERRIAM. 


THE    ORDER    OF    MARCH. 


~'75 


husband  of  the  Captain's  eldest  daughter  Ruth;  John 
Henri  Kagi,  Aaron  Dwight  Stevens,  John  Edwin 
Cook,  who  had  come  the  same  day  from  Martinsburg, 
Maryland,  where  he  had  lived  for  about  fifteen 
months  with  his  wife's  people  ;  William  H.  Leeman, 
George  Plummer  Tidd,  Jeremiah  G.  Anderson,  Albert 
Hazlett,  Steward  Taylor,  Edwin  and  Barclay  Coppoc, 
and  Francis  J.  Merriam,  white  men, 
and  Osborne  P.  Anderson,  William 
Copeland,  Lewis  Sherrard  Leary, 
and  Shields  Green  (known  usually 
as  "the  Emperor"),  colored.  No 
mention  is  made  as  being  at  the 
farm  of  Dangerfield  Newby,  the 
Virginian  free  man,  who  fought 
and  died  at  Harper's  Ferry,  in  the 
evident  hope  of  making  his  wife 
free.  She  was  a  slave  woman  who 
lived  about  thirty  miles  south  of 
Harper's  Ferry  and  was  then,  as 
letters  show,  about  to  be  sold  to 
a  Louisiana  trader.  She  was  sub- 
sequently so  sold  and  still  lives,  I 
learn,  in  the  Pelican  State,  made 
free  by  the  civil  war. 

Of  the  twenty-one  followers  assembled  in  the  Ken- 
nedy dwelling,  thirteen  of  them,  including  the  Browns 
and  William  Thompson,  had  all  seen  service  in  Kan- 
sas. Of  the  younger  whites — Dauphin  Thompson 
was  a  North  Elba  recruit,  the  brothers  Coppoc  were 
from  Iowa,  and  Francis  Jackson  Merriam,  a  grandson 
of  the  president  of  the  American  Anti-Slavery  Society, 
came  naturally  with  his  hostility  to  chattel  bondage, 


JOHN    EDWIN    COOK, 


276  JOHN    BROWN. 

though  his  feeling  did  not  take  the  non-resist- 
ance form  of  Francis  Jackson.  Adolphus  Dauphin 
Thompson  and  Barclay  Coppoc  were  both  in  their 
twentieth  year;  Merriam  was  not  over  twenty-one. 
The  unmarried  men  were  besides  these  three  young- 
sters,—  Owen  Brown,  Kagi,  Stevens,  Tidd,  Leeman, 
Edwin  Coppoc,  Taylor,  "  Jerry  "  Anderson,  his  colored 
namesake,  Osborne,  and  Shields  Green — twelve  out 
of  the  twenty-two.  During  the  summer  months  the 
wives  of  Oliver  and  Watson  Brown  had  both  been  at 
the  Kennedy  Farm  on  short  visits.  Virginia,  the 
wife  of  Captain  Cook,  was  then  at  Chambersburg, 
Pa.,  waiting  with  her  young  child  for  the  news  of  an 
event  whose  nature  she  but  half  suspected.  The 
wives  of  the  Browns  were  all  in  North  Elba.  The 
roads  by  which  the  little  band  of  heroic  emancipators 
had  traveled  to  reach  Harper's  Ferry  that  fateful 
Sunday  evening,  were  indeed  sufficiently  denned. 
Five  through  slavery  and  fugitive  days;  thirteen  in 
the  miry  smoke  and  red  flame  of  Kansas  aggressions; 
the  remaining  five  of  the  party  had  been  trained  by 
the  seeing  of  events  and  through  their  associations. 
Only  one  recruit  came  direct  from  Canada.  There 
was  also  one  unknown  colored  Virginian  left  at  the 
Maryland  farm  to  assist  Owen's  party  in  moving 
goods. 

That  suspicions  were  aroused  became  even  more 
evident  on  the  Pennsylvania  border,  where  the 
profit  of  fugitive  slave-hunting  had  trained  its 
human  bloodhounds,  than  it  was  in  the  sleepy 
fields  of  Maryland.  A  letter  of  Dauphin  Thomp- 
son to  his  North  Elba  home  gives  a  reason  for 
this: 


"the  order  of  march.  277 

"  Parts  Unknown,  September  4,  1859. 

"  Dear  Brother  and  Sister —  ...  I  am  sit- 
ting in  the  door  of  an  old  log-house,  in  which  we 
have  stored  some  of  our  freight.  It  is  about  fifty 
rods  from  the  house  in  which  we  live.  We  are  all 
well  and  in  capital  spirits.  The  girls  have  gone  to 
meeting  this  morning,  and  some  of  the  boys.  They 
call  the  meeting  a  bush-meeting.  They  have  meet- 
ings in  a  grove  during  the  daytime,  and  at  evening 
in  the  house.  The  meeting  is  conducted  by  a  sect, 
called  Winebrenarians.  They  are  opposed  to  slavery, 
so  much  so  that  they  will  not  have  anything  to  do 
with  the  institution  in  the  least.  If  a  strange  minister 
comes  along,  they  will  not  let  him  preach  until  they 
find  out  whether  he  is  in  favor  of  slavery  or  not. 

"  We  have  to  be  very  careful  here  how  we  act  in 
everything.  We  have  one  colored  man  in  our  com- 
pany who  has  been  seen  by  a  neighbor  woman,  but 
she  thinks  he  is  a  fugitive,  and  that  we  are  trying  to 
help  him  to  his  freedom.  She  has  promised  to  keep 
dark  about  it,  and  we  are  going  to  trust  her  honesty. 
It  is  rather  a  bad  job,  but  it  can't  be  helped,  as  we 
are  not  ready  to  begin  operations  yet.  Probably  you 
will  hear  from  us  about  the  1st  of  October,  if  not 
before.  The  girls  will  be  sent  home  before  we  begin 
operations.  I  have  been  over  into  Virginia  a  number 
of  times  since  I  have  been  here.  There  are  some  of 
the  best  farms  in  Jefferson  County  I  ever  saw.  There 
are  two  nephews  of  George  Washington  over  there. 
They  own  large  farms  and  lots  of  slaves."  He  then 
inquires  after  home  and  neighborhood  affairs,  and 
writes:  "  I  suppose  the  folk  think  we  are  a  set  of  fools, 
but  they  will  find  out  we  know  what  we  are  about." 


278  JOHN    BROWN. 

It  is  also  known  that  Captain  Brown  had  learned 
of  orders  to  remove  a  large  number  of  arms  at  an 
early  day  from  the  Harper's  Ferry  Arsenal  to  other 
points,  chiefly  in  the  South.  Indeed,  the  removal  had 
already  begun,  for  when  on  the  17th  the  citizens 
began  to  arm  themselves,  it  was  United  States  mus- 
kets they  obtained  from  boxes  stored  in  the  town 
previous  to  transfer  elsewhere.  There  can  be  little 
question  to  a  student  of  the  period,  that  the  removal 
of  which  Captain  Brown  heard,  was  commenced  in 
pursuance  of  the  Secretary  of  War's  policy  of  loading 
the  Southern  arsenals  with  the  military  property  of 
the  general  Government.1 

Mr.  O.  P.  Anderson's  narrative  continues  by  saying 
that  a  tried  friend  (Dangerfield  Newby)  had  given 
information  of  the  state  of  public  feeling  without,  and 
of  the  projected   search.      Captain  Brown,  therefore, 


1  Valuable  documents  of  an  historical  character  were  obtained 
during  the  Civil  War,  by  army  seizures,  etc.  Among  such  finds 
were  a  number  of  letters  taken  from  Jefferson  Davis's  plantation 
house  in  Mississippi,  bearing  dates  from  1S51  to  1S56.  They  were 
from  various  Southern  Senators;  all  of  them  urged  secession  if  the 
new  Northern  party  should  prove  successful,  and  several  demanded 
of  Mr.  Davis,  as  Secretary  of  War,  the  replacing  of  old  arms  in 
Southern  arsenals  with  the  best  at  command  of  the  War  Depart- 
ment. Senators  Butler  (South  Carolina)  and  Mason  (Virginia) 
were  especially  earnest.  The  latter,  under  date  of  September  30, 
1856,  writes  Davis,  after  urging  the  supply  of  arms  as  indicated, 
that  "  in  the  event  of  Fremont's  election  the  South  should  proceed 
at  once  to  immediate,  absolute,  and  eternal  separation,"  adding, 
that  "  I  am  a  candidate  for  the  first  halter."  It  were  a  pity  that 
he  did  not  get  it  also.  This,  and  other  letters,  first  appeared  in 
print  in  The  Republic  (May,  1876),  a  political  monthly  then  issued 
at  Washington,  of  which  I  was  one  of  the  editors. 


"  THE    ORDER    OF    MARCH.  279 

concluded  to  strike  the  blow  immediately,  and  not, 
as  at  first  intended,  to  await  certain  reinforcements 
from  the  North  and  East,  which  would  have  been  in 
Maryland  within  from  one  to  three  weeks.  Captain 
Brown  was  not  seconded  in  another  quarter  as  he 
expected  at  the  time  of  the  action,  but  could  the  fears 
of  the  neighbors  have  been  allayed  for  a  few  days,  the 
disappointment  in  that  respect  would  not  have  had 
much  weight.  It  is  not  of  much  moment  to  speculate 
as  to  the  disappointment  Anderson  refers  to,  but  it 
seems  most  probable  that  the  reference  is  made  both 
to  the  failure  to  make  connection  with  the  Canada 
colored  recruits,  who  had  been  expected,  and  to  the  de- 
clination of  Frederick  Douglass  to  participate  in  the 
Harper's  Ferry  movement,  as  there  is  some  evidence 
that  other  colored  men  made  their  possible  activity 
contingent  on  that  of  their  leading  orator  and  states- 
man. 

"  On  Sunday,"  writes  Anderson,  "  October  the  16th, 
Captain  Brown  arose  earlier  than  usual  and  called  his 
men  to  worship.  He  read  a  chapter  from  the  Bible 
applicable  to  the  condition  of  the  slaves  and  our  duty 
as  their  brethren,  and  then  offered  up  a  fervent  prayer 
to  God  to  assist  us  in  the  liberation  of  the  bondmen." 
After  breakfast  the  Captain  called  the  roll,  a  sentinel 
was  posted  outside  the  door  to  warn  if  an}- one  should 
approach,  and  at  10  o'clock  the  council  assembled  ; 
Osborne  P.  Anderson  was  appointed  to  the  chair. 
John  Brown  preserved  the  moral  logic  of  his  attitude 
by  putting  this  competent  colored  man  into  the  pre- 
siding place.  After  the  council  adjourned  the  con- 
stitution was  read  for  thebenefit  of  the  four  who  had 
not  before   heard    it   and    the    necessary  obligations 


280  JOHN    BROWN. 

taken.  Mr.  Anderson  used  the  word  "  oaths,"  but 
the  records  show  that  it  was  a  parole  of  honor  which 
was  taken  at  Chatham  when  the  "  Constitution  "  was 
adopted.  Men  who  were  to  hold  military  positions 
in  the  organization,  and  who*  had  not  received  com- 
missions before  then,  had  them  filled  out  by  J.  H.  Kagi, 
and  gave  the  required  promises  of  obedience.  In  the 
afternoon  eleven  orders  were  made  out  by  the  Cap- 
tain and  were  afterwards  carried  out  in  all  partic- 
ulars by  the  officers  and  men.  They  were  as  follows: 
i.  Captain  Owen  Brown,  F.  J.  Merriam,  and  Bar- 
clay Coppoc  to  remain  at  the  old  house  as  sentinels,  to 
guard  the  arms  and  effects  till  morning,  when  they 
would  be  joined  by  some  of  the  men  from  the  Ferry  with 
teams  to  move  all  arms  and  other  things  to  the  old 
school-house  in  Virginia,  located  about  three-quarters 
of  a  mile  from  Harper's  Ferry.  It  is  a  place  selected 
beforehand  by  the  Captain. 

2.  All  hands  to  make  as  little  noise  as  possible 
going  to  the  Ferry,  so  as  not  to  attract  attention  till 
we  could  get  to  the  bridge;  and  to  keep  all  arms 
secreted,  so  as  not  to  be  detected  if  met  by  any  one. 

3.  The  men  to  walk  in  couples,  at  some  distance 
apart;  and  should  any  one  overtake  us,  stop  and  de- 
tain him  until  the  rest  of  our  comrades  were  out  of 
the  road.  The  same  course  to  be  pursued  if  we  are 
met  by  any  one. 

4.  That  Captains  Charles  P.  Tidd,  and  John  E. 
Cook  walk  ahead  of  the  wagon  in  which  Captain 
Brown  rides  to  the  Ferry.  They  are  to  tear  down  the 
telegraph  wires  on  the  Maryland  side  along  the  rail- 
road; and  to  do  the  same  on  the  Virginia  side,  after 
the  town  should  be  captured. 


"the  order  of  march."  281 

5.  Captains  John  H.  Kagi  and  A.  D.  Stevens  to 
take  the  watchman  at  the  Ferry  bridge  a  prisoner 
when  the  party  get  there,  and  to  detain  him  until 
the  engine-house  upon  the  Government  grounds  shall 
be  taken. 

6.  Captain  Watson  Brown  and  Steward  Taylor  to 
take  positions  at  the  Potomac  (covered)  bridge,  and 
hold  it  till  morning.  They  to  stand  on  opposite 
sides,  a  rod  apart,  and  if  any  one  entered  the  bridge, 
they  are  to  let  him  get  in  between  them.  In  that 
case,  pikes  to  be  used,  not  Sharpe's  rifles,  unless  they 
are  offered  much  resistance,  and  they  meet  with  refusal 
to  surrender. 

7.  Captains  Oliver  Brown  and  William  Thompson 
are  to  execute  a  similar  order  at  the  Shenandoah 
bridge;  remaining  until  morning. 

8.  Lieutenant  Jeremiah  Anderson  and  Adolphus 
(Dauphin)  Thompson  to  occupy  the  engine-house  at 
first,  with  the  watchman  from  the  bridge  and  the 
watchman  belonging  to  the  engine-house  yard  as 
prisoners,  until  the  one  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
street  and  the  rifle  factory  be  taken,  after  which  they 
would  be  reinforced,  to  hold  that  place  with  the 
prisoners. 

9.  Lieutenant  Albert  Hazlett  and  Private  Edwin 
Coppoc  to  hold  the  armory  opposite  the  engine-house 
after  it  has  been  taken;  remaining  through  the  night 
and  until  morning,  when  arrangements  would  be  dif- 
ferent. 

10.  That  John  H.  Kagi,  Adjutant-General,  and 
John  A  Copeland  (colored),  take  positions  at  the  rifle 
factory  through  the  night,  and  hold  it  until  further 
orders. 


252  JOHN    BROWN. 

12.  That  Capt.  A.  D.  Stevens  proceed  to  the  coun- 
try with  his  men,  and  after  taking  certain  parties 
prisoners,  bring  them  to  the  Ferry.  In  the  case  of 
Col.  Lewis  Washington,  who  had  certain  arms  in  his 
possession,  he  must,  after  being  secured  as  a  prisoner, 
deliver  them  into  the  hands  of  Osborne  P.  Anderson. 
Anderson  being  a  colored  man,  and  colored  men 
being  only  things  in  the  South,  it  is  proper  that  the 
South  be  taught  a  lesson  upon  this  point. 

Preparation  had  been  made  for  the  means  of  firing 
the  bridges,  buildings,  etc.,  by  tow  balls  steeped  in 
oil.  The  making  of  these  was  probably  due  to  Annie 
and  Isabel  Brown  before  they  left.  These  articles 
were  taken  to  the  Ferry,  but  no  use  was  made  of 
them.  It  was  the  intention,  evidently,  to  set  fire  be- 
fore leaving  that  place  for  the  mountains. 

Captain  Brown  did  not  omit,  it  is  said  by  a  former 
neighbor  of  the  Kennedy  farm  party,  to  proceed  to 
the  nearby  Danker  or"  Winebrenarian  "  Charch,  and 
conduct  there  the  services  in  which  he  had  partici- 
pated or  led  during  the  preceding  months  of  his  life 
in  Maryland.  But  that  is  doubtful,  as  the  order  to 
move  was  made  so  early.  When  all  was  ready,  Cap- 
tain Brown  then  gave  his  final  charge  to  the  men,  in 
which  he  said  among  other  things,  as  Anderson  re- 
ports: 

"And  now,  gentlemen,  let  me  impress  this  one 
thing  upon  your  minds.  You  all  know  how  dear  life 
is  to  you,  and  how  dear  your  life  is  to  your  friends. 
And  in  remembering  that  consider  that  the  lives  of 
others  are  as  dear  to  them  as  yours  are  to  you.  Do 
not,  therefore,  take  the  life  of  any  one  if  you  can 
possibly  avoid  it;  but  if   it  is   necessary  to  take  life 


,c  THE    ORDER    OF    MARCH. 


283 


in    order  to    save   your   own,  then  make   sure  work 
of  it." 

The  several  parties  had  been  chosen.  John  H.  Kagi 
being  second  in  command,  the  capture  and  holding 
of  Hall's  Rifle  Works  was  naturally  assigned  to  him. 
To  Aaron  D.  Stevens  was  assigned  the  capture  of 
several  prominent  slaveholders.  He  selected  for  his 
assistants  Charles  P.  Tidd,  John  E.  Cook,  Osborne  P. 
Anderson,  Lewis  Sherrard  Lear)',  and  John  A.  Cope- 
land.  Stevens  was  to  send  over  from  Virginia  to 
Owen  Brown  at  the  farm  a  wagon 
with  negro  help  for  the  removal  of 
the  pikes  and  guns,  etc.,  stored  at 
the  farm.  Captain  Cook  had 
several  times  traveled  thus  along 
the  Valley  turnpike  and  collected 
information  needed.  He  thus 
learned  of  Lewis  Washington's 
possession  of  the  historic  arms  of 
Frederick  the  Great  and  General 
Lafayette  that  were  afterwards 
captured. 1 

It  would  hardly  be  necessary  to 
repeat  the  startling  story,  except  to 
bring  out  the  actions  of  the  party 
as  a  whole  and  as  individuals.  One  thing  must  be 
realized  from  the  first  moment:  not  one  faltered, 
quailed,  or  failed.  From  the  two  country  lads,  who 
had  not  yet  crossed  the  path  of  manhood,  Dauphin 
Thompson  and  Barclay  Coppoc,  neither  of  whom  had 


DAUPHIN     ADOLPHUS     THOMPSON". 


1  The   Lafayette    pistol   or   pistols  were  afterwards  restored  by 
Owen  Brown;  the  sword  was  retaken  from  Captain  Brown. 


284  JOHN    BROWN. 

reached  his  twentieth  year,  to  Kagi  and  Stevens  and 
Cook — the  three  whose  experience  of  the  world  had 
most  assuredly  given  some  mental  maturity,  fitted 
them  to  understand  as  they  did,  the  desperate  chances 
of  their  startling  venture — all  the  associates  at  Har- 
per's Ferry  failed  not  in  obedience,  courage,  and 
combat,  to  their  veteran  and  idealistic  leader.  From 
the  outset,  intelligently  and  intellectually — sen- 
timentally and  by  feeling — new  recruits  as  well  as 
long-time  comrades,  all  knew  or  felt  that  the  attack  on 
slavery  they  were  about  making,  whether  lost  or  won 
at  the  moment,  would  assuredly  "  pay,"  and  it  did. 
John  Brown  was  right  when  he  said  so  in  the  jail  and 
on  the  road  to  the  sacred  gallows. 


CHAPTER    XI. 

RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL. 

The  first  blow — An  Irish  watchman — Twenty -two  cap- 
ture the  United  States  arsenal,  armory,  and  works 
— Stopping  the  train  a  fatal  blunder — The  town 
people's  fright — Sunrise  brings  aid — Capture  of 
Lewis  Washington — Attack  on  the  little  band — 
Beginning  of  the  fateful  end—  The  fight  was  on — 
Two  thousand  held  at  bay  by  seventeen  ?ne?i — Bar- 
barities and  brutalities  —  Courage  and  calmness 
—  The  United  States  marines — The  Virginians'  own 
verdict  on  their  oivn  acts —  Where  the  roads  ended. 

Down  the  still  road,  dim  white  in  the  moonlight, 
and  amid  the  chill  October  night,  went  the  little 
band,  silent  and  sober.  Tidd  and  Anderson  stated 
afterward  that  they  saw  no  sign  and  felt  none  them- 
selves of  any  special  excitement.  Cook  and  Tidd 
were  so  busily  engaged  in  cutting  the  telegraph  wires 
along  the  road  that  they  had  no  time  to  think.  Near 
the  Maryland  entrance  of  the  Ferry  bridge  the  wagon 
stopped  and  the  men  assumed  their  carbines  and 
cartridge-boxes.     No  one  had  seen  them  on  the  road. 

John  H.  Kagi  and  Aaron  D.  Stevens  led  the  march 
and  were  first  to  cross  the  bridge.  Williams,  the 
watchman  there,  was  captured  without  disturbance. 
Captain  Brown  with  the  wagon  and  the   balance  of 


2$6 


JOHN    BROWN. 


the  force  went  on  and  into  the  Arsenal  grounds. 
Watson  Brown  and  Stewart  Taylor  were  placed  as 
guards,  and  the  engine-house  was  then  occupied.  The 
watchman  in  the  armory  began  to  shout  and  would 
not  open  the  door,  which  was  forced.  The  two  prison- 
ers were  left  under  charge  of  Jeremiah  G.  Anderson 
and  the  younger  Thompson.  Stevens  then  moved 
to  take  possession  of  the  armory.   Kagi  and  Copeland 

were  left  at  Hall's  rifle  works, 
and  Albert  Hazlett  and  Edwin 
Coppoc  held  the  United  States 
armory.  William  Thompson  and 
Oliver  Brown  held  possession  of 
the  Shenandoah  railroad  bridge. 
Up  to  this  point  not  a  shot  had 
been  fired.  Returning  to  the 
engine-house,  where  Captain 
Brown  had  already  stationed 
himself,  Stevens  with  Cook,  Tidd, 
Leary,  Shields  Green,  and  O.  P. 
Anderson,  left  to  secure  Lewis 
Washington,  Terence  Burns,  and 
Alstedt  as  hostages,  with  their 
slave  men  as  recruits,  according 
to  the  arranged  programme.  The  capture  of  the  place 
was  effected  before  eleven  on  the  16th.  At  midnight 
the  relief  watchman  for  the  railroad  bridge  came 
down.  He  may  be  left  to  tell  his  own  story  of 
events.     The  first  shot  fired  was  at  that  watchman.1 


JOHN    HENRI    KAGI, 


1  Patrick  Higgins  is  a  watchman  of  the  Baltimore  and  Ohio 
Railroad,  who  is  still  at  Harper's  Ferry,  where,  in  the  employ  of 
that  corporation,  he  has  resided  for  nearly  forty  years,  recently 
gave  to  Dr.  Thomas  Featherstonhaugh,  of  Washington  (to  whom 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  287 

On  the  night  of  the  16th  of  October,  1859,  Patrick 
Higgins  went  to  his  post  at  midnight,  waiting  as 
usual  at  the  end  of  the  bridge  till  the  half  hour 
came  in  order  to  pull  the  indicator,  as  required  by 
the  railroad  regulations.  He  noticed  that  the  lamps 
at  each  end  of  the  bridge  were  out,  and  thought 
it  strange  but  did  not  light  them.  A  little  alarmed, 
with  a  lantern  in  his  hand  he  passed  the  watch-house 
looking  for  the  other  man,  Bill  Williams.  When 
nearly  over  the  bridge  he  was  suddenly  halted  by  two 
men;  keeping  on,  however,  he  was  seized  by  one 
(Oliver  Brown,  he  afterwards  learned)  who,  grasping 
his  arm,  told  him  to  "come  along."  Higgins  walked 
on,  remonstrating  quietly,  till  he  saw  by  the  light  of 
his  lantern  a  half  dozen  pikes  leaning  against  the 
bridge  rail.  Terrified  at  this,  he  struck  Oliver  a 
savage  blow  on  the  right  ear  and  knocked  him  back 
to  the  rail.  Then  he  ran  towards  the  Foulke's  Hotel, 
while  William  Thompson,  the  other  guard,  immediate- 
ly fired  upon  him,  sending  the  bullet  from  his  Sharpe's 
rifle  through  Higgins's  hat,  and  grazed  his  scalp,  leav- 
ing a  mark  which  is  still  visible.  This  shot  and  Hig- 
gins's story  gave  the  alarm  to  the  Hotel  people,  but 
as  to  the  party  in  possession,  nothing  was  known.  The 
barkeeper  ventured  out  from  curiosity  soon  after  and 
was  captured.  Captain  Brown  exchanged  this  man 
in   the    morning  for   breakfast   for  forty  men,  which 


I  am  greatly  indebted  for  detailed  local  and  other  important  in- 
formation), his  recollection  of  the  capture  of  that  place  by  John 
Biown  and  his  men.  Mr.  Higgins  is  a  man  of  recognized  probity 
and  character.  His  courage  and  manliness  was  conspicuously 
manifested  during  the  remarkable  scenes  of  which  he  speaks 
clearly  and  with  so  much  interest. 


288  JOHN    BROWN. 

number  included  his  prisoners.  The  careful  Vir- 
ginians afterwards  deducted  from  such  remnants  of 
the  Captain's  property,  as  could  be  recovered  from  the 
ravenous  hands  of  enemies  or  relic-hunters  and  sold 
for  his  benefit,  the  price  of  these  meals.  After  his 
escape,  Higgins  went  to  Williams's  house,  and  found 
that  he  had  not  returned  and  was  a  prisoner.  The 
train  was  in  when  the  watchman  got  back.  Accom- 
panying the  conductor  (Mr.  Phelps),  they  went  to 
the  armory  grounds,  saying  loudly  "  What's  the  matter, 
boys  ?  "     The  answer  was: 

"We  want  liberty;  the  grounds,  bridge,  and  town 
are  in  our  hands." 

By  this  time  the  passengers  were  swarming  in  the 
depot  and  much  excited;  no  one  knew,  and  the  watch- 
man could  not  tell  them,  what  was  the  matter.  It  was 
generally  thought  to  be  a  strike  of  dissatisfied  men, 
working  on  a  government  dam.  As  the  dawn  broke, 
John  Brown  told  Mr.  Phelps  to  "  proceed,  that  he  had 
no  intention  of  interfering  with  the  comfort  of  pas- 
sengers or  hindering  the  United  States  mails."  Cap- 
tain Brown  was  apparently  unarmed,  and  with  cool 
deliberation  and  as  much  unconcern  as  if  carrying  on 
an  ordinary  business  proceeding,  walked  with  the 
conductor  across  the  bridge.  He  waited  with  Mr. 
Phelps  till  the  signal  to  proceed  was  given,  and  then 
walked  back  over  it  alone. 

The  four-horse  wagon  load  of  Colonel  Washington's 
slaves,  etc.,  had  already  been  brought  in.  Just  as  the 
train  was  leaving,  Cook  recrossed  the  bridge,  with  a 
companion  (a  colored  man)  driving  the  wagon,  to 
the  school-house  and  Kennedy  farm.  Heyward 
Shepherd,    the    Hotel    porter,   was    shot   soon   after. 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  289 

Higgins  aided  in  his  removal  to  the  depot,  where 
the  watchman  remained  with  the  dying  man.  Early 
in  the  forenoon,  Hey  ward  asked  for  water,  and  Hig- 
gins started  to  the  pump  to  get  some.  On  starting 
to  return  William  Thompson  halted  him  and  asked 
for  a  drink.  The  bucket  was  handed  him.  After 
drinking  he  asked  Higgins  to  go  to  the  bridge  and 
give  some  to  two  men.  They  were  Oliver  Brown  and 
a  negro.     As  he  did  so,  Oliver  said: 

"  You're  the  buck  that  hit  me  last  night,  eh  ?  " 

Replying  affirmatively  to  Oliver,  the  latter  con- 
tinued: 

"  Well,  you  did  an  unwise  thing;  it  was  only  this 
leg  that  saved  you";  showing  a  cut  near  his  left 
knee,  which  he  received  on  striking  the  bridge  from 
Higgins's  blow.     The  latter  then  asked: 

"  What's  all  this  fuss  about,  anyhow  ?  " 

"  Oh,  its  a  darkey  affair,"  laughingly  replied  Thomp- 
son, pointing  to  the  smiling  negro,  and  adding:  "  I 
am  one,  and  here's  another." 

"  I'm  on  a  darkey  affair,  too,"  responded  Higgins, 
"and  that's  to  get  water  for  a  negro  whom  you  have 
shot." 

"  All  right,"  replied  Oliver,  "  go  along.  He  brought 
it  on  himself  by  refusing  to  obey  orders." 

Soon  after,  the  Mayor,  Mr.  Beckham,  was  shot  and 
his  body  lay  exposed  by  the  water  tank  for  some 
hours.  It  was  not  molested  by  the  invaders.  Citizens 
in  the  town  had  got  arms  and  others  were  arriving 
from  the  valley  and  from  Maryland.  A  party  from 
that  side,  says  Higgins,  opened  the  fight  in  earnest, 
coming  upon  the  bridge  and  firing  a  volley.  A  negro 
ran  towards   the  arsenal   and   was   shot  down  while 

19 


290 


JOHN    BROWN. 


getting  over  a  fence.  People  came  along,  says  this 
eye  witness,  and  cut  pieces  from  his  ears  and  face, 
and  the  pigs  ate  from  a  neck  wound.  The  latter  in- 
cident is  told  of  Dangerfield  Newby's  body,  but  as 
he  was  shot  at  the  armory  gate,  it  is  probably  untrue. 

Mr.  Higgins  describes  Aaron  D. 
Stevens  as  the  boldest  man  of  the 
party.  He  stood  in  the  open  en- 
trance of  the  bridge,  firing  upon 
the  Marylanders,  and  that,  too, 
after  he  was  desperately  wounded. 
The  watchman  reached  him  when 
he  fell  face  downward,  taking  a 
pistol  from  his  person,  and  assist- 
ing in  removing  the  wounded 
man  to  the  Gait  House.  William 
Thompson  had  in  the  meanwhile 
been  taken  prisoner,  carried  to 
Foulke's,  and  then  brought  out 
upon  the  bridge,  shot,  and  thrown 
over  into  the  river  mortally 
wounded.  He  managed  to  swim  or  wade  and  reach 
one  of  the  piers,  where  he  was  discovered  and 
riddled  with  bullets. 

Mr.  Higgins's  description  of  the  scenes  of  the  day 
and  night  of  the  17th  is  certainly  terse  and  graphic. 
"The  people,  who  came  pouring  into  town,"  he  says, 
"  broke  into  liquor  saloons,  filled  up,  and  then  got  into 
the  arsenal,  arming  themselves  with  United  States 
guns  and  ammunition.  They  kept  shouting,  shoot- 
ing at  random,  and  howling."  Day  passed  in  this  way, 
and  evening  came.  During  the  night  the  United 
States  marines  came.     He  saw  the  attack   upon  and 


NGERFIELD    NKWUY. 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  2f)I 

capture  of  the  engine-house.  Oliver's  body  was,  the 
watchman  says,  thrown  into  a  cart  and  carried  to  a 
shallow  grave  across  the  Shenandoah.  Shots  came 
from  the  side  of  the  mountains  during  the  afternoon 
of  the  17th  from  Cook,  as  he  believed  then,  and 
as  we  now  know.  It  was  supposed  that  Cook  had 
quite  a  command  in  the  range,  and  even  as  late 
as  1887,  Andrew  Hunter,  John  Brown's  prosecutor 
at  the  Charlestown  trial,  asserted  that  the  mountains 
and  woods  were  full  of  John  Brown's  men.  It  is 
proper  to  say  at  this  point,  that  the  few  shots  Cook 
was  able  to  fire  in  the  futile  though  gallant  effort 
that  courageous  but  unfortunate  young  man  made  to 
assist  his  leader  and  comrades  then  in  the  engine- 
house  and  arsenal  building,  with  a  few  more  fired  by 
Albert  Hazlett  and  Osborne  Perry  Anderson  later  in 
the  day  from  the  Maryland  Heights,  after  they  had 
succeeded  in  crossing  the  river  unharmed  from  the 
arsenal  building,  was  all  the  firing  actually  known  to 
have  been  done  outside  of  the  United  States  grounds 
by  any  of  the  John  Brown  party.  There  is  reason  to 
believe  that  a  small  band  of  neighborhood  negroes 
fired  a  few  desultory  shots  from  the  upper  shore,  but 
that  cannot  be  positively  stated.  Mr.  Higgins  re- 
mained at  Harper's  Ferry  all  through  the  war,  saw 
both  armies  in  possession,  and  all  the  fighting,  but  the 
nights  of  the  John  Brown  raid  stand  alone  in  his 
memory  for  their  terror  and  the  fury  and  excesses 
that  prevailed.  Higgins  knew  Cook  well,  had  often 
talked  with  "  Isaac  Smith,"  remembers  Owen's  ar- 
rival and  asking  for  the  "  Smith  place."  He  assisted 
in  placing  John  Brown's  body  into  the  freight  car, 
and   saw  Mrs.  Brown,  who  was,   he   quietly  remarks, 


292  JOHN    BROWN. 

"a  nice-looking  little  woman."  He  closes  his  narra- 
tive with  the  suggestion  that  "  It  was  not  healthy  to 
be  out  in  sight  of  the  armory  during  the  fray." 

With  the  moving  of  the  train,  early  in  the  morning, 
the  alarm  was  given  to  the  country.  And  what  a 
startling  one  it  was  !  From  Penobscot  to  Mobile,  and 
from  New  York  to  San  Francisco  the  story  flashed! 
Extras  were  issued  !  The  headlines  were  ablaze  ! 
Here  are  some  culled  from  the  dailies  of  the  period: 

harper's   ferry.      fearful    and    exciting 
intelligence  ! 


NEGRO    INSURRECTION    AT    HARPER'S    FERRY  !   ! 


EXTENSIVE    SLAVE    CONSPIRACY    IN    MARYLAND    AND 
VIRGINIA  ! 


HUNDREDS    OF    INSURRECTIONISTS    IN    ARMS  ! 


SEIZURE    OF    THE    UNITED    STATES    ARSENAL  AND  WORKS! 


TELEGRAPH    WIRES    CUT — BRIDGE    SEIZED    AND 
FORTIFIED  ! 


DEFENDED     BY     CANNON TRAIN     SEIZED     AND      HELD 

FIRING     ON     BOTH      SIDES — SEVERAL     KILLED — 

CONTRIBUTIONS     LEVIED — TROOPS    ON    THE 

WAY  ! 


LATER  IN  THE  DAY — ADDING  NEW  FUEL  TO  THE  FLAME 

OF  EXCITEMENT — THE  NAME  OF  THE  LEADER 

APPEARED  AS  OSAWATOMIE  BROWN,  OF 

KANSAS, 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  293 

On  the  road  the  Stevens  party  met  several  colored 
men  who  promised  to  at  once  arouse  their  fellows. 
The  designated  hostages  were  then  captured  ;  Colonel 
Washington  being  the  first.  The  Virginian  gave  the 
sword  of  Frederick  the  Great  and  the  pistols  of 
Lafayette  to  O.  P.  Anderson.  Shields  Green  and 
Leary  were  placed  on  guard,  one  at  the  side  and  the 
other  in  front  of  the  house.  Of  course  Colonel 
Washington  was  excited  and  alarmed.  Stevens,  who 
was  dramatic  in  manner  as  well  as  commanding  in 
appearance,  briefly  told  him  that  they  would  take 
his  slaves,  not  his  life,  and  that  he  must  go  to  the 
Ferry  with  them  as  a  prisoner.  The  slaves  in  the 
meanwhile  had  been  aroused  and  harnessed  up  a 
family  carriage  and  a  four-horse  wagon.  Whiskey 
was  offered  and  refused,  and  when  he  found  the 
handsome,  tall,  full-bearded  invader  was  not  to  be 
moved,  Colonel  Washington  broke  down  utterly. 
Amid  the  cries  of  his  family  he  was  placed  in  his 
carriage,  and  with  the  addition  of  his  slaves,  who 
filled  the  big  wagon,  the  party  started  back.  O.  P. 
Anderson  writes  that  all  the  colored  people  they  met 
were  eager  to  aid.  Seventeen  men  were  armed  and 
added  to  the  force.  The  only  shot  fired  that  first 
night  was  at  the  railroad  bridge  and  that  was  the 
only  act  also  of  direct  personal  violence.  •  Sunrise  on 
the  17th  was,  however,  greeted  with  stirring  action  on 
both  sides.  O.  P.  Anderson  says  that,  in  conse- 
quence of  the  movements  of  the  night  before,  we  were 
prepared  for  commotion  and  tumult,  but  certainly 
not  for  more  than  we  beheld  around  us.  Men, 
women,  and  children  could  be  seen  leaving  their 
homes  in   all   directions,   climbing   up    the    hillsides, 


294  JOHN    BROWN. 

evidently  impelled  by  a  sudden  fear.  Captain  Brown 
was  all  activity,  though  at  times  he  appeared  some- 
what puzzled.  He  ordered  Lewis  Sherrard  Leary, 
and  four  slaves,  to  join  Kagi  and  Copeland  at  the 
rifle  factory.  Copeland  was  the  only  man  of  the 
seven  (Leeman  afterwards  joining  them)  who 
escaped  from  the  dangerous  post.  Kagi  early  realized 
the  perilous  position,  and  ineffectually  sent  for  orders 
to  join  Captain  Brown.  Tidd,  Leeman,  and  Cook, 
with  some  fourteen  slaves  were  ordered  to  take 
Washington's  four-horse  wagon  and  proceed  to  the 
Kennedy  farm  where  Owen  Brown,  Merriam,  and 
Barclay  Coppoc  had  been  left  to  guard  the  place  and 
the  arms.  Cook,  Leeman,  and  Tidd  returned  to  the 
schoolhouse,  Leeman  subsequently  reporting  to 
Kagi.  Owen  Brown  then  began  to  move  the  arms 
and  goods  down  to  the  schoolhouse  in  the  mountain, 
three-fourths  of  a  mile  from  the  Ferry.  Cook  and 
Tidd,  with  the  help  of  armed  slaves,  busied  them- 
selves in  the  capture  of  Terence  Burns,  Mr.  Alstedt, 
and  some  other  neighboring  slaveholders,  whom  they 
sent  into  the  Ferry.  Their  orders  required  them  also 
to  hold  the  schoolhouse,  to  which  it  was  understood 
Captain  Brown,  Kagi,  Stevens,  and  comrades,  with 
such  negroes  as  might  follow  from  the  Ferry,  would 
retreat,  bringing  any  arms,  etc.,  that  it  should  be 
deemed  advisable  to  remove.  Up  to  and  about  noon 
this  could  have  been  accomplished.  Early  in  the 
morning  it  could  have  been  done  without  loss;  in  the 
waning  hours  of  the  forenoon,  there  would  have 
been  some  sporadic  fighting.  The  noon  sun,  however, 
saw  the  liberators  encircled.  Even  then  a  bold 
sortie  would  have   opened    the   ring,   though   pursuit 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL. 


295 


had  surely  followed.  The  United  States  reservation 
wras  to  them  a  trap  of  death.  O.  P.  Anderson  remained 
at  the  Ferry,  and,  by  Captain  Brown's  orders,  pro- 
ceeded to  arm  slaves  in  the  grounds  with  the  pikes 
brought  by  the  wagon  from  the  farm.  Among  those 
who  eagerly  accepted  the  weapons  were  several  farm- 
hands who  had  come  in  on  hearing  the  reports  from 
"  underground  wires."  Colonel 
Washington's  "Jim"  was  one  of 
the  boldest  of  the  new  fighters. 

Outside  the  gates  the  excited 
citizens  gathered.  Arms  were 
found  and  began  to  be  used. 
Desultory  firing  commenced  in 
the  middle  of  the  forenoon. 
Kagi's  position  was  chiefly  as- 
sailed, as  the  Virginia  and  Mary- 
land farmers  could  fire  on  the 
rifle  works  without  getting  within 
the  deadly  range  of  the  engine- 
house  squad.  O.  P.  Anderson's 
arming  of  the  negroes  led  to  the 
early  report  that  the  commander 
was  a  colored  man  named  Ander- 
son. Edwin  Coppoc,  on  guard  at  the  arsenal  gates, 
was  fired  upon  from  the  outside.  He  was  not  struck. 
Immediately  after,  writes  Anderson,  an  old  colored 
man  armed  with  a  double-barreled  shotgun,  taken  at 
the  Washington's  and  loaded  by  Leeman  with  buck- 
shot, was  ordered  by  Captain  Stevens  to  arrest  a  citi- 
zen. The  latter  refused  to  obey  the  order  to  halt, 
and  the  old  man  fired  both  barrels  into  him,  causing 
his  death  immediately.     A  rifle-shot  from  the  engine- 


EinviN  coppoc 


296  JOHN    BROWN. 

house  bad  also  wounded  the  man  who  fired  at  Coppoc. 
From  the  rifle  works  where  Kagi,  Leeman,  Leary,  and 
Copeland,  with  four  freed  men  held  the  fort,  came 
fresh  messages  urging  immediate  withdrawal.  It 
was  at  this  point  that  John  Brown  lost  control  of  his 
judgment,  and  acted  with  hesitation  unusual  to  him, 
halting  between  two  views  of  the  situation.  He  tried 
to  be  both  teacher  and  fighter  at  once  and  necessarily 
failed,  not  that  the  characters  are  incompatible,  but 
that  if  fighting  to  achieve  a  moral  result  is  accepted, 
then  fighting  rather  than  teaching  is  the  order  of  the 
day.  In  his  anxiety  to  prove  that  the  movement  was 
one  not  of  outlawry  and  destruction,  but  of  benefi- 
cence, of  justice,  and  lofty  purpose,  the  logic  of  the 
method  chosen  was  temporarily  overlooked.  Just 
then  the  business  of  the  liberators  was  to  have  got 
out  of  Harper's  Ferry  and  into  the  mountainous  region 
nearby,  leaving  Virginians,  prisoners,  and  citizens 
alike  to  settle  for  themselves  as  best  as  they  might, 
whether  their  assailants  were  freebooters  or  freedom- 
makers.  It  may  well  be  supposed  also,  that  the  long 
strain  of  mental  effort  and  agony  he  had  endured, 
combined  with  undoubted  debility  consequent  upon 
intermittent  attacks  of  chills  and  fever  with  malarial 
tendencies,  had  some  temporary  effect  on  his  intel- 
lectual powers.  Though  possessing  a  sturdy  frame, 
an  iron  constitution,  enriched  and  endowed  with  a 
temperate  life,  he  was  over  fifty-nine  years  of  age  and 
showed  it.  But,  whatever  was  the  cause,  Captain 
Brown  delayed,  and  when  the  October  sun  reached 
its  meridian  on  that  memorable  Monday,  he  and  his 
little  band  were  practically  hemmed  in  by  fire  from 
five    hundred    guns,      held   and    used   by   infuriated 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  297 

men,  with  more  coming  and  the  certainty  also  that  a 
Federal  force  was  on  its  way  to  the  scene  of  action. 

This  tardiness  was  fatal,  and  the  general  encounter 
commenced  in  all  its  fury.  With  Frederick  the  Great's 
sword  on  his  hip,  the  Captain  went  on  the  street, 
sending  for  the  men  at  the  arsenal,  Stevens,  Ander- 
son, Dauphin  Thompson,  Dangerfield  Newby,  and 
several  colored  Virginians.  A  fight  impending,  no 
indecision  existed.  Anderson  reports  the  scene  in  a 
vigorous  style: 

"The  troops  are  on  the  bridge  coming  into  town; 
we  will  give  them  a  warm  reception,"  said  Captain 
Brown  as  he  walked  around  among  us,  giving -words 
of  encouragement: 

"Men!  be  cool!  Don't  waste  your  powder  and  shot! 
Take  aim,  and  make  every  shot  count!  The  troops 
will  look  for  us  to  retreat  on  their  first  appearance; 
be  careful  to  shoot  first." 

His  men  were  all  supplied  with  rifles,  but  Captain 
Brown  had  only  the  sword  mentioned.  The  troops 
soon  came  out  of  the  bridge  and  up  the  street  facing 
us,  we  occupying  an  irregular  position.  When  they 
got  within  sixty  or  seventy  yards,  Captain  Brown  said: 

"  Let  go  upon  them  !  " 

Which  we  did,  when  several  of  them  fell.  Again 
and  again  was  the  fire  repeated,  creating  consterna- 
tion among  the  troops.  From  marching  in  solid 
marching  columns  they  became  scattered.  Some 
hastened  to  seize  upon  and  bear  up  the  wounded. 
They  seemed  not  to  realize  at  first  that  the  raiders 
would  fire  upon  them,  but  evidently  expected  they 
would  be  driven  out  by  them  without  firing.  Captain 
Brown  seemed   to  understand   this,  Anderson  wrote, 


298  JOHN    BROWN. 

and  in  defense  undertook  to  forestall  their  move- 
ments. The  consequence  of  their  unexpected  recep- 
tion was  after  leaving  several  of  their  dead  on  the 
field,  the  Marylanders  beat  a  confused  retreat  into  the 
bridge  and  stayed  there  under  cover  until  other  rein- 
forcements came  to  the  Ferry.  On  the  retreat  of  the 
troops,  Brown  ordered  his  men  back  to  their  former 
posts.  While  going,  Dangerfield  Newby  was  shot 
through  the  head  from  the  window  of  a  brick  store  on 
the  opposite  side  of  the  street.  Anderson  writes: 
"  He  fell  at  my  side,  and  his  death  was  promptly 
avenged  by  Shields  Green,  the  Zouave  of  the  band, 
who  afterwards  calmly  met  his  fate  on  the  gallows 
with  John  Copeland."  Newby  was  shot  twice.  At 
the  first  fire  he  fell  on  his  face  and  returned  it;  as  he 
lay,  a  second  shot  was  fired  and  the  ball  entered  his 
neck.  Green  raised  his  rifle  and  brought  down  the 
assailant  before  the  latter  could  even  get  his  gun  and 
face  from  the  window. 

The  hillsides  grew  more  lively  with  the  frightened 
people,  and  for  a  time  even  that  refuge  became  un- 
safe, as  armed  slaves  were  seen  in  some  numbers. 
Cook's  later  statement  and  the  escape  account  given 
years  later  to  Ralph  Keeler  for  magazine  publication 
by  Owen  Brown,  shows  that  the  laborers  on  the  canal 
above  the  Ferry,  and,  indeed,  generally  the  non- 
slave-holding  white  workmen  of  the  neighborhood, 
took  very  little  part  in  the  fighting,  and,  while  alarmed 
at  the  tumult,  were  evidently  somewhat  disposed  to 
feel  kindly  to  the  liberators.  Cook,  at  least,  testified 
to  this.  He  was  given  coffee  and  food,  as  well  as 
warned  of  the  location  of  armed  men  and  the  danger 
of  capture  he  ran. 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  299 

For  some  time  after  the  Maryland  militia  fell  back, 
nothing  of  moment  occurred  until  William  Thompson 
was  slain  on  the  railroad  bridge.  Shortly  after  the 
Mayor,  Fountain  Beckham,  was  shot  dead  from  the 
engine-house  and  all  the  furies  were  released.  Thomp- 
son was  dragged  out  of  the  Foulke  House.  Oliver 
Brown  was  mortally  wounded  at  the  arsenal  gate  and 
Stevens  soon  after  receiving  several  wounds,  was 
captured  and  taken  to  the  Gait  House.  The  men  at 
the  rifle  works  were  in  the  deadliest  peril,  and  the 
difficulty  of  communication  became  greater.  Jere- 
miah G.  Anderson  wras  sent  with  a  message  to  Kagi, 
requesting  him,"  to  hold  out  a  few  moments  longer." 
But  that  was  the  last.  An  hour's  severe  fighting  en- 
sued. More  troops  were  on  the  ground,  from  Fred- 
erick, Baltimore,  Hagerstown,  in  Maryland,  and  Win- 
chester, in  Virginia.  From  current  accounts  at  the 
time,  a  list  of  twelve  companies  is  obtained,  number- 
ing in  all  from  700  to  800  men.  Officers  were  numer- 
ous. Colonel  Baylor,  who  evidently  had  some  mili- 
tary knowledge,  assumed  command,  and  from  that 
moment  all  chances  of  escape  from  the  self-made  trap 
had  passed.  The  flag  of  truce,  pressed  for  and  ac- 
companied by  some  of  Brown's  Virginian  prisoners, 
was  fired  upon  after  the  hostages  had  escaped,  which 
they  swiftly  did.  In  this  way,  Oliver  and  Watson 
Brown,  with  A.  D.  Stevens,  were  slain  or  wounded 
and  the  latter  was  captured  also.  "Jerry  '  Anderson, 
carrying  a  last  message  and  making  his  way  to  the 
rifle  works,  was  fired  upon  and  returned  to  the  en- 
gine-house. Continuous  firing  was  kept  up  till  dark 
on  both  sides.  The  little  garrison  at  the  rifle  works 
had  all  been  slain.     The  men  at  the  armory  were  iso- 


300  JOHN    BROWN. 

lated,all  slain  but  two,  and  they  crossed  the  river  and 
escaped.  Captain  Brown,  with  four  men  and  ten 
prisoners,  his  dead  son  Oliver,  and  with  Watson 
dying,  settled  himself  grimly  for  the  night  to  "  hold 
the  Fort."  The  United  States  marines,  less  than  a 
hundred  in  number,  commanded  by  General  Scott's 
chief-of-staff,  Robert  E.  Lee,  were  on  the  ground  at 
night  to  regain  control  of  the  Federal  reservation. 
The  incidents  of  that  night,  with  the  early  morning 
attack,  may  fully  be  told  by  eye  witnesses  who  were 
prisoners.  It  will  not  then  be  said,  the  story  is  the 
concoction  of  an  advocate  or  admirer.  John  Brown 
selected  eight  prisoners  to  hold  as  hostages  after  he 
was  compelled  to  retreat  to  the  engine-house.  Among 
these  were  Jesse  W.  Graham,  armory  workman,  and 
acting  United  States  paymaster  or  pay  clerk,  John 
E.  R.  Daingerfield,  who  had  been  taken  on  the  17th. 
Mr.  Daingerfield  tells  of  his  capture,1  and  of  being 
taken  to  "  Captain  Smith,"  and  adds: 

"  Upon  reaching  the  gate  I  saw  what,  indeed,  looked 
like  war — negroes  armed  with  pikes,  and  sentinels 
with  muskets  all  around.  When  I  reached  the  gate 
I  was  turned  over  to  '  Captain  Smith.'  He  called  me 
by  name,  and  asked  if  I  knew  Colonel  Washington 
and  others,  mentioning  familiar  names.  I  said  I  did, 
and  he  then  said,  *  Sir,  you  will  find  them  there,'  mo- 
tioning me  towards  the  engine-room. 

"  We  were  not  kept  closely  confined,  but  were  al- 
lowed to  converse  with  him.  I  asked  him  what  his 
object  was;  he  replied,  '  To  free  the  negroes  of  Vir- 
ginia.'    He  added  that  he  was  prepared  to  do  it,  and 


1  Century  for  June,  1885.     John  Brown  at  Harper's  Ferry, 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  301 

by  twelve  o'clock  would  have  fifteen  hundred  men 
with  him,  ready  armed." 

This  is  evidently  a  mistake  or  misconception  of  the 
paymaster's  memory.  After  describing  briefly  from 
his  own  point  of  view  the  excitement,  massing,  and 
arming  of  the  citizens,  by  which  Captain  Brown  and 
three  unvvounded  men,  one  dead,  and  one  dying,  with 
eight  prisoners,  were  driven  to  keep  within  the  engine- 
house,   Mr.  Daingerfield  says: 

"  After  getting  into  the  engine-house  with  his  men, 
he  made  this  speech:  '  Gentlemen,  perhaps  you  wonder 
why  I  have  selected  you  from  the  others.  It  is  be- 
cause I  believe  you  to  be  the  most  influential,  and  I 
have  only  to  say  now  that  you  will  have  to  share  pre- 
cisely the  same  fate  that  your  friends  extend  to  my 
men.'  He  began  at  once  to  bar  the  doors  and  win- 
dows, and  to  cut  port  holes  through  the   brick  wall." 

Firing  ceased  at  nightfall,  but  the  men  were  vigi- 
lant, responding  to  their  Captain's  voice  and  com- 
mands. After  the  arrival  of  the  United  States  marines, 
the  paymaster  says: 

"  When  Stuart  was  admitted,  and  a  light  brought, 
he  exclaimed,  '  Why,  aren't  you  old  Osawatomie 
Brown,  of  Kansas,  whom  I  once  had  there  as  my  pri- 
soner?' 'Yes,'  was  the  answer,  'but  you  did  not 
keep  me.'  This  was  the  first  intimation  we  had  as  to 
Brown's  true  name.  He  had  been  engaged  in  the 
Kansas  border  war,  and  had  come  from  there 
to  Harper's  Ferry.  When  Colonel  Lee  advised 
Brown  to  trust  to  the  clemency  of  the  Government, 
he  responded  that  he  knew  what  that  meant, — 
a  rope  for  his  men  and  himself, — adding,  '  I 
prefer   to   die   just    here.'     Stuart  told  him  he  would 


302  JOHN    BROWN. 

return  at  early  morning  for  his  final  reply,  and  left 
him. 

(t  When  he  had  gone,  Brown  at  once  proceeded  to 
barricade  the  doors,  windows,  etc.,  endeavoring  to 
make  the  place  as  strong  as  possible. 

"During  all  this  time  no  one  of  Brown's  men 
showed  the  slightest  fear,  but  calmly  awaited  the 
attack,  selecting  the  best  situations  to  fire  from  upon 
the  attacking  party,  and  arranging  their  guns  and 
pistols  so  that  a  fresh  one  could  be  taken  up  as  soon 
as  one  was  discharged.     .     .     . 

"  When  Lieutenant  Stuart  came  in  the  morning  for 
the  final  reply  to  the  demand  to  surrender,  I  got  up  and 
went  to  Brown's  side  to  hear  his  answer.  Stuart  asked, 
1  Are  you  ready  to~  surrender,  and  trust  to  the  mercy 
of  the  Government  ? '  Brown  answered  promptly, '  Nol 
I  prefer  to  die  here.'  His  manner  did  not  betray  the 
least  fear." 

He  then  pays  the  stern  partisan  this  tribute: 

"During  the  day  and  night  I  talked  much  with 
John  Brown,  and  found  him  as  brave  as  a  man  could 
be,  and  sensible  upon  all  subjects,  except  slavery. 
Upon  that  question  he  was  a  religious  fanatic,  and 
believed  it  was  his  duty  to  free  the  slaves,  even  if  in 
doing  so  he  lost  his  own  life. 

"During  a  sharp  fight  one  of  Brown's  sons  was 
killed.  He  fell;  then  trying  to  raise  himself,  he  said, 
'  It  is  all  over  with  me,'  and  died  instantly. 

"  Brown  did  not  leave  his  post  at  the  port-hole,  but 
when  the  fighting  ceased  he  walked  to  his  son's  body, 
straightened  out  his  limbs,  took  off  his  trappings,  then, 
turning  to  me,  said,  'This  is  the  third  son  I  have  lost 
in   this  cause.'     Another   son   had   been   shot  in  the 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL. 


/S03 


morning  and  was  then  dying,  having  been  brought 
in  from  the  street.  While  Brown  was  a  murderer, 
yet  I  was  constrained  to  think  that  he  was  not  a 
vicious  man,  but  was  crazed  upon  the  subject  of 
slavery.  Often,  during  the  affair  in  the  engine-house, 
when  his  men  would  want  to  fire  upon  some  one  who 
might  be  seen  passing,  Brown  would  stop  them,  say- 
ing, 'Don't  shoot;  that  man  is 
unarmed.'  The  firing  was  kept 
up  by  our  men  all  day  and  until 
late  at  night,  and  during  this  time 
several  of  his  men  were  killed; 
but,  as  I  said  before,  none  of  the 
prisoners  was  hurt,  though  in 
great  danger." 

Mr.  Daingerfield's  description 
of  the  entrance  of  the  marines  is 
very  vivid  and  worth  reproduc- 
ing here: 

"  I  had  assisted  in  the  barricad- 
ing, fixing  the  fastenings  so  that  I 
could  remove  them  upon  the  first 
effort  to  get  in.  But  I  was  not 
at  the  door  when  the  batter- 
ing began,  and  could  not  get  to  the  fastenings  until 
the  ladder  was  used,  I  then  quickly  removed  the 
fastenings,  and  after  two  or  three  strokes  of  the 
ladder  the  engine  rolled  partially  back,  making  a 
small  aperture,  through  which  Lieutenant  Green  of 
the  marines  forced  himself,  jumped  on  top  of  the 
engine,  and  stood  a  second  in  the  midst  of  a  shower 
of  balls,  looking  for  John  Brown,  When  he  saw 
Brown  he  sprang  about  twelve  feet  at  him,  and  gave 


WATSON    BROWN. 


304  JOHN    BROWN. 

an  underthrust  of  his  sword,  striking  him  about  mid- 
way the  body  and,  raising  him  completely  from  the 
ground.  Brown  fell  forward  with  his  head  between 
his  knees,  and  Green  struck  him  several  times  over 
the  head,  and,  as  I  then  supposed,  split  his  skull  at 
every  stroke. 

"  I  was  not  two  feet  from  Brown  at  that  time.  Of 
course  I  got  out  of  the  building  as  soon  as  possible, 
and  did  not  know  till  some  time  later  that  Brown  was 
not  killed.  It  seems  that  in  making  the  thrust  Green's 
sword  struck  Brown's  belt  and  did  not  penetrate  the 
body.     The  sword  was  bent  double." 

Twud  y^ars  after  this  was  prepared  and  published, 
Mr.  Hunter  in  a  paper  printed  in  a  New  Orleans 
journal,  declared  that  Captain  Brown  was  "  sham- 
ming" sickness  and  feebleness  from  his  wounds.  He 
is  the  only  Virginian  of  repute  who  saw  Captain 
Brown  at  that  time,  that  has,  since  his  death,  gone 
aside  to  defame  him,  supplying  material  for  the  same 
purpose  to  others.1 

Mr.  Graham  gave  Dr.  Featherstonhaugh  (in  1892) 
interesting  details  of  his  experience,  from  which  I 
extract  some  significant  details.  When  Mr.  Graham 
was  brought  to  Captain  Brown,  he  reports  the  latter 
as  saying  in  response  to  a  question  as  to  reason  for 
capture,  that  he  "  had  no  time  to  make  breastworks, 
and  I  mean  to  use  you  as  such."  Graham  went 
soon   after   (the  prisoners  were  then  all   in   front  of 


1  '*  Trial  of  John  Brown,"  pamphlet.  By  Gen.  Marcus  J. 
Wright  (ex-Confederate  Major-General,  and  then,  1889,  in  charge 
of  Confederate  records,  War  of  the  Rebellion,  War  Department).  A 
review  of  Professor  Von  Hoist's  paper  on  John  Brown,  Richmond, 
Va.,  1889. 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  305 

the  engine-house)  to  Stevens,  who  was  walking  up 
and  down  as  a  guard,  and  begged  for  leave  to  go 
home  for  twenty  minutes  and  tell  his  family.  After 
a  while  Stevens  yielded  and  told  the  Captain  he'd 
•be  responsible  for  his,  Graham's,  return,  then  led 
him  to  the  gate  where  he  was  placed  in  charge  of 
"  a  small  man  "  (probably  Steward  Taylor)  who  was 
directed  to  escort  and  bring  Graham  back,  which  was 
done.  Coming  back,  Daingerfield  was  captured  by 
Graham's  guard.  Firing  had  then  begun,  and  soon 
after  Newby  having  fallen  near  the  gate,  Graham 
saw  Mr.  Burleigh  shot  by  Shields  Green.  The  party, 
prisoners  and  all,  were  obliged  to  take  shelter  in  the 
engine-house.  Shields  Green,  or  "Emperor,"  was 
the  only  negro  taken  out  of  the  engine-house  when 
the  capture  was  made.  Mr.  Graham  and  others,  who 
were  there,  mention  "negroes"  as  being  in  the  early 
hours  of  the  fight  in  and  around  "  John  Brown's 
Fort."  One  of  these,  says  Mr.  Graham,  commenced 
making  a  hole  in  the  wall  for  firing.  Some  one  in  a 
building  near  by — only  a  road  and  fence  intervening 
— saw  what  was  in  progress  and  fired  at  the  hole. 
Pieces  of  brick,  etc.,  flew  about  the  negro  and  he 
never  ventured  near  the  spot  again.  Shields  Green 
is  spoken  of  as  "  very  impudent."  Probably  that  was 
true  from  a  chattel  owner's  point  of  view.  When  Mr. 
Beckham  was  shot  Graham  remonstrated,  and  Green 
pointed  a  pistol  at  his  head  telling  him  to  "  shut  up." 
Before  the  engine-house  was  finally  occupied,  a  num- 
ber of  prisoners  escaped  to  the  back  of  the  building. 
Mr.  Graham  is  interesting  when  describing  the  scenes 
inside  the  engine-house  just  before  and  at  the  attack 
on  the  doors.  He  says: 
20 


306 


JOHN    BROWN. 


"Early  on  Tuesday  morning  I  peeped  out  of  a 
hole  and  saw  Colonel  Lee,  whom  I  had  seen  before 
at  the  Ferry,  standing  close  by  with  the  troops  behind 
him.  A  negro  stood  near  him,  holding  a  large  military 
cloak.  Just  then  Edwin  Coppoc  thrust  me  aside,  and  ' 
thrust  the  muzzle  of  his  gun  into  the  hole,  drawing  a 
bead  on  Lee.     I  interposed,  putting  my  hand  on  the 

rifle  and  begging  the  man  not  to 
shoot,  as  that  was  Colonel  Lee, 
of  the  United  States  army,  and  if 
he  were  hurt  the  building  would 
be  torn  down  and  they'd  all  be 
killed.  Green  again  put  up  his 
pistol  and  Coppoc  readjusted  his 
rifle.  During  this  momentary 
altercation,  Robert  E.  Lee  had 
stepped  aside,  and  thus  his  life 
was  saved  to  the  slaveholder's 
Confederacy.  After  the  demand 
for  surrender  had  been  made  and 
rejected,  the  attack  begun.  A  hole 
was  made  by  a  sledge-hammer  in 
one  of  the  doors,  and  Ouinn,  who 
crawled  through,  was  shot  at  by 
J.  G.  Anderson,  who  a  few  moments  after,  when  with 
a  ladder  the  doors  were  battered  in,  raised  his  gun  to 
fire  on  another  marine.  The  gun  snapped  and  the 
marine  made  a  savage  bayonet  thrust.  The  weapon 
passed  clean  through  Anderson's  body  and  pinned  it 
to  the  wall  where  in  the  dying  struggle  it  turned 
clear  over,  so  that  Anderson  hung  with  his  face 
downward,  a  horrible  sight.  Lieutenant  Green 
struck  at  Captain  Brown,  who  stood  by  the  side  of 


JEREMIAH    G.    ANDERSON. 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  307 

the  engine,  wounding  him  over  the  left  eye,  so  that 
he  fell  to  the  ground,  where,  as  the  Lieutenant  inm- 
self  testified  on  the  trial  and  before  the  United  States 
Senate  Investigating  Committee,  as  since  in  letters 
published  in  current  newspapers,  he  struck  at  him 
several  times  in  the  shoulder  and  in  the  stomach  and 
abdomen. 

Mr.  Graham  tells  of  visiting  Stevens  after  his  own 
release,  and  states  that  while  talking  with  him,  a 
citizen  armed  with  a  bayonet  rushed  in  and  pressed 
the  point  on  Stevens's  neck  saying  "I'm  minded  to 
kill  you."  The  wounded  man  cooly  looked  up  and 
said  : 

"  If  I  were  up  and  had  a  pistol  in  my  hand,  you 
would  jump  out  of  that  window,"  pointing  to  an 
open  one.  Mr.  Graham  adds  that  Stevens  was  brave, 
cool,  and  kindly,  too. 

The  fight  was  over;  the  work  was  done.  John 
Brown  was  a  prisoner,  surrounded  by  politicians, 
soldiers,  reporters,  and  vengeful  spectators.  His  son 
Owen,  with  his  followers,  Cook,  Tidd,  Barclay  Cop- 
poc,  and  F.  J.  Merriam.  as  also  Albert  Hazlett  and 
O.  P.  Anderson,  on  their  own  account,  were  fugitives. 
Of  these,  Cook  and  Hazlett  were  captured,  tried,  and 
executed.  Stevens,  Edwin  Coppoc,  Copeland,  and 
Shields  Green  were  hung,  while  Oliver  and  Watson 
Brown,  William  and  Dauphin  Thompson,  John  H. 
Kagi,  Wm.  Leeman,  Steward  Taylor,  Lewis  S.  Leary, 
Jeremiah  G.  Anderson,  and  Dangerfield  Newby  were 
killed  in  combat  or  as  prisoners.  If  ''John  Anderson  " 
was  present  and  slain,  the  deaths  were  ten  of  the 
attacking  party,  and  during  the  fighting;  afterwards 
seven  were  executed,  and  five  escaped.     It  is   known 


308  JOHN    BROWN. 

and  allowed  that  seventeen  colored  men  were  slain, 
though  the  policy  of  Virginia  minimized  the  action  of 
the  slave-population.  On  the  side  of  the  citizens  and 
soldiery,  eight  were  killed,  seven  whites  and  one 
colored.  Nine  persons  were  wounded.  John  Brown 
held  eight  prisoners  in  the  engine-house  during  the 
night,  all  of  whom  testified  during  the  subsequent 
trial  to  the  uniform  kindness  of  the  leader,  and  as  to 
the  civility  of  the  men.  The  attitude  of  other  Vir- 
ginians seems  to  have  been  different. 

From  a  pamphlet,1  still  sold  at  Harper's  Ferry,  in- 
teresting details  are  given  of  the  raid,  and  especially 
of  the  treatment  of  men,  shot,  wounded,  and  slain, 
by  one  who  was  an  eye  witness  to  the  defense  against 
and  attacks  on  John  Brown's  party. 

The  village  annalist  says:  that  "  he  encountered 
four  armed  men  at  the  arsenal  gate — two  white  and 
two  black," — on  the  morning  of  the  17th.  They  saluted 
him  civilly  and  "one  of  the  white  men  asked  if  he 
owned  any  slaves.  On  his  answering  in  the  nega- 
tive, the  strangers  told  him  there  was  a  movement  on 
foot  that  would  benefit  him  and  all  people  who  did 
not  own  such  property."  His  curiosity  then  led  him 
to  look  in  and  speak  to  some  of  the  prisoners  within 
the  arsenal  gates  that  he  knew,  and  the  result  was 
that  he  had  to  run  to  escape  being  himself  taken. 
Four  Sharpe's  rifles  were  raised  and  his  chances  of 
escape  seemed  small,  when  a  colored  woman,  who 
was  crouched  in  a  doorway  in  the  alley,  rushed  out 


1  "  Annals  o(  Harper's  Ferry,"  by  Josephus,  Jr.,  Hagerstown, 
Md.,  1869,  pp.  64.  The  author's  name  is  Joseph  Barry,  formerly 
a  school-teacher. 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS   WALL.  309 

between  him  and  the  guns,  and  extending  her  arms 
begged  of  the  men  not  to  shoot.  They  did  not,  but 
the  pamphleteer  finds  no  space  or  words  to  thank  the 
brave  woman  for  her  timely  and  courageous  kind' 
ness. 

The  treatment  of  prisoners  and  wounded  captives, 
as  well  as  the  indignities  inflicted  on  the  dead,  are 
described  with  apparent  gusto  by  this  village  pam- 
phleteer. He  says:  "  William  Thompson  was  dragged 
to  the  bridge  and  riddled  with  bullets.  He  even, 
however,  tried  to  escape  by  letting  himself  drop 
through  the  bridge  into  the  river.  He  had  been  left 
for  dead,  but  it  appears  he  had  vitality  enough  left 
to  accomplish  this  feat.  He  was,  however,  discovered 
and  a  shower  of  bullets  was  discharged  at  him.  He 
was  either  killed  or  drowned,  as  he  could  be  seen  for 
a  day  or  two  after  lying  at  the  bottom,  and  with  his 
ghastly  face  still  exhibiting  his  fearful  death  agony." 

Jeremiah  G.  Anderson,  slain  by  the  bayonet  in  the 
engine-house,  had,  says  the  Harper's  Ferry  annalist, 
"  three  or  four  bayonet  stabs  in  the  breast  and  stomach. 
When  dragged  out  of  the  engine-house  to  the  flagged 
walk  in  front,  he  was  yet  alive  and  vomiting  gore 
from  internal  hemorrhage.  While  he  was  in  this 
condition  a  farmer  from  some  part  of  the  surround- 
ing country,  came  up  to  him  and  viewed  him  in 
silence,  but  with  a  look  of  concentrated  bitterness. 
.  .  .  He  passed  on  to  another  part  of  the  yard,  and 
did  not  return  for  a  considerable  time.  When  he  came 
back,  Anderson  was  still  breathing,  and  the  farmer 
addressed  him  thus:  '  Well,  it  takes  you  a  hell  of  a 
long  time  to  die.'  .  .  .  After  death,  also,  this  man 
Anderson    appeared    to    be    marked  out    for   special 


3IO  JOHN    BROWN. 

honors  and  the  most  marked  attention.  Some  phy- 
sicians from  the  valley  of  Virginia1  picked  him  out  as 
a  good  subject  for  dissection,  and,  nem.  con.,  they  got 
possession  of  his  body.  In  order  to  take  him  away 
handily,  they  procured  a  barrel  and  tried  to  pack 
him  into  it.  Head  foremost  they  rammed  him  in, 
but  they  could  not  bend  his  legs  so  as  to  get  them 
into  the  barrel  with  the  rest  of  his  body.  In  their 
endeavors  to  accomplish  this  feat,  the  man's 
bones,  or  sinews,  fairly  cracked.  The  praiseworthy 
exertions  of  these  sons  of  Galen,  in  the  cause  of 
science  and  humanity,  elicited  the  warmest  expres- 
sions of  approval  from  the  spectators.  The  writer 
does  not  know  what  disposition  was  finally  made  of 
him." 

The  would-be  humorous  brutality  of  this  incident 
is  only  equaled  by  the  evident  delight  the  annalist 
takes  in  the  following  description  of  Dangerfield 
Newby's  death.  He  was  a  colored  man,  and  native 
of  that  section  of  Virginia,  whose  wife  Harriet  was  a 
slave  living  some  thirty  miles  below.  By  letters 
found  in  the  famous  carpet-bag,  afterwards  published 
in  State  Legislative  Document  No.  i,  accompanying 
Governor  Wise's  message  relating  to  the  outbreak,  it 
appears  she  was  the  mother  of  their  children,  and 
about  to  bear  another,  while  in  hourly  dread  of  being 
sold  to  a  New  Orleans  trader.  She  was  afterwards 
found  in  Louisiana.     Dangerfield  Newby  was  killed 


1  Winchester  doubtless,  as  there  was  a  medical  college  there, 
and,  some  years  after  the  war,  the  bones  of  Oliver  and  Watson 
Brown  were  recovered  there  and  taken  away  by  John  Brown,  Jr., 
for  burial  with  their  brothers. 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  311 

about  11  a.  m.  on  the  17th,  and  lay  where  he  fell,  his 
body  exposed  to  nameless  brutalities  until  the  after- 
noon of  Tuesday  the  18th  of  October.  A  writer  for  a 
Maryland  paper  stated  that  infuriated  people  beat  the 
body  with  slicks,  put  them  in  the  wounds,  showered 
curses  on  the  dead  and  otherwise  degraded  them- 
selves. The  annalist  shows  that  Newby  was  fired- 
at  from  above,  a  house  window  probably,  as  "  the 
bullet  struck  him  in  the  lower  part  of  the  neck  and 
went  down  into  his  body.  From  the  relative  position 
of  the  parties,  the  size  of  the  bullet,  the  hole  in  his 
neck  was  very  large,"  and  it  was  remarked  that  "a 
smoothing  iron  had  been  shot  into  him.  Shortly  after 
his  death  a  hog  came  rooting  about  him.  .  .  . 
Suddenly  the  brute  was  seized  with  a  panic,  and, 
with  bristles  and  tail  erect,  it  scampered  away  as  if 
for  life.  This  display  of  sensibility  was  very  credit- 
able to  that  hog,  but  soon  a  drove  of  the  same  genus 
crowded  round  the  dead  man,  none  of  which  appeared 
to  be  actuated  by  the  same  generous  impulse  as  the 
first.  .  .  .  The  King  of  Terrors  himself  could  not 
exceed  those  hogs  in  zealous  attention  to  the  defunct 
Newby.  They  tugged  away  at  him  with  might  and 
main,  and  the  writer  saw  one  run  its  snout  into  the 
wound  and  drag  out  a  stringy  substance  of  some 
kind,  which  he  is  not  anatomist  enough  to  call  by  its 
right  name.  It  appeared  to  be  very  long  or  elastic, 
.  .  .  one  end  being  in  the  hog's  mouth  and  the 
other  in  the  man's  body.  This  circumstance,"  says 
the  gloating  annalist,  "could  not  fail  to  improve  the 
flavor,  .  .  .  and  value  of  pork  at  Harper's  Ferry 
next  winter." 

Of  the  fate  of  others  the  annalist,  already  quoted, 


312 


JOHN    BROWN. 


says,  that  Lewis  S.  Leary  "  was  mortally  wounded  * 
early  on  the  17th,  "  at  the  rifle  factory,  and  died  in  9 
cooper's  shop  on  'the  Island.'"  He  suffered  great 
agony,  but  was  left  alone  by  the  infuriated  defenders. 
Of  the  circumstances  attending  the  death  of  Dauphin 
Thompson,  little  is  known,  except  that  he  was  shot 
outside  and  died  in  the  engine-house.   Steward  Taylor 

was  killed  near  the  rifle  works. 
The  bodies  of  Kagi,  Leary,  and 
Wm.  Thompson  were  taken  out  of 
the  river  on  the  18th,  and  buried 
in  shallow  holes  upon  the  river 
bank,  where  the  dogs  soon  rootec* 
them  out.  They  were  partly  de- 
stroyed before  the  Winchester 
doctors  took  the  remains  away 
for  dissection.  Hazlett  and  O. 
P.  Anderson,  who  served  with 
Kagi,  managed  to  cross  the  bor- 
der in  safety  and  get  away  from 
Maryland  into  Pennsylvania, 
where  Hazlett  was  arrested  and 
extradited  at  the  demand  of 
Virginia.  After  W.  H.  Leeman 
had  cut  off  his  accoutrements  and  wounded  as  he  was 
plunged  into  the  river  at  the  rifle  works,  a  Virginia 
militiaman  waded  after  him.  Leeman  threw  up 
his  hands  and  said  appealingly,  "  Don't  shoot." 
The  maddened  pursuer  thrust  his  pistol  in  the  boy's 
face,  fired,  and  blew  it  into  an  undistinguishable  and 
bloody  mass.  He  then  cut  off  the  skirts  of  his  coat, 
gathered  the  weapons  of  his  victim,  and  returned  f> 
the    bank,    where    he    was    loudly  applauded  by  nis 


LEWIS    SHERRARD   LEARY, 


RENDING    THE    FORTRESS    WALL.  313 

fellows.  With  him  in  the  river  or  lying  on  the  rocks 
were  the  riddled  bodies  of  Kagi,  Steward  Taylor, 
William  Thompson,  and  Lewis  S.  Leary. 

It  is  related  by  a  Maryland  newspaper  man  that 
some  time  after  Leeman  had  been  killed  as  described, 
another  militiaman  waded  out  to  where  it  lay  and  set 
it  up  in  a  grotesque  attitude  as  a  target.  Finally  he 
was  pushed  off  and  floated  down  stream,  lodging  near 
William  Thompson's  body.  The  correspondent  re- 
marks that  "being  outlaws,"  they  "  were  regarded  as 
food  for  carrion  birds  and  not  as  human  beings." 
The  same  writer  stated  the  "  dead  lay  .  .  .  sub- 
jected to  every  indignity  that  a  wild  and  madly  ex- 
cited people  could  heap  upon  them.  Dangerfield 
Newby's  wounds  had  sticks  'ran  into'  them,  they 
were  used  'to  beat  him,'  while  the  assailants 
1  wished  he  had  a  thousand  lives '  wherewith  to 
appease  their  fury."  In  striking  contrast  with  this, 
was  the  fact  that  when  Mr.  Beckham,  the  Mayor,  was 
killed,  his  body  lay  for  some  time  exposed  on  the 
road,  till  the  hotel  porter  volunteered  to  bring  it  in. 
A  lady  also  went  out,  and  as  soon  as  the  reason  for 
their  presence  was  seen,  the  anti-slavery  men  ceased 
their  fire  and  the  body  was  recovered. 

It  is  almost  in  order  to  apologize  for  quoting  such 
brutalities.  They  would  not  be  given  here  but  for 
the  illustration  afforded  thereby  of  the  temper 
and  tone  of  the  occasion,  flickering  down  into 
verbal  indecencies  several  years  after  the  occasion. 
They  are  of  a  piece  with  the  sad  and  savage 
spirit  the  wretched  Mahala  Doyle,  of  the  Potta- 
watomie affair,  was  induced  to  exhibit  when  she 
signed     the     letter     written    for   her    in    which   she 


314  JOHN    BROWN. 

desired  to  furnish  the  rope  wherewith  to  hang  John 
Brown. 

Very  different  in  tone,  though  no  less  inexorable 
in  spirit  and  purpose,  were  the  unqualified  tributes 
which  the  power  of  character  wrung  from  Messrs. 
Wise,  Hunter,  Mason,  Vallandigham,  and  Voor- 
hees,  pro-slavery  sympathizers  as  they  were.  These 
direct  if  unwilling  estimates  to  the  convictions, 
high  courage,  stoical  endurance,  and  the  moral  pur- 
pose of  John  Brown,  were  given  by  them  under  con- 
ditions which  would  have  certainly  excused  opinions 
to  the  contrary.  Hunter,  the  prosecuting  attorney; 
Avis,  the  jailer;  Campbell,  the  sheriff;  and  Parker,  the 
judge,  have  also  given  unmistakable  evidence  of  the 
moral  magnetism  and  personal  grandeur  of  the  man. 
As  a  rule,  it  is  not  among  the  Virginian  survivors  of  the 
Harper's  Ferry  raid,  it  is  not  in  Southern  books  and 
newspapers  that  one  will  find  abuse  and  denunciation, 
assault  on  motives,  denial  of  honesty,  and  general 
effort  to  belittle  and  degrade  the  memory  of  a  great 
soul  or  besmirch  the  luminous  apotheosis  of  a  special 
and  sacrificial  deed.  It  is  left  to  Kansas  defamers, 
and  Northern  cynics  and  sciolists  to  do  these  things, 
and  credit  themselves  with  honor  in  the  doing.1 


1  It  is  not  my  purpose  to  shoot  partliian  arrows  in  the  dark.  I 
have  especial  reference  in  this  allusion,  among  a  few  other  assail- 
ants, to  ex  Governor  Charles  Robinson,  of  Kansas;  to  Eli  Thayer, 
of  Massachusetts,  and  to  Mr.  David  N.  Utter  for  his  indefensible 
article  of  November,  1883,  in  the  North  American  Review. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

CAPTURE TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD. 

///  the  hands  of  the  foe — Governor  Wise  and  John 
Brown — Andrew  Hunter,  prosecutor  and  executioner 
—  JoJui  Brown  "is  not  a  madman" — "The 
coolest"  of  men — ///  the  Char  lest  own  jail — The  Peo- 
ple's hysterical  fury — Systematically  fanned — 
Troops  paraded  in  the  interest  of  coming  disunion — 
The  trial  and  its  mockery — How  the  prosecution 
was  foiled — "  Rescue  "  scare — Arrival  of  the 
Massachusetts  lawyer  Hoyt — His  letters — Le  Barnes, 
Griswoldj  Chilton,  Montgomery,  Blair,  Sennott — The 
making  of  two  wills — How  Brown  was  plundered — 
Attempts  of  Wise  to  bully  Governors  Packer  and 
Chase — His  execution — The  trials  and  death  of  Cook, 
Coppoc,  Green,  Copeland,  Stevens,  Hazlett — Duplicity 
of  President  Buchanan — Slavery's  merciless  cruelty. 

John  Brown,  wounded  and  prone,  gibed  and 
wondered  at  by  those  he  had  scared  to  the  verge 
of  hysterical  fury,  was  captured  by  a  party  of  eighty 
United  States  marines,  commanded  by  Major  Russell 
and  Lieutenant  Green,  who  were  directed  by  the 
chief-of-staff  of  Lieutenant-General  Winfield  Scott — 
Colonel  Robert  E.  Lee — he  being  also  accompanied 
by   a    dragoon    officer,    afterwards    to    be    the    most 


31 6  JOHN    BROWN. 

famous  of  Confederate  cavalry  raiders — Lieut,  j.  E. 
B.  Stuart.  Nine  hundred  armed  Virginians  and 
Marylanders!  Nearly  one  hundred  Federal  soldiers 
with  the  power  of  army  headquarters  behind  them! 
All  these  were  necessary  to  capture  one  old  man,  a 
dying  son,  and  four  young  men,  one  seriously 
wounded.  Harper's  Ferry  had  practically  been  held 
for  fifty-eight  hours  by  seventeen  men.1  For  more 
than  half  that  time  not  over  a  dozen  men  of  the 
party  were  actually  in  the  fighting. 

It  was  a  wonderful  object-lesson  in  the  weakness  of 
a  slave-holding  community.  But  there  were  more 
forcible  ones  yet  to  be  taught.  The  old  man  lay 
for  eighteen  hours  on  the  floor  of  the  armory  superin- 
tendent's office,  which  thus  became  an  improvised 
guardroom.  His  wounds  remained  undressed  for  all 
that  period:  wounds,  too,  administered  by  bayonets 
of  marines  and  sabre  of  officer,  Lieutenant  Green, 
after  firing  had  ceased,  and  both  Coppoc  and  Ander- 
son had  announced  their  surrender,  while  the  latter, 
too,  had  been  fastened  by  Marine  Quinn's  bayonet  to 
the  wall  of  the  engine-house.  Brown's  gun2  was  in  his 
hand  when  Russell  and  Green  entered  the  engine- 
house,  and  either  of  them  could  have  been  slain  by 
him.  He  lowered  the  muzzle  and  was  immediately 
struck    down.     Aaron    D.    Stevens,    also    shot    while 


1  Owen  Brown,  Barclay  Coppoc,  and  Francis  J.  Merriam  were 
not  at  the  Ferry  at  all.  John  E.  Cook  and  Charles  Plummer 
Tidd  took  no  active  part  in  the  fighting,  being  ordered  to  the 
Virginia  schoolhouse  in  the  forenoon  of  the  17th,  and  then  being 
unable  to  afterwards  return. 

2  One  of  his  prisoners,  Mr.  Graham,  states  that  he  had  taken  up 
a  pike, 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON SCAFFOLD. 


317 


carrying  a  flag  of  truce,  lay  by  his  Captain's  side, 
with  six  bullet  wounds,  five  of  the  bullets  being  im- 
bedded in  head  and  neck.  He,  too,  was  unarmed 
when  shot.  In  fact,  Virginia's  victims  were  so  taken, 
and  the  most  of  her  shots  were  directed  against  un- 
armed prisoners,  or  men  dying  or  already  dead.  It 
was  Henry  Hunter,  son  of  the  State's  special  attor- 
ney, Andrew  Hunter,  who  testified  on  John  Brown's 
trial,  upon  call  to  the  witness  stand 
by  his  father,  that  he  shot  William 
Thompson,  an  unarmed  prisoner, 
and  only  regretted  that  he  was  not 
quite  sure  of  having  killed  him,  as 
some  one  else  fired  into  his  head 
at  the  same  time.  Another  Vir- 
ginian, George  Schoeper,  of  Har- 
per's Ferry,  is  reported  to  have  shot 
Leeman,  after  he  fell  dying  into  the 
Shenandoah,  wading  out  into  the 
stream  and  setting  up  his  poor  body 
against  a  rock,  to  enable  a  Mary- 
land company  to  make  a  target 
thereof.  Schoeper  cut  off  the  tail 
of  the  boy's  coat  in  which  he  found  his  commission  as 
a  lieutenant.  George  Chambers,  of  Williamsport,  Vir- 
ginia, is  reported  as  the  man  who  shared  with  Henry 
Hunter  in  the  massacre  of  William  Thompson,  and 
boasted  of  it.  James  Holt,  of  Harper's  Ferry,  was 
seen  to  club  the  body  of  Leary,  after  the  capture  of 
the  raiders,  and  long  after  life  was  extinct.  A  farmer 
spat  his  tobacco  expectoration  into  the  throat  of  the 
dying  Jerry  Anderson.  But  the  Virginians  who 
had  been  John  Brown's  prisoners,  resisted  the  cruelty 


WILLIAM    THOMPSON. 


318  JOHN     BROWN. 

of  their  fellows,  and  it  was  they  who  testified  as  to 
the  capture,  as  witnesses  at  the  trial  and  ever  since 
to  their  deaths,  to  the  uniform  kindness  and  courtesy 
of  manner  of  John  Brown  and  to  his  anxiety  to  pre- 
vent their  being  unnecessarily  exposed  to  the  reck- 
less firing  of  their  own'people.  The  bodies  of  Oliver, 
dead,  and  Watson,  dying,  were  brought  to  the 
armory.  The  latter  died  about  three  in  the  after- 
noon with  his  head  pillowed  on  the  knees  of  Edwin 
Coppoc.  Two  wounded  men,  three  un wounded,  ten 
of  the  raiders  dead,  and  seven  fugitives  was  the  tally 
which  Governor  Wise  was  greeted  with  upon  his 
arrival  from  Richmond,  about  9  a.  m.  on  the  18th  of 
October.  In  the  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat  of 
September  5,  1887,  the  late  Andrew  Hunter  published 
a  long  and  somewhat  remarkable  account  of  the 
John  Brown  raid  and  trial.  In  this  paper  Mr.  Hun- 
ter sought  to  prove  that  the  Liberator's  wounds  were 
slight,  only  one,  he  said,  and  that  was  on  the  temple, 
from  whence  the  blood  spread  down  his  face  and 
breast.  The  garments,  afterwards  mended  by  Mrs. 
Rebecca  Spring,  of  New  Jersey,  and  in  which  his 
body  was  clothed,  were  in  proof  of  the  reverse  of 
this.  One  severe  bayonet  wound  in  the  left  kidney 
caused  Captain  Brown  to  suffer  until  his  execution 
had  ended  the  account. 

Federal  soldiers  were  necessary  for  the  protec- 
tion of  the  prisoners.  The  wonderful  vitality  and 
mental  force  of  Captain  Brown  kept  him  alert 
throughout  the  long  strain  of  examination  and  inter- 
viewing, to  which  he  was  subjected.  Immediately 
upon  the  Governor's  arrival,  the  Baltimore  Grays 
went  to  the  Kennedy  Farm-house  and  the  mountain 


CAPTURE TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  3  I  9 

school-building,  and  soon  brought  in  the  famous 
carpet-bag,  containing  the  historic  John  Brown's 
papers,  and  also  a  large  number  of  letters,  etc., 
belonging  to  the  men.  The  arms,  etc.,  found  at  the 
schoolhouse,  were  legally  John  Brown's  property. 
A  small  wagon  and  mule,  compass,  and  other  per- 
sonal property,  were  brought  from  the  Maryland 
farm  into  Virginia  and  there  confiscated;  the  wagon 
and  mule  being  seized  by  Foulke,  the  Harper's  Ferry 
hotel-keeper,  to  pay  for  meals  which  Brown  had 
obtained  to  feed  his  prisoners  and  his  men.  It  was 
well  that  the  money  found  on  Brown's  body,  when 
captured  (about  two  hundred  and  ninety  dollars  in 
gold  and  silver),  had  been  taken  by  Federal  officials, 
or  otherwise  he  would  not  have  any  means  whatever 
to  aid  in  defraying  the  small  expenses  of  a  trial 
and  prison  life.  Even  that,  he  did  not  obtain  the  use 
of  till  the  30th  instant,  after  Northern  counsel  had 
arrived.  Virginia  had  a  somewhat  obsolete  law, 
sequestrating  the  property  of  a  convicted  person  found 
within  the  State.  While  Judge  Parker  said  nothing 
and  Sheriff  Campbell  was  ignorant,  wrote  Counselor 
Hoyt  of  its  existence,  Andrew  Hunter,  claiming 
kindly  treatment  to  his  prisoners,  and  even  writing 
his  will,  exacted  however  the  State's  full  pound  of 
flesh.  The  military  stores  of  the  raiders  proved  a 
somewhat  rich  "  loot  "  for  the  captors.  To  this  day 
the  "  pikes"  are  being  offered  for  sale  from  distant 
points  in  Alabama,  and  elsewhere,  to  which  it  is 
claimed  they  were  carried  early  in  the  Civil  War. 
Of  arms  there  were  not  less  than  180  Sharpe's  rifles 
and  75  Allen  revolvers,  a  little  less  in  size  than  the 
Colt  navy-pistol,  with   950  pikes,   and   primers,  caps. 


320  JOHN    BROWN. 

powder,  tools,  etc.  The  following  were  reported  on 
the  trial  as  received  by  the  State  authorities:  108 
Sharpe's  rifles,  12  revolvers,  455  pikes,  several  kegs  of 
powder,  40,000  rifle  and  20,000  revolver  percussion 
caps,  with  a  quantity  of  rifle  primers,  several  reams 
of  cartridge  paper,  lead  for  bullets,  ladles,  a  small, 
portable  furnace,  and  a  swivel  gun,  with  some  other 
articles.  The  swivel  gun,  carrying  a  two -ounce 
ball,  was  found  in  the  Kennedy  house,  and  it  was  the 
weapon  presented  to  John  Brown  by  Eli  Thayer,  "  for 
service  in  the  cause  of  freedom,"  in  April  or  May, 
1857.  The  Sharpe  rifles  and  Allen  revolvers  were 
those  turned  over  to  the  Captain  in  1857,  and  finally 
presented  to  him  as  a  personal  gift,  in  1858,  by 
George  Luther  Stearns,  of  Massachusetts. 

By  noon  on  the  19th  of  October,  the  armory-room 
was  crowded  by  local  magnates,  press  men,  and 
military  officers,  while  the  train  soon  brought  leading 
men  from  Richmond,  Washington,  Baltimore,  and 
Ohio, — Senator  Mason  and  Clement  L.  Vallandig- 
ham,  among  others — representatives  of  some  leading 
newspapers,  and  the  agent  of  the  Associated  Press, 
from  Baltimore,  connected  with  the  America?i  of  that 
city.  They  certainly  manifested  a  fair  and  manly 
spirit  in  all  dispatches,  and,  even  at  this  date,  they 
can  be  admired  for  their  candid,  almost  judicial 
temper.  These  dispatches,  still  present  a  remarkable 
tribute  to  the  character  and  personality  of  the  anti- 
slavery  raider.  "  Porte  Crayon  "  (General  Strother), 
artist  for  Harper  s  Weekly,  a  Virginian  born,  was 
among  the  earlier  arrivals.  His  graphic  pencil, 
made  furious  by  the  thoughts  of  an  avoided  slave 
insurrection,  spared  no  line  in  savage  realism. 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  32  I 

Captain  Brown's  identity  had  been  settled  the  day 
before.1  Governor  Wise  and  Senator  Mason  arrived 
during  the  early  afternoon  of  Tuesday.  Lieutenant 
Stuart,  who  had  been  stationed  in  Kansas  during  the 
fighting  summer  of  1856,  also  recognized  the  leader 
as  Black  Jack  and  Osawatomie.  A  remarkable  intel- 
lectual duel  at  once  ensued. 

From  the  outset,  Governor  Wise,  who  dominated 
the  situation  by  virtue  both  of  public  position  and- 
erratic  zealotry  as  a  representative  Southerner, 
sought  to  shape  questions  and  entrap  replies  into 
the  mould  he  had  already  formed,  viz.,  the  idea  that 
John  Brown  was  but  the  agent  of  an  extended  and 
powerful  combination  of  Northern  politicians  and 
persons  opposed  to  slavery.  Vallandigham  seconded, 
and  rudely  even,  this  effort  of  the  Governor.  Sena- 
tor Mason,  as  the  report  shows,  aimed  more  at  ascer- 
taining the  Captain's  motives  and  pleas  in  justifica- 


1  Col.  Robert  W.  Baylor,  "Colonel-Commandant"  of  the 
State  forces,  then  about  six  hundred  in  number,  in  his  report  to 
Governor  Wise,  published  the  following  cartels.  It  was  3  p.m.  of 
the  17th,  Stevens  had  already  been  shot  while  carrying  a  flag  of 
truce  and  bearing  John  Brown's  first  proposition  to  retire,  releasing 
his  prisoners,  forty  in  all,  as  he  got  beyond  Harper's  Ferry. 
Baylor  than  assumed  command,  pouring  in  a  heavy  fire,  rescuing 
thirty  of  the  hostages  and  compelling  Brown  to  retire  with  five 
men  and  ten  prisoners  to  the  shelter  of  the  engine-house.  Having 
driven  them  under  cover,  Baylor  also  withdrew  his  own  troops 
out  of  range.  A  second  flag  of  truce  appeared;  Isaac  Russell,  a 
prisoner,  being  used  to  bear  a  verbal  message.     Baylor  replied: 

Headquarters,  Harper's  Ferry. 
Capt.  John    Brown:  Sir — Upon  consultation   with   Mr.  Isaac 
Russell,  one  of  your  prisoners,  who  has  come  to  me    on   terms  of 
capitulation,  I  say  to  you,  if  you  will  set  at  liberty  our  citizens  we 
21 


322  JOHN    BROWN. 

tion.  The  evidence  then  and  afterwards  indicates 
that  the  author  of  the  Fugitive-Slave  Law  gave  but 
little  weight  to  the  apparently  excitable  conceptions 
which  dominated  Henry  A.  Wise.  All,  however, 
were  eager  for  any  means  of  "  firing  the  Southern 
heart,"  for  the  disunion  struggle  up  to  which  their 
efforts  were  leading.  John  Brown,  still  bleeding, 
stiff,  sore,  and  dazed;  in  blood-stiffened  and  dirt- 
begrimed  garments;  suffering  from  hunger,  thirst, 
and  want  of  even  the  rudest  care;  with  his  project 
defeated,  his  men  slain,  captured,  or  scattered;  him- 
self a  prisoner,  one  son  dead,  another  expiring  while 
the  Southern  politicians  questioned,  and  a  third  a 
fugitive  with  his  fate  wholly  unknown,  held  himself 
with  such  firmness,  intellectual  clearness,  stoic 
grandeur  and  manly  directness,  that   the   harsh   floor 


will  leave  the  Government  (Federal)  to  deal  with  you  concerning 
their  property,  as  it  may  think  most  advisable. 

Robert  W.  Baylor,  Colonel-Commandant. 

The  following  written  reply  was  then  received: 

In  consideration  of  all  my  men,  whether  living  or  dead,  or 
wounded,  being  soon  safely  in  and  delivered  to  me  at  this  point, 
with  all  their  arms  and  ammunition,  we  will  then  take  our  prison- 
ers and  cross  the  Potomac  bridge,  a  little  beyond  which  we  will 
set  them  at  liberty;  after  which  we  can  negotiate  about  the  Gov- 
ernment property  as  may  be  best.  Also  we  require  the  delivery 
of  our  horse  and  wagon  at  the  hotel. 

John  Brown. 

Baylor  returned  the  following: 

Capt.  John  Brown:  Sir — The  terms  you  propose  I  cannot 
accept.  Under  no  considerations  will  I  consent  to  a  removal  of 
our  citizens  across  the  river.  The  only  negotations  upon  which  I 
will  consent  to  treat  are  those  which  have  been  previously  pro- 
posed to  you.  Robert  W.  Baylor,  Colonel-Commandant . 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  323 

on  which  he  lay  became,  as  it  were,  the  enthroned 
seat  of  true  courage,  while  his  bearing  compelled  the 
unwilling  attention  of  all  present  and  the  unstinted 
and  admiring  respect  of  some  of  them.  There  was  a 
persistent  demand  to  know  "  who  paid  "  and  "  who 
sent"  John  Brown  to  Virginia.  Vallandigham  en- 
deavored to  lay  all  sorts  of  verbal  traps  in  which  to 
catch  the  Ohio  or  other  Republicans.  Governor 
Wise  showed  to  greater  advantage  than  others, 
and  his  questions  were  straightforward  and  direct, 
being  such  as  his  position  gave  him  the  right  to  ask. 
To  the  Ohio  politician  John  Brown  said:  "No  man 
sent  me  here;  it  was  my  own  prompting  and  that  of 
my  Maker;  or  that  of  the  devil,  whichever  you  please 
to  ascribe  it  to.  I  acknowledge  no  master  in  human 
form."  To  Senator  Mason's  question  of  "  How  do 
you  justify  your  acts?"  he  turned  the  tables  by  say- 
ing: "  I  think,  my  friend,  you  are  guilty  of  a  great 
wrong  to  God  and  against  humanity — I  say  it  with- 
out wishing  to  be  offensive — and  I  believe  it  would 
be  perfectly  right  to  interfere  with  you,  so  far  as  to  free 
those  you  wickedly  and  willfully  hold  in  bondage." 

In  reply  to  other  questions  he  declared  that  he  did 
what  "he  thought  right",  that  he  "applied  the 
golden  rule  "  to  his  own  conduct,  and  that  it  was  "  a 
duty  to  help  others  to  gain  their  liberty."  In  reply 
to  a  question  of  the  Senator,  as  to  whether  he  con- 
sidered the  Provisional  Constitution  (copies  of  which 
in  pamphlet  form  were  in  the  hands  of  his  examiners, 
as  the  carpet-bag  with  his  papers  had  been  brought 
from  the  Kennedy  Farm-house  to  Harper's  Ferry), 
Captain  Brown  said:  "Yes,  in  some  respects.  I  wish 
you  would  give  that  paper  your  close  attention." 


324  JOHN     BROWN. 

To  Lieutenant.  Stuart,  who  remarked  in  comment 
on  some  expression  of  the  wounded  man — "  The 
wages  of  sin  are  death  " — John  Brown  replied  with 
quiet  dignity,  "  I  would  not  have  said  that  if  you  had 
been  a  prisoner  and  wounded  in  my  hands."  When 
asked  under  "  whose  auspices  "  he  went  to  Kansas, 
he  told  Vallandigham — "  Under  the  auspices  of  John 
Brown  and  no  one  else."  To  Governor  Wise  he  said 
he  was  an  "  instrument  in  the  hands  of  Providence," 
and  that  he  considered  the  work  he  attempted  "  the 
greatest  service  man  can  render  to  his  God."  During 
the  long  examination  to  which  he  was  subjected, 
Captain  Brown  avoided  all  names;  all  recriminatory 
speech,  and  contented  himself  with  courteous  but  very 
direct  replies  as  to  his  motives  and  purposes;  declar- 
ing that  he  had  none  but  the  freeing  of  slaves;  that 
he  had  treated  his  thirty  prisoners  well  and  with 
humanity.  Those  who  were  present  promptly  con- 
firmed this.  He  asserted  that  the  only  reason  for  his 
defeat  and  capture  was  that  he  considered  too  long 
the  feelings  of  families  of  those  he  was  holding  as 
hostages.  But  for  that  he  would  have  got  away.  To 
the  reporters  present  he  said: 

"  I  claim  to  be  here  in  carrying  out  a  measure  I 
believe  to  be  perfectly  justifiable,  and  not  to  act  the 
part  of  an  incendiary  or  ruffian;  but,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  aid  those  suffering  a  great  wrong.  I  wish 
to  say,  furthermore,  that  you  had  better — all  you, 
people  of  the  South — prepare  yourselves  for  a  settle- 
ment of  this  question.  You  may  dispose  of  me  very 
easily.  I  am  nearly  disposed  of  now;  but  this  ques- 
tion is  still  to  be  settled — this  negro  question,  I  mean, 
The  end  of  that  is  not  yet." 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  325 

Governor  Wise,  before  leaving  for  Richmond, 
directed  that  the  bodily  necessities  of  the  prisoners 
be  properly  cared  for,  and  also  declared  that  Captain 
Brown  and  his  men  should  have  a  fair  trial.  How 
little  he  meant  this  became  soon  apparent.  There 
were  five  alive  and  in  their  hand, — John  Brown  and 
A.  D.  Stevens,  wounded;  Edwin  Coppoc,  Shields 
Green,  and  John  A.  Copeland  (the  two  last  colored), 
unwounded,  retained  in  the  army  guardroom  till 
noon  of  the  19th,  when  all  were  removed  to  Charles- 
town.  They  were  then  placed  in  the  jail,  a  moderate- 
sized  brick  building,  which  still  stands.  It  was 
surrounded  by  State  troops  under  Colonel  Baylor's 
orders,  and  two  guns  were  also  placed  in  position  to 
command  the  jail.  The  scare  begun.  Rage  had  taken 
the  place  of  the  first  alarmed  surprise.  It  had  vented 
itself  in  a  saturnalia  of  abuse  and  outrage  on  the 
bodies  of  those  whose  lives  had  been  given  in  return 
for  their  daring.  But  when  the  first  excitement  flick- 
ered down  a  little,  a  terrible  dread  then  arose  as  to 
how  far  the  movement  extended  among  the  slaves 
and  free  people  of  color.  This  dread  reached  Rich- 
mond, Baltimore,  and  Washington.  It  caused  vigil- 
ance and  guards  at  Charleston  and  New  Orleans, 
and  put  the  entire  South  into  a  ferment,  illustrating 
John  Brown's  biblical  comment — "The  wicked  fleeth, 
when  no  man  pursueth."  That  it  was  a  terror  need 
not  be  denied  or  evaded.  In  Virginia  and  Maryland 
one  effect  was  to  cause  a  rapid  sale  at  reduced  prices 
"  down  South  "  of  all  slaves  wTho  were  "  suspects," 
unruly,  or  turbulent.  The  loss  from  this  source  has 
been  estimated  at  $10,000,000  in  Virginia  alone.  For 
a    considerable     period     thereafter     some    of    John 


326  JOHN    BROWN. 

Brown's  friends  kept  a  record,  so  far  as  newspaper 
information  permitted,  of  the  enforced  movement 
southward  of  slaves  from  the  border  States.  It  was 
very  rapid  and  extended  from  Virginia  to  Mis- 
souri. 

There  and  then  began  another  marvelous  struggle, 
not  for  life,  but  for  recognition;  for  a  clear  apprehen- 
sion of  motives,  conditions,  and  results.  History 
holds  no  record  more  memorable.  It  was  waged 
against  the  entrenched  Slave  power,  embattled  insti- 
tutionalism,  aroused  legal  ties  sure  to  avenge  them- 
selves if  the  taking  of  life  would  accomplish  that; 
but,  more  than  all,  it  was  set  to  conquer  and  convict 
the  Northern  States,  with  all  their  compromising 
tendencies,  their  commercial  needs,  and  social  de- 
mands excited  and  in  hostile  array.  More,  too,  than 
that,  there  was  a  growing  power  in  public  affairs  to 
be  influenced,  whose  dominance  aiming  only  and 
wholly  for  the  advancement  of  the  Nation,  was 
threatened  in  its  very  heart,  apparently,  by  this 
seemingly  frantic  blow  at  Harper's  Ferry.  To  meet 
all  these  there  was  but  a  simple,  upright,  crystalline 
manhood,  physically  sure  of  only  but  one  thing — 
Death!  To  him,  however,  there  was  also,  and  with- 
out questioning,  God!  Convinced  of  his  cause,  sure 
of  his  motive,  purged  of  all  desire  but  service,  and 
confident  that  such  sacrifice  was  victory,  John  Brown, 
knowing  what  he  was  doing  and  whither  it  led,  was 
supremely  the  Idealist, — transendental  and  trans- 
parent, too,  in  the  eyes  of  the  world.  To  this  end 
the  men  most  opposed,  most  actively  aided.  The 
manhood  of  men  like  Wise  and  Vallandigham  run, 
for   the   time    being,  with    their    schemes,   aims,   and 


CAPTURE — TRIM, —  PR  [SON  —  SCAFFOLD.  327 

policies,  so  far  as  John  Brown's  character  and  motives 
were  concerned. 

The  Harper's  Ferry  raid  was  at,  once  used  as  a 
means  of  attack  on  Northern  and  anti-slavery  opin- 
ion. More  than  that,  however,  the  attack  was  moulded 
so  as  to  arouse  every  hostile  feeling  in  the  South. 
The  effort  to  prove  that  Republican  leaders,  voters, 
and  newspapers  were  parties  to  the  movements  of 
John  Brown  soon  failed  of  their  own  inanition.  But 
the  larger  purpose  of  preparing  for  revolution,  by 
inflaming  Southern  sentiment,  gathered  force  with 
every  da}',  and  the  words  of  the  hour  served  John 
Brown,  his  men,  and  their  cause  most  admirably. 
So  far  as  affecting  fierce  and  fusing  public  opinion, 
as  well  as  the  colder  verdict  of  history,  Henry  A. 
Wise  stamped  on  the  latter  his  representation  of 
John  Brown,  when  he  said  in  a  public  speech,  upon 
his  return  to  Richmond,  from  Harper's  Ferry,  that — 

"  They  are  themselves  mistaken  who  take  him  to  he  a  mad- 
man. He  is  a  bundle  of  the  best  nerves  I  ever  saw,  cut,  and 
thrust,  and  bleeding-,  and  in  bonds.  He  is  a  man  of  clear 
head,  of  courage,  fortitude,  and  simple  ingenuousness.  He  is 
cool,  collected,  indomitable,  and  it  is  but  just  to  him  to  say  that 
he  was  humane  to  his  prisoners,  as  attested  to  me  by  Colonel 
Washington  and  Mr.  Mills  [an  armorer  at  the  United  States 
works],  and  he  inspired  me  with  great  trust  in  his  integrity,  as 
a  man  of  truth.  He  is  fanatic,  vain,  and  garrulous,  but  firm 
and  truthful,  and  intelligent.1    His  men,  too,  who  survive,  except 


1  Governor  Wise  is  the  only  man  of  weight  who  ever  criticised 
John  Brown  as  "  garrulous."  Those  who  knew  him  best  always 
considered  him  a  reticent  man.  He  was  able  to  talk,  however, 
on  proper  occasions,  and  this,  with  the  listening  ears  of  men  wide 
open,  waiting  on  his  utterances,  was  certainly  one  that  he  im- 
proved upon,  and  wisely    too. 


328  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  free  negroes  with  him,  are  like  him.  He  professes  to  be  a 
Christian  in  communion  with  the  Congregational  Church  of  the 
North,1  and  only  preaches  his  purpose  of  universal  emancipa- 
tion; and  the  negroes  themselves  were  to  be  the  agents,  by- 
means  of  arms,  led  on  by  white  commanders.  When  Colonel 
Washington  was  taken,  his  watch,  plate,  and  jewels,  and 
money  were  demanded,  to  create  what  they  call  a  '  safety 
fund  ' 2  to  compensate  the  Liberators  for  the  trouble  and  expense 
of  taking  away  his  slaves.3  This,  by  a  law,  was  to  be  done 
with  all  slaveholders." 


1  This  seems  to  be  an  error.  If  John  Brown  was  a  regular 
church  member,  it  would  have  been  with  a  small  Presbyterian  or 
Cameronian  sect,  the  chief  seat  of  which  was  in  Pittsburg  and 
western  Pennsylvania,  and  which  was  positively  anti-slavery  in  its 
tenets  and  action,  not  fellowshipping  with  those  who  were  actively 
or  tacitly <-m-  favor  of  slavery.  He  seems  not  to  have  been  in 
regular  standing  with  any  church  body  after  being  ostracised  early 
in  the  'forties  on  account  of  his  recognition  on  equal  terms  of 
colored  Christians. 

2  The  "safety  fund"  mentioned  by  the  Governor  was  never 
designed  for  "  compensation  to  liberators"  or  any  one  else.  Its 
purpose  was  simply  that  which  its  name  implied,  or  for  what,  by 
the  light  of  war  experiences,  we  should  now  term  "  secret  ser- 
vice "  work. 

8  "Article  XXIX. 

"  SAFETY    OR    INTELLIGENCE    FUND." 

"  All  money,  plate,  watches,  or  jewelry  captured  by  honorable 
warfare,  found,  taken,  or  confiscated,  belonging  to  the  enemy  shall 
be  held  sacred,  to  constitute  a  liberal  intelligence  or  safety  fund  ;  and 
any  person  who  shall  improperly  retain,  dispose  of,  hide,  use,  or 
destroy  such  money  or  other  article  above  named,  contrary  to  the 
provisions  and  spirit  of  this  article,  shall  be  deemed  guilty  of 
theft,  and  on  conviction  thereof,  shall  be  punished  accordingly. 
The  treasurer  (Owen  Brown)  shall  furnish  the  commander-in-chief 
(John  Brown)  at  all  times  with  a  full  statement  of  the  condition 
of  such  fund  and  its  nature." 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  329 

After  referring  to  the  taking  of  Frederick  the 
Great's  sword  by  Stevens,  Governor  Wise  went  on  to 
say  of  John  Brown: 

11  He  promised.  ...  to  return  it  when  he  was  done 
with  it.  And  Colonel  Washington  says  that  he,  Brown,  was 
the  coolest  and  firmest  man  he  ever  saw  in  defying  danger  and 
death.  With  one  son  dead  by  his  side,  and  another  shot 
through,  he  felt  the  pulse  of  his  dying  son  with  one  hand,  and 
held  his  rifle  with  the  other,  and  commanded  his  men  with  the 
utmost  composure,  encouraging  them  to  be  firm,  and  to  sell 
their  lives  as  dearly  as  they  could." 

In  the  light  of  historic  evidence,  events,  and  con- 
ditions, such  as  can  now  be  seen,  it  is  quite  apparent 
that  the  Virginian  managers  sought  to  prove  that 
John  Brown  represented  a  wide-spread,  organized,  and 
active  hostility  in  the  North,  deliberately  aiming  to 
injure  the  South  and  destroy  its  slave  institutions. 
Such  careful  examination  of  the  "John  Brown 
papers,"  as  Governor  Wise  and  Senator  Mason,  with 
their  counselors  and  aids  must  have  given,  could 
but  have  convinced  them  that  the  range  of  Brown's 
active  support  was  very  limited  indeed.  The  Vir- 
ginian Executive  secured  the  services  of  the  ablest 
detectives,  lawyers,  newspaper  men,  etc.,  to  examine 
these  papers  and  to  follow  up  the  clues  afforded. 
These  men  and  their  rumors,  or  reports,  fooled  him 
to  the  top  of  his  bent.  They  led  nowhere  and  ended 
in  nothing,  until  early  in  November  the  paper  pre- 
pared by  John  Edwin  Cook,  under  the  pressure 
brought  upon  him  by  his  brother-in-law  and  other 
relatives,  gave  the  names  of  Dr.  Howe,  F.  B.  San- 
born, Thaddeus  Hyatt,  and  Gerrit  Smith  as  being 
active  in  support  of  the  Captain's  movements.     In  all 


33° 


JOHN    BROWN. 


the  papers  and  letters  printed  in  "  Appendix  No.  I." 
to  the  messages  of  Governor  Wise,  or  in  the  Harper's 
Ferry  raid  report  of  the  United  States  Senate  Investi- 
gating Committee,  there  are  but  few  clues  to  any 
names.1 

After  removal  by  United  States  marines  to  Charles- 
town,  six  miles  beyond  the  direct  jurisdiction  of  the 
general  government,  four  of  the  prisoners — Brown, 
Coppoc,  Copeland,  and  Green— were  kept  until  the 


1  The  "  Appendix  to  Message  I.  Documents  relative  to  the 
Harper's  Ferry  Invasion,"  is  a  thin  octavo  of  154  pages.  With 
some  exceptions  as  to  personal  letters,  it  probably  contains  nearly 
all  the  manuscripts  or  printed  matter  found  in  the  Captain's 
carpet-bag  or  at  the  Kennedy  Farm-house, "in  addition  to  a  letter, 
addressed  to  President  Buchanan,  dated  November  25th,  and  the 
reply  thereto;  also  letter  of  Wise  to  the  Governors  of  Maryland, 
Ohio,  and  Pennsylvania,  with  replies,  all  relating  to  the  "  inva- 
sion" for  "  rescue  "  purposes,  of  which  Governor  Wise  claimed 
he  had  positive  information;  with  reports  of  State  militia  com- 
mandeis,  Cols.  J.  T.  Gibson  and  Robert  W.  Baylor.  There 
is  a  letter  from  one  Henry  Hudnall  to  the  Governor,  setting  forth 
at  some  length  the  contents  of  the  captured  carpet-bag.  Hudnall 
was  probably  a  lawyer-clerk,  employed  to  look  over  this  material, 
and  his  comments  are  not  especially  marked  by  acumen  or  ability 
of  any  value.  The  formal  documents  are  the  4*  Provisional  Con- 
stitution and  Ordinances  for  the  People  of  the  United  States;" 
"  No.  I.  The  Duty  of  the  Soldier;"  "  Blank  Form  of  Commission 
under  the  Provisional  Government."  The  three  were  printed; 
the  first  and  last  having  been  "  set  up  "  at  St.  Catherine's,  Canada. 
Then  follows  the  manuscript  journal  of  that  convention,  with  the 
autographs  attached  of  the  delegates  thereto.  Outside  of  John 
Brown's  own  name,  there  is  not  one  known  at  the  time  beyond  a 
neighborhood  circle,  unless  Dr.  Delany  is  an  exception,  as  having 
been  editor  of  a  weekly  paper.  A  remarkable  document  was 
"  A  Declaration  of  Liberty.  By  the  Representatives  of  the  Slave 
Population  of  the   United   States  of  America."     This  was  in  the 


CAPTURE TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  33 1 

25th  without  further  disturbance.  On  the  22d,  the 
Captain  wrote  letters  to  the  North  appealing  for 
counsel.  At  John  Brown's  home  in  North  Elba — 
shut  away  amid  the  mountains  from  rapid  communi- 
cation with  the  world — the  news  of  disaster  and 
death  had  been  slow  in  its  merciless  movement.  It 
was  not  until  the  afternoon  of  Friday,  the  21st  inst., 
that  a  young  man,  their  neighbor,  brought  to  the 
lonely  dwelling  under  the  shadow  of  Whiteface  and 


original,  bearing,  wrote  Mr.  Hudnall,  "strong  internal  proof  of 
having  been  the  work  of  Brown,  parodied  on  the  colonial  declara- 
tion, with  some  very  original  variations  and  interpolations  by 
Brown  himself,  the  whole  being  copied  by  his  son,  Owen,  and 
fixed  upon  a  roller."  There  are  102  letters  in  this  "  Appendix," 
mainly  written  to  and  from  the  men  of  the  party,  and  a  few  by 
friends  at  Springfield,  la.,  or  Cleveland,  O.  There  is  a  business 
note  of  Horace  Greeley  &  Co.  inclosing  to  Kagi  a  check  in  pay- 
ment of  work  done  for  the  Tribune;  one  from  Gerrit  Smith,  for- 
warding $200,  and  nothing  else  directly  relating  any  one  to 
Captain  Brown's  movements.  Reference  is  made  under  initials, 
or  assumed  names,  to  Messrs.  Stearns,  Howe,  Sanborn,  and 
Parker,  as  persons  having  relations  with  his  efforts.  The  cor- 
respondence must  have  been  a  disappointment  to  the  Virginians. 
What  became  of  these  papers  and  the  historic  carpet-bag  is 
unknown,  though  there  is  reason  to  believe  they  were  kept  in  the 
Virginian  State  Library  at  Richmond  until  1865.  When  the  Federal 
army  was  about  entering  the  ex-Confederate  capital,  it  is  stated 
that  the  librarian  threw  the  carpet-bag  and  contents  into  some 
receptacle  between  the  walls  of  the  dome  of  the  Capitol,  from 
which,  if  so,  they  have  never  been  recovered.  This  statement  is 
not  vouched  for,  however,  but  yet  it  seems  to  have  some  founda- 
tion in  fact.  What  is  of  interest  in  the  carpet-bcig  papers  is  the 
unquestioned  fact  that  they  offered  little  or  no  foundation  for  the 
inflated  structure  of  hysteria  and  suspicion,  Governor  Wise  sought 
to  build  upon  them. 


332  JOHN    BROWN. 

amid  the  somber  Adirondack  woods,  a  copy  of  the 
New  York  Time's  of  the  18th.  The  day  before  an 
exaggerated  report  of  the  defeat  had  reached  them, 
but  this  they  would  not  believe.  But  the  newspaper 
with  all  its  startling  details  could  not  be  denied.  To 
them  the  shock  was  lessened  by  the  sacrificial,  expec- 
tant atmosphere  in  which  they  had  all  and  so  long 
moved.  Within  the  small  frame-house,  dim  and  un- 
painted,  were  Mary,  the  wife  and  mother;  Annie, 
Sarah,  and  Ellen,  the  younger  daughters — the  latter 
still  a  child — and  Martha,  the  pregnant  widow  of 
Oliver  Brown,  who  was  so  soon  after  to  join  her 
boy-husband  in  death;  also  Salmon,  the  remaining 
brother  and  son,  while  Henry  and  Ruth  Thompson 
were  close  neighbors.  The  dwelling  of  the  elder 
Thompson  was  one  of  mourning  also.  Two  of 
its  boys  had  fallen,  their  sister  was  the  widowed 
wife  of  Watson  Brown,  while  in  another  home 
William  Thompson's  wife  wailed  in  loneliness  her 
sudden  widowhood.  Five  households  and  four 
families  were  stricken  by  the  blow  at  Harper's  Ferry, 
and  yet  no  recognized  murmur  ever  escaped  any  of 
them,  unless  it  were  from  the  parents  of  Oliver's 
widow,  who  were  very  hostile  to  the  anti-slavery  sen- 
timents of  the  Browns  and  Thompsons.  The  neigh- 
borhood, too,  was  somewhat  unfriendly  on  account 
of  political  feeling,  but  the  overwhelming  nature  of 
the  defeat  and  the  reluctant  admiration  extorted  by 
the  way  the  sorrow  was  borne,  soon  changed  hostile 
indifference  into  active  kindliness.  How  vividly  does 
memory  recall  the  facts  relating  to  their  devotion, 
the  Spartanlike  simplicity  of  their  lives,  the  courage 
which  came  because  it  must  and   never   thought  to 


CAPTURE TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  333 

vaunt  itself.  No  one  murmured,  and  each  sought  to 
lift  the  burden  of  the  two  fated  mother-lives — the 
wife  who  had  borne  sons  for  freedom,  and  the  young 
bride  who  was  so  near  death  in  her  coming  mother- 
hood. The  sorrow  and  endurance  at  North  Elba 
was  felt  elsewhere.  In  Jefferson  County,  Ohio,  the 
homes  of  John,  Jr.,  and  Jason  Brown,  at  Dorset  and 
Akron,  were  abodes  of  care  and  suffering.  It  was 
known  that  one  brother — Owen—  had  escaped,  but 
his  fate  remained  in  tedious  uncertainty.  It  was 
also  certain  that  John,  Jr.,  would  early  be  an  object 
of  suspicion,  as  many  of  his  letters  were  among  the 
captured  papers.  The  inaccessibility  of  North  Elba 
doubtless  prevented  annoyance  and  insult  to  the 
elder  household;  in  the  Western  reserve  the  orga- 
nized courage  and  open  determination  to  resist  at- 
tempts at  arrests,  kept  the  Federal  and  State  agents, 
officers  and  detectives,  at  a  respectful  distance.  John 
Brown,  Jr's,  home  at  Dorset  soon  became  for  John 
Brown  men  the  safest  place  in  the  land.  There  was 
mourning  in  southern  Nebraska,  where  father  and 
sisters  lived,  for  the  able  and  gallant  John  Henri 
Kagi;  at  Chambersburg,  Pennsylvania,  the  wife  of 
John  E.  Cook,  cowered  in  bewildering  dread,  saved 
only  at  first  from  insult  and  possible  arrest  by  the 
courage  of  Mrs.  Ritner,  in  whose  boarding-house  she 
had  temporary  shelter.  In  the  homes  of  his  own 
relatives,  in  Connecticut,  New  York,  and  Indiana 
sorrow  and  anxiety  felt  for  Cook  was  made  bitterer 
by  open  hostility  of  feeling  felt  towards  his  cause. 
The  father  and  sisters  of  Aaron  Dwight  Stevens, 
whom  he  had  not  seen  since,  as  a  youth  of  nineteen, 
he  had   enlisted  in  the  United  States  army,  were  in 


334  JOHN    BROWN. 

accord  with  his  nobler  aims,  and  cheered  him  unre- 
mittingly through  the  four  and  a  half  months  of 
brave  prison  life  that  followed.  In  Springfield,  Iowa, 
the  Coppoc  boys  left  home  and  mother  behind  them, 
and  there  were  other  hearts  drawn  by  tender  feelings 
towards  some  of  the  party.  Edwin's  Quaker  mother 
bore  her  burden  well,  rejoicing  at  least  that  one  of 
her  sons  came  safely  through  the  fiery  furnace.  In 
Maine,  two  households  were  affected,  that  of  Leeman 
unto  death,  and  that  of  Tidd,  until  his  safety  was 
assured.  In  Oberlin,  the  widow  of  Leary  was 
mourning  for  her  beloved,  while  Harriet  Newby,  her 
Virginian  sister  in  affliction,  weighted  too  with  bond- 
age, was  hurriedly  sold  to  a  Louisiana  dealer.  The 
range  of  interested  and  sympathetic  excitement  ran 
over  a  wide  area.  Danger,  too,  shadowed  some  well- 
known  door-steps.  One  family  neither  affirmed  or 
denied.  The  household  of  George  Luther  Stearns,  im- 
plicated as  was  its  generous  head,  made  no  change 
and  took  no  precautions.  Dr.  Howe  found  it  advis- 
able to  visit  Canada.  Gerrit  Smith  was  stricken 
under  the  excitement  with  severe  recurrence  of  a 
former  nervous  disorder  which  necessitated  his  being 
placed  in  perfect  quiet  and  care.  Frederick  Doug- 
lass soon  and  wisely,  too,  left  for  England  Mrs. 
Gloucester,  of  Brooklyn,  who  was  known  to  have 
freely  assisted  John  Brown,  took  no  outward  heed  of 
the  talk  aimed  at  her,  as  well  as  others,  while  in 
other  directions  men  marked  for  suspicion  and 
known  at  least  to  have  been  trusted,  went  unfearing 
about  their  work  of  moulding  opinion  for  John  Brown 
and  his  acts,  or  for  at  least  his  character  and  pur- 
poses.    From  startled  surprise  and  deprecation,  even 


CAPTURE TRIAL PRISON SCAFFOLD.  335 

savage  criticism,  Northern  opinion  begun  to  mellow 
and  glow  in  the  light  and  heat  of  the  calm  unflinch- 
ing courage  and  sincerity  that  aura-like  enveloped 
John  Brown.  Orator,  writer,  and  poet,  expressed 
their  true  thoughts.  Among  those  who,  without  in- 
dorsing John  Brown's  acts,  still  felt  the  force  of  John 
Brown's  character,  was  the  poet  from  whose  stirring 
"  Old  Brown  of  Osawatomie,"  the  following  verse  is 
given  in  autographic  fac-simile: 

7  &4 

^Ly  fccfa, ph.  U^nCo  ,***-,  Ok.  xJtf  <U£>  &  *ftc  hw^{ 


THE    STEDMAN    FAC-SIMILE. 


The  hot  passion  of  Virginia,  which  was  perfectly 
natural  at  first,  degenerated  as  details  came  out  of 
the  manner  in  which  twenty-two  men  had  throttled 
the  State  and  five  had  held   800  of  its   armed  citizens 


336  JOHN    BROWN. 

at  bay  for  at  least  eighteen  hours,  into  a  very  drivel 
of  hysterical  fears,  which  fed  a  nervous  and  almost 
ruffianly  panic  at  every  stupid  rumor  or  darkling 
fear  that  crossed  those  trembling  days.  Northern 
newspapers,  of  any  character,  were  compelled  to 
resort  to  all  sorts  of  subterfuges  to  gain  information. 
Edward  House  and  Mr.  Olcott,  since  known  as 
a  teacher  of  modern  theosophy,  went  to  Virginia  in 
disguise,  the  latter  joining  a  Richmond  volunteer 
company  sent  on  guard  duty  to  Charlestown.  Other 
correspondents  were  stationed  at  Baltimore,  Wash- 
ington, Harrisburg,  and  various  points  in  Maryland 
and  Pennsylvania,  to  whom  letters  were  sent  from 
"  within  the  lines,"  it  being  unsafe  to  direct  them 
openly  to  the  several  journals.  Harper's  Ferry  was 
the  chief  outpost  of  this  strange  encampment,  in 
which,  first  and  last,  Virginia  massed  about  four  thou- 
sand militia  at  a  cost  of  $200,000/  maintaining  an 
armed  force  about  Charlestown  throughout  of  not 
less  than  from  one  thousand  to  three  thousand  men, 
with  artillery,  and  yet  it  may  safely  be  affirmed  that 
there  never  was  over  one  hundred  men  in  all  of  the 
United  States  directly  involved  or  knowing  in  any 
positive  degree,  the  character  of  John  Brown's  in- 
tended movement.  That  the  "  wicked  flee  when  no 
man  pursueth,"  was  never  more  vigorously  illus- 
trated. In  the  North  for  weeks  the  leading  brains 
on  the  anti-slavery  side,  that  spoke  out  boldly,  could 
be  counted  on  one  pair  of  hands.  Garrison  doubted 
the   use   of   it,   Beecher   denied    wisdom    and    depre- 


1  Andrew  Hunter's  paper  of  1887  put  the  cost  at  $250,000  ;  a 
carefully  prepared  statement  of  a  New  York  paper,  published  in 
December,  1859,  made  the  bill  up  to  that  time  $193,000. 


CAPTURE TRIAL PRISON SCAFFOLD.  337 

cated  responsibility,  and,  as  a  matter  of  course,  the 
Northern  political  leaders  denied,  avoided,  or  de- 
nounced. The  bitter  taste  left  of  Mr.  Seward's  assail- 
ing speech,  has  not  yet  departed.  The  newspapers 
grew  slowly  to  understand,  brought  thereto  more 
rapidly  by  the  stupid  folly  of  the  South  itself.  Even 
its  readiest  servants  in  the  North,  like  the  New  York 
Herald,  were  denied  access  to  information  or  oppor- 
tunity for  proper  publication.  That  great  journal 
was  able  only  to  get  its  interesting  matter  by  the 
fact  that  it  had  as  a  correspondent  a  cousin  of  editor 
Gallagher,  of  the  Jefferson  County  Times-Democrat. 
He  was  a  native  of  Charlestown,  who  secured  em- 
ployment as  a  jail  guard,  and  so  got  to  the  prisoners 
occasionally.  He  did  his  work  well,  for  at  the  exe- 
cution he  drove  the  undertaker's  wagon  in  which 
John  Brown  was  seated. 

The  provisions  of  law  under  which  the  State's 
attorney,  Andrew  Hunter,  and  his  associates  were 
proceeding,  are  in  substance  as  follows:  Treason 
was  defined  as  an  offense  against  the  "  sovereignty  of 
the  State,"  and  the  provision  of  the  Code  of  Virginia 
(1859-60),  Chapter  CXC,  read  as  follows: 

I.  Treason  shall  consist  only  in  levying  war  against  the 
State,  or  adhering  to  its  enemies,  giving  them  aid  and  comfort, 
or  establishing,  without  authority  of  the  Legislature,  any  gov- 
ernment within  its  limits,  separate  from  the  existing  govern- 
ment, or  holding  or  executing,  in  such  usurped  government, 
any  office,  or  professing  allegiance  or  fidelity  to  it,  or  resisting 
the  execution  of  the  laws,  under  color  of  its  authority;  and 
such  treason,  if  proved  by  the  testimony  of  two  witnesses  to 
the  same  overt  act,  or  by  confession  in  court,  shall  be  punished 
with  death. 
22 


338  JOHN    BROWN. 

Sections  2  and  3  relate  to  "  accessories,"  etc.  The 
fourth  defines  conspiracy  with  slaves  as  follows: 

4.  If  a  free  person  advise  or  conspire  with  a  slave  to  rebel 
or  make  insurrection,  or  with  any  person  induce  a  slave  to 
rebel  or  make  insurrection,  he  shall  be  punished  with  death, 
whether  such  rebellion  or  insurrection  be  made  or  not. 

The  general  laws  of  the  State  provided  for  the 
holding  of  special  term  of  courts,  and  for  immediate 
process  on  indictments  for  felony,  and  for  trial 
on  such  indictments  at  the  same  term  of  court. 
They  also  authorized  immediate  execution  of  the  death- 
sentence  in  cases  of  insurrection  or  rebellion.  This  class 
of  cases  was  excepted  under  the  existing  code  out  of 
the  general  provision  of  law,  allowing  thirty  (30) 
days  to  intervene  between  sentence  and  execution. 

Under  these  statutes,  then,  John  Brown  and  his 
fellow  prisoners  could  have  been  tried,  convicted, 
sentenced,  and  executed  on  the  same  day  they  were 
arraigned,  had  the  court  so  minded,  and  the  execu- 
tion could  also  have  been  conducted  in  private,  if  so 
ordered.  These  provisions  were  undoubtedly  intended 
for  the  defense  of  a  slave-holding  community.  They 
probably  had  their  active  origin  in  the  Nat  Turner 
insurrection  of  1839,  though  the  "patrol  law,"  and 
other  provisions,  run  further  back,  even  to  colonial 
days,  when  attempts  at  insurrections  seemed  more 
frequent.  It  was  perfectly,  then,  within  the  legal 
power  of  Virginia  to  have  tried,  sentenced,  and  exe- 
cuted the  Harper's  Ferry  raiders  in  its  custody  within 
the  ten-days  "  emergency "  law,  of  which  Andrew 
Hunter  wrote  in  1887,  and  upon  which,  but  not  avow- 
edly, he  attempted  to  proceed  in  1859.  The  reason  for 


CAPTURE TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  339 

holding  back  Aaron  Dwight  Stevens  is  apparent  un- 
der the  light  of  these  provisions.  With  the  rest  swept 
away,  his  case  could  have  been  used  to  foment  sec- 
tional feeling  and  to  hunt  down  the  Northern  men 
and  women,  whose  love  of  liberty  may  have  drawn 
them  to  John  Brown.  Mr.  Hunter's  disingenuousness, 
in  his  paper  of  1887,  is  only  equaled  by  Governor 
Wise's  double  dealing,  in  so  emphatically  promising 
John  Brown  a  fair  trial.  It  is  a  matter  of  uncertainty 
as  to  how  far  the  Captain's  knowledge  of  the  State 
Code  then  extended,  but  it  is  certain  that  his  deter- 
mination to  make  clear  his  own  objects  as  well  as 
the  methods  that  were  being  pursued  by  the  State 
authorities,  completely  baffled  the  latter,  and  led  to 
that  full  understanding  of  a  simple,  moral,  and  intel- 
lectual courage,  which,  combining  lofty  aims  and 
intentions,  has  made  the  name  and  history  of  John 
Brown  that  of  one  of  humanity's  nobler  servants  and 
leaders. 

The  Examining  Court  met  under  orders.  John 
Brown,  manacled  to  Edwin  Coppoc,  supported  on  the 
other  side  by  an  armed  man,  and  surrounded  by 
eighty  men  with  fixed  bayonets,  was  taken  to  the 
courtroom  and  arraigned.  The  presiding  justice  was 
a  slaveholder  named  Davenport.  He  was  ordered  to 
plead  to  the  charges  made,  and  in  response  replied  as 
follows,  as  reported  by  the  Associated  Press: 

"VIRGINIANS:  I  did._not  ask  for  quarter  at  the  time  I  was 
taken.  I  did  not  ask  to  have  my  life  spared.  Your  Governor 
assured  me  of  a  fair  trial.  In  my  present  condition  this  is  im- 
possible. If  you  seek  my  blood,  you  can  have  it  at  any  time 
without  this  mockery  of  a  trial.  I  have  no  counsel.  I  have 
not  been  able  to  advise  with  any  one.     I  know  nothing  of  the 


340  JOHN    BROWN. 

feelings  of  my  fellow  prisoners,  and  am  utterly  unable  to 
attend  to  my  own  defense.  If  a  fair  trial  is  allowed,  there  are 
mitigating  circumstances  to  be  urged.  But  if  we  are  forced 
with  a  mere  form — a  trial  for  execution — you  might  spare 
yourselves  that  trouble.  I  am  ready  for  my  fate.  I  beg  for 
no  mockery  of  a  trial — no  insult — nothing  but  that  which  con- 
science gives  or  cowardice  would  drive  you  to  practice."  In 
conclusion  he  added  :  "  I  have  now  little  further  to  ask,  other 
than  that  I  may  not  be  foolishly  insulted,  as  only  cowardly 
barbarians  insult  those  who  fall  into  their  power." 

No  attention  was  paid  to  this  trenchant  statement. 
Attorneys  Lawson  Bottsand  Charles  J.  Faulkner1  were 
assigned  by  the  examining  court  as  the  prisoner's 
counsel.  On  being  asked  if  he  accepted  their  services 
(Attorney  Green,  ex-Mayor  of  Charlestown,  and  now 
a  State  judge,  was  afterwards  substituted  for  Mr. 
Faulkner,  who  could  not  attend),  Captain  Brown 
stated  he  had  sent  for  counsel,  and  there  was  no  time 
given  for  their  arrival.  He  had  no  wish  to  trouble 
any  gentleman,  and  with  such  mockery  of  trial.  In 
reply  to  Harding's  statement  that  he  would  have  "  a 
fair  trial,"  the  Captain  said:  "I  want  counsel  of  my 
own.  I  have  been  unable  to  have  any  conference 
with  any  one.  Let  these  gentlemen  exercise  their 
own  pleasure."  The  other  four  agreed  to  the  assign- 
ment, but  in  no  affirmative  way  did  John  Brown 
acknowledge  them  as  his  counsel.  The  proceedings 
went  on,  and  eight  witnesses  testified  to  the  attack 
on,  the  fighting,  and  results  at,  Harper's  Ferry.  The 
prisoners  were  at  once  committed.     The  Grand  Jury 


1  The  latter  served  the  Confederacy  as  a  diplomatic  agent,  and 
has  since  been  elected  from  West  Virginia  as  Congressman  and 
United  States  Senator. 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  34I 

met  on  the  25th,  and  remained  in  session.  A  true 
bill  was  found  with  three  counts  against  John  Brown, 
and  at  a  later  session,  October  25th,  bills  were  also 
presented  against  the  others  for  slave  conspiracy, 
murder,  and  robbery.  John  Brown  was  charged 
with 

— Conspiracy  with  slaves  for  the  purpose  of  insur- 
rection; with 

— Treason  against  the  Commonwealth  of  Virginia; 
and   with 

— Murder  in  the  first  degree. 

The  trial  was  set  for  the  next  day,  Wednesday,  the 
26th  of  October.  Still  the  prisoners  were  practically 
penniless  and  defenseless.  No  matter  what  might 
have  been  the  courage  and  uprightness  of  Messrs. 
Botts  and  Green,  it  was  simply  an  impossibility  for 
them  to  have  martyrized  themselves  by  vigorous 
showing.  In  the  Andrew  Hunter  narrative  of  the  trial, 
there  is  abundant  testimony,  even  if  unconsciously 
given,  to  this  state  of  feeling.  It  is  asserted  that 
''Brown's  men"  were  "swarming"  in  the  one  street 
of  Charlestown,  that  the  jail  was  approached  by 
them,  and  that  they  were  constantly  managing  to 
converse  with  either  him  or  some  of  his  men  through 
the  cell  windows  of  the  jail,  which,  as  the  diagram 
shows,  were  in  the  back  part,  looking  into  the  yard. 
All  these  statements  are  without  foundation  in  fact. 
That  it  was  impossible  to  communicate  with  John 
Brown  or  his  men,  may  be  understood  when  it  is 
known  that  the  jailer's  house  occupied  the  front, 
and  that  the  yard  inclosing  the  brick  jail  was  sur- 
rounded on  three  sides  by  a  wall  fourteen  feet  in 
height. 


342 


JOHN    BROWN. 


Here  is  a  rude  plan  of  the  building  and  its  yard  : 


>^td 


Brick  wall  14  feet  hight 
D 


r 


Jailer's  dwelling. 


Main  street. 


1     I 1 

A  Main  entrance;  i?  Space  between  walls,  Avis's  house,  and  the 
jail  building;  C  Point  of  wall  which  Cook  and  Coppoc  reached 
on  the  night  of  Dec.  15th  in  their  attempt  to  escape;  D  Jail  yard 
d  d  d  d  d,  cell  doors;  E  Reception-room;  F  Cell  occupied  by 
Brown  and  Stevens,  afterwards  by  the  latter  and  Hazlett;  G  Cell 
of  Green  and  Copeland;  H  Cell  of  Coppoc  and  Cook;  /  Cell 
first  occupied  by  Albert  Hazlett,  w  w  7v,  w  w,  windows,  those  of 
cells  look  into  the  jail  yard;  c c  cots  of  Brown  and  Stevens. 

At  this  date,  too,  the  building  was  guarded  by  a 
heavy  force,  two  cannons  were  planted  so  as  to  cover 
the  same,  the  inside  guards  were  heavily  armed  and 
increased  in  number,  several  hundred  State  troops 
were  encamped  about  the  town.  Harper's  Ferry,  the 
nearest  railroad  point,  was  occupied  as  an  outpost, 
and  no  one  was  allowed   to   pass   from  the   earliest 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  343 

days  of  the  raiders'  imprisonment  at  the  county  seat 
without  passes  from  Governor  Wise  or  Mr.  Hunter 
himself.  All  this  procedure  seemed  to  be  decided 
upon  as  a  means  of  forcing  any  issue  justifying  the 
execution  of  John  Brown  and  of  breeding  sectional 
ill  will.  Espionage  and  vigilance  were  increased,  not 
diminished,  as  the  trial,  etc.,  went  forward. 

Mr.  Hunter's  explanation  (New  Orleans  Times- 
Democrat,  September  5,  1887)  of  the  haste  shown  in 
the  preliminary  examination  is,  that  "  according  to  a 
very  anomalous  system  peculiar  to  Virginia,  it  was 
necessary  that  from  the  time  of  issuing  the  warrant, 
calling  for  the  examining  court,  not  less  than  five 
nor  more  than  ten  days  should  expire."  So  Mr. 
Hunter  proceeded  to  enforce  the  law  to  almost  the 
rigidest  letter  thereof,  by  putting  the  examination  on 
the  sixth  day.  The  State  wTarrant  for  John  Brown's 
commitment  was  not  issued  till  October  19th.  The 
examining  court,  which  had  to  consist  of  not  less 
than  five  justices  of  the  peace  (a  Mr.  Davenport  pre- 
sided, and  eight  were  summoned),  could  acquit,  but 
not  convict  a  prisoner.  The  October  term  of  the 
county  court  began  the  next  day,  the  20th.  The  pre- 
liminary inquiry  was  ordered  for  the  25th;  the  trial 
for  the  next  day.  The  Hunter  programme,  defeated 
by  the  arrival  of  Counselor  Hoyt  and  the  sagacious 
courage  of  Captain  Brown,  would,  if  unchecked,  have 
had  the  chief  prisoner  examined,  committed,  indicted, 
tried,  convicted,  and  sentenced  by  the  28th  of  Oc- 
tober, and  probably  also,  executed  the  next  day — all 
being  done  within  the  ten  days  permitted  by  Vir- 
ginian law. 

Captain  Brown  was  unable  to   stand   more   than  a 


344  JOHN     BROWN. 

few  minutes  at  a  time.  The  wound  in  his  head  had 
affected  both  his  sight  and  hearing,  and  he  was  with- 
out friendly  counsel  or  money,  as  the  Federal  agent 
at  Harper's  Ferry  yet  retained  what  was  taken  from 
his  person.  On  the  26th  the  trial  proceeded,  and  it  was 
only  by  a  fortunate  series  of  incidents  (for  Captain 
Brown  and  his  cause)  that  conviction  did  not  trans- 
pire on  the  28th  or  29th  of  the  same  month.  It  has 
been  left  to  men  like  Hunter,  however,  who  had 
motives  to  present,  ambitions  to  serve,  and  records 
to  maintain,  to  accuse  John  Brown  of  trifling  and 
trickery.  He  accuses  him  of  shamming  weakness,  of 
declaring  he  wanted  no  trial,  while  at  the  same  time 
he  did  all  he  could  to  delay  the  proceedings.  It  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that  John  Brown  had  not  the 
slightest  expectation  of  escape  from  the  severest  legal 
penalty.  His  only  interest  was  in  securing  time 
sufficient  to  make  evident  to  the  country  and  the 
world  the  motives  that  animated  him,  the  objects  he 
had  pursued,  and  the  manner  in  which  he  had  acted. 
He  was  confident  of  his  historical  vindication,  or, 
rather  of  that  of  his  cause.  It  was  the  interest  of 
Virginia  and  of  the  larger  issues  of  Southern  policy 
which  at  once  developed  themselves,  that  John 
Brown's  motives  should  be  questioned  and  his  action 
left  obscure.  Hence,  in  spite  of  the  tribute  to 
character  already  wrung  from  Henry  A.  Wise  and 
others,  it  becomes  at  once  plain  that  the  intention 
was  to  press  the  examination,  trial,  conviction,  sen- 
tence, and  execution  to  as  rapid  a  consummation  as 
possible.  The  current  press  records  show  this;  they 
were  not  in  John  Brown's  interest,  and  offer  therefore 
the  best  of  evidence.     Virginia  was  afraid  of  abetter 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  345 

understanding  of  John  Brown  on  the  part  of  the 
country  and  of  the  world.  John  A.  Andrew  voiced 
the  growing  public  opinion  when  he  said  at  this  time: 
"  Whatever  may  be  thought  of  Joh?i  Brown's  acts,  John 
Brown  himself  is  right !  " 

The  court  begun  its  business  early.    Judge  Parker, 
who  presided,  lived  to  the  age  of  eighty-three,  dying 
in    1893,  was  then   a  man   of  about   forty-nine  years, 
handsome   and    dignified,  with   a   severe   look,  rather 
small  in  stature;  personally,  a  very  social  and  agree- 
able gentleman.     He  was  a  native  of  the  section,  and 
connected  by  family  and  marriage  with  all  the  noted 
Virginians  therein.     Charles  B.  Harding,  the  County 
Attorney,  is  reported  in   the  current  dispatches  as  a 
man  of  intemperate  habits,  unprepossessing,  morose, 
and  even  ferocious  in  manners.     He  wTas  soon  blotted 
out  of  the  case,  however.     Captain  Avis,  who  is  still 
a    resident    of    Harper's    Ferry,    was    then    a    man 
approaching    middle    age,    short    and    stout,   with    a 
humorous-looking,  pleasant  face,  but  of  serious  man- 
ners.    He  was  always  kind,  and  the  testimony  to  that 
effect  is  without  a  negative.     The  sheriff,  Mr.  Camp- 
bell, was   a   tall,  stout   man,  of  middle  age,  who,  like 
Avis,  won  the  respect  of   his  prisoners.     Indeed,  he 
did  for  them,  and  willingly,  even  more  than  common 
humanity    required.     The     most    comical,   pompous 
apparition  of  the  period  was  a  militia  officer,  to  whom 
the  "  protection  "  of  the  court  and  "  security  "  of  the 
prisoners   was   committed.     This    was    Col.  J.  Lewis 
Davis,  a  very  queer-looking  dignitary  indeed,  espe- 
cially  profuse  in   his  hirsute  appendages.     He  wore 
his  hair  braided   in  two  queues  tied   by  a  bow-knot 
over   his    forehead,  and    with   arrogant   manner   and 


346  JOHN    BROWN. 

strident  voice,  armed  with  a  Sharpe's  rifle,  "looted" 
by  him  from  Captain  Brown's  stock,  which  he  always 
carried,  he  was  the  ever  present,  conspicious,  and 
unendurable  figure  about  the  courthouse.  His  special 
purpose  seemed  to  be  the  hunting  out  of  newspaper 
men  and  annoying  them  all  he  could.  He  was  bru- 
tally offensive  to  Counselor  Hoyt,  and  it  was  by  his 
order  that  Mr.  Jewell,  a  newspaper  artist  or  illustrator, 
and  Mr.  Hoyt  were  driven  from  Charlestown.  Col. 
Lewis  A.  Washington  was  naturally  also  a  conspicu- 
ous figure.  A  handsome  man,  of  medium  height, 
with  slow,  grave  speech  and  walk,  he  looked  like 
Trumbull's  portrait  of  his  great-uncle.  Lieutenant 
Green,  of  the  Marine  Corps,  was  another  personage 
of  the  period.  He  is  an  undersized,  dull-look- 
ing man,  compact  of  build,  and  with  the  air  of  a 
stupid  sort  of  a  swashbuckler.  Andrew  Hunter,  the 
State's  special  attorney,  fully  represented  Virginia,  in 
both  her  strength  and  weakness.  His,  was  the  domi- 
nant figure  in  the  prosecution.  Governor  Wise  made 
no  mistake  in  selecting  Hunter.  About  fifty  years  of 
age,  six  feet  in  stature,  well  proportioned,  active, 
elegant  in  manner,  generally  suave,  quiet,  and  grave 
in  speech,  from  the  first  carrying  everything  with  a 
high  hand,  confident,  as  a  matter  of  course,  of  con- 
viction, he  could  still  be  very  overbearing  in  act  and 
coolly  insolent  in  manner.  This  was  his  attitude  at 
first  to  the  brave,  quick-witted,  keen-brained,  but 
inexperienced  young  lawyer,  George  Henry  Hoyt,  of 
Massachusetts,  who  appeared  so  opportunely  in  that 
Virginia  courthouse,  disarranging  thereby  the  short, 
swift  plans  of  the  haughty  Virginian  prosecutor. 
Afterwards  he  gauged  Hoyt's  ability  more  fully  and 


CAPTURE — TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  347 

got  him  out  of  Virginia  as  early  and  rudely  as  he  could. 
He  did  not  care  even  to  assume  the  virtue  he  had 
not,  and  made  it  quite  clear  that  he  proposed  to  drive 
matters  red-handed.  This  became  very  apparent  at 
the  afternoon  session  of  the  29th,  when,  as  Hunter 
states  in  his  last  paper  (1887),  "  the  court  reassembled 
after  dinner,"  and  the  "  word  came  from  the  jail  that 
Brown  was  too  sick  to  appear  that  evening.  I  at 
once  suggested  to  the  court  to  have  the  jail  physi- 
cian summoned  to  examine,  whether  he  was  too  sick, 
and  to  report.  This  was  done,  and  the  physician, 
who  was  Dr.  Mason,  promptly  reported  that  he  was 
not  too  sick,  and  that  he  was  feigning.  On  my 
motion,  the  court  directed  him  to  be  brought  into 
court.  .  .  .  He  was  conducted  through  the  line 
of  soldiers  into  the  courthouse  and  placed  (still  on 
the  cot)  in  the  bar,  with  one  of  his  lawyers  (Mr. 
Hoyt)  fanning  him.  The  trial  went  on  to  a  certain 
extent,  but  every  effort  was  made  to  protract  it.  I 
resisted  it,  but  at  last,  late  in  the  evening,  the  judge 
called  me  up  and  said  he  thought  we'd  better  agree, 
to  avoid  all  further  cavil  at  our  proceedings,  to  let 
the  case  be  adjourned  over  till  Monday,  which  was 
done.  Brown  did  not  require  to  be  carried  back  to 
jail  that  evening;  he  walked  back."  In  this  statement, 
it  is  possible  that  Mr.  Hunter  was  as  wrong  as  in  his 
writing  that  the  trial  ended  on  Monday  night,  October 
30th,  when,  in  fact,  the  verdict  was  not  rendered  until 
Wednesday,  November  2d.  Mr.  Hunter's  own  state- 
ment shows  how  incapable  he  and  all  his  associates 
were  of  understanding  the  representative  character  of 
John  Brown.  He  was  at  that  moment  the  embodied 
moral  sense  of  the  free  States;  he   had  sought  to  be 


348  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  mailed  hand  thereof.  It  was  essential  that  intel- 
lectual courage  should  serve  the  conscience  of  free- 
dom better  even  than  armed  action  has  sought  to  do 
it,  and  he  was  not  found  wanting.  Privilege  never 
can  understand  the  resistance  planted  on  the  basis  of 
right  dealing.  Scratch  its  veneer  ever  so  slightly, 
and  the  brutal  grain  always  appears.  Attorney  Hunter 
demonstrated  this  in  many  ways.  As  a  pleader,  his 
manner  was  subdued,  his  diction  strong  and  earnest, 
his  voice  deep  and  full,  and  he  could  make  it  ring  at 
will.  He  did  this,  and  with  a  touch  of  ferocity,  too, 
when  making  his  final  argument  for  the  conviction  of 
Shields  Green,  till  the  crowd  in  and  around  the  court- 
house blazed  with  fury  at  his  denunciation  of  the 
black  man  who  had  attempted  to  free  his  race,  and 
both  as  fighter  and  prisoner  showed  in  rude,  but 
vigorous  manner,  his  utter  disdain  of  men  who  sold 
mothers,  dealt  in  men,  bred  children  for  sale,  making 
concubines  for  profit  of  every  ninth  woman  in  the 
land. 

The  Virginian  lawyers  selected  by  the  Examining 
Court  to  defend  these  prisoners  had  an  ungracious 
and  thankless  task  assigned  them.  Mr.  Green  was 
described  by  Correspondent  House,  of  the  New 
York  Tribune ',  asa"  most  extraordinary  man  to  look 
upon,  .  .  .  long,  angular,  uncouth,  and  wild  in 
gesture,  .  .  .  deficient  in  all  rhetorical  graces. 
His  words  rush  from  his  mouth  scarce  half  made 
up.  He  speaks  sentences  abreast.  .  .  .  His 
.  .  'whar  and  '  thai* '  are  the  least  of  his  offenses. 
His  demeanor,  altogether,  is  of  unrivaled  oddity; 
and  yet  his  power  is  so  decided  that,  while  he  is 
upon    his    legs,    he    carries    everything   before    him. 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  349 

He  is  the  most  remarkable  man  I  have  seen  here, 
although  not  so  impressive  in  his  bearing  as  Mr. 
Andrew  Hunter,  who  is  a  man  of  real  nobility  of 
presence."  Mr.  Lawson  Botts  is  also  mentioned  in 
the  Cook  trial  as  having  all  the  while  "  sat  coiled 
together  in  his  chair,  .  .  .  watching  for  opportuni- 
ties of  springing  upon  his  antagonist  at  the  least  sign 
of  weakness,  he  has  darted  upon  Hunter  and  striven, 
.     .     .     to  destroy  the  fabric  of  his  argument." 

George  Henry  Hoyt  served  an  excellent  purpose 
for  the  defense  by  his  presence,  and  won  a  deserved 
place  for  both  courage  and  ability.  Mr.  Chilton,  of 
Washington,  was  selected  by  Montgomery  Blair,  who 
at  one  moment,  under  the  solicitation  of  John  A.  An- 
drew, was  almost  ready  to  go  himself.  Chilton  was  a 
Virginian  by  birth,  connected  with  leading  Valley 
families,  thoroughly  familiar  with  the  State  laws,  and 
quite  able  to  measure  the  needlessness  of  the  extreme 
alarm,  which  was  driving  the  community  into  such 
violent  excitement.  He  understood  the  political 
drift  of  the  positions  taken  by  Mr.  Hunter  and 
Governor  Wise,  and  afterwards  aided  Blair  and 
other  conservative  Republican  leaders  to  make  the 
most  of  it.  Judge  Griswold,  of  Ohio,  was  a  strong, 
conscientious,  able  lawyer,  who  did  not  at  all  like  the 
work  he  had  undertaken  at  the  request  of  Judge 
Tilden,  John  Brown's  former  lawyer  and  personal 
friend.  He  did  his  work  well,  as  a  lawyer,  and  got 
away  as  soon  as  it  was  done.  George  Sennott,  the 
young  Boston  Democralic  lawyer  who  volunteered, 
working  for  only  his  bare  expenses,  did  a  man's  part 
as  well  as  a  lawyer's  in  the  defense  of  Copeland  and 
Green,  the  colored    men,  as  also   for  Stevens,  Cop- 


350  JOHN    BROWN. 

poc,  and  Hazlett.  His  avowed  Democracy  gave  him 
a  better  chance  than  Mr.  Hoyt  would  have  had. 
Indeed,  it  was  probably  fortunate  for  himself  that 
the  latter  did  not  have  occasion  beyond  the  first  day 
he  was  in  court,  to  make  a  plea  for  his  friend  and 
client,  as  his  warm  and  impassioned  speech  and 
earnest  anti-slavery  feeling — Hoyt  was  a  man  of 
genuine  eloquence  even  then — might  have  led  him  to 
expressions  that  wTould  have  been  unwise  and  readily 
have  proven  dangerous,  too.  The  most  picturesque 
and  powerful  figure  connected  with  any  defense  was 
that  of  Daniel  \V.  Voorhees,  now  the  veteran  Demo- 
cratic leader  and  United  States  Senator,  of  Indiana; 
then  in  the  full  zenith  of  his  ability  as  a  pleader,  and 
gifted  with  the  soaring  power  of  speech  which  so 
well  befitted  Western  and  Southern  juries  of  the 
period.  John  E.  Cook  had  wealthy  relations — 
opposed  to  him  in  opinions,  but  strongly  attached  to 
him  personally, — and  they  made  for  his  life  a  forensic 
and  legal  fight  of  the  most  vigorous  character.  It 
was  unsuccessful,  for  he  had  lived  and  married 
among  the  neighborhood  people.  With  that  strange 
belief  in  the  iniquity  of  disbelieving  what  they  be- 
lieve, still  a  characteristic  of  our  Southern  brethren, 
the  Virginians  would  have  almost  let  Brown  go  in 
preference  to  Cook,  if  a  peremptory  choice  had  been 
thrust  upon  them.  These  were  some  of  the  salient 
features  of  that  courthouse  drama,  though  when  the 
curtain  rolled  up  for  the  first  act,  it  was  on  a  scene 
all  one-sided.  The  gray-bearded,  worn  old  man,  so 
imperturbably  lying  or  half  raised  on  his  dirty  cot; 
the  intense,  almost  savage  faces  of  spectators,  the 
alert  dignified  judge,  the  already  decided  jury  wait- 


CAPTURE — TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  35  I 

ing  with  barest  patience  for  the  hour  in  which  their  in- 
evitable verdict  would  be  recorded,  the  armed  attend- 
ants, subdued  but  still  eager  for  force;  yet  domi- 
nated all  over  by  the  strident  will  of  Andrew  Hunter, 
pursuing  his  end  with  contemptuous  disregard  of 
practice,  caring  nothing  for  the  bungling  form  of 
papers  and  pleas,  brushing  aside  all  dilatory  motions, 
declaring  that  the  cost  of  waiting  was  too  great,  and 
demanding  a  swift  ending; — these  made  a  somber 
prologue  to  the  powerful  tragedy. 

Cannon  were  trained  on  the  courthouse.  The 
building  and  vicinity  swarmed  with  armed  guards. 
Brown's  face  was  less  swollen,  but  he  managed  to 
walk  only  with  great  difficulty.  Stevens,  supported 
by  two  bailiffs,  was  held  up,  breathing  with  great 
difficulty  ;  afterwards  he  lay  on  a  mattress  placed 
upon  the  floor.  Coppoc,  Copeland,  and  Green  stood 
behind.  All  four  were  removed  to  the  jail  after  the 
indictments  were  read,  Captain  Brown  being  left 
alone.  Before  the  indictment  was  read,  the  prisoner 
said: 

"  I  do  not  intend  to  detain  the  Court,  but  barely  wish  to  say, 
as  I  have  been  promised  a  fair  trial,  that  I  am  not  now  in  cir- 
cumstances that  enable  me  to  attend  a  trial,  owing  to  the  state 
of  my  health.  I  have  a  severe  wound  in  the  back,  or  rather  in 
one  kidney,  which  enfeebles  me  very  much.  But  I  am  doing 
well,  and  I  only  ask  for  a  very  short  delay  of  my  trial,  and  I 
think  I  may  get  able  to  listen  to  it;  and  I  merely  ask  that,  as 
the  saying  is, '  the  devil  may  have  his  due  ' — no  more.  I  wish 
further  to  say  that  my  hearing  is  impaired,  and  rendered  indis- 
tinct, in  consequence  of  the  wounds  about  my  head.  I  cannot 
hear  distinctly  at  all.  I  could  not  hear  what  the  Court  has 
said  this  morning.  I  would  be  glad  to  hear  what  is  said  on 
my  trial,  and  am  now  doing  better  than  I  could  expect  to  under 


352  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  circumstances.  .  .  .  I  do  not  presume  to  ask  more 
than  a  very  short  stay.  ...  If  that  could  be  allowed  me,  I 
would  be  very  much  obliged."1 

This  is  certainly  a  remarkable  speech  for  a  man 
"shamming  weakness,"  defiant  of  proceedings,  and 
desirous  of  "  embarrassing"  justice.  It  was  objected 
that  the  request  was  premature,  and  the  reading  of 
the  indictments  were  proceeded  with.  A  plea  of 
"  not  guilty  "  was  made  and  separate  trials  asked  for 
in  each  case;  the  State  electing  to  try  John  Brown 
first.  Lawson  Botts,  of  counsel,  then  made  the 
formal  plea  for  a  short  delay  on  the  ground  of  the 
prisoner's  physical  disability.  The  Court  after  brief 
discussion,  ordered  the  jail  physician,  Dr.  Mason,  to 
examine  the  Captain.  He  did  so  and  swore  that 
Brown  was  able  to  stand  trial,  upon  which  the  Court 
ordered  it  to  proceed.  During  the  afternoon  the 
jury  was  made  up.  Not  a  single  member  of  the 
panel  was  challenged  by  Mr.  Botts,  though  preju- 
dice and  preconceived  opinion  was  necessarily  evi- 
dent in  a  majority.  At  five  o'clock  the  Court 
adjourned.  On  the  27th,  Captain  Brown  was  brought 
into  court  on  a  cot.  The  illustrated  papers  of  the 
date  give  pictures  of  the  carrying  of  him  to  and  fro, 
accompanied  by  armed  guards.  A  press  dispatch 
describes  the  prevalent  opinion,  as  follows  : 

"  There  is  an  evident  intention  to  hurry  the  trial  through, 
and  execute  the  prisoners  as  soon  as  possible — fearing  attempts 
to  rescue  them.  It  is  rumored  that  Brown  is  desirous  of 
making  a  full  statement  of  his  motives  and  intentions  through 
the  press;   but  the  Court  has  refused  all  access  to  reporters— 


1  See  Associated  Press  dispatches  of  date. 


CAPTURE TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  353 

fearing  that  he  may  put  forth  something  calculated  to  influ- 
ence the  public  mind,  and  to  have  a  had  effect  on  the  slaves. 
The  reason  given  for  hurrying  the  trial  is  that  the  people  of 
the  whole  country  are  kept  in  a  state  of  excitement,  and  a 
large  armed  force  is  required  to  prevent  attempts  at  rescue." 

On  entering  court,  Captain  Brown  was  confronted 
with  a  dispatch  sent  from  Cleveland,  Ohio,  alleging 
his  insanity  and  urging  delay,  in  order  to  prove  the 
same.  This  emanated  from  persons  unable  to  grasp 
the  ethical  nature  of  the  situation.  Jeremiah  L.  Brown, 
half-brother  of  the  Captain,  was  one  of  the  most  per- 
sistent of  those  who  asserted  that  John  Brown's  brain 
was  affected.  Others,  and  a  majority,  desired  only 
to  save,  if  possible,  the  life  of  the  old  covenanter,  and 
were  ready  for  any  method  that  offered.  As  amatter 
of  fact,  no  saner  man  lived  or  died  than  John  Brown. 
In  the  court,  when  Attorney  Botts  presented  the  dis- 
patch, the  Captain,  slowly  getting  on  his  feet,  said: 

"  I  will  add,  if  the  Court  will  allow  me,  that  I  look  upon  it  as  a 
miserable  artifice  and  trick  of  those  who  ought  to  take  a  dif- 
ferent course  in  regard  to  me,  if  they  took  any  at  all,  and  I 
view  it  with  contempt  more  than  otherwise.  ...  I  am 
perfectly  unconscious  of  insanity,  and  I  reject,  so  far  as  I  am 
capable,  any  attempts  to  interfere  in  my  behalf  on  that  score." 

This  little  speech  and  other  details  again  proved  that 
the  accused  did  not  seek  to  obstruct,  or  cause  any 
unnecessary  delay. 

The  jury  being  sworn,  and  the  indictment  read,  a 
plea  of  "  Not  guilty  "  was  entered.  Mr.  Hunter  then 
stated  the  evidence  he  propossd  to  present  and 
urged  absence  of  prejudice,  but  demanding  celerity 
in  the  proceedings.  Mr.  Green  argued  in  reply,  that 
?3 


354  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  indictment  for  "  treason  "  was  faulty,  as  it  must 
be  shown  that  an  attempt  was  made  to  "  set  up  "  a 
separate  State  government,  and  to  show  the  treason- 
able purpose  of  all  acts  done,  not  by  the  prisoners' 
confessions,  but  by  two  separate  witnesses;  that  the 
alleged  conspiracy  with  slaves  must  be  shown  by 
competent  testimony  to  have  existed  within  the  State 
of  Virginia  itself.  The  Court  could  not  punish  for 
acts  done  in  Maryland  or  within  the  Federal  juris- 
diction at  Harper's  Ferry,  and  this  applies  also  to  the 
charge  of  murder  committed  on  the  United  States 
reservation  there.  Mr.  Hunter  replied,  that  the 
treason  was  shown  by  the  effort  made,  backed  by  the 
evidences  of  a  new  form  of  government  being  ready, 
if  the  effort  was  successful.  On  his  own  confession, 
Brown  was  guilty  of  conspiracy.  The  murder  was 
notorious,  and  the  prisoner  was  in  command.  The 
United  States  had  always  recognized  the  local  juris- 
diction over  criminal  offenses  committed  at  Harper's 
Ferry.  Testimony  was  given,  among  others,  by  the 
train  men  to  the  effect  that  Captain  Brown  expressed 
regret  that  the  train  had  been  stopped  and  that  no 
one  should  be  hurt,  adding  that  it  was  not  his  inten- 
tion that  "  blood  should  be  spilled."  The  stoppage 
was  bad  management  on  the  part  of  the  men  stationed 
on  the  bridge.  He  walked  over  the  bridge  with  the 
conductor,  as  a  guarantee  that  the  passengers  and 
people  would  not  be  injured.  Messrs.  Washington, 
Allstadt,  Ball,  and  others,  who  had  been  held  as 
hostages  by  Captain  Brown,  testified  as  to  his  direct- 
ing them  to  keep  out  of  range  of  the  firing  as  far  as 
practicable,  and  of  the  unvarying  courtesy  of  manner 
and  speech  he  showed  towards  them;  also,  as  to  his 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  355 

steadfast  coolness  and  courage,  and  of  a  declaration 
to  them,  that  "his  object  was  to  free  the  slaves  and 
not  to  make  war  on  the  people,  .  .  .  that  it  was 
no  child's  play  he  had  undertaken;  that  he  was  only 
obeying  the  Bible  and  following  the  law  of  God." 
He  assured  all  in  his  hands  that  he  was  not  making 
war  on  property,  but  defending  liberty. 

During  this  afternoon  and  early  the  next  morning, 
he  offered  no  obstacles  whatever  to  the  progress  of 
the  trial,  identifying  as  handed  him  all  the  docu- 
ments, papers,  and  letters,  found  in  the  Kennedy 
Farm-house,  or  at  the  Virginia  schoolhouse,  declaring 
as  documents  were  handed  him  by  the  prosecuting 
attorney  through  Sheriff  Campbell  (who  had  made 
himself  familiar  with  Captain  Brown's  handwriting) 
that  he  was  "  ready  to  face  the  music,"  and  save  all 
trouble  in  such  matters.  Adjournment  on  Thursday 
afternoon  was  had  at  a  reasonable  hour.  The 
arrival  about  midnight  of  George  Henry  Hoyt,  a 
young  Massachusetts  lawyer,  who  proposed  to  serve 
as  junior  counselor  for  John  Brown,  marked  the 
beginning  of  historical  incidents  of  importance.  Mr. 
Hoyt  was  not  allowed  to  enter  the  jail;  Messrs.  Botts 
and  Green  called  at  the  hotel  and  notified  him  that 
they  declined  his  or  any  other  man's  assistance,  while 
the  public  hostility  was  eagerly  and  loudly  made 
apparent.  By  Judge  Parker's  direction,  with  the 
aid  of  Sheriff  Campbell,  Mr.  Hoyt  was  permitted  to 
enter  the  courtroom  and  seat  himself  by  the  cot  of 
the  prisoner.  During  the  early  part  of  the  Friday 
(October  28th)  morning  session,  the  evidence  of  the 
leading  "  hostages,"  and  the  identification  of  the 
John  Brown  papers  proceeded. 


356  JOHN    BROWN. 

It  soon  became  evident  that  the  prosecution  was 
about  to  rest.  Witnesses  subpoenaed  were  called,  but 
did  not  respond,  though,  as  Mr.  Hoyt  stated  in  after 
years,  John  Brown  himself  pointed  out  to  him  several 
he  desired  to  testify  as  being  then  in  the  courtroom. 
The  position  was  a  very  plain  one.  Mr.  Hunter  had 
called  enough  of  John  Brown's  more  prominent 
"  hostages  "  to  give  some  color  to  the  prosecutor's 
desire  for  "  fairness,"  and  did  not  want  any  further 
testimony  of  that  character.  He  had  brought  out  the 
seizure  of  buildings  and  train,  the  capture  of  prisoners 
and  property;  the  presence  of  negroes,  free  and 
slave;  the  firing,  wounding,  and  killing  of  persons; 
and,  to  emphasize  this  latter,  put  his  own  son  on  the 
stand  to  show  the  death  of  Mr.  Beckham — "  his 
grand-uncle  " — and  his  subsequent  seizure  and  slay- 
ing, with  others,  of  Wm.  Thompson.  A  good  case 
had  been  made  and  none  of  the  testimony  disproven. 
Why,  then,  should  John  Brown  be  permitted  in  a 
Virginia  court,  under  plea  of  defense  or  "  mitigating 
circumstances,"  to  make  anti-slavery  arguments  or 
prove  that  his  aim  was  to  attack  slavery  as  "  the  sum 
of  all  villainies"?  Why,  indeed!  The  instinct  of 
self-preservation  leads  clearly  to  the  tacit  under- 
standing, as  existing  between  prosecution  and  de- 
fense. Counselor  Hoyt  always  charged  this.  And 
here  comes  in  the  narration  of  events,  described  to 
this  writer  and  others,  by  Mr.  Hoyt,  and  established, 
too,  by  the  exhibition  of  a  brief,  or  memorandum,  in 
John  Brown's  handwriting,  which,  during  the  earlier 
years  of  the  Civil  War,  was  in  Colonel  Hoyt's  posses- 
sion. As  this  gentleman  sat  by  the  Captain's  cot,  his 
attention    was  called  by  a  silent  motion  of  the  Cap- 


CAPTURE — TRIAL  — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  357 

tain's  eyes  and  head  to  a  paper  with  writing  on  it, 
lying  near  the  chairs  occupied  by  Messrs.  Botts  and 
Green.  My  recollection  of  Hoyt's  statement  was  that 
it  lay  close  to  Mr.  Green's  chair.  He  managed  to 
secure  the  same,  attention  being  directed  to  Captain 
Brown's  rising  from  his  cot  and  addressing  the  Court 
as  follows: 

May  it  phase  the  Court, — I  discover  that,  notwithstanding 
all  the  assertions  I  have  received  of  a  fair  trial,  nothing  like  a 
fair  trial  is  to  be  given  me,  as  it  would  seem.  I  gave  the  names 
as  soon  as  I  could  get  at  them,  of  the  persons  I  wished  to 
have  called  as  witnesses,  andwas  assured  that  they  would  be 
subpoenaed.  I  wrote  down  a  memorandum  to  that  effect,  say- 
ing where  those  parties  were,  but  it  appears  that  they  have 
not  been  subpoenaed,  so  far  as  I  can  learn.  And  now  I  ask  if 
I  am  to  have  anything  at  all  deserving  the  name  and  shadow 
of  a  fair  trial,  that  this  proceeding  be  deferred  until  to-morrow 
morning;  fori  have  no  counsel,  as  I  have  before  stated,  in 
whom  I  feel  that  I  can  rely,  but  I  am  in  hopes  counsel  may 
arrive  who  will  see  that  I  get  the  witnesses  necessary  for  my 
defense.  I  am  myself  unable  to  attend  to  it.  I  have  given  all 
the  attention  I  possibly  could  to  it,  but  am  unable  to  see  or 
know  about  them,  and  can't  even  find  out  their  names;  and  I 
have  nobody  to  do  my  errands,  for  my  money  was  all  taken 
from  me  when  I  was  hacked  and  stabbed,  and  I  have  not  a 
dime.  I  had  two  hundred  and  fifty  or  sixty  dollars  in  gold 
and  silver  taken  from  my  pocket,  and  now  I  have  no  possible 
means  of  getting  anybody  to  go  my  errands  for  me,  and  I  have 
not  had  all  the  witnesses  subpoenaed.  They  are  not  within 
reach,  and  are  not  here.  I  ask  at  least  until  to-morrow  morn- 
ing to  have  something  done,  if  anything  is  designed.  If  not,  I 
am  ready  for  anything  that  may  come  up.1 


1  Associated  Press  report  of  period. 


35^  JOHN    BROWN. 

This  bold  address  created  a  sensation.  Messrs. 
Botts  and  Green  withdrew  peremptorily.  An  exami- 
nation of  the  paper  Mr.  Hoyt  had  secured,  showed  it 
to  be  a  memorandum  made  by  John  Brown  for  the 
use  of  counsel,  containing  the  names  of  witnesses, 
with  notes  of  what  was  to  be  shown  by  the  testi- 
mony. It  was  written  on  legal  foolscap  (blue)  and  occu- 
pied nearly  the  whole  four  pages  thereof.  The  hand- 
writing was  unmistakable.  When  I  saw  it  in  1862 
this  document  still  bore  the  marks  of  tobacco  juice 
and  bootheels  with  which  its  place  on  the  courtroom 
floor  had  caused  it  to  be  decorated.  Evidently  it 
had  been  rejected  by  "counsel"  and  flung  away.1 
Nothing  else  was  left,  of  course,  to  Messrs.  Botts  and 
Green,  than  to  retire  at  once  from  John  Brown's  case. 
Mr.  Hoyt  was  perforce  compelled  to  assume  charge, 
and  first  made  a  request  for  an  adjournment  until 
morning  in  order  to  enable  him  to  examine  the  in- 
dictment papers  in  the  case  and  the  Virginia  statutes, 
etc.  In  resisting  and  refusing  this  motion  both  the 
Judge  and  State's  Attorney  were  contemptuously  un- 
gracious in  speech.  John  Brown  at  this  time  sug- 
gested to  Hoyt  that  a  motion  for  time  be  made  on 
account  of  the  non-appearance  of  witnesses  for  the 
defense  and  the  lack  of  subpoenas  for  them.  On 
this  ground  Mr.  Hoyt  was  at  home,  fresh  as  he  was 
from  his  common-law  studies,  and  aroused  to  the  full 
significance  of  the  delay  asked,  by  the  arrival  of  tele- 
grams tOiCaptain  Brown,  announcing  that  Mr.   Gris- 


1  Of  what  has  become  of  this  document  I  have  no  knowledge.  A 
statement  or  replica  of  its  contents  was  once  published,  if  I  recol- 
lect aright,  in  the  daily  Conservative ',  Leavenworth,  Kansas,  D.  W. 
Wilder,  editor. 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  359 

wold  had  already  left  Cleveland,  that  Mr.  Samuel 
Chilton,  of  Washington,  would  leave  by  the  evening 
train,  so  that  both  would  be  in  the  courtroom  next 
morning.  The  interest  and  excitement  of  the  after- 
noon was  added  to  by  the  arrival  later  in  the  day 
under  heavy  guard,  of  John  E.  Cook,  captured  two 
days  before  at  Chambersburg,  Pennsylvania,  and  re- 
turned under  the  stimulus  of  Governor  Wise's  reward, 
without  waiting  the  full  legal  execution  of  the  proc- 
ess of  extradition.  Mr.  Hoyt's  earnestness  and  per- 
sistence coupled  with  the  news  that  the  other  counsel 
were  to  arrive,  brought  about  an  adjournment  till 
morning.  Cook,  in  the  meanwhile,  was  being  arraigned 
before  the  examining  court.  Mr.  Hunter  was  baffled, 
he  did  not  dare  to  meet  the  issue  made  and  used  the 
full  power  of  the  law  to  end  the  trial  !  The  young 
lawyer  was  admitted  to  a  conference  with  Captain 
Brown,  Jailer  Avis  being  present.  He  managed  to 
place  in  Brown's  hand  a  private  note  from  a  Boston 
friend,  the  purport  of  which  is  hereafter  shown,  and 
proceeded  with  the  larger  duty  that  had  fallen  upon 
him,  spending  the  night  in  an  examination  of  the 
State  laws. 

The  trial  proceeded;  Messrs.  Chilton  and  Griswold 
taking  full  control  of  the  defense  on  Saturday  morn- 
ing. Both  gentlemen  asked  for  a  few  hours  delay,  in 
order  that  they  might  have  time  to  read  the  indict- 
ment at  least.  Mr.  Chilton  had  expected  to  assist 
the  Virginia  lawyers,  and  finding  they  retired  from 
the  case,  had  hesitated  to  take  charge,  but  at  the 
solicitation  of  Captain  Brown  and  Mr.  Hoyt,  and 
friends  elsewhere,  he  had  consented  to  serve.  A  few 
hours'  delay  only  was   essential   for  Judge  Griswold 


360  JOHN    BROWN. 

and  himself  to  become  informed.  Judge  Packer  was 
almost  surly  in  his  rejection  of  this  motion,  referring 
with  marked  asperity  to  the  speech  made  by  Captain 
Brown  the  day  before.  "The  trial  must  proceed,"  he 
ordered.  The  witnesses  Brown  desired  were  secured, 
and  the  evidence  of  Master-Armorer  Mills,  Paymaster 
Daingerfield,  and  Samuel  Snider,  of  the  United  States 
Arsenal,  Captain  Sims,  a  Maryland  militiaman,  with 
others  testified  strongly  to  the  general  aim  and  speech 
of  Captain  Brown  and  the  men  under  him,  in  the  care 
for  prisoners  and  other  matters,  and  equally  as  general 
inhumanity  on  the  part  of  all  the  Virginians  who 
directed  the  attack.  The  evidence  of  Captain  Simons, 
Fredericksburg,  Maryland,  Guards,  is  worthy  repro- 
duction as  to  the  essential  points  : 

"  Brown  complained  (at  the  time  of  the  first  proposition  on 
17th,  for  withdrawal)  that  his  men  were  shot  down  like  dogs, 
while  bearing  a  flag  of  truce.  I  told  him  they  must  expect  to 
be  shot  like  dogs,  if  they  took  up  arms  in  that  way.  Brown 
said  he  knew  what  he  had  to  undergo  when  he  came  there. 
He  had  weighed  the  responsibility  and  should  not  shrink  from 
it.  He  had  had  full  possession  of  the  town,  and  could  have 
massacred  all  the  inhabitants,  had  he  thought  proper  to  do  so  ; 
but  as  he  had  not,  he  considered  himself  entitled  to  some 
terms.  He  said  he  had  knowingly  shot  no  one  who  had  not 
carried  arms.  I  told  him  that  Mayor  Beckham  had  been  killed, 
and  that  I  knew  he  was  altogether  unarmed.  He  seemed 
sorry  to  hear  of  his  death,  and  said,  '  I  fight  only  those  who 
fight  me.'  I  saw  Stevens  at  the  hotel  after  he  was  wounded, 
and  shamed  some  young  men  who  were  endeavoring  to  shoot 
him  as  he  lay  in  his  bed,  apparently  dying.  ...  I  have  no 
sympathy  for  the  acts  of  the  prisoner,  but  I  regard  him  as  a 
brave  man."  * 


1  Condensed  from  the  current  press  reports. 


CAPTURE—  TRIAL—  PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  361 

An  attempt  was  again  made  to  force  the  prisoner's 
counsel  to  proceed  to  a  finish  As  the  ten  days  of 
the  "Emergency"  law  had  expired,  the  effort  was 
altogether  needless.  Hunter  made  his  opening 
speech  and  the  Court  then  adjourned  until  Monday 
at  nine.  Late  in  the  afternoon,  of  Monday,  October 
31st,  after  about  six  hours  were  consumed  by  the 
arguments  of  Messrs.  Chilton,  Griswold,  and  Hunter, 
the  case  was  delivered  to  the  jury.  An  absence  of 
less  than  an  hour  occurred  and  then  the  jury  returned. 
The  clerk  asked: 

"  Gentlemen  of  the  jury,  what  say  you?  Is  the 
prisoner  at  the  bar,  John  Brown,  guilty  or  not 
guilty?"  The  offense  charged  had  previously  been 
recapitulated. 

"  Guilty,"  was  the  foreman's  reply. 

"Guilty  of  treason,  and  conspiring  and  advising 
with  slaves  and  others  to  rebel,  and  of  murder  in  the 
first  degree,"  officially  queried  the  clerk. 

"  Yes,"  slowly  and  seriously  responded  the  fore- 
man. 

Strange  as  it  seems  under  the  high-pressure  ex- 
citement that  existed,  not  a  word  or  sound,  beside 
the  natural  stir  of  the  audience,  was  heard.  All 
seemed  to  feel  that  a  deep  tragedy,  to  be  met  with 
befitting  stillness,  was  in  progress  around  them. 
Counsel  Chilton  entered  a  motion  for  arrest  of  judg- 
ment, on  errors  to  which  he  had  taken  exceptions  in 
both  indictment  and  verdict  ;  Hunter  even  then 
wanted,  or  said  he  did,  to  proceed  with  the  argu- 
ments. But  the  Court  adjourned  till  next  day,  when 
the  closing  arguments  were  heard.  Edwin  Coppoc 
was  called  to  the  bar,  and  his  trial  proceeded,  lasting 


362  JOHN    BROWN. 

less  than  two  days.  So  on  the  second  day  of  Novem- 
ber, while  the  jury  was  out  on  the  verdict  thereof, 
Captain  Brown  was  brought  into  court.  He  still 
walked  with  difficulty,  every  step  being  attended 
with  evident  pain.  His  features  were  firm  and  com 
posed,  but  within  the  dimly  lighted  courtroom, 
showed  wan  and  pallid.  He  seated  himself  near  his 
counsel,  and  resting  his  head  upon  his  right  hand,  re- 
mained motionless,  apparently  the  most  unheeding 
man  in  the  room.  He  sat  upright  with  lips  com- 
pressed, looking  direct  into  the  chilled  stern  face  of 
the  judge  as  he  overruled  the  exceptions  of  counsel. 
When  directed  by  the  clerk  to  say  "  why  sentence 
should  not  be  passed  upon  him,"  John  Brown  rose 
slowly  to  his  feet,  placing  his  hands  on  a  table  in 
front  of  him,  and  leaning  slightly  forward,  in  a  voice 
singularly  quiet  and  self-controlled,  with  tones  of 
marked  gentleness  and  a  manner  slow  and  slightly 
hesitating,  made  this  memorable  speech: 

I  have,  may  it  please  the  Court,  a  few  words  to  say:  In  the 
first  place,  I  deny  everything  but  what  I  have  all  along  ad- 
mitted,— 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  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  in- 
tended. I  never  did  intend  murder,  or  treason,  or  the  destruc- 
tion 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  of 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  363 

the  witnesses  who  have  testified  in  this  case),  had  I  so  inter- 
fered in  behalf  of  the  rich,  the  powerful,  the  intelligent,  the  so- 
called  great,  or  in  behalf  of  any  of  their  friends — either  father, 
mother,  brother,  sister,  wife,  or  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  is  the 
Bible,  or  at  least  the  New  Testament.  That  teaches  me  that 
all  things  whatsoever  I  would  that  men  should  do  to  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  under- 
stand that  God  is  any  respecter  of  persons.  I  believe  that  to 
have  interfered  as  I  have  done — as  I  have  always  freely  ad- 
mitted 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 
submit;  so  let  it  be  done. 

Let  me  say  one  word  further. 

I  feel  entirely  satisfied  with  the  treatment  I  have  received  on 
my  trial.  Considering  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  intention,  and 
what  was  not.  I  never  had  any  design  against  the  life  of  any 
person,  nor  any  disposition  to  commit  treason,  or  excite  slaves 
to  rebel,  or  make  any  general  insurrection.  I  never  en- 
couraged any  man  to  do  so,  but  always  discouraged  any  idea 
of  the  kind. 

Let  me  say,  also,  a  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  induced  them  to  join  me. 


364  JOHN    BROWN. 

But  the  contrary  is  true.  I  do  not  say  this  to  injure  them,  but 
as  regarding  their  weakness.  There  is  not  one  of  them  but 
joined  me  of  his  own  accord,  and  the  greater  part  of  them  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,  1 
have  done  !  1 

On  that  act  the  curtain  fell,  without  a  sound.    Over 


1  At  a  later  date  (November  22d),  under  pressure  from  Andrew 
Hunter,    John    Brown    wrote    a    letter   to    explain    the    apparent 
discrepancy  between  his  statement  to  Governor  Wise,  on  the  day 
of  capture,  and  the  above  speech.     The  Captain  declared   he   wa 
taken   by  surprise   in    court,   not    having   anticipated   so   early 
sentence.      Hunter  wrote,  in  1887  (New  Orleans   Times- Democrat 
paper),  that  he  informed  Governor  Wise,  at  his  visit  to  Brown  in 
jail,  on  the  20th  of  November,   that  the   latter's  speech  in   court 
"  was  deliberate,  cool,  and  evidently  prepared  beforehand."     Not 
a  word  of  such  preparation  has  ever  been  heard  of,  and  the  speech 
itself  bears  internal  proof  of  unexpectedness  on  his  part.     Gov- 
ernor    Wise    declared    that    Brown    represented    to   him  and   the    | 
examining  court  that   he  designed  to  free  slaves  on  the  soil,  and 
did  not  primarily  design  to  turn  them  off.     Under  date  of  Novem-   1 
ber  22d,  John  Brown  addressed  Andrew  Hunter  a  letter,  in  which    i 
the  apparent   " connection"   was  dealt  with.     Of  what  he  said  in   j 
court,   John    Brown    wrote:     "  I    was    taken  wholly  by  surprise. 
.     .     .      In  the  hurry  of  the  moment  I  forgot  much  of  what  I  had    j 
intended   to  say,   and  did   not  consider  the  full  bearing  of  what  I 
did  say.      I  intended  to  convey  this  idea:  that  it  was  my  intention  1 
to  place  the  slaves  in  a  condition  to  defend  their  liberties,  if  they   ] 
would,  without  any  bloodshed,  but  not  that  I  intended  to  run  them 
out  of  the  slave  States.    I  was  not  aware  of  any  such  apparent  con-   I 
fiiction  until  my  attention  was  called  to  it.      .     .      .     A  man  in  my 
then  circumstances"  could  not  be  "  superhuman  in  respect  to  the 
exact    purpose    of   every    word    he   might   utter."     What   he  said 
to  the   Governor  "  was  intended  for  truth,"  and  what  was  said  in 
court  "  was  equally  intended  for  truth,   but  lequhed  a  more  full 
explanation   than  I  gave." 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  365 

all   sounds  were  the  echo  of  those   firm   but  gentle 
tones  ! 

The   letters   of  George  Henry  Hoyt,  furnished  me 
by  J.  W.  Le  Barnes,  Esq.1   (now  a  practising    lawyer 


1  In  a  recent  letter,  this  gentleman  writes  :  "  Hoyt  went  to 
Charlestown,  at  my  instance,  and  I  furnished  him  the  money  for 
his  expenses.  He  was  living  at  Athol,  Mass.,  with  his  parents, 
having  then  recently  graduated  at  law.  The  morning  that  the 
news  was  received  of  the  raid  and  capture,  he  came  at  once  to 
Boston,  and  I  met  him  at  the  Republican  Headquarters  and  told 
him  I  wanted  him  to  go  to  Charlestown  and  act  as  counsel  for 
John  Brown.  My  suggestion  was  that  so  youthful  and  physically 
fragile  a  person  in  appearance  (he  was  not  more  than  twenty-one, 
and  looked  not  more  than  nineteen,  and  was  slight  in  figure) 
would  not  create  the  suspicion  that  a  more  mature  man  might  do, 
and  I  believed  that  for  this  reason  he  would  be  more  likely  to 
succeed  in  being  allowed  access  to  Brown  than  another,  and  did 
not  believe  he  would  be  in  as  much  personal  danger  as  another 
might  be.  The  purposes  for  which  I  wanted  him  to  go  were: 
first,  to  watch  and  be  able  to  report  proceedings,  to  see  and  talk 
with  Brown,  and  be  able  to  communicate  with  his  friends  any- 
thing Brown  might  want  to  say;  and,  second,  to  send  me  an 
accurate  and  detailed  account  of  the  military  situation  at  Charles- 
town, the  number  and  distribution  of  troops,  the  location  and 
defenses  of  the  jail,  the  nature  of  the  approaches  to  the  town  and 
jail,  the  opportunities  for  a  sudden  attack,  and  the  means  of 
retreat,  with  the  location  and  situation  of  the  room  in  which 
Brown  was  confined,  and  all  other  particulars  that  might  enable 
friends  to  consult  as  to  some  plan  of  attempt  at  rescue.  Hoyt 
was  willing  to  accept  the  commission,  if  his  expenses  could  be 
paid,  as  he  had  no  money  himself."  Le  Barnes  and  Hoyt  visited 
Dr.  Howe,  at  South  Boston,  who  threw  cold  water  on  the  project, 
declaring  that  John  Brown's  execution  would  have  a  good  effect 
on  public  opinion.  Such  a  view  naturally  seemed  cold-blooded  to 
these  earnest  young  men.  It  was  probably  a  surprise  when  they 
found  John  Brown  holding  the  same  and  living  up  thereto,  para- 
doxical as  that  seems  in  statement.     Le  Barnes  furnished   Hoyt 


366  JOHN    BROWN. 

of  Washington,  D.  C),  by  whom  Mr.  Hoyt  was 
induced  to  volunteer  for  the  Virginia  work,  and  who 
supplied  the  modest  means  required  to  defray  his 
expenses,  give  details  of  the  trial  and  prison  life, 
which  will  be  of  interest  here. 

Under  date   of  Sunday,  October  30th,  Hoyt  writes 
Mr.  Le  Barnes,  that — 

"  Pursued  with  unrelenting  zeal  by  the  prosecution,  who 
intended  to  have  had  Brown  convicted  and  sentenced last  night, 
even  if  the  session  continued  until  twelve  o'clock.  By  ingenious 
devices,  counsel  have  got  the  case  continued  until  to-morrow 
(Monday,  October  31)  for  concluding  arguments.  We  are  for- 
tunate in  having  here  Mr.  Chilton,  of  Washington,  a  Virginian, 
and  a  very  eminent  lawyer,  .  .  .  also  a  relative  of  the 
Judge  and  the  family  friend  of  most  of  the  wealthy  and 
respectable  people  hereabouts.  .  .  .  Associated  with  him, 
also,  is  Mr.  Griswold,  one  of  the  eminent  Ohio  lawyers,  wh( 
was  for  many  years  the  Reporter  of  the  State.  He  was  sent 
on  by  Judge  Tilden,  who  is  a  personal  and  family  friend  of  B'« 
relations  in  Ohio.     .     .     .     After  referring  to  the  legal  points 


seventy-five  dollars  "  in  silver,"  and  afterwards  sent  him  othei 
small  remittances.  The  funds  for  paying  Messrs.  Chilton 
Griswold,  as  counsel,  $1,000  each,  with  the  expenses  for  copying 
records,  etc.,  were  probably  raised  through  John  A.  Andrews  and 
Judge  Thomas  Russell.  Mr.  Le  Barnes's  original  purpose  was 
probably  never  known  to  either  of  these  gentlemen.  Hoyt's  first 
letter  to  Le  Barnes  set  this  forth  most  plainly,  and  it  was,  of 
course,  scrupulously  obeyed.  Mr.  Le  Barnes  writes:  "  There 
was  a  letter  from  Hoyt,  written  after  he  had  seen  (the  night  of  the 
28th  of  October)  and  talked  with  Brown,  in  which  he  gave  the 
information  desired  in  respect  to  the  situation  at  Charlestown,  the 
defenses,  etc.,  and  which  inclosed  a  diagram  of  the  jail,  showing 
Brown's  cell,  the  approaches,  etc.,  etc.,  and  in  which  he  stated 
that  Brozun  positively  refused  his  consent  to  any  movement  looking 
to  a  rescue." 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  367 

raised  and  reserved  as  exceptions,  by  Mr.  Chilton,  on  which 
subsequently  sound  (as  to  treason,  but  useless  as  to  prejudices) 
appeal  to  the  State  Supreme  Court  was  made,  Mr.  Hoyt  goes 
on — '  Providentially,  things  have  been  conserved  to  obtain 
delay.  It  certainly  was  most  fortunate  for  Brown  that  I  was 
with  him  when  he  dismissed  Botts  and  Green.  In  justice  to 
them  I  must  say  that  their  management  of  the  case  was  as 
good  for  him  as  the  circumstances  of '  tlieir  position  permitted. 
You  must  be  told  that  the  morning  of  my  arrival  I  was  visited 
by  them  and  informed,  that  they  had  decided  not  to  be  associ- 
ated with  anybody  in  the  defense,  so  if  I  then  went  into  the 
case  they  would  wholly  withdraw.  Of  course,  my  only  alterna- 
tive was  to  remain  passive  and  wait  for  developments.  I  was 
not  permitted  to  see  Brown  until  that  night  (October  28th), 
when  the  case  was  thrown  upon  me.  I  never  offered  a  sincerer 
thanksgiving,  than  when  the  morning  light  brought  to  us  the 
eminent  gentlemen  now  conducting  the  case.  Here  let  me 
say,  as  it  is  unnecessary  for  me  to  explain  the  exact  condition 
of  the  case — the  very  fine  report  of  the  Associated  Press  agent 
being  minute  and  particular — that  Brown  is  well  pleased  with 
what  has  transpired;  is  perfectly  satisfied,  and  more  than  all 
the  rest,  seems  to  be  inspired  with  a  truly  noble  resignation. 

"  This  morning,  Mr.  Chilton,  Mr.  Griswold,  and  myself  were 
closeted  with  him  three  or  four  hours.  I  confess,  I  did  not 
know  which  most  to  admire,  the  thorough  honor  and  admi- 
rable qualities  of  the  brave,  old  border  soldier,  or  the  uncon- 
taminated  simplicity  of  the  man.  My  friend  John  Brown  is 
an  astonishing  character.  The  people  about  here,  while  deter- 
mined to  have  him  die  for  his  alleged  offenses,  generally  con- 
cede and  applaud  the  conscientiousness,  the  honor,  and  the 
supreme  bravery  of  this  man.  His  fate  is  sealed,  undoubtedly. 
Whether  he  will  in  the  course  of  further  judicial  proceedings 
be  condemned  and  executed  upon  a  Virginia  scaffold,  or 
whether  he  will  die  by  the  rough  hand  of  violence,  I  do  not 
decide  in  my  own  mind.  .  .  .  There  is  no  chance  of  his 
ultimate  escape.  There  is  nothing  but  the  most  unmitigated 
failure  and  the  saddest  consequence  which   it    is  possible  to 


368 


JOHN    BROWN. 


conjure  up  to  ensue  upon  an  attempt  at  rescue.  The  country, 
all  aroused,  is  guarded  by  armed  patrols  and  a  large  body  of 
troops  are  constantly  under  arms.  If  you  hear  anything  about 
such  an  attempt,  for  Heaven's  sake  do  not  fail  to  restrain  the 
enterprise." 

Under  date  of  the  31st,  Mr.  Hoyt  again  writes, 
acknowledging  receipt  of  a  small  draft,  and  stating 
that  he  had  been  sending  for  witnesses,  and  in  the 
incidental  payments  due  thereon,  says  he  is  regarded 
by  all  the  lawyers,  and  indeed  by  everybody  else,  as 
representing  an  infinitely  rich  somebody  in  Boston." 
He  explained  the  facts,  of  course,  to  Messrs.  Chilton 
and  Griswold,  assuring  them,  however,  that  their 
fees,  etc.  will  be  duly  met,  until  the  writ  of  error  t< 
be  filed  before  the  Supreme  Court  is  decided  upon. 
He  then  adds: 

"  In  regard  to  the  other  prisoners,  Coppoc  is  now  on  trial 
Griswold  and  I  are  counsel,  and  Green  and  Stevens  are  yet  to 
be  tried.  Cook  (who  was  brought  from  Pennsylvania  on  the 
28th)  is  making  a  confession.  Griswold  and  I  accidentally 
found  that  out.  .  .  .  Stevens  is  in  the  same  cell  with 
Brown.  I  have  frequent  talks  with  him.  He  is  in  a  most  piti- 
able condition  physically,  his  wounds  being  of  the  most  pain- 
ful and  dangerous  character.  He  has  four  bullets  in  his  body, 
two  or  three  being  about  the  head  and  neck.  He  bears  his 
sufferings  with  grim  and  silent  fortitude,  never  complaining 
and  absolutely  without  hope.  He  is  a  splendid-looking  young 
fellow.  Brown  says  it  was  a  great  mistake,  and  Stevens  agrees 
that  it  was  a  great  mistake,  chaffering,  to  save  the  lives  and 
shedding  of  the  blood  of  men.  They  might  have  got  away  into 
the  mountains,  where  no  body  of  men  could  have  captured 
them,  had  it  not  been  for  this  mistake.  Brown  says — he 
doubts  not  it  is  all  right  in  the  providence  of  God  and  is  re- 
signed to  his  fate.  ...  I  am  assured  by  everybody  that 
there  is  no  danger  of  violence  to  these  men.     I  am  not  so  much 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFIOI  D.  369 

of  a  fool,  however,  that  I  cannot  read  a  devilish  countenance 
when  I  see  it  face  to  face,  and  I  tell  you  there  have  been  too 
many  silent  people  about  this  courthouse  to-day,  and  I  am 
quite  sure  there  are  a  few  .  .  .  who  want  no  better  pre- 
text than  a  delay,  such  as  we  are  endeavoring  and  hope  to 
obtain  to  set  the  assassin's  hand  upon  our  brave,  old  friend. 
John  Brown  is  too  good  to  live  among  men.  I  never  imagined 
it  possible  for  a  man  to  be  so  desperately  cool  and  calm  under 
such  terrible  circumstances.  It  may  be  he  has  fulfilled  his 
appointed  mission  on  earth  (if  there  be  such  a  thing).  .  .  . 
I  don't  believe  that  John  Brown  will  ever  leave  this  town  a  live 
man."  (Hoyt  had  described  the  lawyers'  hopes  of  having  their 
writs  of  error  sustained  and  a  new  trial  ordered,  all  of  which 
proved  fallacious.)  "There  is  a  disposition."  he  continues,  "  in 
a  measure,  to  prevent  it  being  said,  that  he  had  no  formal  trial, 
but  the  people  are  bound  he  shall  die.  Beckham,  one  of  the 
killed  at  the  Ferry,  0  .  .  was  a  relative  of  Hunter,  and 
mayor  of  that  town.  H.  Turner,  another  of  them,  was  a 
respectable  and  highly  connected  citizen,  and  they  (the  citizens) 
are  bound  to  have  the  blood  of  this  entire  lot  of  prisoners." 

In  another  letter  (November  2d),  Mr.  Hoyt  refers 
to  the  defense  of  Coppoc  by  Mr.  Griswold  and  him- 
self,, and  then  states  that  Mr.  George  Sennott,  of 
Boston,  who  had  been  sent  down,  a  volunteer,  to  de- 
fend Stevens  and  the  colored  prisoners,  "  had  fought 
with  extraordinary  pluck  and  most  astonishing  zeal 
the  cases  of  Copeland  and  Green."  Mr.  Hoyt  urged 
on  Boston  friends  the  necessity'  of  engaging  Mr. 
Chilton  to  prepare  and  carry  appeals  to  Richmond 
in  all  the  other  cases,  declaring  that  it  would  never 
do  to  have  one  case  better  cared  for  legally  than  the 
others.  "  Brown  will  protest  against  it,  and  so  will 
the  entire  North.  Brown  wants  (he  says)  to  share 
everything  with  the  others." 

Commenting  further  on  the  state  of  feeling,  Mr. 
24 


370  JOHN     BROWN. 

Hoyt  wrote  about  the  ioth  of  November,  after  his 
return  from  Philadelphia,  that  he  expects  "  to  get  a 
notice  to  quit"  owing  to  excitement  aroused  by  the 
Northern  press,  especially  the  letters  of  Mr.  House 
in  the  New  York  Tribune.  The  feeling  had  grown 
so  abnormal  that  Hoyt  had  difficulty  in  seeing  Cap- 
tain Brown,  but  in  the  presence  of  the  "  kind-hearted 
jailer,  Captain  Avis,"  contrived  to  have  a  long  inter- 
view with  Brown.  "They  allege,"  he  writes,  "  fears 
that  poison  or  some  other  means  of  death  will  be 
conveyed  to  the  old  hero.  They  need  not  fear  suicide 
from  him!  " 

Mr.  Hoyt  was  kept  busy  at  Baltimore,  Philadel- 
phia, and  Washington,  in  such  duties  as  junior  coun- 
sel usually  perform  in  cases  of  the  magnitude  of  that 
of  John  Brown.  He  was  also  serving  and  making 
that  first,  as  the  personal  friend  of  the  Captain  in 
gathering  the  property  and  belongings  of  the  Cap- 
tain for  the  benefit  of  Mrs.  Brown.  The  Boston 
friends  were  desirous  of  having  all  that  could  be 
rescued  brought  there  for  sale  as  "  relics."  Sheriff 
Campbell,  aided  all  he  could  in  getting  the  material 
together.  The  money  taken  from  Captain  Brown's 
person  after  capture  by  the  Marines,  had  been  held 
for  some  time  in  the  custody  of  the  United  States 
Army  Superintendent  at  Harper's  Ferry,  but  was 
finally  paid  over  to  aid  in  defraying  expenses  of  the 
defense.  Foulke,  the  hotel  proprietor,  levied  upon 
the  wagon  and  mule  found  at  the  Kennedy  Farm,  to 
pay  for  the  food  which  Captain  Brown  impressed 
from  him,  chiefly  for  the  feeding  of  his  forty  prison- 
ers. A  Virginia  law,  Mr.  Hoyt  found  out,  carried 
judgment  for  costs  against  the  property  of  a  convic- 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  37  I 

ted  prisoner.  He  thought  the  sheriff  was  not  aware 
of  it,  and  that  Judge  Parker  would  not  speak  of  it. 
In  all  this,  however,  he  reckoned  without  Andrew 
Hunter,  who  was  bound  to  have  not  only  the  pound 
of  flesh,  but  all  the  surroundings  and  belongings, 
thereto.  Boston  got  none  of  the  relics,  and  Mrs. 
Brown  received  liule  or  nothing  from  property  found 
in  Virginia.  The  order  to  quit  that  Counselor  Hoyt 
expected,  came  on  the  12th  of  November,  and  he 
writes  on  the  13th  from  Baltimore  that  he,  with  Mr. 
Jewett,  Frank  Leslie's  artist,  whom  he  writes  of  "as 
a  gentleman  and  a  deuced  good  fellow,"  was  "com- 
pelled to  leave  the  town  of  Charlestown.  .  . 
We  got  a  polite,  but  decidedly  peremptory  notice  to 
quit,  which,  considering  that  the  town  was  in  a  state 
of  wild  excitement  with  barns  and  wheat  stacks 
burning,1  and  the  lynching  of  these  prisoners  as  well 
as  tar  and  feathers  imminent  (for  us),  we  concluded 
to  deny  ourselves  the  pleasure  of  facing  a  mob  and 
make  discretion  the  better  part  of  valor.  ...  It 
was  the  merest  suspicion  that  set  them  on  to  us." 

Under  date  of  Washington,  November  14th  and 
16th,  whither  he  had  gone  on  the  appeal  business, 
Hoyt  sends  very  interesting  letters,  showing  the 
opinions  of  important  persons  and  why  certain  action 
was  taken.     He  writes: 

.  .  .  Found  Chilton  had  crossed  over  to  Alexandria  where 
he  had  cases  to  be  postponed  in  order  to  go  to  Richmond.  (In 
another  note,  Mr.  Chilton's  explanation  is  given.)  Sought  and 
found  Montgomery  Blair  ;    .     .     .     his  judgment  in  this  matter 


1  These  fires  must  have  been  made  by  the  slaves  ;  there  was  no 
one  else  to  do  it.  The  Virginians,  of  course,  declared  that  it  was 
the  work  of  Northern  emissaries. 


372  JOHN    BROWN. 

is  the  best  possible.     Hoyt  was  very  earnest  as  to  securing  for 
the  men  as  good  and  complete  legal  service  as  given  to  Captain 
Brown.  "  The  expense,"  he  writes,  "must  be  shouldered.  How 
will  the  world  and  especially  John  Brown  regard  an  omission 
to  secure  to  the  same  last  extremity,  the  rights  of  the  associates 
of  the  captive  chief  ?     .     .     .     Certainly  it  is  expected  to  make 
a  clean  fight  in  this  matter.     ...     I  have  had  a  long  talk 
with  Mr.  Blair  and  have  got  his  ideas  pretty  thoroughly  in  my 
mind.     In  regard  to  this,  Hoyt's  going  to  Richmond,  he  waited 
on  learning  whether  'John  A.  Andrews  is  going'  as   had  been 
discussed.     No  statement  can,  therefore,  be  made  by  him,  as 
the  '  expulsion  from  Charlestown  '  by  the  Mayor's  order  and 
under  threats  of  mob  violence  "  until  it  is  settled  that  he,  Hoyt, 
is  to  go  to  Richmond  or  not."  ..."  Mr.  Blair  thinks,"  con- 
tinues Mr.  Hoyt,  "  a  demonstration  of  Brown's  insanity  might 
please  Wise.     He  says  he  has  seen  something  in  the  Richmond 
Inquirer  (Examiner) — probably  the  statement  he  exhibited  to 
Andrews — which  looks  like  an  invitation.     .     .     .     Mr.  Blair 
is  very  anxious  that  all  those  persons  who  have  any  reason  to 
suppose  that  Wise  has  any  reason  to  summon  them  down  to 
this  Federal  Court  (and  he  will  soon  have  some,  as  number  one 
detectives   are   hunting   them   up)   should   quit   the  country." 
(About   this  time  Dr.  Howe  and  Frederick  Douglass  left  for 
Canada  and  England  ;  no  one  else  retired  except  to  the  Western 
Reserve  and  Kansas.)     "  He  says  they  are  sure  to  be  outraged 
and  insulted  by  the  usual  programme  of  '  tar  and  feathers,'  if 
they  are  not  killed,  and  he  thinks  they  are  likely  to  meet  the 
other  treatment.     I  want  you,  Le  Barnes,  to  see  that  Sanborn 
and  the  rest  are  put  on  guard,  and  if  possible  are  either  '  hived 
up'  or  sent  away,  for  they  are  surely  to  be  summoned.     .     .     . 
Mr.  Blair  thinks  that  Mason  and  Company  are  bound  to  stir  up 
disruption  out  of  this  affair,  and  that  they  will  go  to  every  ex- 
tremity to  do  it,  He  is  confident  of  a  Republican  victory  in  '60, 
and  says  disunion  must  be  avoided.     I   agree  mainly  with  this 
doctrine,  provided  victory  is  sure  in    i860.     But   I  feel  like  a 
frantic  disunionist.     I  cannot  help  saying — I   hate  with  all  my 
heart  the  detestable  despotism  into  which   I  cannot  venture  to 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  373 

set  foot  for  an  honest  purpose  without  suffering  violence. 
I  suppose  Mr.  Blair  has  inferred  that  I  am  very  bitter  in  my 
heart  toward  the  South,  for  he  has  kindly  entered  into  an  expo- 
sition of  the  plan  of  the  Republican  party  for  the  future.  It  is 
a  most  persuasive  and  inspiring  thing.  ...  I  think  that 
Mr.  Blair,  senior,  is  a  man  who  understands  the  people  of  the 
South  better  than  we  at  the  North,  and  his  emancipation  theory 
is  great !  Under  date  of  the  16th,  Mr.  Hoyt  says  that  Mr.  Blair 
deems  it  unsafe  for  him  (H.)  to  go  to  Richmond,  denounced  as 
he  had  been  '  as  the  agent  of  the  Boston  abolitionists.'  Mr, 
Chilton  has  been  arranged  with  '  to  look  after  other  appeals.' 
The  article  in  Wise's  Richmond  organ,  the  Examiner,  is  con- 
sidered by  Mr.  Blair  '  as  an  invitation  to  make  a  demonstra- 
tion.' Hoyt  was,  therefore,  to  proceed  and  gather  affidavits 
needed." 

On  the  matter  of  insanity  affidavits,  Governor  Wise 
evidently  felt  himself  obliged,  after  Brown's  execu- 
tion, to  make  some  sort  of  a  case.  In  a  message  to 
the  Legislature,  under  date  of  December  13th,  he 
said  that  "no  insanity  was  feigned,  even  the  prisoner, 
Brown,  spurned  it.  Since  his  sentence,  Samuel 
Chilton,  Esq.  (of  counsel),  has  filed  with  me  a  number 
of  affidavits  for  delay,  in  order  to  show  such  alleged 
insanity."  Mr.  Hoyt's  letter,  already  quoted,  explains 
this,  and  Mr.  Chilton,  in  a  letter  published  December 
18th,  in  the  National  Intelligencer,  states  that  he  had 
no  hand  in  the  preparation  or  presentation  of  such 
affidavits;  that  Mr.  Hoyt  had  pro  forma  only  attached 
his  name  (Chilton's)  to  a  petition  for  a  hearing,  mak- 
ing himself  the  affidavit  required  of  counsel,  and  that 
he,  Hoyt,  was  undoubtedly  led  into  such  procedure 
by  a  statement,  made  in  the  Richmond  Examiner 
(credited  with  being  Governor  Wise's  organ),  that  it 
"  was  not   too  late  to   have  the  question  of  insanity 


374  JOHN    BROWN. 

upon  an  issue,  and  relief  afforded,  if  it  was  found  to 
exist."  The  statement  was  misleading,  as  only  the 
Legislature  could  have  acted. 

An  undated  letter  from  Philadelphia  gives  an 
account  of  Mrs.  Brown  there,  and  must  have  been 
Written  about  the  8th  of  November.  Mr.  Hoyt  says, 
11  I  found  Mrs.  Brown  at  the  house  of  Wm.  Still,  on 
Locust  street.  .  .  .  She  was  stopped  at  Baltimore 
(on  her  way  to  Harper's  Ferry  and  Charlestown)  by 
my  dispatch  (due  to  a  conviction  that  it  was  not  safe 
for  her  then  to  go  to  Charlestown)  to  Mr.  Fulton  (of 
the  American).  .  .  .  We  have  this  p.m.,  heard 
news,  which  seems  to  demand  instant  action.  It  has 
been  explained  by  Mr.  McKim  to  Mr.  Webb.  There 
are  three  refugees  now  in  the  mountains.  They  must  be 
Tidd,  Owen  Brown,  and  Coppoc  (brother  of  the 
prisoner).  .  .  .  We  telegraphed  for  Redpath.  It 
is  important  that  funds  should  be  placed  in  Mr. 
McKim's  hands  to  assist  them — poor  fellows!  (Owen, 
who  was  the  leader,  took  care  that  no  one  approached 
them  till  they  reached  western  Pennsylvania.  I  tried 
it  from  Harrisburg,  Redpath  and  colored  men  from 
Chambersburg,  but  it  was  of  no  avail.)  ...  I 
think  it  prudent,  if  the  cases  of  Cook  and  Stevens 
(which  was  discussed)  be  turned  over  to  the  Federal 
Courts,  that  those  parties  who  feel  they  are  likely  to 
be  summoned  as  witnesses,  keep  out  of  the  way  of 
all  United  States  processes.  I  hope  there  is  pluck  enough 
and  ammunition  enough  in  Massachusetts  to  prevent 
the  forcible  attachment  of  any  Massachusetts  man — 
in  this  regard.  ...  I  wish*  I  could  describe  my 
interview  with  Mrs.  Brown.  'Tell  my  husband,  I  can 
spare  him  for  the  sake  of  the  cause  !  '     .     .     .     'I  can 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  375 

resign  him  to  God,  sure  that  it  is  His  hand  that  strikes 
the  blow  !  '  Every  word  she  utters  breathes  the  spirit 
of  trust  and  resignation.  When  I  bade  her  good-bye, 
the  lips  quivered,  the  voice  trembled,  and  the  tears 
flowed  freely,  but  the  words  were  firmly  spoken  and 
were  worthy  the  wife  of  John  Brown." 

Captain  Brown  had  discouraged  the  visit  of  Mary, 
his  wife,  at  this  time,  as,  owing  to  the  local  anger 
and  excitement,  due  in  large  degree  to  the  successful 
defeat  of  the  plan  to  try  and  execute  on  an  "  emer- 
gency "  plea,  there  was  really  personal  danger  to  all 
visitors,  especially,  he  feared,  of  any  of  his  family.  It 
was  the  energy  also  of  J.  E.  Cook's  defense,  as  well  as 
the  personal  feeling  against  him,  that  re-aroused  at 
this  time  the  bitter  hostility  and  mob-feeling  in  the 
town  and  vicinage.  "  The  shadow  of  an  unconquer- 
able terror"  still  hung  over  the  people.  Evidence  of 
the  feeling  was  found  in  the  exclusion  of  Lawyer 
Sennott  from  the  jail  at  this  time,  and  the  wild,  almost 
unappeasable  fury  which  arose,  over  the  arrival  of  a 
kindly  Quaker  lady  from  Eagleswood,  New  York, 
who,  expecting  to  find  Lydia  Maria  Child  also  at 
Charlestown,  had  come  to  aid  in  caring  for  the  pris- 
oners, 

Edwin  Coppoc,  defended  by  Messrs.  Griswold, 
Green,  and  Hoyt,  was  soon  disposed  of,  having  been 
put  on  trial  at  the  afternoon  session  of  November  1st, 
and  convicted  late  on  the  2nd  inst.  Brown  was 
brought  in  and  sentenced  on  that  day.  Hunter's 
"  latter-day  pamphlet,"  stated  that  he  was  not  sen- 
tenced till  the  appeal  on  the  writ  of  error  was  decided 
adversely,  November  1 6 1 1 1 .  Shields  Green  and  John 
A.  Copeland  were  placed  on  trial   November  3d,  and 


376 


JOHN    BROWN. 


convicted  the  next  day,  and  sentenced  to  be  hung  on 
the  same  day  as  Coppoc,  December  16th.  Mr. 
Sennott  fought  vigorously  for  these  men,  and  went 
the  length  of  justifying  them  in  their  resistance  to 
the  enslavement  of  their  race.  The  State  Attorney, 
Hunter,  was  almost  ferocious  in  his  philippics  against 
Shields  Green,  whose  boldly  careless  bearing  had 
aroused  all  the  brutal  malignity  that  slave  ownership 
and  race  prejudice  necessarily  produced.  Cook's 
trial  began  immediately  after,  and  was  hotly  con- 
tested until  its  close  on  the  9th,  when  at  nine  in  the 
evening  the  jury  brought  in  a  verdict  of  guilty  on  the 
same  charges  that  Brown  was  convicted  upon.  The 
trial  was  remarkable  on  the  part  of  the  defense  for 
its  ingenuity  and  ability.  Cook's  brother-in-law, 
Lieutenant-Governor  Willard,  led  the  array  of  coun- 
sel. Besides  himself,  from  Indiana  were  other  two 
lawyers,  Daniel  W.  Voorhees  being  most  prominent. 
Botts  and  Green  were  also  retained.  The  debates 
were  "  very  keen,"  and  sometimes  "very  severe." 
Hunter  "  vigorously  repelled  these  attacks,  and  some- 
times turned  them  to  his  own  advantage." 

Just  before  this  came,  the  visit  of  Judge  Thomas 
Russell  and  his  wife,  of  Boston,  had  excited  a  great 
fury.  Mr.  Hoyt  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Le  Barnes 
refers  graphically  to  them,  wondering  how  she 
managed  to  get  away  unhurt.  He  himself  fell  under 
greater  suspicion  because  of  leaving  Charlestown 
with  the  Judge.  Hunter,  it  is  stated,  would  have 
arrested  the  lady,  except  for  her  sex,  on  a  charge  of 
"  treason."  Mrs.  Spring  was  at  first  refused  admis- 
sion to  the  jail,  but  Judge  Parker  interfered,  took  her 
himself  to   the   jail,  accompanied    by  a  guard,  and 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  377 

for  her  protection  waited  till  the  interview  was  closed. 
Captain  Brown  himself  was  greatly  disturbed  by 
these  ill-timed,  though  well-meaning  visits.  Mr. 
Hoyt,  on  the  13th  of  November,  writes  to  Mr.  Le 
Barnes,  from  Baltimore: 

"  Do  not  allow  Mrs.  Child  to  visit  B.  He  does  not  wish  it 
because  the  infuriated  populace  will  have  new  suspicions 
aroused,  and  great  excitement  and  injurious  results  are  cer- 
tain. He  is  comfortable  and  has  all  his  wants  supplied  kindly, 
and  is  not  sick  enough  to  be  nursed.  He  don't  want  women 
there  to  weaken  his  heroic  determination  to  maintain  a  firm 
and  consistent  composure.  Keep  Mrs.  Child  away  at  all 
hazards.  Brown  and  his  associates  will  certainly  be  lynched 
if  she  goes  there.  This  ought  to  be  shown  Mr.  Andrews  and 
others,  but  let  no  public  exhibition  be  made." 

One  of  the  curious  incidents  in  the  legal  proceed- 
ings, which  at  the  time  and  since  has  escaped  notice, 
was  reserved  from  trial  by  the  State  authorities  until 
early  in  February,  i860.  Up  to  that  date  Stevens  was 
retained,  it  was  understood,  as  a  Federal  prisoner 
under  indictment  by  a  Federal  Grand  Jury,  sitting 
for  the  Western  District  of  Virginia,  in  the  County 
jail  at  Charlestovvn.  No  record  is  at  hand  as  how 
this  was  brought  about,  nor,  by  what  process  he  was 
transferred  to  the  State  for  a  judicial  slaying.  The 
object,  however,  is  self-evident.  Andrew  Hunter  gave 
it  away  in  writing  in  1887,  that  Governor  Wise  and 
himself  came  to  the  conclusion  "that  this  Brown  raid 
was  the  beginning  of  a  great  conflict  between  the 
North  and  the  South,  and  had  better  be  regarded  ac- 
cordingly," and  he  adds  significantly,  that  "  it  was 
not  alone  for  the  protection  of  the  jail  and  the  repel- 
ling" of  rescuing  parties  who  were  "  not,"  in  spite  of 


37^  JOHN    BROWN. 

his  declarations  otherwise,  organizing  for  the  "  rescu- 
ing of  Brown  and  the  prisoners,  but  it  was  for  the  pur- 
pose of  preparing  for  coming  events."  Part  of  that  prep- 
aration was  to  involve  the  Federal  government  favor- 
ably to  the  South,  hence  the  Federal  indictment 
against  Stevens,  the  sending  of  troops  to  Harper's 
Ferry  as  a  posse  eo/nitatus,  the  proposed  making  by 
Federal  court  and  United  States  Senate  Committee 
of  drag-nets,  into  which  to  bring  all  sorts  of  promi- 
nent personages  in  the  North,  and  the  deliberate 
threat  made  by  Wise  of  invading  Northern  States  in 
"  alleged  "  emergencies,  existing  mainly  in  his  "  mind's 
eye,"  coupled  with  a  demand  that  the  general  govern- 
ment act  with  Virginia  against  other  neighboring 
States  upon  these  frantic  declarations  of  an  envenomed 
Governor.  In  tracing  the  "roads"  leading  from 
Harper's  Ferry  as  well  as  to  it,  it  is  seen  most  clearly 
that  in  the  evolutionary  providence  of  events  the 
wrath  of  the  slaveholders  was  made  to  serve  the  cause 
of  Union  and  Freedom.  The  common  sense  of  the 
North  soon  perceived  the  truth;  that  while  there  was 
a  great  sentiment  and  a  growing  force  of  reason  acting 
steadily  against  the  aggressive  spirit  and  acts  of 
slavery,  that  also  there  never  was  any  inclination 
amounting  to  serious  danger,  of  a  desire  to  put  the 
institution  down  by  force.  The  right  or  wrong  of 
such  a  situation  need  not  be  debated.  It  is  essential 
here  and  only  to  understand  the  situation.  There 
never  was  at  any  time  from  1840  till  John  Brown's 
pendent  shadow  clouded  the  December  sunshine, 
more  than  one  hundred  men  who  had  any  positive  or 
direct  knowledge  and  affiliation  at  any  one  time  with 
John  Brown's  plans  and  purposes.  At  the  time  of  the 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  379 

raid  there  certainly  were  less  than  that  number 
in  all,  counting  in  every  delegate  who  sat  in  the 
Convention  at  Chatham,  Canada  West,  May  10,  1859. 
it  was  the  South  which  made  of  the  raid  a  conspiracy 
against  the  Union  !  John  Brown's  action  was  indeed 
startling.  Nobody  denies  that.  Dealt  with  accord- 
ing to  the  accepted  legalities,  it  would  have  failed  of 
the  aims  its  commander  had  in  view.  But  Virginia 
fanned  it  into  a  greater  success,  because  moral  and 
righteous  in  character,  than  could  have  resulted  from 
even  its  partial  trial  as  a  test  of  conflict.  John 
Brown  saw  the  possibility  of  this  when  he  laid  a 
wounded  captive  under  Wise's  examination.  How 
aptly  then  could  the  young  and  now  eminent  Ohio 
poet,  himself  nurtured  with  anti-slavery  ideas  and 
convictions,  say  as  he  did: — 


Perhaps  in  no  better  way  can  a  more  suggestive 
conception  be  given  of  the  state  of  alarm  in  which 
the   people   of  the  Virginia  Valley  had   lashed  them- 


380  JOHN    BROWN. 

selves  than  by  summarizing  a  few  of  the  statements 
made  by  Mr.  Andrew  Hunter  in  the  notable  paper  to 
which  several  references  have  already  been  made.  It 
cannot  be  said  to  be  unfair.  The  prisoners,  when  cap- 
tured, says  Mr.  Hunter,  were  to  be,  by  railroad,  sent 
to  Charlestown  from  Harper's  Ferry,  via  Winchester. 
Hunter  told  Governor  Wise  this  would  not  do,  as 
the  militia  company  (Captain  Rowan's),  to  be  sent  as 
a  guard,  "  will  massacre  them  before  they  reach  the 
jail."  He  then  advised  Wise  to  go  himself,  accom- 
panied by  a  party  of  United  States  marines,  taking 
the  highway  from  Harper's  Ferry  for  the  trip.  This 
was  done,  and  Mr.  Hunter,  telling  the  story  twenty- 
eight  years 'after,  cannot  see  the  awful  irony  involved 
therein.  The  attorney  says  that  he  told  John  Brown 
that  "  anything  he  wanted,  consistent  with  his  con- 
dition as  a  prisoner,  he  should  have";  yet  he  states 
that  he  himself  retained  (in  the  name  of  the  State,  of 
course)  some,  at  least,  of  the  money  which  friendly 
persons  were  sending  the  prisoner  in  letters  from  the 
North.  All  letters  to  the  prisoners,  by  "  his  "  direc- 
tion, were  placed  by  the  postmaster,  a  United  States 
officer,  in  the  box  of  the  State  Prosecutor,  not 
delivered  at  the  jail,  as  was  the  postmaster's  duty. 
It  was,  of  course,  within  the  power  of  the  State,  after 
the  letters  were  delivered  to  the  jail,  actually  or  con- 
structively to  examine  and  read  the  same.  Hunter 
retained  those  that  he  pleased,  "  between  seventy 
and  eighty  in  all,"  he  stated.  Many  letters  contained 
small  sums,  generally  one-dollar  gold  pieces.  He 
seems  to  believe  it  was  generous  to  allow  these  small 
amounts  to  reach  the  condemned  men,  while  retain- 
ing others  of  larger  value.     There  was  a  letter  from 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  38 1 

a  Mrs.  Russell,  of  Boston,  mentioned  as  sent  to 
Governor  Wise  by  Mr.  Hoyt,  which  evidently  never 
reached  John  Brown.  In  the  matter  of  the  arms  and 
other  property,  some  of  it  wholly  personal,  which  had 
been  captured  by  Virginia,  it  would  seem,  in  the  face 
of  all  the  evidence  obtainable,  that  every  State  officer 
but  Hunter  was  willing  that  the  barbarous  State  law 
which  sequestrated  the  property  of  convicted  per- 
sons, and  which  had  long  been  practically  unen- 
forced, should  remain  in  that  status,  so  far  as  John 
Brown  was  concerned.  Hunter  led  the  Captain  to 
believe,  even  to  drafting  for  him  a  second  will,  on 
the  day  of  his  execution,  that  he  might  dispose  of  his 
property  as  he  wished;  none  of  it,  however,  seems  to 
have  got  out  of  Virginia,  that  the  State's  Attorney 
could  trace.  Mr.  Sennott,  a  Boston  Democrat,  in 
defending  the  colored  prisoners,  spoke  of  slavery  as 
"  illogical  and  absurd,"  and  was,  as  a  result,  for  a 
time,  denied  admission  to  his  clients  within  the  jail. 
Among  the  strangest  of  half  confessions  which  let  in 
unconsciously  the  light  upon  the  character  it  illumi- 
nated is  one  resulting  from  Hunter's  quoting  approv- 
ingly, twenty-eight  years  after  date,  from  a  New  Haven 
Doughface  paper,  which  hopefully  suggested  that  if 
"any  other  party  *  ever '  invades  the  territory  of 
Virginia  .  .  .  they  may  be  caught  and,  without 
judge  or  jury,  burned  alive  in  a  fire  made  of  green 
faggots."  Funny,  to  quote  this,  for  both  the  "  respect- 
able "  Connecticut  paper  and  the  old  Virginia  lawyer, 
in  the  light  of  the  vast  invasions  that  came  so  soon 
upon  the  kibes  of  John  Brown's  execution.  Funnier 
still,  however,  is  the  attorney's  recollections  of  the 
projected   invasions  and   rescue  plots  which  did  not 


382  JOHN    BROWN. 

materialize,  and  which  yet,  even  as  late  as  1887,  this 
venerable  "  survival  "  actually  believed  had  an  exist- 
ence. Hunter  "  chuckled "  almost  audibly  in  his 
New  Orleans  article  over  the  "  adroitness "  with 
which  he  imagines  he  met  these  men  in  buckram. 
He  sustains  his  claims  by  telling  of  an  alleged  fire  at 
a  neighbor's  house,  which  local  papers  afterwards 
said,  so  the  despatches  state,  was  the  result  of  a 
smoky  chimney,  and  by  describing  how  he  and  his 
son  Henry  (the  unblushing  butcher  of  the  unarmed 
prisoner,  William  Thompson)  heard  a  great  clamor 
on  the  road  adjoining  their  house,  and,  seizing  the 
Sharpe's  rifles  "  conveyed "  to  them  from  Brown's 
stores,  went  out,  to  find  some  drunken  men  from 
Harper's  Ferry  riding  wildly  by.  It  would  be  cruel 
to  repeat  these  senile  reminiscences,  but  for  the  fact 
that  the  incidents  were  first  used  in  aid  of  breeding 
civil  war,  and  were  later  repeated  to  justify  it  and  to 
show  the  "  chivalry  and  courage  "  of  a  slave-rearing 
oligarchy.  By  means,  as  he  alleges,  of  Brown's  "  in- 
tercepted "  correspondence,  and  other  sources,  such 
as  the  paid  detective,  it  is  presumed,  who  falsely 
reported,  for  example,  being  with  John  Brown,  Jr., 
at  Oberlin,  while  plotting  a  rescue  of  his  father.  Mr. 
Brown  did  not  leave  the  county  of  Jefferson,  and 
seldom  his  home  at  Dorset  there,  for  many  months. 
All  the  plots  he  was  connected  with  were  simply  as  a 
defense  against  attempts,  by  kidnapping,  to  carry 
him  to  Virginia,  or,  later,  to  make  him  appear  as  a 
witness  before  the  Harper's  Ferry  United  States 
Senate  Committee.  When  Owen  Brown  and  Barclay 
Coppoc  found  refuge  on  the  Western  Reserve,  the 
best  people  joined  in  a  movement  to  warn  them  and 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  383 

to  prevent  efforts  to  get  hold  of  them  without  due 
process  of  law,  as  was  done  in  Pennsylvania  in  both 
Cook's  and  Hazlett's  cases.  The  same  was  true  in 
Iowa,  to  which  Barclay  Coppoc  went  later,  and  in 
Boston,  with  relation  to  the  effort  to  secure  F.  B. 
Sanborn  as  a  witness  at  Washington.  All  the  rest, 
so  far  as  Hunter's  story  of  John  Brown's  "rescue 
plots  "  are  concerned,  is  mere  sensation.  It  is  true, 
probably,  that  many  letters  were  sent  to  John  Brown, 
expressing  a  wish  for  his  release,  by  force  or  other- 
wise; and  it  is  certain,  also,  that  huge  jokes  were 
perpetrated  at  the  expense  of  Virginia's  frightened 
officials.  James  Redpath  and  myself  were  respon- 
sible for  filling  one  credulous  detective,  who  called  on 
us  in  Boston,  having  a  forged  letter  of  introduction, 
with  a  most  exciting  yarn  of  our  scheme  to  get  John 
Brown  out  of  jail.  It  was  so  Munchausen  in  style 
that  we  hardly  dared  to  hope  for  its  being  retailed. 
But  it  was,  and  Hunter  sent  for  500  more  troops  at 
once,  while  Wise  appealed  solemnly  to  the  President, 
Mr.  Buchanan,  for  aid.  Hunter  tells  (1887),  as  sober 
truth,  a  lot  of  stuff  about  men  "  drilling  "  in  Hunting- 
ton County,  Penn.;  about  an  organization  at  Oberlin 
and  Bellaire,  Ohio,  which  involved  the  seizure  of 
trains  in  Ohio;  also  of  an  alleged  movement  from 
Kentucky,  of  all  places  in  the  world,  and  under 
charge  of  a  man  named  "  Day  from  Missouri."  This, 
probably,  had  some  blundering  reference  to  Dr.  Doy, 
of  Kansas,  who  had  been  stolen  by  force  from  Kansas 
and  imprisoned  in  jail  at  St.  Joseph,  Mo.,  from  which 
he  was  afterwards  rescued.  Dr.  Doy  was  lecturing 
on  his  adventures,  in  Michigan  or  Massachusetts, 
and,  being  apt  to  talk  with  a  loose  mouth,  doubtless 


384  JOHN    BROWN. 

filled  another  of  Wise's  detectives  with  a  mare's  nest. 
The  only  direct  tale  Hunter  reported  in  1887  related 
to  information  received  by  him  from  Pennsylvania. 
It  had,  however,  nothing  to  do  with  John  Brown,  for 
he  had  been  executed  two  months  before.  Hunter 
was  warned  of  "  rescue  "  movements  designed  on  behalf 
of  Stevens  a?id  Hazlett,  the  last  two  victims.  This 
incident  will  be  told  in  its  proper  place,  and  cor- 
rectly, too,  as  the  writer  was  an  active  organizer 
thereof.  Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  and  this  is  said 
with  the  fullest  possible  knowledge,  the  most  serious 
attention  was  paid,  and  immediately,  too,  to  the 
desire,  nay,  demand,  of  Captain  John  Brown  that  no 
such  attempt  should  be  thought  of  or  prepared  for. 
Stevens  and  Hazlett  also  made  the  same  declaration, 
and,  like  John  Brown,  said  that  even  if  any  prospects 
of  success  could  be  shown,  the  result  could  not  be 
achieved  without  the  slaying  of  Captain  Avis,  the 
jailer,  and  to  that  none  of  them  would  agree.  All 
three  assumed  that  they  would  be  most  useful  to  the 
cause  they  loved  as  sacrifices. 

Governor  Wise,  under  date  of  November  25,  stated 
to  the  President,  that  "  a  conspiracy,  of  formidable 
extent  in  means  and  numbers  (was)  formed  in  Ohio, 
Pennsylvania,  New  York,  and  other  States,  to  rescue 
John  Brown  and  his  associates,"  was  a  simple  absurd- 
ity. The  barn  and  hayrick  fires,  few  probably  in 
number,  were  made  by  the  negroes,  naturally  aroused 
and  cognizant  of  events  about  them.  Governor  Wise 
says  that  he  has  1,000  men  under  arms,  "and,  if 
necessary,  shall  call  out  the  whole  available  force  of 
the  State."  He  declared  that  "  places  in  Maryland, 
Ohio,  and  Pennsylvania  have  been  occupied  as  depots 


CAPTURE TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  385 

and  rendezvous  by  (these)  desperadoes,  unobstructed 
by  guards,  or  otherwise  intend  to  invade  "  Virginia, 
and  he  then  proceeds  to  declare,  that  while  his  "  pur- 
pose is  peaceful,"  that  "  if  another  invasion  "  occurs, 
he  "  will  pursue  the  invaders  wherever  they  may  go, 
into  any  territory,  and  punish  them  wherever  arms 
can  reach  them."  The  President  was  called  upon  to 
"take  steps  to  preserve  peace  betivcc?i  tJic  States."  The 
words  "  between  the  States  "  and  "  Confederate,"  as 
political  terms,  seem  to  be  extensively  introduced  by 
Wise  at  this  time.  A  copy  of  this  rodomontade  was 
sent  to  the  executives  of  Maryland,  Ohio,  and  Penn- 
sylvania. Mr.  Buchanan  replied  on  the  28th  of  Nov- 
ember to  Wise,  reminding  him  that  he  "  did  not  com- 
municate the  facts  "  on  which  his  charges  "  are 
founded."  He  could  not  conceive  of  such  "atrocious 
wickedness,"  and  expressed  the  conviction  that  Vir- 
ginia was  "abundantly  able  and  willing  to  carry  her 
own  laws  into  execution."  To  protect  United  States 
property  and  to  act  as  a  posse  comilatus  to  the  United 
States  marshal  for  western  Virginia,  who  still  held 
Stevens  in  custody,  "charged  with  the  crime  of 
high  treason  against  the  United  States,"  '  Mr.  Bu- 
chanan announces  that  two  companies  of  artillery  have 
been  ordered  "to  proceed  immediately  from  Fortress 
Monroe  to  Harper's  Ferry."  Mr.  Buchanan,  in  further 
reply  to  the  Virginian's  demand  to  "  take  steps  to 
preserve  peace  between  the  States,"  proceeds  to  lay 


1  No  other  of  the  raiders  was  proceeded  against  by  the  Federal 
authorities.  Stevens,  then,  was  the  only  man  indicted  for  treason 
against  the  United  States.  He  was  held  until  early  in  1S60,  and 
then  tried  by  the  Slate  of  Virginia  as  a  conspirator  and  homicide. 

25 


386  JOHN    BROWN. 

down  that  doctrine  of  imbecility  upon  which  he  acted 
when  "  the  States  "  went  into  "  rebellion  "  and  pre- 
pared for  the  real  "  invasion  "  of  other  States,  on  a 
large  scale.  It  was  the  duty,  he  said,  of  the  several 
States  themselves  to  prevent  such  invasions  as  Wise 
feared,  and  that  if  "  the  Federal  executive,  however, 
were  to  enter  these  States  and  perform  this  duty  for 
them,  it  would  be  a  manifest  usurpation  of  their 
rights.  Were  I  thus  to  act,  it  would  be  a  palpable 
invasion  of  State  sovereignty,  and,  as  a  precedent, 
might  prove  highly  dangerous." 

Mr.  Lincoln  would  certainly  have  found  it  a  bar 
to  earlier  Union  preparations.  Governor  Wise  may 
have  brought  himself  into  the  frenzy  of  fright 
which  his  preparations  indicate  his  being  in,  but 
a  more  reasonable  hypothesis,  based  at  least  upon 
his  acknowledged  possession  of  considerable  ability, 
and  the  certainty  that  he  had  quite  correctly  gauged 
the  inside  facts  as  to  the  extent  and  character  of  the 
support  John  Brown  had  received,  is  found  in  the  con- 
ception that  a  plot  against  the  Union  was  in  process 
of  realization.  The  same  purpose  that  gave  the  most 
vigorous  direction  to  the  pro-slavery  attacks  on 
Kansas,  was  enlarging  the  opportunity  in  Virginia. 
Memory  is  often  at  fault,  but  sometimes  even  its  senil- 
ity may  serve  to  clinch  a  condition.  Reference  has 
already  been  made  to  Andrew  Hunter's  late-in-the- 
day  defense  of  Virginian  justice  in  connection  with 
John  Brown  and  his  men.  The  Hunter  paper  of 
September  5,  1887,  gives  as  reason  for  not  sparing  the 
lives  of  the  raiders,  "that  in  the  coming  war  they 
would  be  found  to  the  South  ugly  customers,  and," 
he  writes,    "  I   have   no  doubt  that  if  Brown,  particu- 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  387 

larly,  had  survived  the  result  of  this  raid  the  most 
dangerous  military  leaders  would  have  been  found  in 
him  and  some  of  his  associates." 

The  replies  of  Governors  Hicks/Maryland  ;  Packer, 
Pennsylvania  ;  and  Chase,  Ohio,  to  the  terrified 
"  squeal  "  of  Governor  Wise,  are  characteristic.  The 
Marylander  will  "  cooperate  "  ;  the  Pennsylvanian 
says  that  Wise's  statement  as  to  that  State  will  "be 
found,  in  the  sequel,  utterly  and  entirely  without 
foundation,"  and  that  in  "  all  circumstances  "  Penn- 
sylvania will  see  "  that  her  honor  is  fully  vindicated." 
Governor  Salmon  P.  Chase,  like  Governor  Packer, 
resented  the  tone  of  the  Wise  letter,  and  notified 
him  that,  while  "unlawful  combinations"  against 
Virginia  or  any  other  State  would  be  broken  up,  the 
State  of  Ohio  would  "  not  consent,  however,  to  the 
invasion  of  her  territory  by  armed  bodies  from  other 
States,  even  for  the  pursuing  and  arresting  of  fugi- 
tives from  justice."  John  Brown's  action  placed  large 
issues  in  the  scales.  Governor  Wise  and  his  fellow 
conspirators  on  behalf  of  the  "  war  between  the 
States"  worked  the  "Invasion"  issue  for  all  it  was 
worth  for  their  aims — in  the  South,  while  their  im- 
potent demands  on  States  to  so  act  upon  the  personal 
showing  of  Wise,  "  that  their  confederate  duty  "  be 
performed,  had  just  a  contrary  effect  on  the  States 
that  were  addressed.  Even  Maryland  was  held  to  her 
fealty  when  the  time  came  and  Governor  Hicks  aided. 

Events  moved  forward  to  the  taking  of  life  on  the 
second  and  sixteenth  days  of  December.  Albert 
Hazlett,  under  the  name  of  "  William  Harrison," 
was,  early  in  November,  brought  from  Carlisle, 
Pennsylvania,  having  been  sent  to  execution  in  Vif- 


388 


JOHN    BROWN. 


ginia  by  a  United  States  Commissioner,  upon  evidence 
that  certainly  did  not  fully  identify  him  with  the 
Harper's  Ferry  raid.  Application  for  his  extradition 
as  Albert  Hazlett  was  made;  his  identity  as  such 
was  not  shown  even  before  the  Court  that  con- 
demned him  to  death;  only  one  witness  actually  testi- 
fying to  his  presence  at  the  Ferry,  and  he  was  shaken 
by  Mr.  Sennott's  cross-examination.  Of  course,  no 
moral  doubt  of  his  connection  ever  existed  ;  but  it 
remains  true  that  the  legal  evidence  was  imperfect. 
For  this  reason,  Captain  Brown  always  refused  to 
recognize  Hazlett  as  one  of  his  men,  and  wrote  of 
him  to  "  Aunt  Fanny  "  (Mrs.  Mary  A.  Gage)  the  2d  of 
November,  as  being  among  those  reported  as  killed. 
The  tally  of  the  raiders  was  now  complete.  Five  had 
been  tried  and  convicted,  and  were  now  awaiting  exe- 
cution ;  two  were  in  prison  as  yet  untried;  five  had 
escaped,  and  were  known  to  be  in  safety,  and  ten 
had  been  slain.  Seventeen  other  men,  colored,  also 
fighting  on  the  side  of  liberty,  have  been  reported 
killed  in  the  Harper's  Ferry  struggle.  The  North 
was  arousing,  the  South  was  on  fire;  while  the  prison- 
ers, all  of  them,  inspired  by  the  calmness  and  courage 
of  their  leader,  awaited  death  in  simple  and  manly 
fashion.  That  fact,  no  record  blackens,  and  no  advo- 
cate can  deny.  John  Brown's  correspondence  went 
forth  ;  each  letter  as  it  was  published,  became  as  a 
winged  fire  in  the  testimony  it  bore.  This  is  not  the 
time  nor  place  to  reproduce  them.  The  days  moved 
onward  with  austere  tread.  The  calm  man  in  the 
prison  cell  steadily  replies  to  his  correspondents.  On 
the  1st  of  December,  Mary,  his  wife,  came,  surrounded 
by   an    armed    guard,    and    compelled    to    leave    the 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  389 

friends,  Messrs.  Miller  McKim  and  Hector  Tyndale, 
who  had  escorted  her  from  Philadelphia,  behind  at 
Harper's  Ferry.  One  of  them  was  afterwards  Briga- 
dier-General Tyndale,  of  the  Union  Army,  and  com- 
manded for  a  time  the  Union  forces  in  the  upper 
valley,  with  headquarters  at  Harper's  Ferry. 

The  narrative  of  Andrew  Hunter  of  the  execution 
of  John  Brown  (see  New  Orleans  Times-Democrat, 
Sept.  5,  1887)  may  be  accepted  as  generally  accurate. 
Its  cool  and  cynical  recognition  of  the  prisoner's  for- 
titude and  courage  is  in  itself  a  tribute  worthy  of 
more  enduring  preservation  than  a  newspaper  file. 
He  says: 

"  On  the  morning  of  the  2d  of  December,  a  messenger  from 
Brown  came  to  me  to  my  office  in  Charlestown,  saying  that 
Captain  Brown  wanted  to  see  me  at  the  jail.  Though  extremely 
busy  making  arrangements  for  the  execution  that  day,  I 
dropped  everything  and  went  at  once  to  the  jail.  There,  to  my 
surprise,  I  learned  from  Brown  that  he  wanted  me  to  draw  his 
will.  He  had  been  previously  advised  by  me,  that  as  to  any 
real  estate  he  had,  the  disposition  of  it  would  be  governed  by 
the  laws  of  the  State  where  it  was  situated,  as  to  which,  of 
course,  I  could  not  advise  him,  but  as  to  any  personal  property 
he  possessed,  he  could  dispose  of  it  here  in  Virginia.  He  ac- 
cordingly asked  me  to  draw  his  will.  I  said  to  him,  'Captain, 
you  wield  a  ready  pen,  take  it,  and  I  will  dictate  to  you  such  a 
testament  as  to  this  personal  property  in  Virginia  as  will  hold 
good.  It  will  be  what  is  called  a  '*  holographic  will  "  ;  being 
written  and  signed  by  yourself,  it  will  need  no  witnesses.'  He 
replied,  '  Yes,  but  I  am  so  busy  now  answering  my  correspond- 
ence of  yesterday,  and  this  being  the  day  of  my  execution,  I 
haven't  time  and  will  be  obliged  if  you  will  write  it.'  There- 
upon, I  sat  down  with  pen  and  ink  to  draw  the  will,  and  did 
draw  it  according  to  his  dictation.  After  the  body  of  the  will 
had  been  drawn,  he  made   suggestions  which   led  to  drawing 


390  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  codicil.  It  was  drawn  as  he  suggested  it,  and  both  the 
will  and  the  codicil  are  attested  by  John  Avis  and  myself,  and 
was  probated  in  Jefferson  County.1     This  all  occurred  a  short 


1  The  first  will  was  a  holographic  one,  made  by  John  Brown 
and  prepared  the  day  before.     It  reads  like  him: 

Charlestown,  Jefferson  County.  Va.,  Dec.  i,  1859. 

I  give  to  my  son  John  Brown,  Jr.,  my  surveyor's  compass  and 
other  surveyor's  articles,  if  found;  also,  my  old  granite  monument, 
now  at  North  Elba,  N.  Y.,  to  receive  upon  its  two  sides  a  further 
inscription,  as  I  will  hereafter  direct;  said  stone  monument,  how- 
ever, to  remain  at  North  Elba  so  long  as  any  of  my  children  and 
my  wife  may  remain  there  as  residents.       . 

I  give  to  my  son  John  Brown,  Jr.,  my  silver  watch,  with  my 
name  engraved  on  the  inner  case. 

I  give  to  my  son  Owen  Brown  my  double  spring  opera-glass, 
and  my  rifle-gun  (if  found),  presented  to  me  at  Worcester,  Mass. 
It  is  globe-sighted  and  new.  I  give,  also,  to  the  same  son  $50  in 
cash,  to  be  paid  him  from  the  proceeds  of  my  wife's  estate,  in  con- 
sideration of  his  terrible  suffering  in  Kansas  and  his  crippled  con- 
dition from  his  childhood. 

I  give  to  my  son  Salmon  Brown  $50  in  cash,  to  be  paid  to  him 
from  my  father's  estate,  as  an  offset  to  the  first  two  cases  above 
named. 

I  give  to  my  daughter  Ruth  Thompson  my  large  old  Bible,  con- 
taining the  family  record. 

I  give  to  each  of  my  sons,  and  to  each  of  my  daughters,  my 
son-in-law,  Henry  Thompson,  and  to  each  of  my  daughters-in- 
law,  as  good  a  copy  of  the  Bible  as  can  be  purchased  at  some  book- 
store in  New  York  or  Boston,  at  a  cost  of  $5  each  in  cash,  to  be 
paid  out  of  the  proceeds  of  my  father's  estate. 

I  give  to  each  of  my  grandchildren  that  may  be  living  when  my 
father's  estate  is  settled,  as  good  a  copy  of  the  Bible  as  can  be 
purchased  (as  above)  at  a  cost  of  $3  each. 

I  desire  to  have  $50  each  paid  out  of  the  final  proceeds  of  my 
father's  estate  to  the  following  named  persons,  to  wit  :  To  Allen 
Hammond,  Esq.,  of  Rockville,  Tolland  County,  Conn.,  or  to 
George  Kellogg,  Esq.,  former  agent  to  the  New  England  Company 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  39 1 

time  before  the  officers  came  to  take  Brown  out  to  execution. 
As  evidence  of  his  coolness  and  firmness,  while  I  was  drawing 
the  will  he  was  answering  letters  with  a  cool  and  steady  hand. 
I  saw  no  signs  of  tremor  or  giving  away  in  him  at  all.  He 
wrote  his  letters,  each  one  of  which  was  handed  to  me  before 
it  went  out,  while  I  was  drawing  the  will,  so  as  to  get  done  by 


at  that  place,  for  the  use  and  benefit  of  that  company.  Also  $50 
to  Silas  Havens,  formerly  of  Lewisburg,  Summit  County,  Ohio,  if 
he  can  be  found.  Also,  $50  to  a  man  of  Stark  County,  Ohio,  at 
Canton,  who  sued  my  father  in  his  lifetime,  through  Judge  Hum- 
phrey and  Mr.  Upson,  of  Akron,  to  be  paid  by  J.  R.  Brown  to  the 
man  in  person,  if  he  can  be  found  ;  his  name  I  cannot  remember. 
My  father  made  a  compromise  with  the  man  by  taking  our  house 
and  lot  at  Munroeville.  I  desire  that  any  remaining  balance  that 
may  become  due  from  my  father's  estate  may  be  paid  in  equal 
amounis  to  my  wife  and  to  each  of  my  children,  and  to  the  widows 
of  Watson  and  Oliver  Brown,  by  my  brother. 

John  Avis,  Witness.  John  Brown. 

To  this  document  he  added  the  following  "  codicil"  next  morn- 
ing early,  and  as  will  be  seen,  mailed  to  his  wife. 

Charlestown,  Jefferson  County,  Va.,  Dec.  2,  1859. 

It  is  my  desire  that  my- wife  have  all  my  personal  property  not 
previously  disposed  of  by  me  ;  and  the  entire  use  of  all  my  landed 
property  during  her  natural  life  ;  and  that,  after  her  death,  the 
proceeds  of  such  land  be  equally  divided  between  all  my  then  liv- 
ing children  ;  and  that  what  would  be  a  child's  share  be  given  to 
the  children  of  each  of  my  two  sons  who  fell  at  Harper's  Ferry  ; 
and  that  a  child's  share  be  divided  among  the  children  of  my  now 
living  children  who  may  die  before  their  mother  (my  present  be- 
loved wife).  No  formal  will  can  be  of  use  when  my  expressed 
wishes  are  made  known  to  my  dutiful  and  beloved  family. 

John  Brown. 

My  Dear  Wife — I  have  time  to  enclose  the  within  and  the 
above,  which  I  forgot  yesterday,  and  to  bid  you  another  farewell. 
"  Be  of  good  cheer,"  and  God  Almighty  bless,  save,  comfort, 
guide,  and  keep  you  to  the  end. 

Your  affectionate  husband,  John  Brown. 


392  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  time  the  officers  came  to  take  him  out.  When  they  finally 
came  to  take  him  he  grasped  me  by  the  hand  and  thanked  me 
in  the  warmest  terms  for  the  kindness  I  had  shown  to  him  from 
the  beginning  down  to  that  time. 

"  I  left  the  jail  about  ten  o'clock  and  stood  at  the  corner 
above  the  jail  until  the  procession  went  out.  The  military  was 
drawn  up,  he  was  received  out  of  the  jail  into  a  spring  wagon, 
and  the  procession  moved  around  the  corner  of  the  jail  and  out 
George  street  to  the  field.  I  saw  everything  from  beginning  to 
end  of  that  morning's  operations,  and  preceded  the  procession 
by  a  few  minutes  in  getting  out  to  the  field.  That  whole 
story  about  his  kissing  a  negro  child  as  he  went  out  of  the  jail 
is  utterly  and  absolutely  false  from  beginning  to  end.  There 
is  not  a  word  of  truth  in  it.  Nothing  of  the  kind  occurred — 
nothing  of  the  sort  could  have  occurred.  He  was  surrounded 
by  soldiers,  and  no  negro  could  get  access  to  him. 

"  I  had  a  party,  called  my  suite,  of  some  fifteen  or  twenty  on 
that  day,  and  David  H.  Strother  ("Porte  Crayon,"  of  Harper 's 
Weekly)  was  among  the  number.  We  were  standing  near  the 
scaffold,  or  immediately  under  it,  when  the  drop  fell.  When 
Brown  was  led  forward  and  placed  on  the  drop,  and  Campbell, 
the  sheriff,  and  Avis,  the  jailer,  had  stepped  back,  I  distinctly 
heard  him  say  in  a  plaintive  tone,  '  I  hope  they  will  not  keep 
me  standing  here  any  longer  than  necessary.'  Immediately 
upon  hearing  which,  the  signal  was  given  to  cut  the  rope  that 
supported  the  drop,  which  was  done,  and  that  ended  John 
Brown's  career.  I  did  not  hear  him  say  '  be  quick,'  as  men- 
tioned by  Captain  Avis,  though  I  have  no  doubt  it  occurred  as 
he  has  narrated  it.  At  the  time  the  order  was  given  to  cut 
the  rope,  the  military  had  not  completed  their  dispositions 
around  the  scaffold.,  but  I  promptly  determined  that  Brown, 
according  to  his  wish,  should  not  be  kept  longer  in  this  state 
of  painful  suspense.  Though  very  close  to  Brown  (we  had 
gotten  there  to  see  how  he  bore  himself)  we  could  see  nothing 
of  tremor ;  his  hands  were  clinched,  and  he  was  as  cool  and  as 
firm  as  any  human  being  I  ever  saw  under  such  circumstances. 

"  While  the  body  was  hanging,  Strother  slipped  up,  raised 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  393 

the  cap  from  his  face  and  took  a  sketch  of  him  hanging.  He 
said  that  the  celebrated  Maria  Lydia  Child  had  published  that 
she  wanted  to  have  a  portrait  or  likeness  of  Brown  in  every 
condition  of  life  to  hang  in  her  room,  and  that  he  had  taken 
this  sketch  to  send  her,  that  '  she  might  have  him,  too,  when 
he  was  finished.'  If  he  sent  it,  she  has  the  best  portrait  of 
Brown  ever  taken. 

"After  Brown  had  hung  some  eight  or  ten  minutes  the 
doctors  began  to  go  upon  the  scaffold,  Dr.  Mason,  the  jail 
physician,  first.  He  examined  the  body  and  pronounced  him 
dead.  Some  ten  or  fifteen  other  physicians  then  went  up, 
examined  the  body  and  concurred  that  he  was  dead.  The 
body  was  then  cut  down,  placed  in  the  coffin  box  prepared  for 
it,  and  returned  to  the  jail.  It  remained  there  until  toward  the 
close  of  the  afternoon,  when  it  was  sent  to  the  depot  and 
transmitted  to  his  wife  and  friends  at  Harper's  Ferry  to  be 
carried  North." 

The  will  drawn  by  Mr.  Hunter  is  as  follows; 

I,  John  Brown,  a  prisoner  in  the  prison  of  Charlestown,  Jef- 
ferson County,  Va.,  do  hereby  make  and  ordain  this  as  my  own 
true  last  will  and  testament.  I  will  and  direct  that  all  my 
property,  being  personal  property,  which  is  scattered  about  in 
the  States  of  Virginia  and  Maryland,  should  be  carefully 
gathered  up  by  my  executor,  hereinafter  appointed,  and  dis- 
posed of  to  the  best  advantage,  and  the  proceeds  thereof  paid 
over  to  my  beloved  wife,  Mary  A.  Brown. 

Many  of  these  articles  are  not  of  a  warlike  character,  and  I 
trust  as  to  such,  and  all  other  property  that  I  may  be  entitled 
to,  that  my  rights  and  the  rights  of  my  family  may  be  re- 
spected. 

And  lastly,  I  hereby  appoint  Sheriff  James  W.  Campbell, 
executor  of  this,  my  true  last  will,  hereby  revoking  all  others. 

Witness  my  hand  and  seal  this  2d  clay  of  December,  1859. 

John  Browx.        [seal.] 

Signed,  sealed,  and  declared  to  be  the  true  last  will  of  John 


394  JOHN    BROWN. 

Brown,  in  our  presence,  who  attested  the  same  at  his  request, 
in  his  presence,  and  in  the  presence  of  each  other. 

John  Avis. 

Andrew  Hunter. 

Codicil — I  wish  my  friends,  James  W.  Campbell,  sheriff,  and 
John  Avis,  jailer,  as  a  return  for  their  kindness,  each  to  have  a 
Sharpe's  rifle  of  those  belonging  to  me,  or,  if  no  rifle  can  be 
had,  then  each  a  pistol. 

Witness  my  hand  and  seal  this  second  day  of  December,  1859. 

John  Brown.        [seal.] 

Signed,  sealed,  and  declared  to  be  a  codicil  to  the  last  will  and 
testament  of  John  Brown,  in  our  presence,  who  attested  the 
same  at  his  request,  in  his  presence,  and  in  the  presence  of  each 
other.  Andrew  Hunter, 

John  Avis. 

This  will  was  written  on  a  plain  white  quarter  sheet  of 
paper,  with  the  usual  faint  blue  lines,  but  with  no  side-rulings 
or  other  customary  incidentals  of  a  legal  document.  The  seals 
were  merely  pen-scrawls  inclosing  a  small  circular  space  in 
which  was  placed  the  word  "seal."  The  black  ink  in  which 
the  body  of  the  paper  was  indited  has  turned  brown  with  age, 
and  the  edges  of  the  folds  are  much  worn  and  tawny  in  color. 
Across  the  back  of  the  main  fold  are  these  indorsements: 

51. 

John  Brown's  will  and  codicil.  1859,  Dec.  19th.  Will  and 
codicil  proved  by  the  oaths  of  John  Avis  and  Andrew  Hunter, 
and  ordered  to  be  recorded.     Teste  : 

F.  A.  Moore,  C.  C. 

Recorded  Will  Book  No.  16,  page  143. 

This  document  is  now  in  the  City  of  Washington. 
It  was  "  of  record  "  for  years  at  Charlestown,  West 
Virginia,  but  when  the  county  seat  was  removed  to 
Shephardstown,  temporary  accommodations  were 
rented.  Having  but  a  limited  space  at  his  disposal, 
the  then  clerk  of  the  court  exercised   his  own  discre- 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  395 

tion  in  the  premises,  and  threw  out  what  he  con- 
sidered to  be  "  unnecessary  and  unclaimed  "  papers. 
Among  the  rest  was  this  original  will.  It  was 
promptly  rescued  by  a  prominent  citizen,  who  recog- 
nized its  historical  value,  and  afterward  by  bequest 
it  came  into  possession  of  relatives  at  the  Federal 
City.  It  has  been  carefully  examined,  signatures 
authenticated,  and  the  document  was  then  photo- 
graphed. Copies  of  this  fac-simile  are  in  my  posses- 
sion. Mr.  Andrew  Hunter  testified  before  the  Senate 
Committee  on  "The  Harper's  Ferry  Invasion"  in 
reply  to  a  question  of  Jefferson  Davis,  that  John 
Brown   "  sent   for   me  to  write  his  will." 

"  Did  you  write   it  ? "    was   the   next  question. 

"Yes,  sir,"  answered  Mr.  Hunter,  "about  an  hour 
and  a  half  before  his  execution.'" 

One  of  the  correspondents  of  the  New  York  Herald, 
a  Mr.  Gallagher,1  cousin  of  the  editor  of  The  Democrat, 
a  weekly  published  at  Charlestown,  was  allowed  about 
the  jail  during  the  last  week  of  John  Brown's  im- 
prisonment. In  order  to  see  the  last  of  the  tragedy, 
Mr.  Gallaher  drove  the  undertaker's  wagon  in 
which  a  coffin  was  placed.  On  this  John  Brown  and 
the  undertaker  were  seated.  The  latter  said  :  "Cap- 
tain Brown,  you  are  in  better  spirits  to-day  than  I." 

"  I  have  good  cause  to  be,"  was  the  quiet  response. 

1  New  Yoik  Herald,  Dec.  3,  1S59.  Mr.  Gallagher,  who  died  at 
Washington  in  1893,  confirmed  this  account  to  me  personally.  He 
left  behind  him  a  number  of  interesting  relics,  among  them  being 
a  copy  of  a  paper  containing  a  sermon  of  Henry  Ward  Beecher, 
sharply  critical  of  John  Brown.  The  latter  covered  the  margins 
with  tart  replies.  This  document  is  doubtless  in  possession  of  the 
old  reporter's  son,  who  is  employed,  I  believe,  in  the  library  of 
the  United  States  Geological  Survey. 


396  JOHN    BROWN. 

At  the  scaffold,  while  standing  waiting  Talliaferro's 
fussy  maneuvers,  using,  according  to  Hunter,  a 
"  criminal  "  execution  as  a  field  for  training  men  to 
thereafter  seek  the  "execution"  of  the  American 
Union.  Sheriff  Campbell  said  in  a  kind,  low  tone  to 
his  prisoner,  "  Are  you   not  tired?" 

"  Not  tired,"  was  the  reply,  "  but  don't  let  them 
make  me  wait  longer  than  is  absolutely  necessary." 

Three  thousand  Virginian  uniformed  militia  in- 
closed the  scaffold,  a  hollow  square.  According  to 
Mr.  Hunter  they  were  only  trying  to  get  into  forma- 
tion when  he  gave  the  signal  for  the  drop  to  fall. 
One  Northern  man,  at  least,  saw  the  execution. 
Correspondent  Olcott,  of  the  New  York  Tribune,  who, 
in  order  to  be  present,  took  another's  place  in  the 
ranks  of  a  cadet  company  from  Richmond.  Another 
young  man  was  there  with  pallid,  handsome  face,  and 
lithe  well-moulded  form,  whose  name  has  since  be- 
come almost  as  widely  infamous  as  that  of  the  man 
whose  death  he  then  gloated  over  has  become  re- 
nowned. John  Wilkes  Booth,  the  assassin  of  Abraham 
Lincoln,  served  as  a  volunteer  in  the  ranks  of  the 
Jefferson  Guards.  In  all  probability,  too,  a  Kansas 
man — one  of  John  Brown's  men — was  in  the  same 
file  with  him.  Charles  Lenhart,  a  printer,  before 
mentioned  in  this  volume,  is  known  to  have  left  his 
home  in  Kansas  some  time  before,  and  there  is  good 
reason  to  believe  that  he  went  to  Virginia,  passing 
himself  off  as  a  pro-slavery  Missourian.  As  he  pos- 
sessed the  sign,  etc.,  of  the  secret  Blue  Lodge  Society, 
and  was  thoroughly  informed,  Lenhart  could  have 
done  this.  Of  course  he  told  a  good  story  of  John 
Brown  outrages,  and  then  was  enabled  to  obtain  work 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  397 

at  Charlestown,  where  lie  remained  till  after  the  exe- 
cution of  Cook  on  the  16th  inst.  They  were  close 
friends  and  comrades,  and  Lenhart  desired  to  aid 
him,  if  possible.  The  printer  died  in  the  Union  Army 
in  1862.  For  miles  around  the  rugged-looking  coun- 
try town,  every  road  was  crowded  with  scouts  and 
pickets,  so  it  would  have  been  impossible  for  North- 
ern men,  as  Mr.  Hunter  asserted  was  the  case,  to  have 
left  the  railroad  before  reaching  Harper's  Ferry, 
which  was  under  strong  guard  of  both  Federal  and 
State  troops,  while  Maryland  had  troops  on  guard  at 
approaching  stations  and  towns,  and  crossed  Loudon 
County  for  the  purpose  of  being  present  at  the  exe- 
cution. Several  cannon  were  drawn  up  and  pointed 
at  the  scaffold,  and  not  until  the  quivering  form  of 
the  brave  old  man  ceased  its  muscular  action,  did  the 
shivering  commonwealth  recover  even  its  bragga- 
docio. It  had  forgotten  before  in  its  wild  terrors,  to 
do  that.  William  Jackson  Armstrong  (of  California), 
writer  and  lecturer,  standing  years  after  on  the  small 
rounded  knoll  upon  which  the  rude  scaffold  had 
stood,  thus  described  the  landscape  : 

"  The  beauty  of  the  earth,  as  on  that  fair,  soft  December  noon 
it  shone  in  on  his  sight  over  the  Blue  Ridge  mists,  might  have 
unmanned,  at  the  last  moment,  any  man  who  had  had  lower 
than  a  martyr's  purpose  for  his  deed.  But  John  Brown's  was 
not  an  unfledged  fancy,  and  his  imagination  had  only  lent  it- 
self to  human  sentiments.  He  said  to  his  jailer  as  he  mounted 
this  hill:  'This  is  a  beautiful  country.  I  have  never  noticed  it 
before.'  From  the  spot  of  the  scaffold,  on  the  ridge  of  a 
plowed  field,  the  country  clips  away  into  a  valley  of  superb 
picture — a  sweep  of  wild  fields,  broken  into  vistas  by  ribs  of 
mountain  here  and  there  pitched  up  through  the  soil  and  heat- 
ing fringes  of  forest.     On  the  edge  of  this  landscape,  live  miles 

\ 


39$  JOHN    BROWN. 

away,  glides  the  Shenandoah  River,  and  around  that  lifts  and 
sweeps  the  magnificent  crescent  of  the  Blue  Ridge,  closing  the 
vision  under  thirty  miles  of  eastern  sky.  That  vision,  beyond 
the  gaudy  military  parade  at  his  feet,  caught  at  last  John 
Brown's  eye  before  he  dropped  from  the  scaffold." 

His  last  written  words,  penned  in  the  jail-room  as 
he  was  about  to  leave  it  for  ever,  were  a  prophecy.  His 
last  spoken  words  were  those  of  calm  and  pleasant  re- 
signation. The  last  writing  was  in  chirography  clear, 
firm,  strong;  in  sentiment  solemn,  prescient,  majestic: 
Charlestown,  Va.,  2d  December,  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. 

Truly  could  it  be  said  and  sung — 

Y#JUf  >W^CX-7   £.Co^a-0   £*X~-  O-^-  9%X.  yJi-UxJ:.    frSLy 


uu 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  399 

Between  the  second  and  fifteenth  of  December  there 
was  little  of  interest  in  Virginia,  at  least.  The  people 
of  Charlestown  and  vicinity  managed,  however,  to 
keep  up  the  abnormal  excitement  on  which  they  had 
been  feeding.  At  the  North,  the  effects  of  John 
Brown's  execution  was  not  all  pleasant  to  the  gentle- 
men of  Virginia  who  had  made  use  of  it  as  a  means 
of  training  their  cohorts  for  an  attack  on  the  United 
States  itself  in  the  near  future.  Some  demonstra- 
tions may  have  been  satisfactory  to  them,  such,  for 
example,  as  the  breaking  up  by  a  Boston  "  mob  in 
broadcloth  "  of  a  sympathy  meeting  in  Tremont 
Temple.  But,  as  a  rule,  the  rising  tide  of  opinion 
expressed  nothing  but  sympathetic  opinion,  not  at 
the  "  raid  "  made  by  John  Brown,  but  at  the  cruelty 
and  cowardice  the  slaveholders  had  shown.  The 
body  of  the  Liberator  had  been  carried  in  solemn  sor- 
row from  Harper's  Ferry  to  North  Elba  and  there 
laid  beside  the  grand  granite  boulder,  which  now, 
in  monumental  letters,  boldly  chisseled,  bears  the 
words : 

JOHN  BROWN. 

"  Marvelous  old  man  !"  said  Wendell  Phillips  at  the  side  of 
his  grave.1  "  We  have  hardly  said  it  when  the  loved  form  of 
his  sons,  in  the  bloom  of  young  devotion,  encircled  him.  We 
remember  he  is  not  alone,  only  the  majestic  center  of  a  group. 
.  .  .  How  resolute  each  looked  into  the  face  of  Virginia, 
how  loyally  each  stood  at  his  forlorn  post,  meeting  death 
cheerfully,  till  that  master-voice  said,  '  It  is  enough.'  And 
these  weeping  children  and  widows  so  lifted  up  and  conse- 
crated by  long,  single-hearted  devotion  to  his  great  purpose, 


1  From  speech  delivered  at  the  grave  of  John   Brown,  North 
Elba,  December  8,  1S59. 


400  JOHN    BROWN. 

that  we  dare,  even  at  this  moment,  to  remind  them  how  blessed 
they  are  in  the  privilege  of  thinking  that  in  the  last  throbs  of 
those  brave,  young  hearts,  .  .  .  thoughts  of  them  mingled 
with  love  to  God  and  hope  for  the  slave.  He  has  abolished 
slavery  in  Virginia.  You  may  think  this  is  too  much.  Our 
neighbors  are  the  last  men  we  know.  The  hours  that  pass  us 
are  the  ones  we  appreciate  the  least.  .  .  .  History  will 
date  Virginian  Emancipation  from  Harper's  Ferry.  True,  the 
slave  is  still  there.  So,  when  the  tempest  uproots  a  pine  „  .  c 
it  looks  green  for  months, — a  year  or  two.  John  Brown  has 
loosened  the  roots  of  the  slave  system;  it  only  breathes, — it 
does  not  live, — hereafter.  ...  I  feel  honored  to  stand 
under  such  a  roof.  .  .  .  Thank  God  for  such  a  master. 
.  .  .  What  lessons  shall  these  lips  teach  us  ?  .  .  „  His 
words,  they  are  stronger  even  than  his  rifles.  These  crushed 
a  State.  Those  have  changed  the  thoughts  of  millions,  and 
will  yet  crush  slavery.  .  .  .  God  make  us  all  worthier  of 
him  whose  dust  we  lay  among  these  hills  he  loved.  Here  he 
girded  himself  and  went  forth  to  battle.  Fuller  success  than 
his  heart  ever  dreamed  God  granted  him.  He  sleeps  in  the 
blessings  of  the  crushed  and  the  poor,  and  men  believe  more 
firmly  in  virtue,  now  that  such  a  man  has  lived." 

A  movement  was  made  to  secure  a  commutation  of 
Edwin  Coppoc's  sentence.  Governor  Wise  seems  to 
have  entered  frankly  into  this,  and  it  went  so  far  that 
a  committee  of  the  State  Legislature  were  in  favor 
of  making  his  sentence  one  of  "  imprisonment  for 
life."  Edwin's  family  were  Quakers,  and  the  great 
influence  of  that  sect  was  brought  to  bear  in  his 
favor.  It  was,  however,  rejected  by  the  Legislature. 
Wise  could  not,  under  the  law,  commute  the  sen- 
tences of  any  of  the  men  convicted  of  treason,  he 
was  able,  therefore,  to  shield  himself  behind  the 
Legislature.  At  Charlestown,  the  relatives  of  Cook 
and  Coppoc  were  permitted  to  see  them.    The  latter's 


CAPTURE — TRIAL PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  40I 

grandfather  and  uncle,  from  Salem,  Ohio,  and  Cook's 
sister  and  husband,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Willard,  with  Miss 
Hughes,  a  cousin,  were  prolonging  their  farewells. 
In  the  town  was  a  Kansas  man,  Charles  Lenhart,  who 
under  disguise,  had  secured  a  position  where  he  was 
striving  to  be  of  service.  On  the  night  of  the  14th  of 
December,  Lenhart  was  on  guard  and  at  the  angle  of 
the  jail  wall  where,  the  next  night,  the  spectacle  of 
their  heads  above  its  edge  created  the  alarm  of  a 
faithful  pro-slavery  sentinel.  The  attempt  was  not 
made  on  the  14th,  because  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Willard  were 
still  in  the  town.  They  had  bade  their  brother  fare- 
well and  were  expected  to  leave  so  as  to  reach  an 
evening  train  to  the  West,  but  at  the  last  moment 
Mrs.  Willard  broke  down  and  was  obliged  to  remain 
till  the  next  day.  Knowledge  of  this  compelled  the 
two  prisoners  to  postpone  their  attempt  until  the 
next  night,  when  they  failed.  The  Associated  Press 
report  states*. 

•'The  sentinel  stationed  near  the  jail  reported  that  at  8.15 
o'clock  he  observed  a  man  on  the  jail  wall.  He  challenged 
him,  and,  receiving  no  answer,  fired  at  him.  Another  head 
was  also  seen  above  the  wall,  but  it  disappeared  as  soon  as  the 
first  one  had  been  fired  at.  The  man  on  the  top  of  the  wall 
seemed  at  first  determined  to  jump  down,  but  the  sentinel  de- 
clared his  intention  of  impaling  him  on  his  bayonet,  and  he 
then  retreated  into  the  jail-yard  with  Coppoc,  and  both  gave 
themselves  up  without  further  resistance.  Cook  afterwards 
remarked  that  if  he  could  have  got  over  and  throttled  the 
guard,  he  would  have  made  his  escape.  The  Shenandoah 
Mountains  are  within  ten  minutes'  run  of  the  jail  wall,  and  had 
he  reached  them,  with  his  thorough  knowledge  of  the  moun- 
tains, his  arrest  would  have  been  difficult — especially  as  but 
few  of  the  military  could  have  followed  him  during  the  night. 
26 


402  JOHN    BROWN. 

They  acknowledged  that  they  had  been  at  work  a  whole  week 
In  making  the  aperture  in  the  wall.  Their  cell  being  on  the 
first  floor,  the  aperture  was  not  more  than  five  feet  above  the 
pavement  of  the  yard,  and  when  freed  of  their  shackles  their 
access  to  the  yard  was  quite  easy.  Here,  however,  there  was 
a  smooth  brick  wall,  about  fifteen  feet  high,  to  scale.  This  diffi- 
culty was,  however,  soon  overcome  with  the  aid  of  the  timbers 
of  the  scaffold  on  which  Captain  Brown  was  hung,,  and  which 
was  intended  also  for  their  own  execution.  They  placed  these 
against  the  wall  and  soon  succeeded  in  reaching  the  top,  from 
which  they  could  have  easily  dropped  to  the  other  side,  had 
not  the  vigilance  of  the  sentinel  on  duty  so  quickly  checked 
their  movements." 

The  account  written  on  the  morning  of  the  execu- 
tion by  John  E.  Cook  differs  slightly  from  that  of  the 
Associated  Press.     It  is  as  follows  : 

"  Having  been  called  upon  to  make  a  fair  statement  in  regard 
to  the  ways  and  means  of  our  breaking  jail,  I  have  agreed  to  do 
so  from  a  sense  of  duty  to  the  sheriff  of  the  county,  our  jailer, 
and  the  jail  guard.  We  do  not  wish  that  any  one  should  be 
unjustly  censured  on  our  account.  The  principal  implements 
with  which  we  opened  a  passage  through  the  wall  of  the  jail 
were  a  barlow  knife  and  a  screw  which  we  took  out  of  the 
bedstead. 

"  The  knife  was  borrowed  from  one  of  the  jail  guards  to  cut 
a  lemon  with.  We  did  not  return  it  to  him.  He  had  no  idea 
of  any  intention  on  our  part  to  break  out,  neither  did  the 
sheriff,  jailer,  or  any  of  the  guard,  have  any  knowledge  of  our 
plans. 

"  We  received  no  aid  from  any  person  or  persons  whatever. 
We  had,  as  we  supposed,  removed  all  the  brick  except  the  last 
tier,  several  days  ago,  but  on  the  evening  previous  to  our  break- 
ing out,  we  found  our  mistake  in  regard  to  that  matter. 

"  We  had  intended  to  go  out  on  the  evening  that  my  sister 
and  brother-in-law  were  here,  but  I  knew  that  it  would  reflect 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  403 

on  them,  and  we  postponed  it — but  I  urged  Coppoc  to  go  and  I 
would  remain,  but  he  refused.     We  then  concluded  to  wait. 

"  I  got  a  knife  blade  from  Shields  Green,  and  with  that  made 
some  teeth  in  the  barlow  knife,  with  which  we  sawed  off  our 
shackles.  We  had  them  all  off  the  night  previous  to  our  getting 
out.  Coppoc  went  out  first  and  I  followed.  We  then  got  up  on 
the  wall,  when  I  was  discovered  and  shot  at.  The  guard  out- 
side the  wall  immediately  came  up  to  the  wall, 

"  We  saw  there  was  no  chance  to  escape,  and  as  it  was  dis- 
covered that  we  had  broken  jail,  we  walked  in  deliberately 
and  gave  ourselves  up  to  the  sheriff,  Captain  Avis,  and  the 
jail  guard.  There  was  no  person  or  persons  who  aided  us  in 
our  escape.     This  is  true,  so  help  us  God. 

John  E.  Cook0 
Edwin  Coppoc. 

The  regular  Press  reports  are  drawn  upon  for  an 
account  of  the  excitement  following  the  attempted 
escape  and  of  the  proceeding  at  the  double  execu- 
tions of  the  following  day. 

"At  daybreak  this  morning  the  reveille  was  sounded  from 
the  various  barracks,  announcing  the  dawn  of  the  day  of 
execution,  and  soon  the  whole  community  was  astir.  The 
weather  was  bright  and  beautiful,  and  much  milder  than  for 
several  preceding  days.  At  nine  o'clock  the  entire  military 
force  in  attendance  was  formed  on  Main  street,  and  the  officers 
reported  ready  for  duty  at  headquarters.  Those  companies 
detailed  for  field  duty  around  the  gallows  immediately  took  up 
the  line  of  march,  and  at  9.30  o'clock  were  in  the  positions 
assigned  them  in  the  field.  Those  companies  detailed  for 
escort  duty  took  up  their  positions  in  front  of  the  jail,  awaiting 
orders. 

"At  10.30  o'clock  General  Taliaferro,  with  his  staff,  number- 
ing about  twenty-five  officers,  having  given  orders  to  prepare 
the  two  negro  prisoners,  Shields  Green  and  John  Copeland,  for 
execution,  took  their  departure  to  join  the  main  body  of  the 
•troops   on  the  field.     The  military  then   formed  in   a  hollow 


404  JOHN    BROWN. 

around  the  jail,  and  an  open  wagon,  containing  the  coffins  of 
the  prisoners,  drew  up  in  front,  with  a  carriage  to  convey 
Sheriff  Campbell  and  his  deputies.  The  crowd  of  citizens  and 
strangers  was  very  great — at  least  five  times  as  numerous  as 
on  the  occasion  of  Brown's  execution — most  of  whom  were 
already  on  the  field,  while  others  wanted  to  see  the  prisoners 
come  out." 

Religious  services  were  performed  in  the  prisoners' 
cell,  and  at  a  quarter  to  eleven  their  departure  was 
made.     According  to  the  report, 

"  Copeland  and  Green  seemed  downcast  and  wore  none  of 
that  calm  and  cheerful  spirit  evinced  by  Brown  under  similar 
circumstances.  They  were  helped  into  the  wagon  and  took 
their  seats  on  their  coffins  without  scarcely  looking  to  the  right 
or  left.  .  .  .  They  mounted  the  scaffold  with  a  firm  step, 
and  were  immediately  joined  by  Sheriff  Campbell.     .     .     . 

"  Green  died  very  easy,  his  neck  being  broken  by  the  fall. 
The  motion  of  his  body  was  very  slight.  Copeland  seemed 
to  suffer  very  much,  and  his  body  writhed  in  violent  contor- 
tions for  several  minutes.  The  bodies  were  placed  in  poplar 
coffins  and  carried  back  to  jail.  They  will  be  interred  to-mor- 
row on  the  spot  where  the  gallows  stands,  but  there  is  a  party 
of  medical  students  here  from  Winchester  who  will  doubtless 
not  allow  them  to  remain  there  long." 

John  Edwin  Cook  and  Edwin  Coppoc  were  caMed 
from  their  cells  at  half  past  twelve,  the  religious 
services  having  closed.     The  report  says  that- — 

"  They  were  reserved  and  rather  quiet.  Cook  gave  direc- 
tions in  regard  to  one  or  two  articles :  one,  a  breast-pin,  he 
did  not  want  taken  off,  then,  nor  at  the  scaffold.  He  wished 
it  given  to  his  wife,  or  to  his  boy  if  he  lived.  Within 
his  shirt-bosom,  on  the  left  side,  was  a  daguerreotype  and 
lock  of  his  son's  hair,  which  he  wished  given  to  his  wife. 
During   these   proceedings,    Coppoc  was  struggling   to  keep 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  405 

down  his  emotion  and  Cook  was  striving  to  be  calm.  The 
Quaker  gentleman  remarked  that  'it  was  hard  to  die,'  to  which 
Coppoc  responded,  '  It  is  the  parting  from  friends,  not  the 
dread  of  death,  that  moves  us.'  On  the  way  down  stairs  they 
were  allowed  to  advance  to  the  cell  of  Stevens  and  Hazlett,  and 
bid  them  farewell.  They  shook  hands  cordially,  and  Cook 
said  to  Stevens,  '  My  friend,  good-by.'  Stevens  said,  '  Good 
by,  cheer  up  ;  give  my  love  to  my  friends  in  the  other  world.' 
Coppoc  also  made  a  remark  to  Stevens,  which  was  unheard  by 
the  crowd,  but  Stevens  replied,  '  Never  mind.'  Both  then 
shook  hands  with  Hazlett,  and  bade  him  '  good-by,'  but  did 
not  call  him  by  name.  On  emerging  from  jail,  Cook  recog- 
nized several  gentlemen  and  bowed  politely. 

"  After  the  cap  had  been  placed  on  their  heads,  Coppoc 
turned  toward  Cook,  and  stretched  forth  his  hand  as  far  as 
possible.  At  the  same  time  Cook  said,  '  Stop  a  minute — where 
is  Edwin's  hand  ?  '  They  then  shook  hands  cordially,  and  Cook 
said,  'God  bless  you.'  The  calm  and  collected  manner  of 
both  was  very  marked.  On  approaching  the  scaffold,  Cook 
shook  hands  with  a  large  number  of  persons,  and  bowed 
politely  to  Mayor  Green.  .  .  .  They  both  exhibited  the  most 
unflinching  firmness,  saying  nothing,  with  the  exception  of 
bidding  farewell  to  the  ministers  and  sheriff.  After  the  rope 
was  adjusted,  Cook  exclaimed,  '  Be  quick — as  quick  as  pos- 
sible,' which  was  also  repeated  by  Coppoc.  After  hanging  for 
about  half  an  hour,  both  bodies  were  taken  down  and  placed 
in  black  walnut  coffins,  prepared  for  them.  That  of  Cook  was 
placed  in  a  poplar  box,  labeled  and  directed  as  follows:  '  Ash- 
bell  P.  Willard  and  Robert  Crowley,  No.  104  William  street, 
New  York,  care  of  Adams's  Express.'  Coppoc's  body  was 
placed  in  a  similar  box,  to  be  forwarded  to  his  relatives  in 
Salem,  Ohio." 

From  the  16th  of  December,  1859,  until  the  26.  of 
February,  i860,  when  Aaron  D wight  Stevens  and 
Albert  Hazlett  were  arraigned,  little  transpired  at 
Charlestown    of    any    moment.       From    a    constant 


406  JOHN    BROWN. 

parade  of  from  1,000  to  3,000  armed  militia  (the  first 
named  force  were,  it  seems,  necessary  to  secure  the 
peaceful  execution  of  Green,  Copeland,  Cook  and 
Coppoc,  the  latter  number  that  of  John  Brown)  the 
guard  had  diminished,  first  to  two  companies,  and 
finally  to  one  of  about  sixty  men.  Judge  Parker 
being  too  reluctant  to  continue  the  task,  another 
district  judge,  Mr.  Kenny,  took  his  place  on  the 
bench.  Andrew  Hunter  represented  the  State;  George 
Sennott,  of  Boston,  with  undiminished  energy,  de- 
fended the  prisoners.  Before  the  proceedings  fairly 
begun,  Mr.  Sennott  read  a  letter  he  had  addressed  to 
President  Buchanan,  with  the  reply  thereto.1 


1  To  His  Excellency  James  Buchanan,  President  of  the  United 
Stales: 

The  undersigned  respectfully  invites  the  attention  of  the  Presi- 
dent to  the  case  of  Aaron  D.  Stevens,  whose  counsel  he  is. 

Mr.  Stevens  was  arrested  in  the  armory  grounds  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  during  the  late  disturbances  there.  He  was  committed  for 
examination  under  the  authority  of  the  United  States.  After- 
wards, and  before  any  such  examination  was  made,  he  was  indicted 
for  treason  and  other  capital  offenses,  in  and  against  the  Common- 
wealth of  Virginia.  He  was  forced  to  plead;  but  he  was  so  dread- 
fully wounded  as  to  be  in  a  dying  condition,  and  the  humanity  of 
the  court  would  not  urge  his  trial,  which  was  indefinitely  post- 
poned. 

Contrary  to  expectations,  however,  he  did  not  die  of  his  five 
desperate  and  all  but  mortal  wounds,  and  it  was  thought  fit  to  try 
him.  The  people,  who  had  shown  little  sympathy  for  the  oilier 
prisoners,  were  deeply  moved  when  this  young  man  was  brought 
in  on  a  bed  and  laid  on  the  courthouse  floor.  A  jury  was  partly 
empaneled,  and  the  undersigned,  who  had  asked  for  delay  without 
success,  was  present  and  ready  to  proceed  wilh  the  trial.  All  at 
once,  without  any  consultation  with  the  defendant,  proceedings 
Were  suspended,  and  a  dispatch,  said  to  be  from  the  Governor  cf 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  407 

In  his  reply  to  a   demand  of  Governor  Wise,  dated 
Nov.  25,  1859,  for  use  of  United  States  troops  to  pre- 


Virginia,  recommending  the  defendant  to  be  given  up  to  the 
authorities  of  the  United  Slates,  was  read  in  open  court.  In  this 
arrangement  the  defendant,  being  asked  to  do  so  by  the  counsel 
conducting  the  case  for  the  Commonwealth,  acquiesced,  and  con- 
sented to  the  suspending  of  the  trial  with  the  understanding  that 
he  was  to  be  delivered  into  the  custody  of  the  United  States,  and 
to  be  tried  in  their  courts. 

But  now,  from  private  advices  and  fron  t-he  public  acts  of  the 
Legislature  of  Virginia,  we  learn  that  the  Commonwealth  is  about 
to  retract  its  own  proposition,  made  to  and  accepted  by  Mr. 
Stevens  in  good  faith  on  his  part,  and  without  any,  the  slightest 
shadow,  of  constraint  upon  the  part  of  the  Commonwealth,  Mr. 
Stevens  is  to  be  again  taken  from  the  marshal's  custody,  and  a 
special  session  of  the  Circuit  Court  of  Jefferson  County  is  pro- 
posed to  try  him,  though  the  regular  session  comes  on  as  early  as 
May. 

Such,  according  to  the  best  of  his  information  and  belief,  being 
the  facts,  the  undersigned,  as  it  was  his  duty  to  do,  respectfully 
inquires  of  the  President  what  action,  if  any,  the  authorities  of  the 
United  States  have  taken,  or  propose  to  take,  in  the  case  of  Aaron 
D.  Stevens.  The  forlorn  and  desperate  condition  of  the  man,  and 
his  uncomplaining  fortitude,  appeal  for  an  answer  to  the  well- 
known  humanity  of  the  President  much  more  strongly  than  any 
claim  which  the  undersigned  imagines  he  has  to  be  answered. 
The  answer  is  plainly  of  the  last  importance  to  the  defendant,  and 
is  awaited  with  great  anxiety  and  respect  by  his  counsel,  the 
President's  humble,  obedient  servant.  Geo.  Sennott. 

Washington,  Dec.  16,  1S59. 
Dear  Sir — I  have  received  your  favor  of  the  13th  instant,  and 
immediately  telegraphed  to  Andrew  Hunter,  Esq.,  to  ascertain 
whether  Mr.  Stevens  had  been  actually  delivered  to  the  United 
Stales  authorities  according  to  the  current  report  His  answer, 
dated  to-day,  is  as  follows:  ft  Stevens  has  not  been  delivered  to 
the  authorities  of  the  United  Stales.  Undecided  as  yet  whether 
he  will  be  tried  here.  He  is  still  in  the  Charlestown  jail."  Yours 
very  respectfully,  James  Buchanan. 


408  JOHN    BROWN. 

vent   alleged   "invasions"   of   the   State   of  Virginia, 
from  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio,  Mr.  Buchanan  said  that 

..."  There  is  one  measure  which,  on  the  presumption 
that  your  information  is  well  founded,  it  is  both  my  right  and 
my  duty  to  adopt:  that  is,  to  reinforce  the  guard  already  at 
Harper's  Ferry."  This  is  necessary,  he  wrote,  to  protect  pub- 
lic property  as  well  as  to  prevent  "  insurgents  "  from  "  seizing 
arms,"  and  he  adds,  "  Besides  it  is  possible  the  additional 
troops  may  be  required  to  act  as  posse  comitatus  on  the  requi- 
sition of  the  marshal  of  the  United  States  for  the  western 
district  of  Virginia,  to  prevent  the  rescue  of  Stevens,  now  in 
his  custody,  charged  with  thecriine  of  high  treason." 

When,  however^  the  question  is  that  of  Stevens's 
trial  and  execution  by  Virginia,  the  President  who 
could  send  troops  to  keep  him  as  a  Federal  prisoner, 
transmits  his  counsel  the  baldfaced  acknowledg- 
ment of  legal  fraud  in  the  form  of  a  dispatch  from 
the  United  States  marshal  to  the  effect,  that  "  Stevens 
has  not  been  delivered  to  the  authorities  of  the  United 
States:'     A  curious  dilemma  this  to  be  impaled  upon. 

Mr.  Sennott  moved  for  Stevens's  discharge  on  the 
ground  that  the  Commonwealth  had  offered  a  trial 
in  the  United  States  Court,  and  that  the  offer  had 
been  accepted.  Hunter  denied  that  such  a  proposi- 
tion had  ever  been  made  in  court.  Governor  Wise 
had  recommended  it  to  be  done,  "in  order  to  reach 
Brown's  confederates."  He  withdrew  that,  however, 
on  the  appointment  of  the  Mason  Committee  by  the 
United  States  Senate.  Harding,  the  inebriated  and 
snubbed  county  attorney,  took  the  occasion  to  say 
that  Hunter  had  proposed  the  same  thing  as  Governor 
Wise,  and  that  he,  Harding,  did  then  and  would  have 
resisted  in  court  the  carrying  out  of  any  such  con- 


CAPTURE — TRIAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  409 

tract.     Sennott's  motion  was  overruled   and   the   trial 
proceeded  rapidly  to  conviction  and  sentence.1 


1  A  copy  of  the  first  count  of  the  indictment  against  Stevens  is 
given  below  with  a  statement  of  the  other  two  counts.  It  will  be 
seen  that  the  charges  of  treason  and  murder  were  abandoned  in 
his  case,  as  also  in  that  of  Albert  Hazlett.  They  were  presented 
"  for  advising"  certain  "slaves"  to  "rebel  and  make  insurrec- 
tion," as  per  the  first  count  here  given,  of  "  conspiring  "  to  do  the 
same  thing  in  the  other  two.  The  quaint  phraseology  is  of  interest, 
and  the  historical  significance  of  the  document  warrants  the  quot- 
ing of  this  count: 

Virginia,  to  wit:  In  the  Circuit  Court  of  Jefferson  county, 
Thirteenth  Judicial  Circuit  of  Virginia,  Jefferson  county,  to  wit: 

First  count — The  Jurors  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Virginia,  in 
and  for  the  body  of  the  county  of  Jefferson,  duly  etnpanneled  and 
attending  upon  said  Court,  upon  their  oaths  present,  that  Aaron  D. 
Stevens,  being  a  free  person,  on  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
days  of  the  month  of  October,  in  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and 
fifty-nine,  and  on  divers  other  days  before  and  after  that  time,  in 
the  county  of  Jefferson  and  the  Commonwealth  of  Virginia  afore- 
said, and  within  the  jurisdiction  of  that  Court,  not  having  the  fear 
of  God  before  his  eyes,  but  moved  and  seduced  by  the  instigations 
of  the  devil,  did  maliciously,  willfully,  and  feloniously,  advise  cer- 
tain slaves  of  the  county  and  Commonwealth  aforesaid,  to  wit: 
slaves  called  Jim,  Sam.  Mason,  and  Catesby,  the  slaves  of  Lewis 
W.  Washington,  and  slaves  called  Henry,  Levi,  Ben,  Jerry,  Phil, 
George,  and  Bill,  the  slaves  of  John  H.  Allstadt,  and  each  of  said 
slaves  severally,  to  rebel  and  make  insurrection  against  their  said 
masters  respectively,  and  against  the  authority  of  the  constitution 
and  laws  of  the  said  Commonwealth  of  Virginia,  to  the  evil  exam- 
ple of  all  others  in  like  case  offending  against  the  form  of  the  sta- 
tute in  that  case  provided,  and  against  the  peace  and  dignity  of 
the  Commonwealth. 

******** 

Lewis  W.  Washington,  Alexander  Kelly,  William  D.  Copeland, 
John  McClelland,  Jesse  Grimes,  Benjamin  F.  Beall,  Lewis  P. 
Stary,  and   George   H.  Furtney — witnesses   sworn    in  open  court 


4IO  JOHN    BROWN. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  fact  of  "  slaves  "  assist- 
ing the  raiders  is  herein  judicially  and  historically 
acknowledged.  Virginian  authorities  at  that  time 
endeavored  to  minimize  the  sympathetic  position 
of  the  enslaved  people.  Ten  slaves  are  named  as 
being  "advised"  with,  but,  in  the  third  count,  the 
indictment  for  conspiracy  runs  against  those  already 
named  and  divers  other  slaves  to  the  jurors  unknown, 
The  trial  of  Albert  Hazlett,  as  "  William  Harrison, 
alias  Albert  Hazlett  "  was  opened  on  the  8th  of  Febru- 
ary. There  was  really,  as  before  stated,  but  little  direct 
proof  of  his  connection  with  the  Harper's  Ferry  raid. 
Except  in  the  case  of  one  witness,  who  identified  Haz- 
lett as  the  raider  by  whom  he  was  captured  and  treated 
well,  even  to  risking  himself  to  prevent  injury  to  the 
prisoner,  the  chief  testimony  was  of  the  flimziest  cir- 
cumstantial character.  Another  point  which  told 
for  identification  was  the  fact  that  when  captured, 
Albert  Hazlett  carried  a  Sharpe's  rifle,  pistol,  and 
cartridge-belt  and  box.  It  is  safe  to  say  that  had 
Hazlett's  arrest  occurred  in  Ohio,  he  would  not  have 
been  surrendered  to  Virginia  by  that  State,  and  upon 
the  evidence  offered.  At  a  later  date  a  test  was  given 
in  the  case  of  Francis  J.  Merriam,  whose  surrender 
was  demanded.  Governor  Chase  replied  that  no  evi- 
dence was  offered  that  Merriam  had  even  been  in  Vir- 
ginia.    He  never  had,  except  as  a  passenger  on  a  rail- 


this  first  day  of  February,  i860,  to  give  evidence  to  the  Grand  Jury 
upon  the  bill  of  indictment. 

Robt.  T.  Brown, 
Clerk  of  the  Circuit  Court  of  Jefferson  County. 
Robt.  T.   Brown,  County  Clerk. 


CAPTURE — TRTAL — PRISON — SCAFFOLD.  41 1 

road  train.  Nor  was  there  any  proof  of  Hazlett's 
presence  in  Virginia  submitted  to  the  examining 
officer  at  Carlisle,  Pennsylvania,  showing  that  the 
arrested  man  had  ever  been  in  the  State  demanding 
his  surrender.  All  this,  however,  passed  for  nothing. 
Virginia  demanded  her  victim  and  got  him.  All  the 
idle  talk  of  Governor  Wise's  "  merciful "  desires, 
which  were  rife  in  the  sad  and  tragic  panorama,  be- 
tween the  19th  of  October,  1859,  and  the  16th  day  of 
February,  i860,  are  blown  away  like  thistledown  in 
the  breeze,  when  the  execution  of  Stevens  and  Haz- 
lett  is  recalled.  It  was  a  piece  of  pure  savagery,  de- 
manded only  by  the  merciless  voracity  of  slavehold- 
ing  fury.  Stevens  or  Hazlett  never  became  parties 
to  any  appeals  for  mercy.  They  neither  expected  or 
asked  it.  Their  able  and  energetic  counsel,  Mr,  Sen- 
not,  did  all  that  he  could;  all  that  any  lawyer  might, 
but  against  the  inexorable  maw  of  public  opinion, 
excited  by  dread  of  attack  on  "property"  in  human 
beings,  and  excited  to  fury  by  the  exaggerations  of 
political  conspirators  seeking  to  rend  apart  the 
Federal  Union,  nothing  but  death  could  be  the  out- 
come. And  these  young  men,  handsome,  gallant, 
unflinching,  and  true  in  their  manly  fortitude,  with 
"  malice  towards  none  and  charity  for  all,"  went  to 
the  gallows  on  the  16th  of  March,  i860,  with  a 
debonair  courage  befitting  their  years  and  a  dignity 
of  mien  and  manner  that  exalted  the  cause  for  which 
they,  with  the  others,  had  so  ungrudgingly  lived  and 
died. 

So  John  Brown  and  his  men  battered  the  citadel 
wall — a  forlorn  hope,  which  perished  in  the  doing. 
Lo!    the   wall   was    rent  in   twain,  revealing   all    the 


412  JOHN    BROWN. 

creeping,  slimy  horrors  that  oppression  creates  in  the 
hearts  and  brains  of  the  oppressors  themselves!  We 
learned,  as  never  before,  the  truth  of  Lamartine's 
saying  that  man  never  fastens  a  chain  around  the 
heel  of  his  fellow  man,  but  what  God  fastens  the 
other  end  around  the  neck  of  the  oppressor ! 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

AS  SEEN  BY  HIMSELF,  FAMILY,  NEIGHBORS,  AND    FRIENDS. 

John  Brown,  the  farmer — His  characteristics — The 
father  and  teacher — Business  illustrates  integrity — 
Leader  of  the  slave — How  he  'reasoned — /;/  prison 
and  his  cheerfulness — Religious  philosophy — A  mod- 
em Franklin — The  North  Elba  home — How  the 
family  bore  it — Oliver's  and  Watson* s  wives. 

They  held  themselves  "as  the  Lord's  free  people, 
to  walk  in  all  His  ways  made  known,  or  to  be  made 
known   to   them,  according  to  their  best  endeavors, 

WHATEVER    IT    MAY    COST    THEM." 

This  was  a  part  of  the  covenant  which  Peter  Brown, 
the  carpenter,  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
before  his  sixth  descendant,  John  Brown,  swung 
from  a  Virginian  gallows  for  the  "crime  "  of  seeking 
to  overthrow  chattel  slavery,  signed  in  the  cabin  of 
the  Mayflower,  one  December  morning  in  the  seven- 
teenth century.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  in  "Elsie 
Venner,"  writes  of  a  man's  brain  and  body  as  being 
an  omnibus,  filled  with  his  ancestors.  Surely,  John 
Brown's  Pilgrim  progenitor  drove  the  vehicle  that 
rumbled  to  the  scaffold  at  Charlestown,  while  the 
revolutionary  grandfather  must  have  served  as  its 
conductor.     If  a  man  ever  obeyed  the  law  of  heredity, 


414  JOHN     BROWN. 

it  was  John  Brown  !  If  a  citizen  ever  made  an  apo- 
theosis of  such  loftier  civic  duties,  as  came  to  him,  it 
was  John  Brown  !  And  all  that  led  thereto  was  as 
but  part  of  his  daily  life  and  hourly  walk.  To  him  it 
was  not  necessary  to  exalt  the  horn  of  righteousness; 
yet  every  note  or  blast  thereof  fell  on  ears  attuned 
to  understand.  There  is  not  in  American  historical 
literature  more  quaint,  sincere  materials  from  which 
to  weave,  as  a  living  fabric,  the  life  of  an  American 
and  New  England  family — such  a  life  as  was  con- 
stantly lived  within  the  first  six  decades  of  this  cen- 
tury, than  can  be  found  in  the  published  letters,  or 
mass  of  unpublished  reminiscences  and  manuscripts 
still  existing,  written  by  John  Brown,  or  by  members 
of  his  family  to  him  and  to  others.  The  homely 
details  of  a  severe  and  Spartan  life  are,  however, 
gilded  therein  by  a  frank  simplicity  of  spirit.  The 
animating  forces  of  noble,  redemptive  subjectivity  of 
soul,  always  active  and  informing,  touches  each  seem- 
ingly severe  detail  into  that  clearness  of  outline 
which  heat  brings  back  to  an  incrusted  and  battered 
die  or  medallion.  Every  line  glows,  and  the  beauty 
of  true  endeavor  burns  from  the  inner  life  to  the 
outer  environment.  It  is  not  designed  to  give  John 
Brown's  letters  and  papers  here — the  important  ones 
may  be  found  in  the  Appendix — but  enough  may  be 
quoted  from  himself,  his  "  most  familiar  acquaint- 
ances— his  family,"  as  he  once  quaintly  expressed  it, 
and  his  immediate  neighbors  and  friends,  to  show  in 
truth  what  manner  of  man  it  was  that  American  slavery 
thought  fit  to  hang  with  such  awesome  pomp  and 
fearsome  ceremony.  Hung  as  a  lawbreaker,  of  course, 
and  according  to  "  law,"  but  no  defense  of  the  great 


AS  SEEN  BY  HIMSELF,  FAMILY,  ETC.       415 


lawbreakers,  from  Moses  to  Washington,  can  be 
made  that  will  not  count  John  Brown  as  a  saint 
among  them  all.  Let  us  see,  then,  what  manner  of 
man  he  was,  apart  from  the  deeds  that  sent  his  soul 
"  marching  on." 

His  boyhood  and  its  conditions  have  been  described 
in  the  Stearns  autobiographical  paper,  and  by  his 
father,  Owen  Brown,  in  an  autobiography  which  first 
saw  the  light  in  Mr.  Sanborn's  volume.1  So,  at  twenty- 
four,  of  simple  ways,2  one  of  the  neatest  of  men,  and 
very  particular  as  to  personal  cleanliness,  he  would 
never  wear  expensive  clothing,  however,  for  the  reason 
that  their  cost  was  a  useless  waste  of  money  which 
might  be  given  to  the  poor.  Often  jocose  and  mirth- 
ful in  speech  he  was  hotly  resentful  to  all  vulgar 
words  and  profane  talk.  Helpful  to  his  neighbors, 
and  anxious  to  assist  new  settlers,  but  suspicious  of 
those  whose  standards  differed  from  his  own.  Active 
in  favor  of  free  schools,  abstemious  in  food,  never 
using  tobacco  or  intoxicating  liquor,  which  custom 
then  made  common  and  deemed  no  offense.  He  was 
masterful  in  disposition,  but  open  to  reason;  dislik- 
ing to  be  accused  of  unfairness  or  harsh  judgment, 
but  argumentative,  somewhat  set  and  disputatious. 
He  never,  however,  respected  those  who  always  agreed 
with  hirm  He  knew  the  Bible  thoroughly  and  could 
use  it  with  more  aptness  of  illustration  than  any  of 
those  about  him — lay  or  clerical.  Rigid  and  unbend- 
ing  in   his   religious  views,  he  was  kind  and  friendly 


1  See  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown." 

2  This  characterization  of  earlier  life  and  habits  in  Western 
Pennsylvania  are  condensed  from  a  lengthy  letter  from  W.  C.  Neff, 
of  Bradford,  Pa.,  written  in  the  winter  of  1859-60. 


41 6  JOHN    BROWN. 

in  all  his  personal  conduct  and  intercourse.  In  local 
affairs  he  was  always  an  active  organizer  of  good 
roads  and  free  schools,  a  stern  opponent  of  Sabbath- 
breaking,  and  a  liberal  supporter  of  the  church  he  be- 
longed to;  always  foremost  in  good  citizenship.  He 
was  then  a  Presbyterian — a  better  and  more  ready 
theologian,  too,  than  most  of  the  preachers  known  in 
those  years.  Anti-slavery  to  the  core — as  then  under- 
stood; in  politics  he  was  a  supporter  of  John  Quincy 
Adams,  and,  therefore,  a  Northern  Whig.  He  would 
not  vote  for  Henry  Clay,  because  he  defended  slavery 
and  had  fought  a  duel.  He  early  refused  to  do  mili- 
tary duty  and  paid  a  fine  in  preference.  Becoming  a 
Mason  in  his  younger  manhood,  he  soon  abandoned 
the  fraternity,  and  after  the  Morgan  excitement  be- 
came strongly  anti-secret  society  in  his  views.  In 
business  affairs  he  was  shrewd  and  energetic,  but 
rigidly  upright  and  honest,  "no  trader"  said  a  later 
friend.  He  made  good  leather,  and  would  not  allow 
a  single  pound  to  leave  the  tanyard  until  there  could 
by  no  means  be  any  more  water  squeezed  from  it. 
His  customers  were  often  compelled  to  submit  to 
return  without  their  goods,  as  he  would  take  no  pay 
until  the  hides  were  completely  dry.  An  excellent 
judge  of  timber — he  owned  five  hundred  acres  of 
hemlock — and  a  good  surveyor,  he  was  in  constant 
demand  in  timber  lot  purchases.  Even  then  he  was 
noted  for  terse,  epigrammatic  speech,  and  a  quaint 
humor  which  was  no  respecter  of  persons.  Having  a 
public  theological  dispute  with  a  Baptist  clergyman, 
on  the  doctrine  of  predestination,  in  which  John  Brown 
was  an  earnest  believer,  he  afterwards  criticised  his 
clerical    opponent    with    considerable    plainness    of 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  417 

speech.  The  clergyman,  who  was  one  that  magnified 
his  office  and  exacted  all  the  deference  that  in  those 
days  was  generally  tendered  thereto,  was  quite  in- 
dignant at  the  tanner's  presumption,  and  called  to 
ask  if  Brown  had  said  that  he,  the  minister,  had  not 
behaved  in  a  gentlemanly  manner?  "I  did  say  you 
were  no  gentleman.  I  said  more  than  that,  sir,"  was 
the  slow  response. 

"What  did  you  say?"  queried  the  indignant  cleric. 

"I  said,  sir,  it  would  take  as  many  men  like  you  to 
make  a  gentleman  as  it  would  take  hens  to  make  a 
cock  turkey." 

The  Baptist  preacher  felt  compelled  to  give  the 
Presbyterian  farmer  another  chance  to  debate.  The 
complaint  made  of  the  preceding  discussion  was  that 
the  clergyman  talked  too  fast,  overrode  his  slower 
antagonist,  and  agreed  to  no  rules.  In  the  second 
debate,  twenty-four  questions  were  propounded,  a 
moderator  chosen,  and  both  sides  kept  down  to  strict 
time  and  methods.  John  Brown  was  considered  suc- 
cessful on  this  occasion.. 

In  the  early  'thirties  it  was  a  common  saying  in 
Crawford  County  (Pa.),  when  speaking  of  a  man  who 
won  the  respect  of  the  people,  that  he  was  as  honest 
as  John  Brown  and  as  good  to  his  country;  no  higher 
praise  could  be  given. 

It  is  told  of  him,  by  Mr.  Neff,  and  the  incident  is 
one  he  vouched  for,  that  a  journeyman  working  in 
Brown's  tanyard  was  suspected,  and,  after  quiet  in- 
vestigation, proven  to  be  guilty  of  stealing  a  calfskin 
hide.  Orders  were  issued  to  say  nothing.  After 
some  time,  however,  the  brother  of  the  delinquent 
was  known  to  have  offered  the  stolen  goods  for  sale, 
27 


41 8  JOHN    BROWN. 

John  Brown  called  the  two  men  into  his  barn  and 
there  told  them  of  his  knowledge,  convicting  the  thief 
so  clearly,  that  he  confessed.  John  Brown's  punish- 
ment was  to  tell  him  to  go  to  work  again,  be  honest 
in  all  his  actions,  and  nothing  should  ever  be  said  of 
it.  He  charged  his  household  with  silence.  The 
young  man  became  foreman  in  the  tanyard  and  the 
early  fact  was  unknown  until  years  after  he  told  it 
himself  to  the  honor  of  his  benefactor.  Incidents  of 
charity  are  many,  extended  alike  to  those  whom  he 
held  under  suspicion.  To  a  debtor  whom  he  had 
relieved  in  distress,  and  who  was  unable,  at  the  time 
set,  to  discharge  the  debt  of  thirty  dollars,  he  said: 
"  Return  home  and  take  care  of  your  family  and  let 
me  hear  no  more  of  this  debt.  It  is  part  of  my  relig- 
ion to  assist  those  in  distress  and  comfort  those  who 
mourn." 

A  man  stole  a  cow  and  John  Brown  was  among  the 
more  active  in  bringing  him  to  trial  and  punishment, 
yet  all  through  the  following  winter  the  tanner  trav- 
eled regularly  through  the  heavy  snow  to  furnish  the 
imprisoned  man's  family  with  sufficient  supplies  for 
their  needs. 

He  was  never  interested  in  hunting  or  fishing, 
though  active  in  other  athletic  sports,  being  an  ex- 
cellent wrestler  and  a  fair  horseman.  He  loved  good 
stock  ;  sheep,  cattle,  and  horses.  After  tie  moved  to 
Ohio  he  bred  fine  horses,  two  of  them  becoming 
noted  racers.  This  pursuit,  however,  he  abandoned, 
because  of  the  doubtful  associations  of  racing  and 
horse-trading.  He  was  not  a  graceful  rider,  but 
knew  how  to  manage  a  horse  and  could  not  be  easily 
thrown.     He  loved   the  land  and  all  work  upon  the 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC,  419 

soil,  once  congratulating   his  sons,  John,   Jason,  and 
Frederick,    on   following  the   "  pursuit   of   the  patri- 
archs."    He  loved   the   mountains,  and   was  "enam- 
oured   of    all    out-o'-doors."     Music    delighted    him, 
and    he  felt  the  strains   of  Schubert  as  well  as  the 
spur  of   martial   playing.     Just  before   his  death,  his 
old  friend,  Mr.  Lowry,  of  Pennsylvania   (afterwards 
a  Representative  in  Congress),  was  permitted  to  see 
him.     While  conversing  in  his  cell,  the  strains  of  a 
military  band  were  heard,  Governor  Wise  being  en- 
gaged in  reviewing  the  garrison.     The  Captain  was 
asked  if  it  did  not  disturb  him.   "  Not  at  all,"  was  the 
reply,   "it    is    inspiring."      His    favorite    hymn     was 
"Blow    ye   the   Trumpet,    Blow."     "He    sung   us  to 
sleep  by  it,"  wrote  one  of   his  daughters,   "when   we 
were    little    ones."     The    Psalms    of    David    and   the 
Prophecies  of    Isaiah  and  Jeremiah,  with  the  poetic 
grandeur  of  Job,  fed   with    their  splendid   fervor  his 
own  winged  imagination.   The  night  with  its  planetary 
display,  was  a  constant  study  and  delight.     His  fail- 
ure, in  1842,  was  due  to  buying  land  in  that  way,  and 
though  legally   relieved  by  bankruptcy  proceedings 
from  his  liabilities,  he  was  seeking  always  to  the  day 
of  his  death   to   meet  the  obligations  then  incurred. 
In  his  will  he  directed  §50  to  be  paid  on  that  account. 
While    unable   to   fall   in   successfully  as  a  merchant 
with  the  conditions  of  competitive  traffic,  every  one 
with  whom  he  came  in  contact  during  his  thirty-five 
years  of  such  activities   testifies  to  his  integrity  and 
uprightness.      It  has  taken  the  latter-day  politicians, 
who    benefited   by  his  struggles  for  free  Kansas,  to 
suggest  a   want   of    veracity   in   speech    and   honesty 
in  purpose.     Even  the  New  England  editor  who  ad- 


420  .     JOHN    BROWN. 

duced  as  proof  of  insanity  the  statement  that  if  John 
Brown  as  a  wool  merchant  believed  a  thing  was 
right,  he  would  wreck  all  his  affairs  in  the  effort  to 
do  the  same,  declared  that,  at  the  banks  John 
Brown's  word  was  as  good  as  another  man's  note. 
An  old  associate,  Mr.  Baldwin,  of  Ohio,  who  had  busi- 
ness and  personal  relations  with  him  for  years,  wrote 
of  him  as  a  "  man  of  rigid  integrity."  George  Leach, 
another  of  his  earlier  friends,  declared  he  was 
"  strictly  conscientious  and  honest,  but  of  ardent  im- 
pulses and  strong  religious  feelings."  Mr.  Otis,  of 
Akron,  Ohio,  wrote  in  1859  that  "I  always  regarded 
him  (John  Brown)  as  a  man  of  more  than  ordinary 
mental  capacity,  a  kind  neighbor,  a  good  Christian, 
deeply  imbued  with  religious  feelings  and  sympa- 
thies. ...  I  never  knew  his  integrity  to  be 
questioned  by  any  one."  A  former  chief-justice  of 
Massachusetts,  Judge  Rufus  Chapman,  was  Brown's 
counsel  at  Springfield,  and  his  characterization  of  his 
famous  client  is  a  good  one:  He  was  "a  quiet  and 
peaceable  citizen  and  a  religious  man,"  whose  "in- 
tegrity was  never  doubted;  honorable  in  all  his  deal- 
ings," he  was  "peculiar"  and  possessed  of  "great 
obstinacy."  Mr.  E.  C.  Leonard,  who  knew  him  well 
in  the  Springfield  wool-dealing  years  (1847  et  at), 
says  that  "  Uncle  John  was  no  trader;  he  waited  until 
his  wools  were  graded  and  then  fixed  a  price;  if  this 
suited  the  manufacturers,  they  took  the  fleeces;  if 
not,  they  bought  elsewhere,  and  Uncle  John  had  to 
submit  finally  to  a  much  lower  price  than  he  could 
have  got.  Yet  he  was  a  scrupulously  honest  and  up- 
right man — hard  and  inflexible,  but  everybody  had 
just  what  belonged  to  them."     There  is  no  need  of 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  42 1 

inquiring  further  why  John  Brown  was  not  a  suc- 
cessful "trader."  He  emphasized  in  business,  it 
seems,  what  he  advised  his  daughter  Ruth  when  a 
young  girl,  that  is,  "  to  be  all  that  to-day,  which  she 
intends  to  be  to-morrow."  In  his  connection  with 
the  litigation,  which  arose  over  this  wool  business,  a 
gentleman  connected  with  the  New  York  law  firm 
(Vernon  near  Utica)  that  served  as  his  counsel  said  that 
his  "  memory  and  acuteness  often  astonished  "  them. 
He  was  then  54  years  of  age,  "  a  clean-shaven,  scrupu- 
lously neat,  well-dressed  old  gentleman."  Is  it  any 
wonder,  then,  that  John  Brown  could  write  to  his  son 
John,  that  "  It  is  a  source  of  the  utmost  comfort  to 
feel  that  I  retain  a  warm  place  in  the  sympathies, 
affections,  and  confidence  of  my  own  most  familiar 
acquaintances,  my  family  j  a  man  can  hardly  get  into 
difficulties  too  big  to  be  surmounted  if  he  has  a  firm 
foothold  at  home.     Remember  that." 

Indeed,  John  Brown  had  strange  conceptions  of 
business  and  was  not  in  harmony  with  its  more 
ordinary  precepts.  All  his  troubles,  he  said,  arose 
from  trying  to  do  business  on  credit.  In  1847,  ne 
wrote  that  "  to  get  a  little  property  together  to  leave, 
.  .  .  is  really  a  low  mark  to  be  firing  at  through 
life.  .  .  .  Running  into  debt  includes  so  much 
evil,"  he  declares,  "  that  I  hope  my  children  will  shun 
it  as  they  would  a  pestilence.  .  .  .  Regular  out- 
of-doors  labor  I  believe  to  be  one  of  the  best  medi- 
cines of  all  that  God  has  yet  provided,  ...  A 
world  of  pleasure  and  success,"  he  writes  John,  "  is 
the  sure  and  constant  attendant  upon  early  rising. 
It  makes  all  the  business  of  the  day  go  off  with  pecu- 
liar cheerfulness,   while   the   effects  of  the    contrary 


42  2  JOHN     BROWN. 

course  are  a  great    and    constant    draft  upon   one's 
vitality." 

"  On  our  first  visit  to  the  Adirondack^,"  writes 
Ruth,  ''Father  wanted  us  to  notice  how  fragrant  the 
air  was,  filled  with  the  perfume  of  the  spruce,  hem- 
locks, and  balsams.  Soon  after  we  had  settled  there, 
he  one  day  called  us  together  and  asked  if  he  should 
spend  a  little  money  he  had  to  spare  in  furnishing 
the  parlor,  or  spend  it  in  paying  for  clothing  for  the 
colored  people,  who  may  need  help  in  North  Elba 
another  year.  We  all  said  (the  older  ones  present), 
'  Save  the  money.'  "  Once,  when  asked  by  Ruth  to 
write  a  long  letter  of  "  good  advice,"  he  wrote  a  short 
one,  saying,  "  Would  you  believe  that  the  long  story 
would  be  that  ye  sin  not,  that  you  form  no  foolish 
attachments,  and  that  you  be  not  a  companion  of 
fools."  Another  time  he  writes,  that  "God  is  carry- 
ing out  His  eternal  purpose  in  them  all."  And  he 
hopes  to  his  sons,  "  that  entire  leanness  of  soul  may 
not  attend  any  little  success  in  business."  His  letters 
are  full  of  aphorisms  like  these:  "Who  can  tell  or 
comprehend  the  vast  results  for  good  or  evil  that  are 
to  follow  the  saying  of  one  little  word."  "  Every- 
thing worthy  of  being  done  at  all  is  worthy  of  being 
done  in  good  earnest,  and  in  the  best  possible  man- 
ner." .  .  .  Of  the  little  house  at  Elba,  on  taking 
possession,  he  remarked,  "  It  is  very  small,  but 
the  main  thing  is,  that  we  all  keep  good  natured." 
Writing  his  wife  from  Springfield,  he  declares  that 
"  It  is  my  growing  resolution  to  promote  my  own 
happiness  by  doing  what  I  can  to  render  those  about 
me  happier."  Mingling  husbandry  with  faith,  he  says, 
"Sheep  and  cattle  are  doing  well;  and   I  would  be 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  423 

most  happy  to  add  that  in  wisdom  and  good  morals 
we  are  all  improving."  Of  his  first  visit  (1840)  to  the 
Virginia  Alleghanies,  in  the  interest  of  Oberlin  Col- 
lege, Ohio,  has  already  been  mentioned.  He  wrote 
his  wife  from  Ripley,  that  "Were  the  inhabitants  as 
resolute  and  industrious  as  the  Northern  people,  and 
did  they  understand  how  to  manage  as  well,  they 
would  become  rich,  but  they  are  not  generally  so. 
.  .  .  By  comparing  them  with  the  people  of  other 
parts  of  the  country,  I  can  see  new  and  abundant 
proofs  that  knowledge  is  power.  I  think  we  might 
be  very  useful  to  them  on  many  accounts,  were  we  so 
disposed." 

How  vividly  and  forceful  comes  his  words  as  the 
period  of  probation  shortens  and  the  days  of  action 
begin.  From  Kansas  he  writes,  in  1856,  that  "  We 
have,  like  David  of  old,  had  our  dwellings  with  the 
serpents  of  the  rocks  and  wild  beasts  of  the  wilder- 
ness, being  obliged  to  hide  away  from  our  enemies. 
We  were  not  disheartened,  though  nearly  destitute  of 
food,  clothing,  and  money.  God,  who  has  not  given 
over  to  the  will  of  our  enemies,  but  has  moreover 
delivered  them  into  our  hands,  will,  we  humbly  trust, 
still  keep  and  deliver  us.  We  feel  assured  that  He, 
who  sees  not  as  men  see,  does  not  lay  the  guilt  of 
innocent  blood  to  our  charge."  To  his  wife,  after 
the  Osawatomie  fight,  he  says  :  "  I  was  struck  by  a 
partly  spent  grape,  canister,  or  rifle  shot,  which 
bruised  me  some,  but  did  not  injure  me  seriously. 
Hitherto  the  Lord  has  helped  me,  notwithstanding 
my  afflictions."  He  saw  the  issues  plainly,  writing 
home  that  "  The  slaveholders  are  neither  disheartened 
as   yet,  nor   indifferent,   nor    inactive.     .     .     .     They 


424  JOHN    BROWN. 

are  gathering  assurance  and  determination.  They 
see  the  magnitude  of  the  issue;  ...  a  prominent 
Missourian  declared  that,  to  prevent  Kansas  from 
becoming  a  free  State,  Missouri  should  pour  half  her 
population  '  temporarily,  at  least,'  into  the  Territory. 
.  .  .  We  are  in  the  midst  of  a  revolution,  as  you 
will  see  by  the  papers.  How  we  shall  come  out  of 
the  furnace,  God  only  knows.  That  we  have  got  to 
enter  it,  some  of  us,  there  is  no  doubt;  but  we  are 
ready  to  be  offered." 

After  the  second  sacking  of  Lawrence,  Kansas,  in 
May,  1856,  Captain  Brown's  comment  was,  that 
"  Their  leading  men  had  (as  I  think)  decided  in  a 
very  cowardly  manner  not  to  resist  any  process  hav- 
ing any  government  official  to  serve  it."  Before  the 
Massachusetts  Legislature,  on  the  18th  of  February, 
1857,  he  remarked  tersely,  "We  want  men  who  fear 
God  too  much  to  fear  anything  human."  To  Mr. 
Stearns,  and  other  gentlemen  met  at  Medford,  Mass., 
he  declared,  "  I  believe  in  the  Golden  Rule,  sir,  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  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  was  emphatic  when  occasion  arose,  in  saying, 
"Do  not  allow  any  one  to  say  I  acted  from  revenge. 
It  is  a  feeling  that  does  not  enter  my  heart.  What  I 
do,  I  do  for  the  cause  of  human  liberty,  and  because 
I  regard  it  as  necessary."  To  William  A.  Phillips,  in 
Kansas,  when  the  colonel  pointed  out  danger  in  a 
conflict  with  the  United  States  troops,  the  stern  and 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  425 

uncompromising  old  man  replied:  "And  why  not? 
The  people  of  Kansas  are  doing  nothing  here  but 
what  they  have  a  right  to  do  as  American  citizens. 
If  the  regular  army  interferes,  they  have  no  right  to 
do  it.  It  is  the  act  of  a  blackguard,  whoever  does  it; 
and  if  a  blackguard,  doing  a  blackguard's  business, 
should  happen  to  desecrate  the  United  States  livery, 
we  cannot  help  it.  It  is  our  duty  to  protect  our 
rights."  Some  mention  being  made  of  farcial  judicial 
proceedings,  common  to  early  Kansas  history,  Cap- 
tain Brown  grimly  said  to  Mr.  Stearns  that  "  If  the 
Lord  had  delivered  Judge  Lecompte  into  my  hands, 
I  think  it  would  have  required  the  Lord  to  have 
taken  him  out  again."  When  first  invited  to  call  at 
Medford  on  "his  business,"  it  being  Sunday,  defer- 
ence was  paid  to  his  views.  But,  on  being  asked,  he 
said,  "  Mr.  Stearns,  I  have  a  poor  little  ewe  that  has 
fallen  into  the  ditch,  and  I  think  the  Sabbath  is  as 
good  a  day  as  any  to  help  her  out.  I  will  come." 
There  was  a  grim  directness  in  his  suggestion  to  the 
National  Kansas  Aid  Committee,  in  February,  1857: 
"  Gentlemen,  we  had  rather  have  one  rifle  without 
contingencies  than  two  hundred  with  them." 

John  Brown  thought  "  a  standing  army  the  greatest 
curse  to  a  country,  because  it  drained  off  the  best  of 
the  young  men  and  left  farming  and  the  industrial 
arts  to  be  managed  by  inferior  men."  "  Give  a  slave 
a  pike,  and  you  make  him  a  man.  .  .  .  Deprive 
him  of  the  means  of  resistance,  and  you  keep  him 
down."  To  colored  men  organized  to  resist  arrest  as 
fugitive  slaves,  he  advised  that  they  "Do  not  delay 
one  moment  after  you  are  ready;  you  will  lose  all 
your   resolution,  if  you  do.     .     .     .     No  jury  can  be 


426  JOHN    BROWN. 

found  in  the  Northern  States  that  would  convict  a 
man  for  defending  his  rights  to  the  last  extremity. 
.  .  .  Your  plans  must  be  known  only  to  yourself, 
and  with  the  understanding  that  all  traitors  must 
die,  wherever  caught  and  proven  to  be  guilty.  .  .  . 
Collect  quietly,  so  as  to  outnumber  the  adversaries 
who  are  taking  an  active  part  against  you;  make 
clear  work  of  all  such,  and  be  sure  you  meddle  not 
with  any  other.  .  .  .  Stand  by  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  confessions"  And  he  required  them 
to  pledge  that  "  We  will  ever  be  true  to  the  flag  of 
our  beloved  country,  always  acting  under  it."  He 
told  Mr.  Sanborn,  early  in  their  friendship,  that  he 
"had  much  considered  the  matter,  and  had  about 
concluded  that  the  forcible  separation  of  the  connec- 
tion between  master  and  slave  was  necessary  to  fit 
the  blacks  for  self-government.  .  .  .  When  the 
slaves  stand  like  men,  the  nation  will  respect  them; 
it  is  necessary  to  teach  them  this."  "  Negroes  behaved 
so  much  like  folks,  he  almost  thought  they  were  so." 
"  A  few  men  in  the  right,  and  knowing  that  they  are 
right,  can  overturn  a  mighty  king.  Fifty  men, 
twenty  men,  in  the  Alleghenies  would  break  slavery 
to  pieces  in  two  years.  .  .  .  The  mountains  and 
swamps  of  the  South  were  intended  by  God  as  a 
refuge  for  the  slave,  and  a  defense  against  his 
master.  .  .  .  Slavery,  being  maintained  by  force 
must  be  overthrown  by  force."  To  Judge  Russell,  of 
Boston,  he  said,  "  It  would  be  better  that  a  whole 
generation  should  perish  from  the  earth  than  that 
one    truth    in    the    Sermon    on    the   Mount    or    the 


AS  SEEN  BY  HIMSELF,  FAMILY,  ETC.       427 

Declaration  of  Independence  should  be  forgotten 
among  men."  Also,  when  it  was  reported  that  an 
attempt  might  be  made  to  arrest  him,  he  said,  very 
quietly,  to  Mrs.  Russell,  "I  should  hate  to  spoil  your 
carpets,  but,  you  know,  I  cannot  be  taken  alive."  In 
his  eyes,  as  he  declared  "  the  slaves  were  prisoners  of 
war";  their  masters  had  taken  them  by  force,  that  is 
by  "  the  sword,  and  must  perish  by  it."  "  Tell  General 
Lane  " — during  the  Kansas  days  in  1856 — "  that  when 
he  wants  me  to  fight,  to  say  so;  that  is  the  only  order 
I  will  obey."  Writing  on  "  The  Duty  of  the  Soldier," 
he  declared  that  the  test  of  "  Legitimate  Authority  is 
right,  and  to  maintain  that  authority  soldiers  are  not 
required  to  be  mere  living  machines."  When  it 
was  suggested  that  he  should  fight  the  fellows  who 
killed  Frederick,  as  long  as  he  lived,  Captain  Brown 
replied,  "  That  is  not  a  Christian  spirit.  If  I  had 
one  bit  of  that  spirit  I  would  not  lift  my  hand.  I  do 
not  make  war  on  slaveholders,  but  on  slavery."  In 
conversation  with  James  Redpath,  after  the  Black 
Jack  fight,  he  said,  "  It's  a  mistake,  sir,  that  our  people 
make  when  they  think  that  bullies  are  our  best 
fighters.  Give  me  men  of  good  principles,  God- 
fearing men,  men  who  respect  themselves,  and  with 
a  dozen  of  them  I  will  oppose  any  hundred  such  men 
as  these  Buford  ruffians."  To  Henry  Clay  Pate,  com- 
manding the  border  ruffians,  who  was  trying  to  parley 
with  John  Brown,  the  reply  was  :  "  Captain,  I  under- 
stand exactly  what  you  are,  and  do  not  want  to  hear 
more  about  it.  Have  you  any  proposition  to  make 
tome?"  "Well,  no;  that  is—"  "  Very  well,  Cap- 
tain, I  have  one  to  make  to  you — your  unconditional 
surrender." 


428  JOHN    BROWN. 

His  courage  is  shown  when  he  writes:  "  Things 
now  look  more  favorable  than  they  have,  but  I  may 
still  be  disappointed.  We  must  all  try  to  trust  in 
Him  who  is  very  gracious  and  full  of  compassion  as 
almighty  power;  for  those  that  do  will  not  be  made 
ashamed."  His  practical  view  was  shown  when  he 
wrote  to  a  New  England  friend:  "  I  was  told  that  the 
newspapers  in  a  certain  city  were  dressed  in  mourn- 
ing on  hearing  that  I  was  killed  and  scalped  in  Kansas, 
but  I  did  not  know  of  it  until  I  reached  the  place. 
Much  good  it  did  me.  In  the  same  place  I  met  a 
more  cool  reception  than  in  any  other  place  wThere  I 
have  stopped.  If  my  friends  will  hold  up  my  hands, 
while  I  live,  I  will  freely  absolve  them  from  any 
expense  over  me  when  I  am  dead." 

In  a  letter  from  Brown  to  his  men,  written  on  the 
18th  of  May,  1858,  he  advises  them  to  keep  up  their 
courage,  seek  out  farms,  and  say  they  were  traveling, 
got  out  of  money,  etc.,  wanted  work,  offer  to  do  it 
for  board,  and  thus  save  in  that  way,  and  adds:  "  I 
and  three  others  were  in  exactly  such  a  fix  in  the 
spring  of  181 7,  between  the  seaside  and  Ohio,  in  a 
time  of  extreme  scarcity,  not  only  of  money,  but  of 
the  greatest  distress  for  want  of  provisions.  .  .  . 
It  was  the  next  year  after  the  *  cold  summer,'  as  it 
was  called,  and  would  you  believe  it,  some  of  the 
company  are  on  their  legs  yet." 

This  bit  of  cheerful  philosophy  will  bear  quoting: 
"  I  have  often  passed  under  the  rod  of  Him  whom  I 
call  my  Father;  and  certainly  no  son  ever  needed  it 
oftener;  and  yet  I  have  enjoyed  much  of  life,  as  I 
was  enabled  to  discover  the  secret  of  this  somewhat 
early.     It  has  been  in    making    the    prosperity    and 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  429 

happiness  of  others  my  own;  so  that  really  I  had  a 
good  deal  of  prosperity.  I  am  very  prosperous  still." 
John  Brown,  while  certainly  not  without  a  due 
sense  of  his  possible  place  in  history,  had  no  vanity 
to  favor.  Mrs.  Stearns  was  very  anxious  to  have  a 
cast  or  drawing  made  from  which  the  sculptor 
Brackett  could  work.  He  told  the  artist  over  and 
over  again,  "Its  nonsense!  All  nonsense!  Better  give 
the  money  to  the  poor.  It  is  of  no  consequence  to 
posterity  how  I  looked.  Give  the  money  to  the 
poor."  He  only  yielded  when  convinced  that  his 
doing  would  be  a  pleasure  to  Mrs.  Stearns.  He  wrote 
Mrs.  Child  not  to  come  to  Charlestown,  but  if  she 
wished  to  be  of  real  aid,  to  start  a  fund,  asking  fifty 
cents  from  each  for  the  benefit  of  his  wife  and  children. 
In  the  movement  made  in  1857  to  pay  $1,000  for  the 
North  Elba  homestead,  in  order  to  make  his  wife 
secure,  he  wrote  Frank  B.  Sanborn  that,  if  attempted 
the  amount  should  be  promptly  raised  ;  adding — 
"  This,  I  think,  much  the  cheapest  and  most  proper  way 
to  provide  for  them  (his  family),  and  far  less  humilia- 
ting to  my  wife,  who,  though  not  above  getting  her 
bread  over  the  washtub,  will  never  tell  her  trials  or 
wants  to  the  world.  This  I  know  by  the  experiences 
of  the  past  two  years,  while  I  was  absent;  but  I  would 
never  utter  a  word  in  regard  to  it  were  I  not  con- 
scious that  I  am  performing  that  service  which  is 
equally  the  duty  of  millions,  who  need  not  forego  a 
single  hearty  meal  by  the  efforts  they  are  called  on 
to  make."  He  was  not  unmindful  of  what  he  regarded 
as  due  to  his  name  in  all  these  matters,  as  is  shown. 
by  his  removal  of  the  Torrington,  Conn.,  gravestone 
to  North  Elba,  and  the  inscriptions  placed  thereon. 


430  JOHN    BROWN. 

In  a  letter  dated  Hudson,  Ohio,  May,  1857,  he  writes 
his  wife: 

"  If  I  should  never  return,  it  is  my  particular  request  that 
no  other  monument  be  used  to  keep  me  in  remembrance  than 
the  same  plain  old  one  that  records  the  death  of  my  grand- 
father and  son ;  and  that  short  story,  like  those  already  on  it, 
be  told  of  John  Brown  the  fifth,  under  that  of  grandfather. 
.  .  .  I  would  be  glad  that  my  posterity  should  not  only 
remember  their  parentage,  but  also  the  cause  they  labored  in." 

When  Governor  Henry  A.  Wise,  in  his  last  visit  to 
Charlestown,  warned  him  to  prepare  for  eternity, 
John  Brown  replied:  "Governor,  I  have  from  all 
appearances  not  more  than  fifteen  or  twenty  years 
the  start  of  you  in  that  eternity  of  which  you  kindly 
warn  me;  and  whether  my  term  here  shall  be  fifteen 
months,  or  fifteen  days,  or  fifteen  hours,  I  am  equally 
prepared  to  go.  There  is  an  eternity  behind,  and  an 
eternity  before,  and  the  little  spec  in  the  center,  how- 
ever long,  is  but  comparatively  a  minute.  You  all 
(referring  to  slaveholders)  have  all  of  you  a  heavy 
responsibility,  and  it  behooves  you  to  prepare  more 
than  it  does  me." 

John  Brown  repudiated  the  ministrations  of  all  the 
local  clergymen,  whenever  they  showed  a  desire  to 
defend  chattelism.  To  one  who  declared  he  would 
not  fight  for  or  aid  in  freeing  the  slaves,  the  stern 
Puritan  said:  "  I  will  thank  you  to  leave  me  alone; 
your  prayers  would  be  an  abomination  to  my  God." 
A  preacher  who  argued  that  slavery  was  a  "  Chris- 
tian institution  "  was  told  that  he  knew  nothing 
about  Christianity;  "  you,"  he  said,  "  will  have  to  learn 
its  A,  B,  C;  I  find  you  quite  ignorant  of  what  the 
word  Christianity  means."     Seeing  that    his    visitor 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  43  I 

was  disconcerted,  John  Brown  added,  "  I  respect  you 
as  a  gentleman,  of  course,  but  it  is  as  a  heathen 
gentleman."  "  There  are  no  ministers  of  Christ 
here,"  he  wrote.  "  These  ministers,  who  profess  to 
be  Christians,  and  hold  slaves,  or  advocate  slavery,  I 
cannot  abide  them."  In  a  letter  found  by  Mrs. 
Brown  after  his  death,  he  wrote:  "I  have  asked  to  be 
spared  from  having  any  mock  or  hypocritical  prayers 
made  over  me  when  I  am  publicly  murdered;"  and 
to  Mrs.  Spring  he  said  during  her  prison  visit:  "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;  Cap- 
tain Avis  knows  I  do;"  referring  to  the  kindly 
humored  jailer  who  was  present  He  told  another 
Methodist  that  he  "  would  not  insult  God  by  bowing 
down  in  prayer  with  any  one  who  had  the  blood  of 
the  slave  on  his  skirts," 

In  a  letter  to  the  Rev.  H.  L.  Vail,  his  old  school- 
master, dated  during  the  middle  of  November,  he 
said:  "You  will  not,  therefore,  feel  surprised  when 
I  tell  you  I  am  joyful  in  all  my  tribulations  ;  that  I 
do  not  feel  condemned  of  Him  whose  judgment  is 
just,  nor  of  my  own  conscience.  .  .  .  As  to  both 
the  time  and  manner  of  my  death — I  have  but  very 
little  trouble  on  that  score,  and  am  able  to  be  of 
good  cheer."  To  his  excellent  friend,  Judge  Russell, 
of  Boston,  he  declared:  "I  have  no  kind  of  fault  to 
find  about  the  manner  of  my  death.  The  disgrace  of 
hanging  does  not  trouble  me  in  the  least.  In  fact,  I 
know  that  the  very  errors  by  which  my  scheme  was 
marred  were  decreed  before  the  world  was  made." 
His  cousin,   the   Rev.   Luther   Humphrey,    was    told 


432  JOHN    BROWN. 

that — "  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.  ...  I 
should  be  sixty  years  old  were  I  to  live  to  May  9, 
i860.  I  have  enjoyed  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  amount  of  sleep;  so  that  I  conclude  that  I  have 
already  fully  enjoyed  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  comfort- 
ably. But  more  than  that,  I  have  generally  enjoyed  1 
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." 

He  considered  himself,  he  declared,  "  worth  incon- 
ceivably more  to  be  hung  in  this  cause,"  than  to  be 
used  in  any  other  way.  He  could  wait  the  hour 
.  .  .  with  great  composure  of  mind  and  cheerful- 
ness. In  no  other  possible  manner  could  he  be  used 
to  so  much  advantage  to  the  cause  of  God  and 
humanity.  .  .  .  "I  expect  nothing  but  to  endure 
hardship,  but  I  expect  to  achieve  a  great  victory, 
even  though  it  be  like  the  last  victory  of  Samson." 
In  a  last  letter  to  Mr.  Vail,  he  wrote,  "  The  Captain 
of  my  salvation,  who  is  also  a  Captain  of  liberty,  has 
taken  away  my  sword  of  steel,  and  put  into  my  hands 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  433 

a  sword  of  Spirit"; — and  that,  "  As  I  believe  most 
firmly  that  God  reigns,  I  cannot  believe  that  any- 
thing that  I  have  done,  suffered,  or  may  yet  suffer, 
will  be  lost  to  the  cause  of  God  or  humanity.  And 
before  I  begun  my  work  at  Harper's  Ferry,  I  felt  as- 
sured that  in  the  worst  event  it  would  certainly  pay." 
Henry  Ward  Beecher  preached  in  Plymouth  Church 
on  Sunday  morning,  October  30th,  1859,  twelve  days 
after  the  attack  begun  on  Harper's  Ferry,  from  Jere- 
miah vi:  12-19,  using  the  text  as  a  basis  for  a  remark- 
able sermon  on  John  Brown,  his  movement,  and 
character.  This  sermon  was  widely  published  and 
commented  on,  more  or  less  caustically  all  over  the 
land.  It  did  not  suit  the  grim  old  covenanter  when 
it  reached  through  the  pages  of  a  spiritualist  weekly, 
The  Telegraph.  Captain  Brown  wrote  a  series  of  run- 
ning comments  on  the  margin,  and  this  paper  passed 
into  the  possession  (with  certificates  of  its  genuine- 
ness from  Captain  Avis,  A.  D.  Stevens,  and  Sheriff 
Campbell)  of  W.  W.  B.  Gallaher,  one  of  XhzNew  York 
Herald's  correspondents,1  who  was  serving  also  as  a 

1  "  Charlestown,  Dec.  10,  '59. 
"  I  hereby  certify  that  W.  W.  B.  Gallaher  sent  to  Captain  John 
Brown  a  copy  of  some  newspaper  with  a  request  that  he  would 
give  his  opinion  of  a  sermon  therein  published  of  the  Rev.  H. 
Ward  Beecher;  that  Captain  Brown  did  make  comments  upon  the 
same,  in  his  own  handwriting  upon  the  margin,  and  other  blank 
places  of  said  paper. 

"  I  also  certify  that  I  heard  Captain  Brown  deny  that  his  com- 
ments were  correctly  printed  in  the  New  York  Herald. 

'*  I  also  certify  that  the  certificate  of  A.  D.  Stevens  was  signed 
in  my  presence. 

[Test]        J.  W.  Gallaher,  Jail  Guard. 

John  Avis,  Jailer. 
28 


434  JOHN    BROWN. 

"Jail  Guard."  Mr.  Beecher's  opening  references  to 
the  attack  and  characterization  of  John  Brown  him- 
self, is  quietly  sat  upon  by  the  latter  with  the  remark 
that  it  is  "mere  rhetoric,"  and  Mr.  Beecher  is  "not 
well  posted."  To  the  references  to  Kansas  and  the 
Federal  treatment  of  the  free  state  men  there,  as 
compared  with  President  Buchanan's  eager  display 
of  troops  against  John  Brown,  the  latter's  marginal 
note  with  an  admiration  point,  is  "Truth!"  but  to 
the  remark  that  he  (Brown)  "received  his  impulse" 
from  Kansas,  the  quiet  comment  is,  "  He  does  not 
understand  his  subject."  When  Mr.  Beecher  begins 
to  deal  in  causistry,  and  says  that  for  the  negro  "reas- 
onable liberty  is  required,  possessed  with  the  consent 
of  the  master,"  and  that  freedom  sometimes  "is  a 
mischief,"  while  vague  insurrection  speech  is  a  great 
and  cruel  wrong  to  them  " — the  slaves, — John  Brown 
appreciates  the  point  involved  in  the  latter  remark, 
but  adds  "it  is  not  strictly  true."  The  right  way  to 
deal  with  "the  African,"  said  Mr.  Beecher,  is  to 
"begin  at  home" — make  him  fit  for  freedom.  On 
that  "  I  am  willing  to  be  weighed  in  an  even  balance 
on  this  score,"  commented  Captain  Brown,  as  indeed 
he  might  well  be,  but  added — "  His  remark  is,  how- 
ever, true."  When  Mr.  Beecher  commented  sharply 
on  the   inconsistent   treatment   of   the    negro   in    the 


"  Charlestown  Jail,  Dec.  10,  1859. 
"  I  hereby  certify  that  Captain  Brown  wrote,  with  his  own  hand, 
comments  upon  H.  W.  Beecher's  sermon  published  in  the  Spirit- 
ual Telegraph. 

A.  D.  Stevens,  W.  B.  Gallaher,  Witness. 
Copied  in  my  presence,  read,  and  found  correct. 

Thos.  Featherstonhaugh." 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  435 

North,  with  its  comments  on  slavery  in  the  South, 
John  Brown  underscored  the  passage  and  wrote 
marginally  that,  "  these  are  truthful  remarks,  but 
were  never  applicable  to  my  case.  God  is  my  witness 
on  this  point."  Beecher  said  the  "air  must  be  made 
vital  with  love  of  liberty,"  and  the  Captain  under- 
scored "Truth!  very  well,"  three  times,  and  then 
added,  "  my  own  practice  has  been  correct  in  this 
matter."  When  the  Plymouth  preacher  suggests  that 
"the  shot  that  struck  his  child,  crazed  the  father's 
brain."  John  Brown  wrote  he  "is  mistaken  in  the 
individual."  Captain  Brown  wrote  "Good"  on  the 
margin,  after  underscoring  the  words  that  follow: 
"Let  no  man  pray  that  John  Brown  be  spared!  Let 
Virginia  make  him  a  martyr!  Now,  he  has  only 
blundered.  His  soul  was  noble;  his  work  miserable. 
But  a  cord  and  a  gibbet  would  redeem  all  that,  and 
wind  up  Brown's  failure  with  a  heroic  success."  The 
sentences  next  marked  do  not  meet  with  as  hearty  an 
approval.  The  preacher  declares  "  that  men  who 
tamper  with  slaves  and  incite  them  are  not  themselves 
to  be  trusted  .  .  .  conspirators,  the  world  over,  are 
bad  men"  .  .  .  wouldn't  trust  "such  men  with 
money  "  nor  "  place  any  confidence  in  them  " — they 
must  crafty  and  "unreliable."  Such  a  statement, 
wrote  Captain  Brown,  is  "an  utterly  false  assumption 
as  applied  to  this  case.  .  .  .  It  is  a  boastful  and 
false  insinuation"  if  directed  "tome."  When  Mr. 
Beecher  declared  that  he  would  help  the  fugitive 
who  came  to  his  door,  Brown  waxed  sarcastic  and 
wrote,  a  "  very  brave  man  "  this ;  "  must  be  a  very  good 
man,  too;  glad  to  know  it."  To  a  remark  of  Beecher's 
that  "breeding  discontent  is  not  good  for  the   slaves 


436  JOHN    BROWN. 

themselves,"  —  Captain  Brown  savagely  indites — 
"  Another  vile  assumption,"  and  underscores  the  re- 
mark. When  Beecher  talked  against  "  insurrection," 
Brown  writes,  "I  never  counseled  it."  "The  right  of 
a  people  to  revolt  in  order  to  achieve  liberty,"  said 
Beecher,  must  ''conform"  in  "its  use"  "to  reason 
and  to  the  benefits"  to  be  achieved.  Captain  Brown 
notes  this  as  a  "false  assumption,"  but  marks  as 
"Truth  "  the  further  remark,  that  "  a  man  who  leads 
a  people  has  no  right  to  incite  that  people  to  rise, 
unless  there  is  a  reasonable  prospect  that  they  will 
conquer."  To  the  optimism  of  Beecher,  which  said: 
There  is  "a  nobler  spirit"  rising;  a  "fearless  asser- 
tion of  truth  "  to  the  South,  and  a  declaration  to  them 
that  we  "love  you;  we  hate  your  slavery";  Captain 
Brown  writes,  "so  say  I  !"  To  a  remark  on  Paul's 
direction  to  servants  and  masters,  Brown  writes — 
"  Why  don't  Beecher  come  South  to  preach  ?  "  When 
the  preacher  said,  that  the  establishment  of  "  a  few 
virtues"  among  the  slaves,  "houshold  love,"  "per- 
sonal chastity,"  "the  right  of  parents  to  their 
children,"  would  revolutionize  the  moral  conditions 
of  "both  masters  and  slaves";  John  Brown  wrote — 
"  This  is  true,  but  is  there  any  progress  making  in 
this  direction?"  There  follows  a  number  of  eloquent 
sentences  on  this  subject,  to  which  John  Brown's 
comments  give  pungency.  "  Let  the  champion  come 
here  to  preach  !  "  "  Good,  if  spoken  here  !  "  "  How 
can  he  stay  away?"  When  Mr.  Beecher,  referring 
to  the  slave  mart,  said — "It  is  no  use  to  preach  a 
gospel  without  protection  to  the  family,"  Brown 
cynically  remarks,  "  Come  on,  Beecher."  To  a  series  of 
other  sentences  in  relation  to  practice  and  principles, 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  437 

Brown  wrote  that  they  "  were  truth  and  error  inter- 
mingled ";  that  they  were  also  "sophistical,"  and  in 
the  nature  of  "  a  plea  in  avoidance."  "  No  relief,"  said 
Beecher,  "  could  come  from  inciting  or  organizing  " 
slaves  "to  run  away  "  or  "  abscond,"  and  Brown  sar- 
castically writes,  "  a  great  man  may  be  mistaken — 
he's  very  wise,  indeed."  To  the  Plymouth  orator's 
declaration  that — "  Emancipation,  when  it  comes, 
will  come  either  by  revolution  or  by  a  change  of  pub- 
lic opinion  in  the  whole  community,"  Brown  under- 
scored the  whole  sentence  and  writes,  "  Truth  !  "  and 
when  the  great  preacher  closed  with  the  hope — "  that 
bondsmen  may  become  free,  that  the  ignorant  may 
become  wise,  that  the  master  and  slave  may  respect 
each  other,  so  that  at  length  we  may  bean  evangelized 
and  Christian  people!  May  God  in  His  own  way  and 
time  speed  the  Day  !  " — John  Brown  heavily  under- 
scored the  words,  and  added:  "Amen  !  So  says  old 
Brown;  Amen  !  " 

John  Brown  was  not  a  dreamer,  nor  an  enthusiast; 
nor  was  he  visionary  or  fanatical.  That  he  miscalcu- 
lated his  forces  is  doubtless  true,  from  the  limited  or 
immediate  point  of  view.  But  who  will  deny  that  he 
was  a  man  of  clear  mentality  and  spiritual  insight, 
when  we  recall  with  what  distinct  and  non-personal 
sagacity  he  built,  from  his  own  errors  of  command,  a 
strategy  of  peaceful  victory,  which  laid  bare  the 
weakness  of  his  enemy  and  made  marvelously  clear 
the  lucidity  of  purpose  and  the  idealistic  rarefication 
of  atmosphere  in  which  he  breathed.  He  was  never 
a  schemer,  but  yet  he  manifested  intellectual  craft, 
while  always  simple  in  aim  and  action.  He  was  an 
idealist  with  a  human  intent.     As  Henry  O.  Thoreau 


438  JOHN    BROWN. 

said,  he  would  have  "  left  a  Greek  accent  slanting 
the  wrong  way  and  slanted  up  a  falling  man."  He 
probably  never  thought  of  the  cynical  saying,  that 
"  no  man  is  a  hero  with  his  valet,"  because  he  dreamed 
not  of  being  a  hero  and  never  would  have  accepted  a 
Valet.  If  his  simplicity  of  action  made  him  the  vic- 
tim of  inadequate  means,  the  grandeur  of  his  pur- 
pose served  him  to  a  loftier  realization.  In  the  first 
family  letter,  he  wrote  after  defeat,  he  expressed  this 
when  he  wrote: 

"  Under  all  these  terrible  calamities,  I  feel  quite 
cheerful  in  the  assurance  that  God  reigns,  and  will 
overrule  all  for  His  glory  and  the  best  possible  good. 
I  feel  no  consciousness  of  guilt  in  this  matter,  and  I 
feel  perfectly  assured  that  very  soon  no  member  of 
my  family  will  feel  any  possible  disposition  to  blush 
on  my  account." 

And  this  was  written  after  describing  the  death  of 
Oliver,  the  mortal  wounding  and  subsequent  death 
of  Watson,  the  massacre  of  William  Thompson,  the 
slight  wounding  on  the  first  day  and  the  killing  of 
Dauphin,  his  young  brother,  on  the  second,  while  he 
himself  became  a  prisoner,  saber  cuts  on  his  head  and 
bayonet  wounds  in  his  body.  He  could  tell  his  wife 
and  children  to  "  never  forget  the  poor,  nor  think 
anything  you  may  bestow  on  them  to  be  lost  to  you," 
and  ask  them,  after  being  sentenced  to  death,  "  not  to 
grieve  on  my  account";  adding,  4'  I  am  still  quite 
cheerful,  God  bless  you  !  "  Nor  was  he  seeking  to 
blame  any  one  but  himself  for  apparent  failure:  "  It 
is  solely  my  own  fault  .  .  .  that  we  met  with 
disaster  ...  I  mean,  that  I  mingled  with  our 
prisoners   and    so   far    sympathized    with    them    and 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC  439 

their  families,  that  I  neglected  my  duty  in  other 
respects."  In  an  appeal  to  Mrs.  Child  and  others  to 
aid  in  raising  funds  for  the  wives  and  children  made 
widowed  and  fatherless  at  North  Elba,  his  object  was 
to  secure  means  to  "supply  themselves  and  children 
with  bread  and  very  plain  clothing,  and  to  enable  all 
the  children  to  receive  a  common  English  education." 
He  pleaded  with  his  wife  Mary  not  to  come  on  to 
Virginia,  because  it  would  use  up  the  little  money 
she  had,  and  because  there  was  but  little  more  of  the 
romantic  in  helping  poor  widows  than  there  is  about 
trying  to  relieve  the  poor  negroes.  Indeed,  he  believed 
that  more  generous  sympathy  would  flow  out  to 
them  all  by  their  staying  at  home.  "  There  is,"  he 
wrote,  "  no  night  so  dark  as  to  have  hindered  the 
coming  day,  nor  any  storm  so  furious  or  dreadful  as 
to  prevent  the  return  of  warm  sunshine  and  a  cloud- 
less sky."  "  God  will  surely  attend,"  he  declared, 
"  to  His  own  cause  in  the  best  possible  way  and  time, 
and  He  will  not  forget  the  work  of  His  own  hand." 
"Jesus  of  Nazareth  suffered  a  most  excruciating 
death  on  the  cross  as  a  felon,"  he  tells  his  wife, 
"  under  the  most  aggravating  circumstances.  Think, 
also,  of  the  prophets,  and  apostles,  and  Christians  of 
former  days,  who  went  through  greater  tribulations 
than  you  or  I,  and  try  to  be  reconciled.  May  God 
Almighty  comfort  all  your  hearts  and  soon  wipe 
away  all  tears  from  your  eyes  !  To  Him  be  endless 
praise  !  Think,  too,  of  the  crushed  millions  who 
have  no  comforter.  I  charge  you  all  to  never,  in 
your  trials,  to  forget  the  griefs  'of  the  poor  who  cry, 
and  of  those  who  have  none  to  help  them.' '  And 
that  last  letter  to  iiis  household  at  North  Elba,  how 


440  JOHN    BROWN. 

full  of  faith  and  sincerity  of  devotion;  with  what 
simpleness  in  wants  and  singleness  of  purpose  does 
he  advise  with  his  children.  The  courage  is  unfalter- 
ing; indeed,  it  is  something  more  than  courage,  for 
it  practically  takes  no  account  of  death,  only  as  such 
result  may  affect  others.  No  wonder  that  his  young 
men  murmured  not;  that  his  wife  and  children 
accepted  unflinchingly  ! 

Charlestown  Prison,  Jefferson  County,  Va., 
November  30,  1859. 

My  Dear  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  Phila- 
delphia, dated  November  22,  by  which  it  would  seem  that  she 
was  about  giving  up  the  idea  of  seeing  me  again.  I  had  written 
to  her  to  come  on  if  she  felt  equal  to  the  undertaking,  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  com- 
posure of  mind  and  cheerfulness;  feeling  the  strong  assurance 
that  in  no  other  possible  way  could  I  be  used  to  so  much  ad- 
vantage 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  in  which  our  own  feelings 
and  wrongs  have  placed  us.     I   have  no  doubt  but  that  our 


AS  SEEN  BY  HIMSELF,  FAMILY,  ETC.       44I 

seeming  disaster  will  ultimately  result  in  the  most  glorious  suc- 
cess. So,  my  clear  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.  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. 

Oh,  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  of  the  grace  of  God  through  Jesus  Christ ;  that  no 
one  of  you  may  be  blind  to  the  truth  and  the  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  childlike,  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.  Oh,  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  ?  Oh,  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 


442  JOHN    BROWN. 

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  may  bless  and  leave  others  stronger.  Still,  it  is 
ground  for  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  skeptical — certainly  not  credulous.  I  wish  all  to  con- 
sider 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  everywhere  insisted  on,  that  distinguishes  it 
from  all  the  other  teachings,  that  commends  it  to  my  con- 
science. Whether  my  heart  be  willing  and  obedient  or  not, 
the  inducement  that  it  holds  out  is  another  reason  of  my  con- 
viction 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  worldly  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  instruc- 
tion is  of  divine  origin  or  not.  Be  sure  to  owe  no  man  any- 
thing, but  to  love  one  another.  John  Rogers  wrote  to  his  chil- 
dren :  "Abhor  that  arrant  whore  of  Rome."  John  Brown 
writes  to  abhor,  with  undying  hatred  also,  that  sum  of  all 
villanies,  Slavery.  Remember,  "  that  he  that  is  slow  to  anger 
is  better  than  the  mighty,"  and  "  he  that  ruleth  his  spirit  than 
he  that  taketh  a  city."     Remember,  also,  that   "  they   being 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  443 

wise  shall  shine,  and  they  that  turn  many  to  righteousness,  as 
the  stars  for  ever  and  ever." 

And   now,  dearly  beloved  family,  to  God  and  the  work  of 
His  grace  I  commend  you  all. 

Your  affectionate  husband  and  father, 

John  Brown. 

And  that  lonely  mountain  home  at  North  Elba. 
The  somber  beauty  of  its  surroundings  were  harmo- 
nious with  the  solemn  moods  and  sad  thoughts  that 
dwelt  therein.  How  slow  were  the  hours  and  how 
infrequent  the  communication  they  necessarily  had 
with  all  that  animating  life,  laden  with  a  quickening 
sympathy  and  regard,  wherewith  their  father's  life 
and  acts  had  endowed  the  world.  We  may  sneer  in 
cold  blood  at  the  fanatics.  We  may  deride  those  who 
give  that  others  may  live,  but  in  the  presence  of  one 
flaming  deed  all  mankind  are  kin.  "  When  souls 
reach,"  said  Emerson,  "  a  certain  clearness  of  percep- 
tion, they  accept  a  knowledge  and  motive  above  self- 
ishness. .  .  .  It  is  the  air  which  all  intellects  in- 
hale and  exhale,  and  it  is  the  wind  which  blows  the 
world  into  order  and  orbit."  Character  is  a  weapon 
for  the  accomplishment  of  great  deeds,  but  the  forg- 
ing of  the  weapon  is  done  in  the  furnace  of  environ- 
ment, and  the  home-life  of  John  Brown  was  a  large 
part  of  his  character.  Moulded  by  him,  mother 
and  children — older  ones  and  younger,  too — also 
moulded  and  uplifted  this  Cromwellian  soul  unto  the 
hour  of  his  and  their  supreme  sacrifice!  "  Does  it 
seem  as  if  freedom  were  to  gain  or  lose  b}r  this  ?  " 
This  was  the  wife's  expression — the  mother's  question: 
"  I  have  had  thirteen  children,  and  only  four  are  left; 
but  if  I  am  to  see  ruin  of  my  house,  I  cannot  but  hope 
that  Providence  may  bring  out  of  it  some  benefit  to 


444  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  poor  slave."  And  in  this  atmosphere  and  hope 
they  had  lived  for  thirty  years.  John  Brown  said  to 
Frank  B.  Sanborn,  early  in  that  last,  fateful  year  of  his 
life:  "I  always  told  them  that  when  the  time  came  to 
fight  against  slavery,  that  conflict  would  be  the  signal 
of  our  separation.  Mary  made  up  her  mind  to  have 
me  go  along  before  this;  and  when  I  did  go,  she  got 
ready  bandages  and  medicines  for  the  wounded." 
The  wife  and  mother  who  "  got  ready  bandages  and 
medicines,"  wrote  her  husband,  as  he  lay  under  sen- 
tence of  death  (on  the  15th  of  October,  1859):  "I 
have  often  thought  that  I  would  rather  hear  you  were 
dead  than  fallen  into  the  hands  of  your  enemies:  but 
I  don't  think  so  now.  The  good  that  is  growing  out  of 
it  is  wonderful.  If  you  had  preached  in  the  pulpit  ten 
such  lives  as  you  have  lived,  you  could  not  have  done 
so  much  good  as  you  have  done,  in  that  one  speech 
to  the  Court."  It  was  Salmon  Brown  who  said,  "  I 
sometimes  think  that's  what  we  came  into  the  world 
for — to  make  sacrifices,"  and  it  was  his  eldest  daugh- 
ter, Ruth,  who  had  once  given  up  her  beloved  hus- 
band to  the  field  and  saw  brought  home  to  her, 
bleeding,  upon  "  his  shield,"  who  wrote  her  father  in 
May  of  that  last  year: 

"  Dear  Father — You  have  asked  me  rather  a  hard  ques- 
tion. I  want  to  answer  you  wisely,  but  hardly  know  how.  I 
cannot  bear  the  thought  of  Henry  leaving  me  again,  but  I  feel 
that  I  am  selfish,  when  I  think  of  my  poor,  despised  sisters, 
that  are  deprived  of  both  husband  and  children,  I  feel  deeply 
for  them  ;  and  were  it  not  for  my  little  children,  I  would  go 
most  anywhere  with  Henry,  if  by  going  I  could  do  them  any 
good.  ...  I  should  be  very  glad  to  be  with  him,  if  it 
would  not  be  more  expense  then  what  good  we  could  do.  I 
say  we;  could  I  not  do  something  for  the  cause  ?  " 


AS    SEEN    BY    HIMSELF,    FAMILY,    ETC.  445 

There  were  others,  too,  who  suffered,  and  from  whom 
no  murmurs  came.  In  the  many  letters  from  all  direc- 
tions, faulty  in  grammar,  halting  in  expression  and 
awkward  in  chirography,  the  writer  of  this  volume 
has  received  from  those  who  survived  their  sons, 
brothers,  and  lovers,  were  as  true  in  unselfish  and  un- 
regretting  love  and  remembrance,  as  the  plain  farmer 
families  at  North  Elba  who  suffered  so  much  and  lost 
so  largely.  For  it  was  not  one  family,  but  four  that 
mourned  amid  the  Adirondacks.  Anne  Brown  illu- 
minates the  life  of  the  household,  and  describes  the 
bearing  of  the  members  when  she  writes: 

"  You  ask  me  to  tell  you  how  the  family  at  North  Elba 
received  the  news  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  affair.  That  is  a  time 
that  I  do  not  like  to  think  of  or  speak  of.  We  only  had  a 
weekly  mail  at  that  time.  I  do  not  now  remember  whether  we 
had  heard  any  rumors  before,  but  I  think  we  had.  It  was  the 
Tuesday  evening  that  the  mail  usually  came,  when  a  young 
man,  a  neighbor,  brought  us  a  paper  (the  New  York  Times) 
with  a  full  account  in  it,  some  one  said  '  Let  Annie  read  it, 
for  she  can  read  faster  than  any  of  us  can ' ;  so  I  read  that 
long  account  from  beginning  to  end,  aloud,  without  faltering. 
I  was  stunned,  and  my  senses  so  benumbed  that  I  did  not 
comprehend  the  meaning  of  the  words  I  pronounced.  There 
was  very  little  '  weeping  or  wailing '  or  loud  demonstration 
on  the  part  of  our  brave  household  ;  we  were  most  of  us  struck 
dumb,  horrorstricken  with  a  grief  too  deep  and  hard  to  rind 
expression  in  words  or  even  tears.  I  do  not  think  I  have  ever 
fully  recovered  from  the  mental  shock  I  received  then. 
Mother,  Salmon's  wife,  and  I  were  all  down  sick  shortly  after 
that,  and  Martha  patiently  did  the  work  and  cared  for  us,  until 
she  became  ill  herself.  I  never  saw  her  smile  but  twice  after 
that,  once  when  she  same  upstairs  in  the  morning  to  see  me 
while  I  was  sick,  and  I  told  her  that  an  '  angel  came  in  the  night 
with  a  bright  light  and  gave  me  some  water,'  and  showed  her 


446  JOHN    BROWN. 

a  bowl  of  water  beside  the  bed  to  prove  it ;  she  smiled  and 
said  she  was  'my  angel.'  The  other  time  was  the  night  after 
her  baby  was  born,  when  she  told  me  to  '  write  to  Tidd  and 
tell  him  he  had  a  little  sister.'  C.  P.  Tidd  used  to  call  Martha 
and  Oliver  '  Mother  and  Father,'  to  tease  them,  while  we  were 
at  Kennedy  Farm.  The  only  time  after  that  I  ever  saw  her 
shed  a  tear  was  when  I  held  her  little  dead  baby  at  her  bed- 
side, for  her  to  take  a  last  look  at  it  before  they  put  it  into  the 
coffin;  a  few  great  scalding  drops  fell  on  its  little,  waxen 
face." 

Anne  Brown  (Mrs.  Adams)  unconsciously  illustrates 
her  own  sincere  self  and  shows  how  with  what  true 
courage  they  all  walked  within  the  valley  of  shadows. 
Martha  Evelin  Brewster  was  born  in  1842,  and  died 
in  March,  i860,  being,  therefore,  but  eighteen  years  of 
age.  Wife,  widow,  and  mother,  within  two  years. 
She  married  Oliver  on  the  17th  of  April,  1858,  of 
medium  height,  well  formed,  with  regular  features, 
hair  of  a  pale  gold  brown,  and  blue-gray  eyes,  she  was 
a  very  woman,  sedate  and  dignified  in  manners,  full 
of  character,  writes  Mrs.  Adams,  even  as  a  little 
child.  "  I  remember,"  writes  Mrs.  Adams,  "  William 
Thompson  telling  me,  that  one  day  soon  after  her 
father  moved  on  to  the  farm  adjoining  the  Thomp- 
sons' home,  he  was  going  by  the  house  and  saw  three 
little  girls  on  the  fence  by  the  roadside;  he  stopped 
and  talked  to  them  inquiring  their  names;  the  little 
Martha  after  telling  her  name  added,  '  I'm  Mom's 
lady.'  He  said,  '  I  think  she  is  Mom's  lady  still,'  and 
so  she  always  continued  to  be.  As  her  father  was  an 
easygoing,  thriftless  man,  with  a  large  family  poorly 
provided  for,  she  preferred  to  work  for  the  farmers' 
wives  around,  where  by  her  own  labor  she  could  pro- 
cure better  clothing  and  in  most  places  a   more  con- 


AS  SEEN  BY  HIMSELF,  FAMILY,  ETC.        447 

genial  home."  Oliver  married  her  while  waiting  for 
his  father's  next  movement  towards  Harper's  Ferry, 
"so  that  she  might,"  writes  his  sister,  "have  a  legal 
right  to  a  home  with  his  family  during  his  absence, 
as  most  of  her  relatives  were  rabidly  pro-slavery  and 
opposed  to  us  politically,"  though  not  personally. 
It  was  as  characteristic  of  the  Essex  county  neighbors 
as  elsewhere,  that  John  Brown  and  his  family  were 
held  in  the  highest  respect  for  their  good  qualities. 
There  was  a  considerable  modicum  of  the  pro-south- 
ern, hardshell  Democracy  among  its  men,  and  John 
Brown  was  counted  as  a  "  crazy  Abolitionist,"  but 
always  esteemed  as  a  good  citizen  and  excellent 
neighbor. 

Isabella  Thompson,  the  widowed  wife  of  Watson 
Brown,  lived  with  her  parents — the  Thompson  family 
which  furnished  two  fighters  for  Kansas  and  two  vic- 
tims of  Harper's  Ferry— the  sons,  William  and 
Dauphin.  Henry,  the  eldest  brother,  is  the  husband 
of  Ruth,  John  Brown's  eldest  daughter.  They  are 
both  still  living  at  Pasadena,  California.  A  child  was 
born  to  Watson  and  Bella,  but  two  weeks  before  the 
young  husband  started  in  June,  1859,  for  the  Kennedy 
Farm.  "  Freddie,"  the  little  one,  lived  four  years. 
William  Thompson's  widow,  Mary  Brown,  lived  close 
by.  Though  of  the  same  name  she  was  no  relative. 
A  young,  good-looking,  brave-minded  woman  of  about 
twenty  years,  she  bore  her  part  well  and  murmured 
not.  Death's  harvest  had  not  spared  that  lonely 
mountain  section — four  widows,  and  six  fatherless 
children,  with  other  parents,  relatives,  and  grand- 
children in  mourning.  Yet,  with  what  fortitude  it  was 
all  borne,  and  but  for  the  profound  regard  that  the 


448  JOHN    BROWN. 

land  fastened  upon  those  stricken  homes,  no  word  or 
wail  would  have  ever  floated  beyond  the  Au-Sable 
valley. 

And  so  John  Brown  passed  beyond.  And  so  was 
the  tidings  borne,  and  these  were  the  manner  of 
persons  that  wore  their  robe  of  sorrow  with  a  quiet 
dignity  that  exalted.  They  were  not  unknowing  of 
the  sacrifices.  To  them  their  dead  was  sacred.  To 
the  cause  they  gave,  if  not  joyfully,  yet  with  a  sober, 
sweet  earnestness,  that  added  grace  to  their  deep 
sorrow.  Nor  have  they  thrust  themselves  ever  into 
the  world's  notice,  but  lived  their  lives;  hardworking, 
honorable  men,  loving,  motherly  women;  all  an 
honor  to  the  name  they  bear  and  the  strong  life  of 
which  they  are  a  part.  Was  he  not,  indeed,  the  larg- 
est of  "Connecticut  schoolmasters,"  as  Wendell  Phil- 
lips said,  and  did  he  not  withal  prove  himself  a  "  great 
commander,"  as  Richard  Realf  affirmed  before  the 
Senate  Committee  of  investigation  ?  Northern  or 
Kansas  defamers  may  malign  and  deride,  but  as 
against  the  hero-life  and  the  martyr's  crown,  their 
venomous  spittle  is  blown  back  but  to  scorch  their 
own  names  and  fames.  We  may  say  with  D.  W. 
Wilder,  of  Kansas,  and  there  is  no  more  competent 
critic:  "Common  men  live  for  years  in  despair,  with 
only  ordinary  bad  luck  to  contend  with;  but  here  is 
a  man  absolutely  alone,  exiled  from  family,  among 
hostile  strangers,  where  barbarism  is  made  popular  by 
law  and  fashion, — yet  never  in  despair.  Why  this 
contrast  ?  He  believed  in  God  and  Justice,  and  in 
nothing  else;  we  believe  in  everything  else,  but  not 
in  God." 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

JOHN    BROWN'S    MEN  :      WHO    THEY    WERE. 

Their  rightful  place  in  history — Kagi,  philosopher  ana 
scholar — Cook,  ardent,  poetic,  and  generous — Stevens* 
soldier  a  fid  hero — Hazlett,  simple  and  brave — Osborne 
P.  Anderson,  the  faithful  colored  leader — Danger- 
field  Netvby,  the  Virginian  freeman,  fighting  for 
family  and  race — Copeland,  Leary,  Shields  Green, 
resisting  like  men,  dying  as  heroes — Arrests  and  ren- 
ditions of  Cook  and  Hazlett — Col.  A.  K.  McClure's 
account — Travesty  of  justice  at  Carlisle — Story  of 
an  attempt  at  rescue. 

Twenty-one  men  marched  with  John  Brown  on 
the  night  of  October  16,  1859.  That  was  the  fighting 
array  with  which  he  invaded  the  "sacred  soil"  of 
Virginia,  and  begun  a  "sympathetic  strike"  against 
the  "  chattel  slavery  "  which  enthralled  labor,  while 
threatening  the  peace  of  the  Republic  and  the  safety 
of  the  Union.  Sixteen  of  these  men  were  of  the 
master  race;  five  of  the  one  that  was  in  bondage,  two 
only  of  whom  had,  however,  been  born  slaves.  Three 
of  the  white  men  were  sons  of  the  leader;  two  were 
related  by  marriage  and  years  of  close  and  neigh- 
borly friendship.  They  were  all  Northern  and  anti- 
slavery  by  association  and  training;  positive  in  such 
29 


450  JOHN    BROWN. 

opinion  by  the  force  and    blending  of   serious  condi- 
tions   and    experiences.     All  but   two  of   them  were 
country  born   and   bred.     All  who  participated   were 
"native    and    to    the    manner    born."     Anna  Brown, 
one    of    the    two    brave    girls    from    the    family,  who 
walked,  worked,  and  watched  with    her   comrades   in 
the  "valley  of  shadows"  at  the  Kennedy  Farm,  says 
of  them  collectively,  and  she  knew  all  but  one  of  the 
white  men,  F.  J.  Merriam,  and  four  also  out  of  the 
five  men  of  color,  that—"  taking  them  all  together,   I 
think  they  would   compare   well    (she  is  speaking  of 
manners,  etc.)  with  the  same  number  of  men  in  any 
station  of  life  I  have  ever  met";— and  her  experience 
compasses  the  homes  of   Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  and 
George  Luther  Stearns,  as  well  as  that  of  her  father's 
household  and    the  wholesome  dignity  of    her    own 
abode.     All   of  her    comrades   possessed    more  than 
the  average  of  intelligence  and  character.     Some  of 
them  would  have  made  a  broad  place  for  themselves 
in  the  stirring  drama  to  which  their  sacrifice  was  the 
tragic  overture.     In  telling,  as  I  shall  try  very  briefly 
to  do,  from  whence  these  men  came — wc  know  where 
they  went — I   shall   hope  to  work   in  the  spirit  sug- 
gested   by    Anna    Brown    (Mrs.    Adams),  in    writing 
me:  "  I  have  always  had  a  feeling  that  I  wished  some 
one  would  write  of  these  men  who  felt  like  a  friend 
and   companion;    who   was   in    sympathy  with   them, 
and  did    not   condescend   to  look  down  from  a  high 
pedestal  of  culture  at  such  common  mortals  as  they 
were.     ...     It    takes    very  much    more  of  school 
education  to  write  of  the  lives  of  good    people,  than 
it  did  for  them  to  live  those  lives.     Some  of  the  best, 
noblest,  and  most  heroic   people   I   have  ever  known 


JOHN    BROWNS    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  45 1 

were  men  and  women  who  could  neither  read  nor 
write,  and  still  they  lived  beautiful  lives.  The  young- 
men  of  these  days  do  not  know  that  there  is  some 
good  bread  that  is  not  college  bred."  The  homely 
pun  may  be  forgiven  for  the  wholesome  lesson  it 
teaches. 

The  youngest  of  the  whites  was  not  yet  nineteen; 
the  oldest  had  just  reached  twenty-eight,  when,  after 
an  imprisonment  of  169  days,  Virginia  sent  his  nobly 
equipped  life  and  soul  into  eternity.  Of  the  colored 
men  the  youngest  was  barely  twenty-one  and  only  one 
had  passed  his  twenty-fourth  year.  That  was  Danger- 
field  Newby,  who  fought  for  his  family  as  well  as  race. 
Captain  Brown  and  he  were  the  two  men  of  mature 
years  in  the  fateful  band.  This  group  of  devoted 
men  in  any  other  of  our  modern  lands  (except, 
perhaps,  Russia)  would  have  been  embalmed  long 
ere  this  in  historical  record.  Practically,  they  have 
remained  unknown  for  a  third  of  a  century  and  may 
remain  so  during  the  passing  of  time.  As  an  im- 
mediate result  this  was  due  to  the  pervading  per- 
sonality and  record  of  their  Captain.  But  as  a  per- 
manent condition  it  is  due  most  directly  to  the  strange 
fact  that  their  lives  were  given  for  the  negro;  that 
they  fought  for  those  who  were  then  the  poorest  and 
most  wretched  of  all  Americans.  That  in  itself  is  an 
hostility  to  the  canons  of  good  taste  and  an  offense 
against  a  spirit  which  worships  success — even  in 
altruism. 

"  We  will  endure  the  shadow  of  dishonor  but  not 
the  stain  of  guilt."  These  words  of  John  Henri  Kagi 
express   the   spirit   of  John   Brown's  men  and,  in  an 


452  JOHN     BROWN. 

especial  sense,  the  character  of  the  young  and  brill- 
iant man  who  fell  riddled  with  bullets  into  the 
waters  of  the  Shenandoah.  Thirty  miles  below,  the 
blood-tinged  stream  flowed  through  the  lands  of  his 
father's  family.  Kagi  was  related  to  Virginia  by 
more  than  one  hundred  years  of  American  progeni- 
tors.    One  of  the  same  family1  writes: 

"  The  first  Kagy  of  whom  I  have  authentic  record  in  this 
country  was  one  John  R.  Kagy.  who  came  to  this  country  from 
Switzerland  in  171 5,  with  others  who  suffered  persecution  in 
the  fatherland  on  account  of  their  religious  faith,  they  being 
followers  of  the  great  reformer  Men  no  Simon.  My  ancestor 
was  among  the  first  settlers  in  Lancaster  Co.,  Pa.,  having 
settled  on  the  Conestogue,  in  the  township  of  Conestogue, 
then  a  vast  wilderness  inhabited  by  wild  beasts  and  Indians. 
Here  in  the  primitive  forest,  Hanse  Kagy  reared  his  family  of 
four  sons  and  three  daughters.  One  of  his  sons,  Henry,  born 
1728,  went  to  Virginia  in  176S,  and  located  on  Smith  Creek, 
in  the  county  of  Shenandoah.  He  raised  seven  sons  and  three 
daughters,  one  of  these  sons  was  named  Abraham,  and  he 
had  sons,  one  also  named  Abraham,  who  was  the  father  of 
the  subject  of  this' sketch  by  John  Henri  Kagi.  The  descend- 
ants of  Hanse,  or  John  R.  Kagy,  are  numbered  by  hundreds 
and  are  to  be  found  in  all  the  States  of  this  Union  and  in 
Canada.  I  never  knew  but  two  instances  of  the  Kagys  owning 
slaves,  one  in  Pennsylvania,  the  other  in  Virginia.  A  large 
number  of  our  people  belong  to  the  German  Baptist  and 
Methodist  Churches." 

John  Brown's  adjutant-general  had  just  passed 
the  seventh  month  of  his  twenty-fourth  year  when 
slain  at  Harper's  Ferry.  He  was  tall  and  somewhat 
angular,  with   a  slight   stoop  in  the  shoulders,  about 


1  Franklin  H.  Keagy,  Chambersburg,  Pa. 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         453 

five  feet  eleven  inches  in  height,  and  weighing  one 
hundred  and  fifty  pounds.  The  insufficient  portrait 
that  has  been  the  only  one  obtainable  was  taken  in 
1854,  at  an  age  when  thoughtful  young  men  are  apt  to 
look  older  than  they  really  are.  At  the  time  of  his 
death,  Kagi  wore  a  short,  full,  dark-brown  beard;  his 
face  was  thin  and  worn-looking,  complexion  pallid 
but  healthy,  hair  thin  and  dark  brown.  His  cousin 
Franklin,  who  got  well  acquainted  with  him  in  the 
ten  or  eleven  wreeks  of  his  life  spent  at  Chambers- 
burg,  but  without  then  knowing  the  relationship 
between  them,  writes  that  he  "had  more  the  appear- 
ance of  a  divinity  student  than  a  warrior.  His  manner 
was  reserved  almost  to  bashful ness,  but  when  ad- 
dressed or  engaged  in  conversation  he  spoke  freely 
and  fluently,  commanding  attention.  His  language 
was  elegant,  his  deportment  unassailable,  his  habits 
strictly  temperate,  kind  in  his  feelings  to  every  one, 
especially  to  children,  whose  confidence  he  acquired 
at  first  acquaintance."  It  was  John  Henri  Kagi 
whom  John  Brown  permitted  to  tell  me  fully  in  the 
summer  of  1858,  as  to  his  startling  design,  and  who 
replied  to  me  when  I  involuntarily  exclaimed  that  all 
would  "  be  killed";  "Yes,  I  know  it,  Hinton,  but  the 
result  will  be  worth  the  sacrifice"  I  recall  my  friend 
as  a  man  of  personal  beauty,  with  a  fine,  well-shaped 
head,  a  voice  of  quiet,  sweet  tones,  that  could  be  pene- 
trating and  cutting,  too,  almost  to  sharpness.  The 
eves  were  remarkable-  large,  full,  well-set  beneath 
strongly  arched  brows.  Ordinarily  they  wore  a  veiled 
look,  reminding  me  of  a  slow-burning  fire  of  heated 
coals,  hidden  behind  a  mica  door.  Hazel-gray  in 
color,    irridescent     in     light    and     effect.       The    face 


454  JOHN    BROWN. 

gave  you  confidence  in  the  character  that  had  already 
wrought  it  into  a  stern  gravity  beyond  its  years.  One 
would  trust  or  turn  away  at  once,  according  to  the 
purpose  sought.  Kagi  was  not  a  man  of  expressed 
enthusiasms;  on  the  contrary,  he  was  cold  in  manner, 
and  his  conclusions  were  stamped  with  the  approval 
of  his  intellect.  Mentally,  he  was  the  ablest  of  those 
who  followed  John  Brown  to  Harper's  Ferry.  In  the 
best  sense,  too,  he  was  the  most  scholarly  and  cul- 
tured. .George  B.  Gill,  who  was  closely  associated 
with  him  for  twelve  months,  writes: 

"  That  he  was  a  logician  of  more  than  ordinary  ability.  In 
speaking  or  debating,  he  would  stand  slightly  bent  with  his 
hands  behind  his  back.  To  a  superficial  listener  perhaps  he 
would  not  have  been  very  attractive,  but  the  thinking,  thought- 
ful listener  would  not  tire  of  him.  In  mental  fields  he  possessed 
abundant  and  ingenious  resources.  He  was  full  of  a  wonderful, 
enduring  vitality.  Disappointment  gave  him  just  as  results  as 
a  successful  termination.  All  things  were  fit  food  for  his 
brain.  No  road  was  so  lonely  that  he  did  not  see  hope  beckon- 
ing in  the  distance  ;  somewhere  seethe  sun  peering  through  the 
clouds.  .  .  .  He  was  an  agnostic  of  the  most  pronounced 
type,  so  grounded  in  his  convictions  that  he  gave  but  little 
thought  to  what  he  considered  useless  problems.  His  disposi- 
tion was  a  model  one.  No  strain  or  stress  could  shake  his 
unruffled  serenity.  His  fertility  of  resources  made  him  a  tower 
of  strength  to  John  Brown." 

Osborne  Perry  Anderson,  the  colored  annalist  of 
the  Harper's  Ferry  party,1  writes  that: 

"  Kagi  was  indifferent  to  personal  appearance,  he  went  about 
with  slouched  hat,  only  one  leg  of  his  pantaloons  properly  ad- 


1  "  A  Voice  from  Harper's  Ferry,"  p.  15. 


JOHN    BROWNS    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  455 

justed,  and  the  other  partly  tucked  into  His  high  boot-top;  un- 
brushed,  unshaven,  and  in  utter  disregard  of  the  'latest  style,' 
but  to  his  companions  and  acquaintances  a  verification  of 
'Burns'  man'  in  the  clothes.  He  had  improved  his  time;  for 
he  discoursed  elegantly  and  fluently,  wrote  ably,  and  could 
occupy  the  platform  with  greater  ability  than  many  a  man 
known  to  the  American  people  as  famous  in  these  respects." 

Realf  once  described  Kagi  as  the  "  Horace  Gree- 
ley "  of  the  John  Brown  party. 

Kagi  was  an  only  son,  born  March  15,  1835,  at 
Bristol,  Trumbull  County,  Ohio,  where  his  father, 
Abraham  Neff  Kagy,  had  moved  some  years  before 
from  Shenandoah  County,  Virginia.  Abraham  was 
born  in  iSo7,and  died  in  Kansas  about  1890.  His  son 
John  was  fifth  in  descent  from  Hanse  Kagy,  who,  with 
other  Swiss  Mennonites,  settled  in  17 15  on  Paquea 
Creek,  Conestoga  township,  Lancaster  County,  Penn- 
sylvania. It  was  the  grandson  of  this  emigrant  that 
moved  to  Virginia.  The  root  of  this  life,  like  John 
Brown's,  ran  deep  it  will  be  seen  into  the  volcanic 
soil  of  struggle  for  liberty  of  conscience  and  civic  free- 
dom. The  father  was  a  blacksmith,  all  of  the  earlier 
Kagys  were  farmers  and  mechanics;  good  stock  to 
be  citizens  of  a  great  nationality,  the  whole  of  whose 
stirring  history,  made  and  making,  has  sprung  from 
the  shaping  hands  of  industry;  fuses  only  in  the 
heated  crucible  of  toil  and  its  correlative  issues. 
Kagi's  mother  was  Anna  Fansler,  born  in  Virginia, 
and  to  them  four  children  were  born.  This  mother 
died  when  he  was  three  years  old.  John  went  to 
the  district  school,  and  became  an  example  for  his 
assiduity  in  study.  So  marked  was  his  devotion  that 
his  uncle   Jackson  Neff  sent   him    to   an   academy  in 


456  JOHN    BROWN. 

Virginia.  He  commenced  teaching  in  that  State  be- 
fore he  was  seventeen  and  remained  till  he  was  nine- 
teen, when  his  quietly  outspoken  dislike  of  slavery- 
put  him  under  the  ban.  He  was  a  good  mathema- 
tician and  English  scholar,  and  knew  his  Latin  well 
enough  to  teach  it.  He  taught  himself  phonography 
and  French,  and  had  commenced  the  study  of  Ger- 
man, when  he  found  it  conducive  to  physical  safety 
to  retire  from  the  "  Old  Dominion."  On  his  return 
to  Bristol  he  taught  in  the  neighborhood,  began  the 
study  of  law,  made  a  practise  of  attending  the 
country  lyceum  and  debating  clubs,  and  worked  also 
at  his  reporting.  His  father  went  to  California  late 
in  1850,  and  returned  East  in  1853,  settling  at  last  in 
southern  Nebraska,  at  Otoe,  on  Camp  Creek.  John 
had  to  keep  hard  at  work.  During  this  period  he  was 
at  Lexington,  Kentucky,  reporting  the  State  Con- 
stitutional Convention.  It  was  excellent  drill  and 
made  of  him  a  proficient  verbatim  reporter.  Kagi 
was  admitted  to  the  bar  somewhere  in  the  West  in 
the  early  part  of  1856  at  the  age  of  twenty-one.  He 
grew  firmer  and  sterner  in  his  anti-slavery  convictions, 
identifying  himself  in  1854  with  the  local  free-soil 
agitation  of  southern  Ohio. 

Arriving  at  Topeka,  Kansas,  on  the  fourth  day  of 
July,  1856,  he  was  a  deeply  interested  observer  of  the 
disposal  by  the  United  States  Dragoons,  under  the 
command  of  Colonel  Sumner  (who  was  afterward 
killed  in  command  of  the  Sixth  Army  Corps,  in  Vir- 
ginia), of  the  body  known  in  free-state  annals  as  the 
"  Topeka  Legislature."  It  will  be  worth  while  to 
briefly  re-indicate  here  the  historical  relation  of  that 
body  :  After    Missouri    and    its  Southern    allies    had 


JOHN    BROWN  S    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  457 

violated  the  so-called  "  squatter  sovereignty,"  or 
home-rule  dogma  of  the  Territorial  organic  act,  by 
invading  Kansas,  electing  citizens  of  Missouri  as  a 
Legislature  and  then  passing  the  draconian  slave- 
code,  known  as  the  "  bogus  laws,"  the  free-state  citi- 
zens, who  were  six  to  one  of  all  other  bona-fide  resi- 
dents, framed  through  a  constitutional  convention  a 
free-state  constitution  and  form  of  government.  It 
had  asked  for  admission  as  such  into  the  Union. 
That  was  pending,  and  to  prevent  the  "  constructive 
treason,"  for  which  Judge  Lecompte  indicted,  when 
the  Legislature  met  pro  forma,  under  orders  (subse- 
quently repudiated),  the  gallant  Massachusetts  soldier 
who  commanded  the  United  States  troops,  was 
obliged  to  disperse  by  a  show  of  force.  Kagi's  future, 
his  life,  and  death,  were  fixed  by  that  event.  He  at 
once  actively  identified  himself  with  the  free-state 
party,  joining  Company  "  B,"  of  what  was  known 
as  the  Second  Regiment  of  the  Free-State  Volunteers, 
under  command  of  Colonel  "  Charles  Whipple  " — 
afterwards  hung  at  Charlestown,  Virginia,  as  Aaron 
D.  Stevens,  March  16,  i860,  for  participation  in  the 
Harper's  Ferry  raid.  In  all  subsequent  details  of  the 
Topeka  movement,  Kagi  was  one  of  the  most  active, 
serving  as  its  reporter,  writing  appeals  to  the  Ameri- 
can people  on  Kansas  affairs,  and  to  the  Topeka 
Legislature,  urging  the  members  to  assemble  and 
maintain,  as  will  be  seen,  that  policy  to  the  last. 

Kagi  became,  in  every  sense,  active  in  free-state 
warfare.  He  served  for  one  year  in  the  Whipple  regi- 
ment, and  was  a  prisoner  at  Lecompton  for  a  period 
of  four  months,  half  starved  and  abused  all  the  time. 
He  was  beaten  with  a  club  and  wounded  by  a  pistol 


458  JOHN    BROWN. 

for  writings  he  sent  to  Eastern  journals.  He  was  the 
regular  correspondent  of  the  National  Era,  Dr. 
Bailey's  paper,  at  Washington,  and  of  the  New  York 
Evening  Post,  the  latter  over  the  signature  of  "  Kent." 
He  was  a  writer  for  the  Kansas  Tribune,  at  Topeka, 
and  the  Republican,  Lawrence,  Kan.,  from  1857  to  the 
early  spring  of  1859.  He  wrote  a  good  deal  also  for 
the  Chicago  Tribune,  Cleveland  Leader,  and  the  New 
York  Tribune.  As  such  writer,  he  possessed  the  faculty 
of  knowing  what  was  news  and  stating  the  same 
clearly  and  forcibly.  A  small  volume  might  readily 
be  made  interesting  from  the  materials  in  my  hands 
— school  compositions,  drafts  of  lectures,  essays,  in- 
cluding one  in  which  he  outlines  the  theory  that  all 
forms  of  matter  are  the  result  of  ether  in  motion; 
in  other  words  the  alleged  law  of  vibration.  In  his 
early  Kansas  life,  like  all  the  free-state  correspond- 
ents, he  was  a  shining  target  for  pro-slavery  persecu- 
tion It  was  not  an  uncommon  thing,  in  those 
days,  for  the  Territorial  Grand  Juries  to  be  manip- 
ulated into  rendering  indictments  against  them  under 
their  pen  names.  Kagi  was  once  indicted  by  the 
name  of  "Kent."  Hugh  Young  had  a  charge  made 
against  him  as  "  Potter,"  that  being  the  signature  he 
used  in  the  New  York  Tribune.  I  also  had  the  honor 
of  being  so  served.  Against  Kagi,  indictments  for 
highway  robbery,  arson,  etc.,  were  found.  His  arrest 
was  achieved  by  a  rather  disgraceful  trick,  under 
cover  of  Gov.  Geary's  presence,  at  Topeka.  It  was 
published  early  in  October,  1856,  that  the  Governor 
would  address  the  free-state  men  of  Topeka  in  the 
interests  of  peace.  Kagi  attended  to  report  his 
speech  and  was  arrested  while  so  engaged  on  account 


JOHN    BROWN  S    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  459 

of  his  alleged  participation,  early  in  August,  in  an 
attack  upon  a  fortified  position  held  by  Titus,  the 
border  ruffian,  near  Lecompton.  The  purpose  of 
the  arrest  was  evidently  to  stop  li is  pen.  But  it 
only  increased  its  usefulness,  for  prison  letters 
bitterly  incisive  in  their  exposure  of  brutal  cruelty, 
were  of  great  value  in  the  creation  of  Northern 
public  opinion.  The  man  whose  alleged  buildings 
he  was  said  to  have  aided  in  burning,  was  the 
jailer  in  charge  of  such  accused  prisoners.  Kagi 
resorted  to  all  sorts  of  ingenious  expedients  to  get  his 
letters  out  of  prison  and  properly  mailed.  In  Janu- 
ary, his  health  failing  him  rapidly,  he  procured 
bondsmen  and  was  admitted  to  $5,000  bail.  Judge 
Lecompte  was  glad  to  get  rid  of  him.  When  the 
pro-slavery  Constitutional  Convention  assembled 
soon  after,  in  February  1857,  Kagi  came  down  to 
Lecompton  to  report  its  proceedings,  and  was  almost 
immediately  rearrested;  giving  this  time  bonds  of 
$8,000.  All  these  charges  were  frauds,  and  were  never 
brought  to  trial.  Such  persecution  not  only  shaped 
his  early  ended  career,  but  prevented  attention  to  his 
own  interests  and  that  of  his  father  and  sisters. 
There  are  many  family  letters  of  the  period  showing 
this,  and  also  illustrating  Kagi's  sincere  and  affection- 
ate character.  He  notifies  his  father  in  Nebraska  of 
his  intended  home-coming,  and  of  the  necessity  of 
returning  in  April,  the  date  set  for  his  trial.  He 
asks  that  his  projected  return  by  way  of  the  Missouri 
River  be  kept  "  perfectly  quiet,"  as  his  life  would  not 
be  safe.  "  I  shall  be  compelled,"  he  says,  "to  go 
under  an  assumed  name  "  as  I  am  otherwise  known 
all  along  the  border  and    pro-slavery    men   "  would 


460  JOHN    BROWN. 

not  hesitate  to  assassinate  me."    While  in  the  Lecomp- 
ton  prison  he  wrote  to  his  sister,  that — 

"  Our  friends  will  take  us  out  the  moment  I  say  so.  A 
regiment,  the  same  in  which  I  was  lieutenant,  will  come  to  our 
rescue  any  night  I  give  the  order.  I  hesitate  only  because  we 
may  get  out  some  other  way,  and  a  forcible  rescue  would 
bring  on  a  fearful  winter  war,  which  I  do  not  wish  to  see.  Be 
cheerful  !  " 

In  March,  1857,  an  incident  occurred  of  great 
moment  to  Kagi.  Tecumseh  was  a  pro-slavery  town, 
which  the  border-ruffian  Legislature  had  made  the 
county  seat  of  Shawnee.  Topeka  is  in  the  same 
county,  and  it  was  almost  wholly  free  State.  Constant 
disturbances  occurred  at  Tecumseh.  Free-state  men 
were  not  safe  in  it  alone.  One  of  its  residents  was 
robbed  by  a  pro-slavery  townsman.  An  appeal  for 
protection  was  made  to  friends  at  Topeka.  The  law 
of  force  was  the  only  one  that  was  respected  on  either 
side.  The  Topeka  boys  arrived  and  proposed  arbi- 
tration. A  committee  was  appointed,  consisting  of 
the  accuser  and  the  accused,  with  Rush  Elmore,  a 
lawyer  from  Alabama,  who  had  served  a  brief  period 
as  one  of  the  United  States  Judges.  The  free-state 
man  proved  the  loss  of  his  goods  and  traced  them 
into  the  other  man's  hands.  Of  this  latter  there  was 
no  doubt,  for  the  goods  were  afterwards  seized  and 
restored  to  the  rightful  owner  by  free-state  men, 
who  announced  their  responsibility  for  the  act.  The 
burden  of  deciding  fell  on  the  ex-Judge,  and  he 
avoided  by  declaring  that  he  "  could  not  tell."  In 
his  letter,  describing  the  farce,  Kagi  said  that — 

"  President  Pierce  need  not  have  sought  a   pretext  for  dis- 
missing Elmore,  on  account  of  his  extra-judicial  investments, 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         461 

as  it  was  self-evident  that  a  person  who  could  not  decide  a  case 
when  the  clearest  evidence  was  given,  whether  a  convicted 
robber  should  return  stolen  goods  or  retain  them,  was  hardly 
qualified  for  a  seat  on  the  supreme  bench  of  the  Territory." 

Shortly  after  the  receipt  of  this  publication  in 
Kansas,  Kagi  had  occasion  with  a  few  others  to  visit 
Tecumseh,  in  order  to  attend  the  United  States  Court 
in  session  there.  Elmore  approached  him  armed 
with  bludgeon  and  revolver.  Kagi  did  not  know  the 
ruffian  personally  and  when  spoken  to  as  to  his 
identity  politely  responded.  Elmore  immediately 
struck  him  a  savage  blow  over  the  head,  and,  dodging 
behind  a  pillar,  commenced  firing  on  Kagi.  One  ball 
struck  him  in  the  breast,  passing  through  a  heavy 
memorandum  book,  and  glancing  made  a  severe 
wound  in  his  left  arm.  The  blood  streaming  from 
the  wound  in  his  head,  half  blinded  Kagi,  who  never- 
theless, revolver  in  hand,  advanced  steadily  on  the 
burly  and  fugacious  Alabamian,  dodging  round  the 
pillar  and  firing  wildly  at  his  antagonist  until  the 
latter's  only  shot,  penetrating  the  groin,  laid  him  low. 
The  lawyer  lived,  but  the  house  of  Elmore  was  ended 
by  this  incident.  Kagi,  however,  never  quite  re- 
covered from  the  effects  of  the  blow  on  his  head.  Mr. 
Gill,  in  his  recollections,  says  he  required  watching  at 
times,  especially  when  suffering  from  fever.  Becoming 
melancholic  and  moody  for  brief  spells,  his  comrades 
would  deem  it  necessary  to  hide  his  weapons  and 
otherwise  care  for  his  safety.  But  this  was  never 
serious,  and  resulted  more  from  the  effects  of  priva- 
tion than  any  cerebral  difficulty. 

The  lasting  contact  with  John  Brown  did  not 
occur  till  October,  1857,  when  these  two  met  at  To- 


,  462  JOHN    BROWN. 

peka.  Aaron  D.  Stevens  also  entered  that  service  at 
the  time.  The  party  was  formed  which  went  to 
school  at  Springdale,  Iowa,  to  Chatham,  Canada,  back 
to  southern  Kansas,  thence  to  Pennsylvania,  Mary- 
land, Virginia — and  Death.  Other  chapters  have 
sketched  in  outline  the  events  which  moved  along 
this  route,  and  have  indicated  the  part  John  Henri 
Kagi  played  therein.  A  memorandum  found  in  the 
carpet-bag  of  papers  seized  by  the  Virginian  authori- 
ties had  the  following  written  thereon  by  Kagi. 
Evidently  this  was  intended  as  the  basis  of  a  fuller 
paper  or  lecture.  It  shows  the  working  of  his  mind, 
the  spirit  in  which  he  acted:  "Slavery,"  the  paper 
declares,  "  must  be  abolished  by  war.  Peaceful  aboli- 
tion would  result  in  a  war  of  races.  Slaves  will  grow 
in  war  and  fit  themselves  for  (civic)  equality.  A  re- 
public cannot  abolish  it.  Slavery  and  its  increase  is 
a  bribe  "  to  the  politicians.  The  suggestion  as  to  the 
incapacity  of  a  republic  to  the  task  he  had  in  mind  is 
not  without  incisive  vigor,  when  the  subsequent 
course  of  civic  suppression  and  ballot-box  inanity 
pursued  "down  South,"  is  duly  considered.  Writing 
to  William  A.  Phillips,  of  Kansas,  in  1S59,  but  a  few- 
weeks  before  his  death,  he  showed  the  intensity  of 
his  sympathetic  hostility  to  chattelism,  by  declaring, 
that 

"  I  shall  long  remember  that  your  house  was  one  of  the  only 
two  in  Lawrence  into  which  I  dared,  and  that  in  the  night 
only,  to  enter ;  and  solely  because  I  was  opposed  to  theft,  rob- 
bery, murder — for  slavery  is  all  of  these.  It  steals  babes  in 
the  cradle  ;  I  might  say  in  the  mother's  womb.  It  robs  women 
of  their  chastity  and  men  of  their  wives.  It  kills,  with  sorrow, 
uncheered  labor  and  the  various  forms  of  cruelty,  more  slowly, 
surely,  but  more  in  number  than  the  sword." 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         463 

In  all  the  twenty-four  months  of  close  intimacy 
that  followed  the  meeting  of  John  Brown  and  John 
Henri  Kagi,  there  is  not  one  discordant  note.  It  is  a 
tribute  to  his  closest  associate,  that  from  the  first  the 
old  Captain  trusted  him  to  the  uttermost.  It  was 
not  Kagi  that  ever  murmured  or  opposed.  It  was 
Kagi  that  planned,  worked,  conceived,  fought,  and 
obeyed,  without  question.  He  was  the  best  of  coun- 
selors and  showed  it  in  his  last  communication  with 
the  leader  at  Harper's  Ferry,  when  in  the  noon  hour 
of  the  17th  of  October,  he  sent  "  Jerry  "  Anderson 
from  Hall's  Rifle  Works,  half  a  mile  distant,  to  John 
Brown  at  the  Armory  Yard,  urging  a  uniting  of  all 
their  small  force,  with  a  view  to  fighting  their  way 
out  of  the  trap  they  were  in.  It  could  have  then 
been  successfully  done  and  have  carried  out  also 
fifteen  or  twenty  of  the  pluckier  men  of  color.  The 
fatal  glamor  of  judgment  which  made  John  Brown 
place,  at  the  moment,  more  importance  on  the  fair 
impression  he  tried  to,  but  never  made,  on  such 
brains  as  those  of  Lewis  Washington,  Alstadt,  Burns, 
et  a/.,  than  he  did  upon  gaining  a  vigorous  foothold 
for  the  partisan  warfare  he  had  started,  induced  him 
to  urge  another  hour's  delay  on  Kagi's  suggestion. 

With  some  manuscript  letters  of  Kagi,  filed  by 
the  late  Col.  William  A.  Phillips,  of  Kansas,  in  the 
State  Historical  Society's  Library,  there  was  attached 
a  note  in  which  he  describes  briefly  Kagi's  fate,  and 
says  that  "he  was  not  hopeful  of  the  result  of  the 
attack,  but  accompanied  Brown."  There  is  no  justi- 
fication for  the  remark  in  any  extant  letter  or  writing 
left  by  John  Henri  Kagi.  On  the  contrary,  he  always 
wrote  hopefully,  cheering  every  one  addressed.     On 


464  JOHN    BROWN. 

September  23,  1858,  he  wrote  his  father  and  unmar- 
ried sister,  who  had  met  Captain  Brown  and  others, 
and  knew,  in  a  general  way,  that  their  purpose  was 
to  attack  slavery  in  its  own  domain,  that — 

"  I  believe  there  are  better  times  dawning,  to  my  sight  at 
least.  I  am  not  now  laboring  and  waiting  without  present 
reward  for  myself  alone;  it  is  for  a  future  reward  for  man- 
kind, and  for  you  all.  There  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  reward  in 
the  end,  or  of  the  drawing  very  near  of  the  success  of  a  great 
cause  which  is  to  earn  it.  Few  of  my  age  have  toiled  harder 
or  suffered  more  in  the  cause  than  I,  yet  I  regret  nothing  that 
I  have  done,  nor  am  I  in  any  discouragement  at  the  future. 
It  is  bright  and  good,  and  treads  on  to  meet  the  hopeful  with 
rapid  strides.  Things  are  now  quiet.  I  am  collecting  arms, 
etc.,  belonging  to  J.  B.,  so  that  he  may  command  them  at  any 
time." 

From  Tabor,  Iowa,  on  the  7th  of  February,  1859, 
he  writes  "  expecting  to  get  actively  to  work  by 
July,"  and  from  Cleveland,  Ohio,  under  date  of  June 
8th,  he  says:  "  I  now  expect  to  leave  here  next  week 
and  go  into  my  business  in  earnest  ;  " — and  he  also 
advises  his  sister  that  she  should  "  always  keep  in 
good  spirits  and  hopeful,  believing  that  all  is  for  the 
best  and  not  thinking  that  you  were  singled  out  by 
Fate  from  living  chessmen  in  his  game  of  horror  and 
of  death.  Follow  this  and  you  will  never  regret 
being  alive." 

Under  date  of  Cleveland,  Ohio,  March  18,  1859,  he 
wrote  the  following: 

Dear  Hinton — I  have  to-day  written  Redpath  and  Mer- 
riam  respecting  our  proposed  Nicaragua  emigration,  and  wish- 
ing them  to  meet  me  in  Boston  at  an  early  day.  The  careless 
action  of  our  government   and  the   evident  backing  down  in 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         465 

view  of  the  virtual  European  interference  seem  to  offer  advan- 
tages never  possessed  by  Walker.  I  wrote  to  them  in  care  of 
Francis  Jackson.  I  need  not  say  that  I  would  like  to  see  you 
also  at  that  time,  which  I  am  now  unable  to  name.  Will  you 
see  that  Redpath  and  Merriam  get  the  word  ?  " 

But  the  letter  which  most  expressed  confidence  was 
the  last  one  written  to  his  home  in  Otoe,  Nebraska, 
bearing  date,  Chambersburg,  Pa.,  September  24,  1859,  ' 
twenty-two  days  before  the  little  party  started  down 
the  dim  moonlit  road  from  the  Kennedy  Farm  to 
Harper's  Ferry.     Kagi  writes: 

"  My  business  is  progressing  finely.  I  could  not  ask  for 
better  prospects.  My  parttiers  are  all  about  sixty  miles  this 
side  of  Uncle  Jacob's,  and  enough  of  them  to  put  the  business 
through  in  the  best  of  style.  Our  freight  is  all  on  the  ground 
with  them  in  safety,  and  we  are  now  only  waiting  &few  days 
more  for  two  or  three  hands,  not  so  much  because  we  want 
them,  but  because  they  want  a  share  themselves.  So  that  in  a 
very  few  days  we  shall  commence.  You  may  even  hear  of  it 
before  you  get  this  letter.  Things  could  not  be  more  cheerful 
and  more  certain  of  success  than  they  are.  We  have  worked 
hard  and  suffered  much,  but  the  hardest  is  down  now,  and  a 
glorious  success  is  in  sight.  I  will  say — can  say — only  one 
word  more.  I  will  write  soon  after  we  commence  work.  When 
you  write,  give  me  all  the  news — for  I  shall  hereafter  have 
only  three  correspondents  in  all — Mr.  Dana  (Charles  A.,  then 
managing  editor)  of  the  Tribune,  and  Mr.  Win,  A.  Phillips, 
of  Lawrence  (Kansas),  so  that  I  shall  look  to  you  for  all  news 
about  our  friends  and  acquaintances.  Direct  the  letters  like 
this:  H.  K.,  and  put  them  into  another  envelope  and  direct  it 
as  follows :  ,Mrs.  Mary  W.  Ritner,  Chambersburg,  Pa.  But 
don't  let  no  one  else  know  how  you  send  them.  Be  cheerful. 
Don't  imagine  dangers.     All  will  be  well." 

He  remained  at  his  post,  fighting  and  dying  in  the 
same  lofty  temper  which  made  him  declare  to  me  the 

3° 


466  JOHN    BROWN. 

year  preceding  that,  whatever  it  was,  life  or  death — 
"the  result  would  be  worth  the  sacrifice."  No  word 
of  surrender  came  from  his  lips.  Pierced  with  bul- 
lets, his  riddled  body  lay  in  the  Shenandoah  till  late 
in  the  afternoon  of  the  nineteenth,  when  it  was  pitched 
with  others  in  a  shallow  trench  dug  on  the  east  bank, 
to  be  afterwards  carried  off  for  dissection  by  the  Win- 
chester medical  students.  No  braver  man  or  more 
unselfish  soul  ever  blessed  the  earth  than  John  Henri 
Kagi. 

John  Edwin  Cook  was  in  his  twenty-ninth  year 
when  hung  by  Virginia,  having  been  born  in  the 
summer  of  1830,  at  Haddam,  Connecticut.  The  family 
were  well-to-do,  cultivated  people,  of  old  Puritan 
stock,  and  John  was  the  favorite  boy-child  among  a 
family  of  handsome  sisters.  He  was  well  educated, 
and  was  early  admitted  to  Yale.  It  remains  uncertain 
to  the  writer  whether  he  graduated,  but  he  studied 
law  in  Williamsburgh,  with  a  Mr.  Stearns,  and  resided 
in  the  home  of  his  elder  sister  Mrs.  Crowley,  the  wife 
of  a  prosperous  Englishman,  acting  as  agent  in  this 
country  for  a  famous  English  make  of  needles.  He 
afterwards  served  as  a  clerk  in  the  office  of  Ogden 
Hoffman,  a  famous  New  York  lawyer  of  that  day. 
But  his  love  of  adventure  was  irresistible,  and  when 
the  Kansas  excitement  broke  out,  he  could  not  be 
persuaded  to  pursue  his  profession  further.  Of  his 
life  as  law  student,  the  Rev.  Elder  J.  Porter,  editor  of 
the  Christian  Intelligencer  writes  that — 

"  He  was,  a  few  years  ago,  a  member  of  the  congregation  of 
which  the  writer  is  the  pastor.  He  was  then  a  law  student  in 
Williamsburgh,  and  a  young  man  of  blameless  morals  and  in- 
dustrious habits.     As  an  attendant  at  church,  and  a  teacher  in 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         467 

a  then  mission  Sabbath-school,  he  displayed  tendencies  of  dis- 
position at  once  amicable  and  admirable.  When  the  Kansas 
war  broke  out,  when  preachers  and  politicians  strove  together 
to  inflame  the  public  mind  with  diabolical  resentments,  Cook, 
young,  sentimental,  visionary,  and  adventurous,  emigrated  to 
Kansas." 

Cook  was  about  five  feet,  seven  inches  in  height, 
slender  but  strong  in  frame,  active  in  movement, 
quick,  impetuous  of  speech,  even  sometimes  stammer- 
ing a  little  through  his  vocal,  nervous  haste.  His 
appearance  was  always  attractive.  Memory  recalls 
him  as  he  rode  up  to  a  campfire  near  Fall  City,  Ne- 
braska, about  the  20th  of  July,  1856,  accompanied  by 
Charles  Lenhart,  his  devoted  comrade,  a  young, 
curly,  and  blonde  haired,  fresh-faced,  intensely  blue- 
eyed  boy,  for  he  looked  not  to  be  over  twenty  years 
of  age,  though  five  years  older,  with  a  good  horse, 
handsome  clothing,  and  a  brilliant  array  of  weapons 
on  his  person.  He  captured  all  present  at  once.  Even 
Ira  Stewart  (afterwards  the  organizer  of  the  New  Eng- 
land Eight-Hour  League),  our  cynical  and  somewhat 
depressing  critic,  gave  way  to  the  spell  that  Cook  pos- 
sessed. For  myself,  we  became  friends  at  once,  and 
this  was  constant  until  we  parted  in  the  early  No- 
vember days  of  1857.  Cook  was  ingenuous,  fervid, 
passionate,  eloquent;  always  cheerful  and  sentimental, 
because  affectionate  and  tender  to  a  fine  degree.  He 
would  talk  and  rattle  on  about  himself.  After  all,  it 
will  be  difficult  to  recall  that  he  ever  really  talked  of 
any  one's  opinion  or  purposes  but  his  own.  This, 
however,  was  an  indiscretion  at  times  and  under  the 
conditions  in  which  John  Brown's  men  were  placed. 
Anna  Brown  doubtless  expresses  the  facts,  when   she 


468  JOHN    BROWN. 

writes,  that — "  Cook  favored  the  plan  of  taking  the 
town  (Harper's  Ferry),  government  buildings,  visited 
them  and  obtained  a  good  deal  of  valuable  informa- 
tion. The  idea  of  taking  Colonel  Washington  and  his 
r  'lies  was  his,  and  he  called  on  that  gentleman  and 
found  out  where  he  kept  thern.  Cook  wanted  to  go 
among  the  plantation  negroes  and  give  them  vague 
hints  of  what  was  coming.  This  father  positively  for- 
bade him  doing,  and  he  lived  in  constant  fear  all  that 
summer  that  Cook  would  make  a  confidant  of  some 
one.  who  would  betray  us.  He  never  doubted  his 
bravery,  honesty,  or  good  intentions,  but  considered 
him  impulsive  and  indiscreet." 

It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  the  details  of  his  life, 
from  the  early  summer  of  1856  to  the  early  winter  day 
of  1859,  when  he  was  done  to  death  on  a  Virginia 
scaffold.  His  course  has  generally  been  outlined  in 
tracing  the  roads  followed  from  Kansas  to  Harper's 
Ferry.  In  Springdale,  Iowa,  as  in  Kansas,  he  was 
a  good  comrade  to  all  men;  beloved  of  all  women, — 
mothers  as  well  as  maidens.  He  had  a  good  deal  of 
poetic  fancy  and  excellent  taste  in  rhyming.  From  a 
forgotten  Kansas  newspaper  I  rescue  one  little  lyric, 
written  in  reply  to  one  sent  from  Boston,  demanding 
that  we  "  Don't  give  up  "  the  free-state  cause.  One 
of  Richard  Realf's  stirring  free-state  lyrics  was 
penned  in  reply,  and  John  E.  Cook  responded  with — 

WE'LL  NOT  GO  BACK! 

From  the  bleak  New  England  hills, 
From  the  forest,  dark  and  old. 
From  the  side  of  murm'ring  rills, 
Came  the  hardy  and  the  bold — 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         469 

Came  they  here  to  seek  a  home, 
On  the  prairies'  boundless  plain. 
Here,  to  Kansas,  they  have  come, 
Found  a  home — and  will  remain. 

Rest  they  here ;  though  clouds  may  lower, 

O'er  Freedom's  glowing  sky, 

Fear  not  they  the  tyrant's  power, 

Nor  the  Ruffian's  battle-cry. 

If  the  storm  should  o'er  them  roll — 

Battles'  lightnings  round  them  glow, 

Still,  with  firm,  undaunted  soul, 

They  will  meet  the  coming  blow. 

Meet  it,  as  the  sons  of  sires, 
Who,  in  bye-gone  days  of  yore, 
Stood  where  Bunker's  awful  fires 
Strewed  the  field  with  crimson  gore. 
Sires,  who  died  that  Freedom's  light 
Here  might  glow  with  undimm'd  ray, 
Freedom  theirs;  and  truth  and  right 
Hallows  tombs  where  now  they  lay. 

This  our  home  ;  and  Kansas  sod 
Free  from  slavery's  stain  shall  be. 
Here  the  tyrant's  chast'ning  rod, 
Bows  no  neck,  nor  bends  no  knee. 
This  our  home  ;  and  we'll  never 
Leave  a  land  we  so  much  love. 
Till  life's  ties  shall  sever, 
And  we  seek  a  home  above. 

Here,  on  Kansas'  wide-spread  plains, 
We  shall  dwell,  through  weal  and  woe  ; 
Keep  it  pure  from  slavery's  stains, 
Till  life's  fountains  cease  to  flow 


4yo  JOHN    BROWN, 

Leave  it — never  !  nevermore, 
While  the  blue  sky  bends  above, 
Woods  and  plains,  and  valleys  o'er, 
Are  our  home — the  home  we  love. 

Lawrence,  Dec.   17,  '56. 

His  letters,  and  many  have  been  in  my  poseession, 
are  all  clean,  sweet,  and  manly,  filled  with  a  poetic 
sentimentality,  but  never  one  embraces  a  sentence 
unworthy  of  light,  or  detracting  from  the  strong, 
manly  quality  of  bis  character.  Writing,  after  the 
Chatham  Convention,  to  Iowa  friends,  be  says: 

"  I  came  as  a  stranger  ;  I  was  treated  as  a  friend  and  brother, 
and  in  return  you  have  my  undying  gratitude  and  affection. 
.  .  .  Higher,  holier  duties  called  me  and  I  left  you,  prob- 
ably  for  ever.  But  wherever  I  may  roam,  through  all  the 
changing  scenes  of  life,  and  in  that  hour  when  the  scenes  of 
life  are  closing,  I  shall  think  of  you  and  shall  love  you  with  a 
brother's  love.  And  may  I  not  hope  that  the  golden  links  of 
the  chain  that  thus  unites  us  will  remain  unbroken  in  life  and 
grow  brighter  in  eternity.  Then  only  can  you  know  me  as  I 
am.  And  when  upon  your  bended  knees,  '  Oh  !  if  at  no  other 
time  you  think  of  me,  do  not  forget  me  then.  Alone,  before 
your  God,  in  the  stillness  of  your  chamber,  I  would  most  wish 
to  be  remembered,'  till  I  left  you  that  there  was  so  much  sel- 
fishness in  my  nature  ;  that  there  would  be  so  great  a  struggle 
between  the  desires  of  a  selfish  heart  and  my  manifest  duty. 
But,  so  it  is.  We  do  not  know  ourselves  until  we  are  tested 
in  the  great  crucible  of  time  and  circumstances.  .  .  .  The 
prospects  of  our  cause  are  growing  brighter  and  brighter. 
Through  the  dark  gloom  of  the  future  I  almost  fancy  I  can  see 
the  dawning  light  of  freedom  breaking  through  the  midnight 
darkness  of  foul  wrong  and  oppression.  That  I  can  almost 
hear  the  swelling  -anthem  of  Liberty  rising  from  the  millions 
who  have  but  just  cast  aside  the  fetters  and   shackles  that 


JOHN    BROWNS    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  471 

bound  them  But  ere  that  day  arrives  I  fear  that  we  shall 
hear  the  crash  of  the  battle  shock  and  see  the  red  glare  of  the 
cannon's  lightning'.  .  .  .  Inclosed  you  will  find  a  few 
flowers  that  I  gathered  in  my  rambles  about  town.  They  are 
the  earliest  flowers  that  blossom  in  this  region.  Accept  this 
with  my  best  wishes  for  your  earthly  and  eternal  bloom."1 

In  another  letter  of  the  same  period  he  writes: 

"  I  am  in  the  worst  situation  I  ever  was  in  in  my  life.  I  am 
here  among  strangers,  and,  what  is  strange,  have  no  wish  to 
make  acquaintances.  I  also  wish  to  write  to  my  parents,  sis- 
ters, and  brother,  but  dare  not  at  present  on  account  of  future 
plans.  For,  should  they  know  that  I  was  stopping  here,  it 
would  awaken  suspicion  as  to  the  cause  of  it.  And  then, 
beside,  Mr.  B.  says  he  rather  we  would  not  until  we  leave  here  ; 
for  which  request  he  has  good  reasons.  .  .  .  Time  hangs 
heavily  on  my  hands  while  waiting,  and  there  is  but  one  thing 
that  keeps  me  from  being  absolutely  unhappy,  and  that  is  the 
consciousness  that  I  am  in  the  path  of  duty.  I  long  for  the 
10th  of  May  to  come  (this  was  the  date  set  for  the  Chatham 
Convention  to  meet).  I  am  anxious  to  have  my  mind  occupied 
with  the  great  work  of  our  missions,  for  amid  the  bustling, 
busy  scenes  of  the  camp,  I  should  be  less  lonely  and  therefore 
more  happy  than  at  present." 

His  Spring-dale  friendships  were  maintained  to  the 
last  hour  of  his  life,  and  on  the  morning'  of  his  execu- 
tion he  wrote  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Townsend  there, 
before  he  indited  the  farewell  letter  to  his  wife  and 
child.     On  the  3d  of  July,  1859.  he  writes: 

.  .  .  I  shall  start  up  among  the  mountains  to  gaze  upon 
the  grand  and  beautiful.  .  .  .  God's  blessed  air  sweeps 
over  them,  and  the  winds,  as  it  were,  breathe  a  mournful  song 
of    Liberty.     .     .     .     Time    passes  slowly     ...     as    I    idle 


1  To  Miss  Ella  F.  Lewis,  of  SpringJale,  Iowa. 


472  JOHN     BROWN. 

thus.  Heart  and  soul  are  all  absorbed  in  the  thought  of  what 
I  owe  my  country  and  my  God.  .  .  .  To-morrow  is  the 
Fourth  !  the  glorious  day  which  saw  our  Freedom's  birth,  but 
left  sad  hearts  beneath  the  slave  lash  and  clanking  chain. 
.  .  .  I  feel  self-condemned  whenever  I  think  of  it.  .  .  . 
The  contents  of  the  cup  may  be  bitter,  but,  if  it  is  our  duty 
let  us  drain  it  to  the  very  dregs. 

On  the  ioth  of  August  he  writes  to  the  Lewis 
family  that: 

"A  light  is  breaking  in  the  Southern  sky,  and  my  glad  eyes  are 
gazing  on  its  beams,  for  well  I  know  that  they  are  heralds  fair 
of  the  bright  glories  of  the  coming  day.  My  hours  of  watching 
and  waiting  now  are  over,  and  my  glad  heart  is  thrilled  with 
the  joy  which  the  morning  light  has  brought.  My  spirit  seems 
to  drink  the  inspiration  of  the  scene,  and  I  scarcely  feel  the 
weakness  of  my  body.  I  am  ready,  waiting  for  my  task.  / 
shall  not  have  long  to  ivait.  The  harvest  is  ripe,  and  the 
husbandman  is  almost  ready.  He  has  gazed  over  the  field, 
and  found  that  all  was  good.  I  but  await  his  mandate.  How 
I  want  to  see  you  now.  I  have  no  words  to  tell  my  yearning 
after  friends  and  home.  Oh,  I  would  love  to  gaze  upon  them 
now ;  to  hear  the  tones  that  taught  my  infant  lips  to  utter 
father,  mother,  sister,  brother.  But  this  may  not  be.  God  be 
with  and  bless  them." 

In  this  letter  he  sent  the  following  stanzas: 

We  see  the  gathering  tempest  in  the  sky, 
We  see  the  black  clouds  as  along  they  roll, 
We  see  from  out  the  gloom  the  lightnings  fly, 
O'erthrowing  all  who  would  their  course  control ! 

We  see  their  flashes  as  they  light' the  gloom, 
Which  o'er  the  morning's  deep-blue  sky  was  cast ; 
We  hear  the  deep  thunder's  echoing  boom, 
That  tells  the  Death-descending  bolt  has  past. 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         475 

We  see  the  sunlight  pierce  the  gloom  of  night, 
Which  those  dark  clouds  o'er  mornings  had  cast, 
And  roll  them  back  upon  their  rapid  flight, 
That  we  may  hail  the  rainbow's  beam  at  last. 

John  E.  Cook  left  Captain  Brown  at  Cleveland, 
Ohio,  in  the  latter  part  of  May,  1858,  proposing  to 
him  to  go  to  Harper's  Ferry,  or  neighborhood,  procure 
employment,  and  make  investigations.  John  Brown 
consented,  a  little  reluctantly  at  first,  as  Cook's  indis- 
creet speech  always  disturbed  him.  But  there  is  no 
doubt  that  his  hearty  consent  was  finally  given.  Gill, 
Tidd,  Parsons,  Realf,  have  all  agreed  to  that.  Andrew 
Hunter,  examining  the  correspondence  in  the  cap- 
tured carpet-bag,  found  two  or  three  letters,  one 
being  written  by  Richard  Realf,  criticising  Cook  for 
indiscreet  talking,  and,  with  the  craft  of  the  petty 
prosecutor,  thought  he  had  lighted  on  evidence  of  a 
divided  feeling.  He  set  himself  to  work  it  up,  hoping  to, 
in  some  way,  find  one  of  his  prisoners  weak  enough  to 
fall  into  the  shallow  trap  he  set.  It  was  given  out  that 
Copeland  had  confessed  and  Edwin  Coppoc  adjured 
his  Captain,  while  Cook's  statement,  wrung  from  him 
by  the  desire  to  see  his  wife  and  babe  again,  but  more 
through  the  pleadings  of  his  sister  and  cousin,  Mrs. 
Willard  and  Miss  Hughes,  of  Indiana,  was  heralded 
as  a  "  confession"  of  importance.  How  little  signifi- 
cance it  had  is  apparent  by  the  comments  of  the 
New  York  Tribune's  correspondent  (Nov.  10,  1859). 
when  it  was  sensationally  introduced  into  court. 
The  Captain's  daughter  writes  relative  to  these   mat- 


1  The  spectators  had  begun  to  withdraw,  expecting  no  continu- 
ance of  the  interest,  when,  suddenly,  all  attention  was  arrested  by 
Mr.  Hunter's  announcement  that  he  had  a  confession  rendered  uy 


474  JOHN    BROWN. 

ters,  that  both  Cook  and  Coppoc  were  a  warm- 
hearted and  impulsive,  willing  to  work  for  the  cause, 
but  would  rather  not  die  for  it,  unless  forced  to." 

Arriving  in  Virginia  early  in  June,  1858,  Cook 
Stopped  at  Martinsburg,  boarding  with  Mrs.  Kennedy, 
whose  daughter  Virginia  he  soon  after  married. 
He  taught  district  school,  and  also  gave  writing  les- 
sons. He  peddled  maps  and  traveled  as  a  book 
agent  in  the  Valley  of  Virginia.  He  kept  in  touch 
with  his  Captain,  who  wisely  destroyed  the  letters  as 
they  came.  Hence  there  were  none  found  in  the  car- 
pet-bag. For  some  time  he  kept  the  canal  lock  at  the 
north  end  of  the  United  States  grounds.  He  was 
often  in  the  armory  and  gathered  considerable  infor- 
mation. Cook  formed  the  plan  for  capturing  Lewis 
Washington  and  obtaining  his  historical  relics.  He 
also  advocated  the  seizure  of  Harper's  Ferry,  wanted 
to  burn  the  buildings  and  railroad  bridges,  carrying 
off  such  United  States  arms  as  their  means  of  trans- 
portation would  allow.     He  was  a  favorite  with  his 


Cook,  which  he  was  about  to  read.  The  intelligence  soon  spread 
'about,  and  the  courtroom  was  speedily  crowded  again.  All  hoped 
for  a  complete  and  satisfactory  revelation.  .  .  .  but  all  were 
disappointed.  For  the  confession,  which  occupied  some  twenty 
large  pages  of  manuscript,  and  was  not  read  in  less  than  half  an 
hour,  was  very  little  beside  a  record  of  some  of  Cook's  experi- 
ences in  Kansas,  Iowa,  Ohio,  Canada,  and  elsewhere,  in  which, 
to  be  sure,  Brown  was  concerned  all  through,  but  which,  except- 
ing the  latter  portions,  bore  very  remotely  upon  the  Harper's 
Ferry  question.  .  .  .  Beyond  the  interest  that  attaches  to  an 
ostensible  full  avowal  from  one  of  Brown's  party,  his  confession 
nas  none.  It  is  thought  by  the  court  that  Cook  has  played  a 
double  game  in  preparing  it — that  he  has  pretended  to  reveal  to 
the  authorities  in  good  faith  all  that  he  is  able  to,  and  at  the 
same  time  attempted  to  preserve  his  fidelity  to  his  old  master. 


John  brown's  men:  who  they  were.        475 

neighbors,  and  was  well  treated  and  warned  of  danger 
by  the  people  along  the  canal,  when,  on  the  afternoon 
of  the  17th  of  October,  he  was  the  only  one  of  the 
band  not  in  the  Ferry,  who  risked  his  life  to  aid  his 
Comrades  that  were  fighting  there.  Mr.  Boteler, 
then  in  Congress  from  that  district,  has  told  of  the  close 
call  he  received  from  a  bullet  sent  by  Cook  from  the 
side  of  Maryland  Heights.  The  mark  is  still  seen,  made 
as  he  fell  fifteen  feet  that  afternoon,  when  a  shot  from 
one  of  the  militia  cut  a  small  tree  branch  to  which  he 
was  clinging.  Cook  never  lacked  the  courage  which 
Napoleon  termed  the  "  three  o'clock  in  the  morning" 
tvpe.  In  Ralph  Keeler's  account,  from  Owen  Brown's 
notes  and  statement,  of  the  final  escape  of  Owen, 
Barclay  Coppoc,  and  F.  J.  Merriam,  the  earlier  pages 
are  of  interest  as  illustrating  the  influences  that  acted 
upon  Cook  in  his  fatal  move  at  the  Mount  Alto  or 
"  old  "  furnace. 

The  counsel  of  John  Edwin  Cook,  at  Chambers- 
burg,  is  a  man  honored  in  his  native  State  and 
esteemed  throughout  the  nation.  In  a  recent  volume1 
the  editor  of  the  Philadelphia  Times,  Hon.  Alexan- 
der K.  McClure,  has  written  an  account  of  his  con- 
nection with  my  beloved  comrade  and  friend.  It  is  a 
pathetic  story,  having  the  great  merit  of  personal 
knowledge  by  one  whose  word  will  not  be  gainsaid, 
and  it  embodies  a  real  tribute  to  a  brilliant,  brave, 
erratic  but  earnest  manhood.      I  condense: 

When    Hazlett     was    captured    near    Shippenburg 


1  "  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Men  of  War  Times."  By  A.  K. 
McClure,  LL.D.,  Philadelphia.  The  Times  Publishing  Company, 
lSy2       "  An  Episode  of  the  John  Brown  Raid,"  pp.  307-326. 


476  JOHN    BROWN. 

and  taken  to  Carlisle,  Pennsylvania,  he  was  believed 
to  be  Captain  Cook.  A  reward  of  $1,000  was  offered 
for  the  latter's  capture,  and  of  $2,000  for  Owen  Brown, 
Charles  Plummer  Tidd,  Barclay  Coppoc,  and  Francis 
J.  Merriam.  Attached  to  the  proclamation  was  a 
fair  description  of  each  of  the  fugitives.  A  requisi- 
tion was  obtained  from  Richmond  for  the  rendition 
of  Cook.  When  the  mistake  was  discovered,  the 
Cook  requisition  was  retained  in  a  sheriff's  hands, 
thirty  miles  from  Chambersburg.  This  proximity 
cost  Cook  his  life.  Thus,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was 
practically  sacrificed;  the  arrest  of  Hazlett  being  one 
direct  cause,  and  the  rather  quarrelsome  disposition 
of  Tidd  being  the  other,  though  unintentional,  force 
which,  with  hunger,  induced  or  drove  Cook  down  from 
the.  mountains.  Col.  A.  K.  McClure  says:  "I  was  the 
counsel  of  John  E.  Cook  at  Chambersburg,  and  the 
only  person  entirely  familiar  with  the  inner  history 
of  his  capture  and  the  plans  of  escape." 

The  hunters,  slave  or  otherwise,  of  the  "South 
Mountain"  region,  had  seen  that  the  line  of  retreat 
must  be  in  that  direction.  "  Cook  was  known  as  a  man 
of  desperate  courage,"  "  reckless,"  and  "  expert  "  in  the 
use  of  weapons,  and  "  his  capture  alive  was  not  ex- 
pected." He  was,  however,  arrested  on  the  24th  of 
October,  and,  says  Col.  McClure,  he  "  walked  into  the 
hands  of  the  only  man  in  Franklin  County  who  com- 
bined with  the  courage  and  skill  the  purpose  to  cap- 
ture him.  The  Logans  were  mountaineers,  Southern 
in  sympathy,  "  natural-born  detectives,"  accustomed 
to  the  hunting  of  fugitive  slaves.  Daniel  Logan,  the 
capturer  of  Cook,  lived  at  Lancaster,  until  1892.  He 
is  described  as  a  man  who  "  did  not  believe  that  either 


JOHN    BROWN  S    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  477 

slavery  or  freedom  was  worth  dying  for. "  His  brother 
Hugh  went  South  and  joined  the  Confederate  Army, 
dying  at  last  in  its  ranks  from  wounds.  Daniel,  pos- 
sessing "  the  highest  measure  of  courage,"  was  a  man 
of  complete  "  physical  strength,"  having  clean-cut 
features  and  a  symmetrical  form.  "A  born  detective, 
silent,  cunning,  tireless,  and  resolute,"  without  a  con- 
viction, he  was  just  the  man  for  the  act.  Captain 
Cook,  in  his  wanderings  in  search  of  food,  found 
himself  suddenly  in  an  "open  space"  and  "within 
fifty  yards  of  a  number  of  workmen."  He  boldly  de- 
clared himself  to  be  a  hunter.  Cleggett  Fitzhugh, 
manager  of  the  Mount  Alto  Furnace,  where  Cook 
was  first  seen,  was  a  man  of  Southern  birth  and  sym- 
pathies. He  is  reported  in  the  newspapers  of  the 
period  as  a  nephew,  by  marriage,  of  Gerrit  Smith, 
John  Brown's  friend  and  supporter.  Logan  was  con- 
versing with  him,  when  Cook  emerged  from  the 
thickets.  He  quietly  said:  "That's  Captain  Cook; 
we  must  arrest  him;  the  reward  is  $1,000."  Cook 
advanced  carelessly,  stated  he  had  been  hunting  and 
wanted  to  "  replenish  his  stock  of  bread  and  bacon." 
Logan  heartily  invited  Cook  to  go  to  "  his  store  "  for 
supplies.  Without  noticing  how  he  was  flanked,  with 
his  gun  carelessly  on  his  shoulder,  Cook  was  suddenly 
seized.  After  a  brief  and  hopeless  struggle  he  asked 
"why?"  "Because  you  are  Captain  Cook,"  replied 
Logan.  No  answer  was  made  to  this.  Afterwards,  the 
captor  said  all  he  wanted  was  the  reward  or  its  equiv- 
alent. "  Cook's  naturally  bright  face  beamed  at  once 
with  hope."  He  told  Logan  that  the  amount  and 
more  was  not  to  be  a  consideration,  for  his  brother- 
in-law,   Willard,   of    Indiana,    and    Crowley,  of    New 


478  JOHN    BROWN. 

York,  could  raise  the  same  on  learning  the  condi- 
tions. The  statements  were  of  course  distrusted  by 
such  a  man,  but  Logan  named  Col.  McClure  as  a 
Republican  and  lawyer  who  would  act  as  counsel 
and  might  otherwise  aid.  They  went  to  Chambers- 
burg,  put  up  at  a  small  hotel  and  started  to  find  the 
now  famous  editor.  He  could  not  be  found  easily, 
and  Logan,  fearing  for  his  reward,  took  his  prisoner, 
about  dark,  to  Justice  Reisher.  Mr.  McClure  was 
passing  and,  seeing  a  gathering  crowd,  stepped  into 
the  office.  Logan  whispered,  "  with  a  betrayal  of 
excitement,"  unusual  in  him:  "  My  God,  Col.  McClure! 
where  have  you  been  ?  I  have  been  hunting  you 
for  more  than  an  hour.  That's  Captain  Cook,  and 
I  had  agreed  to  bring  him  to  you.  Can't  you  get 
him  yet  ?"  Logan  had  promised  Cook  to  take 
McClure's  word  for  the  reward  or  its  equivalent. 
There  was,  of  course,  nothing  to  be  done,  but  let 
Cook  be  committed.  Everybody,  says  the  editor, 
would  have  been  content  if  Cook  had  "  been  able  to 
bounce  through  a  window  and  escape  .  .  .  Logan 
repented  .  .  .  when  he  saw  he  had  surrendered 
a  life  for  a  price,"  and  as  they  passed  out  he  said: 
"  Get  Cook  away,  reward  or  no  reward."  McClure 
was  counsel  for  the  sheriff,  who  would  also  have  been 
glad  to  have  his  prisoner  escape.  Cook,  however, 
agreed  not  to  try  until  the  next  night.  At  the  next 
noon,  the  sheriff  rushed  to  McClure's  office  "  wild 
with  excitement  and  his  eyes  dimmed  with  tears," 
exclaiming,  "  Cook's  taken  away."  A  requisition  had 
arrived  from  Carlisle,  in  the  hands  of  the  sheriff  of 
Cumberland  County.  The  officer  accompanied  by  a 
Mr.  Kimball,  Judge  Jeremiah  G.  Black's  brother-in- 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         479 

law,  arrived  in  town  on  the  morning  train,  accom- 
panied, as  press  reports  state,  by  a  Virginian  lawyer 
named  Douglass.  A  presiding  judge  (State)  happen- 
ing to  be  in  town,  was  called  upon,  instant  delivery 
demanded,  and  acceded  to.  The  papers  being 
regular,  Cook  was  at  once  turned  over  to  the  Virgin- 
ian. The  whole  transaction  was  finished  in  twenty 
minutes.  He  was  borne  away  before  his  lawyer  even 
knew  of  the  action  taken,  loaded  with  irons,  placed  in 
a  wagon  and  driven  to  the  station.  Gov.  Willard 
had  been  notified  and  was  already  on  his  way  from 
Indiana  to  Chambersburg. 

Here  is  Col.  McClure's  description  of  his  famous 
client: 

*•  When  the  lawless  little  captain  had  got  comfortably 
seated  in  his  cell,  I  had  my  first  opportunity  to  note  his 
appearance  and  quality.  His  long  silken  blonde  hair  curled 
carelessly  about  his  neck ;  his  deep  blue  eyes  were  gentle 
in  expression  as  a  woman's,  and  his  slightly  bronzed  com- 
plexion did  not  conceal  the  soft,  effeminate  skin  that 
would  have  well  befitted  the  gentler  sex.  He  was  small  in 
stature,  .  .  .  nervous,  and  impatient.  He  spoke  in  quick, 
impulsive  sentences,  but  with  little  directness  save  in  repeat- 
ing that  he  must  escape  from  prison." 

It  was  pointed  out  that  it  would  be  dangerous  to 
all  for  him  to  try  that  night — no  one  knew  of  the 
waiting  requisition,  and  time  seemed  to  be  unpress- 
ing.  The  next  night  it  was  decided  that  the  attempt 
should  be  made.  A  conference  was  then  held  by  the 
lawyer  and  his  partner  as  to  the  best  means  of  delay- 
ing or  fighting  a  requisition.  At  ten  o'clock  McClure 
returned  to  the  jail  and  had  his  last  interview  with 
Cook.     "As  he  never  dreamed  of  a  requisition  reach- 


480  JOHN     BROWN. 

ing  him  before  the  second  day,"  and  felt  confident  of 
escape,  Cook  "  threw  off  the  cloud  of  despair  that 
shadowed  him  in  the  early  part  of  the  evening,  and 
startled  me  with  the  eloquence  and  elegance  of  his 
conversation,"  making  "one  forget  that  he  was  in  a 
chilly  prison  cell,  and  imagine  that  he  was  in  the 
library  of  some  romantic  lover  of  literature  and  the 
fine  arts.  .  .  .  He  was  evidently  a  man  of  much 
more  than  common  intellectual  qualities,  and  thor- 
oughly poetic  in  tastes  and  temperament,  with  a 
jarring  mixture  of  wild,  romantic  love  of  the  heroic." 
He  talked  of  Kansas  and  his  adventures,  while  "his 
soul,"  writes  McClure,  "  seemed  to  be  absorbed  in 
avenging  the  Kansas  slavery  crusades  by  revolution- 
ary emancipation  in  the  slave  States.  When  asked 
whether  he  would  not  abandon  this,  'when  he 
escaped,'  his  large,  soft  eyes  flashed  with  the  fire  of 
defiance,  as  he  answered,  with  an  emphasis  that  un- 
strung every  nerve  in  his  body, l  No  !  the  battle  must 
be  fought  to  the  bitter  end,  and  we  must  triumph,  or 
God  is  not  just.'  " 

Col.  McClure  states  that  Cook,  at  any  time  that 
night,  could  have  escaped  within  thirty  minutes,  but 
refrained  from  action  "  for  it  would  have  com- 
promised both  the  sheriff  and  counsel."  Arriving  at 
home  at  eleven  o'clock,  Mrs.  McClure  and  Miss  Vir- 
ginia Reilley,  a  devoted  friend,  were  found  prepared 
with  a  bundle  of  female  apparei,  and  ready  to  go  to 
the  jail,  admission  to  which  would  not  be  denied 
them.  There  they  proposed  that  Cook  should 
assume  the  garb,  and  while  one  remained  in  his 
place  he  should  walk  out  with  the  other.  It 
took  more    than    persuasion  to    prevent  their  doing 


JOHN  brown's  men:   who  they  were.         481 

this,  and  they  have  since  then  many  times  "  re- 
proached themselves  for  not  acting  upon  their 
woman's  intuition." 

Justice  Reisher,  before  whom  Logan  brought  Cook, 
said:  "In  the  short  time  I  was  with  him,  I  thought 
him  a  gentleman.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  candor 
about  him.  He  is  evidently  a  very  brave  man."  In 
conversation,  Cook  spoke  of  his  own  companions  in 
the  mountains,  except  Merriam,  but  gave  no  clue  to 
their  whereabouts.  He  denied  all  knowledge  of  the 
Bostonian,  who  had  luckily  got  on  the  train  five 
miles  from  Chambersburg  and  was  then  in  safety. 
He  also  refused  to  talk  of  Hazlett,  of  whom  he  said  he 
had  no  knowledge,  either  as  "  Harrison,"  or  by  his  own 
name.  He  did  not  mention  him  in  his  so-called  con- 
fession and  the  only  vexatious  admission  therein  was 
the  use  of  this  writer's  name.  Realf  was  at  the  time 
believed  among  the  John  Brown  party  to  be  dead,  and 
when  I  had  left  Boston,  the  spring  before,  I  had 
designedly  stated  my  intention  to  join  Gen.  Frederick 
Landers,  on  a  United  States  wagon  road  expedition 
to  Oregon.  So  that  in  no  way  did  Cook  ever  design- 
edly mention  the  name  of  anyone  not  already  known 
to  the  Virginian  authorities  as  in  some  way  or  fashion 
contributing  to  the  John  Brown  movement.  Mr. 
Franklin  Keagy  writes,  that  "  in  the  early  part  of 
October,  1892,  Daniel  Logan  was  struck  by  an  engine 
on  the  Pennsylvania  railroad  at  Lancaster  City,  and 
had  his  right  leg  so  badly  mangled  that  it  had  to  be 
amputated,  and  the  shock  killed  him.  It  is  but  justice 
to  Mr.  Logan  to  say,  that  he  greatly  regretted  he 
had  arrested  John  C.  Cook."  Mr.  Keagy  describes 
the  arrival  of  Mrs.  Cook  at  Chambersburg,  she  hav- 
31 


482  JOHN    BROWN. 

ing  been  brought  in  Brown's  covered  wagon  from  the 
Kennedy  Farm.     He  writes  that: 

"  Mrs.  Cook  was  assigned  a  room  in  the  rear  of  the  parlor 
on  the  first  floor.     She  was  under  the  impression  that  a  party 
from  here  were  going  West,  of  which    she   was  to   be  a  part. 
They  were  to  start  in  a  few  days.     .     .     .     When  Mrs.  Cook 
learned  of  the  outbreak  at  Harper's  Ferry,  and  her  husband's 
connection  with    it,  she  was  terribly   distressed  and   frenzied 
with  grief.     Her  situation  was   pitiable  in   the  extreme.     She 
was  a  total  stranger,  with   a  young  babe,  and   not  a  dollar  to 
pay  her  boarding  or  assist  her  to  go  away.     In  this  extremity 
she  appealed  to  the  writer  hereof  for  advice.     She   desired  to 
go  back  to  Harper's  Ferry.     I  thought  it  best  she  should  not 
go  there  at  that  time.     The  intense  excitement  and  possibility 
of  her  being  arrested,  harassed,  or  insulted,  was  pointed  out  to 
her.     She  feared,  too,  to  go  there.     On  inquiry   I  learned  from 
her  that  she  had   an   uncle   residing  at  Brooklyn,  N,  Y.,  and  I 
advised  her  to  go  there.     It  was  then  I   was  informed  that  she 
was  penniless.     I  told  her  if  she  wished  to  go  the  means  would 
be  furnished   her.     I    appealed   to   Capt.  Thomas  G.  Cochran 
for  assistance,  and   in  a  few  hours  had    more  than  enough  to 
defray  her  expenses.     I  shall  never  forget  the  look  of  speech- 
less gratitude  when  I  placed  the  money  in  her  hands.   I  started 
to  leave  the  room.     She  awoke  as  it  were  from   a  dream,  and 
breaking  out    in  a  flood  of  tears,  with  clenched  hands  raised 
above  her  head,  she  exclaimed  :  '  Oh,  sir,  how  can  I  thank  you 
for  your  kindness  to  me.     God   bless  you.'     At    her   further 
request   I  ordered  the  'bus  to  call  for  her  the  next  morning, 
and  she  started  for  Brooklyn,  N.  Y.     Late  in   the  afternoon  of 
that  same  day  her  uncle  arrived  here  with  the  purpose  of  look- 
ing after  her.     They  had  passed  each  other  on  the  road." 

Mrs.  Ritner,  in  whose  house  "  Dr.  Smith,"  John 
Henri,  Watson,  Owen,  and  Oliver,  Merriam,  and  Tidd 
had  boarded  for  varying  periods,  was  the  widow  of  a 


john  brown's  men:   who  they  were.         483 

Mr.  Ritner,  son  of  the  famous  farmer-governor  of 
Pennsylvania,  who  secured,  about  1830,  the  first  laws 
for  a  free  school  system,  which  he  inaugurated.  He 
was  a  warm  personal  friend  of  Thaddeus  Stevens, 
and  therefore  of  the  old  political  free-soil  stock. 
Mrs.  Ritner  and  her  daughter  live  in  Bridgeport, 
Connecticut,  where  also  resides,  as  a  merchant  and  a 
man  of  family,  the  son  of  John  E.  Cook.  Mrs.  Cook 
remained  for  some  time  in  Williamsburg,  but  early  in 
the  spring  of  i860  went  to  Boston,  working  for  a 
time  at  "  the  case"  in  James  Redpath's  office,  until 
she  finally  decided  to  take  her  son  and  return  to  her 
mother  at  Martinsburg,  Virginia.  This  she  did,  and, 
though  it  was  not  a  pleasant  experience  that  beset 
her  in  unneighborly  ill  will,  she  bravely  remained 
through  the  war  period,  marrying,  in  1864,  an  officer 
of  Illinois  volunteers,  named  Johnson,  with  whom 
she  removed  to  Bloomington,  and  now  resides  in 
Chicago.  Virginia  Kennedy  Cook  was  an  attractive 
young  woman,  large,  regular  featured,  blonde 
in  complexion,  modest,  quiet  in  manner,  blame- 
less in  life,  devoted  to  her  husband's  memory, 
possessed  a  reserve  of  will  and  character  that  well 
befitted  her  sad  position.  Mrs.  Willard  still  lives  in 
Indianapolis,  and  Mrs.  Robert  Crowley  in  New  York, 
both  widows.  Another  married  sister,  Mrs.  Carpen- 
ter, and  an  unmarried  one  reside  in  Connecticut,  the 
latter  at  Haddam,  the  family  home.  Cook's  counsel 
were  Daniel  W.  Voorhees  and  J.  E. "McDonald,  botli  of 
whom  have  served  as  United  States  Senators,  and  his 
brother-in-law,  Governor  Willard,  of  Indiana.  Messrs. 
Bott  &  Green  were  also  engaged.  One  of  the  most 
frequently   repeated    stories    about    the    relations    of 


484  JOHN    BROWN. 

Captain  Brown  and  John  E.  Cook  is  that  of  a  slight 
put  upon  the  latter  as  the  former  was  going  to  his 
execution.  On  the  9th  of  December,  Cook  set  that 
at  rest,  in  a  letter,  given  below,  which  is  of  interest 
for  other  reasons: 

"  The  statements  that  have  been  made  in  regard  to  my  com- 
panions and  myself  are  totally  false.  There  has  not  been  one 
single  instance  in  which  I  have  felt  or  shown  any  signs  of  fear 
or  nervousness  since  I  have  been  here.  Neither  has  my  com- 
rade, Coppoc,  since  he  has  occupied  the  cell  with  me,  shown 
any  such  weakness  or  dread  of  death.  We  dislike  the  mode 
of  death  to  which  we  have  been  doomed,  But,  notwithstand- 
ing, we  are  cheerfully  and  calmly  awaiting  our  fate,  and  trust 
we  shall  meet  it  like  men.  I  will  frankly  admit  that  on  one  or 
two  occasions  I  have  been  agitated  by  the  reception  of  touch- 
ing letters  from  my  wife  and  other  relatives,  whose  happiness 
are  dearer  to  me  than  my  life.  The  doom  that  awaits  me  has 
not  in  the  least  affected  my  appetite,  nor  has  it  occasioned  any 
loss  of  rest.  I  sleep  as  calmly  here  as  I  would  if  in  my 
boyhood  home." 

As  to  the  farewell  interview,  Cook  wrote: 

"  Captain  Brown  came  in  smiling,  and  shook  both  Coppoc 
and  myself  warmly  by  the  hand.  He  asked  kindly  after  our 
health.  He  then  said  to  me  that  he  was  very  sorry  that  I  had 
made  a  statement  that  was  not  true,  as  I  would  only  gain  con- 
tempt by  it.  I  asked  him  what  I  had  said  that  was  untrue. 
He  told  that  it  was  the  statement  which  I  had  made.  '  that  he 
had  sent  me  to  the  Ferry.'  I  told  him  he  most  certainly  did 
tell  me  to  go  there.  He  said  he  had  no  recollection  of  any- 
thing of  the  kind,  but  that  he  remembered  distinctly  of  telling 
me  not  to  go  there.  I  replied  that  I  had  a  good  memory,  and 
had  not  the  slightest  recollection  of  anything  of  the  kind.  He 
remarked  that  he  thought  that  my  memory  must  be  treacher- 
ous then,  but  it  would  do  no  good  to  talk  about  that ;  but  that 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         485 

if  we  had  got  to  die,  to  meet  our  fate  like  men,  that  we  had 
gone  into  a  good  cause,  and  not  to  deny  it  now.  He  then 
turned  to  Coppoc,  and  said  that  he  had  heard  that  he  had 
made  some  false  statements,  but  was  glad  to  learn  that  those 
reports  were  untrue.  He  then  asked  if  he  could  do  anything 
for  us.  We  answered  in  the  negative.  He  then  pressed  our 
hands  warmly,  and  bade  us  a  last  farewell.  There  was  no  one 
present  except  Captain  Avis,  Captain  Brown,  Coppoc,  and 
myself.  Captain  Avis  will,  I  think,  vouch  for  the  truth  of  this 
statement,  as  will  Mr.  Coppoc." 

Among  the  papers  left  by  Cook  are  a  number  of 
musical  and  pathetic  lyrics,  written  during  his  im- 
prisonment. One  of  them,  written  in  pencil,  on  a 
leaf  of  his  note-book,  was  brought  to  me  by  George 
Henry  Hoyt.  Another  was  received  by  the  Lewis 
family  at  Springdale,  Iowa,  and  in  his  exquisite  fare- 
well letter  to  "wife  and  child,"  penned  on'the  morn- 
ing of  his  execution,  was  enclosed  some  stanzas  ex- 
pressive of  both  affection  and  religious  resignation. 
Virginia  had  a  spasmodic  generosity  and  allowed  his 
body  to  be  taken  North  by  his  relatives.  The  cowardice 
and.doughfacism,  then  too  prevalent,  culminated  in 
insulting  refusals  to  permit  public  funeral  services 
over  the  dead  soldier's  body.  The  consistory  of  Dr. 
Porter's  church  refused  to  allow  funeral  services 
therein  over  Cook's  body.  Mr.  Robert  Crowley  and 
his  wife  were  members  of  the  church.  So  also  did 
the  consistory  of  Dr.  Tompkins's  church  (the  New 
England).  A  Baptist  Congregation  offered  the  use 
of  their  small  chapel,  but  the  funeral  services  were 
finally  held  in  Mr.  Crowleyr's  dwelling,  where  Virginia 
Cook  by  the  coffin  of  her  husband  for  the  first  time 
met  any  of  her  relatives.  He  was  buried  in  the 
Cypress  Hills  Cemetery. 


486 


JOHN     BROWN. 


Loving  their  heroic  relative  though  they  did,  some 


of  John  Edwin  Cook's  "  respectable  "   kin,  undertook 


JOHN  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         487 

to  do  a  considerable  amount  of  explaining  for  him. 
Richard  Realf,  in  a  letter  dated  from  Washington  in 
i860,  responded  to  this  spirit  in  words  of  tribute, 
which  are  gladly  adopted  here:  "You  will,  I  am 
sure,"  he  wrote,  "  pardon  me  for  saying  that-  in  rela- 
tion to  'John  Edwin  Cook'  I  cannot  consent  to  adopt 
as  my  own  the  sentiments  with  which  you  appear  to 
regard  him.  I  cannot,  that  is,  consent  to  call  him  un- 
fortunate. .  .  .  We  have  been  friends.  Permit 
me  to  say  of  him  that  his  faults  were  such  as  belong 
to  a  warm,  impulsive,  chivalrous  nature.  He  was 
quickhearted,  swift-blooded,  brave  unto  recklessness, 
generous  unto  prodigality.  We  have  been  together 
on  the  stump, in  the  solitude  of  the  far  prairies,  in  the 
social  circle,  in  the  retirement  of  our  own  homes,  and 
I  never  knew  him  other  than  that  which  I  have 
stated."  Here  let  it  be  added,  that  knowing  Cook 
closely  in  personal  relations,  and  critically  scanning 
for  years  everything  to  be  found  written  by  or  about 
him,  this  writer  regards  his  errors  or  rather  his 
mistakes,  as  matters  of  temperament;  his  qualities 
were  those  of  a  noble  soul,  an  aspiring,  abiding  brain, 
a  vivid  and  hopeful  imagination.  He  was  a  man  of 
deep  convictions;  a  genuine  comrade;  more  than 
brave,  for  he  had  often  shown  himself  ready  in  the 
faithfulness  that  abides  even  into  death  for  its 
higher  ideals. 

Quakers  are  esteemed  to  be  good  fighters  when 
the  paradox  is  illustrated  of  their  being  engaged  in 
fighting.  Edwin  Coppoc  was  Quaker  bred,  and 
showed  it  in  his  grave,  quiet,  reserved,  even  rustic, 
ways.  But  he  was  faithful  in  fight  and  unflinching 
before  death.     A  letter  written   by  him  to   friends  in 


488  JOHN    BROWN. 

Iowa  illustrates  his  character.  It  bears  date  No- 
vember 22d,  and  deserves  this  place  in  the  record. 
It  is  valuable,  too,  as  a  simple,  succinct  statement  of 
personal  knowledge.     It  reads  in  part: 

"  And  with  them  are  the  forms  and  faces  of  those  that,  to  me, 
were  more  than  comrades,  who  fell  in  a  fearful  struggle.  Eleven 
of  our  little  band  are  sleeping  now  in  their  bloody  garments 
with  the  cold  earth  above  them.  Braver  men  never  lived  ;  truer 
men  to  the  plighted  word  never  banded  together.  Five  of 
them  fell  while  righting  in  self-defense  for  the  cause  for  which 
they  had  enlisted  ;  three  on  the  afternoon  of  the  17th  ;  the  first 
a  negro  by  the  name  of  Dangerfield  Newby;  he  fell  on  the 
street  by  my  side,  whilst  we  were  running  to  the  aid  of  some 
of  our  friends  who  were  surrounded  by  the  enemy.  Two  men, 
Steward  Taylor  and  Oliver  Brown,  fell  by  the  engine-house. 
Taylor  lived  about  three  hours  after  he  was  shot  ;  he  suffered 
very  much  and  begged  of  us  to  kill  him.  Oliver  died  in  about 
fifteen  minutes  after  he  was  shot ;  he  said  nothing.  During 
these  last  moments  we  could  not  administer  to  their  wants 
such  as  they  deserved,  for  we  were  surrounded  by  the  troops 
who  were  firing  volley  after  volley,  so  that  we  had  to  keep  up 
a  brisk  fire  in  return  to  keep  them  from  charging  upon  us.  Two 
more  fell  in  the  engine-house  on  the  morning  of  the  1 8th,  when 
the  last  charge  was  made — Jeremiah  Anderson  and  Dolph. 
Thompson. 

"They  both  had  surrendered  after  the  first  charge,  which  was 
repulsed,  but,  owing  to  the  noise  and  confusion,  they  were  not 
heard.  Captain  Brown  and  I  were  the  only  ones  that  fought 
to  the  last.  The  negro  Green,  after  I  had  stationed  him  behind 
one  of  the  engines,  the  safest  place  in  the  house,  laid  down 
his  rifle  and  pulled  off  his  cartridge-box,  and  passed  himself  off 
for  one  of  the  prisoners.  He  and  I  were  the  only  ones  not 
wounded. 

"  Watson  Brown  was  wounded  about  10  o'clock  on  Monday 
at  the  same  time  Stevens  was,  while  passing  along  the  street 
with  a  flag  of  truce,  but  was  not  so  badly  wounded  but  he  got 


JOHN  brown's  men:  who  thev  were.         489 

back  in  the  engine-house.  During  the  fight  in  the  afternoon  he 
fought  as  brave  as  ever  any  man  fought,  but  as  soon  as  the 
fight  was  over  he  got  worse.  When  we  were  taken  in  the 
morning  he  was  just  able  to  walk.  He  and  Green  and  myself 
were  put  in  the  watch-house.  Watson  kept  getting  worse  from 
then  until  about  three  o'clock  Wednesday  morning  when  he  died. 
I  did  everything  in  my  power  to  make  him  comfortable.  He 
begged  hard  for  a  bed,  but  could  not  get  one,  so  I  pulled  off  my 
coat  and  put  it  under  him,  and  placed  his  head  in  my  lap,  and 
in  that  position  he  died. 

"Cook  and  Tidd  had  left  the  Ferry  early  in  the  morning,  by 
order  of  Captain  Brown,  to  cross  the  river  for  the  purpose  of 
taking  some  prisoners  and  to  convey  the  arms  to  a  schoolhouse 
about  one  and  a  half  miles  from  the  Ferry,  there  to  guard  them 
until  the  Captain  came,  but,  hearing  a  heavy  firing.  Cook  went 
down  to  learn  the  cause.  On  gaining  the  side  of  the  river 
opposite  the  Ferry,  he  found  we  were  surrounded,  so  he  as- 
cended the  mountain  in  order  to  get  a  better  view  ;  while  there 
he  saw  parties  firing  on  us.  In  order  to  relieve  us  he  fired  on 
them  and  in  doing  so  he  drew  the  fire  on  himself,  the  result  of 
which  was  the  cutting  of  a  limb  and  giving  him  a  fall  of  about 
fifteen  feet  down  the  mountain  side,  tearing  his  clothes,  and 
lacerating  his  flesh.  There  were  thirty  or  forty  men  in  the  first 
party  he  fired  on  who  after  the  second  shot  were  taken  with  a 
sudden  leaving,  having  no  doubt  important  business  elsewhere. 
The  Virginians  who  were  present  give  him  the  credit  of  being 
a  splendid  shot  at  a  long  range,  as  they  admit  they  made  a  very 
near  acquaintance  with  some  of  his  bullets. 

"  But  enough  of  this.  Whatever  may  be  our  fate,  rest  as- 
sured we  shall  not  shame  our  dead  companions  by  a  shrinking 
fear.  They  lived  and  died  like  brave  men.  We,  I  trust,  shall 
do  the  same.  And  our  souls  with  no  sin  of  intention  on  their 
robes  will  gaze  unmoved  upon  the  scaffold  and  the  tomb.  We 
were  deceived  in  some  things.  Even  Captain  Brown  acknowl- 
edges that  ;  but  all  is  over  now,  so  let  it  pass.  There  are  true 
and  brave  men  in  Virginia  who  deeply  sympathize  with  us  in 
our  misfortune.     I  suppose  within  the  last  two  days  from  eight 


490  JOHN    BROWN. 

hundred  to  one  thousand  persons  have  visited  us,  some  through 
sympathy,  but  more  through  animosity. 

"  Among  those  who  called  to-day  were  three  young  ladies 
from  Harper's  Ferry,  friends  and  acquaintances  of  Cook. 
They  stood  and  gazed  on  us  for  a  moment  with  deep  earnest- 
ness and  then  burst  into  tears.  One  of  them  told  Cook  that 
all  of  his  friends  and  acquaintances  at  the  Ferry,  had  formed 
the  highest  opinion  of  him  and  regretted  he  should  have  gone 
into  such  a  scheme.  They  parted  from  us  with  tear-dimmed 
eyes  and  the  deepest  expression  of  sympathy  for  us  in  our  sad 
position.  .  .  .  I  have  not  seen  the  Captain  or  Stevens  since 
our  trials,  but  the  jailer  tells  me  they  are  doing  well,  their 
wounds  will  soon  be  healed.     J.  E.  Cook  sends  his  love  to  all." 

Edwin  Coppoc's  days  before  the  early  part  of  1859 
were  uneventful.  Born  near  Salem,  Columbiana 
County,  Ohio,  June  30,  1835,  he  was,  when  hung  by 
Virginia  on  the  16th  of  December,  1859,  twenty-four 
years,  four  months,  and  sixteen  days  old.  He  was 
reared  by  his  grandfather,  having  lost  his  father  early 
in  childhood,  going  to  district  school  and  working  on 
the  farm.  As  pupil,  studious;  as  a  boy,  industrious; 
as  a  youth,  enterprising,  with  good  business  traits. 
Mr.  Gill,  who  knew  him  intimately,  writes  of  Edwin 
as  a  young  man  of  force  and  decision  of  character, 
accompanied  by  winning  manners  and  most  amiable 
ways.  He  was  brave,  persistent,  active,  and  athletic, 
intelligent,  "  honorable,  loyal,  and  true  ;"  full,  too,  of 
"  pleasant  mirthfulness,"  a  "  magnetic  person,"  and 
a  "  capital  chum."  Edwin  Coppoc,  says  Anne  Brown, 
was  of  fair  skin,  had  a  well-balanced,  large  head, 
dark  brown  hair  and  eyes,  short  beard,  "quite 
simple  and  fascinating  in  his  ways."  He  was  "a 
rare  young  fellow;  caring  for  and  fearing  nothing, 
he    yet    possessed    great    social   traits  and   no   better 


JOHN    BROWN  S    MEN:     WHO    THEY    WERE.  49I 

comrade  have  lever  met."  His  mother  was  a  woman 
of  uncommon  intelligence.  Barclay  was  killed  in 
the  Civil  War.  Two  sisters  and  another  brother 
died  of  consumption.  The  Rev.  Joseph  Coppoc, 
a  Baptist  preacher,  resident  in  Iowa,  is  the  only 
living  brother.  He  was  a  major  in  a  colored 
infantry  regiment  during  the  Civil  War.  Edwin's 
brief  record  begun  when  John  Brown  went  through 
Iowa,  early  in  1859,  with  his  band  of  rescued  slaves 
from  Missouri.  He  and  his  brother  Barclay  bade 
their  mother  farewell  in  the  early  summer,  and  at 
their  own  cost  went  to  Chambersburg  and  reported 
for  service.  A  quaint  incident,  characteristic  of  the 
Captain's  care  for  details,  is  told  as  occurring  on  the 
morning  of  his  execution.  Barclay  Coppoc  spent 
about  forty  dollars  in  the  '*  cause,"  and  this  amount 
John  Brown  considered  as  due  him.  He  handed 
Edwin  fifty  cents — all  the  change  that  remained  to 
him  as  he  was  leaving  the  jail,  recalling,  as  he  did  so, 
the  amount  Barclay  had  expended.  The  latter  never 
considered  it  as  a  debt,  however.  It  is  unnecessary 
to  recount  again  the  story  of  Edwin's  attempt  with 
Cook  to  escape,  or  of  his  quiet,  manly  farewells.  "  It 
is  not  the  manner  of  death  that  troubles,  it  is  the 
leaving  of  dear  friends,"  and  with  these  words,  and 
hand  clasped  in  Cook's,  this  young  life  went  gallantly 
into  the  unknown. 

"  What  happiness  there  is  in  thinking  or  knowing 
that  we  are  doing  the  best  we  can  for  the  good  of 
humanity,  although  we  meet  hardships  on  our  jour- 
ney." Thus  wrote  Aaron  D wight  Stevens  in  a  letter 
from  "  Post  of  Duty  "  (Kennedy  Farm),  dated  Septem- 
ber 9,    1859,  and  directed   to  Miss  Jennie  Dunbar,  at 


492  JOHN    BROWN. 

West  Andover,  Ohio.  When  a  condemned  prisoner, 
he  said  to  a  Virginian  who  railed  at  him:  "I  am  a 
poor  man  myself,  but  I  never  yet  saw  the  day  when  I 
would  have  exchanged  liberty  for  riches."  Anne 
Brown  wrote  of  Stevens:  "  He  tries  the  hardest  to  be 
good;"  and  he  himself  declared,  after  conviction  and 
sentence,  that  "  I  am  cheerful  and  happy,  ready  to 
die  at  a  moment's  warning,  although  I  would  like  to 
live  as  long  as  anybody."  The  young  man  who 
wrote  thus  of  duty,  liberty,  riches,  and  death,  was 
born  at  Lisbon,  New  London  County,  Connecticut, 
March  15,  1S31,  and  was  hung  on  March  16, 
i860,  at  Charlestown,  Virginia,  for  the  "  crime  "  of 
attacking  chattel  slavery.  Stevens  was  also  of  the  best 
New  England  stock,  and  of  ancestral  strains  that  go 
deep  into  the  roots  of  the  struggle  for  liberty  of  con- 
science and  civic  freedom.  His  great-grandfather, 
Moses  Stevens,  was  a  revolutionary  officer,  and  his 
grandfather  served  in  the  war  of  181 2.  The  record 
goes  back  to  early  colonial  da}^,  when  his  progeni- 
tors were  always  found  with  the  people's  cause  and 
against  the  aggressions  or  arrogance  of  the  crown. 
The  paths  of  heredity,  as  well  as  the  roads  of  action, 
moulded  tendencies  and  created  forces,  leading  direct 
to  Harper's  Ferry  and  a  Virginian  gallows-tree. 

The  boy  was  father  of  the  man.  Taught  till  four- 
teen in  the  common  school,  he  early  went  to  work  to 
maintain  himself.  Handsome  and  active  as  a  young 
Greek  gladiator,  overflowing  with  abundant  life, 
impetuous,  passionate,  generous,  warm-hearted,  and 
hasty,  it  is  not  surprising  that  this  boy  found  his 
daily  life  monotonous,  and  that  during  the  first  years 
of  war  with  Mexico  he  enlisted   and   served    until  its 


JOHN    BROWN  S    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  493 

close.  He  was  honorably  discharged,  and  remained 
at  home  until  185 1,  when  he  enlisted  as  a  bugler  in  a 
United  States  dragoon  regiment,  commanded  by  Col. 
Sumner,  being  drafted  to  the  West  at  once.  He 
became  the  colonel's  bugler-orderly.  He  served  in 
Western  Kansas  and  Nebraska,  in  Wyoming,  Colo- 
rado, and  New  Mexico.  Stevens  was  hard  to  disci- 
pline, and  could  seldom  restrain  his  disposition  to 
resist  the  daily  tyrannies.  One  who  knew  the  cir- 
cumstances attending  his  desertion,  has  told  that, 
after  a  considerable  period  in  New  Mexico,  watching, 
and  sometimes  fighting  Navajo  and  Apache,  the 
command,  early  in  1855,  was  ordered  into  Fort 
Leavenworth.  Soon  after  the  march  commenced,  a 
soldier  disobeyed  some  petty  order  and  was  inhumanly 
punished  therefor  by  order  of  the  major  in  command. 
Maddened  by  the  outrage,  Stevens  fell  upon  the  major, 
and,  beating  his  bugle  out  of  shape  over  his  head, 
chastised  him,  as  he  richly  deserved,  within  an  inch 
of  his  life.  For  this  performance  he  was  marched 
across  the  plains,  with  a  ball  and  chain  attached  to 
his  ankle,  to  Fort  Leavenworth,  where  he  was  court- 
martialed,  and  sentenced  to  be  shot.  On  application 
of  some  of  the  officers  at  the  fort  to  the  President,  \f 
his  sentence  was  commuted  to  three  years'  hard  labor 
in  the  guardhouse  or  the  shop,  with  the  ball  and 
chain  to  his  ankle.  He  served  the  government  in 
this  way  till  early  in  January,  1856,  when  he  deserted, 
and  concealed  himself  among  the  Delaware  Indians 
on  the  Kaw  River.  He  remained  with  them  till  about 
the  1st  of  March  following,  when  he  made  his  appear- 
ance in  Topeka.  Stevens  at  once  identified  himself 
with  the  Free  State  cause,  assuming  his  mother's  name 


494  JOHN    BROWN. 

and  being  known  as  "Charles  Whipple."  He  filed  a 
preemption  claim  on  a  quarter  section  of  land  in 
Shawnee  County. 

It  was  of  course  soon  apparent  that  he  had  had  a 
military  training,  and  this  was  accounted  for  by  his 
acknowledgment  of  having  served  in  the  Mexican 
War.  Whipple  became  useful  at  once,  and  during 
the  spring  of  1856,  organized  several  mounted  com- 
panies which  were  formed  into  the  Second  Regiment 
of  Free-State  Volunteers.  This  was  not  disbanded 
until  the  next  summer,  when,  being  in  possession  of 
the  Territorial  Legislature,  the  free-state  people 
authorized  the  creation  of  a  militia  of  which  James 
H.  Lane  was  made  major-general  in  command,  Stev- 
ens being  offered  a  brigadier-general's  commission. 
Under  Col.  "Whipple,"  the  Second  Free-State  Regi- 
ment did  service  at  Indianola,  Tecumseh,  Osawkee, 
the  Titus  Fort,  Lecompton,  and  other  points.  These, 
as  already  explained,  were  armed  camps  of  Buford's 
men,  or  towns  controlled  by  and  serving  as  rallying 
points  for  the  Missouri  invaders.  Whipple  himself 
was  exceedingly  serviceable  also  in  keeping  open  the 
Northern  emigrant  route  to  Nebraska.  When  Col. 
Sumner  with  dragoons  was  in  Topeka,  on  the  4th 
of  July,  and  later  with  Governor  Geary  in  the  fol- 
lowing December  and  January,  the  free-state  colonel 
always  found  a  convenient  excuse  for  being  absent. 
They  would  'nave  hardly  recognized  however,  in  the 
stalwart  man,  "bearded  like  a  pard,"  the  down- 
bedewed  cheeks  of  the  daring  youth  who  had  served 
as  orderly  among  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

In  describing  the  roads  to  Harper's  Ferry,  the 
actions  of  Aaron  D.  Stevens  and    his  general  charac- 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         495 

teristics  have  been  sufficiently  outlined  to  make  of 
him  a  distinct  figure.  The  Baltimore  Americans 
special  correspondent,  under  date  of  October  18th, 
1859,  thus  writes  of  Stevens,  then  a  prisoner,  with 
six  bullet  wounds  in  various  parts  of  his  body: 

"  He  is  the  only  one  of  the  lot  that  I  have  seen,  excepting, 
of  course,  the  negroes,  who  has  not  light  hair.  His  hair  and 
long  beard  are  of  a  fine  black  (it  was  really  a  dark  brown)  ; 
his  face  partakes  of  the  handsome  and  noble  ;  his  eye,  though 
restless,  has  a  sharp  brilliancy;  and  he,  too,  is  a  six-footer. 
A  stout,  strong  man,  whose  condition,  lying  upon  the  floor, 
obedient  to  the  last  to  the  command  of  '  my  Captain,'  as  he  called 
him,  wounded  with  three  or  four  buckshot  wounds — two  in  the 
head  and  one  in  the  breast,  certain  of  death — I  could  not  but  pity. 
He,  too,  showed  a  marvelous  courage.  Ever  and  anon,  groan- 
ing with  excessive  pain,  he  did  not.  however,  forget  himself  for 
an  instant,  but  calmly,  although  in  such  pain,  listened  to  the 
conversation  as  it  progressed.  Both  men  seemed  prepared  for 
death,  seemed  to  court  it  rather,  perhaps  under  the  idea  that 
they  will  be  acknowledged  martyrs,  but  more  possibly  under 
the  conviction  of  having  performed  a  sacred  duty.  However 
much  the  writer  hereof  may  differ  from  them,  there  must  arise 
a  feeling  of  respect  for  them  in  their  bold  rashness." 

Stevens  stood  six  feet  two  inches  in  his  stocking- 
feet,  was  a  perfectly  proportioned  man,  with  hands 
and  feet  that  were  small  for  stature  and  bulk,  a  long 
arm,  having  remarkable  skill  in  the  use  of  a  sabre, — he 
was  a  perfect  drillmaster  for  cavalry  and  irregular 
warfare.  His  head  was  large,  round,  with  full,  high 
forehead,  well  proportioned,  good  features,  and  re- 
markably brilliant,  clear,  speaking  eyes.  He  had 
decidedly  soldierly  qualities  and  would  have  won 
place  and  fame  if  he  had  lived  and  occasion  arose 
before  him.     He  wrote  fairly  and  read  much  in  Eng- 


496  JOHN    BROWN. 

lish,  and  coming  of  a  decidedly  musical  family,  with 
a  magnificent  baritone  voice,  was,  of  course,  fond  of 
singing.  His  father  and  elder  brothers  both  taught 
music,  and  all  the  family  were  choir  members.  To 
Mrs.  Spring,  replying  to  that  lady's  proposal  to  bury 
both  himself  and  Hazlett  at  Eagleswood,  he  wrote: 

"  I  have  a  dear  father,  a  very  kind,  benevolent  man.  I  have 
also  a  stepmother,  my  own  mother's  sister,  and  I  have  also 
two  sisters,  and  two  brothers,  all  very  near  and  dear  to  me. 
They  are  somewhat  different  from  me — more  quiet  and  steady 
than  me.  My  oldest  brother  is  a  music  teacher — in  fact,  we 
all  understand  music,  more  or  less.  My  father  has  led  a  choir 
ever  since  he  was  sixteen — he  is  now  over  sixty.  I  have 
written  him  to  know  if  he  will  want  to  claim  my  body,  if  I  am 
sent  to  the  spiritland  through  the  kindness  of  Virginia.  It 
makes  very  little  difference  to  me  what  becomes  of  the  body 
after  the  spirit  has  left  it.  My  father  is  a  poor  man  ;  I  do  not 
know  as  he  will  be  able  to  come  on  here  and  get  it.  I  wrote 
him,  telling  him  he  had  better  give  up  his  right  to  you,  and 
that  he  could  come  to  your  place,  if  he  chose,  and  see  me 
buried.  I  hope  he  will  comply ;  if  not,  please  accept  my 
thanks  for  your  kind  offer." 

Nothing  can  give  a  better  conception  of  Stevens — 
bold,  brave,  full  of  courage  and  passionate  vigor  as 
he  was — than  some  brief  sentences  from  the  numer- 
ous letters  at  my  command;  enough,  in  fact,  to  fill  a 
small  volume.     To  his  sister  he  said: 

"  I  am  glad  that  I  did  not  die  of  my  wounds ;  for  I  believe 
that  my  execution  upon  the  gallows  will  be  a  better  testimony 
for  truth  and  liberty." 

In  reply  to  a  question  why  he  went  to  Harper's 
Ferry  with  John  Brown,  the  reply  was: 

"  It  was  to  help  my  fellow  men  out  of  bondage.  You  know 
nothing  of  slavery — /  know  a  great  deal.     It  is   the   crime    of 


JOHN    BROWNS    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  497 

crimes.  I  hate  it  more  and  more  the  longer  I  live.  Even 
since  I  have  been  lying  in  this  cell,  I  have  heard  the  cryings  of 
slave-children  torn  from  their  parents." 

11  We  are  in  the  right,  and  will  resist  the  universe," 
was  the  answer  thundered  back  at  a  Kansas  sheriff 
in  the  fall  of  1858,  when  arrests  were  to  be  attempted 
for  resistance  to  pro-slavery  murderers  and  robbers. 
"There  is  so  much  happiness,"  he  said,  "  in  trying  to 
make  others  happy."  To  Mrs.  Spring,  with  whom  he 
maintained  a  long  and  remarkable  correspondence, 
he  wrote,  at  different  dates: 

"  I  wish  you  a  long  life  and  a  happy  one,  and  in  your  last 
days  the  thought  of  having  helped  the  world  forward  instead 
of  back.  .  .  .  The  bouquet  you  sent  me  is  very  beautiful. 
I  have  hung  it  up  south  of  the  window,  over  the  little  table  I 
have  to  write  upon.  It  always  has  a  smile  of  love  and  kind- 
ness. .  .  .  My  trial  comes  on  to-morrow.  I  shall  soon 
know  my  destiny.  I  have  not  much  hope  short  of  anything 
but  the  better  land.  ...  I  hope  your  soul  is  so  strong  that 
sorrow  cannot  find  a  lodging  there.  I  am  cheerful  and  happy, 
patiently  awaiting  the  fate  of  man — death.  ...  I  could 
bear  all  the  sorrow  of  the  world,  if  I  had  it  on  my  shoulders. 
.  .  .  It  makes  my  soul  overflow  with  sorrow  to  see  men 
with  great  talents  use  them  in  defending  what  is  both  a  curse 
to  themselves  and  to  all  mankind.  ...  I  hope  you  will 
always,  as  you  love  yourself,  as  you  love  woman,  as  you  love 
man,  as  you  love  God,  work  with  hands,  head,  and  heart 
for  the  happiness  of  all  mankind.  .  .  .  I  am  glad  I  did  not 
die  of  my  wounds  ;  for  I  believe  my  execution  upon  the  gallows 
will  be  a  better  testimony  for  truth  and  liberty.  .  .  .  Give 
those  little  children  my  love  and  thanks  for  their  bounteous- 
ness;  tell  them  I  hope  they  will  live  to  be  an  ornament  to  the 
world,  and  lovers  of  freedom  and  justice  to  all  the  human 
family.  .  .  .  Mr.  Sennott  (his  lawyer)  left  here  this  morn- 
ing ;    I  suppose  you  will  see  him  before  you  get  this.     He  has 

32 


498  JOHN    BROWN. 

done  all  a  man  could  for  me,  for  which  I  am  very  thankfitL 
.  .  .  I  hope  you  will  not  hesitate  a  moment  about  speaking 
to  me  of  death,  for  it  gives  me  no  more  pain  than  it  would  to 
talk  about  living.  It  would  give  me  much  more  pain  to  have 
you  tell  of  some  poor  human  being  trodden  down  by  some 
tyrant.  Death  has  no  terrors  for  me;  at  the  same  time,  I 
should  like  to  live  as  long  as  I  can  do  any  good." 

To  Anne  Brown,  in  closing  a  letter,  he  said:  "  Give 
my  love  to  all  good  people — to  all  who  love  the 
truth."  Again  he  writes,  eight  days  before  his  execu- 
tion, that: 

"  It  is  hard  to  look  back  on  those  that  are  gone ;  but,  thank 
God,  they  died  for  liberty,  and  ere  the  17th  of  March  I  expect 
to  meet  them  in  the  spirit  land.  I  am  very  cheerful  and  happy, 
and  never  felt  more  so  in  my  life.  .  .  .  My  comrade,  Mr. 
Harrison,  is  getting  along  nicely." 

He  tells  Wealthy  Brown  that  he  cannot  "  laugh " 
because  of  his  facial  paralysis,  owing  to  a  wound,  and 
that  it  is  impossible  to  sing,  which  is  the  worst  of  all. 
He  read  much  and  was  amply  supplied  with  books. 
Gerald  Massey's  poems  and  "Abou  Ben  Adhem,"  by 
Leigh  Hunt,  were  among  his  favorites.  Copies  of 
verses  in  Stevens's  neat  handwriting  are  quite  plentiful. 
His  songs  seem  to  have  been  ''The  Messenger  Bird," 
a  lyric  often  sung  in  spiritualist  meetings,  "Just  as  I 
Am,"  "  Come  to  Me,"  "  The  Eden  Shore,"  and  others. 
Ellen  Francis  Watkins  Harper,  a  colored  woman  of 
poetical  and  oratorical  ability,  then  living  in  Phila- 
delphia, was  a  constant  and  cheering  correspondent, 
and   sent   him  several  very   pretty  lyrics  of  her  own. 

When  Captain  Brown  was  bidding  a  final  farewell 
to  his  young  comrade,  he  wrote  the  following: 

"  Charlestown  Prison,  2d  December,  1859. 
"John  Brown  to  Aaron  D.  Stevens.    '  He  that  is  slow  to  anger 


joiin   brown's  men:  who  they  were.         499 

is  better  than  the  mighty ;  and  lie  that  ruleth  his  spirit,  than 
he  that  taketh  a  city.' — Solomon." 

Stevens  added: 

"This  was  given  me  an  hour  or  two  before  he  was  exe- 
cuted. A.  D.  S." 

Unlike  Captain  Brown,  his  gallant  soldier  associate 
did  not  affect  the  faith  of  a  Christian.  He  was  a 
devoted  spiritualist,  however,  and  died  believing 
absolutely  in  the  immortality  of  life.  To  Mrs.  Spring 
he  wrote: 

"I  suppose  you  have  heard  before  this,  that  I  am  not  a  be- 
liever in  the  Christian  religion,  and  I  never  judge  a  person  by 
their  belief.  The  Christian  religion  never  looked  consistent  to 
me,  and  therefore  I  had  to  look  elsewhere  for  religion,  and  found 
it  in  the  great  Bible  of  Nature.  Christians  think,  as  a  general 
thing,  that  a  person  that  believes  that  way  never  has  the  feel- 
ing that  comes  over  a  person  when  they  experience  religion  ; 
but  that  is  not  so.  That  feeling'  will  come  upon  every  one  who 
will  put  away  the  great  self,  and  try  to  do  unto  others  as  they 
would  have  others  do  unto  them  ;  then  they  will  feel  happy  and 
ready  to  die  at  any  time.  There  is  a  natural  feeling  to  live  in 
the  bosom  of  all  as  long  as  they  can,  but  I  mean  they  will  have 
no  fears  of  going  into  the  hands  of  the  Supreme  Being,  or 
Ruling  Power  of  the  universe."  Of  his  prison  life,  under 
date  of  January  14,  i860,  he  says  :  "  I  have  many  letters  to  write 
to  many  dear  friends  which  employ  a  good  part  of  my  time, 
and  the  rest  is  taken  up  in  sleeping,  exercise,  and  reading. 
The  chain  only  gives  me  room  to  take  a  half  step,  so  you  will 
see  I  cannot  walk  very  fast,  but  I  get  some  exercise  that  way, 
which  gives  rne  rest  from  sitting  or  lying."  After  regretting 
his  inability  to  write  freely,  he  goes  on:  "  Without  going  into 
the  mysteries  of  death,  what  a  field  of  thought  and  action  there 
is  here  to  find  out  how  to  live  and  Juno  to  do  our  duty  to  our 
brothers  and  sisters,  or  to  everything  that  lives.     How  little 


500  JOHN    BROWN. 

can  we  learn  in  the  few  years  we  spend  here  of  the  truth  found 
in  the  infinite  ocean  of  mind  and  matter."  He  then  mentions 
the  books  sent  him  by  friends  as  having  been  read  with  pleas- 
ure ■  in  the  snug  home,"  wherein  he  was  confined. 

The  trial  of  Stevens  and  Hazlett  begun  on  the  2d 
of  February,  i860.  The  indefatigable  and  faithful 
Boston  lawyer,  Mr.  Sennott,  was  on  hand,  able  and 
untiring  in  his  unpaid  and  volunteer  labors.  He 
harried  the  prosecutor  Hunter  a  good  deal  over  the 
pretense  of  having  transferred  Stevens's  case  to  the 
Federal  Court,  and  endeavored  to  secure  from  Judge 
Kenny  an  order  permitting  such  choice  on  the  pris- 
oner's part.  It  was  all  useless,  of  course.  Stevens 
was  in  prison  one  hundred  and  sixty-nine  days  and 
then  executed  ;  Hazlett  was  held  for  one  hundred 
and  fifty;  Coppoc,  Copeland,  and  Green  for  fifty-nine 
each;  Cook  for  forty-eight,  and  John  Brown  for  forty- 
five  days. 

In    his    brief    address,    when    sentence    was    pro- 
nounced, he  denied  that  he  ever  proposed  the   burn- 
ing  of    Harper's    Ferry,   as   had  been   sworn  to,  and 
closed    by    saying:     "When    I  think  of  my  brothers 
slaughtered  and  my  sisters  outraged,  my  conscience 
does  not  reprove  me  for  my  actions.     I  shall  meet  my 
fate  manfully."     The  coolness  of  these  men   is  shown 
by  an  incident.    Captain  Avis  tells  of  finding  Hazlett 
and  Stevens   engaged    the   day  after  their  sentences, 
in   "chucking"   pennies.      As   the   jailer  stood  there 
Stevens  tossed  the  coin  again  and  called  out:   "  Head 
or  tail?"     "Tail!"    shouted    Hazlett.     "It's  head— 
I've  won  !  "  exclaimed  Stevens,   as   he  went  over  and 
picked  up  the  coin.     "What  have  you  won  ?"  asked 
the  jailer.    "  The  privilege  of  selecting  you  to  put  the 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         501 

hangman's    noose    around  my  neck  !  "    was  the  cool 
reply. 

The  jailer's  kindness  had  made  a  deep  impression 
on  both  men,  and  they  had  discussed  the  question  as 
to  which  should  be  the  first  to  be  noosed  by  his 
hands.  Stevens  had  won,  and  as  they  mounted  the 
gallows  in  company  he  whispered  to  the  jailer:  "Cap- 
tain, remember  that  I  won  the  first  choice!  " 

Of  course,  the  inevitable  military  parade  was  had, 
though  the  pompous  General  Taleifiero  had  departed 
and    Col.   John   Gibson   was  in  command  of  the  six 
companies  of  State  militia,  it  was  thought   necessary 
to  "  call  out"  to  see  executed  two   men   who  deemed 
their  deaths  better  for  freedom  than  their  lives  could 
possibly  be.     During  the  middle  of  February  a  secret 
message  was  received   by  the   prisoners  and   a  reply 
returned.     An  intoxicated  man  was  arrested  in  Char- 
lestown  on   a  Saturday  evening   and   locked   up  over 
Sunday  in   jail.     To   all  appearances  he  was  a  jolly, 
devil-may-care  young  Irish  laborer,  in  whom  whisky 
left  nothing  but  boisterous  fun.  As  he  sobered  up,  he 
became  a  delight  to  the  jailer's  family  by  his  funny 
songs    and    witty    words.       Discipline    had    relaxed, 
vigilance  nodded,  and  the  careless  Irishman   was  en- 
abled to  communicate  with  Stevens  and  Hazlett.    He 
made  himself  known  and   told   them   that  their  com- 
rades, James  Montgomery,  Richard  J.  Hinton,  Joseph 
Gardner,  "  Preacher"  Steward,  and  six  other  Kansas 
men,  with  Thomas  Wentworth    Higginson,  J.  W.   Le 
Barnes,   and  W.  W.   Thayer,   of   Boston,   assisted  by 
some   New   York  German-Americans,   were  ready  at 
Harrisburg,  Pennsylvania,  to  make   a   move  through 
the  South  Mountain  section  of  that  State,  into  Virginia, 


502  JOHN     BROWN. 

and  attempt  their  rescue.  They  were  told  that  Mont- 
gomery was  even  then  in  the  adjacent  mountains, 
making  a  reconnaissance  as  to  practicability.  Both  were 
deeply  affected,  but  without  hesitation  declared  it  to 
be  impossible.  Stevens  emphatically  asserted  that 
the  attempt  could  not  be  made  without  causing  other 
deaths,  especially  that  of  the  jailer,  Mr.  Avis,  who 
would  resist  to  the  last.  He  would  not  take  his 
liberty  at  such  a  cost.  The  constant  armed  force  con- 
sisted of  eighty  men,  and,  while  it  was  possible  to  get 
away  if  Montgomery  could  reach  and  attack  the  place 
suddenly,  yet  the  lives  to  be  sacrificed  would  not 
warrant  the  saving  of  their  own.  Hazlett  sent  a  per- 
sonal message  to  the  writer  of  this  volume,  who  had 
been  deeply  stirred  by  the  fact  that  his  comrade  was 
tried  and  condemned  under  a  name  himself  assumed 
in  writing  to  Kagi.  There  was  nothing  to  be  done. 
The  daring  young  Kansan,  who  had  so  successfully 
used  his  powers  of  mimicry,  was  discharged  next  day 
by  an  unsuspecting  justice  of  the  peace  and  made  his 
way  out  of  Virginia  as  rapidly  as  he  dared.  Montgomery 
had  already  returned  to  Harrisburg  and  his  associate 
rejoined  him  in  Boston,  bearing  there  his  message  to 
myself. 

Mrs.  Pierce,  Stevens's  sister,  and  Miss  Jennie  Dun- 
bar, of  Ohio,  visited  the  prisoners  the  day  before 
the  execution;  the  latter  having  just  returned  from  a 
visit  to  Richmond,  where  she  pleaded  wkh  Governor 
Letcher  (Wise  retired  at  the  close  of  1859)  for  the 
Mves  of  Stevens  and  "  Harrison."  In  a  letter,  still 
unpublished  I  believe,  Miss  Dunbar  tells  how  she 
arrived  at  Richmond  on  the  14th.  Mr.  Sennott  had 
already  left,  having  unsuccessfully  been  on   the  same 


JOHN  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         503 

mission.  Miss  Dunbar  was  received,  she  wrote,  with 
wliat  the  Governor  called  "  civility,"  but  which  she 
thought  might  have  had  a  harsher  name.  After  read- 
ing Mrs.  Spring's  letter — the  servant  being  gone  from 
the  room — Letcher  said  in  substance  that  Stevens  was 
the  worst  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  insurrectionists;  that 
at  the  trial  he  saw  that  he  was  "  reckless,  hardened, 
and  dangerous  to  society"  ;  that  he  (Letcher)  felt  it 
to  be  a  duty  to  rid  the  world  of  him.  In  short,  that 
Stevens  "  should  not  be  pardoned."  Miss  Dunbar 
describes  her  reception  by  the  friend  she  had 
sought  to  succor.  He  expressed  regret  that  she  had 
pleaded  with  the  Governor,  whose  hardness  as  one 
with  the  slave-power  he  had  fully  expected.  He  soon 
became  calm  and  cheerful;  "quite  himself,"  writes 
the  young  lady,  "  talking  and  laughing  as  he  had 
done  under  other  and  happier  circumstances."  On 
the  last  morning  they  all  breakfasted  together.  Miss 
Dunbar  writes,  that  he  was  dressed  in  fresh  clothing, 
his  chains  had  been  removed,  and  "  I  had  never  seen 
him  looking  better;  he  seemed  fitter  to  live  than 
ever  on  the  morning  of  his  execution."  His  sister 
was  quite  overcome,  and  had  to  leave  the  table 
to  recover  herself.  Tears  welled  from  Miss  Dun- 
bar's eyes.  "You  must  not  give  up  here,"  said  the 
brave  brother  and  friend;  "wait  until  you  reach  Mrs. 
Spring,  you  can  weep  upon  her  bosom."  They  all 
grew  calmer.  He  packed  a  little  trunk,  designating 
various  gifts  for  different  persons,  chatted  as  if  he 
were  going  soon  to  meet  us  again,  polished  his  shoes 
and  brushed  his  clothes,  saying  "  I  wish  to  look  well 
when  I  go  upon  the  scaffold."  Miss  Dunbar,  in  tak- 
ing her  last  farewell,  said:  "You   have   done   a  great 


504  JOHN    BROWN. 

deal  for  me,  inasmuch  as  you  have  shown  me  that 
the  moralist's  faith  will  do  to  die  by." 

"Oh!  yes,"  he  quickly  replied,  "  I  am  perfectly 
confirmed  in  the  belief  that  God  is  over  all  and  that 
He  is  too  loving  a  God  to  make  His  creatures  unhap- 
pier  than  they  make  themselves."  Miss  Dunbar  tells 
that  a  minister  called  on  Stevens  a  few  days  before 
the  execution,  saying  he  "  was  not  going  to  help  him 
out  of  the  trouble  in  this  life,  but  wished  to  help  him 
to  security  in  the  next"  Stevens  told  him,  he  "  re- 
quired no  help  after  leaving  the  body;  that,  if  the 
minister  could  not  help  him  then,  he  did  not  wish  his 
services  at  all."  At  half-past  eight  they  left,  to  wait 
at  Harper's  Ferry  for  the  remains  of  the  two  brave 
young  soldiers  of  liberty.  They  embraced  and  kissed 
on  the  scaffold,  were  unattended  by  any  one  but  the 
officers,  bore  themselves  both  bravely,  but  evidently 
died  hardly.  Lawbreakers!  yes;  but  more  to  be  com- 
mended in  spirit  and  purpose,  or  character  either, 
than  the  makers  and  administrators  of  the  laws  they 
violated. 

The  colored  men  who  are  known  to  have  borne 
their  part  in  the  raid  at  Harper's  Ferry,  were  Osborne 
Perry  Anderson,  born  free  in  Pennsylvania,  a  printer 
by  trade,  working  at  Chatham,  Canada  West,  where 
he  first  became  connected  with  John  Brown;  Shields 
Green,  a  fugitive  slave  from  Charlestown,  S.  C,  who 
came  with  Frederick  Douglass  to  Chambersburg,  Pa., 
on  the  19th  of  August  preceding  the  outbreak,  and 
entered  the  party  at  Kennedy  Farm  as  in  sort  a  rep- 
resentative of  Mr.  Douglass;  Dangerfield  Newby,  a 
freeman  of  the  Shenandoah  Valley,  Virginia;  John  A. 
Copeland  and   Lewis  Sherrard  Leary,  both  born   in 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         505 

Raleigh,  N.  C,  but  reared  from  childhood  at  Oberlin, 
Ohio.  Copeland  was  free  born;  Leary  was  a  fugitive 
slave.  Newby  and  Leary  were  married  men,  the  first 
had  a  wife  and  seven  children,  the  second  a  wife  and 
one  child.  Green  had  left  a  boy  in  slavery;  his  wife 
dying  before  he  made  his  escape.  Copeland  was  un- 
married. Newby  was  about  thirty  years  of  age, 
Green  twenty-four,  Anderson  twenty-four,  and  the 
Oberlin  men  were  twenty-two  and  twenty-four  years 
of  age.  Green  was  a  full-blooded  black;  Newby 
"was  a  tall,  well-built  mulatto,  aged  about  thirty, 
with  a  pleasing  face."  ]  Anderson  and  Copeland 
were  good-looking,  bright,  mulatto  in  color,  the  latter 
having  bushy  head  and  nearly  straight  hair,  while 
Leary  was  nearly  or  quite  a  quadroon.  They  were  all 
intelligent,  Green  looking  the  least  so,  though  pos- 
sessed of  considerable  natural  ability,  vigor  of  charac- 
ter, and  a  courage  which  showed  that  if  better  trained 
he  might  have  become  a  marked  man  Anderson  was 
well  educated,  a  man  of  natural  dignity,  modest, 
simple  in  character  and  manners.  He  wrote  a  very 
interesting  pamphlet  account  of  the  raid,  after  his 
escape,  served  during  the  latter  part  of  the  Civil 
War  in  the  Union  Army,  and  died  in  Washington, 
in  187 1.  Anne  Brown  writes  that  his  treatment  was 
not  altogether  creditable  to  the  people  of  his  own 
race,  upon  whom  he  was  compelled  to  call  for  aid, 
when  escaping.  He  gives  very  few  particulars  in  his 
own  account,  and  they  are  in  acknowledgment  of 
favors  received.  In  the  early  summer  of  i860,  he 
visited  North  Elba,  entering  the  door  yard  and   stop- 


1  Barry's  "Annals  of  Harper's  Ferry." 


506  JOHN    BROWN. 

ping  at  the  grave  of  the  Captain,  where  he  appeared 
to  the  friendly  eyes  watching  him  from  the  house  to 
be  weeping  and  praying.  At  last,  as  he  turned  to 
leave,  Watson's  widow,  Belle,  suggested  he  might  be 
a  fugitive,  and  Anne  Brown,  looking  again,  declared 
that  perhaps  she  knew  him.  On  going  out,  his  iden- 
tity was  established.  He  expressed  himself  as  de- 
lighted to  meet  her,  asked  after  all  the  family,  and 
then  with  a  "  God  bless  you,  you  dear  girl,"  he  started 
to  go.  Anne  insisted  on  his  coming  into  the  house, 
seeing  Watson's  boy,  Freddie,  and  meeting  her  mother. 
"  I  might  not  be  welcome;  I  have  seen  you  and  the 
Captain's  grave,  and  now  I'll  go."  The  harsh  man- 
ner in  which,  among  others,  some  of  his  own  relatives 
had  received  him,  threatening  even  his  arrest  in  their 
selfish  and  cowardly  alarm,  had  made  the  refined  and 
sensitive  man  timid  even  of  this  hospitality.  How- 
ever, he  staid,  and  for  a  number  of  days,  being  pres- 
ent at  the  Fourth-of-July  celebration  held  at  John 
Brown's  grave,  in  i860,  at  which  F.  J.  Merriam  and 
Barclay  Coppoc  were  also  present,  while  Thaddeus 
Hyatt,  James  Red  path,  and  R.  J.  Hinton  were  active, 
papers  and  letters  being  read,  by  the  latter,  from 
Wendell  Phillips,  Frederick  Douglass,  and  Henry  D. 
Thoreau.  When  Anderson  was  leaving  the  modest 
but  very  hospitable  "  House  of  the  Gods,"  which  had 
received  him  so  cordially,  he  told  Anne,  in  explana- 
tion of  his  strange  behavior,  how  he  had  been  treated, 
and  that  he  had  hardly  had  a  kind  word  spoken  to 
him  until  he  came  to  their  lrouse.  He  apologized, 
she  writes,  "  for  staying  so  long  and  said  he  dreaded 
to  go  back  and  into  the  world  where  he  would  be  so 
friendless  and  alone.    He  was  a  dignified  and  sensible 


John  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         507 

man,  modest,  and  unassuming  in  his  conversation,  a 
printer  by  trade.  At  the  Kennedy  Farm,  the  night 
before  we  were  leaving  for  home  (Martha  and  Anne), 
he  came  downstairs  to  listen  to  the  'Emperor's' 
(Shields  Green)  farewell  speech,  as  he  called  it.  This 
was  the  greatest  conglomeration  of  big  words  that 
was  ever  pil^d  up.  Some  one  asked  Anderson  'if  he 
understood  it,'  and  he  replied,  '  No,  God  Himself 
could  not  understand  that.'" 

But  the  negro  man  with  Congo  face,  big,  mis- 
placed words,  and  huge  feet,  knew  instinctively  what 
courageous  manhood  meant  and  how  devotion  acted. 
Frederick  Douglass  tells  how,  when  he  turned  to 
leave  the  Chambersburg  quarry,  where  his  last  inter- 
view with  John  Brown  was  had,  that,  on  telling 
Green  he  could  return  with  him  to  Rochester,  New 
York,  the  latter  had  turned  and  looked  at  the  strong 
but  bowed  figure  of  John  Brown,  weighted  with  the 
pain  of  Douglass's  refusal  to  aid  him  in,  as  he  termed 
it,  "  hiving  the  bees,"  and  then  asked:  "  Is  he  going  to 
stay  ?"  An  affirmative  answer  being  made,  he  looked 
again  at  the  old  leader,  and  slowly  said,  "Well,  I 
guess  I's  goes  wid  de  old  man."  When,  a  short  time 
after  O.  P.  Anderson  and  Albert  Hazlett  had  decided 
the  resistance  then  making  to  be  hopeless,  Green 
came,  under  fire,  with  some  message,  over  to  their 
station  at  the  arsenal  on  the  Potomac.  Anderson  told 
him  he'd  better  go  with  them.  He  turned  and  looked 
toward  the  engine-house,  before  the  door  of  which 
stood  its  few  defenders,  and  asked:  "You  think  der's 
no  chance,  Osborne?"  "Not  one,"  was  the  reply. 
"And  de  old  Captain  can't  get  away?"  "No,"  said 
both  the  men.     "  Well,"  with  a  long   look   and    slow 


5o8 


JOHN    BROWN. 


utterance,  "  I  guess  I'll  go  back  to  de  old  man."  In 
the  prison,  Green,  with  Copeland  and  Leary,  were 
constantly  sending  messages  of  regard  to  Captain 
Brown  and  Stevens,  and  on  the  morning  of  John 
Brown's  execution  he  sent  him  word  that  he  was  glad 
he  came,  and  that  he  waited  willingly  for  his  own 
death. 

Lewis  Sherrard  Leary  was  a  bright,  and  quite  well- 
educated  young  man  Leary  was  the  first  Oberlin 
recruit,  and  introduced  Copeland 
to  Kagi.  In  an  alleged  "  confes- 
sion," which  was  merely  statements 
that  Mr.  Hunter,  by  adroit  exam- 
ination, got  out  of  Copeland,  it 
appears  that  Ralph  and  Samuel 
Plumb,  of  Oberlin  College,  gave 
them  fifteen  dollars  to  defray  their 
expenses  to  Chambersburg;  that 
they  came  by  way  of  Cleveland, 
stopping  with  Mrs.  Isaac  Sturte- 
vant,  a  distant  relative  of  C.  W.  Mof- 
fet,  meeting  Charles  H.  Langston 
there,  and  from  thence  coming  on 
to  Chambersburg,  where  they  were 
received  by  James  Watson,  a  col- 
ored man.  Andrew  Hunter  spent  a  good  deal  of 
time  in  the  effort  to  get  some  one  of  the  pris- 
oners to  tell  something  they  did  not  know,  but 
he  utterly  failed.  Letters  of  Copeland,  written  from 
the  jail,  to  his  father  and  mother  at  Oberlin,  are  as 
notable  for  cheerfulness  and  religious  resignation  as 
any  of  John  Brown's  correspondence.  He  wrote, 
shortly  before  the  execution  of  December  16th,  that: 


JOHN  A.    COPELAND. 


1 


john  brown's  men:   who  they  were.         509 

"  I  am  not  terrified  by  the  gallows,  which    I   see  staring  me 
in  the   face,  and  upon  which    I    am  soon   to   stand  and  suffer 
death  for  doing  what  George  Washington  was  made  a  hero  for 
doing."     .     .     .     "  While,  for  having  lent  my  aid  to  a  general 
no  less  brave,  and  engaged  in  a  cause   no  less   honorable  and 
glorious,  I  am  to  suffer  death.     Washington   entered  the  field 
to  fight  for  the  freedom   of  the  American  people — not  for  the 
white  man  alone,  but  for  both  black  and  white.  Nor  were  they 
white  men  alone  who  fought  for  the    freedom  of  this  country. 
The  blood  of  black  men  flowed  as  freely  as  that  of  white  men. 
.     .     And  some  of  the  very  last  blood  shed  was  that  of  black 
men.     .     .     .     It  was  a  sense  of  the  wrongs  which  we  have  suf- 
fered that  prompted  the  noble  but   unfortunate  Captain  Brown 
and  his  associates  to  attempt  to  give  freedom  to  a  small  number, 
at  least,  of  those  who  are  now  held  by  cruel  and   unjust  laws, 
and  by  no  less  cruel  and  unjust  men.     .     .     .     And  now,  dear 
brother,  could  I  die  in  a  more  noble  cause  ?     Could  I  die  in  a 
manner  and  for  a  cause  which  would   induce   true  and  honest 
men  more  to  honor  me,  and  the  angels  more   ready  to  receive 
me  to  their  happy  home  of  everlasting  joy  above  ?     I   imagine 
that  I   hear  you,  and  all  of  you,  mother,  father,   sisters,  and 
brothers,  say — '  No,  there  is  not  a  cause  for  which  we,  with 
less  sorrow,  could  see  you  die.'     Believe   me  when   I   tell  you, 
that  though  shut  up  in  prison  and  under  sentence  of  death,  I 
have  spent  more  very  happy  hours    here,    and    were    it    not 
that  I  know  that  the  hearts  of  those   to  whom    I   am  attached 
.     .     .     will  be  filled  with  sorrow,    I  would  almost   as  lief  die 
now  as  at  any  time,  for  I  feel  that  I  am  now  prepared  to  meet 
my  Maker.     .     .     .     You  may  think   I  have  been  treated  very 
harshly  since  I  have  been  here,  but   it  is  not   so.     I  have  been 
treated   exceedingly    well.     ...     My   jailer,    Captain  John 
Avis,  is  a  gentleman  who  has  a  heart  in  his  bosom  as  brave  as 
any  other.     He  met  us  at  Harper's  Ferry,  and   fought  us  as  a 
brave  man  would  do.     But  since  we  have  been  in  his  power, 
he  has    protected    us   from   insult    and  abuse   which  cowards 
would  have  heaped  upon  us.    He  has  done  as  a  brave  man  and 
gentleman  would  do.     Also  one  of  his   aids,  Mr.  John  Sheats, 


cjio  JOHN    BROWN. 

has  been  very  kind  to  us,  and  has  done  all  he  could  to  serve 
us.  And  now,  Henry,  if  fortune  should  ever  throw  either  of  them 
in  your  way,  and  you  can  confer  the  least  favor  on  them,  do  it 
for  my  sake." 

On  the  morning  of  the  execution  he  wrote  a  long 
letter  to  his  family  at  Oberlin,  from  which  the  follow- 
ing may  well  be  quoted: 

"  I  am  well  both  in  body  and  in  mind.     And  now,  dear  ones, 
if  it  were  not  for  those  feelings  I  have  for  you — if  it  were  not 
that  I  know  your  hearts  will  be  filled  with  sorrow  at  my  fate,  I 
could  pass  from  this  earth  without  regret.     Why  should  you  sor- 
row ?     Why  should  your  hearts  be  racked  with  grief  ?     Have 
I  not  everything  to  gain,  and  nothing  to  lose  by  the  change  ? 
I  fully  believe  that  not  only  myself,  but   also   all  three  of  my 
poor  comrades  who  are  to  ascend  the  same  scaffold  (a  scaffold 
already  made  sacred  to  the  cause  of  freedom  by  the  death  of 
that  great  champion  of  human  freedom,  Captain  John  Brown), 
are    prepared    to    meet    our   God.     ...     I    pray   daily  and 
hourly  that  I  may  be  fitted  to  have   my  home  with  them,  and 
that  you,  one  and  all,  may  prepare  your  souls  to  meet  your  God  ; 
that  so,  in  the  end,  though  we  meet  no  more  on  earth,  we  shall 
meet  in  heaven,  where  we  shall  not  be  parted  by  the  demands 
of  the  cruel  and  unjust  monster,  slavery.     But  think  not  that  I 
am  complaining,  for  I  feel  reconciled  to  meet  my  fate.     I  pray 
God  that  His  will  be  done,  not  mine.     Let  me  tell  you  that  it 
is  not  the  mere  fact  of  having  to   meet  death  which   I  should 
regret  (if  I  should  express  regret,  I    mean),  but  that   such   an 
unjust  institution   should  exist   as  the  one  which  demands  my 
life,  and  not  my  life   only,  but  the  lives  of  those  to  whom  my 
life  bears  but  the  relative  value  of  zero  to  the  infinite.     I  beg 
of  you.  one  and  all,  that  you  will  not  grieve  about  me,  but  that 
you  will  thank  God  that  He  spared  me  to  make  my  peace  with 
Him. 

"  And  now,  dear  ones,  attach  no  blame   to   any  one  for  my 
coming  here,  for  not  any  person  but  myself    is  to   blame.     I 


john  brown's  men:  who  they   \vl:..e.         511 

have  no  antipathy  against  any  one.  I  have  freed  my  mind  of 
all  hard  feelings  against  every  living  being,  and  I  ask  all  who 
have  anything  against  me  to  do  the  same." 

Virginia's  cruel  hostility  to  the  negro,  even  when 
imprisoned  and  dead,  is  shown  by  Hunter's  attack  in 
court  on  Shields  Green,  and  more  than  all  by  the 
petty  maliciousness  of  Governor  Wise's  refusal  to 
give  up  the  dead  bodies  unless  "  white  men  came 
after  them."  Andrew  Hunter  says,  Copeland  "  died 
with  unwavering  fortitude  and  perfect  composure." 
Professor  Munroe,  of  Oberlin,  who  secured  admission 
to  the  prisoners,  declares  that  Green  was  "  patient, 
manly,  and  enduring."  Copeland  was  sent  with 
Leary  under  Kagi's  command  to  the  Hall  Rifle  Works, 
half  a  mile  distant  from  the  armory  and  engine- 
house.  Leary  was  riddled  to  pieces  in  Shenandoah 
River  about  two  o'clock  on  the  18th  of  October.  Cope- 
land was  compelled  to  surrender,  and  his  life  was 
saved  for  the  scaffold  through  the  interposition  of 
Congressman  Boteler.  Newby  was  in  the  thickest  of 
the  early  fighting  at  the  armory  gate,  shooting,  it  ap- 
pears, both  Turner  and  Boerly,  being  himself  shot  by 
Armorer  Boerly  from  an  upper  window  of  a  dwelling 
on  the  corner  of  High  and  Stevenson  streets.  The  gun 
was  loaded  with  a  spike  or  shot  bolt,  which  entered  into 
Newby's  neck,  inflicting  a  frightful  wound  and  killing 
him  instantly.  Boerly  was  himself  slain  by  a  bul- 
let from  a  Sharpe's  rifle,  fired  by  an  old  slaveman  of  the 
neighborhood,  who  distinguished  himself  by  reckless 
courage.  He  was  probably  killed  soon  after.  "Jim," 
Colonel  Washington's  coachman,  also  fought,  says  O. 
P.  Anderson,  "  like  a  tiger."  Anderson  and  Green 
went  with  Stevens  to  Washington,  and   Newby,  from 


512  JOHN    BROWN. 

there  with  Cook  to  Alstadt  and  Burns.  Anderson 
and  Hazlett  were  sent  to  the  arsenal  and  ordered  to 
hold  it.  After  they  crossed  the  river,  late  on  the  17th, 
they  had  quite  a  sharp  skirmish  with  some  of  the 
militia;  a  proceeding  which  led  the  Virginians  ever 
since  to  write  of  the  "reinforcements"  that  sought 
to  aid  John  Brown.  Osborne  P.  Anderson  deserves  a 
fuller  account,  but,  after  all,  the  record,  though 
meager,  is  sufficient  to  insure  his  place  among  the 
heroes  of  mankind.  He  possessed,  among  other  quali- 
ties, good  literary  ability.  It  may  speak  well  for 
shrewdness  and  sagacity,  but  not  for  the  "  higher 
power  "  which  Emerson  says,  is  "  the  wind  that  blows 
the  world  into  orbit  and  order,"  that  amid  the  forty 
or  fifty  more  or  less  representative  men  of  color, 
cognizant  of  John  Brown's  plans;  the  unassuming 
Anderson,  the  young  Oberlin  recruits,  the  negro 
fugitive  slave  from  South  Carolina  and  "  clothes 
cleaner "  from  Rochester,  were  the  only  ones  that 
answered  the  call.  Even  Richardson  failed  in  Canada, 
and  Thomas  kept  still  at  Springfield. 

Albert  Hazlett,  returned  to  death  by  his  native 
State  of  Pennsylvania,  without  justifiable  and  legal 
identification,  was  hung  by  Virginia  on  the  16th  of 
March,  i860,  after  being  held  more  than  140  days  in 
jail  and  on  trial,  never  clearly  shown  to  have  been  at 
Harper's  Ferry.  Even  his  name  was  never  clearly 
established,  for  he  was  tried  as  "  William  Harrison, 
alias  Albert  Hazlett,"  the  first  being  the  name  given 
by  him  when  arrested  between  Chambersburg  and 
Carlisle,  on  the  21st  of  October.  The  writer  of  this 
volume  was  sympathetically  drawn  more  closely  to 
tli is  young  man  than  to  any  other  of  the  John  Brown 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         513 

party,  a  number  of  whom  were  his  personal  friends 
as  well  as  anti-slavery  associates,  by  reason  of  the 
fact  in  using  the  name  "William  Harrison,"  he  took 
that  which  this  writer  had  signed  for  prudential 
reasons  to  letters  sent  during  1858  and  1859,  to  John 
H.  Kagi.  It  may  have  been  but  an  accidental  coin- 
cidence, but  it  influenced  the  writer  to  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  only  definite  attempt  made  towards  rescu- 
ing any  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  raiders.1 

Albert  Hazlett  was  born  at  Indiana,  Pennsylvania, 
September  21st,  1837.  At  the  date  of  his  death, 
therefore,  he  was  in  his  twenty-fourth  year,  that  is 
twenty-three  years,  six  months,  and  eleven  days  old. 
He  went  to  Southern  Kansas  very  early  in  1857,  and 


1  In  referring  to  the  "  Harrison  "  letters  to  Kagi,  it  may  not  be 
improper  for  me  to  say  that  Henry  A  Wise  told  me,  in  1867,  at 
the  Spottswoode  Hotel,  Richmond,  that  three  of  these  letters 
were  found,  giving  an  account  of  a  trip  through  the  Indian  Terri- 
tory, with  especial  reference  to  the  slaves  found  among  the  Chero- 
kees,  Choctaws,  Chickasaws,  and  Creeks,  as  well  as  to  the  de- 
scendants of  the  "marooned"  negroes  among  the  Seminoles, 
both  in  the  territory  and  in  Nuevo  Leon,  Mexico.  There 
were  also  extended  details  of  slave  conditions  in  northeastern 
Texas,  northern  Louisiana,  western  and  central  Arkansas.  The 
topography  of  all  this  region  was  referred  to  with  reference  to  a 
plan  of  attack  on  slavery  therein.  This  was  vigorously  outlined  in 
one  of  the  "  William  Harrison"  letters.  Part  of  them  were  in 
stenographic  (not  phonographic)  signs,  arranged  between  Kagi 
and  myself,  and  were  never  deciphered  by  Wise,  Hunter  &  Co. 
It  would  have  caused  some  loss  of  life  had  they  been  able  to  read 
the  names  and  places  such  signs  referred  to.  Gov.  Wise  informed 
me  these  letters  had  been  taken  from  the  famous  John  Brown 
carpet-bag  with  the  consent  of  Senator  Mason,  privately  litho- 
graphed, and  carefully  circulated  in  tlie  South,  as  an  illustration  of 
the  extent    of    the    "abolition"    conspiracy.     The    authorship  of 

33 


514  JOHN     BROWN. 

soon  became  actively  identified,  on  the  free-state 
side,  with  the  troubles  there.  In  the  latter  part  of 
1858  he  joined  John  Brown's  company,  was  with  him 
on  the  Christmas-Eve  raid  into  Missouri,  and  aided 
in  escorting  the  rescued  slaves  to  Canada.  After 
this  was  done,  Hazlett  staid  a  short  time  in 
northern  Ohio  and  then  returned  to  his  home  in 
western  Pennsylvania,  where  he  remained  at  his 
brother  William's  doing  such  work  as  he  could  obtain 
until  the  early  part  of  September,  1859,  when  he 
joined  the  party  at  Kennedy  Farm,  reporting  first  to 
Kagi  at  Mrs.  Ritner's,  Chambersburg.  In  the  latter 
part  of  May  (21st)  he  wrote:  "I  wish  it  would  come 
off    soon,    for    I    am    tired   of   doing   nothing; "    and 


these  letters  was  a  matter  of  uncertainty  to  the  Virginian  authori- 
ties, and  when  Hazlett  first  gave  the  name  "Harrison"  they 
hoped  »o  have  secured  the  writer.  From  other  reference,  and  a 
comparison  with  letters,  signed  by  my  own  name,  they  reached 
the  conclusion  that  I  was  the  author  of  those  they  deemed  import- 
ant enough  to  keep  secret  and  use  as  a  breeder  of  future  civil  war. 
Recently,  on  a  visit  to  South  Carolina,  I  found  a  curious  pamphlet 
allusion  to  these  letters,  and  to  a  subsequent  plan  of  insurrection 
which  was  prepared  and  sent  out  from  Boston  during  the  fall  of 
i860,  more  as  a  scare  or  means  of  agitation  than  anything  else. 
In  the  library  of  a  Northern  gentleman,  who  has  resided  and  done 
business  in  the  Palmetto  State  ever  since  the  surrender  of  Lee,  and 
who  has  collected  a  large  amount  of  Civil-War  matter,  especially 
Southern,  I  found  a  pamphlet  printed  in  Charleston,  which 
quotes  from  the  Boston  plan  and  refers  mysteriously  to  the  carpet- 
bag letters  under  consideration.  General  Albert  L.  Lee  and  other 
officers  of  the  7th  Kansas  Cavalry,  who  served  in  northern  Louisi- 
ana, told  me  also  of  finding  several  partially  mutilated  copies  of 
the  lithograph  letters  in  places  that  were  raided.  Their  attention 
was  first  called  to  them  because  of  Kansas  places  and  dates, — 
R.  J.  H, 


JOHN    BROWN'S    MEN!     WHO    THEY    WERE.  515 

again,  July  14th,  he  wrote:  "  I  will  be  ready  when 
you  want  me,  if  nothing  happens."  Mrs.  Adams 
(Anne  Brown)  writes  of  him,  that  he  was  "a  bright, 
kindly,  obliging  young  man,"  not,  perhaps,  as 
"  refined  "  in  manners  as  the  others,  but  always  frank 
and  willing.  Mr.  Gill  writes  of  him  in  the  same 
vein,  suggesting  mildly,  as  also  of  Leeman,  that  he 
was  one  who  did  not  impress  you  as  especially 
striving  to  "  climb  the  golden  stairs."  And  yet  he  did 
his  "  dering  do,"  with  the  same  modest  and  chival- 
rous acceptance  that  characterized  all  the  party,  and 
not  less  unflinchingly  than  did  their  wonderful  old 
leader.  He  was  tall,  quite  five  feet  eleven  in  height; 
slender,  small,  well-shaped  head,  with  marked  oval 
face,  very  fair  complexion,  blonde,  curly  hair,  open 
expression,  genial  in  ways,  truthful,  and  brave  to  the 
last  degree.  Hazlett  was  busy  under  Captain  Brown's 
direct  orders  all  of  the  17th,  until  after  a  large  num- 
ber of  the  Virginian  militia  were  driven  to  the 
Potomac  bridge,  falling  back  to  the  other  side.  Haz- 
lett, with  O.  P.  Anderson  and  Shields  Green,  were 
directed  to  hold  the  arsenal,  it  being  the  Captain's 
obvious  purpose,  at  the  time,  to  effect  a  retreat  that 
way.  The  arrival  of  other  militia  prevented  this  by 
compelling  Captain  Brown  to  retire  into  the  engine- 
house.  Green  returned  to  him,  and  the  other  two 
made  their  way,  by  a  culvert,  into  the  stream  and 
then  across  the  same  to  the  Maryland  side.  Osborne 
P.  Anderson,  in  "A  Voice  From  Harper's  Ferry," 
stated  that: 

"  Hazlett  and  I  crossed  over  to  the  Maryland  side  after  the 
skirmish  with  the  troops  about  nightfall.  When  we  descended 
from  the  rocks,  we  passed  through  the  back  part  of  the  Ferry 


516  JOHN    BROWN. 

on  the  hill,  clown  to  the  railroad,  proceeding  as  far  as  the  saw- 
mill on  the  Virginia  side,  where  we  came  upon  an  old  boat, 
tied  up  to  the  shore,  which  we  cast  off  and  crossed  the  Poto- 
mac.  The  Maryland  shore  once  gained,  we  passed  along  the 
tow-path  of  the  canal  for  some  distance,  when  we  came  to  an 
arch  which  led  through  under  the  canal,  and  thence  we  went 
to  the  Kennedy  Farm,  hoping  to  find  something  to  eat  and  to 
meet  the  men  who  had  been  stationed  on  that  side.  But  the 
old  house  had  been  ransacked  and  deserted,  and  the  provisions 
taken  away.  .  .  .  Thinking  that  we  should  fare  better  at 
the  schoolhouse,  we  bent  our  ways  in  that  direction.  The 
night  was  dark  and  rainy,  and  after  tramping  for  an  hour  and 
a  half  we  reached  it  about  two  in  the  morning.  The  school- 
house  was  packed  with  things  moved  there  by  the  party  the 
previous  day,  but  we  searched  in  vain,  after  lighting  a  match, 
for  food,  our  great  necessity.  .  .  .  Thinking  it  unsafe  to 
remain  .  .  .  from  fear  of  oversleeping  ourselves,  we  climbed 
up  the  mountain  in  the  rear  of  it,  to  lie  down  till  daylight.  It 
was  after  sunrise  when  we  awoke.  Hearing  .  .  .  shooting 
at  the  Ferry,  Hazlett  thought  it  must  be  Owen  Brown  and  his 
men,  trying  to  force  their  way  into  the  town,  as  they  had  been 
informed  that  a  number  of  us  were  taken  prisoners.  When  we 
got  in  sight  of  the  Ferry,  troops  were  firing  across  the  river  to 
the  Maryland  side,  .  .  .  and  to  our  surprise  we  saw  that 
they  were  firing  upon  a  few  colored  men  who  had  been  armed 
the  day  before  by  our  men  at  the  Kennedy  Farm,  and  stationed 
at  the  schoolhouse  by  C.  P.  Tidd.  One  of  the  colored  men 
came  toward  us;  we  hailed  him  and  inquired  the  particulars. 
He  said  that  one  of  his  comrades  had  been  shot  and  was  lying 
on  the  side  of  the  mountain  ;  that  they  thought  the  men  who 
had  armed  them  the  day  before  must  be  in  the  Ferry.  We 
told  him  '  no,'  and  asked  him  to  join  us  in  hunting  up  the  rest 
of  the  party,  but  he  refused. 

"  While  in  this  part  of  the  mountains  we  could  see  the  troops 
take  possession  of  the  schoolhouse.  Our  shelter  was  gone  and 
we  had  no  hope  of  meeting  our  companions.  We  then  con^ 
eluded  to  make  our  escape  North,  and  started  at  once.     Hav^ 


JOHN    BROWN  S    MEN:     WHO    THEY    WERE.  5 1 7 

ing  eaten  nothing  for  forty-eight  hours,  our  appetites  were 
exceedingly  keen.  So,  under  cover  of  the  night,  we  sought  a 
cornfield,  gathered  some  of  the  ears  and,  having  matches, 
struck  fire  and  roasted  and  feasted.  As  a  result  of  our  hard 
journey  and  poor  diet  we  became  nearly  famished  and  very 
much  reduced  in  strength.  Poor  Hazlett  could  not  endure  as 
much  as  I  could.  With  his  feet  blistered  and  sore,  he  gave  out 
at  last  ten  miles  below  Chambersburg.  He  declared  he  could 
go  no  further,  and  begged  me  to  go  on  as  we  should  be  more 
in  danger  if  seen  together  in  the  vicinity  of  the  towns,  that 
after  resting  that  night  he  would  throw  away  his  rifle  and  go 
to  Chambersburg,  where  we  agreed  to  meet  again.  The  poor, 
young  man's  face  was  wet  with  tears  when  we  parted." 

Anderson  found  it  impossible  to  retrace  his  steps, 
and  was  barely  able  to  get  away  in  safety  from  the 
colored  man's  dwelling  where  he  had  obtained 
food.  He  felt  compelled  to  make  his  way  out  of  the 
town  northward,  and  was  therefore  able  to  move  with 
less  suspicion.  It  was  the  fourth  day  before  this 
occurred,  after  Anderson  had  left  him,  Hazlett  en- 
deavored also  to  reach  Chambersburg.  This  was  on 
the  21st  of  October.  The  reward  of  $1,000  offered  by 
the  State  of  Virginia  for  the  capture  of  Cook,  had 
aroused  the  cupidity  of  all  the  fugitive  kidnappers 
and  thief-catchers  of  the  border  counties  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. An  experience  had,  three  months  later, 
enabled  the  writer  to  assert  that  even  the  armed 
bands  of  western  Missouri,  arrayed  at  that  period 
for  the  business  of  capturing  fugitives,  or  kidnapping 
free  men  of  color  sheltering  or  living  in  Kansas, 
were  no  more  brutal  in  their  cupidity^  and  zeal,  if 
more  courageous  in  the  exercise  of  those  amiable 
qualities,  than  were  some  of  the  kidnappers  on  the  Vir- 
ginian border.     Hazlett  took  the  railroad,  believing, 


5  l8  JOHN    BROWN. 

doubtless,  that,  as  he  was  in  a  "  free "  State,  the 
chances  were  in  his  favor.  It  was  the  vigilance 
aroused  at  the  appearance  of  Hazlett  that  aided 
materially  in  the  capture  of  Cook  on  the  24th.  Haz- 
lett, arrested  near  Newville,  having  followed  the 
Cumberland  Valley  railroad,  was  turned  over  to  the 
sheriff  of  Cumberland  County,  and  by  him  taken  to 
Carlisle.  He  was  first  carried  to  a  justice  court, 
and  then  arraigned  before  a  United  States  commis- 
sioner. The  stories  are  all  incorrect  to  the  effect  that 
Mrs.  Cook  or  Mrs.  Ritner  saw  and  warned  Hazlett, 
or  that  any  other  of  the  fugitives  were  endeavoring 
to  rescue  Cook.  The  pursuit  against  them  was  too 
hot  for  any  such  action  on  their  part.  Hazlett  gave 
the  name  of  William  Harrison.  It  was  quickly  found 
that  he  was  not  "  Captain  Cook."  Douglass  and 
other  attorneys  of  Virginia  and  Pennsylvania,  found 
themselves  at  fault.  Their  witnesses  could  not 
identify  the  prisoner  as  one  of  the  raiders.  They 
never  did.  A  requisition  for  him  as  Albert  Hazlett 
would  not  hold.  On  the  29th  inst.  a  writ  of  habeas 
corpus  was  returned,  and  "  the  court,"  says  a  dispatch 
of  that  date,  "  took  the  ground  that  the  requisi- 
tion is  legally  and  formally  right,  but  there  is  no 
evidence  that  we  have  any  man  in  our  custody 
named  Hazlett  whom  we  can  deliver  on  this  requisi- 
tion. We  are  satisfied  that  a  monstrous  crime  has 
been  committed,  and  that  the  prisoner  was  there  and 
participated,  and  therefore  recommit  him  to  await  a 
requisition  from  the  Governor  of  Virginia." 

He  had  been  in  prison  then  for  eight  days,  and  the 
jail  officials  are  believed  to  have  pointed  him  out  to 
a  man  named  Copeland  from  Virginia,  who  swore  to 


john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         519 

seeing  him  at  Harper's  Ferry  in  the  act  of  firing  a 
rifle.  On  the  trial  at  Charlestown  this  fellow's  evi- 
dence was  discredited  and  abandoned  by  the  prose- 
cution itself.  Yet  Hazlett  was  held  long  enough  to 
secure  a  requisition  for  "  William  Harrison,"  and,  after 
two  weeks  of  effort,  he  was  sent  back  by  a  judge  in 
his  native  State,  without  a  single  direct  or  even  cir- 
cumstantial proof  of  his  ever  having  been  in  Virginia. 
He  escaped  on  the  18th  of  October,  was  arrested  on 
the  22d,  extradited  on  the  5th  of  November,  and 
reached  Charlestown  on  the  8th,  the  day  that  the  trial 
of  Cook  and  Coppoc  begun  before  Judge  Parker. 

His  own  trial,  or  the  farce  so  called,  begun  on  the 
2d  of  February  following.  Mr.  Sennott  contested 
strongly  for  the  defense,  and  it  was  the  14th  of  the 
month  before  sentence  was  passed.  In  receiving  it, 
Hazlett  said: 

'•  I  have  a  few  words  to  say.  I  am  innocent  of  the  charge 
on  which  I  have  been  convicted.  I  deny  ever  having  committed 
murder,  or  ever  having  contemplated  murder,  or  ever  having 
associated  with  any  one  having  such  intentions.  Some  of  the 
witnesses  here  have  sworn  to  things  which  I  deny,  and  which 
were  positively  false.  But  I  forgive  them  all.  I  have  been 
treated  kindly."  .  .  .  He  thanked  officers  and  his  Virginia 
counsel,  and  closed  by  saying  :  "  I  repeat,  I  am  innocent  of  mur- 
der, but  I  am  prepared  to  meet  my  fate." 

The  spiteful  brutality  of  Virginia  is  forcibly  illus- 
trated by  the  execution  of  this  young  man.  In  law 
there  was  more  than  a  reasonable  doubt  of  his 
identity,  and  in  any  event  his  part  in  the  raid  was 
comparatively  unimportant.  Governor  Letcher  was 
as  savage  but  less  politic,  than  his  predecessor  Henry 
A.  Wise. 


520  JOHN    BROWN. 

Mrs.  Rebecca  B.  Spring,  the  good  woman  who 
visited  "those  in  bonds"  at  Charlestown,  writes  that 
the  delay  in  executing  Stevens  and  Hazlett  was  be- 
cause of  the  former's  wounds,  and  also  from  the  fact 
that  they  "  were  not  sure  that  Hazlett  .  .  .  was 
really  one  of  John  Brown's  men."  There  never  was 
any  doubt  by  the  officials  of  his  participation  in  the 
raid;  there  was  difficulty  in  procuring  or  manufactur- 
ing evidence  thereof.  The  delay  held  out  the  hope 
of  rescuing  these  two  gallant  men. 

The  special  reason  for  my  desire  in  that  regard  has 
already  been  given.  In  Boston  were  a  few  persons 
who  would  have  risked  everything  to  have  saved 
John  Brown  or  any  of  his  men.  If  I  give  as  most 
active  and  earnest  in  this  desire  John  W.  Le  Barnes, 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  W.  W.  Thayer  (of 
the  publishing  firm  of  Thayer  &  Eldridge),  F.  B. 
Sanborn,  James  Redpath,  Dr.  David  Thayer,  George 
Henry  Hoyt,  Brackett,  the  sculptor,  and  Richard  J. 
Hinton,  I  shall  cover  not  only  those  I  am  permitted 
to  name,  but  all  that  were  most  actively  inter- 
ested in  any  such  conception.  As  to  John  Brown, 
that  was  ended  by  his  message  through  Hoyt,  from 
his  prison  cell.  But  knowing  myself  that  in  Kansas 
there  were  men  brave  enough  to  try  the  odds,  when 
the  relaxation  of  vigilance  begun  after  the  16th  of 
December,  the  desire  to  save  Hazlett  and  Stevens 
grew  into  a  hope,  and  from  that  into  a  plan,  which 
was  ably  seconded  by  John  W.  Le  Barnes  and  T.  W. 
Higginson,  as  well  as  supported  by  Redpath  and  W. 
W.  Thayer,  was  pushed  thoroughly  up  to  the  point 
where  an  actual  reconniassance  proved  it  could  not  be 
accomplished.      Money   was    raised,    and    about    the 


john  brown's  men:   who  they  were.         521 

middle  of  January  I  started  for  Kansas.  For  pruden- 
tial reasons  I  adopted  in  traveling  my  mothers 
name  of  Read,  except,  of  course,  in  Kansas,  where  I 
was  well  known.  Proceeding  direct  to  the  southern 
portion  of  the  Territory,  I  consulted  with  Captain 
James  Montgomery,  laying  before  him  topographical 
maps  of  the  section,  plans  of  the  jail,  with  the  railroad 
and  country  highways.  Careful  inquiry  had  been 
made  as  to  possible  "  underground  railway  "  routes 
and  stations,  and  as  to  the  trust  that  could  be  reposed 
in  the  latter.  It  was  very  slight,  indeed.  Messrs. 
Higginson,  Le  Barnes,  and  publisher  Thayer  were  to 
look  after  the  pecuniary  part  of  the  plan.  By  the  sale 
of  Redpath's  "  Life  of  John  Brown  "  a  small  fund  for 
the  benefit  of  the  families  had  been  obtained.  With 
Mrs.  John  Brown's  consent,  this  fund  might  be  used 
temporarily,  and  that  was  readily  obtained.  Sculptor 
Brackett  promised  $200;  Mr.  Le  Barnes  gave  liberally 
and  advanced  more,  and  Mr.  Higginson,  who  was 
treasurer,  obtained  other  amounts  and  met  the  costs 
fully,  with  what,  besides  the  men,  was  obtained  in 
Kansas.  From  that  section  seven  volunteers  returned 
with  me,  including  James  Montgomery,  Silas  Soule, 
James  Stewart,  Joseph  Gardner,  Mr.  Willis,  and  two 
others  (from  Lawrence)  whose  names  have  escaped 
me.1  We  reached  Leavenworth  early  in  February, 
and  I  found   that  money  expected   had   not  arrived. 


1  The  omission  of  some  of  the  names  is  due  to  the  fact  that  one 
of  my  notebooks  was  loaned  in  1880  and  never  returned,  to  a  writer 
who  prepared  an  article  for  the  Philadelphia  Times.  It  was  pub- 
lished, but  having  no  copy,  I  am  writing  mainly  from  memory, 
except  some  letters  of  Col.  Higginson  placed  in  my  hands  by  Mr. 
Le  Barnes,  to  whom  they  were  addressed. 


522  JOHN    BROWN. 

Taking  Col.  Daniel  R.  Anthony1  into  my  confidence 
he  at  once  contributed  the  money  needed,  placing 
in  Captain  Montgomery's  hand  $150,  and  an  equal, 
amount  in  mine.  It  was  deemed  best  I  should  go  by 
way  of  Weston,  Missouri,  direct  to  St.  Joe,  and  that 
Montgomery  and  his  associates  should  go  by  private 
teams  to  Elwood,  Kansas,  directly  opposite  that  place, 
then  the  railroad  terminus  for  the  section.  Hon. 
Edward  Russell,  now  of  Lawrence,  Kansas,  gives  me 
a  brief  but  interesting  account  of  the  party's  arrival 
there  and  of  the  aid  extended  to  them.8 


1  Under  date  of  January  31,  1893,  he  writes  me  as  follows: 
•'  You  ask  me  about  using  my  name  in  connection  with  the  at- 
tempted rescue.  Yes,  of  course,  I  always  felt  proud  of  my  action 
in  that  case,  but  have  forgotten  much.  I  had  forgotten  to  whom 
I  paid  the  $150.  My  memory  is  that  I  paid  it  direct  to  Captain 
Montgomery  when  he  stopped  with  me  over  night.  You  probably 
was  the  active  agent  managing  the  rescue,  and  I  may  have  paid 
this  sum  to  you,  but  I  think  I  paid  it  to  Captain  Montgomery,  and 
he  left  for  the  East  via  St.  Joseph,  Mo." 

2  Lawrence,  Kansas,  February  14,  1893:  ...  I  have  made 
some  statements  at  a  meeting  of  the  Historical  Society  in  connec- 
tion with  the  paper  read  by  Major  Abbott  on  the  Doy  rescue;  but 
I  never  wrote  out  my  recollections  of  this  matter,  so  far  as  I  now 
recall;  at  least,  I  did  not  for  the  State  Historical  Society.  To  save 
you  a  little  bother  and  time,  I  will  give  you  the  facts  as  I  recall 
them.  One  afternoon,  just  before  dark,  Captain  Montgomery  ap- 
peared in  Elwood,  Doniphan  County,  with  letters  to  several  of  us 
living  there  from  friends  in  Leavenworth,  and  probably  in  Lawrence, 
requesting  any  assistance  upon  our  part  which  we  could  supply  to 
enable  the  captain  and  his  company  to  secure  transportation  over 
the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  railroad  on  their  way  to  West  Vir- 
ginia, for  the  purpose  of  rescuing  John  Brown  or  some  of  his 
party.  Just  how  many  men  were  with  Montgomery  I  do  not  re- 
call; but  I  do  know  that  when   I   had  them  loaded    into   a  skiff,   it 


JOHN    BROWN'S    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  523 

On  the  way  to  Harrisburg,  though  traveling  by  the 
same  train,  the  party  were  apparently  unacquainted 
with  each  other.      By  the  Higginson-Le  Barnes  letters 


sank  into  the  water  so  that  there  was  less  than  an  inch  of  her  gun- 
wale above  the  river.  After  a  consultation  it  was  found  that  there 
were  three  of  us  who  held  passes  over  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph 
railroad,  through  our  connection  with  the  press  in  El  wood, — D. 
W.  Wilder,  Albert  L.  Lee  (afterwards  brigadier-general),  and  my- 
self. We  very  cheerfully  offered  our  passes  to  Montgomery,  and 
wrote  a  note  also  to  the  station-agent  in  St.  Joseph  (Joseph 
Howatd),  requesting  him  to  help  the  party,  if  possible,  over  his 
line.  He  was  in  thorough  sympathy  with  the  free-state  men  of 
Kansas.  We  knew,  also,  that  the  men  who  owned  and  controlled 
the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  railroad  and  the  general  management 
thereof,  were  in  sympathy  with  us  and  opposed  to  slavery.  We 
trusted  not  a  little  to  that;  and,  as  I  recall  it,  they  secured  transporta- 
tion upon  our  passes  and  also  got  additional  passes,  so  that  nearly 
or  quite  all  of  them  were  carried  over  the  Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph 
railroad,  and  without  charge.  They  had  reached  El  wood  so  late  in 
the  short  winter  evening,  that  due  preparation  could  not  be  made 
for  their  crossing  the  river.  The  only  skiffs  convenient  to  be  reached 
belonged  to  the  gentleman,  Mr.  Ebenezer  Blackiston,  the  Ferry 
owner.  It  was  not  safe  for  him  to  know  anything  about  the  pro- 
ceedings. Through  his  daughter  (Mrs.  Russell)  I  obtained  posses- 
sion of  the  boathouse  keys  and  also  the  oars,  which  were  in  his 
house,  and  between  nine  and  ten  o'clock  that  night  (one  of  the 
darkest  I  ever  knew),  we  proceeded  to  the  river  and  loaded  the 
company  with  their  weapons.  We  furnished  them  two  or  three  of 
the  Sharpe's  rifles  which  we  had  among  us  in  Elvvood,  and  also 
some  ammunition.  After  getting  them  loaded,  and  enjoining  them 
to  keep  quiet  lest  the  skiff  should  dip  water  and  we  should  all 
be  dumped  out,  I  headed  it  for  the  opposite  shore.  There  was  a 
long  pull  and  we  reached  there,  but  it  was  still  so  dark  that  we 
could  not  see  the  shore  until  we  bumped  against  it,  and  came  very 
near  being  swamped  thereby.  The  company  landed,  bade  me 
adieu,  went  upon  their  journey,  and  I  returned  to  report  prog- 
ress." 


524  JOHN    BROWN. 

I  find  we  arrived  on  February  17th.  The  men  were 
housed  as  cattle-buyers  and  drovers  at  a  little  tavern 
in  the  outskirts.  Higginson  had  been  lecturing  in 
Ohio  and  was  awaiting  our  arrival,  stopping,  I  believe, 
with  Dr.  Rutherford,  a  well-known  Quaker  aboli- 
tionist and  physician.  At  his  residence  I  know,  how- 
ever, that  all  our  conferences  were  held.  The  pro- 
spects were  very  dubious.  At  Pittsburg  we  had 
encountered  a  heavy  snow-storm.  Another  storm 
occurred  on  the  18th.  Arms  (revolvers)  had  been 
obtained  by  Mr.  Higginson  as  a  loan,  unless  used. 
Arrangements  were  made  for  five  or  six  men  from 
New  York,  ex-German  revolutionary  soldiers,  these. 
Le  Barnes,  with  Higginson  himself  and  "  Read,"  they 
would  have  made  sixteen  "  machines,"  as  in  our  cor- 
respondence we  were  termed.  Under  date  of  the 
18th,  "  C.  P.  Carter"  (Higginson)  writes: 

"  The  machinist  (Montgomery)  is  strong  in  hope,  and  he  is  a 
man  to  inspire  infinite  hope  in  others.  Nothing  stops  him  but 
the  snow  that  now  lies — that  is  a  hopeless  obstacle  to  the 
working  of  the  machines, — but  a  few  days  will  probably  take  it 
away,  and  he  does  not  consider  the  season  such  an  obstacle  as 
T.  (Thayer)  did,  and  I  believe  it  can  be  done." 

Captain  Montgomery  started  from  Harrisburg  on 
a  reconnaissance  of  the  mountain  section  to  the  west 
of  Harper's  Ferry  and  Charlestown.  Gardner,  as 
having  been  a  Pennsylvania  Quaker,  was  sent  to 
exploit  the  "  underground  "  routes  to  see  what  aid 
could  be  secured  in  that  way.  He  trusted  his  Quaker 
brethren  too  much,  and,  as  a  result,  was  threatened 
with  exposure  to  Governor  Parker,  who  had  already 
made  undue  haste  in  returning  Hazlett.  It  was  from 
this  source  that   Attorney  Andrew    Hunter   received 


JOHN    BROWNS    MEN:    WHO    THEY    WERE.  525 

his  only  reliable  "  rescue"  information.  In  his  later 
years  he  misplaced  the  dates,  and  thought  it  related 
to  John  Brown  himself.  Silas  Soule  was  sent  into 
Virginia  to  find  out  what  he  could;  the  others  were 
put  at  various  details,  and  I  went  direct  to  New  York 
and  Massachusetts  to  see  our  German  friends  and 
also  to  hurry  Publisher  Thayer's  arrival  at  Harris- 
burg.  In  New  York,  by  Le  Barnes's  introduction 
and  through  an  acquaintance  with  the  late  Dr.  Adolph 
Douai,  I  met  Frederick  Kapp,  the  German  historian, 
then  editor  of  the  New  Yorker  Demokrat,  also  Col. 
Richard  Metternich,  nephew  of  the  famous  diplomat 
(who  afterwards  fell  in  the  Union  army).  The 
matter  was  discussed  with  both,  and  the  latter  was 
to  arrange  the  military  contingent.  Rockets  were 
purchased,  arms  and  ammunition  provided  for,  and 
also  various  other  tools.  All  these  things  were  pre- 
pared, but  the  reports  from  the  field  were  of  the 
worst.  Heavy  and  frequent  snows  made  all  moun- 
tain movements  impossible.  At  last,  Thayer  having 
arrived,  and  Higginson  returned  to  Harrisburg  from 
lecturing  in  Chicago,  a  conference  was  held  at  Dr. 
Rutherford's.  It  was  purposely  convened  before  my 
return,  in  order  to  relieve  me  of  responsibility  for  the 
decision,  which  was  entirely  adverse  to  the  attempt. 
In  writing,  about  this  date  (February  25th),  to  Le 
Barnes,  Higginson  says:  "Perhaps  Read  saw  you;  I 
sent  him  to  New  York  to  clench  the  Teutons,  and  for 
other  objects.  He  has  proved  himself  very  efficient." 
Again,  he  writes  that  Montgomery  "  was  the  very 
man  of  all  the  world.  Read  could  not  have  done 
better,  both  as  to  the  whole  or  the  parts."  The  cost 
of   the    expedition,    of    which    Higginson    writes    Le 


526  JOHN    BROWN. 

Barnes  that  he  was  glad  that  an  attempt  had  been 
made,  is  placed  at  about  $1,800;  of  this,  $300  was 
obtained  in  Kansas.  Le  Barnes  advanced  $200  in 
all;  of  which,  $74  was  returned  to  him.  Higginson 
took  $250  and  W.  W.  Thayer  $471  to  Harrisburg, 
making  in  all,  with  $300  paid  to  me  on  starting  for 
Kansas,  $1,721.  I  have  been  a  little  precise  in  these 
details,  because  of  a  desire  to  settle  for  good  the 
matter  of  "  rescue  "  talks  or  attempts.  This  is  the 
only  effort  made,  and  it  was  necessarily  abandoned. 
In  a  few  days  after,  Albert  Hazlett  also  died  on  a 
Virginia  scaffold.  His  brother  visited  him  on  the  15th 
of  March,  under  the  name  of  Harrison.  A  letter  of 
that  date  to  Mrs.  Spring,  who  had  promised  to  receive 
his  body  with  that  of  Stevens,  will  illustrate  the 
simple  courage  of  the  simple-hearted  boy — for  such 
he  really  was. 

"  Charlestown,  V  A., -March  15,  i860. 
"  Dear  Friend — Your  letter  gave  me  great  comfort  to 
know  that  my  body  would  be  taken  from  this  land  of  chains. 
You  spoke  of  my  friends;  I  never  wrote  to  them,  but  my 
brother  has  come  to  see  me.  He  left  the  matter  to  me,  and  I 
thought  it  best  to  let  you  have  my  body.  You  wanted  to  know 
who  was  dear  to  me  ;  I  say  everybody  that  is  good  is  dear  to 
me.  I  am  willing  to  die  in  the  cause  of  liberty;  if  I  had  ten 
ihousand  lives,  I  would  willingly  lay  them  all  down  for  the 
same  cause.  My  death  will  do  more  good  than  if  I  had  lived. 
Farewell,  my  dear  friend."  • 

On  the  1st  of  March  he  had  written  to  Anne  Brown 
at  North  Elba,  in  reply  to  a  letter  of  hers.  His  letter 
deserves  a  place  in  this  prison  literature  : 

"Charlestown  Jail,  Va.,  March  1.  i860. 
"My    Dear   Frjend   Anne — Your   kind     letter  gave  me 


•     john  brown's  men:  who  they  were.         527 

much  pleasure  to  know  there  was  some  who  had  sympathy  for 
me  in  my  prison  home.  I  am  very  thankful  to  you  for  your 
kind  and  cheering  letter  to  me.  Do  not  grieve  about  the  past, 
but  take  all  things  for  the  best.  I  think,  as  you  do.  that  my 
fate  is  hard  and  very  unjust.  But  I  shall  try  to  meet  it  like  a 
man.  I  do  not  see  that  my  death  will  do  them  any  good,  hut 
1  the  Lord  s  will,  not  mine  be  done.'  I  do  not  think  the  citi- 
zens here  thirst  for  my  blood ;  they  have  treated  me  \rery  kind 
and  humane  ;  the  ladies  come  in  to  see  us  most  every  day,  and 
gentlemen  also.     Good-bye,  Anne,  I  am  your  friend, 

"W.  H.  Harrison." 

On  the  3d  of  the  month  he  also  sent  to  Wealthy, 
wife  of  John  Brown,  Jr.,  a  copy  of  some  simple  but 
pathetic  stanzas,  headed  "  Harrison's  Farewell."  In 
them  he  bids  his  mother,  sweetheart,  and  friends  fare- 
well, saying: 

"  Oh,  do  not  mourn  for  me, 
Remember  that  I  die 
In  the  cause  of  Liberty.' 

So  feeling  and  so  saying  he  went  to  his  death, 
without  regret,  passion,  or  denunciation,  and  my  tally 
of  the  gallows  is  complete! 


CHAPTER   XV. 

MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,  OR    ESCAPED. 

The  North  Elba  families  —  Owen's  mountain  journey — 
Roswell  Thompson  and  sons — Tidd,  Barclay  Cop- 
poc,  Merriam — Owens  devotion — The  Boston  boys 
escape — Deaths  of  J.  G.  Anderson,  William  H. 
Lee  man,  Steward  Taylor,  the  two  Thompsons — Oliver 
and  Watson  Brown — Who  begun  the  war  that  ended 
slavery —  The  words  of  Frederick  Douglass. 

North  Elba  gave  ungrudgingly  to  the  attack  on 
slavery,  made  by  John  Brown  and  his  men.  One 
household  lost  father,  two  sons,  the  wife  and  child  of 
one  of  these.  Another  household  suffered  almost  as 
heavily;  two  sons  slain  and  one  daughter  widowed.  No 
one  has  heard  from  this  one  a  word  of  complaint;  a 
single  demand  for  recognition.  William  and  Dauphin 
Thompson  were  both  slain — the  first  named  having 
been  brutally  butchered.  That  act  was  done  under 
the  fierce  passion  of  alarm  and  combat.  But  the 
boasting  thereof  was  cold-blooded  and  ruffianly  in 
the  extreme.  The  younger  brother  was  at  least  slain 
in  combat.  Their  sister,  Isabel,  was  the  wife  and 
widow  of  Watson  Brown.  Henry,  the  elder  brother, 
is  the  husband  of  Ruth,  John  Brown's  eldest  daughter, 
and  he,  too,  served  his  apprenticeship  to  freedom's 
fighting. 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        529 

There  were  twenty  children  born  to  Roswell 
Thompson  and  his  wife  Mary.  There  were  four  pair 
of  twins,  of  whom  William  and  Willard  were  one  set. 
Only  ten  children  lived  to  maturity,  the  others  dying 
in  infancy.  William  was  born  in  August,  1833. 
Adolphus  Dauphin  Thompson,  the  youngest  son,  was 
in  his  twenty-second  year  when  shot  in  the  Harper's 
Ferry  engine-house.  He  was  born  April  17,  1838.  Bar- 
clay Coppoc  was  therefore  the  youngest  member  of 
the  party.  William  married  in  the  fall  of  1858,  Mary 
Brown,  the  daughter  of  a  neighboring  farmer,  not  re- 
lated to  the  historic  family.  She  was  eighteen  years  of 
age  when  married,  was  left  bv  her  husband  with  his 
brother  Henry  and  family.  She  was  a  quiet,  brave, 
young  woman,  fortunately  without  any  child,  and 
left  North  Elba  for  the  West  in  the  next  summer, 
where  she  remarried  within  a  few  years.  Watson's 
widow  lives  in  Wisconsin,  having  married  Salmon 
Brown,  a  cousin  of  her  first  husband.  William  was  a 
strong,  bold,  rustic-looking  man,  writh  large  features, 
ruddy  complexion,  very  fair  hair,  bold  but  kindly 
blue  eyes.     Anne  Brown  writes  that — 

•"  William  Thompson  and  his  twin  brother,  Willard,  were 
noted  as  boys  for  their  mischievous  pranks.  No  one  could  tell 
which  one  did  the  mischief,  not  even  their  own  mother.  Will- 
iam was  a  complete  and  successful  mimic,  imitating  speech 
and  gestures  perfectly.  He  was  lively  and  full  of  fun,  but 
could  be  as  sober  and  earnest  as  any  man  when  occasion 
required.  His  brother  Willard  served  in  the  Union  army,  was 
taken  prisoner  and  sent  to  Andersonville,  finding,  on  his 
return,  his  wife  insane,  his  children  scattered,  and  his  mother 
mourning  him  as  dead." 

William  was  "  kind,  generous-hearted,  and  helpful 
34 


530  JOHN     BROWN. 

to  others.  Dauphin  was,"  she  writes,  "  very  quiet, 
with  a  fair,  thoughtful  face,  curly  blonde  hair,  and 
baby-blue  eyes.  He  always  seemed  like  a  very  good 
girl,"  to  her.  The  family  came  from  Keene,  New 
Hampshire,  and  Mr.  Roswell  Thompson  was  a  nephew 
of  Dr.  "  Lobelia  "  Thompson,  as  he  was  called,  founder 
of  the  botanic  school  of  medicine. 

William  Thompson  was  assigned,  with  Oliver 
Brown,  to  the  capture  of  the  Potomac  railroad  bridge. 
By  some  accident  a  collision  occurred  with  the  watch- 
man, just  about  to  go  off  duty,  and  that  led  to  the  un* 
successful  attempt  to  capture  Patrick  Higgins,  who  is 
still  watchman  there.  This  brought  the  detention  of 
the  midnight  train,  and  then,  when  it  was  allowed  to 
go  on,  to  the  acceleration  through  the  neighboring 
section  of  the  alarm  created  by  the  attack.  It  was 
intended  to  evacuate  the  town  and  burn  the  bridges 
in  doing  so.  At  least,  fire-balls  were  prepared  of  tow, 
placed  on  sticks,  and  saturated  with  oil.  The  two 
Thompsons  were  kept  with  Captain  Brown  in  the 
armory  grounds.  Soon  after  noon  William  was  cap- 
tured and  taken  to  Foulke's  hotel.  Heywood,  Tur- 
ner, and  Boerly,  of  the  Ferry,  had  been  killed. 
About  forty  citizens  were  prisoners.  Newby,  "Jim  " 
Washington,  and  another  man  of  the  raiding  party 
were  also  slain,  when  the  mayor,  Fountaine  Beck- 
ham was  killed,  having  incautiously  shown  himself. 
This  roused  great  anger.  Henry  Hunter,  a  grand- 
nephew  of  the  dead  mayor,  headed  a  party  and 
dragged  the  prisoner  from  the  hotel.  The  land- 
lord's daughter,  C.  C.  Foulke,  who  was  reported  as 
endeavoring  to  prevent  the  prisoner  from  being 
lynched,  wrote,  for  a  St.  Louis  daily,  an  apologetic 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.         53 1 

account  of  her  action.1  He  was  dragged  out,  shot  at 
and  wounded  almost  before  he  was  past  the  door- 
step, beaten  as  he  was  hauled  to  the  bridge,  where 
several  guns  were  fired  at  his  head  and  breast.  He 
was  then  thrown  over  the  bridge  into  the  river,  and 
again  wounded  as  he  struck  the  water.  After  a  little 
while,  he  was  discovered,  still  alive,  clinging  to  the 
pier,  when  he  was  literally  riddled  with  bullets.  He 
lay  in  the  river,  face  upward,  until  the  next  day, 
when  his  body  was  taken  out  and  carried  to  Win- 
chester for  dissection.  His  young  brother  was 
wounded  slightly  during  the  firing  on  the  17th,  and 
retreated  to  the  engine-house  with  the  Captain,  He 
was  shot  dead  when  the  marines  attacked  the  little 
building. 

In  all  movements,  involving  personal  danger,  there 
will  some  one  be  found  with  fateful  forebodings. 
The  Kennedy  Farm   party  did  not  prove  an  excep- 


1  "  While  I  was  talking  to  Thompson  several  of  the  friends  of 
Mr.  Beckham,  who  were  justly  enraged  at  his  cold-blooded 
murder,  came  in  with  the  avowed  determination  to  kill  Thompson 
on  the  spot.  As  they  appeared  with  leveled  rifles  I  stood  before 
T.  and  protected  him,  for  three  powerful  reasons:  first,  my  sister- 
in-law  was  lying  in  the  adjoining  room  very  ill  under  the  influence 
of  a  nervous  chill,  from  sheer  fright,  and  if  they  had  carried  out 
their  design  it  would  have  proved  fatal  to  her,  no  doubt.  In  the 
second  place,  I  considered  it  a  great  outrage  to  kill  the  man  in  the 
house,  however  much  he  deserved  to  die.  Thirdly,  I  am  emphati- 
cally a  law-and-order  woman,  and  wanted  the  self-condemned  man 
to  live  that  he  might  be  disposed  of  by  the  law.  I  simply  shielded 
the  terribly  frightened  man,  without  touching  him,  until  Col. 
Moor  (I  think  it  was)  came  in  and  assured  me,  on  his  honor,  that 
he  should  not  be  shot  in  the  house.  That  was  all  I  desired.  The 
result  everybody  knows," 


532  JOHN    BROWN. 

tion,  for  Steward  Taylor,  one  of  the  younger  mem- 
bers, was  quite  confident  he  would  be  the  first  man 
slain.  Anne  Brown  tells  how  he  was  affected  and 
with  what  cool  equanimity  he  went  forward  with  the 
"duty  "  he  had  assumed.     She  writes  that — 

"  Taylor  somehow  got  the  notion  that  he  would  he  shot  as 
soon  as  the  party  took  possession  of  Harper's  Ferry.  We 
could  not  persuade  him  out  of  this.  It  did  not  seem  to  make 
him  cowardly  in  the  least,  or  act  like  flinching  from  what  he 
considered  his  duty.  He  wrote  farewell  letters  to  his  relatives 
and  friends,  and  sent  them  off.  Then  he  seemed  as  calm  and 
content  as  ever,  even  laughing  when  one  of  the  men  found  him 
writing  one  day,  and  called  out :  '  Boys,  Steward  is  writing  his 
will.'  He  was  one  who  could  never  have  betrayed  a  friend  or 
deserted  a  post." 

Edwin  Coppoc  tells  in  a  letter  to  Iowa  friends  just 
how  and  when  Taylor  fell.  He  was  wounded  in  the 
afternoon  fighting  on  the  17th  inst.,  and  died  in  the 
engine-house  soon  after. 

Steward  Taylor's  birthplace  was  a  Canadian  town, 
named  Uxbridge,  north  of  Toronto,  and  the  date  was 
October  29,  1836.  At  the  time  of  death,  then,  he  was 
within  twelve  days  of  his  twenty-third  birthday.  His 
mother,  Jane  Taylor,  married  a  Mr.  Foote,  while 
Steward  was  still  a  child.  He  received  a  fair  English 
education  and  went  to  work  in  his  youth,  remaining 
in  Canada  with  his  grandfather,  David  Taylor,  till 
his  seventeenth  year,  when  he  started  for  the  United 
States,  intending  to  settle  in  Kansas.  He  did  not 
enter  that  Territory,  having  been  quite  ill  in  Mis- 
souri, and  upon  his  recovery,  after  visiting  Arkansas, 
he  returned  north  to  Iowa,  where,  at  West  Liberty, 
Cedar  County,  he  obtained  employment  in  a  wagon 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        533 

factory.  He  early  became  acquainted  with  George 
B.  Gill,  who,  in  the  early  spring  of  1858,  introduced 
him  to  the  John  Brown  party,  and  to  John  Brown 
himself  at  the  house  of  a  Mr.  Painter.  He  joined  as 
Mr.  Gill  did  and  went  to  Chatham,  Canada,  to  partici- 
pate in  the  convention  held  there.  After  that  body 
adjourned,  Steward  Taylor  found  employment  in 
Illinois,  and  remained  until  Kagi  addressed  him  from 
Chambersburg,  early  in  July,  1859,  when  he  responded 
at  once,  bearing  his  own  expenses  and  reporting  for 
duty  as  soon  as  required.  That  he  had  deliberately 
engaged  himself  in  the  enterprise  is  shown  by  the 
fact,  that  for  a  year  he  had  no  communication  with 
any  of  the  party,  yet  he  writes  to  an  Iowa  friend,  in 
1859,  that — 

"  My  condition  seemed  rather  unfavorable.  I  expected 
momentarily  I  would  be  relieved  of  my  doubts,  which  arose 
from  my  losing  communication  with  my  friends.  I  keep  wait- 
ing day  after  day  for  word  and  at  last  gave  it  up.  Then  my 
hopes  were  partly  crushed,  I  felt  as  though  I  was  deprived  of 
my  chief  object  in  life.  I  could  imagine  no  other  cause  than 
want  of  ability  or  confidence.  I  believe  that  fate  has  decreed 
me  for  this  undertaking.  .  .  .  Although  at  one  time  .  .  . 
I  had  given  up  being  wanted,  but  all  came  right  when  neces- 
sary. It  could  not  seem  to  be  wrong,  in  spite  of  my  trying  to 
believe  to  the  contrary.  But  truth  will,  if  it  has  a  chance,  ap- 
pear to  the  sincere." 

In  his  reply  from  Illinois  to  Kagi  under  date  of 
July  3d,  he  writes: 

"  It  is  my  chief  desire  to  add  fuel  to  the  flame.  The  amount 
may  be  small  but  every  little  helps.  My  ardent  passion  for  the 
gold  fields  is  my  thought  by  day  and  my  dream  by  night.  I 
often  think  that  I  am  with  you  bringing  it  forth  in  masses  that 
will  surprise  the  world.     Please  let   me  know  as  soon  as  pos- 


534  JOHN    BROWN. 

sible,  for  if  it  is  very  sudden,  I  might  be  sore  troubled  to  get 
my  money." 

Taylor  was  of  medium  height,  stout  and  stocky  in 
form,  quite  strong  and  capable  of  physical  endurance. 
His  head  was  large,  round,  well  balanced.  In  that 
respect  he  was  of  striking  appearance.  Very  quiet 
in  his  ways,  helpful,  a  good  comrade,  always  even 
tempered.  Complexion  dark,  reddish-brown  hair, 
closely  cropped,  his  eyes  wTere  dark  brown,  large  and 
full.  He  was  smooth-faced  and  immature  looking  for 
even  his  age.  He  was  given  to  day-dreaming  and 
writing  a  great  deal;  phonographic  shorthand  espe- 
cially. Like  Stevens,  "  Jerry  "  Anderson,  Edwin  Cop- 
poc,  Taylor  was  strongly  disposed  to  spiritualism, 
Out  with  Kagi,  he  leaned  more  to  what  may  be 
termed  ''rationalism."  He  was  somewhat  excitable 
on  such  questions,  was  always  an  "odd  genius,  "  and 
would  nowadays  be  branded  "  crank  "  by  the  flippant 
formalists.  Very  persistent  in  any  purpose,  he  learned 
to  play  the  violin  quite  fairly,  though  he  had  but 
little  musical  ability.  He  was  a  constant  student 
and  always  had  some  book  or  study  on  hand.  In  dis- 
position, benevolent  and  affectionate — his  brother 
says  very  tender, — he  proved  himself  faithful  to  his 
convictions  unto  death. 

William  Henry  Leeman,  slain  at  Hall's  Rifle  Works, 
was  a  native  of  Maine,  where  members  of  the  family 
still  reside.  The  youngest  member  of  the  party, 
born  March  20,  1839,  and  therefore,  when  slain,  but 
twenty  years,  seven  months  and  three  days  old,  his  life 
had  been  for  over  three  years  as  full  of  stirring  adven- 
ture as  his  death  was  tragic.  He  was  sent  out  of  the 
Ferry  in  the  early  morning,  under  Tidd's  command, 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        535 

to  capture  Terence  Barns,  and  on  returning  took 
four  of  the  rescued  slaves  with  him  to  reinforce  Kagi, 
who  with  Leary  and  Copeland  had  taken  possession 
of  Hall's  Rifle  Works.  The  eight  men  were  trapped 
when  the  Virginia  militia  got  ready  to  take  a  hand 
in  the  proceedings.  A  Harper's  Ferry  doctor,  after 
the  shooting  of  the  railway  porter,  Heywood,  had 
gotten  out  of  town,  and,  riding  hard,  roused  the 
country.  By  noon  the  Virginians  begun  to  cross  the 
Shenandoah,  and  the  men  in  the  Rifle  Works  were 
soon  discovered.  The  four  colored  Virginians  made 
their  escape  without  fighting,  and  the  other  four  held 
the  untenable  place  for  over  an  hour,  until  at  last 
the  quartet  of  anti-slavery  fighters  made  a  break 
from  the  back  of  the  factory.  They  fell  before  the 
fire  of  a  hundred  rifles.  Leeman  lay  on  the  gray 
rock  dying  with  ten  or  twelve  bullets  in  his  body. 
A  militiaman  waded  out,  put  a  pistol  against  his  face 
and  firing  blew  half  his  head  off.  Cutting  off  the 
boy's  coattails  and  cartridge-box  and  belt,  he  sat  the 
mangled  form  against  the  rocks,  and  then  with  a 
grim  humor  of  the  pro-slavery  type,  spent,  with  others, 
the  afternoon  in  target  practice  on  the  dead  body. 
Captain  Leeman  thus  completed  a  service  begun  for 
free  Kansas  in  June,  1856.  He  became  a  fighter  for 
freedom  in  the  early  part  of  his  seventeenth  year,  and 
died  in  the  seventh  month  of  his  twentieth  year. 
Leeman  was  six  feet  in  height,  slender  but  well  built, 
fair  complexion,  small  featured,  with  good  steady 
eyes,  bluish  gray  in  color,  light  brown  hair,  ingenious 
in  the  use  of  tools,  quiet  in  manners,  and  always  re- 
liable. He  received  a  moderate  degree  of  education 
in  the  common  schools  of  Saco  and  Hallowell,  and  at 


536  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  age  of  fourteen  went  to  Haverhill,  Mass.,  to  work 
in  a  shoe  factory.  From  earlier  boyhood,  as  his 
letters  show,  he  identified  himself  with  anti-slavery 
politics  and,  in  the  spring  of  1856,  decided  to  go  to 
Kansas.  He  left  Massachusetts,  in  June  of  that  year, 
with  Dr.  Cutler's  party,  and  was  with  it  when  armed 
Missourians,  at  Lexington,  turned  the  company  back 
and  down  the  Missouri  River.  Leeman  found  his 
way  to  Keokuk,  Iowa,  and  there  joined  the  second 
Massachusetts  colony,  under  charge  of  Martin  Stowell 
and  Richard  J.  Hinton,  entered  Kansas  with  them, 
after  marching  afoot  across  the  State  from  Iowra  City 
and  through  southern  Nebraska  to  Fall  City.  He 
then  pushed  southward  and  was  soon  in  the  midst  of 
the  fighting,  joining  "John  Brown's  Regulars," ]  as 
the  record  shows,  September  9,  1856.  He  was  at 
the  third  attack  on  Lawrence  where  we  met  again 
and  for  the  last  time. 

Leeman's  life  thereafter  was  a  part  of  the  record  of 
John  Brown.  He  was  at  the  Springdale,  Iowa,  school, 
a  member  of  the  Chatham  Convention,  and  his  signa- 
ture was  the  fifteenth  in  order  to  the  roll  of  the  con- 
vention, and  of  the  provisional  constitution  there 
adopted.  He  was  also  a  member  of  the  committee 
appointed  to  fill  the  offices  under  it.  Letters  to  his 
parents  and  sisters  have  been  in  my  possession,  and 
many  evidences  are  given  by  them  of  his  adventurous 
disposition,  as  well  as  the  underlying  steadfastness  of 
his  character.  His  people  were  poor,  struggling  con- 
stantly, and  naturally  sought  his  assistance.  Some 
touching    letters    were    found     from,  them,    showing 

1  See  Appendix. 


Men  who  fought  and  fell,  or  escaped.      537 

their  trouble  at  his  absence  as  well  as  affection  for 
the  wandering  son  and  brother.  His  replies  were  all 
as  affectionate  in  tone,  and  there  are  proofs  that  he 
sent  small  amounts  of  money  at  different  periods. 
He  wrote  of  going  to  Utah,  when  he  was  about  some 
dangerous  movement  for  the  Captain.  Of  his  early 
Kansas  experience  he  writes,  early  in  November, 
1856,  that  after  "  we  had  cleaned  out  the  border 
ruffians,  the  government  troops  got  after  us  and  I 
had  to  get  away  to  Nebraska,  where  I  shall  work  at 
my  trade.  (He  was  a  bootmaker.)  If  Fremont  is 
elected,  there  will  be  more  trouble  in  the  spring. 
You  have  heard  how  we  whipped  them  at  Osawa- 
tomie.  We  had  thirty  men  and  wounded  thirty-two; 
they  had  400,  all  mounted."  There  is  no  trouble  in 
following  the  roads  by  which  Leeman  traveled  to  his 
death  at  Harper's  Ferry.  In  1858  and  '59  there  are 
several  letters  giving  hints,  more  or  less  plain,  of  the 
purposes  he  was  following.  In  one  Ohio  letter  the 
youthful  partisan  says  he  ''can't  tell  till  he  hears 
from  Kansas."     This  was  in  1858,  and   then  he  adds: 

"  I  think  a  great  deal  of  my  mother  and  sisters,  and  I  know 
they  do  of  me,  and  it  makes  me  unhappy  to  think  that  mother 
worries  so  much  about  me,  but  I  feel  myself  amply  repaid  for 
denying  myself  the  pleasure  of  seeing  them  by  realizing  that 
I  have  been  engaged  in  a  good  cause — a  noble  cause.  For  the 
last  year  I  have  been  engaged  in  the  cause  of  freedom,  and  ere 
long  it  will  be  shown  to  the  world.  If  we  succeed  in  our 
undertaking,  it  will  pay  me  for  years  of  toil." 

The  last  letter  sent  from  Harper's  Ferry  is  dated 
October  2,  1859,  and  makes  no  disguise  of  his  posi- 
tion.     It  reads: 

"DEAR  MOTHER — I  have  not  written  vou  for  a  long  time, 


538  JOHN    BROWN. 

and  have  not  heard  from  you  for  a  longer  one.  I  am  well,  and 
anxious  to  hear  from  you.  I  am  now  in  a  Southern  slave  State, 
and  before  I  leave  it,  it  will  be  a  free  State,  and  so  will  every 
other  one  in  the  South.  Yes,  mother,  I  am  warring  with 
slavery,  the  greatest  curse  that  ever  infested  America.  In 
explanation  of  my  absence  from  you  for  so  long,  I  would  tell 
you  that  for  three  years  I  have  been  engaged  in  a  secret  asso- 
ciation of  as  gallent  fellows  as  ever  pulled  a  trigger,  with  the 
sole  purpose  of  the  extermination  of  slavery.  We  are  now  all 
privately  gathered  in  a  slave  State,  where  we  are  determined 
to  strike  for  freedom,  incite  the  slaves  to  rebellion,  and  estab- 
lish a  free  government.  With  the  help  of  God  we  will  carry  it 
through.  Now  you  will  see,  mother,  the  reason  why  I  have 
stayed  away  from  you  so  long — why  I  have  never  helped  you 
when  I  knew  you  was  in  want,  and  why  I  have  not  explained 
to  you  before.  I  dared  not  divulge  it.  Now  we  are  about  to 
commence,  and  it  does  not  make  any  difference ;  but,  mother 
dear,  I  charge  you  not  to  divulge  a  word  in  this  letter  outside 
of  the  family,  until  you  hear  from  me  in  actual  service.  I  don't 
want  you  to  worry  yourself  about  me  at  all.  I  shall  be  in 
danger,  of  course,  but  that  is  natural  to'me.  I  shall  not  get 
killed.  I  am  in  a  good  cause  and  I  am  not  afraid.  I  know  my 
mother  will  not  object.  You  have  a  generous  heart.  I  know 
you  will  sacrifice  something  for  your  fellow  beings  in  bondage. 
I  knew  one  lady  in  New  York  that  bid  her  husband  and  four 
sons  to  take  up  arms  in  our  cause,  and  they  are  here  with  us 
now." 

With  what  courage,  then,  these  young  men  entered 
upon  their  tragic  work  is  illustrated  by  such  letters, 
scores  of  which  testify  to  the  purposes  and  devotion 
of  their  writers.  They  show  also,  however  mistaken 
in  their  hopes,  that  no  unworthy  thoughts  ever  dwelt 
in  their  manly  brains.  Their  paths  were  clean;  their 
aim  noble;  their  lives  full  of  high  bravery,  and  in 
their  deaths  were  justified  the  sacrifice  of  their  lives. 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND     FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.         539 


Barclay  Coppoc,  brother  of  Edwin,  one  of  the 
younger  members  of  the  party,  was  born  at  Salem, 
Ohio,  January  4,  1839,  an<^  was,  therefore,  twenty-one 
years  of  age  when  left  under  Owen  Brown's  com- 
mand, with  Merriam,  to  attend  to  the  removal  of  the 
arms  and  tools  from  the  Kennedy  Farm  to  the 
little  Virginia  schoolhouse,  where  they  were  after- 
wards seized.  In  the  fall  of  1856,  Barclay  was  in  Kan- 
sas for  a  short  time  and  there  be- 
came possessed  of  the  spirit  of  the 
free-state  movement.  He  was  a 
little  taller  and  more  slender  than 
his  brother  Edwin,  with  the  rest- 
lessness of  one  touched  with  con- 
sumption, full  of  an  adventurous 
spirit,  and  more  inclined  to  audac- 
ity. He  had  scant  brown  hair,  bold 
large  eyes,  irregular  features,  a  de- 
termined expression.  During  the 
perilous  period  of  escaping,  though 
frail  in  strength,  Owen's  narrative 
shows  that  the  brave  vouth  bore  his 
share  without  complaint,  of  the 
thirty-six  days  of  hunger,  cold,  fatigue,  and  danger 
they  passed  in  the  rough  laurel  hills  and  semi-mountain 
areas  from  the  neighborhood  of  Harper's  Ferry  to 
Center  County,  western  Pennsylvania,  where  the  three 
comrades — Owen  Brown,  Tidd,  and  the  young  Coppoc 
parted,  November  24,  1859.  Barclay  made  haste 
to  reach  Iowa.  His  presence  there  was  concealed 
slightly,  and  the  young  men  of  Springdale,  and 
Liberty  township,  in  Cedar  County,  organized  for 
his    protection.     George    B.    Gill    and     Charles    W. 


&'&    ' 


BARCLAY    COPPOC. 


^40  JOHN    BROWN. 

Moffett,  two  of  the  Chatham  Convention  delegates, 
were  resident  there  also.  Both  were  in  some  dan- 
ger. Virginia  sent  agents  to  secure  Barclay  Cop- 
poc's  arrest,1  but  Governor  Kirkwood  (afterwards 
United  States  Senator  and  Secretary  of  the  In- 
terior) had  no  desire  to  extradite  the  young 
adventurer.     Arrangements  were  made,    if  not  with 

1  The  following  letter  illustrates  the  feelings  and  actions  of  the 
period: 

"  Springdale,  Cedar  County,  Iowa,  Feb.  12,  i860. 

"The  object  of  thy  anxious  inquiry  (Barclay  Coppoc)  has  not 
been  taken  from  Springdale,  nor  is  it  intended  that  he  shall  be 
taken.  Springdale  is  in  arms  and  is  prepared  at  a  half-hour's 
notice  to  give  them  a  reception  of  200  shots;  and  it  will  be  neces- 
sary for  the  marshal  to  find  him  before  he  can  be  taken.  There  is 
a  well-organized  body  here.  They  meet  two  or  three  evenings  in 
each  week  to  lay  their  plans  and  take  the  necessary  steps  to  have 
them  carried  out  incase  of  necessity,  There  are  three  of  their 
number  who  always  know  of  his  whereabouts,  and  nobody  else 
knows  anything  of  him.  He  is  never  seen  at  night  where  he  was 
during  the  day,  and  there  are  men  on  the  watch  at  Davenport, 
Muscatine,  Iowa  City,  Liberty,  Tipton,  and  all  around,  and  the 
first  sign  of  an  arrest  in  any  quarter  a  messenger  will  be  dispatched 
to  Springdale,  and  larger  companies  than  the  Virginians  can  raise 
will  follow  immediately  after  them.  Muscatine  has  offered  to  send 
400  men  at  the  very  shortest  notice.  But  it  is  intended  to  baffle 
them  in  every  possible  way  without  bloodshed  if  possible.  The 
marshal  was  at  Des  Moines  City  some  two  weeks  for  a  requisition, 
and  the  Governor  refused  to  grant  it  on  account  of  informality, 
then  swore  they  would  take  him  by  mob.  The  citizens  dispatched 
a  messenger  immediately  to  this  place.  He  rode  four  horses  down 
on  the  way,  and  came  through  in  two  nights  and  a  day,  it  being 
165  miles.  We  understand  that  the  marshal  has  gone  the  second 
time  to  Des  Moines  for  his  requisition,  and  his  return  is  looked 
for  daily.  But  I  have  no  doubt  but  he  will  be  baffled  in  some  way, 
for  be  assured  Springdale  is  right  on  the  goose. 

*'  F.  C.  Galbraith." 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.         54I 

the  '  rovernor's  direct  consent,  not  without  his 
kno\*  edge,  to  give  Barclay's  friends  due  notice 
of  any  legal  action  upon  a  requisition  from  Virginia 
that  the  Iowa  Governor  might  feel  himself  formally 
bound  to  obey.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  never 
forced  to  such  action.  The  Virginian  sent  to  accom- 
plish the  arrest  proved  to  be  worthless,  drunken,  and 
cowardly.  He  succeeded  in  getting  arrested  for  debt 
on  account  of  a  board  bill.  After  a  visit  East  to  Ohio, 
New  York,  and  Massachusetts,  in  the  early  summer  of 
i860,  Barclay  went  to  Kansas.  In  the  fall  of  that 
year  Coppoc  aided  to  run  off  some  Missouri  slaves. 
Quantrile,  afterward  so  infamous  as  a  Missouri  rebel 
guerilla  (he  was  himself  of  Ohio  birth),  then  known 
as  "  Charley  Hart,"  and  pretending  to  be  in  sympathy 
with  the  helpers  of  the  fugitives,  trapped  the  boy, 
two  of  his  cousins,  and  four  or  five  others,  into 
a  movement  to  help  some  Jackson  County,  Missouri, 
slaves.  They  were  ambushed;  Barclay  and  others  of 
the  party  escaped,  but  two  or  three  were  killed.  For 
several  months  after  this  he  remained  quiet,  but,  when 
the  Civil  War  began,  he  at  once  entered  the  Union 
army,  and  was  commissioned  in  June  a  second  lieu- 
tenant in  the  Fourth  Kansas  Volunteer  Infantry, 
commanded  by  Col.  James  Montgomery.  Coppoc 
was  sent  to  Iowa  to  collect  as  recruits  some  young 
men  of  Cedar  County,  who  desired  to  serve  in  a 
Kansas  regiment.  On  his  return  with  them  he  met 
his  death,  on  the  30th  of  August,  on  the  Hannibal 
and  St.  Joseph  Railroad,  by  the  precipitation  of  a 
train  eighty  feet  into  the  Platte  River,  owing  to 
guerillas  having  burned  away  the  timbers  of  the 
bridge  across  it.     The  rebel  force  had  attacked  and 


542  JOHN    BROWN. 

taken  St.  Joe,  which  they  held  for  a  few  hours.  It 
was  supposed  that  a  heavy  train  of  Union  troops  was 
on  the  road;  it  had,  however,  fortunately  been  de- 
tained at  Palmyra,  but  the  trap  set  for  them  was 
filled  by  the  ordinary  passenger  train.  Barclay  Cop- 
poc,  with  several  others,  were  killed,  and  seventeen 
more  were  severely  injured.  His  body  was  taken  to 
Leavenworth,  Kansas,  and  buried  there  in  the  Pilot 
Knob  Cemetery.  That  of  his  brother  Edwin  was 
grudgingly  surrendered  to  Quaker  friends  and  buried 
at  his  birthplace,  Salem,  Ohio.  The  lives  of  these 
young  brothers,  with  their  comrades,  were  indeed 

'*  Built  of  furtherance  and  pursuing, 
Not  of  great  deeds,  but  of  doing" 

Revolutionary  blood  was  in  the  ascendancy  in  the 
John  Brown  party;  as  the  Browns  and  Thompsons, 
Kagi,  Cook,  Stevens,  "Jerry"  Anderson,  the  Coppoc 
brothers,  and  Merriam,  could  all  tell  of  progenitors 
serving  in  that  and  earlier  fields  of  civic  and  religious 
freedom.  Anderson,  slain  by  a  United  States  soldier 
after  he  had  thrown  down  his  rifle,  was  the  great- 
o-randson  of  two  soldiers  of  the  American  War  for  In- 
dependence.  They  were  both  Virginians.  On  his 
mother's  side,  Col.  Jacob  Westfall,  of  Tygert  Valley, 
in  the  "  Old  Dominion,"  was  a  partisan  commander  of 
considerable  local  reputation.  Soon  after  the  war 
ceased  he  moved  to  Kentucky.  He  was  a  slaveholder, 
as  was  the  other  grandfather,  Captain  Anderson. 
John,  his  son,  abjured  slavery,  and  after  his  marriage 
moved  first  to  the  Territory  of  Black  Hawk  (Wiscon- 
sin), and  then  to  that  of  Indiana,  settling  at  the  town 
of  Indiana,  Putnam  County,  where   his  son   Jeremiah 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        543 

was  born.  April  17,  1833.  "Jerry  "  was  therefore  in 
his  twenty-seventh  year  when  killed  in  the  raid.  The 
family,  his  father  having  died,  then  moved  to  Des 
Moines,  Iowa.  Jeremiah  was  fairly  well  educated, 
attending  the  district  schools,  and  at  Galesburg, 
Illinois,  and  Kossuth,  Iowa,  entering  the  academy  or 
high  school.  Hon.  James  W.  McDill,  ex-Congressman 
from  Iowa,  and  now  a  member  of  the  Interstate 
Commerce  Commission,  writes  that  when,  in  1854,  he 
was  teaching  in  the  Kossuth  Academy,  "  one  of  the 
students  was  Jeremiah  G.  Anderson.  My  recollection 
of  him  is  quite  distinct.  He  was  a  morose,  eccentric 
young  man,  quiet  and  very  studious."  The  morose- 
ness  alluded  to  doubtless  arose  from  the  fact  that 
Anderson  found  himself  out  of  his  element  in  a  Pres- 
byterian seminary,  where  he  had  been  placed  with 
the  idea  of  becoming  a  minister.  He  soon  kicked 
over  the  theological  traces,  having,  by  an  essay  he 
wrote,  declared  himself  a  Universalist.  At  the  time 
of  his  death  he  was  accounted  a  Spiritualist.  A  score 
of  essays  and  compositions,  placed  before  me,  show 
he  was  a  thoughtful  and  industrious  student.  Leav- 
ing the  academy,  then,  before  graduation,  owing  to 
poor  health,  he  took  up  an  active  out-of-door  life, 
investing  in  a  steam  sawmill  and  working  industri- 
ously therein.  One  brother  studied  medicine  and 
graduated.  He  went  to  Kansas,  was  concerned  in  the 
Southern  troubles  of  1857-58.  He  now  lives  in  Iowa. 
Harrison,  another  brother,  went  to  California,  after  a 
short  stay  in  Kansas.  Jeremiah  also  moved  there  in 
the  fall  of  1857,  purchasing  a  "  claim  "  on  the  Little 
Osage.  His  youthful  essays  show  a  strong,  free-soil 
bias,  due,  doubtless,  to    the   teachings   of   his    father. 


544  JOHN    BROWN. 

So,  when  the  Fort  Scott  outbreaks  were  renewed,  it 
was  natural  for  the  young  man  to  range  himself  at 
once  at  the  free-state  side.  He  became  active,  was 
one  of  Montgomery  and  Bain's  most  trusted  men,  and 
got  himself  under  arrest  several  times.  He  was  in 
the  fight  of  resistance  with  Montgomery  against 
Captain  Anderson,  a  dragoon  officer,  already  referred 
to.  In  a  letter  to  his  brother  in  Iowa,  Jeremiah 
writes,  Camp  near  Luella,  Kansas  Territory,  February 
17,  1858,  as  follows: 

.  .  .  "  There  is  considerable  excitement  here  at  the 
present  time.  A  free- state  man  was  robbed  at  Fort  Scott  some 
time  ago.  His  name  was  Johnson,  and  he  came  here  to  see  if 
he  could  get  help  to  recover  his  property.  Our  company, 
under  Capt.  Bain,  and  the  Sugar  Creek  company,  under  Capt. 
Montgomery,  responded.  We  marched  into  the  fort  on  the 
14th  inst.,  met  with  no  resistance,  for  the  bloody  villains 
had  heard  of  our  coming  and  fled  into  the  State  (Mo.)  that 
night.  .  .  .  We  have  just  now  heard  that  a  company  left 
the  fort  to-day,  and  expect  them  to  attack  us  to-night,  but  I 
don't  think  they  will  attempt  it  again,  they  got  whipped  so  bad 
the  other  time.  .  .  .  We  have  so  many  alarms  that  I  can- 
not get  half  a  chance  to  work.  ...  It  has  been  this  way 
for  three  months  or  more,  but  not  always  so  bad." 

Naturally,  the  young  settler  drifted  into  John 
Brown's  camp,  when,  as  "Shubel  Morgan,"  he  took 
position  on  the  border  near  the  "Trading  Post,"  the 
scene  of  the  "  Marias  du  Cygne  "  massacre.  He  was 
with  Captain  Brown  at  Christmas,  1859,  when  the 
raid  of  freedom  wras  made  on  Missouri  slaveholders. 
Fr  m  Lawrence,  on  the  14th  of  January,  1859,  he 
writes  his  brother  that,  after  getting  away  from  an 
arrest,  attempted  by  the  pro-slavery  officials,  he  had: 

.     .     .     "A  call  to  go  into  the   service,  and  went  to  Fort 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        545 

Scott  to  help  relieve  Benjamin  Rice.  We  were  fired  upon  by 
one  John  Little  Blake,  ex-deputy  United  States  marshal.  Our 
men  fired  back,1  and  a  ball  hit  him  in  the  forehead,  which 
done  him  up  just  right.  I  was  also  engaged  in  liberating  the 
Missouri  slaves  Captain  Brown  brought  in." 

After  giving  a  short  account  of  the  rescue,  Anderson 
continues: 

"I  am  now  three  miles  from  Lawrence  with  'Old  Brown,' 
as  they  call  him.  We  are  looking  out  a  railroad  route,  estab- 
lishing depots,  and  finding  watering-places.  Our  road  is  a 
long  one,  terminating  in  Canada.  .  .  .  Montgomery  came 
out  of  Lawrence  to  stay  with  us  to  night,  and  has  just  told  us 
of  a  plan  laid  to  assassinate  Brown  and  himself." 

Anderson  did  not  leave  the  Territory  in  January, 
1859,  but  joined  John  Brown  early  in  the  spring,  as 
he  was  with  him  in  Rochester,  Peterboro,  and  North 
Elba,  New  York,  in  the  following  March  and  April. 
He  seldom  left  him  afterwards,  Captain  Brown  hav- 
ing evidently  grown  much  attached  to  him.  He  said 
to  Mr.  Putman,  of  Peterboro,  that  Anderson  "was 
more  than  a  friend;  he  was  as  a  brother  and  a  son 
to  him."  To  J.  Q.  Anderson,  writing  on  the  29th  of 
November,  three  days  before  his  execution,  Captain 
Brown  states  that  his  brother  Jeremiah  "  was  fight- 
ing bravely  by  my  side,  at  Harper's  Ferry,  up  to  the 
moment  when  I  fell  wounded  and  took  no  further 
notice  of  what  passed  for  a  little  time."  Anderson 
was  pierced  with  a  death  wound  by  the  bayonet  of 
a  marine  whose  weapon  first  struck  the  buckle  of  a 
pistol  belt  and  sliding  off  pierced  his  body  through 
till  he  was  pinned  to  the  opposite  wall.  One  of  the 
prisoners  described  Anderson  as  turning  completely 


1  I.  II.  Kngi  fired  that  shot. 
35 


546  JOHN    BROWN. 

over  against  the  wall  in  his  dying  agony.  He  lived 
a  short  time,  stretched  on  the  brick  walk  without, 
where  he  was  subjected  to  savage  brutalities,  being 
kicked  in  body  and  face,  while  one  brute  of  an  armed 
farmer  spat  a  huge  quid  of  tobacco  from  his  vile  jaws 
into  the  mouth  of  the  dying  man,  which  he  first 
forced  open. 

All  the  evidence  shows  Anderson  to  have  been  re- 
garded as  singularly  reliable;  quiet,  grave,  and 
modest  in  manners  and  temper.  He  was  about  five 
feet  nine  inches  in  height,  quite  spare,  of  black  com- 
plexion, quiet  but  penetrative  dark  eyes.  His  feat- 
ures were  of  the  Abraham  Lincoln  type;  one  common 
to  the  Blue  Range  Scotch-Irish  stock  from  which  he 
came.     George  B.  Gill  writes  of  him: 

"  I  remember  that  he  was  considered  quite  a  valuable  aquisi- 
tion  to  the  party,  based  mainly  on  his  appearance  and  motions, 
and  from  his  undoubted  reliability,  carrying,  I  think,  his  whole 
being  into  the  cause.  He  was  probably  as  earnest  a  member 
of  the  party  as  Brown  had  with  him." 

He  wrote  good  letters  and  just  before  the  attack 
informed  his  brother  in  Iowa  fully  of  the  purposed 
assault.     On  the  5th  of  July  he  writes: 

"  I  am  stopping  (Sandy  Hook)  one  mile  from  Harper's  Ferry, 
in  Maryland,  on  the  Potomac.  The  railroad  is  one  side,  the 
house  and  the  canal  is  on  the  other.  This  is  a  mountainous 
country  and  the  scenery  is  very  beautiful.  Crops  look  well, 
especially  wheat,  of  which  there  is  a  vast  amount."  He  de- 
scribes the  fruits,  berries,  etc.,  tells  of  cool  weather,  and  says, 
"  there  was  nothing  going  on  for  the  Fourth  but  '  drinking, 
dancing,  and  fighting,'  so  he  spent  the  day  in  '  berrying '  and 
long  walks,"  and  adds,  "  I  am  going  to  be  on  a  farm  about  five 
miles  from  the  Ferry  engaged,"  he  adds,  "in  agricultural  pur- 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.         547 

suits,'  and  then  warns  his   brother  not  to  write  of  the  institu- 
tion." 

A  letter,  bearing  date  September  28th,  evidently 
written  from  the  Kennedy  Farm,  says: 

"Our  cooks  (Anne  Brown  and  Martha,  wife  of  Oliver)  are 
going-  to  start  back  to  Essex  County,  New  York,  in  the  morn- 
ing (Sept.  29).  They  are  the  old  man's  daughter  and 
daughter-in  law.  The  old  man  (Osawatomie)  has  gone  to 
Philadelphia  for  a  few  more  hands  and  will  be  back  in  a  few 
days,  and  then  we  will  commence  digging  the  precious  metal 
sometime  next  week  without  doubt." 

He  writes  hopefully  of  a  future  visit  to  Iowa,  and 
then  adds,  that: 

"  At  present  I  am  bound  by  all  that  is  honorable  to  continue 
in  the  same  cause  for  which  I  left  Kansas  and  all  my  relations, 
Millions  of  fellow  beings  require  it  of  us;  their  cries  for  help 
go  out  to  the  universe  daily  and  hourly.  Whose  duty  is  it  to 
help  them?  Is  it  yours,  is  it  mine?  It  is  every  man's ;  but 
how  few  there  are  to  help.  But  there  are  a  few  who  dare  to 
answer  this  call,  and  dare  to  answer  it  in  a  manner  that  will 
make  this  land  of  Liberty  and  Equality  shake  to  the  center.  If 
my  life  is  sacrificed,  it  can't  be  lost  in  a  better  cause.  Our 
motto  is,  '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.  .  .  .  The  old  man 
has  had  this  operation  in  view  for  twenty  years  and  last  winter 
was  just  a  hint  and  a  trial  of  what  could  be  done." 

Anderson  then  refers  to  a  picture  which  would 
seem  to  be  a  view  of  Harper's  Ferry,  as  he  writes: 

"  It  is  not  a  large  place,  but  a  precious  one  to  Uncle  Sam,  as 
he  has  great  many  tools  there.  I  expect  (when  I  start  again 
traveling)  to  start  at  that  place  and  go  through  the  State  of 
Virginia  and  on  South,  just  as  circumstances  requiring  mining, 
and  prospecting,  and  carrying  the  ore  along  with   us;  you  can 


548  JOHN    BROWN. 

just  imagine  while  you  are  reading  this  what  we  are  doing  and 
see  how  near  you  guess  the  truth.  '  Great  excitement ! '  '  New 
gold  discoveries  in  Virginia ! '  I  judge  the  excitement  will  be 
so  high  that  the  slaveholders  will  have  all  the  darkies  out  dig- 
ging gold  for  THEMSELVES.  I  believe  a  hint  to  the  wise  is  suf- 
ficient. I  suppose  this  is  the  last  letter  I  shall  write  before 
there  is  something  in  the  wind.  .  .  .  Farewell  till  you  hear 
from  or  see  me  and  hope  for  the  best." 

The  hopeful  courage  of  all  these  young  men,  as 
manifested  in  these  simple,  unaffected  home  letters, 
is  not  the  least  remarkable  fact  the  records  show.  It 
stands  as  proof  alike  of  their  intelligent  fidelity  to 
principle,  and  of  the  confidence  their  leader  inspired 
them  with.  Anderson  was  one  of  the  minority  who 
in  the  debate  at  the  Kennedy  Farm  sustained  the  pro- 
posed attack  on  Harper's  Ferry. 

After  the  arrest  of  Cook  and  Hazlett,  Governor 
Wise  issued  another  proclamation.  In  these  days  he 
seems  to  have  maintained  a  factory  for  their  produc- 
tion : 

Two  Thousand  Dollars  Reward — A  Proclamation 
by  the  Governor  of  Virginia. — Information  having  been 
received  by  the  Executive  that  Owen  Brown,  Barclay  Coppoc, 
Francis  J.  Merriam,  and  Charles  P.  Tidd  (who  are  severally 
charged  with  the  crimes  of  treason,  murder,  and  conspiring 
and  advising  with  slaves  to  rebel  in  the  county  of  Jefferson,  in 
this  commonwealth),  have  escaped  from  justice,  and  are  now 
going  at  large,  therefore  I  do  hereby  offer  a  reward  of  five 
hundred  dollars  to  any  person  who  shall  arrest  either  of  said 
fugitives  and  deliver  him  into  the  jail  of  said  county  of  Jeffer- 
son, and  I  do,  moreover,  require  all  officers  of  this  common- 
wealth, civil  and  military,  and  request  the  people  generally,  to 
use  their  best  exertions  to  procure  their  arrest,  that  they  may 
be  brought  to  justice. 

Given  under  my  hand  as  Governor,  and  under  the  Less  seal 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        549 

of  the  commonwealth,  at  Richmond,  this  third  day  of  Novem- 
ber, 1859.  Henry  A.  Wise. 

The  Richmond  papers  appended  the  following  de- 
scriptions to  the  above: 

"  Owen  Brown  is  thirty-three  or  thirty-four  years  of  age, 
about  six  feet  in  height,  with  fair  complexion,  though  somewhat 
freckled — has  red  hair,  and  very  heavy  whiskers  of  the  same 
color.  He  is  a  spare  man,  with  regular  features,  and  has  deep 
blue  eyes. 

"  Barclay  Coppoc  is  about  twenty  years  of  age  ;  is  about  five 
feet  seven  and  a  half  inches  in  height  with  hazel  eyes,  and 
brown  hair,  wears  a  light  mustache,  and  has  a  consumptive 
look. 

'Francis  J.  Merriam  is  about  twenty-five  years  of  age;  is 
about  five  feet  eight  and  a  half  inches  in  height,  has  black  hair 
and  eyes,  and  brown  mustache.  He  has  lost  one  eye — some- 
times wears  a  glass  eye.  His  face  is  somewhat  blotched. 
Complexion  dark. 

"  Charles  P.  Tidd  stands  five  feet  eleven  inches ;  has  broad 
shoulders,  and  looks  like  a  very  muscular  and  active  man ;  has 
light  hair,  blue  eyes,  Grecian  nose,  and  heavy  brown  whiskers; 
looks  like  a  fighting  man,  and  his  looks  in  this  respect  are  in 
no  way  deceptive." 

With  John  Edwin  Cook,  the  other  four  men  started 
on  the  morning  of  the  18th  of  October,  across  the 
South  Mountain  spur,  to  escape  from  the  clutches  of 
Virginia,  and  reach,  if  possible,  the  western  part  of 
Pennsylvania,  where  John  Brown  had  married  his 
wife,  Mary  Anne  Day.  It  was  natural,  then,  for 
Owen  to  make  that  section  his  objective  point.  Not 
only  could  they  then  reach  the  Ohio  northwestern  re- 
serve, where  John,  Jr.,  and  Jason  Brown  lived  and  in 
which  nearly  all  of  the  party  had  recently  been  staying, 
but  in    the   western    counties  of  the   Keystone   State 


550  JOHN    BROWN. 

there  were  prominent  persons,  like   the   Delameters, 
who  had  in  earlier  days  avowed  their  sympathy  with 
John  Brown's  acknowledged  purpose.     Three  of  the 
four  proclaimed  in  Wise's  proclamation  never  got  a 
chance    at    the    fighting;    Tidd    was   actually   in   the 
Ferry  between  midnight  and   daylight   of  the    17th, 
and    then    went    with    a    party    to    capture    Terence 
Burns,  a  slaveholder  of   the   neighborhood.     He  re- 
turned  to  the  Ferry  and  was  immediately  sent  out 
again  with  a  four-horse  wagon  and  a  party  of  negroes 
to   assist  at  the  schoolhouse  and    protect    the  arms, 
etc.,  that   Owen   Brown's  party   was  removing  from 
the   Kennedy   Farm.     He   was   the   first   to  hear  the 
news    of   failure.      Owen    declared,    "We    must    not 
desert  our  friends,"  and  started  to  arm  with  rifles  the 
colored  men,  with  them  who  had  been  brought  from 
the  Washington,  Alstadt,  Burns,  and  other    planta- 
tions; take  position  as  near  the  Ferry  as  possible,  and 
open  firing  at  long  range,  at  least  so  as  to  enable  the 
others   to   fight  their  way   out.     Tidd  was  hopeless, 
and  the  colored  men  soon  showed  they  were  unwill- 
ing.    It  was  late  in  the  afternoon;  John  Brown  had 
been  driven   into  the   engine-house,   and    the    report 
Tidd  returned  with,  having  volunteered  to  go  as  near 
the  Ferry  as  possible  and  obtain  news,  was:  "Your 
father  was  killed  at  four.     Oliver  and  Watson  are  re- 
ported  dead.     Only  two  or  three  men  are  left  alive." 
It  appeared  evident,  then,  that  the  only  hope  was  in 
making   their  escape.     They  made  up  some  provis- 
ions, Cook  having  joined  them  after  his  unsuccessful 
firing  at  the  Virginians  from  a  perch  on   the  side  of 
Maryland  Heights.     A  negro  man  who  had  been  left 
at  the   Kennedy  Farm  also  appeared.     The  six  men 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        55 1 

then  went  to   the   Maryland    house,  got  supper,  and 
immediately  after  took  to  the  range.     The  negro  was 
directed  to  let  loose  a  horse  he  had.     This  he  refused 
and  that  night  he  disappeared.     "None  of  us,"  said 
Owen,  in  after  days,  "  made  much  pretension  to  being 
scared."     They  were  alarmed,  however,  at  the  negro's 
flight,  and   made  on   the    18th   as  good  time  as  they 
could.     Owen  naturally  assumed  command,  and  de- 
clared that  they  must  follow  the   mountains,  making 
to   the    Northwest    as   steadily  as    possible.      It  was 
determined   to  keep  out  of  sight  and  travel  only  by 
night.     If  the  party  had  gone  directly  north  from  the 
Kennedy  Farm,  as  Anderson  and  Hazlitt,  they  would 
probably   have   met  the   latter,  been  on  ground  the 
topopraphy  of  which   they  understood,  and  would  in 
all   probability  have  had   a  better  chance  of  getting 
away.     Anderson  was  in  Chambersburg  on  the  night 
of  the  20th.    Cook  did  not  go  down  to  the  old  forge  in 
the  Cumberland  Valley,  where  he  was  captured,  until 
the    24th    inst.     By    Owen's    directions,   all    traveled 
roads  were  shunned,  except  to  cross  them  at  night ; 
no  fires  were  built,  though  the  cold  was  bitter;  at  first 
they  got  along  without  getting  food  except  a  few  ears 
of  corn,  eaten  raw.     After  they  were  able  to  travel 
more  directly  west  they  succeeded  in  either  raiding  on 
farmyards  or,  preferably,  in  buying  provisions.    After 
finding,  early  in  the  morning,  that  the  negro  had  fled, 
they  crossed   the    nearest   range.     Cook,   bold,   fiery, 
quick-thinking,  wanted  all  to  go   together  on  to  the 
roads  and  then  move,  at  night,  as  rapidly  as  possible. 
Tidd  was  severe  in  his  criticisms  of  what  he  termed 
Cook's  "  braggadocio."    It  took  all  of  Owen's  genuine 
kindliness  and  tact  to  prevent  open  quarrels.    Another 


552  JOHN    BROWN. 

difficulty  supervened  in  the  inability  of  Merriam  to 
withstand  the  severe  fatigue.  "  He  never  complained," 
Owen  said  in  after  years,  though  he  avoided  also 
telling  how  he  carried  the  young  Bostonian  over 
streams  and  difficult  places.  Barclay  Coppoc  was 
not  strong,  being  consumptive  in  tendency,  but  he 
had  a  brave,  enduring  spirit,  had  lived  in  the  open  air, 
worked  at  manual  labor,  as  Merriam  had  not,  and  got 
through  without  serious  drawbacks.  After  Cook's 
descent  to  the  valley,  and  his  capture  within  fifteen 
miles  of  Chambersburg,  the  others  pushed  on  to  that 
burg,  hoping  to  get  food  and  aid  their  unfortunate 
comrade.  Another  reason  for  venturing,  as  it  were, 
into  a  trap,  was  to  enable  Merriam  to  get  away  by 
railroad,  and  in  this  they  succeeded.  Fortunately, 
he  had  retained  some  of  the  $600  drawn  from  his 
trustee  and  uncle,  Mr.  James  Jackson,  of  Boston.  He 
divided  with  his  comrades,  retaining  only  sufficient  to 
reach  a  place  of  safety.  Tidd  and  Coppoc  left  Owen 
and  Merriam  hidden  nearby  and  made  their  way  to 
Mrs.  Ritner's  dwelling.  Mr.  Franklin  Keagy  thus 
describes  this  adventure: 

"  On  the  morning  after  Cook's  capture  and  the  day  on  which 
he  was  surrendered  so  hastily  to  Virginia,  Tick!  and  Coppoc 
came  to  Mrs.  Ritner's  house  ,  and  awakened  her  by  knocking 
at  her  bedroom  window  with  a  bean  pole.  Mrs.  Ritner  put  her 
arm  out  and  motioned  them  to  leave.  Tidd  said,  'Don't  you 
know  me  ?  I  am  Tidd.'  Mrs.  Ritner  whispered  in  a  frightened 
manner, '  Leave,  leave  ! '  Tidd  said,  '  We  are  hungry,'  to  which 
Mrs.  Ritner  replied,  '  I  can't  help  you,  if  you  were  starving, 
leave!  the  house  is  guarded  by  armed  men!'  The  men  then 
hurriedly  left  and  secreted  themselves  in  a  thicket  on  the  out- 
skirt  of  the  town  ;  there  they  remained  all  day,  and  that  night 
they  left  their  hiding-place  and  started  northward.     It  is  well 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        553 

they  did,  the  next  morning  was  Thanksgiving  Day,  and  the 
country  about  town  was  alive  with  boys  and  men  rabbit  hunt- 
ing. The  arms  left  by  them  were  soon  found,  and  it  was  sur- 
mised that  there  was  some  of  the  party  in  the  town  yet.  Mer- 
riam  left  the  party  at  Chambersburg,  and,  going  on  the  railroad 
track  as  far  as  Scotland,  distant  five  miles,  took  the  early 
morning  train  east.  The  rest  of  the  party,  Owen  Brown,  Cop- 
poc,  and  Tidd,  crossed  the  North  Mountains  and  escaped  cap- 
ture." 

An  account,  published  at  the  time  in  the  New  York 
Tribune,  dated  Chambersburg,  says  that  the  four  men 
remained  several  days  near  that  place.  This  and  other 
statements  are  incorrect,  as  James  Redpath  met  Mer- 
riam  in  Philadelphia  on  the  26th,  and  sent  him  north- 
ward, while  also  dispatching  previously  arranged  for 
telegrams  to  his  mother  and  uncle.  A  quiet,  but  well- 
organized  and  vigorouseffort  vvasmadeto  reach  Owen's 
party  at  the  time,  and  several  times  friends  were 
within  rifle  shot.  It  was  impossible,  however,  to  com- 
municate with  them  even  when  the  messengers  were 
of  the  colored  race.  The  same  thing  was  true  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Harrisburg,  where  both  Colonel 
Hoyt  and  myself  conducted  well-planned  efforts. 
After  leaving  Chambersburg,  which  they  did  after 
learning  in  some  way  of  Cook's  return  to  Virginia  at 
noon  of  the  25th,  they  were  compelled  to  wander  in 
more  or  less  danger,  and  it  was  not  until  the  4th  of 
November,  twenty  days  after  they  had  left  the  Ken- 
nedy Farm  that  they  were  able  to  obtain  an  old 
newspaper  and  learn  that  John  Brown  and  Stevens, 
severely  wounded,  with  Edwin  Coppoc,  Green,  and 
Copeland  had  been  captured  and  were  on  trial  for 
their  lives.  It  was  Owen's  birthday  and  he  read  the 
proclamation  of  Governor  Wise  offering   rewards  for 


554  JOHN    BROWN. 

their  capture.  Owen  stated  that  Tidd  got  the  paper, 
and  he  (Owen),  "  with  a  tremor  in  the  voice,  read  the 
news  aloud."  At  this  time  they  adopted  other  names; 
Owen  taking  that  of  Edward  Clark,  Tidd  becoming 
Charles  Plummer,  and  Coppoc  assuming  to  be  George 
Barclay.  They  began  to  get  among  Quakers  and 
farmers  who  asked  no  questions,  gave  them  food  and 
directed  them  on  their  way.  On  one  occasion  they 
were  hotly  pursued,  and  Benjamin  Wakefield,  near 
Fawnville,  Crumford  County,  a  Quaker,  managed  to 
put  the  pursuers  off  on  a  wrong  road.  He  fed  and  cared 
for  the  fugitives,  letting  them  understand  he  knew 
who  they  were,  would  take  no  money,  and  directed 
them  to  find  a  cousin,  forty  miles  distant,  at  Half 
Moon.  At  Half  Moon  they  were  at  first  reluctantly 
received,  but  well  treated  after  the  household  got 
over  its  fright.  Here  they  bought  large  carpet  bags 
and  were  thus  enabled  to  hide  their  weapons.  They 
reached  Center  County,  Pennsylvania,  where  Owen 
had  relatives,  in  the  latter  part  of  November,  and  then 
separated.  Under  date  of  November  28th,  Hoyt 
wrote  Mr.  Le  Barnes  from  Cleveland:  " Coppoc  passed 
this  place  this  morning.  Before  this  gets  to  Boston 
he  will  be  safe  enough  in  Canada.  Owen  Brown  is 
in  Ashtabula  County  and  will  soon  be  here  en  route. 
Where  Tidd  is  I  don't  know,  but  he  is  safe."  He  was 
very  careful  about  his  address,  and,  as  late  as  July, 
i860,  his  actual  whereabouts — he  being  then  in  Mas- 
sachusetts— was  withheld  directly  from  all  but  mem- 
bers of  the  Brown  family,  Barclay  Coppoc,  and  L.  F. 
Parsons.  Owen,  who  had  gone  to  his  brother  at 
Dorset,  did  not  leave  Ohio  for  many  years.  On  the 
8th  of  March,  i860, Governor  Letcher  madeademand 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.         555 


for  Virginia  on  Governor  Dennison,  Ohio,  for  the  sur- 
render of  Owen  Brown  and  Francis  J.  Merriam.  The 
latter  had  been  sojourning  a  brief  period  at  Cleve- 
land, while  passing  to  and  from  Chatham,  Canada, 
where  I  find  by  O.  P.  Anderson's  letters  to  me,  he 
made  his  residence  until  the  summer  of  i860.  The 
attorney-general  of  Ohio,  to  whom  Letcher's  demand 
was  referred,  stated  that  no  ^le- 
gal" demand  had  been  made  or 
proper  papers  submitted.  He 
said:  "  In  all  these  documents, 
from  beginning  to  end,  there  is 
no  word,  no  letter,  from  which 
human  ingenuity  can  draw  the 
vaguest  hint  that  Owen  Brown 
or  Merriam  had  fled  from  Vir- 
ginia, nor  was  there  any  proper 
proof  of  either  of  the  men  being 
within  the  bounds  of  Ohio." 

Owen  Brown  showed  in  his 
conduct  of  the  escape,  as  in  his 
life  in  Kansas  and  elsewhere,  the 
best  qualities  and  the  true  stuff 
of  which  the  Browns    were    all 

made.     George  B.  Gill,  who  knew  him  well,  writes  a 
bit  of  analytical  description.     He  says: 


1   "*  '  ■" 

OWEN   BROWN. 


"Owen  Brown  came  as  near  being  a  philosopher,  in  many 
ways,  as  I  ever  saw.  A  thorough  optimist,  too,  often  express- 
ing approbation  of  life  by  wishing  that  he  could  live  a  thousand 
years.  Apparently  organized  like  his  father,  yet  having  but 
few  of  the  latter's  severe  peculiarities,  every  idea  had  to  pass 
through  the  cynical  test  of  logic.  In  contradistinction  to  his 
father's  views,  Owen  was  an  avowed  agnostic.     He  was  moral 


556  JOHN    BROWN. 

and  upright,  very  kind,  and  very  willing-  to  sacrifice  his  per- 
sonal comforts,  if  by  doing  so  he  might  benefit  others.  To 
induce  me  to  quit  the  use  of  tobacco  he  offered  to  live  upon 
two  meals  a  day.  Very  firm,  yet  entirely  free  from  vindictive- 
ness  :  the  very  soul  of  honor  and  honesty.  The  equanimity  of 
his  temper  I  have  never  seen  equaled. 

"  He  must  have  been  six  feet  in  height  and  well  propor- 
tioned, with  red  or  sandy  hair  and  full,  long  beard.  He  had 
been  physically  unfortunate,  when  younger,  in  the  injury  of  an 
arm  or  shoulder,  I  think,  through  which  lie  had  suffered  so 
severely  as  to  prematurely  age  him,  and  produced  a  trouble 
of  some  kind  by  which  he  was  subject  to  drowsiness.  This,  as 
well  as  being  crippled  in  his  arm,  rendered  him  incapable  of 
any  very  hard  labor.  His  father,  in  planning  for  him,  was 
always  taking  this  into  consideration,  and  most  likely  had  this 
in  mind  when  leaving  him  in  charge  of  the  house  and  arms  at 
the  Kennedy  Farm.  He  inherited  from  him  a  dislike  for 
buttermilk  and  cheese.  Owen  became  much  attached  to  a 
young  lady  at  Springdale,  Iowa,  but  owing  to  the  peculiar  con- 
ditions, he  considered  that  it  would  be  dishonorable  in  him  to 
make  any  advance.  I  have,  however,  understood  that  he 
retained  for  her  an  undiminished  affection  to  the  day  of  his 
death." 

Owen  lived  for  several  years  at  Gibraltar  (Jay 
Cooke's  residence)  in  Sandusky  Bay,  Lake  Erie,  John, 
Jr.,  and  Jason  residing  at  the  same  time  on  Put-in- 
Bay  Island,  nearby.  John,  with  his  wife,  Wealthy,  and 
their  son  and  daughter,  still  live  at  the  vineyard, 
whose  planting  was  begun  in  i860.  They  are  among 
the  rarest  of  gentlefolks,  well  mannered,  and  culti- 
vated in  the  best  sense,  honored  by  all  who  know 
them,  and  beloved  by  those  who  are  endowed  with 
their  friendship.  Early  in  the  'eighties  the  Brown 
family  removed  to  California,  with  the  exception  of 
John,  Jr.,  and   his  family,  who  remain  in  their  Island 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        557 

home,  Lake  Erie.     A  portion   of   Jason's   family  still 
live  at  Akron,  Ohio.     The   North   Elba   homestead, 
purchased,  raised  through  the  energy  of   Kate   Field, 
is  now  in    the   hands   of   trustees   and    in  charge  of  a 
family  related  by  marriage   to  the  Browns.     The  un- 
married   daughter,    Sarah,    lived    in    San    Francisco, 
where   the  widowed    mother  died    two    years  before 
Owen's  death.     Ruth,  Jason,  and  Owen  settled  in,  or 
near,  South    Pasadena;  the    two   sons    holding  small 
ranches   on    Las   Cacitas,  a    neighboring  table-land. 
Ellen,  with  her  husband,   settled   in   the  Santa   Cruz 
Valley,  where  also  Sarah  now  resides.     Salmon,  with 
his    family,    recently    removed    to    Yakima    Valley, 
Washington,  from    the  neighborhood  of  Red   Bluff, 
while   Mrs.  Anne   Brown-Adams   resides   at   Petralia, 
Humboldt  County.      Owen  Brown  died  on  the  9th  of 
January,  1891,  greatly  beloved  by  all  who  knew  him. 
His  powers  of  description  were  marked  and  made  his 
conversation  very  attractive.     His  memory  of  places, 
incidents,  and  scenes,  though  not  of  names  or  persons, 
remained    vivid    until    his    death.     In    July,  i860,   at 
North    Elba,   he   wrote   in  an  autograph   album   the 
following,   and  it   is   quoted    here  because  it  clearly 
illustrates  his  mental  habits  and  his  way  of  putting 
things  : 

"  How  much  better  is  defeat  while  struggling  for  the  right 
than  the  greater  success  in  an  evil  work.  That  nation  which 
will  rob  and  oppress  its  laboring  citizens  must  experience  all 
the  horrors  of  a  revolution.  It  is  a  necessary  result  of  a  war 
upon  the  natural  and  most  sacred  rights  of  man.  I  am  sorry 
that  any  member  of  the  human  family  should  think  so  much  of 
self,  or  have  so  tight  a  hold  upon  the  great  silver  and  golden 
god  of  the  United  States,  that  they  cannot  be  just.  From  this 
source  springs  all  oppression.     The  welfare  of  man  is  the  first 


55§  JOHN    BROWN. 

great  law.  Then  let  all,  male  and  female,  irrespective  of  nation 
or  complexion,  be  governed  by  one  and  the  same  laws." 

A  native  of  Maine,  born  at  Palermo,  Waldo  County, 
in  1832,  Charles  Plummer  Tidd  was  in  his  twenty- 
seventh  year  when  he  escaped  from  Virginia,  Octo- 
ber 18th,  1859.  Anne  Brown-Adams  writes  that, 
after  the  discussion  at  the  Kennedy  Farm  in  Septem- 
ber, ending  by  the  decision  to  follow  John  Brown's 
plans,  Tidd  was  so  dissatisfied  that  he  left  the  farm- 
house and  went  to  stay  with  Cook,  and  a  week  passed 
before  he  gave  way  to  the  general  verdict.  At  this 
point,  it  may  well  be  assumed  that  the  real  objection 
to  the  Harper's  Ferry  raid  was  against  Captain 
Brown's  desire  to  hold  the  place  long  enough  to 
leave  a  startling  impression  on  the  country,  and  then 
by  a  disappearance,  to  be  followed  swiftly  b}r  raids 
elsewhere,  add  to  the  alarm  that  would  exist.  What 
John  Brown  seriously  believed  was,  that  slavery, 
being  vulnerable  in  all  directions,  could  be  frightened 
quite  as  much  as  fought  out  of  existence.  I  have 
found  no  evidence  whatever  that  there  was  any 
difference  of  opinion  among  his  men  as  to  this,  but 
evidently  the  experienced  Kansas  members  of  the 
party  questioned  the  wisdom  of  the  special  demon- 
stration at  Harper's  Ferry,  which  Captain  Brown 
projected,  and  which  he  finally  failed  to  carry  to  a 
finish,  as  planned.  I  know,  from  conversation  and 
correspondence  with  Kagi,  and  from  constant  exam- 
ination of  all  the  facts  since  accessible,  that  the  idea 
of  raids  from  the  Appalachian  ranges  into  the  farm 
and  plantation  regions  below  them  was  well  under- 
stood and  fully  accepted  by  Tidd  as  well  as  the 
others.     Cook's   essentially  dramatic   way  of  putting 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        559 


things,  as  well  as  his  minute  knowledge  of  affairs 
at  Harper's  Ferry,  had,  doubtless,  something  to  do 
with  John  Brown's  adherence  to  his  conception  of 
the  value  of  a  blow  well  struck  at  the  Ferry.  Kagi 
never  opposed,  because  he  probably  believed  that  a 
speedy  evacuation  of  the  place  would  follow.  Tidd 
never  gave  a  hearty  consent  to  the  attack,  but  would 
not,  because  of  this  difference, 
abandon  the  leader  he  and  all  of 
them  personally  trusted  in  so 
implicitly. 

A  man  of  sturdy  frame,  about 
five  feet  nine  inches  in  height, 
with  a  large,  well-shaped  head, 
set  well  forward  on  broad  shoul- 
ders, Charles  Plummer  Tidd  had 
the  look  of  a  clever,  handy  me- 
chanic. His  perceptives  were 
active  and  dominant.  Of  bilious, 
nervous  temperament,  his  com- 
plexion was  dark,  eyes,  beard, 
and  hair  also,  features  strongly 
marked,  expression  grave,  even 

stern.  In  temper,  he  was  somewhat  saturnine  and 
dominant.  A  little  overbearing,  and  fond  of  prac- 
tical jokes  and  sharp  teasing.  This  led  to  quarel- 
ing  at  times.  Stevens  and  Tidd  were  excellent  friends, 
and  depended  greatly  on  each  other,  but  Stevens  was 
quick  to  wrath  while  Tidd  was  cool,  provoking,  and 
sarcastic.  Yet  he  was  faithful,  a  true  comrade, 
courageous,  and  wholly  trustworthy,  with  more  than 
ordinary  mental  capacity.  Somewhat  reticent,  not 
given  to  writing,  and   more  apt   to   repress  than  to 


CHARLES    PLUMMER    TIDD. 


560  JOHN    BROWN. 

express,  he  has  left  little  accessible  matter  behind 
him.  A  personal  friend,  writing  in  a  Maine  paper  at 
the  time  of  the  raid,  when  it  was  believed  he  was  one 
of  the  slain,  says: 

"  I  have  been  privileged  with  looking  over  many  letters  to 
his  mother  and  sisters,  and  if  what  a  man  says  to  his  most  in- 
timate and  dearest  friends,  if  the  whole  tenor  of  numerous 
letters  to  a  mother,  continued  through  a  period  of  nearly  four 
years,  is  an  evidence  of  a  man's  motives,  Chailes  P.  Tidcl  de- 
serves a  monument  to  his  memory,  rather  than  execration  and 
reproach.  He  minutely  relates  the  tragical  scenes  in  which  he 
was  engaged  in  Kansas  ;  describes  the  sufferings  which  he 
endured  from  pro-slavery  violence,  and  yet  there  is  not  in  all 
his  letters  a  single  revengeful,  vindictive,  or  cruel  sentiment 
uttered  relative  to  his  enemies." 

Reference  is  made  in  the  same  article  to  the  winter 
passed  at  Springdale,  and  to  the  regard  entertained 
for  the  Varney  family  at  that  place,  the  maternal  head 
of  which  was  always  called  "  mother  "  by  Tidd  and 
Stevens.  He  tells  his  family  of  a  course  of  Bible- 
reading  and  of  the  abstinence  from  liquor  and  tobacco 
which  the  party  had  all  agreed  to.  He  declared  that 
he  had  himself  refrained  from  tea  and  coffee  and 
used  but  little  meat  for  the  two  years  past.  In  the 
last  few  of  these  letters,  Tidd  hinted  clearly  that  he 
was  engaged  in  an  undertaking  which  he  could  not 
divulge,  but  in  every  letter  he  assured  his  friends  that 
it  was  one  which  they  would  heartily  approve  if  they 
knew  all  the  particulars.  It  was  one,  too,  from  which 
he  could  reap  no  personal  benefit,  but  was  all  for  the 
good  of  the  oppressed  and  downtrodden,  although 
it  was  fraught  with  danger  to  himself,  yet  he  was 
willing  to  risk  all  for  the  good  of  others.  In  his  last 
letter  he   informed   his   parents  where  what  property 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        561 

he  had  would  be  found  if  any  tiling  should  befall  him, 
who  had  his  miniatures,  and  closed  by  saying  that, 
"this  is  perhaps  the  last  letter  you  will  ever  receive 
from  your  son.  The  next  time  you  hear  from  me, 
will  probably  be  through  the  public  prints.  If  we 
succeed  the  world  will  call  us  heroes;  if  we  fail,  we 
shall  hang  between  the  Heavens  and  the  earth." 

He  entered  Kansas  in  August,  1856,  having  joined 
the  Dr.  Cutter  party  from  Massachusetts,  and  he  was 
with  it  when  the  Missourians  blockaded  the  river  at 
Lexington  forcing  his  return  to  Chicago  and  thence 
overland  through  Iowa  and  Nebraska  to  Kansas. 
Tidd  made  the  acquaintance  of  John  Brown  and  his 
sons  Owen  and  Oliver  at  Tabor,  Iowa.  He  was  trusted 
fully,  and  justly  esteemed  as  one  of  the  reliables. 
Having  received  a  fair  English  education,  he  wrote 
well,  had  good  business  faculties,  and  would  have 
been  a  successful  man  in  ordinary  circumstances. 
Owen  Brown  had  a  good  deal  to  endure  from  the 
willfulness  of  both  Tidd  and  Cook.  The  two  younger 
men,  Coppoc  and  Merriam,  seem  to  have  implicitly 
followed  his  directions  and  obeyed  his  requests.  The 
presence  of  Mr.  Cook  at  Chambersburg  was  the  load- 
stone which,  with  hunger,  drew  my  unfortunate  friend 
from  obeying  Owen's  more  sagacious  counsel.  It 
was  the  latter's  plan  to  avoid  Chambersburg,  but  the 
other  two  insisted  on  their  chance  to  get  food  there. 
Tidd  seems  to  have  been  more  than  persistent — he 
was  obstinate,  even  after  the  failure  of  Cook  to  return 
on  the  24th  inst.  in  his  determination  to  call  at  Mrs. 
Ritner's  house.  Owen  urged  that  the  lady  had 
doubtless  denied  knowledge  of  them  all,  and  it  would 
not  be  fair  to  bring  her  into  trouble.     One  incident, 

36 


562  JOHN    BROWN. 

graphically  related  to  Mr.  Keeler  by  Owen,  well 
illustrated  the  trials  and  temptations  of  the  trip.  It 
was  about  the  21st  or  22d  of  October,  and  they  were 
keeping  in  the  range. 

"  Leaving  Cook,  Merriam,  and  Coppoc  in  the  timber,  I  took 
Tidd  and  went  to  see  if  we  could  prudently  cross  that  valley 
by  daylight.  We  had  gone  on,  Tidd  and  I,  about  a  mile  and 
a  half,  when  we  came  in  sight  of  a  road  with  teams  going  and 
coming  on  it.  Farther  on  we  could  see  a  farmhouse.  While  we 
were  discussing  the  matter,  and  deciding  that  it  would  not  be 
safe  to  cross  the  valley  by  daylight,  there  came  wafted  to  our 
keen,  hungry  nostrils,  from  that  farmhouse,  at  least  forty  rods 
away,  the  smell  of  something-  like  doughnuts  cooking.  .  .  . 
It  was  too  much  for  Tidd's  endurance.  .  .  .  We  were  both 
weak  and  faint  enough  to  stagger.  Tidd  vowed  he  wouldn't 
go  a  step  farther  without  food.  'You'll  be  all  winter,'  he  said, 
'  and  never  get  through  after  all  ;  you'll  starve  and  freeze  to 
death.  It  is  just  as  well  to  expose  ourselves  one  way  as  an- 
other,'and  he  took  a  long  breath  of  the  distant  frying.  I  had 
the  two  arguments  to  withstand,  Tidd's  and  the  lard-laden 
air.  The  latter  was  the  more  powerful,  but  I  withstood  them 
both.  I  promised  him,  as  I  had  promised  to  others,  that  as 
soon  we  got  three  nights  north  of  Chambersburg,  I  would  steal 
all  the  chickens,  milk,  and  apples  we  needed.  It  would  not  do, 
I  contended,  to  go  to  buying  or  even  stealing  provisions  now. 
I  am  not  in  the  habit  of  stealing,  by  the  bye.  But  anti-slavery 
men  would  have  been  glad  to  give  what  little  we  needed  to  the 
cause,  and  pro-slavery  men  certainly  owed  it  that  much.  That 
was  the  way  I  argued.  Tidd,  however,  clung  to  the  delightful, 
maddening  odor,  and  his  determination  to  go  and  buy  food.  As 
a  great  favor,  I  at  last  prevailed  upon  him  to  go  first  with  me 
back  to  the  place  where  we  had  left  the  other  boys.  And  every 
one  but  myself  agreed  with  Tidd.  I  had  a  large  red  silk 
handkerchief  with  white  spots  in  it,  given  me  by  Mrs.  Gerrit 
Smith.  Well,  this,  with  the  empty  shot-bag  for  salt,  mentioned 
before,  I  gave  to   Cook,  and  told  him,  if  they  insisted  on  hav- 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.         563 

ing  food  bought  he  could  wield  the  glibest  tongue,  and  tell 
the  best  story;  he  should  go.  Still,  I  didn't  want — and  I  feel 
just  as  agitated  now,  almost,  when  I  tell  it — I  didn't  want  him 
to  go.  I  needed  food,  I  told  them,  as  much  as  any  of  them  ; 
and  if  they  would  go  and  get  it,  it  would  be  foolish  in  me  not 
to  help  eat  it.  So,  as  I  had  more  funds  than  the  rest,  I  made 
him  take  my  money  to  pay  for  it,  begging  him  to  the  last  not 
to  go.  In  Cook's  confession,  he  says  we  sent  him  for  food. 
That  is  the  way  it  was. 

"  Cook  was  gone  two  or  three  hours,  perhaps.  He  came 
back  with  a  couple  of  loaves  of  bread,  some  salt  in  the  bag, 
some  good  boiled  beef,  and  a  pie.  He  had  had  a  pleasant  visit, 
he  said.  He  had  stayed  to  dinner — which  happened  to  be  a 
little  late  that  day — with  the  people  of  the  farmhouse  ;  had 
made  himself  very  agreeable,  and  told  them  the  story  we  had 
concocted  beforehand  about  our  being  a  hunting  party,  too  far 
from  home  to  get  back  to  our  dinners.  If  you  have  never  been 
a  great  deal  more  than  half  starved,  you  can  form  no  idea  how 
marvelously  good  that  feast  was  that  day.  I  felt  more  or  less 
gloomy  about  it  at  the  time,  keeping  it  to  myself,  though.  But 
the  shadow  of  the  danger  hanging  over  us  did  not  seem  to 
affect  the  other  boys,  who  were  exceedingly  merry.  And  after 
dinner  we  all  went  to  sleep  for  an  hour  or  so." 

A  bitter  quarrel  soon  arose  between  Cook  and 
Tidd,  owing  to  the  former  insisting,  after  the  pro- 
curement of  this  food,  on  firing  off  the  Washington 
horse-pistol  he  had  in  order  to  keep  up  the  pretense 
of  being  hunters.  Tidd  undertook  to  take  the  pistol 
away  and  fell  upon  Cook.  It  took  all  the  efforts  of  the 
three  to  prevent  a  serious  personal  termination  of 
this  quarrel. 

The  first  detailed  news  the  three  received  of  the 
fighting,  losses,  and  subsequent  trials  in  Virginia,  was 
obtained  early  in  November,  near  Bellefonte,  Pa., 
where    a    farmer    sheltered     them     one    night.       He 


564  JOHN    BROWN. 

handed  them  his  newly  arrived  weekly  paper  to  read. 
In  the  Keeler  narrative,  Owen  says: 

"  Tidd's  stoicism  broke  down  first  ;  he  arose  and  caught  up 
the  paper  and  began  reading  aloud.  The  first  thing  that 
caught  his  eye  was  the  account  of  Cook's  capture.  You  can 
imagine  how  eagerly  Coppoc  and  I  listened  to  the  first  we  had 
heard  of  Cook  since  he  had  left  us  in  the  mountains.  Our  host 
interrupted  the  reading  to  assure  me  that  one  son  of  old  Smith, 
who  had  proved  to  be  old  Brown  of  Kansas,  had  escaped  with 
Cook  and  others,  and  was  supposed  to  be  still  at  large  some- 
where. Old  man  Brown  was  not  dead,  as  we  had  heard.  No, 
he  was  just  severely  wounded  ;  it  was  not  certain  yet  whether 
he  would  live  to  be  hanged,  for  he  had  been  tried  and  found 
guilty.  To  me,  who  had  so  long  thought  my  father  dead,  this 
somehow  had  the  effect  of  good  news.  In  the  meantime,  Tidd 
had  gone  on,  silently  devouring  the  paper.  I  could  see  that  he 
was  much  moved  by  what  he  read.  He  was  probably  reading 
how  his  friend  Stevens  was  shot  down  while  going  on  an 
errand  of  mercy  and  bearing  a  flag  of  truce." 

Upon  separating  from  Owen  Brown  and  Barclay 
Coppoc,  Tidd,  after  a  trip  to  Canada  and  Ohio, 
under  the  name  of  Charles  Plummer,  lived  for  awhile 
at  Edinboro,  Erie  County,  Pa.,  where  he  got  inter- 
ested in  the  oil  business  and  made  then  and  subse- 
quently some  money.  In  the  summer  of  i860  he 
settled  in  Massachusetts  and  became  intimate  in  the 
family  of  Dr.  Cutter.  In  a  letter  to  Owen  Brown, 
dated  Salem,  Ohio,  December  9,  1859,  he  writes  that 
he  didn't  stay  in  Erie  County  at  first,  on  account  of 
the  excitement,  but  went  to  Cleveland,  where  he  re- 
mained but  two  days. 

"  I  met  there,"  he  writes,  "  a  person  as  unexpected  to  me 
as  that  of  the  '  old  man  '  himself  would  have  been.  The  first 
two  letters  of  his  name  Al  (as  we  used  to  call   him)  *  Chatham 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        565 

Anderson.'  He  escaped  from  below  with  Hazlett  but  before 
the}'  got  to  Chambersburg,  'AT  gave  out.  and  so  Anderson 
had  to  leave  him.  He  got  through  safe  as  his  presence 
showed.  From  Windsor  we  went  to  Chatham  together,  where 
I  also  found  Merriam,  so  there  were  three  of  the  originals 
together.  From  there  I  went  to  Rochester,  where  I  found  Dr. 
Doy,  of  Kansas.  He  wanted  me  to  go  lecturing  with  him,  but 
I  had  made  other  arrangements  and  could  not  break  them/' 

He  then  tells  of  his  return  to  Salem,  sends  his 
regards  to  "  George  Barclay "  (Coppoc),  says  the 
"  box  is  all  right."  They  had  shipped  their  arms  to 
Salem,  Ohio,  after  reaching  Center,  Pa.  He  adds,  at 
the  close,  "  I  see  that  I  have  been  arrested  and  am 
now  in  Charlestown  jail."  From  Cleveland  he  wrote, 
before  the  execution  of  Captain  Brown,  a  vigorous 
letter  to  the  New  York  Tribune  in  response  to  an 
attack  by  the  Observer,  the  Presbyterian  weekly, 
which  was  especially  severe  on  John  Brown.  The 
basis  of  this  attack  was  an  article  from  the  Kansas 
Herald,  written  by  the  editor,  George  W.  Brown. 
Tidd's  Tribune  letter,  bold,  well-put  and  keen,  declared 
that  the  Kansas  editor's  animosity  was  due  to  John 
Brown's  plain  characterization  of  him  as  "  cowardly  " 
as  well  as  an  "old  granny."  He  charged  the  editor 
with  maintaining  a  secret  correspondence  with  Mis- 
sourians  and  betraying  Lawrence  into  border  ruf- 
fians' hands.  This  charge  is  without  foundation.  I 
believe,  except  in  so  far  that  George  W.  Brown  was 
always  assailing,  gossiping  about,  and  backbiting 
every  other  prominent  free-state  man. 

During  the  early  part  of  the  Civil  War,  Tidd  enlisted 
as  Charles  Plummer  in  Company  "  K,''  Twenty-first 
Regiment  Massachusetts  Volunteer  Infantry,  and 
was  soon  made  orderly  sergeant.      The  regiment  was 


566  JOHN    BROWN. 

detailed  as  a  part  of  the  Burnside  expedition  to 
North  Carolina  in  the  early  months  of  1862,  and  was 
shipped  on  the  steamer  Northerner  with  the  expedi- 
tion. Walcott's  "  History  of  the  Twenty-first  Regi- 
ment "  (p.  42)  refers  to  him.  The  landing  on  Roanoke 
Island  was  successfully  accomplished,  and  the  author 
says: 

"On  the  17th  of  February,  soon  after  we  left  the  North- 
erner, one  of  our  men  died  on  her  who  is  worthy  something 
more  than  a  passing  mention.  His  true  name  was  Charles 
PlummerTidd.  He  had  been  a  trusted  comrade  of  John  Brown 
in  Kansas  and  Virginia,  and  was  one  of  the  four  men  who 
evaded  the  thousands  of  armed  foes  who  blockaded  every  out- 
let of  escape  from  the  scene  of  that  grand  historic  precursor  of 
the  War,  at  Harper's  Ferry.  He  dropped  his  surname  Tidd, 
and  called  himself  Charles  Plummer,  to  aid  in  escaping  detec- 
tion. Following  that  staunch  abolitionist,  Dr.  Cutter,  our  sur- 
geon, who  was  a  father  to  him,  he  brought  his  fierce  enthusiasm 
for  freedom  into  the  Twenty-first,  and  was  made  first  sergeant 
of  Company  K.  He  was  too  marked  a  man  to  escape  Colonel 
Maggi's  vigilant  eye,  and  was  selected  to  command  a  band  of 
sixty  scouts,  organized  by  the  colonel  while  on  the  North- 
erner, whose  duty  it  would  be  to  scour  the  country  around  us 
after  we  were  on  hostile  ground :  every  man  of  the  sixty  was  a 
good  shot,  fearless  and  strong,  and  Tidd  was  the  strongest  and 
bravest  of  them  all.  Shortly  before  we  landed  he  was  pros- 
trated with  inflammation  of  the  bowels  (enteritis),  but  could  not 
reconcile  himself  to  being  left  behind  without  a  chance  to  fire 
a  shot  under  the  flag  (perhaps  at  Governor  Wise  himself,  com- 
mander of  the  rebel  forces  on  the  island),  to  avenge  the  death 
of  his  old  leader  and  his  own  sufferings  from  hunger  and  cold 
during  the  terrible  month  when,  hunted  like  a  wolf,  he  pain- 
fully worked  his  way  along  the  mountains  of  Maryland  and 
Pennsylvania  north  from  Harper's  Ferry.  Forced  to  remain  in 
bed  when  the  regiment  entered  the  boats,  every  cannon  shot 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELT.,    OR    ESCAPED.         567 

excited  and  inflamed  his  mind  beyond  his  shattered  powers  of 
physical  endurance,  and  he  died  just  after  we  landed,  more 
from  the  fearful  strain  of  his  dee])  and  bitter  disappointment 
than  from  his  disease.  His  eyes  were  closed  by  his  true  and 
loving  friend,  Miss  Carrie  E.  Cutter,  the  Florence  Nightingale 
of  the  Twenty-first,  the  delicate  and  accomplished  daughter  of 
our  surgeon,  who  followed  her  father  and  the  regiment  to  nurse 
our  sick,  until  she,  alas,  so  soon,  shared  the  grave  of  her  noble 
and  admired  friend." 

The  men  who  escaped  from  Harper's  Ferry,  or 
who  were  immediately  and  perilously  connected  with 
the  movement,  will  be  found  in  line,  when  able, 
serving  the  Union  cause  when  that  issue  came. 
Two  of  John  Brown's  living  sons,  John  Brown,  Jr., 
and  Salmon,  held  commissions.  John  was  captain 
of  Company  K,  Seventh  Kansas  Volunteer  Cavalry, 
until  inflammatory  rheumatism  compelled  his  resig- 
nation. Salmon  was  a  second  lieutenant  in  a  New 
York  infantry  regiment.  O.  P.  Anderson  served  as  a 
non-commissioned  officer  in  a  colored  regiment. 
William,  brother  of  John  A.  Copeland,  was  commis- 
sioned as  second  lieutenant  in  a  colored  light  artillery 
company.  Barclay  Coppoc  was  killed  in  the  service. 
Parsons,  Moffett,  and  Realf,  of  the  men  who  were  with 
the  Iowa  party  and  at  the  Chatham  Convention,  were 
commissioned  officers,  and  Realf,  especially,  had  a 
notable  career.  Dr.  Delany  was  a  major  of  colored 
troops.  A  brother  of  J.  G.  Anderson  was  also  major 
in  the  same  service.  Charles  W.  Leonhardt  had  the 
rank  of  lieutenant-colonel.  Richard  Metternich,  who 
was  to  have  gone  with  me  to  the  rescue  of  Stevens  and 
Hazlett,  was  killed  in  Texas,  it  is  stated,  as  a  lieu- 
tenant-colonel.    F.  J.  Merriam  was  in    the   service  in 


568  JOHN    BROWN. 

some  capacity  throughout  the  War.  George  W. 
Stearns  aided  materially  in  raising  troops,  spending 
large  sums  of  money  for  that  purpose.  James  Mont- 
gomery and  Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson  were 
both  regimental  commanders.  George  Henry  Hoyt 
was  a  brilliant  cavalry  officer,  retiring  with  a  brevet 
as  brigadier-general.  John  W.  Le  Barnes  served  also 
as  lieutenant  and  captain.  The  list  can  be  lengthened, 
but  these  will  serve  for  illustrations  of  service  and 
loyalty. 

Francis  Jackson  Merriam,  born  November  17, 
1837,  at  Framingham,  Mass.,  handsome,  well-to- 
do,  cultivated,  and  traveled,  was  in  his  twenty- 
second  year  when  he  made  his  escape.  He  was 
about  five  feet  seven  inches  in  height,  slender 
in  frame,  having  no  pretension  to  possession  of 
special  powers  of  endurance,  or  even  of  courage. 
Yet  Merriam  was  as  absolutely  fearless  as  he  was 
personally  unrestrained  in  his  hostility  to  slavery 
and  his  determination  to  resist  it,  at  all  hazards,  per- 
sonal, social,  or  civic.  He  was  the  child  of  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation,  his  grandfather  being  Francis 
Jackson,  the  president  of  the  American  Anti-Slavery 
Society,  whose  house  in  Hollis  street  was  attacked  on 
one  occasion  by  a  mob  of  Boston  "  Conservatives." 
There  was  a  meeting  of  women,  and  his  mother,  not 
long  married,  was  present.  So,  also,  was  the  mother 
of  Colonel  Hoyt,  and  two  men  never  existed  within 
my  range  of  acquaintance  who  scorned  and  assailed 
slaveholders  so  bitterly  as  young  Merriam  and  Hoyt. 
Francis  was  educated  in  the  public  schools,  attend- 
ing the  "  Brimmer,"  not  entering  college,  but  trav- 
eling in  Europe  and  living  in   Paris   for  some  time. 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        569 

His  father,  Charles,  died  when  the  boy  was  young, 
and  the  mother  married  again.  The  daughter, 
Sarah  J.  Eddy,  resides  in  Providence.  Merriam  was 
decidedly  good-looking,  with  dark,  long,  brown  hair 
and  beard,  good  features,  somewhat  disfigured  by 
blotches,  though;  he  had  a  thoughtful,  rather  dreamy 
look.  I  am  primarily  responsible  for  Merriam's 
recruitment,  having  informed  him,  as  I  did  James 
Redpath  (with  Kagi's  consent),  during  the  winter  of 
1858-59,  of  the  general  purpose  and  plan  of  John 
Brown.  I  spent  that  winter  in  Boston,  leaving  early 
in  the  spring  for  the  West.  Merriam's  letter1  to 
Captain  Brown  was  sent  to  Lawrence,  Kansas,  by  my 
direction.  We  were  occupying  the  same  rooms  in 
Boston  at  the  time,  and  Merriam  proposed  devoting 
his  means  to  this  work.  He  had  already  visited 
Kansas,  where  I  first  met  him. 

In  one  of  his  Atlantic  Monthly  articles,  Mr.  Sanborn 
gives  this  interesting  account  of  the  meeting  of  Hay- 
den  with  Merriam.  F.  B.  Sanborn  suggests  that 
Merriam  had  no  direct  knowledge   of   John   Brown's 


1  "  Boston,  December  23,  1858. 
"  Dear  Sir — I  have  heard  vaguely  of  your  general  purpose, 
and  have  been  seeking  definite  information  for  some  time  past, 
and  now  Mr.  Redpath  and  Mr.  Hinton  have  told  me  of  your  con- 
templated action,  in  which  I  earnestly  wish  to  join  you  to  act  in 
any  capacity  you  wish  to  place  me  as  far  as  my  small  capacities 
go.  I  am  now  about  s'arting  for  Hayti  with  Mr.  Redpath,  to  pass 
the  winter  there,  and  shall  return  in  time  for  all  movements.  In 
case  you  should  accept  my  services,  I  would  return  at  any  time 
you  might  wish  me  to,  and  in  the  spring  at  any  rate.  Is  there 
anything  it  would  be  well  for  me  to  study  meanwhi'e?  Of  course, 
I  shall  pay  all  my  own  expenses  and  shall  acqirre  the  u<=e  of  the 
proper  tools    for  the  work  which    I    have    bought.     Any    letters 


570  JOHN    BROWN. 

movements  until  early  in  that  month  which  witnessed 
the  attempt  at  consummation: 

"  One  early  day  in  October,  Lewis  Hayden  got  word  at  the 
State  House  in  Boston,  by  a  letter  either  from  Chambersburg 
or  from  John  Brown,  Jr.,  in  Ohio  that  Captain  Brown's  men 
were  in  need  of  more  money,  and  could  not  begin  their  move- 
ments until  it  reached  them.  Going  down  from  the  State 
House  to  the  post-office,  which  was  then  in  State  street,  he 
met  Merriam  near  the  old  Province  House,  and  it  occurred  to 
him  that  here  was  a  friend  who  would  perhaps  contribute 
something.  He  therefore  accosted  Merriam,  and,  after  a  few 
words,  said.  •'  I  want  five  hundred  dollars  and  must  have  it" 
Merriam,  startled  at  the  manner  of  the  request,  replied,  "  If 
you  have  a  good  cause,  you  shall  have  it."  Hayden  then  told 
Merriam  briefly  what  he  had  learned  from  John  Brown,  Jr., 
that  Captain  Brown  was  at  Chambersburg,  or  could  be  heard 
of  there,  that  he  was  preparing  to  lead  a  party  of  liberators 
into  Virginia,  and  that  he  needed  money ;  to  which  Merriam 
replied,."  If  you  tell  me  John  Brown  is  there,  you  can  have  my 
money  and  me  along  with  it."  For  it  was  well  known  to  Mer- 
riam that  Brown  had  the  general  purpose  of  freeing  the  slaves^ 
by  force,  and  he  had  even  written  to  him  the  winter  before, 
offering  to  join  the  party  upon  his  return  from  Hayti  in  the 
spring.  Being  thus  prepared  in  mind  for  Mr.  Hayden's  com- 
munication, he  received  it  as  a  call  from  heaven,  and  prepared 
at  once  to  obey. 

"  Within  a  day  or  two — probably  that  same  day — Merriam, 


addressed  to  the  care  of  my  grandfather,  Francis  Jackson,  31  Hollis 
street,  Boston,  will  be  safe,  and  will  be  forwarded  to  me.  I 
already  consider  this  the  whole  present  business  of  my  life.  I  am 
entirely  free  from  any  family  ties  which  would  impede  my  action.  I 
was  much  disappointed  in  not  meeting  you  in  Kansas  last  winter, 
with  a  letter  of  recommendation  from  Wendell  Phillips.  Immedi- 
ately upon  my  return  in  the  spring  I  should  wish  to  be  employed 
in  any  manner  to  be  of  service  to  yon;  and,  if  convenient,  to  go 
through  your  system  of  training,  which  I  propose  studying." 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        57 1 

whom  I  had  never  seen  before,  made  me  an  evening  visit  in 
Concord,  where  he  spent  the  night.  He  came  to  say  that  he 
had  learned  something  of  Captain  Brown's  plans." 

Merriam  was  not  without  other  direct  information, 
however,  as  I  had  forwarded  to  the  care  of  his  grand- 
father two  letters  from  Kagi,  that  reached  me  in  the 
far  West — one  in  May  and  the  other  during  August  of 
1859.  I  know  the  first  was  received,  and  have  reason 
to  suppose  the  second  also,  as  Mr.  Redpath  wrote 
to  that  effect.  Merriam's  visit  to  Hayti,  mentioned 
in  the  letter  I  give,  was  designed  as  a  study  of  the 
effects  of  a  struggle  for  freedom  on  the  negro  char- 
acter. 

Merriam  arrived  at  Chambersburg  on  the  9th  of 
October;  the  date  being  fixed  by  notes  afterwards 
found  in  Kagi's  handwriting,  and  by  own  knowledge 
of  John  Brown's  presence  in  Philadelphia  from  the 
10th  to  the  13th  thereof.  Col.  A.  K.  McClure,  in  his 
book  "  Lincoln  and  Men  of  War  Time  "  (page  309), 
writes  that — 

"  In  the  early  part  of  October  two  persons,  unknown  to  me, 
entered  my  office  and  asked  to  submit  some  legal  matters  in 
private.  .  .  .  The  younger  of  the  two,  an  intelligent  and 
evidently  positive  man,  gave  his  name  as  Francis  Jackson  Mer- 
riam, of  Boston,  and  his  companion  gave  his  name  as  John 
Henri.  This  was  Kagi.  Merriam  said  that  he  was  going  on 
a  journey  South;  that  he  had  some  property  at  home,  and  that 
he  desired  me  to  draw  his  will.  I  did  so,  and  was  not  sur- 
prised that  a  young  Boston  traveler,  after  making  a  few  special 
bequests,  gave  his  property  to  the  Abolition  Society  of  his 
native  State.  There  was  nothing  in  his  appearance,  manner, 
or  conversation  to  attract  any  special  attention  to  his  proceed- 
ing, and  his  will  was  duly  executed,  witnessed,  and.  in  obedience 
to  his  orders,  mailed  to  his  executor  in  Boston.    When  I  asked 


572  JOHN    BROWN. 

Merriam's  companion  to  witness  the  will,  he  declined,  saying 
that  he  was  a  traveler  also,  and  that  both  the  witnesses  had 
better  be  in  the  same  town." 

On  the,  nth  Merriam  was  in  Philadelphia;  on  the 
13th  and  14th  he  was  in  Baltimore  purchasing  sup- 
plies, and  on  the  15th  (Saturday)  at  the  Wager 
House,  Harper's  Ferry.  John  Brown  and  Kagi 
arrived  at  the  Kennedy  Farm  the  night  before,  from 
Chambersburg.  At  Harper's  Ferry  Merriam  sent 
the  following  telegram  to  Lewis  Hayden  in  Boston: 
"Orders  disobeyed;  conditions  broken.  Pay  S. 
(probably  Sanborn)  immediately  balance  of  my 
money;  allow  no  further  expense;  recall  money 
advanced,  if  not  spent."  The  only  probable  explana- 
tion of  this  is  that  finding  John  Brown  designed 
moving  at  once  he  regarded  prior  Boston  arrangements 
as  "  broken,"  or  else  he  found  that  the  "  recruits," 
for  whose  expenses  he  had  left  in  Hayden's  hands  a 
considerable  sum,  had  not  arrived  as  per  "  condi- 
tions." The  latter  seems  the  most  likely  explanation. 
One  thing,  however,  is  certain,  that  he  did  not  break 
his  own  promise,  but  went  to  the  farm  early  in  the 
morning  of  the  16th  to  take  his  share  of  the  work. 

The  care  required  to  bring  Merriam  through  from 
the  Virginia  schoolhouse  to  the  point  five  miles  from 
Chambersburg,  Pa.,  where  he  was  able  to  take  the 
Philadelphia  train  and  so  make  good  his  escape,  is 
clearly  brought  out  in  Ralph  Keeler's  narrative, 
though  in  it  Owen  seemed  unconscious  that  he  was 
making  for  himself  a  tribute  to  that  good  comrade- 
ship and  devotion,  to  the  exercise  of  which  Merriam 
undoubtedly  owed  his  final  safety.  At  one  time  in 
their  flight  they  were  moving  along  a  Cumberland 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        573 

Valley  road  and  found  themselves  approaching  a 
tollgate,  from  which,  of  course,  they  sheered  at 
once. 

"  The  baying-  of  the  hounds  had  not  yet  wholly  ceased.  A 
few  moments  after  we  were  obliged  to  wade  quite  a  large 
creek.  We  were  hurrying  on  from  that  towards  the  mountains, 
when  I  happened  to  look  back  and  found  that  Merriam  was 
nowhere  to  be  seen.  Hurrying  back  to  the  steep  bank  of  the 
creek  we  had  crossed,  I  discovered  him,  poor  fellow,  unable  to 
climb  it.  I  tried  to  hold  him  up,  but  was  too  tired  and  weak. 
I  called  Tidd  and  he  took  hold  of  Merriam  rather  impatiently, 
and,  in  pulling  him  up  together,  we  bruised  him  against  a  pro- 
jecting root," 

When  within  a  few  miles  of  Chambersburg,  after 
Cook's  arrest,  Tidd  and  Coppoc  announced  their  in- 
tention of  leaving  Owen  and  Merriam;  the  former 
having-  declared  he  would  not  abandon  his  almost 
helpless  comrade.  They  started  off,  arranging  to  re- 
turn to  one  of  the  two  hiding-places  Owen  Brown 
had  discovered  on  the  road  to  Hagerstown  when 
taking  the  colored  men  to  the  Kennedy  Farm.  Owen 
and  Merriam  followed  steadily  and  kept  within  a 
short  distance  of  the  others  till  they  reached  the  out- 
skirts of  the  town.  Tidd  and  Coppoc  entered  and 
the  former  approached  Mrs.  Ritner's  house,  as  has  al- 
ready been  stated.  Thoroughly  alarmed  at  their  re- 
ception the  two  made  their  way  back  to  where  the 
others  had  concealed  themselves.  It  was  then  decided 
that  Merriam  must  be  got  away  by  rail  and  as  quickly 
as  possible. 

"  They  succeeded  after  a  severe  effort,  during  which  Mer- 
riam had  to  be  dragged  along  or  supported,  in  concealing 
themselves  in  a  thicket  about  daybreak."  Owen  describes  how 
he  mended  Merriam's   overcoat,  which   had   been   torn  in  the 


574  JOHN     BROWN. 

mountain  travel,  "  to  a  state  of  what  I  considered  suspicious 
shabbiness.  I  had  a  pair  of  scissors  with  my  needles  and 
thread;  and  so  when  the  tempest  got  worse,  and  it  was  safe 
to  sit  up  a  little,  I  clipped  off  his  beard  as  close  as  I  could 
shingle  it.  What  was  especially  fortunate  for  Merriam  just 
then  was  the  fact  that  he  wore  a  glass  eye  ;  and  this  glass  eye 
fitted  him  so  well  that  he  could  turn  it,  or  at  least  seemed  to 
turn  it  nearly  as  well  as  he  did  the  other  one.  That  and  his 
beard  gone,  Merriam  was  pretty  thoroughly  disguised.  We 
discussed  Merriam's  leaving,  more  or  less,  all  day  long.  The 
poor  fellow  was  so  weak  and  worn  that  he  couldn't  have  walked 
any  further  anyhow." 

They  saw  the  train  passing  that  conveyed  Cook  to 
his  trial  and  death.  In  the  briar  patch  where  they 
were  hidden,  they  concluded  to  leave  Merriam's  arms 
and  ammunition,  and  their  own  Sharpe's  carbines,  all 
except  the  pistol  that  could  be  concealed  on  their  per- 
sons.    Owen  tells  of  the  final  parting,  saying  that — 

"  Merriam  had  furnished  a  good  deal  of  money  to  the  cause. 
He  would  take  only  five  dollars  from  me  when  making 
his  preparation  to  part  with  us.  He  said  he  had  money 
enough  to  get  through  with.  A  driving  snow  set  in  that 
night,  and  it  was  as  dark  as  I  ever  saw  it  in  my  life.  We  could 
see  almost  nothing  at  all.  We  started  together  for  the 
road  bordering  the  side  of  the  field  opposite  the  railway.  In 
this  road  Tidd  and  Coppoc  bade  Merriam  good-by  and  God- 
speed. Leaving  them  in  a  fence  corner,  I  took  Merriam  by  the 
hand — it  was  so  dark  and  he  was  so  feeble — and  led  him  to  the 
railroad.  Then  I  walked  a  little  way  on  the  track  with  him, 
so  that  he  would  be  sure  to  take  the  direction  away  from 
Chambersburg,  and  reach  the  first  station  outside  of  that  town 
before  taking  a  train.  Our  plan  was  that  he  should  thereafter 
go  north  as  directly  as  he  could.  So  I  left  him  on  the  track 
and  found  my  way  back  to  Tidd  and  Coppoc,  through  the 
darkness  and  blinding  snowstorm," 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        575 

There  remains  little  more  to  be  said  of  Merriam. 
He  went  direct  to  Philadelphia  and  thence  to 
Chatham,  Canada,  where,  as  Tidd's  letter  to  Owen 
Brown  shows,  he  was  at  the  time  of  the  executions  of 
December  2d  and  16th.  He  returned  to  Boston  in 
the  latter  winter  and  was  there  at  the  time  of  Stevens's 
and  Hazlett's  (March  16th)  execution.  He  was  at 
North  Elba  on  the  4th  of  July,  and  O.  P.  Anderson 
wrote  under  date  of  October  13,  i860,  in  answer  to 
my  inquiry  that  Francis  was  then  at  Chatham, 
Canada.  Merriam  visited  Hayti  again  in  the  summer 
of  i860,  this  time  in  the  interest  of  a  more  extended 
insurrectionary  or  revolutionary  movement,  which  em- 
braced not  only  a  projected  uprising  of  colored 
American  slaves,  but  the  possible  organization  of  such 
a  racial  nationality  in  the  Gulf  States,  the  mid-con- 
tinental islands,  and  portions  of  South  America.  This 
is  not  the  place  to  detail  that  scheme,  which  ended  with 
the  precipitation  of  civil  war  by  our  own  slaveholders. 
When  the  first  stern  throes  of  that  struggle  were 
visible  to  the  most  skeptical,  Merriam  wrote  in  a  little 
autograph  volume,  under  date  of  January  31st,  1861, 
dating  it  "  Third  Month  of  the  Crisis,"  that— "  I  hail 
with  exultation  the  emancipation  of  six  millions  of 
Southern  whites — I  care  not  for  the  abnormal  manner 
they  use  their  newly  acquired  liberty. 

'•  They  seized  power  to  rivet  the  claims  of  their 
black  fellows, — they  have  freed  themselves  and  will 
soon  accomplish  the  freedom  of  the  remaining  foui" 
millions. 

"  While  others  see  only  anarchy  and  the  ruin  of  oui 
country,  I  see  permanent  peace,  founded  on  justice 
through  a  veil  of  thin,  though  dark,  war-clouds." 


576  JOHN    BROWN. 

Early  in  the  Civil  War,  Merriam  married  Min- 
erva Caldwell,  of  Galena,  111.,  the  daughter  and 
sister  of  physicians,  who  also  became  herself  a 
physician  of  note.  In  some  relation  or  other, 
Merriam  was  in  the  field  constantly.  Dr.  David 
Thayer,  of  Boston,  writes  that  "  it  was  reported 
that  his  (the  doctor's)  brother-in-law  was  killed 
in  the  Battle  of  Fredericksburg.  I  went  down," 
he  says,  "  to  Washington  to  obtain  his  body.  .  .  . 
In  my  search  through  all  the  hospitals  of  the 
District  of  Columbia  I  saw  thousands  of  wounded 
soldiers.  In  one  large  field  hospital,  as  I  was  going 
along,  I  heard  some  one  call  out,  '  Dr.  Thayer,  is  that 
you?'  I  halted  and  said,  'Who  is  it?'  and  went  in 
the  direction  of  the  voice.  The  day  was  already  far 
advanced  and  it  began  to  be  dark.  Some  one  said 
'  It  is  Francis.'  I  looked  and  found  it  was  Merriam. 
I  said  to  him,  '  Francis,  this  is  wrong.'  He  replied, 
'  My  friends  in  Chicago  know  where  I  am.  But  I 
could  not  keep  out  of  it.'  He  had  been  in  battle  and 
was  wounded  in  the  leg,  a  gunshot  wound."  Mer- 
riam was  on  the  South  Carolina  Sea  Islands,  during 
1863,  recruiting  colored  soldiers.1  In  1864  he  was 
under  Grant.     His  death  occurred  November  28,  1865. 


1  Camp  3D  Regt.,  S.  C.  Infantry,  July  7,  1863. 

Brig. -General  A.   H.  Terry: 

General — I    respectfully   request   permission   to   visit    Fort 
Pulaski  with  a  small   squad   of  men,  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining 
colored  men  as  recruits  for  the  3d  S.  C.  Infantry,  and  return. 
Very  respectfully,  your  ob'd't  servant, 

F.  J.  Merriam,  Capt.  Co.  £,jd  S.  C.  I. 
Approved: 

By  order  of  E.  R.  Fowler,   Capt.  Cotti'g jd  S.  C.  Infy. 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        577 

But  little  more  remains  to  be  said  of  those  who 
only  fought  and  fell.  The  final  words  on  Watson 
and  Oliver  Brown,  the  fifth  and  seventh  of  John 
Brown's  sons;  the  ninth  and  twelfth  of  his  twenty- 
children,  and  the  second  and  fifth  born  to  Mary,  his 
second  wife  and  widow,  remain  unwritten.  So  much 
might  still  be  said,  while  so  many  references  have 
already  been  made,  that  the  pen  hesitates  at  further 
description.  Watson  was  born  October  7,  1835,  and 
when  he  died  from  his  wounds  on  the  18th  of  October, 
1859,  he  had  passed  but  eleven  days  into  his  twenty- 
fifth  year.  He  was  the  only  one  of  the  living  boys 
who  did  not  serve  in  Kansas,  though  he  started 
therefor,  reaching  Tabor,  Iowa,  in  the  latter  part 
of  1856.  Watson  married  Isabella  M.  Thompson, 
Henry's  sister,  in  September,  1856,  and  when  he  fell 
was  the  father  of  a  boy,  born  in  May  preceding,  who 
lived  to  the  age  of  four.  The  mother  is  still  living 
and  is  now  the  wife  of  Salmon  Brown,  a  cousin  of 
her  first  husband.  Watson  was  tall  and  rather  fair, 
of  finely  knit  frame,  athletic,  and  active.  He  was  a 
man  of  excellent  natural  ability,  fair  education,  and 
had  in  fine  poise  the  good  qualities  of  this  wonderful 
family.  Oliver  was  born  March  9,  1839,  ancl  was 
therefore,  when  slain,  on  the  afternoon  of  October 
17th,  at  Harper's  Ferry,  still  within  four  months  and 
twenty-two  days  of  his  twenty-first  year.  He  was  in 
Kansas  with  his  father  from  June  until  October,  1856, 
and  received  his  "baptism  of  fire"  at  Black  Jack. 
The  two  brothers  were  about  six  feet  in  height,  and 
of  large  muscular  development.  There  was  a  marked 
difference,  however,  in  the  physiognomical  and  phren- 
ological cast  of  the  brothers.  The  features  of  Oliver 
37 


57&  JOHN    BROWN. 

were  regular  and  the  head  was  evenly  developed,  the 
organs  most  prominent,  in  phrenological  idiom,  being 
those  of  individuality  and  eventuality.  The  head  of 
Watson  was  broader  and  more  fully  developed  above 
and  behind  the  ears,  while  the  cheek  bones  were  more 
prominent. 

Oliver  married  Martha  Evelyn  Brewster  on  the  7th 
of  April,  1858,  and  she  died  in  childbirth  early  in 
i860.  Watson  suffered  greatly,  being  desperately 
wounded  by  shots  fired  at  the  armory  gate  at  the 
same  time  that  Newby  fell.  After  the  capture  on  the 
morning  of  the  18th,  he  was  able  to  inquire  after  his 
father's  welfare.  Edwin  Coppoc,  in  a  letter  to 
Mrs.  Brown,  described  the  last  hours  of  her  son, 
writing: 

"  I  was  with  your  sons  when  they  fell.  Oliver  lived  but  a  very 
few  moments  after  he  was  shot.  He  spoke  no  word,  but 
yielded  calmly  to  his  fate.  Watson  was  shot  at  ten  o'clock 
on  Monday  morning,  and  died  about  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  guardhouse  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  for  him.  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." 

On  the  16th  of  September,  Watson,  writing  to  his 
wife,  says: 

"  We  have  only  two  black  men  with  us  as  yet,  but  we  expect 
more.  One  of  them  has  a  wife  and  seven  children  in  slavery.  I 
sometimes  feel  as  if  I  could  not  make  this  sacrifice,  but  what 
would  I  not  want  others  to  do  were  I  in  their  place," 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        579 

In  still  another  letter  to  his  home,  he  writes: 

"  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  babe  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." 

In  the  last  letter 'sent  to  Isabella  at  North  Elba, 
dated  October  14,  he  also  writes: 

"  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  .  .  .  since  we  have  lived  here.  They  were  all  slaves, 
too." 

Pages  might  be  filled  with  such  extracts  and  others, 
as  manly  and  sympathic.  Touch  these  men  and 
women — the  sons  and  daughters  of  John  Brown — 
when  and  where  you  will,  and  the  response  is  always 
virile,  wholesome,  clean,  upright;  glowing  with  cour- 
age and  white  with  the  clear  light  of  firmness  and 
faith.  Mrs.  Brown  spoke  of  her  son  Oliver  as  among 
the  most  promising  of  her  children,  gifted  with  a 
thoughtful  character  and  great  intelligence.  His  last 
letter  to  his  lovely  child-wife  bears  date,  "Home, 
October  9,  1859,"  and  she  did  not  receive  it  until  after 
his  death: 

"  My  DEAR  Martha — Having  opportunity  to  write  you  once 
more,  I  improve  it,  with  the  greatest  pleasure  to  myself,  and 
with  the  hope  of  pleasing  you.  I  arrived  here  two  days  sooner 
than  father  and  Watson.  They  have  gone  back  once  more. 
We  are  all  well  at  present. 


580  JOHN    BROWN. 

'  You  can  hardly  think  how  I  want  to  see  you,  or  how  lone- 
some it  was  the  day  I  left  you.  .  .  .  Nothing  else  could 
strengthen  me  to  do  the  right  so  much  as  the  thought  of  you. 
It  is  when  I  look  at  your  picture  that  I  am  wholly  ashamed  of 
my  every  meanness,  weakness,  and  folly.  I  would  not  part 
with  that  picture  for  anything  on  earth — but  the  original.  I 
have  made  a  morocco  case  for  it  and  carry  it  close  around  my 
body.  I  am  more  and  more  determined  every  day  to  live  a 
more  unselfish  life. 

"  Now.  Martha,  you  can  hardly  conceive  my  great  anxiety 
about  you  in  your  present  situation,  and  you  will  certainly  allow 
me  to  suggest  some  ideas  to  you  for  your  own  good.  Let  me 
ask  you  to  try  and  keep  up  good,  cheerful  spirits.  Take  plenty 
of  sleep  and  rest,  plenty  of  outdoor  exercise.  Bathe  often. 
And,  finally,  do  read  good  books,  such  as  Paiker's  '  Sermons  ' 
and  Combe's  '  Constitution  of  Man.'  These  books  will  do  much 
to  keep  you  from  being  lonesome.  Finally,  Martha,  do  try  to 
enjoy  yourself.  Make  the  best  of  everything.  Remember  your 
affectionate  husband." 

The  most  amazing  fact  one  finds  in  these  dramatic 
events,  is  the  systematic  savagery  of  all  the  slave- 
holding  acts  and  forces.  When  the  South  Caro- 
lina rebel  commander  replied  to  a  request  for  the 
body  of  Col.  Robert  Shaw,  who  fell  at  Fort  Wagner, 
that  he  was  "  buried  with  his  niggahs,"  he  only 
phrased  for  himself  an  echo  of  the  brutality  which 
animated  the  Virginians  less  than  three  years  before. 
The  bodies  of  the  slain  men  were  refused  the  con- 
sideration of  decent  burial;  the  passions  of  the  hour 
seeking  a  fancied  revenge  in  the  defilement  of  their 
dead  forms.  Oliver's  body  was  thrown  on  its  back 
into  a  shallow  grave  or  trench,  and  in  his  arms  was 
placed  the  body  of  Dangerfield  Newby,  the  bold, 
brave,  free  man  of  color,  who  fought  to  save  his  wife 
and    children    from     the    slavedealer's    pen.       These 


MEN    WHO    FOUGHT    AND    FELL,    OR    ESCAPED.        581 

white  Virginians  actually  believed  they  hurt  the  dead 
heroes  by  laying  such  comrades  upon  each  other. 
Anderson,  Leeman,  and  Taylor,  were  flung  together 
into  the  same  grave,  to  remain  there  a  short  time. 
The  ghoulish  young  medicos  of  Winchester  quickly 
rifled  this  pit,  and  that  also  into  which,  upon  the 
Shenandoah's  bank,  the  bodies  of  Kagi  and  others 
had  been  thrown.  The  skeleton  of  Watson,  as  it  had 
been  made  an  exhibit  of  at  the  Virginian  Medical 
School,  was  identified  as  late  as  1882,  and  then 
removed  to  North  Elba  from  Indiana,  whither  it  had 
been  taken  from  Winchester,  Va.,  by  a  Union  sur- 
geon in  1862.  There  is  no  reason  for  doubting  this 
to  have  been  Watson's  frame,  and  it  was  sent  to 
the  lonely  homestead  to  be  interred  in  the  grave  of 
his  father. 

The  tally  of  the  Harper's  Ferry  dead  was  com- 
pleted, when  the  soul  of  Martha  passed  beyond. 
"  Other  women  give  money,"  she  said,  "but  I  have 
given  all;  my  beloved  and  my  life!  "  So  it  was.  Their 
sacrifice,  however  great  it  became,  was  not  without 
majestic  return.  The  roads  to  Harper's  Ferry  are  all 
emblazened  with  Union  and  Emancipation.  The 
words  of  Frederick  Douglass,  spoken  at  the  place 
where  the  blow  fell,  illustrate  the  historical  weight 
and  significance  of  that  reward.  In  a  commencement 
address  to  the  colored  students  of  Storer  College  at 
Harper's  Ferry  (May  30,  1882),  the  eloquent  negro 
orator  said: 

"  If  John  Brown  did  not  end  the  war  that  ended 
slavery t  he  did  at  least  begin  the  war  that  ended  slavery. 
If  we  look  over  the  dates,  places,  and  men  for  which  this 


582  JOHN    BROWN. 

honor  is  claimed,  we  shall  find  that  not  Carolina,  but  Vir- 
ginia, not  Fort  Sumter,  but  Harper  s  Ferry,  and  the 
United  States  Arsenal — not  Major  Anderson,  but  Joh?i 
Brown  began  the  war  that  ended  America?i  slavery  and 
made  this  a  free  Republic.  Until  this  blow  was  struck, 
the  prospect  for  Freedom  was  dim,  shadowy,  and  uncer- 
tain. The  irrepressible  conflict  was  one  of  words,  votes, 
and  compromises.  When  JoJui  Brown  stretched  forth  his 
arm  the  sky  was  cleared — the  time  for  compromise  was 
gone — the  armed  hosts  stood  face  to  face  over  the  chasm  of 
a  broken  Union  and  the  clash  of  arms  was  at  hand  I  " 


APPENDIX. 


Containing  the  principal  and  more  important  docu- 
ments prepared  by  John  Brown,  or  relating  directly 
to  the  enterprises  against  American  slavery  in  which 
he  was  actively  engaged. 


PART  I. 


"WORDS  OF  ADVICE. 

"  Branch  of  the  United  States  League  of  Gileadiies.  Aaoptei* 
January  15,  1851,  as  written  and  recommended  by  John 
Brown,  also* 

AGREEMENT  AND  RULES. 

[This  interesting  paper,  writte?i  at  Springfield,  Massachu- 
setts, was  first  published  in  "  The  Independent,"  iSyo,  by 
William  Wells  Brown.  The  manuscript,  written  shortly 
after  the  passage  of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law,  is  still  in 
existence,  is  i?i  the  Captain's  quaint  and  peculiar  chirog- 
raphy.  It  was  sig7ied  by  forty -four  men  and  women, 
chiefly  colored,  resident  in  Springfield.  Mr.  F.  B.  San- 
born published  in  his  "Life  and  Letters  of  Jo/ui  Brown" 
{pp.  125-26),  the  agreement,  rules,  and  signatures,  from 
which  volume  they  are  transcribed  here.] 

"UNION    IS    STRENGTH." 

"  Nothing-  so  charms  the  American  people  as  personal  brav- 
ery. The  trial  for  life  of  one  bold  and  to  some  extent  success- 
ful 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  sub- 
missive colored  population.  We  need  not  mention  the  Greeks 
struggling  against  the  oppressive  Turks,  the  Poles  against 
Russia,  nor  the  Hungarians  against  Austria  and  Russia  com- 
bined, to  prove  this.     No  jury  can  be  found  in  the  Northern 


586  JOHN    BROWN. 

States  that  would  convict  a  man  for  defending  his  rights  to 
the  last  extremity.  This  is  well  understood  by  Southern  Con- 
gressmen, who  insisted  that  the  right  of  trial  by  jury  should 
not  be  granted  to  the  fugitive.  Colored  people  have  more  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  of  the  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  adver- 
saries who  are  taking  an  active  part  against  you.  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  depart  early  from  Mount  Gilead.'  (Judges,  vii. 
chap.,  3  verse;  Deut.,  xx  chap.,  8  verse.)  Give  all  cowards  an 
opportunity  to  show  it  on  condition  of  holding  their  peace.  Do 
not  delay  one  moment  after  you  are  ready  ;  you  will  lose  all 
your  resolution  if  you  do.  Let  the  first  blow  be  the  signal  for 
all  to  engage,  and  when  engaged  do  not  do  your  work  by  halves  ; 
but  make  clea?i  work  with  your  enemies,  and  be  sure  you  meddle 
not  with  any  others.  By  going  about  your  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  advan- 
tage 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  once  done  up  the  work  nicely  ;  and 
if  they  should,  they  will  have  to  encounter  your  white  friends  as 


APPENDIX.  587 

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  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  effectually  fasten  upon 
them  the  suspicion  of  being  connected  with  you,  and  will  com- 
pel 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  oppor- 
tunity 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.  Stand  by  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." 

AGREEMENT. 

"  As  citizens  of  the  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  belo7>ed 
country,  always  acting  under  it.  We,  whose  names  are  here- 
unto affixed,  do  constitute  ourselves  a  branch  of  the  United 
States    League    of    Gileadites.      We  will    provide    ourselves 


588  JOHN    BROWN. 

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  for  the 
performance  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  tern.,  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." 


SAMBO'S  MISTAKES. 


{Part  of  an  unfinished  pamphlet,  so  called,  which  Captain 
Brown  begun  to  write  for  publication  in  a  small  anti- 
slavery  paper,  called  "  The  Ramshorn"  The  manuscript 
is  now  in  the  library  of  the  Maryland  Historical  Society 
at  Baltimore.  It  was  first  printed  in  Sanborn's  "  Life 
a?id  Letters  of  John  Broiun  "    pp.  1 29-1 31.] 

I. 

Messrs.  Editors. — Notwithstanding  I  may  have  commit- 
ted a  few  mistakes  in  the  course  of  a  long  life,  like  others 
of  my  colored  brethren,  yet  you  will  perceive  at  a  glance 
that  I  have  always  been  remarkable  for  a  seasonable  discovery  of 
my  errors  and  a  quick  perception  of  the  true  course.  I  propose 
to  give  you  a  few  illustrations  in  the  following  chapters. 

For  instance,  when  I  was  a  boy  I  learned  to  read  ;  but, 
instead  of  giving  my  attention  to  sacred  and  profane  history, 
by  which  I  might  have  become  acquainted  with  the  true  char- 
acter of  God  and  man,  learned  the  true  course  for  individuals, 
societies,  and  nations  to  pursue  ;  stored  my  mind  with  an  end- 
less  variety  of   rational  and  practical  ideas  ;  profited  by  the 


APPENDIX. 


5§9 


experience  of  millions  of  others  of  all  ages  ;  fitted  myself  for 
the  most  important  stations  in  life,  and  fortified  my  mind  with 
the  best  and  wisest  resolutions,  and  noblest  sentiments  and 
motives — I  have  spent  my  whole  life  in  devouring-  silly  novels 
and  other  miserable  trash,  such  as  most  newspapers  of  the 
day  are  filled  with;  thereby  unfitting  myself  for  the  realities  of 
life,  and  acquiring  a  taste  for  nonsense  and  low  wit,  so  that  I 
have  no  relish  for  sober  truth,  useful  knowledge,  or  practical 
wisdom.  By  this  means  I  have  passed  through  life  without 
profit  to  myself  or  others,  a  mere  blank  on  which  nothing  worth 
perusing  is  written.  But  I  can  see  in  a  twink  where  I  missed  it. 

Another  error  into  which  I  fell  in  early  life  was  the  notion 
that  chewing  and  smoking  tobacco  would  make  a  man  of  me, 
but  little  inferior  to  some  of  the  whites.  The  money  spent  in 
this  way  would,  with  the  interest  of  it,  have  enabled  me  to 
relieve  a  great  many  sufferers,  supplied  me  with  a  well-selected, 
interesting  library,  and  paid  for  a  good  farm  for  the  support 
and  comfort  of  my  old  age  ;  whereas  I  have  now  neither  books, 
clothing,  the  satisfaction  of  having  benefited  others,  nor  where 
to  lay  my  hoary  head.  But  I  can  see  in  a  moment  where  I 
missed  it. 

Another  of  the  few  errors  of  my  life  is,  that  I  have  joined  the 
Free  Masons,  Odd  Fellows,  Sons  of  Temperance,  and  a  score 
of  other  social  societies,  instead  of  seeking  the  company  of 
intelligent,  wise,  and  good  men,  from  whom  I  might  have 
learned  much  that  would  have  been  interesting,  instructive, 
and  useful ;  and  have  in  that  way  squandered  a  good  deal  of 
most  precious  time,  and  money  enough,  sometimes  in  a  single 
year,  which,  if  I  had  then  put  out  the  same  at  interest  and 
kept  it  so,  would  have  kept  me  always  above  board,  given  me 
character  and  influence  among  men,  or  enabled  me  to  pursue 
some  respectable  calling,  so  that  I  might  emplov  others  to 
their  benefit  and  improvement ;  but  as  it  is  I  have  always  been 
poor,  in  debt,  and  now  obliged  to  travel  about  in  search  of 
employment  as  a  hostler,  shoe-black,  and  fiddler.  But  I  retain 
all  my  quickness  of  perception  ;  I  can  readily  see  where  I 
missed  it. 


590  JOHN    BROWN. 

II. 

Another  error  of  my  riper  years  has  been,  that  when  any 
meeting  of  colored  people  has  been  called  to  consider  any  im- 
portant  matter  of  general  interest,  I  have  been  so  eager  to  dis- 
play my  spouting  talents,  and  so  tenacious  of  some  trifling 
theory  or  other  that  I  have  adopted,  that  I  have  generally  lost 
sight  of  the  business  on  hand,  consumed  the  time  in  disputing 
about  things  of  no  moment,  and  thereby  defeated  many  impor- 
tant measures  calculated  to  promote  the  general  welfare ; 
but  I  am  happy  to  say  that  I  can  see  in  a  minute  where  I 
missed  it. 

Another  small  error  of  my  life  (for  I  never  committed  great 
blunders)  has  been  that  I  never  would  (for  the  sake  of  union  in 
the  furtherance  of  the  most  vital  interests  of  our  race),  yield 
any  minor  points  of  difference.  In  this  I  have  always  had  to 
act  with  but  a  few,  or  more  frequently  alone,  and  could  accom- 
plish nothing  worth  living  for ;  but  I  have  one  comfort,  I  can 
see  in  a  moment  where  I  missed  it. 

Another  little  fault  I  have  committed  is,  that  if  in  anything 
another  man  has  failed  to  come  up  to  my  standard,  nothwith- 
standing  that  he  might  possess  some  of  the  most  valuable 
traits,  and  be  most  admirably  adapted  to  fill  some  one  impor- 
tant post,  I  would  reject  him  entirely,  injure  his  influence,  op- 
pose his  measures,  and  even  glory  in  his  defeat.  But  I  have 
the  great  satisfaction  of  being  able  to  say,  without  fear  of  con- 
tradiction, that  I  can  see  very  quick — that  I  can  see  where  I 
missed  it. 

III. 

Another  small  mistake  which  I  have  made  is,  that  I  could 
never  bring  myself  to  practice  any  present  self-denial,  al- 
though my  theories  have  been  excellent.  For  instance,  I  have 
bought  expensive,  gay  clothing,  nice  canes,  watches,  safety 
guards,  finger-rings,  breast  pins,  and  many  other  things  of  a 
like  nature,  thinking  I  might  by  that  means  distinguish  myself 


APPENDIX.  59I 

from  the  vulgar,  as  some  of  the  better  class  of  the  whites  do. 
I  have  always  been  of  the  foremost  in  getting  up  expensive 
parties,  and  running  after  fashionable  amusements;  having  in- 
dulged my  appetite  freely  whenever  I  had  the  means  (and  even 
with  borrowed  means),  have  patronized  the  dealers  in  nuts, 
candy,  etc.,  freely,  and  have  sometimes  bought  good  suppers, 
and  was  always  a  regular  customer  at  livery  stables.  By  these, 
and  many  other  means,  I  have  been  unable  to  help  to  benefit 
my  suffering  brethren,  and  am  now  but  poorly  able  to  keep  my 
body  and  soul  together,  but  do  not  think  me  thoughtless  or 
dull  of  apprehension,  for  I  can  see  at  once  where  I  missed  it. 

Another  trifling  error  of  my  life  has  been,  that  I  have  always 
expected  to  secure  the  favor  of  the  whites  by  tamely  submitting 
to  every  species  of  indignity,  contempt,  and  wrong,  instead  of 
nobly  resisting  their  brutal  aggressions  from  principle,  and 
taking  my  place  as  a  man,  and  assuming  the  responsibilities  of 
a  man,  a  citizen,  a  husband,  a  father,  a  brother,  a  neighbor,  a 
friend — as  God  requires  of  every  one  (if  his  neighbor  will  allow 
him  to  do  it) ;  but  I  find  I  get  for  all  my  submission  about  the 
same  reward  that  the  Southern  slavocrats  render  to  the  dough- 
faced  statesmen  of  the  North,  for  being  bribed  and  troubled, 
and  fooled  and  cheated,  as  the  Whigs  and  Democrats  love  to 
be,  and  think  themselves  highly  honored  if  allowed  to  lick  up 
the  spittle  of  a  Southerner.  I  say,  I  get  the  same  reward.  But, 
I  am  uncommon  quick-sighted,  I  can  see  in  a  minute  where  I 
missed  it. 

Another  little  blunder  that  I  made  is,  that  while  I  have  al- 
ways been  a  most  zealous  Abolitionist,  I  have  commonly  been 
at  war  with  my  friends  about  certain  religious  tenets.  I  was 
first  a  Presbyterian,  but  I  could  never  think  of  acting  with  my 
Quaker  friends,  for  they  were  the  rankest  heretics ;  and  the 
Baptists  would  be  in  the  water,  and  the  Methodists  denied  the 
doctrine  of  election,  etc.  Of  later  years,  since  becoming  en- 
lightened by  Garrison,  Abby  Kelly,  and  other  really  benevolent 
persons,  I  have  been  spending  all  my  force  on  my  friends 
who  love  the  Sabbath,  and  felt  that  all  was  at  stake  on  that 
point ;  just  as  it  proved  to  be  of  late  in  France,  in  the  abolition 


592  JOHN    BROWN. 

of  slavery  in  their  colonies.  Now,  I  cannot  doubt,  Messrs.  Edi- 
tors, notwithstanding  that  I  have  been  unsuccessful,  that  you 
will  allow  me  full  credit  for  my  peculiar  quick-sightedness.  I 
can  see  in  one  second  where  I  missed  it. 


JOHN   BROWN'S   REGULARS.1 

[Its  conte7its  are  from  " Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown'1 
F.  B.  Sanborn,  page  287,  given  here,  as  to  spelling  and 
punctuation,  in  exact  accordatice  with  the  original.] 

Articles  of  Enlistment  and  By-Laws  of"  the 
Kansas  Regulars,  Made  and  Established  by  the 
Commander,  a.d.  1856,  in  Whose  Handwriting  It  Is. 

We  whose  names  are  found  on  these  and  the  next  following 
pages  do  hereby  enlist  ourselves  in  the  Free  State  cause  under 
John  Brown  as  Commander:  during  the  full  period  of  time 
affixed  to  our  names  respectively  and  we  severally  pledge  our 
word  and  sacred  honor  to  said  Commander;  and  to  each 
other,  that  during  the  time  for  which  we  have  enlisted  we  will 
faithfully  and  punctually  perform  our  duty  (in  such  capacity  or 
place  as  may  be  assigned  to  us  by  a  majority  of  all  the  votes  of 
those  associated  with  us :  or  of  the  companies  to  which  we 
may  belong  as  the  case  may  be)  as  a  regular  volunteer  force 
for  the  maintenance  of  the  rights  &  liberties  of  the  Free  State 
Citizens  of  Kansas  :  and  we  further  agree  ;  that  as  individuals 
we  will  conform  to  the  by  Laws  of  this  Organisation  &  that 
we  will  insist  on  their  regular  &  punctual  enforcement  as  a 
first  &  last  duty :  &  in  short  that  we  will  observe  &  Maintain 
a  strict  &  thorough  Military  discipline  at  all  times  until  our 
term  of  service  expires. 

Names,  date  of  enlistment,  and  term  of  service  on  next  Pages. 


1  This    represents  the   free-State    men  who  fought  at   Osawat- 
omie  and  elsewhere  in  1856. 


APPENDIX.  593 

Term  of  service  omitted  for  want  of  room  {principally  for 
the  War.) 

2.   Names  and  Date  of  Enlistment. 

Aug.  22.  Wm.  Patriclge  (imprisoned),  John  Salathiel,  S.  Z. 
Brown,  John  Goodell,  L.  F.  Parsons,  N.  B.  Phelps,  Wm.  B. 
Harris. 

Aug.  23.  Jason  Brown  (son  of  commander;  imprisoned). 

Aug.  24.   J.  Benjamin  (imprisoned). 

Aug.  25.  Cyrus  Taton,  R.  Reynolds  (imprisoned),  Noah 
Frazee  (1st  Lieut.),  Amos  Alderman,  August  Bondie,  Charles 
Kaiser  (murdered  Aug.  30),  Freeman  Austin  (aged  57  years), 
Samuel  Hereson,  John  W.  Troy,  Jas.  Holmes  (Capt.). 

Aug.  26.  Geo.  Partridge  (killed  Aug.  30),  Wm.  A.  Sears. 

Aug.  27.  S.  H.  Wright. 

Aug.  29.  B.  Darrach  (Surgeon),  Saml.  Farrar. 

Sept.  8.   Timothy  Kelly,  Jas.  Andrews. 

Sept.  9.  W.  H.  Leman,  Charles  Oliver,  D.  H.  Hurd. 

Sept.  15.  Wm.  F.  Haniel. 

Sept.  16.  Saml.  Geer  (Commissary). 

3.  By-Laws  of  the  Free- State  Regular  Volunteers 
of  Kansas  Enlisted  under  John  Brown. 

Art.  I.  Those  who  agree  to  be  governed  by  the  following 
articles  &  whose  names  are  appended  will  be  known  as  the 
Kansas  Regulars. 

Art.  II.  Every  officer  connected  with  this  organization 
(except  the  Commander  already  named)  shall  be  elected  by  a 
majority  of  the  members  if  abcn>e  a  Captain;  and  if  a  Captain  ; 
or  under  a  Captain,  by  a  majority  of  the  company  to  which 
they  belong. 

Art.  III.  All  vacancies  shall  be  filled  by  vote  of  the  majority 
of  members  or  companies  as  the  case  may  be,  &  ail  members 
shall  be  alike  eligible  to  the  highest  office. 

Art.  IV.  All  trials  for  misconduct  of  Officers;  or  privates ; 
shall  be  by  a  jury  of  Twelve;  chosen  by  a   majority  of  Com- 


594  JOHN     BROWN. 

pany,  or  companies  as  the  case  may  be.  Each  Company  shall 
try  its  own  members. 

Art.  V.  All  valuable  property  taken  by  honorable  warfare 
from  the  enemy,  shall  be  held  as  property  of  the  whole  com- 
pany, or  companies,  as  the  case  may  be:  equally,  without  dis- 
tinction ;  to  be  used  for  the  common  benefit  or  be  placed  in 
the  hands  of  responsible  agents  for  sale  :  the  proceeds  to  be 
divided  as  nearly  equally  amongst  the  company  :  or  companies 
capturing  it  as  may  be  :  except  that  no  person  shall  be  entitled 
to  any  dividend  from  property  taken  before  he  entered  the 
service ;  and  any  person  guilty  of  desertion,  or  convicted  of 
any  gross  violation  of  his  obligations  to  those  with  whom  he 
should  act,  whether  officer  or  private:  shall  forfeit  his  inter- 
est in  all  dividends  made  after  such  misconduct  has  occurred. 

Art.  VI.  All  property  captured  shall  be  delivered  to  the 
receiver  of  the  force,  or  company  as  the  case  may  be ;  whose 
duty  it  shall  be  to  make  a  full  inventory  of  the  same  (assisted 
by  such  person,  or  persons  as  may  be  chosen  for  that  purpose), 
a  copy  of  which  shall  be  made  into  the  Books  of  this  Organi- 
zation ;  &  held  subject  to  examination  by  any  member,  on  all 
suitable  occasions. 

Art.  VII.  The  receiver  shall  give  his  receipts  in  a  Book  for 
that  purpose  for  all  moneys  &  other  property  of  the  regulars 
placed  in  his  hands ;  keep  an  inventory  of  the  same  &  make 
copy  as  provided  in  Article  VI. 

Art.  VIII.  Captured  articles  when  used  for  the  benefit  of 
the  members  :  shall  be  receipted  for  by  the  Commissary,  the 
same  as  moneys  placed  in  his  hands.  The  receiver  to  hold 
said  receipts. 

Art.  IX.  A  disorderly  retreat  shall  not  be  suffered  at  any 
time  &  every  Officer  &  private  is  by  this  article  fully  empow- 
ered to  prevent  the  same  by  force  if  need  be,  &  any  attempt  at 
leaving  the  ground  during  a  fight  is  hereby  declared  disorderly 
unless  the  consent  or  direction  of  the  officer  then  in  command 
have  authorized  the  same. 

Art.  X.  A  disorderly  attact  or  charge  ;  shall  not  be  suffered 
at  any  time. 


APPENDIX.  595 

Art.  XI.  When  in  camp  a  thorough  watch  both  regular  and 
Piquet  shall  be  maintained  both  by  day,  &  by  Night :  and 
visitors  shall  not  be  suffered  to  pass  or  repass  without  leave 
from  the  Captain  of  the  guard  and  under  common  or  ordinary 
circumstances  it  is  expected  that  the  Officers  will  cheerfully 
share  this  service  with  the  private  for  example  sake. 

Art.  XII.  Keeping  up  Fires  or  lights  after  dark ;  or  firing  of 
Guns,  Pistols  or  Caps  shall  not  be  allowed,  except  Fires  and 
lights  when  unavoidable. 

Art.  XIII.  When  in  Camp  neither  Officers  shall  be  allowed 
to  leave  without  consent  of  the  Officer  then  in  command. 

Art.  XIV.  All  uncivil  ungentlemanly  profane,  vulgar  talk  or 
conversation  shall  be  discountenanced. 

Art.  XV.  All  acts  of  petty  theft  needless  waste  of  the  prop- 
erty of  the  members  or  of  Citizens  is  hereby  declared  dis- 
orderly: together  with  all  uncivil,  or  unkind  treatment  of  Cit- 
izens or  of  prisoners. 

Art.  XVI.  In  all  cases  of  capturing  property,  a  sufficient 
number  of  men  shall  be  detailed  to  take  charge  of  the  same  ;  all 
others  shall  keep  in  their  position. 

Art.  XVII.  It  shall  at  all  times  be  the  duty  of  the  quarter 
Master  to  select  ground  for  encampment  subject  however  to 
the  approbation  of  the  commanding  officer. 

Art.  XVIII.  The  Commissary  shall  give  his  receips  in  a 
Book  for  that  purpose  for  all  money  provisions,  and  stores  put 
into  his  hands. 

Art  XIX.  The  Officers  of  the  companies  shall  see  that  the 
arms  of  the  same  are  in  constant  good  order  and  a  neglect  of 
this  duty  shall  be  deemed  disorderly. 

Art.  XX.  No  person  after  having  first  surrendered  himself  a 
prisoner  shall  ho.  put  to  death,  or  subjected  to  corporal  punish- 
ment, without  first  having  had  the  benefit  of  an  impartial  trial. 

Art.  XXI.  A  Waggon  Master  and  an  Assistant  shall  be 
chosen  for  each  company  whose  duty  it  shall  be  to  take  a 
general  care  and  oversight  of  the  teams,  waggons,  harness,  and 
all  the  other  articles  or  property  pertaining  thereto:  and  who 
shall  both  be  exempt  from  serving  on  guard. 


596  JOHN     BROWN. 

Art.  XXII.  The  ordinary  use  or  introduction  into  the  camp 
of  any  intoxicating  liquor,  as  a  beverage:  is  hereby  declared 
disorderly. 

Art.  XXIII.  A  Majority  of  Two  Thirds  of  all  the  members 
may  at  any  time  alter  or  amend  the  foregoing  articles. 

1.  List  of  Volunteers  either  engaged  or  guarding 

Horses  during  the  fight  of  Black  Jack  or  Pal- 
myra, June  2,  1856. 

1.  Saml.  T.  Shore  (Captain).  2.  Silas  Moore.  3.  David 
Hendricks  (Horse  Guard).  4.  Hiram  McAllister.  5.  Mr.  Parmely 
(wounded).  6.  Silvester  Harris.  7.  O.  A.  Carpenter  (wounded). 
8.  Augustus  Shore.  9.  Mr.  Townsley  (Potawatomie).  10. 
Win.  B.  Hayden.  11.  John  Mewhinney.  12.  Montgomery 
Shore.  13.  Elkana  Timmons.  14.  T.  Weiner.  15.  August 
Bondy.  16.  Hugh  Mewhinney.  17.  Charles  Kaiser.  18.  Elizur 
Hill.  19.  William  David.  20.  B.  L.  Cochran.  21.  Henry 
Thompson  (wounded).  22.  Elias  Basinger.  23.  Owen  Brown. 
24.  Fredk.  Brown,  horse  guard;  (murdered  Aug.  30).  25.  Sal- 
mon Brown.  26.  Oliver  Brown.  27.  This  blank  may  be  filled 
by  Capt.  Shore  as  he  may  have  the  name. 

John  Brown. 

5.  List  of  Names  of  the  wounded  in  the  Battle  of 
Black  Jack  (or  Palmyra)  and  also  of  the  Eight 
who  held  out  to  reCkive  the  surrender  of 
Capt.  Pate  and  Twenty-Two  men  on  that  occa- 
sion, June  2,  1856. 
1.  Mr.  Parmely  wounded   in  Nose   &  Arm,  obliged  to  leave. 

2.  Henry  Thompson,  dangerously  wounded  but  fought  for 
nearly  one  Hour  afterward.  3.  O.  A.  Carpenter  Badly  wounded 
and  obliged  to  leave.  4.  Charles  Kaiser,  murdered  Aug. 
30.  5.  Elizur  Hill.  6.  Win.  David.  7.  Hugh  Mewhinney  (17 
yrs  old).  8.  B.  L.  Cochran.  9.  Owen  Brown.  10.  Salmon 
Brown.  Seriously  wounded  (soon  after  by  accident).  11.  Oliver 
Brown  — 17  years  old. 

In  the  battle  of  Osawatomie  Capt.  (or  Dr.)  Updegraph  ;  and 


APPENDIX.  597 

Two  others  whose  names  I  have  lost  were  severely  (o?ie  of 
them  shockingly)  wounded  before  the  fight  began  Aug.  30, 
1856. 

John  Brown. 


JOHN  BROWN  AND    THE    FIRST  ATTACK    IN  THE 
"WAKARUSA  WAR,"  1855. 

Osawatomie,  K.  T.,  16th  Dec.,  1855. 
Sabbath  evening. 
Dear  Wife  and  Children,  Every  One — I  improve  the 
first  mail  since  my  return  from  the  camp  of  volunteers  who 
lately  turned  out  for  the  defense  of  the  town  of  Lawrence  in 
this  Territory ;  and,  notwithstanding,  I  suppose  you  have 
learned  the  result  before  this  (possibly),  will  give  a  brief 
account  of  the  invasion  in  my  own  way.  About  three  or  four 
weeks  ago  news  came  that  a  free-State  man  by  the  name  of 
Dow  had  been  murdered  by  a  pro-slavery  man  by  the  name  of 
Coleman,  who  had  gone  and  given  himself  up  for  trial  to  pro- 
slavery  Governor  Shannon.  This  was  soon  followed  by  further 
news  that  a  free-State  man,  who  was  the  only  reliable  witness 
against  the  murderer,  had  been  seized  by  a  Missourian, 
appointed  sheriff  by  the  bogus  Legislature  of  Kansas,  upon 
false  pretexts,  examined,  and  held  to  bail  under  such  heavy 
bonds  to  answer  these  false  charges  as  he  could  not  give;  and 
that,  while  on  his  way  to  jail  in  charge  of  the  bogus  sheriff,  he 
was  rescued  by  some  men  belonging  to  a  company  near  Law- 
rence, and  that  in  consequence  of  the  rescue  Governor  Shannon 
had  ordered  out  all  the  pro-slavery  force  he  could  muster  in 
the  Territory  and  called  on  Missouri  for  further  help  ;  that 
about  two  thousand  had  collected,  demanding  a  surrender  of 
the  rescued  witness  and  of  the  rescuers  ;  the  destruction  of 
several  buildings  and  printing-presses,  and  the  giving  up  of  the 
Sharpe's  rifles  by  the  free-State  men;  threatening  to  destroy  the 
town  with  cannon  with  which  they  were  provided,  etc.  ;  and 
that  about  an  equal  number  of  free-State  men  had  turned  out 
to  resist  them,  and  that  a  battle  was  hourly  expected  or  sup- 


$g&  JOHN     BROWN. 

posed  to  have  been  already  fought.  These  reports  appeared 
to  be  well  authenticated  ;  but  we  could  get  no  further  account 
of  matters,  and  left  this  for  the  place  where  the  boys  are  settled 
at  evening,  intending  to  go  to  Lawrence  the  next  day  to  learn 
the  fact.  John  was,  however,  started  on  horseback ;  but 
before  he  had  gone  many  rods  word  came  that  our  help  was 
wanted  immediately.  On  getting  this  last  news  it  was  at  once 
agreed  to  break  up  at  John's  Camp  and  take  Wealthy  and 
Johnny  to  Jason's  Camp  (some  two  miles  off),  and  that  all  the 
men  but  Henry,  Jason,  and  Oliver,  should  at  once  set  oft  to 
Lawrence  under  arms;  those  three  being  wholly  unfit  for  duty. 
We  set  about  providing  a  little  cornbread  and  meat,  blankets, 
cooking  utensils,  running  bullets,  loading  all  our  guns,  pistols, 
etc.  The  five  set  off  in  the  afternoon  and  after  a  short  rest  in 
the  night  (which  was  quite  dark)  continued  our  march  until 
after  daylight  next  morning,  when  we  got  our  breakfast,  started 
again,  and  reached  Lawrence  in  the  forenoon,  all  of  us  more  or 
less  lamed  by  our  tramp.  On  reaching  the  place  we  found  that 
negotiations  had  commenced  between  Governor  Shannon 
(having  a  force  of  some  fifteen  or  sixteen  hundred  men)  and 
the  principal  leaders  of  the  free-State  men ;  they  having  a 
force  of  some  five  hundred  men  at  the  time.  These  were  busy 
night  and  day  fortifying  the  town  with  embankments  and  cir- 
cular earthworks  up  to  the  time  of  the  treaty  with  the  Gover- 
nor, as  an  attack  was  constantly  expected,  notwithstanding  the 
negotiations  then  pending.  This  state  of  things  continued 
from  Friday  until  Sunday  evening.  On  the  evening  we  left,  a 
company  of  the  invaders  of  from  fifteen  to  twenty-five  attacked 
some  three  or  four  free-State  men,  mostly  unarmed,  killing  a 
Mr.  Barber,  from  Ohio,  wholly  unarmed.  His  body  was  after- 
wards brought  in,  and  it  lay  for  some  days  in  the  room  after- 
wards occupied  by  a  part  of  the  company  to  which  he  belonged, 
it  being  organized  after  we  reached  Lawrence.  The  building 
was  a  large,  unfinished  stone  hotel,  in  which  a  great  part  of 
the  volunteers  were  quartered,  and  who  witnessed  the  scene  of 
bringing  in  the  wife  and  the  friends  of  the  murdered  man.  I 
will  only  say  of  this  scene  that  it  was  heart-rendering  and  cal- 


APPENDIX.  599 

ciliated  to  exasperate  the  men  exceedingly,  and  one  of  the  sure 
results  of  civil  war.  After  frequently  calling  on  the  leaders  of 
the  free-State  men  to  come  and  have  an  interview  with  him, 
by  Governor  Shannon,  and  after  as  often  getting  for  an  answer 
that  if  he  had  any  business  to  transact  with  any  one  in  Law- 
rence to  come  and  attend  to  it,  he  signified  his  wish  to  come 
into  the  town,  and  an  escort  was  sent  to  the  invaders'  camp  to 
conduct  him  in.  When  there  the  leading  free-State  men,  find- 
ing out  his  weakness,  frailty,  and  consciousness  of  the  awkward 
circumstances  into  which  he  had  really  got  himself,  took 
advantage  of  his  cowardice  and  folly,  and  by  means  of  that 
and  the  free  use  of  whiskey  and  some  trickery  succeeded  in 
getting"  a  written  arrangement  with  him  much  to  their  own  liking. 
He  stipulated  with  them  to  order  the  pro-slavery  men  of  Kansas 
home,  and  to  proclaim  to  the  Missouri  invaders  that  they  must 
quit  the  Territory  without  delay  and  also  give  up  General  Pom- 
eroy,  a  prisoner  in  their  camp,  which  was  all  done;  he  also 
recognized  the  volunteers  as  the  militia  of  Kansas,  and  empow- 
ering their  officers  to  call  them  out  whenever  in  their  discretion 
the  safety  of  Lawrence  or  other  portions  of  the  settlements 
required. 

[Balance  of  letter  was  lost.] 

NOTES. 

From  this  singularly  modest  letter,  but  little  idea  can  be 
gathered  of  the  strange,  almost  solemn  excitement  created  by 
the  appearance  of  John  Brown  and  his  sons  in  that  winter- 
chilled,  beleaguered  frontier  town.  Lawrence  was  the  center 
of  free-State  sentiment  and  operations.  The  "  Wakarusa  War," 
of  December,  1855..  was  the  first  attack  in  force  by  the  Missou- 
rians  in  their  vain  attempt  to  enforce  the  slave  code  that  they 
had  framed.  An  eye  witness  in  Lawrence,  who  has  for  thirty- 
seven  years  been  a  constant  and  even  malicious  critic  of  John 
Brown,  his  acts  and  memory,  wrote  in  1880  of  the  arrival  in 
the  Northern  town  of  that  band  of  "plain-living,  high-think- 
ing" farmers  and  fighters  : 

"  It  was  near  sunset,  I  should  think,  about  the  3d  of  Decern- 


6oO  JOHN    BROWN. 

ber  (that  was  the  date),  when,  in  the  distance,  towards  the 
South,  a  strange-looking  object  was  seen  approaching  Law- 
rence. .  .  .  As  it  neared,  it  proved  to  be  the  skeleton  of  a 
horse  covered  with  purely  stuffed  skin,  wearily  dragging  a 
rather  large  one-horse  lumber  wagon.  I  think  there  were 
seven  men  standing  in  the  box,  which  was  made  of  wide, 
undressed,  and  weather-stained  boards."  Each  man  supported 
himself  by  a  pole,  "  several  feet  in  height,  surmounted  by  a 
bayonet."  These  poles  were  "  held  in  place  by  leather 
loops  nailed  to  the  side."  Each  man  had  a  "  Voltaic  repeater 
strapped  to  his  person,  as  also  a  short  sword  ;  at  the  same  time 
supporting  a  musket  at  the  position  of  order.  "  A  formidable 
arsenal,  well  manned";  writes  the  pamphleteer,  adding,  with 
a  sneer — "All  but  the  horse." 

The  writer  of  the  foregoing  is  Dr.  George  W.  Brown,  of 
Rockford,  Illinois,  who  at  the  time  of  the  "  Wakarusa  War." 
and  until  about  1858,  was  editor  of  the  Herald  of  Freedom. 
He  has  of  late  years  left  the  chief  labor  of  assailing  the  memory 
of  Capt.  John  Brown  to  others  who  find  the  task  one  that 
seems  to  suit  them  admirably, — Eli  Thayer,  of  Massachusetts, 
and  Charles  Robinson,  of  Kansas.  A  writer  of  later  days,  whose 
work,  however,  shows  the  influence  of  Governor  Robinson, 
Professor  Spring  of  the  Kansas  State  University,  in  his  read- 
able though  by  no  means  fair-minded  work  "  Kansas,"  one  of 
the  "  Commonwealth "  series  of  State  history,  says  of  the 
"  Shannon  Agreement,"  which  John  Brown  condemned,  that: 

"  A  single  voice  was  raised  in  solemn  and  public  protest 
against  the  peace.  After  the  treaty  and  its  stipulations  became 
known,  after  speeches  favorable  to  them  were  made,  an 
unknown  man — tall,  slender,  angular — his  face  clean  shaved, 
somber,  strongly  lined,  of  Puritan  tone  and  configuration;  his 
blue  gray  eyes  honest,  inexorable,  strange;  unworldly  intensi- 
ties enveloping  him  like  an  atmosphere,  mounted  on  a  dry- 
goods  box,  and  began  to  denounce  the  treaty  as  a  foolish 
makeshift.  .  .  .  Since  that  day  the  name  of  this  unknown 
man,  plucked  down  with  his  speech  mostly  unspoken,  has 
filled  the  post-horns  of  the  world — Old  John  Brown." 


APPENDIX.  6or 

SLAVES:  AN  ACT  TO  PUNISH  OFFENSES  AGAINST 
SLAVE    PROPERTY. 

Sec.  3.  If  any  free  person  shall,  by  speaking,  writing,  or 
printing,  advise,  persuade,  or  induce  any  slaves  to  rebel,  con- 
spire against,  or  murder  any  citizen  of  this  Territory,  or  shall 
bring  into  print,  write,  publish,  or  circulate,  or  cause  to  be 
brought  into,  printed,  written,  published,  or  circulated,  or  shall 
knowingly  aid  or  assist  in  the  bringing  into,  printing,  writing, 
publishing,  or  circulating,  in  this  Territory  any  book,  pamphlet, 
paper,  magazine,  or  circular  for  the  purpose  of  exciting  insur- 
rection, rebellion,  revolt,  or  conspiracy  on  the  part  of  the 
slaves,  free  negroes,  or  mulattos  against  the  citizens  of  the 
Territory  or  any  part  of  them,  such  person  shall  be  guilty  of 
felony  and  suffer  death. 

Sec.  4.  If  any  person  shall  entice,  decoy,  or  carry  away  out 
of  this  Territory  any  slave  belonging  to  another,  with  intent  to 
deprive  the  owner  thereof  of  the  services  of  such  slave,  or  with 
intent  to  effect  or  procure  the  freedom  of  such  slave,  he  shall 
be  adjudged  guilty  of  grand  larceny,  and,  on  conviction  thereof, 
shall  suffer  death,  or  be  imprisoned  at  hard  labor  for  not  less 
than  ten  years. 

Sec.  5.  If  any  person  shall  aid  or  assist  in  enticing,  decoy- 
ing, persuading,  or  carrying  away,  or  sending  out  of  this  Ter- 
ritory any  slave,  belonging  to  another,  with  intent  to  effect  or 
procure  the  freedom  of  such  slave,  he  shall  be  adjudged  guilty 
of  grand  larceny,  and,  on  conviction  thereof,  he  shall  suffer 
death   or  be  imprisoned  at  hard  labor  for  not  less  than  ten  years. 

Sec.  5.  If  any  person  shall  aid  or  assist  in  enticing,  decoy- 
ing, persuading,  or  carrying  away,  or  sending  out  of  this  Ter- 
ritory any  slave  belonging  to  another,  with  intent  to  effect  or 
procure  the  freedom  of  such  slave,  or  with  intent  to  deprive  the' 
owner  thereof  of  the  services  of  such  slave,  he  shall  be  ad- 
judged guilty  of  grand  larceny,  and  on  conviction  thereof,  he 
shall  suffer  death,  or  be  imprisoned  at  hard  labor  for  not  less 
than  ten  years. 

Sec.  6.   If  any  person  shall  entice,  decoy,  or  carry  away  out 


002  JOHN    BROWN. 

of  any  State  or  other  Territory  of  the  United  States  any  slave 
belonging  to  another,  with  intent  to  procure  or  effect  the  free- 
dom of  such  slave,  or  to  deprive  the  owners  thereof  of  the  serv- 
ices of  such  slave,  and  shall  bring  such  slave  into  this  Ter- 
ritory, he  shall  be  adjudged  guilty  of  grand  larceny,  in  the  same 
manner  as  if  such  slave  had  been  enticed,  decoyed,  or  carried 
away  out  of  this  Territory ;  and  in  such  case  the  larceny  may 
be  charged  to  have  been  committed  in  any  county  of  this  Ter- 
ritory into  or  through  which  such  slave  shall  have  been  brought 
by  such  person;  and,  on  conviction  thereof,  the  person  offend- 
ing shall  suffer  death,  or  be  imprisoned  at  hard  labor  for  not 
less  than  ten  years. 

Sec.  9.  If  any  person  print,  write,  introduce  into,  pub- 
lish, or  circulate,  or  cause  to  be  brought  into,  printed,  written, 
published,  or  circulated,  or  shall  knowingly  aid  or  assist  m 
bringing  into,  printing,  publishing,  or  circulating  within  this 
Territory  any  book,  paper,  pamphlet,  magazine,  handbill,  or 
circular  containing  any  statements,  arguments,  opinions,  senti- 
ment, doctrine,  advice,  or  innuendo  calculated  to  produce  a  dis- 
orderly, dangerous,  or  rebellious  disaffection  among  the  slaves 
of  this  Territory,  or  to  induce  such  slaves  to  escape  from  the 
service  of  their  masters,  or  resist  their  authority,  he  shall  be 
guilty  of  felony,  and  be  punished  by  imprisonment  at  hard  labor 
for  a  term  not  less  than  five  years. 

Sec.  12.  If  any  free  peison,  by  speaking  or  by  writing,  assert 
or  maintain  that  persons  have  not  the  right  to  hold  slaves  in 
this  Territory,  or  shall  introduce  into  this  Territory,  print, 
publish,  write,  circulate,  or  cause  to  be  printed,  published, 
written,  circulated,  or  introduced  into  this  Territory  any  book, 
paper,  magazine,  pamphlet,  or  circular  containing  any  denial 
of  the  right  of  persons  to  hold  slaves  in  this  Territory,  such 
person  shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  felony,  and  punished  by  im- 
prisonment at  hard  labor  for  a  term  not  less  than  five  years. 

Sec.  13.  No  person  who  is  conscientiously  opposed  to  hold- 
ing slaves,  or  who  does  not  admit  the  right  to  hold  slaves  in 
this  Territory,  shall  sit  as  a  juror  on  the  trial  of  any  prosecution 
for  any  violation  of  any  of  the  sections  of  this  act. 


APPENDIX.  603 

JOHN    BROWN'S    SONS    IN    KANSAS. 

In  1854,  the  four  eldest  sons  of  John  Brown,  named  John,  Jr., 
Jason,  Owen,  and  Frederick  (all  children  by  a  first  wife),  then 
Jiving  in  Ohio,  determined  to  remove  to  Kansas.  John,  Jr.,  sold 
his  place,  a  very  desirable  little  property  near  Vernon,  in  Trum- 
bull County.  Jason  Brown  had  a  very  valuable  collection  of 
grape-vines,  and  also  of  choice  fruit-trees,  which  he  took  up 
and  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  premiums, 
both  in  the  State  of  New  York  and  also  of  Ohio.  The  two 
first  named,  John  and  Jason,  both  had  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  de- 
cided 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,  1855.  This  was  done  at  a  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  he  more 
false.  He  had  subjected  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 


604  JOHN    BROWN. 

sent  forward  early  in  1855,  to  assist  the  two  last  named,  and  all 
three  arrived  in  Kansas  early  in  the  spring." 


JOHN    BROWN'S    ACCOUNT    OF    THE    BATTLE    Ti 
OSAWATOMIE,  KANSAS,  AUGUST,  1856. 

"  Early  on  the  morning  of  the  30th  of  August,  the  enemy's 
scout  approached  to  within  a  mile  and  a  half  of  the  wescern 
boundary  of  the  town  of  Osawatomie.  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  ascer- 
tained, 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  a  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  ot  the 
enemy,  I  placed  twelve  of  the  recruits  in  a  log-house,  hoping  that 
we  might  be  able  to  defend  the  town.  I  then  gathered  some  fitteen 
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,  a.^ut 
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  assist- 
ance 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  riiteen 


APPENDIX.  605 

mounted  men,  and  persuaded  him  to  go  with  us  into  the  timber 
on  the  southern  shore  of  the  Osage,  or  Marais-des-Cygnes,  a 
little  to  the  northwest  of  the  village.  Here  the  men,  number- 
ing not  more  than  thirty  in  all,  were  directed  to  scatter  and 
secrete  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  ut- 
most 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.  Par- 
tridge, was  shot  in  crossing  the  river.  Two  or  three  of  the 
party  who  took  part  in  tbe  fight  are  yet  missing,  and  may  be 
lost  or  taken  prisoners.  Two  were  wounded,  viz.,  Dr.  Upde- 
graff  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  the  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. 


606  JOHN    BROWN. 

"  I  give  this  in  great  haste,  in  the  midst  of  constant  interrup- 
tions. 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  7th,  1856." 


JOHN    BROWN  BEFORE  THE  MASSACHUSETTS 
LEGISLATURE    IN    1857. 

After  an  introduction,  given  by  Mr.  Frank  B.  Sanborn,  he 
read  the  following  statement  "  in  a  clear,  ringing  tone  "  : 

"  I  saw,  while  in  Missouri,  in  the  fall  of  1855,  large  numbers 
of  men  going  to  Kansas  to  vote,  and  also  returning,  after  they 
had  so  done,  as  they  said. 

"  Later  in  the  year,  I,  with  four  of  my  sons,  was  called  out, 
and  traveled,  mostly  on  foot  and  during  the  night  we  helped 
to  defend  Lawrence,  a  distance  of  thirty- five  miles,  where  we 
were  detained,  with  some  five  hundred  others,  or  thereabouts, 
from  five  to  ten  days — say  an  average  of  ten  days — at  a  cost 
of  not  less  than  a  dollar  and  a  half  per  day  as  wages  ;  to  say 
nothing  of  the  actual  loss  and  suffering  occasioned  to  many  of 
them  by  leaving  their  families  sick,  their  crops  not  secured, 
their  houses  unprepared  for  winter,  and  many  without  houses 
at  all.  This  was  the  case  with  myself  and  sons,  who  could  not 
get  houses  built  after  returning.  Wages  alone  would  amount 
to  seven  thousand  five  hundred  dollars  ;  loss  and  suffering 
cannot  be  estimated. 

"  I  saw,  at  that  time,  the  body  of  the  murdered  barber,  and 
was  present  to  witness  his  wife  and  other  friends  brought  to 
see  him  with  his  clothes  on,  just  as  he  was  when  killed. 

"  I,  with  six  sons  and  a  son-in-law,  was  called  out,  and 
traveled  most  of  the  way  on  foot,  to  try  and  save  Lawrence, 
May  20th  and  21st,  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 


APPENDIX.  607 

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. 

"On  or  about  the  30th  of  May,  hundreds  of  men,  like  our- 
selves, lost  their  whole  time,  were  imprisoned  without  other 
crime  than  opposition  to  bogus  legislation,  and  most  barbar- 
ously treated  for  a  time,  one  being  held  about  one  month,  and 
the  other  about  four  months.  Both  had  their  families  on  the 
ground.  After  this,  both  of  them  had  their  houses  burned, 
and  all  their  goods  consumed  by  the  Missourians.  In  this 
burning  all  the  eight  suffered.  One  had  his  oxen  stolen,  in 
addition." 

Here  Brown,  laying  aside  his  paper,  said  that  he  had  now 
at  his  hotel,  and  would  exhibit  to  the  committee,  if  they  so 
desired,  the  chains  which  one  of  his  sons  had  worn,  when  he 
was  driven  beneath  the  burning  sun,  by  Federal  troops,  to  a 
distant  prison,  on  a  charge  of  treason.  The  cruelties  he  there 
endured,  added  to  the  anxieties  and  sufferings  incident  to  his 
position,  had  rendered  him,  the  old  man  said,  as  his  eye 
Hashed  and  his  voice  grew  sterner,  "  a  maniac — yes,  a  maniac." 

He  paused  a  few  seconds,  wiped  a  tear  from  his  eye,  and 
continued  his  narration  : — 

"At  Black  Jack  the  invading  Missourians  wounded  three 
free-state  men,  one  of  whom  was  my  son-in-law  ;  and,  a  few 
days  afterwards,  one  of  my  sons  was  so  wounded  that  he  will 
be  a  cripple  for  life. 

"  In  August  I  was  present,  and  saw  the  mangled  and  dis- 
figured body  of  the  murdered  Hoyt,  of  Deerfield,  Massachu- 
setts, brought  into  our  camp.     I  knew  him  well. 

"  I  saw  the  ruins  of  many  free-State  men's  houses  in  differ- 
ent parts  of  the  Territory,  together  with  grain  in  the  stack, 
burning,  and  wasted  in  other  ways,  to  the  amount,  at  least  of 
fifty  thousand  dollars. 

"  1  saw  several  other  free-state  men,  besides  those  I  have 
named,  during  the  summer,  who  were  badly  wounded  by  the 
invaders  of  the  Territory. 

"  I  know  that  for  much  of  the  time  during  the   summer,  the 


6o8 


JOHN    BROWN. 


travel  over  portions  of  the  Territory  was  entirely  cut  off,  and 
that  none  but  bodies  of  armed  men  dared  to  move  at  all. 

"  I  know  that  for  a  considerable  time  the  mails  on  different 
routes  were  entirely  stopped  ;  and,  notwithstanding  there  were 
abundant  troops  in  the  Territory  to  escort  the  mails,  I  know 
that  such  escorts  were  not  furnished  as  they  ought  to  have 
been. 

"  I  saw  while  it  was  standing,  and  afterwards  saw  the  ruins 
of  a  most  valuable  house,  the  property  of  a  highly  civilized,  in- 
telligent, and  exemplary  Christian  Indian,  which  was  burned 
to  the  ground  by  the  ruffians,  because  its  owner  was  suspected 
of  favoring  the  free-state  men.  He  is  known  as  Ottawa  Jones, 
or  John  T.  Jones. 

"  In  September  last  I  visited  a  little  free-state  town  called 
Staunton,  on  the  north  side  of  the  Osage  (or  Marais-des-Cygnes, 
as  it  is  sometimes  called),  from  which  every  inhabitant  had  fled 
for  fear  of  their  lives,  even  after  having  built  a  strong  log- 
house,  or  wooden  fort,  at  a  heavy  expense,  for  their  protection. 
Many  of  them  had  left  their  effects  liable  to  be  destroyed  or 
carried  off,  not  being  able  to  remove  them.  This  was  to  me  a 
most  gloomy  scene,  and  like  a  visit  to  a  sepulcher. 

"  Deserted  houses  and  corn  fields  were  to  be  found  in  almost 
every  direction  south  of  the  Kansas  river. 

"  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  buck-shot  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." 

The  stern  old  man  faltered.  He  struggled  long  to  suppress 
all  exhibition  of  his  feelings  ;  and  then,  but  in  a  subdued  tone, 
continued  : 

"  I  saw  Mr.  Parker,  whom  I  well  knew,  all  bruised  about  the 
head,  and  with  his  throat  partly  cut,  after  he  had  been  dragged, 
sick,  from  the  house  of  Ottawa  Jones,  and  thrown  over  the 
bank  of  the  Ottawa  Creek  for  dead. 

"About  the  1st  of  September,  I  and  five  sick  and  wounded 


APPENDIX.  609 

sons,  dad  a  son-in-law,  were  obliged  to  lie  on  the  ground, with- 
out shelter,  for  a  considerable  time,  and  at  times  almost  in  a 
suite  of  starving,  and  dependent  on  the  charity  of  the  Christian 
Indian  I  have  before  named  and  his  wife. 

"I  saw  Dr.  Graham,  of  Prairie  City,  who  was  a  prisoner 
with  the  ruffians  on  the  2d  of  June,  and  was  present  when 
they  wounded  him  in  an  attempt  to  kill  him,  as  he  was  trying 
to  save  himself  from  being  murdered  by  them  during  the  fighl 
at  Black  Jack. 

"  I  know  that  numerous  other  persons,  whose  names  I  can- 
not now  remember,  suffered  like  hardships  and  exposures  to 
those  I  have  mentioned. 

"I  know  well  that  on  or  about  the  14th  of  September,  1856, 
a  large  force  of  Missourians  and  other  ruffians,  said  by  Gov- 
ernor Geary  to  be  twenty-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  a  mile  of  Lawrence ; 
and  I  know  of  no  reason  why  they  did  not  attack  that  place, 
except  that  about  one  hundred  free-state  men  voluntered  to  go 
out,  and  did  go  out  on  the  open  plain  before  that  town,  and 
give  the  offer  of  a  fight,  which,  after  getting  scattered  shots 
from  our  men,  they  declined,  and  retreated  back  towards 
Franklin.  I  saw  that  whole  thing.  The  Government  troops  at 
this  time  were  at  Lecompton,  a  distance  of  twelve  miles  only 
from  Lawrence,  with  Governor  Geary;  and  yet,  notwithstand- 
ing runners  had  been  dispatched  to  advise  him  in  good  time 
of  the  approach  and  setting  out  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 
after  the  enemy  had  retreated  to  Franklin,  and  been  gone  for 
more  than  five  hours.  This  is  the  way  he  saved  Lawrence. 
And  it  is  just  the  kind  of  protection  the  free-state  men  have 
received  from  the  Administration  from  the  first." 

He  concluded  his  remarks  by  denouncing    the    traitors    to 

freedom. 

The  Chairman—"  Captain  Brown,  I  wish  to  ask  you  regarding 


6lO  JOHN     BROWN. 

Buford's  men.  Did  you  ever  mingle  with  them  ?  And,  if  so, 
what  did  you  see  or  hear  ?  " 

Captain  Brown  replied  that  he  saw  a  great  deal  of  them  at 
first;  that  they  spoke  without  hesitation  before  him,  because 
he  employed  himself  as  surveyor ;  and  as  nearly  all  the  surveyors 
were  pro-slavery  men,  they  probably  thought  he  was  "sound 
on  the  goose."  They  told  him  all  their  plans ;  what  they 
intended  to  do;  how  they  were  determined  to  drive  off  the 
free-state  men,  and  possess  themselves  of  the  Territory,  and 
make  it  a  slave  State  at  all  hazards — cost  what  it  might.  They 
said  that  the  Yankees  could  not  be  whipped,  coaxed,  nor  driven 
into  a  fight,  and  that  one  pro-slavery  man  could  whip  a  dozen 
Abolitionists.  They  said  that  Kansas  must  be  a  slave  State  to 
save  Missouri  from  Abolition  ;  that  both  must  stand  or  fall 
together.  They  did  not  hesitate  to  threaten  that  they  would 
burn,  kill,  scalp,  and  drive  out  the  entire  free-state  population 
of  that  Territory,  if  it  were  necessary  to  do  so  to  accomplish 
their  object. 

The  Chairman  then  asked  who  commanded  the  free-state 
men  at  Lawrence. 

His  answer  was  characteristic.  He  explained  how  bravely 
the  free  state  men  had  acted,  and  gave  every  one  credit  but 
himself.  When  again  asked  who  commanded  them,  he  said — 
No  one  ;  that  he  was  asked  to  take  the  command,  but  refused, 
and  only  acted  as  their  adviser ! 

In  conclusion,  he  said,  "  We  want  good  men,  industrious 
men,  men  who  respect  themselves,  who  act  only  from  the  dic- 
tates of  conscience — men  who  fear  God  too  much  to  fear  any- 
thing human." 

The  Chairman — "What  is  your  opinion  as  to  the  probability 
of  a  renewal  of  the  hostilities  in  Kansas — of  another  invasion  ? 
And  what  do  you  think  would  be  the  effect  on  the  free-state 
men  of  an  appropriation  by  Massachusetts  ?" 

Captain  Brown — "  Whenever  we  heard,  out  in  Kansas,  what 
the  North  was  doing  for  us,  we  were  encouraged  and  strength- 
ened to  struggle  on.  As  to  the  probability  of  another  invasion, 
I    do   not   know.     We  ought  to  be  prepared  for  the  worst, 


APPENDIX.  6ll 

Things  do  not  look  one  iota  more  encouraging  now  than  they 
did  last  year  at  this  time  . 


AN    IDEA    OF    THINGS    IN    KANSAS. 
[Jo/m  Brown  spoke  in  many  New  England  meetings  on  Kansas 
affairs  early  in  iSjy.    Mr.  Sanborn  gives  the  following  as 

the  "  Notes  "  prepared  for  such  addresses,  pp.  2^-46.] 

I  propose,  in  order  to  make  this  meeting  as  useful  and  inter- 
esting as  I  can,  to  try  and  give  a  correct  idea  of  the  conditions 
of  things  in  Kansas,  as  they  were  while  I  was  their,  and  as  I 
suppose  they  still  are,  so  far  as  the  great  question  at  issue  is 
concerned.  And  here  let  me  remark  that  in  Kansas  the  ques- 
tion is  never  raised  of  a  man  :  Is  he  a  Democrat  ?  Is  he  a 
Republican  ?  The  questions  there  raised  are,  Is  he  a  free-state 
man  ?  or,  Is  he  a  pro -slavery  man  ? 

I  saw  while  in  Missouri,  in  the  fall  of  1855,  large  numbers  on 
their  way  to  Kansas  to  vote,  and  also  returning  after  they  had 
so  done,  as  they  said.  I,  together  with  four  of  my  sons,  was 
called  out  to  help  defend  Lawrence  in  the  fall  of  1855,  and 
traveled  most  of  the  way  on  foot,  and  during  a  dark  night,  a 
distance  of  thirty-five  miles,  where  we  were  detained  with 
some  five  hundred  others,  or  thereabout,  from  five  to  fifteen 
days — say  an  average  of  ten  days — at  a  cost  of  each  per  day 
of  $1.50  as  wages,  to  say  nothing  of  the  actual  loss  and  suffer- 
ing it  occasioned ;  many  of  them  leaving  their  families  at 
home  sick,  their  crops  not  secured,  their  houses  unprepared 
for  winter,  and  many  of  them  without  houses  at  all.  This 
was  the  case  with  myself  and  all  my  sons,  who  were  unable  to 
get  any  house  built  after  our  return.  The  loss  in  that  cast, 
wages  alone,  would  amount  to  $7,500.  ,  Loss  and  suffering  in 
consequence  cannot  be  estimated.  I  saw  at  that  time  the  body 
of  the  murdered  barber,  and  was  present  when  his  wife  and 
other  friends  were  brought  in  to  see  him  as  he  lay  in  the  clothes 
he  had  on  when  killed, — no  pleasant  sight.  I  went  in  the  spring 
of  last  year  with  some  of  my  sons  among  the  Buford  men,  in 
the  character  of  a  surveyor,  to   see   and  hear  from  them  their 


6l2  JOHN    BROWN. 

business  into  the  Territory  ;  this  took  us  from  our  work.  I 
and  numerous  others,  in  the  spring  of  last  year,  traveled  some 
ten  miles  or  over  on  foot  to  meet  and  advise  as  to  what  should 
be  done  to  meet  the  gathering  storm  ;  this  occasioned  much 
loss  of  time.  I  also,  with  many  others,  about  the  same  time 
traveled  on  foot  a  similar  distance  to  attend  a  meeting  of 
Judge  Cato's  court,  to  find  out  what  kind  of  laws  he  intended 
to  enforce  ;  this  occasioned  further  loss  of  time.  I  with  six  sons 
and  a  son-in-law  was  again  called  out  to  defend  Lawrence, 
May  20th  and  21st,  and  traveled  most  of  the  way  on  foot  and 
during  the  night,  being  thirty-five  miles.  From  that  date  none 
of  us  could  do  any  work  about  our  homes,  but  lost  our  whole 
time  until  we  left,  in  October  last,  excepting  one  of  my  sons, 
who  had  a  few  weeks  to  devote  to  the  care  of  his  own  and  his 
mother's  family,  who  had  been  burned  out  of  their  houses  while 
the  two  men  were  prisoners. 

From  about  the  20th  of  May  of  last  year  hundreds  of  men 
like  ourselves  lost  their  whole  time,  and  entirely  failed  of 
securing  any  kind  of  crop  whatever.  I  believe  it  safe  to  say 
that  five  hundred  free-state  men  lost  each  one  hundred  and 
twenty  days  at  $1.50  per  day,  which  would  be,  to  say  nothing 
of  attendant  losses,  $90,000.  I  saw  the  ruins  of  many  free- 
state  men's  houses  at  different  places  in  the  Territory,  to- 
gether with  stacks  of  grain  wasted  and  burning,  to  the  amount 
of,  say  $50,000 ;  making  in  loss  of  time  and  destruction  of 
property  more  than  $150,000.  On  or  about  the  30th  of  May 
last,  two  of  my  sons,  with  several  others,  were  imprisoned 
without  other  crime  than  opposition  to  bogus  enactments,  and 
most  barbarously  treated  for  a  time, — one  being  held  about  a 
month,  the  other  about  four  months.  Both  had  their  families 
in  Kansas,  and  destitute  of  homes,  being  burned  out  after  they 
were  imprisoned.  In  this  burning  all  the  eight  were  sufferers, 
as  we  had  all  our  effects  at  the  two  houses.  One  of  my  sons 
had  his  oxen  taken  from  him  at  this  time,  and  never  recovered 
them.  Here  is  the  chain  with  which  one  of  them  was  con- 
fined, after  the  cruelty,  sufferings,  and  anxiety  he  underwent 
had  rendered  him  a  maniac — yes,  a  maniac. 


APPENDIX.  613 

On  the  2d  of  June  last,  my  son-in-law  was  terribly  wounded 
(supposed  to  be  mortally)  and  may  prove  a  cripple  for  life.  In 
August  last  I  was  present  and  saw  the  mangled  and  shock- 
ingly disfigured  body  of  the  murdered  Hoyt,  of  Deerfield.  Mass., 
brought  into  our  camp.  I  knew  him  well.  I  saw  several  other 
free  state  men  who  were  either  killed  or  wounded,  whose 
names  I  cannot  now  remember.  I  saw  Dr.  Graham,  who  was 
a  prisoner  with  the  ruffians  on  the  2d  of  June  last,  and  was 
present  when  they  wounded  him,  in  an  attempt  to  kill  him,  as 
he  was  trying  to  save  himself  from  being  murdered  by  them 
during  the  fight  at  Black  Jack.  I  know  that  for  much  of  the 
time  during  the  last  summer  the  travel  over  a  portion  of  the 
Territory  was  entirely  cut  off,  and  that  none  but  bodies  of 
armed  men  dared  to  move  at  all.  I  know  that  for  a  consider- 
able time  the  mails  on  different  routes  were  entirely  stopped, 
and  that  notwithstanding  there  were  abundant  United  States 
troops  at  hand  to  escort  the  mails,  such  escorts  were  not  fur- 
nished as  they  might  or  ought  to  have  been.  I  saw,  while  it 
was  standing,  and  afterwards  saw  the  ruins  of,  a  most  valuable 
house  full  of  good  articles  and  stores,  which  had  been  burned 
by  the  ruffians  for  a  highly  civilized,  intelligent,  and  most 
exemplary  Christian  Indian,  for  being  suspected  of  favoring 
free-state  men.  He  is  known  as  Ottawa  Jones,  or  John  S. 
Jones.  In  September  last  I  visited  a  beautiful  little  free  state 
town  called  Stanton,  on  the  north  side  of  the  Osage,  or  Marais 
des  Cynges  River,  as  it  is  called,  from  which  every  inhabitant 
had  fled  (being  in  fear  of  their  lives),  after  having  build  them, 
at  a  heavy  expense,  a  strong  blockhouse  or  wooden  fort,  for 
their  protection.  Many  of  them  had  left  their  effects,  liable  to 
be  destroyed  or  carried  off,  not    being  able  to  remove    them. 

This  was  a  most  gloomy  scene,  and  like  a  visit  to  a  vast 
sepulcher. 

During  last  summer  and  fall  deserted  houses  and  corn  fields 
were  to  be  met  with  in  almost  every  direction  south  of  the 
Kansas  river.  I  saw  the  burning  of  Osawatomie  by  a  body  of 
some  four  hundred  ruffians,  and  of  Franklin  afterward,  by  some 
twenty-seven  hundred  men, — the  first- named  on  August  30th, 


6 14  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  last-named,  September  14th  or  15th.  Governor  Geary  had 
been  for  some  time  in  the  Territory,  and  might  have  saved 
Franklin  with  perfect  ease.  It  would  not  have  cost  the 
United  States  one  dollar  to  have  saved  Franklin.  I,  with  five 
sick  and  wounded  sons  and  son-in-law,  was  obliged  for  some 
time  to  lie  on  the  ground,  without  shelter.  Our  boots  and 
clothes  worn  out,  and  we  were  destitute  of  money,  and  at  times 
almost  in  a  state  of  starvation,  and  dependent  on  the  charities 
of  the  Christian  Indian  and  his  wife,  whom  I  before  named.  I 
saw  in  September  last  a  Mr.  Parker,  whom  I  well  knew, 
with  his  head  all  bruised  over  and  his  throat  partly  cut,  having 
before  been  dragged,  while  sick,  out  of  the  house  of  Ottawa 
Jones,  the  Indian,  when  it  was  burned  and  left  for  dead  over 
the  bank  of  the  Ottawa  Creek.  I  saw  three  mangled  bodies 
of  three  young  men,  two  of  which  were  dead  and  had  lain  on 
the  open  ground  for  about  eighteen  hours  for  the  flies  to  work 
at,  the  other  living  with  twenty  buckshot  and  bullet-holes  in 
him.     One  of  those  two  dead  was  my  own  son. 


OLD    JOHN    BROWN'S    FAREWELL. 

TO     THE     PLYMOUTH     ROCKS,  BUNKER    HILL    MONUMENTS, 
CHARTER    OAKS,  AND    UNCLE    TOM'S    CABINS. 

He  has  left  for  Kansas  ;  has  been  trying  since  he  came  out 
of  the  Territory  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.  And  he 
leaves  the  States  with  a  feeling  of  deepest  sadness,  that  after 
exhausting  his  own  small  means,  and  with  his  family  and  his 
brave  men  suffering  hunger,  cold,  nakedness,  and  some  of  them 
sickness,  wounds,  imprisonment  in  irons,  with  extreme  cruel 
treatment,  and  others  death  ;  that,  lying  on  the  ground  for 
months  in  the  most  sickly,  unwholsome,  and  uncomfortable 
places,  some  of  the  time  with  sick  and  wounded,  destitute  of 
any   shelter,   hunted   like   wolves,  and   sustained   in   part   by 


APPENDIX.  615 

Indians ;  that  after  all  this,  in  order  to  sustain  a  cause  which 
every  citizen  of  this  "glorious  Republic  "  is  under  equal  moral 
obligation  to  do,  and  for  the  neglect  of  which  he  will  be  held 
accountable  by  God, — a  cause  in  which  every  man,  woman, 
and  child  of  the  entire  human  family  has  a  deep  and  awful 
interest, — that  when  no  wages  are  asked  or  expected,  he  can- 
not secure,  amid  all  the  wealth,  luxury,  and  extravagance  of 
this  "  heaven-exalted  "  people,  even  the  necessary  supplies  of 
the  common  soldier.     "  How  are  the  mighty  fallen  !" 

I  am  destitute  of  horses,  baggage-wagons,  tents,  harness, 
saddles,  bridles,  holsters,  spurs,  and  belts ;  camp  equipage, 
such  as  cooking  and  eating  utensils,  blankets,  knapsacks, 
intrenching-tools,  axes,  shovels,  spades,  mattocks,  crowbars; 
have  not  a  supply  of  ammunition  ;  have  not  money  sufficient  to 
pay  freight  and  traveling  expenses  ;  and  left  my  family  poorly 
supplied  with  common  necessaries. 

Boston,  April,  1857. 


No.  I. 

DUTY  OF  THE  SOLDIER.1 

(Presented  with  respectful  and  kind  feelings  to  the  officers  and 
soldiers  of  the  United  States  army  in  Kansas.) 

In  the  ancient  Republics  every  man  capable  of  bearing  arms 
was,  up  to  a  certain  period  of  his  life,  bound  in  duty  to  the 
public  to  fill  his  place  in  the  ranks  of  the  soldiery  to  secure  his 
country  against  invasion  or  insult.  The  mode  of  warfare 
in  remote  times  differed  considerably  from  that  adopted  in  the 
present  day — man  fought  chiefly  with  those  weapons  which 
brought  him  into  hand-to-hand  collision  with  his  enemy,  hence 


1  This  paper  was  first  written  in  Kansas  or  Iowa  in  the  fall  of 
1S56.  As  finally  printed  it  was  probably  revised  by  John  Henri 
Kagi.      I  first  saw  it  in  November,  1S57. 


616  JOHN    BROWN. 

his  military  instruction  was  rather  in  the  management  of  arms 
than  the  application  of  tactics,  and  the  chiefs  studied  strata- 
gem rather  than  strategy.  When  the  war  or  expedition  upon 
which  he  had  been  engaged  was  terminated,  he  returned  to 
his  civic  occupations  and  his  home,  till  some  new  exigency 
called  him  again  into  military  service.  The  word  soldier  in 
ancient  Republics  was  synonymous  with  freeman — for  in 
assuming  his  armor  the  man  did  not  engage  to  confine  his 
mind  in  a  strait-jacket.  Indeed  there  are  instances  in 
ancient  history  in  which  the  soldiery  in  camp  was  consulted  on 
public  affairs,  and  gave  its  vote  on  the  great  question  of  Right 
against  Wrong — and  in  some  cases  the  soldier  was  the  first 
part  of  a  nation  to  proclaim  the  supremacy  of  Right,  Never- 
theless in  all  military  duties,  those  same  intelligent  soldiers 
desirous  of  conquering  the  foreign  enemy  showed,  when  in  his 
presence,  implicit  obedience  to  their  military  chiefs. 

The  soldiery  of  the  princes  of  antiquity  was  very  different 
from  the  Republican  warriors.  The  tyrants  were  necessitated 
to  keep  an  armed  force  in  constant  readiness  to  uphold  their 
authority  at  home  as  well  as  abroad,  and  they  did  exact  that 
the  myrmidons  in  their  pay  should  unhesitatingly  execute  all 
the  commands  of  their  ministers  with  the  same  obedience  with 
which  the  Republican  soldiery  attended  to  those  orders  only 
which  were  purely  military.  As  the  era  of  despotism  ex- 
tended and  the  limits  of  Liberty  became  proportionately  circum- 
scribed, the  habit  of  obeying  all  commands,  civil  and  military, 
became  more  usual  among  the  soldiery. 

Time  rolled  on  till  despotism,  aided  by  priestcraft,  corrup- 
tion, and  party  rapacity,  supplanted  the  Republics.  The  in- 
vention of  gunpowder,  though  it  overthrew  the  feudal  system 
of  the  Barons,  operated  on  the  other  hand  against  the  People, 
for  the  increased  precision  and  promptitude  required  in  modern 
military  maneuvers,  necessitated  a  lengthened  training  for  the 
soldiery,  which  served  as  a  pretense  for  wicked  rulers  to  incul- 
cate in  the  minds  of  the  soldiers  jthe  idea  that  they  were  living 
mac/iines,  Moreover,  the  cunning  artifice  of  indirect  taxation 
and  of    national  loans  enabled  the  despotic    governments   to 


APPENDIX. 


617 


maintain  large  permanent  armies  of  those  living  machines  to 
stifle  Right  and  to  perpetuate  Wrong — for  such  the  soldiers 
have  proved  themselves  to  be  under  despotism,  and  as  such 
they  are  regarded  by  the  oppressed  populations:  but  should 
the  soldiery  of  a  Republic  be  vile  living  machines  f 

Two  main  points  we  have  to  analyze  in  this  investigation — 
the  first  is  Right,  and  the  next  is  Authority. 

Right  is  that  which  is  good,  true,  honorable,  just,  humane, 
self-sacrificing — it  is  the  precise  opposite  to  Wrong.  Right 
is  immutable;  as  it  was,  so  it  is  and  so  it  always  must  be. 
Circumstances  cannot  change  it.  It  never  was  right  to  lie. 
cheat,  oppress,  rob,  or  murder — it  never  can  be  right  to  do  so 
— no  legal  subterfuge,  no  oratory,  no  public  or  private  engage- 
ments, no  theological  interpretations,  no  arbitary  laws,  no 
government  orders,  no  military  commands  can  transform 
Wrong  into  Right.  Oppression  may  trample  under  foot  the 
devotees  of  Right — may  calumniate,  pillage,  imprison,  and  even 
butcher  them — yet  that  will  not  alter  Right,  though  Wrong 
may  be  made  more  hideous.  The  weaker  disciples  of  Right 
may  quail  and  hesitate  before  dangers,  privations,  and  suffer- 
ings—  some  indeed  may  abandon  Right  —  yet  Right  itself 
cannot  alter,  though  it  may  shine  more  beautiful  under  per- 
secution. Between  Right  and  Wrong  there  can  be  no  com- 
promise. 

Authority  is  of  two  sorts:  Legitimate  and  Illegitimate. 

Legitimate  Authority  is  based  on  Reason  and  Equity;  it 
must  spring  from,  and  always  be  controlled  by,  the  People  ;  its 
object  is  the  benefit  of  the  People  by  the  maintenance  of  justice, 
the  diffusion  of  education  and  knowledge,  the  advancement  of 
civilization,  the  repression  of  violence,  the  reclamation  of  vice 
and  the  development  of  Humanity.  Though  authority  may  be 
filched  through  a  Party  frenzied  by  some  delusion,  even  that 
power  would  not  be  legitimate,  for  no  portion  of  any  nation 
can  annul  the  Rights  of  Man — no  majority  can  rightfully  sacri- 
fice the  freedom  and  well-being  of  any  one  fellow  man  or  pos- 
terity. Man  cannot  take  or  give  that  which  is  not  his.  The 
test,  therefore,  of  Legitimate  Authority  is  Right,  and  to  main- 


^l8  JOHN    BROWN. 

tain  that  authority  soldiers  are  not  required  to  be  mere  livi)ig 
machines. 

Illegitimate  Authority  is  founded  on  fraud  and  violence  :  it 
is  created  by  a  despot,  an  oligarchy,  or  the  leaders  of  a  party, 
and  is  used  for  the  benefit  of  some  usurpation.  Under  the 
plausible  pretext  of  acting  for  the  public  good,  of  repelling 
some  enemy,  of  checking  party  rancor,  of  maintaining  law  and 
order  purposely  disturbed,  illegitimate  authority  has  frequently 
been  established  in  formerly  happy  communities,  and  the  usur- 
pation having  seized  the  reins  of  government  has  hoped  to  per- 
petuate its  domination  by  the  distribution  of  lucrative  offices, 
and  by  the  hiring  of  living  machines.  The  dominant  party 
may  boast,  rejoice,  and  fatten,  while  mercenary  scribes  and 
orators  flatter :  but  under  such  misrule  the  nation  degenerates, 
violence  becomes  habitual,  ignorance  prevails,  want  nurtures 
crime,  the  tribunals  become  corrupt,  vice  revels  and  virtue  is 
persecuted,  the  people,  awaking  under  the  smart  of  des- 
potism, soon  realize  the  difficulty  of  self-emancipation  while 
ground  down  by  the  living  machines  set  in  motion  by 
illegitimate  authority.  Will  the  soldiery  of  a  Republic  consent 
to  become  living  machines,  and  thus  sustain  Wrong  against 
Right? 

It  is  self-evident  that  "  There  can  exist  no  moral  obligation 
to  do  that  which  is  immoral — no  virtuous  obligation  to  do  that 
which  is  vicious — no  religious  obligation  to  do  that  which  is 
irreligious."  It  is  also  self-evident  that  every  citizen  is  in  duty 
bound  to  sustain  Right  even  though  he  thereby  neglect  tem- 
porarily some  of  his  private  business:  he  who  regards  his  per- 
sonal interests  as  of  more  importance  to  him  than  to  exercise  a 
watchfulness  at  all  times  for  the  public  good  and  for  the  secur- 
ity of  Right  against  Wrong,  fails  in  an  essential  duty  toward, 
the  commonwealth.  The  Greeks  decreed  that  all  guilty  of  such 
neglect  of  duty  were  infamous:  they  were  deprived  of  that 
citizenship  which  they  had  shown  themselves  unworthy  to 
enjoy,  their  property,  which  they  had  preferred  to  the  public 
welfare,  was  confiscated,  and  they  were  reduced  to  the  lowest 
state  of  degradation. 


APPENDIX.  619 

THE    BROWN    PAPERS. 

[Found  in  the  carpet-bag  captured  at  the  Virginia  Ji ill- 
side  sc/iool-/wuse.~\ 

Consisting  of  the  Journal  of  the  Constitutional  Convention  at 
Chatham,  Canada,  W.  ;  Brown's  Declaration  of  Independence  ; 
Kagi's  Draft  for  a  Provisional  Army;  Correspondence  and 
Plans  of  Brown's  Men  ;  Letters  from  their  friends,  and  from 
persons  furnishing  means;  Memoranda,  Mints,  and  Sugges- 
tions; Extracts  from  Letters,  Diaries,  and  Journals;  Commis- 
sions issued  under  the  Provisional  Army  regulations  ;  Lists  of 
Members  of  the  Provisional  Convention  and  Government, 
etc.,  etc. — Copied  from  the  Originals  at  Charlestown,  by  order 
of  Executive  Department  of  the  State  of  Virginia. — November 
16,  1859. 

[Document  No.  I,  Appendix  to  Message  I,  Documents 
relative  to  the  Harper's  Ferry  Invasion.] 

Copy  of  the  Constitution,  adopted  at  Chatham,  May  8, 
1858. 


PROVISIONAL    CONSTITUTION    AND     ORDINANCE 
FOR  THE  PEOPLE  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES. 

PREAMBLE. 

Whereas,  slavery  throughout  its  entire  existence  in  the  United 
States,  is  none  other  than  a  most  barbarous,  unprovoked,  and 
unjustifiable  war  of  one  portion  of  its  citizens  upon  another 
portion,  the  only  conditions  of  which  are  perpetual  imprison- 
ment and  hopeless  servitude  or  absolute  extermination  ;  in  utter 
disregard  and  violation  of  those  eternal  and  self-evident  truths 
set  forth  in  our  Declaration  of  Independence  :  Therefore 

We,  citizens  of  the  United  States,  and  the  Oppressed  People, 
who,  by  a  recent  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court  are  declared 
to  have  no  rights  which  the  White  Man  is  bound  to  respect  ; 
together  with  all  other  people  degraded  by  the  laws  then 
Do,  for  the  time  being  ordain  and  establish  ourselves,  the  fol- 
lowing   PROVISIONAL   CONSTITUTION    and    ORDINANCES,  the 


620  JOHN    BROWN. 

better  to  protect  our  Persons,  Property,  Lives,  and  Liberties ; 
and  to  govern  our  actions  : 

Article  I. 

QUALIFICATIONS   FOR   MEMBERSHIP. 

All  persons  of  mature  age,  whether  Proscribed,  oppressed, 
and  enslaved  Citizens,  or  of  the  Proscribed  and  oppressed 
races  on  the  United  States,  who  shall  agree  to  sustain  and 
enforce  the  Provisional  Constitution  and  Ordinance  of  this 
organization,  together  with  all  minor  children  of  such  persons, 
shall  be  held  to  be  fully  entitled  to  protection  under  the  same, 

Article  II. 

BRANCHES   OF   GOVERNMENT. 

The  provisional  government  of  this  organization  shall  con- 
sist of  three  branches,  viz. :  Legislative,  Executive,  and 
Judicial. 

Article  III. 

LEGISLATIVE. 

The  legislative  branch  shall  be  a  Congress  or  House  of 
Representatives,  composed  of  not  less  than  five,  nor  more  than 
ten  members,  who  shall  be  elected  by  all  the  citizens  of  mature 
age  and  of  sound  mind,  connected  with  this  organization  ;  and 
who  shall  remain  in  office  for  three  years,  unless  sooner 
removed  for  misconduct,  inability,  or  by  death.  A  majority  of 
such  members  shall  constitute  a  quorum. 

Article  IV. 

executive. 

The  executive  branch  of  this  organization  shall  consist  of 
a  President  and  Vice-President,  who  shall  be  chosen  by  the 
citizens  or  members  of  this  organization,  and  each  of  whom 
shall  hold  his  office  for  three  years,  unless  sooner  removed  by 
death,  or  for  inability  or  misconduct. 


APPENDIX.  621 

Article  V. 

JUDICIAL. 

The  judicial  branch  of  this  organization  shall  consist  of  one 
Chief-Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  of  four  Associate 
Judges  of  said  Court;  each  constituting  a  Circuit  Court.  Thej 
shall  each  be  chosen  in  the  same  manner  as  the  President,  and 
shall  continue  in  office  until  their  places  have  been  filled  in 
the  same  manner  by  election  of  the  citizens.  Said  court  shall 
have  jurisdiction  in  all  civil  or  criminal  causes,  arising  under 
this  constitution,  except  breaches  of  the  Rules  of  War. 

Article  VI. 

VALIDITY    OF    ENACTMENTS. 

All  enactments  of  the  legislative  branch  shall,  to  become  valid 
during  the  first  three  years,  have  the  approbation  of  the  Presi- 
dent and  of  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  Army. 

Article  VII. 

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 

A  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army  shall  be  chosen  by  the 
President,  Vice-President,  a  majority  of  the  Provisional  Con- 
gress, and  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  he  shall  receive  his  com- 
mission from  the  President,  signed  by  the  Vice-President,  the 
Chief-Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  the  Secretary  of  War  : 
and  he  shall  hold  his  office  for  three  years,  unless  removed  by 
death,  or  on  proof  of  incapacity  or  misbehavior.  He  shall, 
unless  under  arrest  (and  till  his  place  is  actually  filled  as  pro- 
vided for  by  this  constitution)  direct  all  movements  of  the 
army,  and  advise  with  any  allies.  lie  shall,  however,  be  tried, 
removed,  or  punished,  on  complaint  to  the  President,  by,  at 
least,  three  general  officers,  or  a  majority  of  the  House  of 
Representatives,  or  of  the  Supreme  Court;  which  House  of 
Representatives  (the  President  presiding);  the  Vice  President, 
and  the  members  of  the  Supreme  Court,  shall  constitute  a 
court-martial,  for  his  trial  ;  with  power  to  remove  or  punish, 
as  the  case  may  require  ;  and  to  fill  his  place  as  above  pro- 
vided. 


622  JOHN    BROWN. 

Article  VIII. 

OFFICERS. 

A  Treasurer,  Secretary  of  State,  Secretary  of  War,  and  Sec- 
retary of  the  Treasury,  shall  each  be  chosen  for  the  first  three 
years,  in  the  same  way  and  manner  as  the  Commander-in- 
Chief;  subject  to  trial  or  removal  on  complaint  of  the  Presi- 
dent, Vice-President,  or  Commander-in-Chief,  to  the  Chief- 
Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court ;  or  on  complaint  of  the  majority 
of  the  members  ot  said  court,  or  the  Provisional  Congress. 
The  Supreme  Court  shall  have  power  to  try  or  punish  either  of 
those  officers  ;  and  their  places  shall  be  rilled  as  before. 

Article  IX. 

SECRETARY   OF   WAR. 

The  Secretary  of  War  shall  be  under  the  immediate  direc- 
tion of  the  Commander-in-Chief;  who  may  temporarily  fill  his 
place,  in  case  of  arrest,  or  of  any  inability  to  serve. 

Article  X. 

CONGRESS   OR   HOUSE  OF    REPRESENTATIVES. 

The  House  of  Representatives  shall  make  ordinances  for  the 
appointment  (by  the  President  or  otherwise)  of  all  civil  officers 
excepting  those  already  named ;  and  shall  have  power  to 
make  all  laws  and  ordinances  for  the  general  good,  not  incon- 
sistent with  this  Constitution  and  these  ordinances. 

Article  XI. 

APPROPRIATION    OF   MONEY,   ETC 

The  Provisional  Congress  shall  have  power  to  appropriate 
money  or  other  property  actually  in  the  hands  of  the  Treas- 
urer, to  any  object  calculated  to  promote  the  general  good,  so 
far  as  may  be  consistent  with  the  provisions  of  this  Constitu- 
tion;  and  may  in  certain  cases,  appropriate,  for  a  moderate 
compensation  of  agents,  or  persons  not  members  of  this  organi- 
zation, for  important  service  they  are  known  to  have  rendered. 


APPENDIX.  623 

Article  XII. 

SPECIAL    DUTIES. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  Congress  to  provide  for  the  instant 
removal  of  any  civil  officer  or  policeman,  who  becomes  habitu- 
ally intoxicated,  or  who  is  addicted  to  other  immoral  conduct, 
or  to  any  neglect  or  unfaithfulness  in  the  discharge  of  his 
official  duties.  Congress  shall  also  be  a  standing  committee 
of  safety,  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining  important  information  ; 
and  shall  be  in  constant  communication  with  the  Commander- 
in-Chief ;  the  members  of  which  shall  each,  as  also  the  Presi- 
dent, Vice-President,  members  of  the  Supreme  Court,  and 
Secretary  of  State,  have  full  power  to  issue  warrants  return- 
able as  Congress  shall  ordain  (naming  witnesses,  etc.)  upon 
their  own  information,  without  the  formality  of  a  complaint. 
Complaint  shall  be  made  immediately  after  arrest,  and  before 
trial ;  the  party  arrested  to  be  served  with  a  copy  at  once. 

Article   XIII. 

TRIAL   OF    PRESIDENT    AND    OTHER  OFFICERS. 

The  President  and  Vice-President  may  either  of  them  be 
tried,  removed,  or  punished,  on  complaint  made  to  the  Chief- 
Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court,  by  a  majority  of  the  House  of 
Representatives,  which  House,  together  with  the  Associate 
Judges  of  the  Supreme  Court,  the  whole  to  be  presided  over 
by  the  Chief-Justice  in  cases  of  the  trial  of  the  Vice-President, 
shall  have  full  power  to  try  such  officers,  to  remove,  or  punish 
as  the  case  may  require,  and  to  fill  any  vacancy  so  occurring, 
the  same  as  in  the  case  of  the  Commander-in-Chief. 

Article   XIV. 

TRIAL  OF  MEMBERS  OF  CONGRESS. 

The  members  of  the  House  of  Representatives  may  any  and 
all  of  them  be  tried,  and  on  conviction,  removed  or  punished 
on  complaint  before  the  Chief-Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
made  by  any  number  of  members  of  said  House,  exceeding  one- 
third,  which  House,   with   the  Vice-President   and  Associate 


624 


JOHN    BROWN. 


Judges  of  the  Supreme  Court,  shall  constitute  the  proper  tri- 
bunal, with  power  to  fill  such  vacancies. 

Article   XV. 

IMPEACHMENT  OF  JUDGES. 
Any  member  of  the  Supreme  Court,  tried,  convicted,  or  pun- 
ished by  removal  or  otherwise,  on  complaint  to  the  President, 
who  shall,  in  such  case,  preside  ;  the  Vice-President,  House  of 
Representatives,  and  other  members  of  the  Supreme  Court, 
constituting  the  proper  tribunal  (with  power  to  fill  vacancies) ; 
on  complaint  of  a  majority  of  said  House  of  Representatives, 
or  of  the  Supreme  Court ;  a  majority  of  the  whole  having  power 
to  decide. 

Article   XVI. 

DUTIES  OF  PRESIDENT  AND  SECRETARY  OF  STATE. 
The  President,  with  the  Secretary  of  State,  shall  immediately 
upon  entering  on  the  duties  of  their  office,  give  special  atten- 
tion to  secure,  from  amongst  their  own  people,  men  of  integrity, 
intelligence,  and  good  business  habits  and  capacity  ;  and  above 
all,  of  first-rate  moral  and  religious  character  and  influence,  to 
act  as  civil  officers  of  every  description  and  grade,  as  well  as 
teachers,  chaplains,  physicians,  surgeons,  mechanics,  agents  of 
every  discription,  clerks,  and  messengers.  They  shall  make 
special  efforts  to  induce  at  the  earliest  possible  period,  persons 
and  families  of  that  description,  to  locate  themselves  within  the 
limits  secured  by  this  organization;  and  shall,  moreover,  from 
time  to  time,  supply  the  names  and  residence  of  such  persons 
to  the  Congress,  for  their  special  notice  and  information,  as 
among  the  most  important  of  their  duties,  and  the  President  is 
hereby  authorized  and  empowered  to  afford  special  aid  to  such 
individuals,  from  such  moderate  appropriations  as  the  Congress 
shall  be  able  and  may  deem  it  advisable  to  make  for  that  ob- 
ject. The  President  and  Secretary  of  State,  and  in  cases  of 
disagreement,  the  Vice-President  shall  appoint  all  civil  offi- 
cers, but  shall  not  have  power  to  remove  any  officer.  All  re- 
movals shall  be  the  result  of  a  fair  trial,  whether  civil  or 
military. 


APPENDIX.  625 

Article   XVII. 

FURTHER     DUTIES. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  President  and  Secretary  of  State, 
to  find  out  (as  soon  as  possible)  the  real  friends,  as  well  as  the 
enemies  of  this  organization  in  every  part  of  the  country ;  to 
secure  among  them,  innkeepers,  private  postmasters,  private 
mail-contractors,  messengers,  and  agents:  through  whom  may 
be  obtained  correct  and  regular  information,  constantly  ;  recruits 
for  the  service,  places  of  deposit  and  sale ;  together  with  all 
needed  supplies :  and  it  shall  be  matter  of  special  regard  to 
secure  such  facilities  through  the  Northern  States. 

Article    XVIII. 

DUTIES   OF   THE   PRESIDENT. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  President,  as  well  as  the  House  of 
Representatives,  at  all  times,  to  inform  the  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  any  matter  that  may  require  his  attention,  or  that  may 
affect  the  public  safety. 

Article   XIX. 

DUTY   OF    PRESIDENT — CONTINUED. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  President  to  see  that  the  provi- 
sional ordinances  of  this  organization,  and  those  made  by  Con- 
gress, are  promptly  and  faithfully  executed  ;  and  he  may  in  cases 
of  great  urgency  call  on  the  Commander-in-Chief  of  the  army, 
or  other  officers  for  aid  ;  it  being,  however,  intended  that  a 
sufficient  civil  police  shall  always  be  in  readiness  to  secure 
implicit  obedience  to  law. 

Article   XX. 

THE   VICE-PRESIDENT. 

The  Vice-President  shall  be  the  presiding  officer  of  the  Pro- 
visional Congress ;  and  in  cases  of  tie  shall  give  the  casting 
vote. 


626  JOHN    BROWN. 

Article    XXI. 

VACANCIES. 

In  case  of  death,  removal,  or  inability  of  the  President,  the 
Vice-President,  and  next  to  him  the  Chief-Justice  of  the 
Supreme  Court,  shall  be  the  President  during  the  remainder  of 
the  term  :  and  the  place  of  Chief-Justice  thus  made  vacant 
shall  be  filled  by  Congress  from  some  of  the  members  of  said 
court;  and  places  of  the  Vice-President  and  Associate  Justice 
thus  made  vacant,  filled  by  an  eleclion  by  the  united  action  of 
the  Provisional  Congress  and  members  of  the  Supreme  Court. 
All  other  vacancies,  not  hertofore  specially  provided  for,  shall, 
during  the  first  three  years,  be  filled  by  the  united  action  of  the 
President,  Vice-President,  Supreme  Court,  and  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  the  Army. 

Article   XXII. 

PUNISHMENT    OF    CRIMES. 

The  punishment  of  crimes  not  capital,  except  in  case  of  in- 
subordinate convicts  or  other  prisoners,  shall  be  (so  far  as  may 
be)  by  hard  labor  on  the  public  works,  roads,  etc. 

Article    XXIII. 

ARMY   APPOINTMENTS. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  all  commissioned  officers  of  the  army 
to  name  candidates  of  merit  for  office  or  elevation  to  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief, who,  with  the  Secretary  of  War,  and,  in 
cases  of  disagreement,  the  President,  shall  be  the  appointing 
power  of  the  army :  and  all  commissions  of  military  officers 
shall  bear  the  signatures  of  the  Commander-in-Chief  and  the 
Secretary  of  War.  And  it  shall  be  the  special  duty  of  the 
Secretary  of  War  to  keep  for  constant  reference  of  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief a  full  list  of  names  of  persons  nominated  for 
office,  or  elevation,  by  the  officers  of  the  army,  with  the  name 
and  rank  of  the  officer  nominating,  stating  distinctly  but  briefly 
the  grounds  for  such  notice  or  nomination.  The  Commander- 
in-Chief  shall  not  have  power  to  remove  or  punish  any  officer 
or  soldier ;  but  he  may  order  their  arrest  and  trial  at  any  time, 
by  court-martial. 


APPENDIX.  627 

Article   XXIV. 

COURTS-MARTIAL. 

Courts- martial  for  Companies,  Regiments,  Brigades,  etc., 
shall  be  called  by  the  chief  officer  of  each  command,  on  com- 
plaint to  him  by  any  officer,  or  any  rive  privates,  in  such  com- 
mand, and  shall  consist  of  not  less  than  five  nor  more  than  nine 
officers,  non-commissioned  officers,  and  privates,  one-half  of 
whom  shall  not  be  lower  in  rank  than  the  person  on  trial,  to 
be  chosen  by  the  three  highest  officers  in  the  command,  which 
officers  shall  not  be  a  part  of  such  court.  The  chief  officer  of 
any  command  shall,  of  course,  be  tried  by  a  court-martial  of 
the  command  above  his  own.  All  decisions  affecting  the  lives 
of  persons,  or  office  of  persons  holding  commission,  must,  be- 
fore taking  full  effect,  have  the  signature  of  the  Commander- 
in-Chief,  who  may  also,  on  the  recommendation  of,  at  least, 
one-third  of  the  members  of  the  court-martial  rinding  any  sen- 
tence, grant  a  reprieve  or  commutation  of  the  same. 

Article  XXV. 

SALARIES. 

No  person  connected  with  this  organization  shall  be  entitled 
to  any  salary,  pay,  or  emolument,  other  than  a  competent  sup- 
port of  himself  and  family,  unless  it  be  from  an  equal  divi- 
dend, made  of  public  property,  on  the  establishment  of  peace, 
or  of  special  provision  by  treaty;  which  provision  shall  be  made 
for  all  persons  who  may  have  been  in  any  active  civil  or  military 
service  at  any  time  previous  to  any  hostile  action  for  Liberty 
and  Equality. 

Article  XXVI. 

TREATIES  OF    PEACE. 

Before  any  treaty  of  peace  shall  take  full  effect,  it  shall  be 
signed  by  the  President  and  Vice-President,  the  Commander- 
in-Chief,  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Representatives,  a  major- 
ity of  the  Supreme  Court,  and  majority  of  all  general  officers 
of  the  army. 


628  JOHN    BROWN. 

Article  XXVII. 

DUTY    OF   THE   MILITARY. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  Commander-in-Chief,  and  all 
officers  and  soldiers  of  the  army,  to  afford  special  protection 
when  needed,  to  Congress,  or  any  member  thereof ;  to  the 
Supreme  Court,  or  any  member  thereof;  to  the  President, 
Vice-President,  Treasurer,  Secretary  of  State,  Secretary  of 
Treasury,  and  Secretary  of  War ;  and  to  afford  general  protec- 
tion to   all   civil  officers,  other  persons  having  right    to   the 

same. 

Article  XXVIII. 

PROPERTY. 

All  captured  or  confiscated  property,  and  all  property  the 
product  of  the  labor  of  those  belonging  to  this  organization 
and  of  their  families,  shall  be  held  as  the  property  of  the 
whole,  equally,  without  distinction  ;  and  may  be  used  for  the 
common  benefit,  or  disposed  of  for  the  same  object ;  and  any 
person,  officer  or  otherwise,  who  shall  improperly  retain, 
secret,  use,  or  needlessly  destroy  such  property,  or  property 
found,  captured,  or  confiscated,  belonging  to  the  enemy,  or 
shall  willfully  neglect  to  render  a  full  and  fair  statement  of 
such  property  by  him  so  taken  or  held,  shall  be  deemed  guilty 
of  a  misdemeanor  and,  on  conviction,  shall  be  punished 
accordingly. 

Article  XXIX. 

SAFETY  OR  INTELLIGENCE  FUND. 
All  money,  plate,  watches,  or  jewelry,  captured  by  honor- 
able warfare,  found,  taken,  or  confiscated,  belonging  to  the 
enemy,  shall  be  held  sacred,  to  constitute  a  liberal  safety  or 
intelligence  fund  ;  and  any  person  who  shall  improperly  retain 
dispose  of,  hide,  use,  or  destroy  such  money  or  other  article 
above  named,  contrary  to  the  provisions  and  spirit  of  this 
article,  shall  be  deemed  guilty  of  theft,  and,  on  conviction 
thereof,  shall  be  punished  accordingly.  The  Treasurer  shall 
furnish  the  Commander-in-Chief  at  all  times  with  a  full  state- 
ment of  the  condition  of  such  fund  and  its  nature. 


APPENDIX.  629 

Article  XXX. 

THE  COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF    AND   THE  TREASURY. 

The  Commander-in-Chief  shall  have  power  to  draw  from 
the  Treasury  the  money  and  other  property  of  the  fund  pro- 
vided for  in  ARTICLE  twenty-ninth,  but  his  orders  shall  be 
signed  also  by  the  Secretary  of  War,  who  shall  keep  strict 
account  of  the  same;  subject  to  examination  by  any  member  of 
Congress,  or  general  officer. 

Article   XXXI. 

SURPLUS   OF   THE   SAFETY   OR    INTELLIGENCE    FUND. 

It  shall  be  the  duty  of  the  Commander-in-Chief  to  advise 
the  President  of  any  surplus  of  the  Safety  or  Intelligence  Fund; 
who  shall  have  power  to  draw  such  surplus  (his  order  being 
also  signed  by  the  Secretary  of  State)  to  enable  him  to  carry 
out  the  provisions  of  Article  Seventeenth. 

Article  XXXII. 

PRISONERS. 

No  person,  after  having  surrendered  himself  or  herself  a 
prisoner,  and  who  shall  properly  demean  himself  or  herself  as 
such,  to  any  officer  or  private  connected  with  this  organization, 
shall  afterward  be  put  to  death,  or  be  subject  to  any  corporal 
punishment,  without  first  having  had  the  benefit  of  a  fair  and 
impartial  trial:  nor  shall  any  prisoner  be  treated  with  any  kind 
of  cruelty,  disrespect,  insult,  or  needless  severity:  but  it  shall 
be  the  duty  of  all  persons,  male  and  female,  connected  here- 
with, at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances,  to  treat  all  such 
prisoners  with  every  degree  of  respect  and  kindness  the  nature 
of  the  circumstances  will  admit  of;  and  to  insist  on  a  like 
course  of  conduct  from  all  others,  as  in  the  fear  of  Almighty 
God,  to  whose  care  and  keeping  we  commit  our  cause. 

Article    XXXIII. 

VOLUNTARIES. 

All  persons  who  may  come  forward  and  shall  voluntarily 
deliver  up  their  slaves,  and  have  their  names  registered  on  the 
Books   of  the  organization,  shall,  so  long  as  they  continue  at 


63O  JOHN    BROWN. 

peace,  be  entitled  to  the  fullest  protection  of  person  and  prop- 
erty, though  not  connected  with  this  organization,  and  shall  be 
treated  as  friends,  and  not  merely  as  persons  neutral. 
Article    XXXIV. 

NEUTRALS. 

The  persons  and  property  of  all  non-slaveholders  who  shall 
remain  absolute  neutral,  shall  be  respected  so  far  as  the  cir- 
cumstances can  allow  of  it ;  but  they  shall  not  be  entitled  to 
any  active  protection. 

Article   XXXV. 

NO    NEEDLESS    WASTE. 

The  needless  waste  or  destruction  of  any  useful  property  or 
article,  by  fire,  throwing  open  of  fences,  fields,  buildings,  or 
needless  killing  of  animals,  or  injury  of  either,  shall  not  be 
tolerated  at  any  time  or  place,  but  shall  be  promptly  and  prop- 
erly punished. 

Article  XXXVI. 

PROPERTY    CONFISCATED. 

The  entire  and  real  property  of  all  persons  known  to  be  act- 
ing either  directly  or  indirectly  with  or  for  the  enemy,  or  found 
in  arms  with  them,  or  found  willfully  holding  slaves,  shall  be 
confiscated  and  taken,  whenever  and  wherever  it  may  be  found, 
in  either  free  or  slave  States. 

Article  XXXVII. 

DESERTION. 

Persons  convicted,  on  impartial  trial,  of  desertion  to  the 
enemy  after  becoming  members,  acting  as  spies,  or  of  treacher- 
ous surrender  of  property,  arms,  ammunition,  provisions,  or 
supplies  of  any  kind,  roads,  bridges,  persons,  or  fortifications, 
shall  be  put  to  death  and  their  entire  property  confiscated. 
Article    XXXVIII. 

VIOLATION    OF   PAROLE  OF   HONOR. 
Persons  proven  to  be  guilty  of  taking  up  arms  after  having 
been  set   at   liberty  on  parole  of  honor,  or,  after  the  same,  to 


APPENDIX.  631 

have  taken  any  active  part  with  or  for  the  enemy,  direct  or 
indirect,  shall  be  put  to  death  and  their  entire  property  con- 
fiscated. 

Article  XXXIX. 

A  L  L     M  U  S  T     L  A  15  O  R, 

All  persons  connected  in  any  way  with  this  organization,  and 
who  may  be  entitled  to  full  protection  under  it  :  shall  be  held 
as  under  obligation  to  labor  in  some  way  for  the  general  good  ; 
and  persons  refusing,  or  neglecting  so  to  do,  shall  on  convic- 
tion receive  a  suitable  and  appropriate  punishment. 

Article  XL. 

IRREGULARITIES. 

Profane  swearing,  filthy  conversation,  indecent  behavior,  or 
indecent  exposure  of  the  person,  or  intoxication,  or  quarrelling, 
shall  not  be  allowed  or  tolerated  ;  neither  unlawful  intercourse 
of  the  sexes. 

Article  XLI. 

CRIMES. 

Persons  convicted  of  the  forcible  violation  of  any  female 
prisoner  shall  be  put  to  death. 

Article  XLII. 

THE   MARRIAGE   RELATION — SCHOOLS — THE   SABBATH. 

The  marriage  relation  shall  be  at  all  times  respected  ;  and 
families  kept  together  as  far  as  possible  ;  and  broken  families 
encouraged  to  re-unite,  and  intelligence  offices  established  for 
that  purpose,  schools  and  churches  established,  as  soon  as  may 
be,  for  the  purpose  of  religious  and  other  instructions;  and 
the  first  day  of  the  week  regarded  as  a  day  of  rest  and  appro- 
priated to  moral  and  religious  instruction  and  improvement ; 
relief  to  the  suffering,  instruction  of  the  young  and  ignorant, 
and  the  encouragement  of  personal  cleanliness  ;  nor  shall  any 
persons  be  required  on  that  day  to  perform  ordinary  manual 
labor,  unless  in  extremely  urgent  cases. 


632  JOHN    BROWN. 

Article  XLIII. 

CARRY   ARMS  OPENLY. 

All  persons  known  to  be  of  good  character,  and  of  sound 
mind  and  suitable  age,  who  are  connected  with  this  organiza- 
tion, whether  male  or  female,  shall  be  encouraged  to  carry  arms 
openly. 

Article  XLIV. 

NO  PERSON   TO   CARRY   CONCEALED   WEAPONS. 

No  person  within  the  limits  of  the  conquered  territory,  except 
regularly  appointed  policemen,  express  officers  of  the  army, 
mail  carriers,  or  other  fully  accredited  messengers  of  the  Con- 
gress, President,  Vice-President,  members  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  or  commissioned  officer  of  the  army — and  those  only 
under  peculiar  circumstances — shall  be  allowed,  at  any  time, 
to  carry  concealed  weapons;  and  any  person  not  specially 
authorized  so  to  do,  who  shall  be  found  so  doing,  shall  be 
deemed  a  suspicious  person,  and  may  at  once  be  arrested  by 
any  officer,  soldier,  or  citizen,  without  the  formality  of  a  com- 
plaint or  warrant,  and  may  at  once  be  subjected  to  thorough 
search,  and  shall  have  his  or  her  case  thoroughly  investigated  ; 
and  be  dealt  with  as  circumstances,  on  proof,  shall  require. 

Article  XLV. 

PERSONS  TO    BE   SEIZED. 

Persons  within  the  limits  of  the  territory  holden  by  this 
organization,  not  connected  with  this  organization,  having  arms 
at  all,  concealed  or  otherwise,  shall  be  seized  at  once ;  or  be 
taken  in  charge  of  some  vigilant  officer ;  and  their  case  thor- 
oughly investigated  :  and  it  shall  be  the  duty  of  all  citizens  and 
soldiers,  as  well  as  officers,  to  arrest  such  parties  as  are  named 
in  this  and  the  preceding  Section  or  Article,  without  the  for- 
mality of  complaint  or  warrant :  and  they  shall  be  placed  in 
charge  of  some  proper  officer  for  examination,  or  for  safe 
keeping. 


APPENDIX.  6j3 

Article  XLVI. 

THESE  ARTICLES  NOT  FOR  THE  OVERTHROW  OF  GOV'm'T. 
The  foregoing  Articles  shall  not  be  construed  so  as  in  any 
way  to  encourage  the  overthrow  of  any  State  Government  of 
the  United  States  :  and  look  to  no  dissolution  of  the  Union, 
but  simply  to  Amendment  and  Repeal.  And  our  flag  shall  be 
the  same  that  our  Fathers  fought  under  in  the  Revolution. 

Article  XLVII. 
no  plurality  of  offices. 
No  two  of  the  offices  specially  provided  for,  by  this  Instru- 
ment, shall  be  filled  by  the  same  person,  at  the  same  time. 

Article  XLVI  1 1. 

OATH. 

Every  officer,  civil  or  military,  connected  with  this  organiza- 
tion, shall,  before  entering  upon  the  duties  of  his  office,  make 
solemn  oath  or  affirmation,  to  abide  by  and  support  this 
Provisional  Constitution  and  these  Ordinances.  Also,  every 
Citizen  and  Soldier,  before  being  fully  recognized  as  such,  shall 
do  the  same. 

Schedule. 

The  President  of  this  Convention  shall  convene,  imme- 
diately on  the  adoption  of  this  instrument,  a  convention  of  all 
such  persons  as  shall  have  given  their  adherence,  by  signature, 
to  the  constitution,  the  President  of  this  convention  presiding, 
and  issuing  commissions  to  such  officers  elect  :  all  such  officers 
being  thereafter  elected  in  the  manner  provided  in  the  body  of 
this  instrument. 

Blank  Form  of  Commission  Under  the  Provisional 

Government. 

Greeting: 
Whereas:  has  been  chosen  in  accordance 

with  the  provisions  of  the  schedule  of  the  provisional  constitu- 
tion : 


634  JOHN    BROWN. 

Therefore  :  by  the  authority  vested  in  me  by  said  instrument, 
I  hereby  commission  the  said  under  said  constitu- 

tion. 

Witness  hand  and  the  seal  of  the  convention,  at  this 

day  of  in  the  year  eighteen  hundred  and  fifty- 

eight. 


Pres.  of  the  Convention. 


Journal  of  the  Provisional  Convention  held  on 
Saturday,  May  8th,  1858. 
Chatham,  Canada  West,  Saturday,  May  8th,  1858. 

10  a.  M. — Convention  in  persuance  to  call  of  John  Brown 
and  others,  and  was  called  to  order  by  Mr.  Jackson,  on  whose 
motion  Mr.  Wm.  C.  Monroe  was  chosen  President : 

When,  on  motion  of  Mr.  Brown,  Mr.  J.  H.  Kagi  was  elected 
Secretary. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Delany,  Mr.  Brown  then  proceeded  to 
state  the  object  of  the  convention,  at  length,  and  then  to 
explain  the  general  features  of  the  plan  of  action  in  the  execu- 
tion of  the  project  in  view  by  the  Convention.  Mr.  Delany 
and  others  spoke  in  favor  of  the  project  and  the  plan,  and  both 
were  agreed  to  by  general  consent.   , 

Mr.  Brown  then  presented  a  plan  or  organization,  entitled 
"  Provisional  Constitution  and  Ordinances  for  the  people  of 
the  United  States,"  and  moved  the  reading  of  the  same. 

Mr.  Kinnard  objected  to  the  reading  until  an  oath  of  secrecy 
be  taken  by  each  member  of  the  Convention.     Whereupon, 

Mr.  Delany  moved  that  the  following  parole  be  taken  by  alt 
members  of  the  Convention:  "I  solemnly  affirm  that  I  will 
not  in  any  way  divulge  any  of  the  secrets  of  this  convention, 
except  to  persons  entitled  to  know  the  same,  on  the  pain  of 
forfeiting  the  respect  and  protection  of  this  Organization;" 
which  motion  was  carried. 

The  President  then  proceeded  to  administer  the  obligation, 
after  which 


APPENDIX.  635 

The  question  was  taken  on  the  reading  of  plan  proposed  by 
Mr.  Brown,  and  the  same  carried. 

The  plan  was  then  carried  by  the  Secretary.     After  which 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Whipple,  it  was  ordered  that  it  be  now 
read  by  articles,  for  consideration. 

The  articles  from  one  to  forty-five  inclusive,  were  then  read 
and  adopted.  On  the  reading-  of  the  forty-sixth,  Mr.  Reynolds 
moved  to  strike  out  the  same.  Reynolds  spoke  in  favor,  and 
Brown,  Monroe,  Owen  Brown,  Delany,  Realf,  Kinnard,  and 
Kagi,  against.  The  question  was  then  taken  and  lost,  there 
being  but  one  vote  in  the  affirmative. 

The  article  was  then  adopted.  The  forty-seventh  and  forty- 
eighth  Articles  with  the  schedule,  were  then  adopted  in  the 
same  manner. 

It  was  then  moved  by  Mr.  Delany  that  the  Title  and  Pre- 
amble stand  as  read.     Carried. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Kagi  the  Constitution  as  a  whole  was 
then  unanimously  adopted. 

The  Convention  then,  at  1%  P.  M.,  adjourned,  on  motion  of 
Mr.  Jackson,  till  3  o'clock. 

3  P.  M. — Journal  read  and  approved. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Delany  it  was  then  ordered  that  those 
approving  of  the  Constitution,  as  adopted,  sign  the  same. 
Whereupon  the  names  of  all  the  members  were  appended. 
(See  No.  (91).) 

After  congratulatory  remarks  by  Messrs.  Kinnard  and 
Delany,  the  convention  on  motion  of  Mr.  Whipple,  adjourned, 
at  a  quarter  to  4.  J.  H.  Kagi. 

Sec.  of  tJic  Convention. 

Chatham,  Canada  West,  Saturday,  May  8th,  1858. 
6  P.  M.— In  accordance  with  the  obedience  to  the  provisions 
of  the  schedule  to  the  Constitution  for  the  "  proscribed  and 
oppressed  people  "  of  the  United  States  of  America,  to-day 
adopted  at  this  place,  a  Convention  was  called  by  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  Convention  framing  that  instrument,  and  met  at  the 
above-named  hour,  for  the   purpose  of  electing  officers  to  fill 


636  JOHN    BROWN. 

the  offices   specially   established  and  named  by  said  Consti. 
tution. 

The  Convention  was  called  to  order  by  Mr.  M.  R.  Delany, 
upon  whose  nomination  Mr.  Wm.  C.  Monroe  was  chosen  Pres- 
ident, and  Mr.  J.  H.  Kagi,  Bell,  Cook,  and  Monroe,  was  then 
chosen  to  select  candidates  for  the  various  offices  to  be  filled, 
for  the  consideration  of  the  Convention. 

On  reporting  progress  and  asking  leave  to  set  again,  the 
request  was  refused,  and  the  Committee  discharged. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Bell  the  Convention  went  into  the  election 
of  officers,  in  the  following  manner  and  order. 

Mr.  Whipple  nominated  John  Brown  for  Commander-in- 
Chief,  who  was,  on  the  seconding  of  Mr.  Delany,  elected  by 
acclamation. 

Mr.  Realf  nominated  J.  H.  Kagi  for  Secretary  of  War,  who 
was  elected  in  the  same  manner. 

On  motion  of  Mr.  Brown  the  Convention  then  adjourned  to 
9  A.M.  on  Monday,  the  10th. 


9  a.m. — The  proceedings  of  Convention  of  Saturday  were 
read  and  approved. 

The  President  announced  that  the  business  before  the  Con- 
vention was  the  further  election  of  officers. 

Mr.  Whipple  nominated  Thomas  M.  Kinnard  for  President. 
In  a  speech  of  some  length  Mr.  Kinnard  declined. 

Mr.  Anderson  nominated  J.  W.  Loguen  for  the  same  office. 
The  nomination  was  afterwards  withdrawn,  Mr.  Loguen  not 
being  present,  and  it  being  announced  that  he  would  not  serve 
if  elected. 

Mr.  Brown  then  moved  to  postpone  the  election  of  President 
for  the  present.     Carried. 

The  Convention  then  went  into  the  election  of  Members  of 
Congress.  Messrs.  Alfred  M.  Ellsworth  and  Osborn  Anderson 
were  elected. 

After  which  the  Convention  went  into  the  election  of  Secre- 
tary of  State,  to  which  office  Richard  Realf  was  chosen. 

Whereupon  the  Convention  adjourned  to  1%  p.m. 


APPENDIX.  637 

2^  P.M. — Convention  again  assembled,  and  went  into  a 
balloting-  for  the  election  of  Treasurer  and  Secretary  of  the 
Treasury.  Owen  Brown  was  elected  as  the  former,  and  George 
B.  Gill  as  the  latter. 

The  following  resolution  was  then  introduced  by  Mr.  Brown, 
and  unanimously  passed: 

Resolved,  that  John  Brown,  J.  II.  Kagi,  Richard  Realf, 
L.  F.  Parsons,  C.  P.  Tidcl,  E.  Whipple,  C.  W.  Moffet,  John  E. 
Cook,  Owen  Brown,  Stewart  Taylor,  Osborn  Anderson,  A.  ML 
Ellsworth,  Richard  Richardson,  W.  H.  Leeman,  and  John 
Lawrence,  be,  and  are  hereby  appointed  a  Committee  to  whom 
is  delegated  the  power  of  the  Convention  to  fill  by  election  all 
the  offices  specially  named  in  the  Provisional  Constitution 
which  may  be  vacant  after  the  adjournment  of  this  Convention. 
The  Convention  then  adjourned  sine  die. 

(See  No.  (78).)  J.  H.  Kagi, 

Sec.  of  the  Convention. 


4th,  1859. 

A  DECLARATION  OF  LIBERTY  BY  THE  REPRE- 
SENTATIVES OF  THE  SLAVE  POPULATION  OF 
THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA. 

"  When  in  the  course  of  Human  events,  it  becomes  neces- 
sary "  for  an  oppressed  People  to  Rise,  and  assert  their  Natural 
Rights,  as  Human  Beings,  as  Native  and  Mutual  Citizens  of  a 
free  Republic,  and  break  that  odious  yoke  of  oppression, 
which  is  so  unjustly  laid  upon  them  by  their  fellow  country- 
men, "  and  to  assume  among  the  powers  of  Earth  the  same 
equal  privileges  to  which  the  Laws  of  Nature,  and  nature's  God 
entitle,  them  ;  A  moderate  respect  for  the  opinions  of  Man- 
kind, requires  that  they  should  declare  the  causes  which  incite 
them  to  this  Just  &  worthy  action. 

"We  hold  these  truths  to  be  Self  Evident ;  That  all  men  are 
created  Equal ;  That  they  are  endowed  by  the  Creator  with 
certain  unalienable  rights.  That  among  these  are  Life,  Liberty; 
&  pursuit   of  happiness,  "  That  nature  hath  freely  given  to  all 


638  JOHN    BROWN. 

Men,  a  full  supply  of  Air,  Water,  and  Land  ;  for  their  susti- 
nance,  &  mutual  happiness.  That  No  Man  has  any  right  to 
deprive  his  fellow  Man,  of  these  Inherent  rights  in  punishment 
of  crime.  "  That  to  secure  these  rights  governments  are  insti- 
tuted among  men,  deriving  their  Just  powers  from  the  consent 
of  the  governed.  That  when  any  form  of  government,  becomes 
destructive  to  these  ends,  It  is  the  right  of  the  People,  to  alter 
Amend,  or  Remoddel  it,  Laying  its  foundation  on  such  Prin- 
ciples, &  organizing  its  powers  in  such  form  as  to  them  shall 
seem  most  likely  to  affect  the  safety,  &  happiness "  of  the 
Human  Race.  To  secure  equal  rights,  privileges,  &  Justice  to 
all;  Irrespective  of  Sex;  or  Nation;  To  secure  Fraternal 
kindness  to  all  Friends  of  Equal  Moral  privileges,  to  all  who 
honestly  abandon  their  Despotic  oppressive  rule.  We  hold 
this  truth  to  be  self  evident :  That  it  is  the  highest  Privilege,  & 
Plain  duty  of  Man ;  to  strive  in  every  reasonable  way,  to 
promote  the  Happiness,  Mental,  Moral,  &  Physical  elevation  of 
his  fellow  Man.  And  that  People,  or  Clanish  oppressors  ;  who 
wickedly  violate  this  sacred  principle  ;  oppressing  their  fellow 
Men,  will  bring  upon  themselves  that  certain  and  fearful  retri- 
bution, which  is  the  Natural,  &  Necessary  penalty  of  evil 
Doing.  "  Prudence,  indeed  will  dictate,  that  Governments  long 
established,  should  not  be  changed  for  light  &  transient 
causes;  But  when  a  long  train  of  abuses,  &  usurpations,  pursu- 
ing invariably  the  same  object ;  evince  a  design  to  perpetrate 
an  absolute  Despotism  ;  and  most  cruel  bondage;  It  is  theii 
Right,  it  is  their  Duty,  to  resist  &  change  such  Government, 
&  provide  safeguards  for  their  future  Liberty."  Such  has  been 
the  patient  sufferance  of  the  slaves  of  the  United  States,  ano. 
such  is  now  the  necessity  which  constrains  them  to  Crush  this 
foul  system  of  oppression. 

"  The  history  of  Slavery  in  the  United  States,  is  a  history  of 
injustice  and  cruelties  inflicted  upon  the  Slave  in  every  con- 
ceivable way,  and  in  barbarity  not  surpassed  by  the  most 
savage  Tribes.  It  is  the  embodiment  of  all  that  is  Evil,  and 
ruinous  to  a  Nation  ;  and  subversive  of  all  Good.  "  In  proof  of 
which ;  facts  innumerable  have  been  submitted  to  the  People, 


APPENDIX.  639 

and  have  received  the  verdict  and  condemnation  of  a  candid  and 
Impartial  World."  Our  Servants  ;  Members  of  Congress  ;  and 
other  servants  of  the  People,  who  receive  exorbitant  wages, 
from  the  People  ;  in  return  for  their  unjust  Rule,  "have  refused 
to  pass  laws  for  the  accommodation  of  large  districts  of 
People,  unless  that  People,  would  relinquish  the  right  of 
representation  in  the  Legislation,  a  right  inestimable  of  them, 
and  formidable  to  tyrants  only.  Our  President  and  other 
Leeches  have  called  together  legislative,  or  treasonable  Bodies, 
at  places  unusual,  uncomfortable,  and  distant  from  the  deposi- 
tory of  our  public  records ;  for  the  sole  purpose  of  fatigueing 
us  into  compliance  with  their  measures.  They  have  desolved 
Representative  houses,  for  opposing  with  manly  firmness,  their 
invasions  of  the  rights  of  the  people. 

"  They  have  refused  to  grant  Petitions  presented  by  numer- 
ous and  respectable  Citizens,  asking  redress  of  grievances  im- 
posed upon  us,  demanding  our  Liberty  and  natural  rights. 
With  contempt  they  spurn  our  humble  petitions;  and  have 
failed  to  pass  laws  for  our  relief.  "  They  have  prevented  in  all 
possible  ways,  the  administration  of  Justice  to  the  Slave.  They 
have  made  Judges  like  Taney  dependent  on  their  will  alone, 
for  the  tenure  of  their  office,  and  the  amount  and  payment  of 
their  salaries.  They  have  erected  a  Multitude  of  new  offices, 
and  Sent  on  Swarms  of  Blood  Suckers,  and  Moths,  to  harass 
the  People,  and  eat  out  their  Substance.  They  have  affected 
to  render  the  Military,  independent  of,  and  superior  to  the 
power  and  wishes  of  the  people,  (the  Civil  power.)  Claiming 
that  knowledge  is  power,  they  have,  (for  their  own  safety,) 
kept  us  in  total  darkness,  and  Ignorance,  inflicting  base 
cruelties,  for  any  attempt  on  our  part  to  obtain  knowledge. 
They  have  protected  base  Men,  Pirates  (engaged  in  a  most 
Inhuman  traffic;  The  Foreign;  and  Domestic  Slave  Trade.) 
"by  mock  trials,  from  punishment,  for  unprovoked  murders 
which  they  have  committed  upon  us,  and  free  Citizens  of  the 
States.  They  have  prevented  by  law,  our  having  any  Traffic 
or  deal  with  our  fellow  Men  ;  Regardless  of  our  wishes,  they 
declare  themselves  invested  with  power  to  legislate  for  us  in 


640  JOHN    BROWN. 

all  cases  whatsoever.  They  have  abdicated  government 
among  us,  by  declaring  us  out  of  their  protection,  and  waging 
a  worse  than  cruel  war  upon  us  continually. 

"  The  facts  and  full  description  of  the  enormous  sin  of 
Slavery,  may  be  found  in  the  General  History  of  American 
Slavery,  which  is  a  history  of  repeated  injuries,  of  base  hypo- 
cracy  ;  A  cursed  treasonable,  usurpation  ;  The  most  abominable 
provoking  atrocities ;  which  are  but  a  mockery  of  all  that  is 
Just,  or  worthy  of  any  people.  "  Such  cruelty,  tyrany,  and  per- 
fidy, has  hardly  a  parallel,  in  the  history  of  the  most  barbarous 
ages. 

"Our  Servants,  or  Law  makers;  are  totally  unworthy  the 
name  of  Half  Civilized  Men.  All  their  National  acts,  (which 
apply  to  slavery,)  are  false,  to  the  words  Spirit,  and  intention, 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  and  the  Declaration 
of  Independence. 

"  They  say  by  word  &  Act,  That  their  own  Children,  or  any 
faithful  Citizen,  may  be  legally  robed  of  every  Natural  and 
Sacred  Right,  and  that  we  had  no  rights  whatever.  They  are 
a  blot  upon  the  character,  the  honor,  of  any  Nation,  which 
claims  to  have  the  least  shadow  or  spark  of  Civilization  above 
the  lowest,  most  inferior  Canibal  Races.  This  is  a  slight 
though  brief  recital,  of  some  of  the  enormous  atrocities,  of  these 
Idle,  haughty,  tyranical,  Arrogant  Land  Monopolists;  slave 
holders  are  lords  and  masters,  From  which,  Good  Lord  Deliver 
us.  These  are  some  of  the  facts,  which  we  now,  (after  the 
lapse  of  83  years,  since  the  writing  and  signing  of  that  Sacred 
Instrument,  Honored  and  Adored  by  our  Fathers,  which  de- 
clares that  it  is  Self  Evident  that  all  Men  are  created  Equal, 
Endowed  by  their  Creator  with  certain  inherent  rights  &c") 
submit  to  the  Decision  of  all  Candid ;  true  Republican,  Friends 
of  Universal  Freedom,  and  National  Equality  of  Rights.  All 
We  Demand,  is  our  Liberty,  and  the  Natural  rights  and  im- 
munities of  faithful  Citizens  of  the  United  States.  We  will 
Obtain  these  rights  or  Die  in  the  Struggle  to  obtain  them.  We 
make  wrar  upon  oppression,  we  have  no  controversy  with  any 
Religious  Sect,  our  intention  is  not  to  molest  any  Good  Man, 


APPENDIX.  i,l- 

whatever  may  be  his  religious  belief.  "The  welfare  of  the 
People;  Is  the  first  Great  Law."  We  hold  these  to  be  self 
evident  truths,  That  any  Tribe,  Rulers,  or  People,  who  Rob 
and  cruelly  oppress  their  faithful  Laboring  Citizens,  have  within 
themselves  the  Germ,  of  their  own  certain  and  fearful  over- 
throw ;  It  is  one  of  Nature's  Immutable  Laws;  that  "  Accord- 
ing to  the  measure  that  ye  mete  ;  so  shall  it  be  measured  to  you 
again."  Herein  is  the  secret  of  Security  &  true  happiness,  for 
Individuals,  and  the  only  firm  Basis,  upon  which  Governments. 
may  be  permanently  Established;  where  the  Citizens,  are  De- 
voted to  the  greatest  good  of  their  fellow  Men, The  more  humble, 
benighted  &  oppressed  they  are,  So  much  more  sympathy,  •$: 
earnest  effort  for  their  relief,  is  demanded,  striving  earnestly  to 
promote  the  Safety  and  prosperity  of  their  Nation ;  &  the 
Human  Race. 

"It  is  a  fixed  Law  of  Nature,  That   any  People  or  Nation 
whose  steady  purpose,  &  Constant  Practice,   is   in   accordance 
with  these  principles  ;  Must  go  forward  Progressing;  So  long 
as   Man   continues  to  Exist.     For  in   Nature  the  Principle  cl 
Reciprocity  is  Great. 

"  The  Legitimate  object  of  all  Punishment,  is  to  preven* 
Crime."  When  any  Punishment  is  inflicted  more  than  is  neces- 
sary to  prevent  Crime,  it  then  ceases  to  be  a  Punishment;  It 
has  then  become  a  Barbarous  Crime.  A  Sore  Evil.  "  The 
Natural  Object  of  all  Government  is  to  Protect  the  right. 
Defend  the  Innocent.  When  any  set  of  Usurpers,  Tribe,  or 
community,  fail  to  protect  the  right,  but  furnish  protection  & 
encouragement  to  the  Villian,  by  bestowing  a  Bounty,  or  Pre- 
mium, upon  the  vile  Thief,  Rober,  Libertine,  Pirate  ;  &  Woman 
killing  Slave  Holder;  as  a  reward  for  their  deeds  of  rascality 
and  Barbarism  ;  And  inflict  grievous  cruelties  upon  the  inocent, 
Shooting  and  Butchering  those  most  faithful,  Citizens,  who 
have  striven  Manfully,  for  the  relief  of  the  down  troden  &  op- 
pressed of  their  country,  Who  fought  bravely  in  support  of  the 
Great  Principles  set  forth  in  Our  Declaration  of  Independei 
from  the  oppressive  Rule  of  England.  Encouraging  in  various 
ways,  by  bribery  and   fraud,   the   most  Fiendish  acts  of  J'-     - 


642  JOHN    BROWN. 

barism,  (like  those  Perpetrated  within  the  limits  01  the  United 
States,  at  Blounts'  Fort ;  in  Florida  and  other  Territories.) 
under  the  Jurisdiction  and  guidance  of  Slave  holding  Author- 
ity, &  in  strict  accordance  with  Slave  holding  Rules.  They 
have  transcended  their  own  limits,  they  have  fairly  outwitted 
themselves;  Their  Slave  Code  is  a  Shame  to  any  Nation,  Their 
Laws  are  no  Laws,  they  themselves  are  no  more  than  a  Band 
of  Base  Piratical  Rulers.  They  are  a  curse  to  themselves,  a 
most  lamentable  Blot  upon  Society. 

"  In  every  stage  of  these  oppressions,  we  have  petitioned  for 
redress,  in  the  most  humble  terms,  Our  repeated  petitions  have 
been  answered  only  by  repeated  Injury  A  Class  of  oppressors, 
whose  character  is  thus  marked  by  every  act  which  may  define 
a  Tyranical  Despotism,  is  unfit  to  rule  any  People.  Nor  have 
we  been  wanting  in  attention,  to  our  oppressors;  We  have 
warned  them  from  time  to  time,  of  attempts  (made  by  their 
headlong  Blindness,)  to  perpetrate,  extend,  strengthen,  and 
revive  the  dieing  eliments  of  this  cursed  Institution.  We  have 
reminded  them  of  our  unhappy  condition,  and  of  their  Cruelties. 
We  have  appealed  to  their  native  Justice  and  magnanimity,  we 
have  conjured  them  by  the  ties  of  our  common  nature,  our 
Brotherhood,  &  common  Parentage,  to  disavow  these  usurpa- 
tions, which  have  destroyed  our  Kindred  friendship,  and  en- 
dangered their  safety.  "  They  have  been  Deaf  to  the  voice  of 
Justice  &  Consanguinity.  We  must  therefore  acquiece  in  the 
necessity,  which  denounces  their  tyrany  &  unjust  rule  over  us. 
Declaring  that  we  will  serve  them  no  longer  as  slaves,  know- 
ing that  the  "  Laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire."  We  therefore, 
the  Representatives  of  the  circumscribed  citizens  of  the  United 
States,  of  America  in  General  Congress  assembled,  appealing 
to  the  supreme  Judge  of  the  World,  for  the  rectitude  of  our 
intentions,  Do  in  the  name,  &  by  authority  of  the  oppressed 
Citizens  of  the  Slave  States,  Solemnly  publish  and  Declare: 
that  the  Slaves  are,  &  of  right  ought  to  be  as  free  &  and  inde- 
pendent as  the  unchangable  Law  of  God,  requires  that  All  Men 
Shall  be.  That  they  are  absolved  from  all  allegiance  to  those 
Tyrants,  who  still  presist  in  forcibly  subjecting  them  to  per- 


APPENDIX.  64J 

petual  "  Bondage,  and  that  all  friendly  connection  between 
them  &  such  Tyrants,  is,  &  ought  to  be  totally  desolved,  And 
that  as  free,  &  independent  citizens  of  these  states,  they  have 
a  perfect  right,  a  sufficient  &  just  cause,  to  defend  themselves 
against  the  tyrany  of  their  oppressors.  To  solicit  aid  from  & 
ask  the  protection  of  all  true  friends  of  humanity  &  reform,  of 
whatever  nation,  &  wherever  found;  A  right  to  contract  Al- 
liances, &  to  do  all  other  acts  &  things  which  free  independent 
Citizens  may  of  right  do.  And  for  the  support  of  Declaration  ; 
with  a  firm  reliance  on  the  protection  of  Devine  Providence ; 
We  mutually  Pledge  to  each  other,  Our  Lives,  and  Our  Sacred 
Honor.  Indeed;  I  tremble  for  my  Country,  when  I  reflect; 
that  God  is  Just;  And  that  his  Justice  ;  will  not  sleep  forever" 
&c.  &c.  Nature  is  morning  for  its  murdered,  and  Afflicted 
Children.     Hung  be  the  Heavens  in  Scarlet. 


ARTICLES  OF  AGREEMENT  FOR  SHUBEL  MOR- 
GAN'S COMPANY. 

We,  the  undersigned,  members  of  Shubel  Morgan's  Com- 
pany, hereby  agree  to  be  governed  by  the  following  rules : 

I.  A  gentlemanly  and  respectful  deportment  shall  at  all  times 
and  places  be  maintained  towards  all  persons  ;  and  all  profane 
and  indecent  language  shall  be  avoided  in  all  cases. 

II.  No  intoxicating  drinks  shall  be  used  as  a  beverage  by 
any  member,  or  be  suffered  in  camp  for  such  purpose.   • 

III.  No  member  shall  leave  camp  without  leave  of  the  com- 
mander. 

IV.  All  property  captured  in  any  manner  shall  be  subjected 
to  an  equal  distribution  among  the  members. 

V.  All  acts  of  petty  or  other  thefts  shall  be  promptly  and 
properly  punished,  and  restitution  made  as  far  as  possible. 

VI.  All  members,  so  far  as  able,  shall  contribute  equally  to 
all  necessary  labor  in  or  out  of  camp. 

VII.  All  prisoners  who  shall  properly  demean  themselves 
shall  be  treated  with   kindness  and  respect,  and  shall   be  pun- 


644  JOHN     BROWN. 

ished  for  crime  only  after  trial  and  conviction,  being  allowed  a 
hearing  in  defense. 

VIII.  Implicit  obedience  shall  be  yielded  to  all  proper  orders 
of  the  commander  or  other  superior  officers. 

IX.  All  arms,  ammunition,  etc.,  not  strictly  private  property, 
shall  ever  be  held  subject  to,  and  delivered  upon,  the  order  of 
the  commander. 

Names.  Date,  1858.  Names.  Date,  1858. 

Shubel  Morgan,1       July  12.  E.  W.  Snyder,        July  15. 

C.  P.  Tidd,  "  Elias  J,  Snyder, 

J.  H.  Kagi,  "  John  H.  Snyder, 

A.  Wattles,  "  Adam  Bishop, 

Saml.  Stevenson  "  Wm,  Hairgrove, 

J.  Montgomery,"2  "  John  Mikel, 

T.  Homyer  (Weiner?),3 "  Wm.  Partridge, 
Simon  Snyder,        July  14. 


JOHN    BROWN'S   PARALLELS.4 

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  pa- 
rallels, in  my  poor  way. 

Not  one  year  ago  eleven  quiet  citizens  of  this  neighborhood 


1  A  name  assumed  by  Capt.  John  Brown  in  the  conflicts  of 
1858-59,  southeastern  Kansas  border. 

2  James  Montgomery,  one  of  the  bravest  partisans  of  the  Kansas 
border,  and  during  the  Civil  War  colonel  of  a  black  regiment  in 
South  Carolina. 

3  In  probability  this  name  is  meant  for  Theodore  Weiner,  the 
German-American  citizen  who  was  one  of  the  eight  that  left  the 
camp  of  the  Pottawatomie  Rifles  the  evening  before  the  slaying  of 
the  Doyles,  Wilkinson,  and  the  man  who  always  served  with  John 
Brown  in  Kansas  as  occasion  offered.  Mr.  Sanborn  states  that  this 
paper  is  in  Kagi's  handwriting. 

4  First  published  in  the  Lawrence,  Kansas,  Tribune, 


APPENDIX.  645 

— William  Robertson,  William  Colpetzer,  Amos  Hall,  Austin 
Hall,  John  Campbell,  Asa  Snyder,  Thomas  Stilwell,  William 
Hairgrove,  Asa  Hairgrove,  Patrick  Ross,  and  15.  L.  Reed — 
were  gathered  up  from  their  work  and  their  homes  by  an 
armed  force  under  one  Hamilton,  and  without  trial  or  oppor- 
tunity to  speak  in  their  own  defense  were  formed  into  line,  and 
all  but  one  shot, — five  killed  and  five  wounded.  One  fell  un- 
harmed, 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  occur- 
rence in  May  last,  been  taken  by  either  the  President  of  the 
United  States,  the  Governor  of  Missouri,  the  Governor  of  Kan- 
sas, or  any  of  their  tools,  or  by  any  pro-slavery  or  administra- 
tion 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  the  river  to  the  Osage  settle- 
ment, 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  following)  night,  two  small  companies  were  made 
up  to  go  to  Missouri  and  forcibly  liberate  the  five  slaves,  to- 
gether with  other  slaves.  One  of  these  companies  I  assumed 
to  direct.  W'e  proceeded  to  the  place,  surrounded  the  build- 
ings, liberated  the  slaves,  and  also  took  certain  property  sup- 
posed 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  to  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  in- 
formed, killed  one  white  man  (the  master),  who  fought  against 
the  liberation. 


646  JOHN    BROWN. 

Now  for  a  comparison.  Eleven  persons  are  forcibly  restored 
to  their  natural  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  con- 
cerned in  the  last-named  "  dreadful  outrage."  The  marshal  of 
Kansas  is  said  to  be  collecting  a.  posse  of  Missouri  (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.  Repectfully  yours, 

John  Brown. 


Headquarters,  War  Department  Provisional  ) 
Army,  Harper's  Ferry,  Oct.  10,  1859.  ) 

GENERAL   ORDERS. 

No.   1. 

ORGANIZATION. 

The  Divisions  of  the  Prow  Army  and  the  coalition  are  hereby 
established  as  follows. 

1. — Company. 

A  company  will  consist  of  56  privates,  12  non-com.  off's.  (8 
corporals,  4  sergeants),  3  com.  off.  (2  Lieutenants,  Captain)  and 
a  Surgeon. 

The  privates  shall  be  divided  into  Bands  or  messes  of  7  each 
numbering  from  1  to  8,  with  a  corporal  to  each,  numbered  like 
his  Band.  Two  Bands  will  comprise  a  Section.  Section  will 
be  numbered  from  1  to  4.  A  Sergeant  will  be  attached  to  each 
Section,  and  numbered  like  it. 

Two  Sections  will  comprise  a  Platoon.  Platoons  will  be  num- 
bered 1  and  2  and  each  commanded  by  a  lieutenant  designed 
by  like  number. 

2. — Battalion. 

The  Battalion  will  consist  of  4  companies  complete. 

The  commissioned  officers  of  the  Battalion  will  be  a  Chief  of 


APPENDIX.  647 

Battalion,  and  a  1st  &  2nd  major,  one  of  whom  shall  be  attached 
to  each  wing. 

3. — The  Regiment. 

The  Regiment  shall  consist  of  4  Battalions  complete. 

The  commissioned  officers  of  the  Regiment  will  be  a  Colonel 
and  2  Lieutenant-Colonels,  attached  to  the  wings. 
4. — The  Brigade. 

The  Brigade  will  consist  of  4  Regiments  complete. 

The  commissioned  officers  of  the  Brigade  will  be  a  General 
of  Brigade. 

5. — Each  Gen.  Staff. 

Each  of  the  above  Divisions  will  be  entitled  to  a  General 
Staff,  consisting  of  an  adjutant,  a  commissary,  a  musician,  and 
a  surgeon. 

6. — Appointment. 

Non-commissioned  officers  will  be  chosen  by  those  whom 
they  are  to  command. 

Commissioned  officers  will  be  appointed  and  commissioned 
by  this  Department. 

The  staff  officers  of  each  Division  will  be  appointed  by  the 
respective  commanders  of  the  same. 

(See  No.  (         ). — Transcriber.) 

(The  above  document  numbered  "  2,"  is  in  the  handwriting 
of  J.  H.  Kagi.  The  erasures  and  cross-marks  are  copied  from 
the  original. — Note  by  transcriber.)1 


RECOLLECTIONS  OF  THE  JOHN  BROWN  RAID. 

BY  THE   HON.    ALEXANDER   R.    BOTELER,   A  VIRGINIAN  WHO 
WITNESSED   THE   FIGHT. 

[This  paper  is  in  the  whole  so  fair  and  candid  in  tone  that  it 
deserves  a  place  in  the  record  here  made.  \ 

"On  entering  the  room  where  John  Brown  was  I  found  him 
alone,   lying  on  the  floor  on  his  left  side,  and  with  his  back 


1  From  Sanborn's  "  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown." 


648  JOHN    BROWN. 

turned  toward  me.  The  right  side  of  his  face  was  smeared 
with  blood  from  the  sword-cut  on  his  head,  causing  his  grim 
and  grizzly  countenance  to  look  like  that  of  some  aboriginal 
savage  with  his  war-paint  on.  Approaching  him,  I  began  the 
conversation  with  the  inquiry. 

" '  Captain  Brown,  are  you  hurt  anywhere  except  on  the 
head  ? ' 

"'Yes,  in  my  side, — here,'  said  he,  indicating  the  place  with 
his  hand. 

"  I  then  told  him  that  a  surgeon  would  be  in  presently  to 
attend  to  his  wounds,  and  expressed  the  hope  that  they  were 
not  very  serious.  Thereupon  he  asked  me  who  I  was,  and  on 
giving  him  my  name  he  muttered  as  if  speaking  to  himself. 

"  '  Yes,  yes, — I  know  you  now, — member  of  Congress — this 
district.' 

"  I  then  asked  the  question: 

"  '  Captain,  what  brought  you  here  ?  ' 

"'  To  free  your  slaves,'  was  the  reply. 

"  '  How  did  you  expect  to  accomplish  it  with  the  small  force 
you  brought  with  you  ?  ' 

"  '  I  expected  help.' 

"'Where,  whence,  and  from  whom,  Captain,  did  you  ex- 
pect it  ? ' 

"  '  Here  and  from  elswhere,'  he  answered. 

" '  Did  you  expect  to  get  assistance  from  whites  here  as  well 
as  from  the  blacks  ?  '  was  my  next  question. 

" '  I  did.'  he  replied. 

"  '  Then,'  said  I,  '  you  have  been  disappointed  in  not  getting 
it  from  either  ?  ' 

"  '  Yes,'  he  muttered,  '  I  have — been — disappointed.' 

"  Then  I  asked  him  who  planned  his  movement  on  Harper's 
Ferry,  to  which  he  replied :  '  I  planned  it  all  myself,'  and  upon 
my  remarking  that  it  was  a  sad  affair  for  him  and  the  country, 
and  that  I  trusted  no  one  would  follow  his  example  by  under- 
taking a  similar  raid,  he  made  no  response.  I  next  inquired  if 
he  had  any  family  besides  the  sons  who  had  accompanied  him 
on  his  incursion,  to  which   he   replied   by  telling  me  he  had  a 


APPENDIX. 


649 


wife  and  children  in  the  State  of  New  York  at  North  Elba,  and 
on  my  then  asking  if  he  would  like  to  write  to  them  and  let 
them  know  how  he  was,  he  quickly  responded: 

"'  Yes,  I  would  like  to  send  them  a  letter.' 

"  'Very  well,'  I  said,' you  will  doubtless  be  permitted  to  do  so. 
But,  Captain,'  I  added,  'probably  you  understand  that,  being  in 
the  hands  of  the  civil  authorities  of  the  State,  your  letters  will 
have  to  be  seen  by  them  before  they  can  be  sent." 

"'  Certainly,'  he  said. 

'"Then,  with  that  understanding-,' continued  I,  '  there  will, 
I'm  sure,  be  no  objection  to  your  writing  home  ;  and  although 
I  myself  have  no  authority  in  the  premises,  I  promise  to  do 
what  I  can  to  have  your  wishes  in  that  respect  complied  with.' 

"'  Thank  you — thank  you,  sir,'  said  he,  repeating  his  acknowl- 
edgment for  the  proferred  favor  and,  for  the  first  time,  turning 
his  head  toward  me. 

"  In  my  desire  to  hear  him  distinctly  I  had  placed  myself  by 
his  side,  with  one  knee  resting  on  the  floor ;  so  that,  when  he 
turned,  it  brought  his  face  quite  close  to  mine,  and  I  remember 
well  the  earnest  gaze  of  the  gray  eye  that  looked  straight  into 
mine.     I  then  remarked  : 

"  '  Captain,  we,  too,  have  wives  and  children.  This  attempt  of 
yours  to  interfere  with  our  slaves,  has  created  great  excitement, 
and  naturally  causes  anxiety  on  account  of  our  families.  Now, 
let  me  ask  you  :  Is  this  failure  of  yours  likely  to  be  followed  by 
similar  attempts  to  create  disaffection  among  our  servants  and 
bring  upon  our  homes  the  horrors  of  a  servile  war?  ' 

"  '  Time  will  show,'  was  his  significant  reply. 

"Just  then  a  Catholic  priest  appeared  at  the  door  of  the 
room.  He  had  been  administering  the  last  consolations  of  re- 
ligion to  Ouinn,  the  marine,  who  was  dying  in  the  adjoining 
office;  and  the  moment  Brown  saw  him  he  became  violently 
angry,  and  plainly  showed,  by  the  expression  of  his  countenance, 
how  capable  he  was  of  feeling  'hatred,  malice,  and  all  un- 
charitableness.' 

"  '  Go  out  of  here — I  don't  want  you  about  me — go  out ! '  was 
the  salutation  he  gave  the  priest,  who,  bowing  gravely,  imme- 


65O  JOHN    BROWN. 

diately  retired.  Whereupon  I  arose  from  the  floor,  and  bidding 
Brown  good-morning,  likewise  left  him. 

"In  the  entry  leading  to  the  room  where  Brown  was,  I  met 
Major  Russell,  of  the  marine  corps,  who  was  going  to  see  him, 
and  I  detailed  to  him  the  conversation  I  had  just  had.  Meeting 
the  major  subsequently  he  told  me  that  when  he  entered  the 
apartment  Brown  was  standing  up — with  his  clothes  unfastened 
— examining  the  wound  in  his  side,  and  that,  as  soon  as  he  saw 
him,  forthwith  resumed  his  former  position  on  the  floor;  which 
incident  tended  to  confirm  the  impression  I  had  already 
formed,  that  there  was  a  good  deal  of  vitality  left  in  the  old 
man,  notwithstanding  his  wounds, — a  fact  more  fully  developed 
that  evening  after  I  had  left  Harper's  Ferry  for  home,  when  he 
had  his  spirited  and  historic  talk  with  Wise,  Hunter,  and  Val- 
landigham. 

"  Between  the  time  of  his  raid  and  his  execution  I  saw  Brown 
several  times,  and  was  sitting  near  him  in  the  court-room  when 
the  sentence  of  death  was  pronounced  upon  him,  during  which 
he  was  apparently  the  least  interested  person  present.  Of 
course,  I  did  not  witness  his  execution,  as  I  had  seen  quite 
enough  of  horrors  at  Harper's  Ferry,  little  dreaming  of  those, 
ten  thousand  times  more  terrible,  which- 1  was  yet  to  witness 
as  among  the  results  of  the  John  Brown  raid." — Century. 


PART  II. 

John  Brown's  Autobiography,  Family  Record,  and 
other  papers  relating  to  John  Brown  and  his  family, 
with  narratives  of  actions,  etc.,  gathered  from  au- 
thentic sources. 

JOHN    BROWN'S   AUTOBIOGRAPHY, 

Written  by  him  to  henry  l.  stearns,  son  of  george 
l.  stearns,  and  bearing  date  rkd  rock,  iowa, 

JULY   7,    1857. 

"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  descended 
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 
1776. 

"  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: 
received  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 


652  JOHN    BROWN. 

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;  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  ob- 
serving 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  be- 
ginning of  a  severe  but  much  needed  course  of  discipline  which 
he  afterwards  was  to  pass  through  ;  &  which  it  is  to  be  hoped 
has  learned  him  before  this  time  that  the  Heavenly  Father  sees 
it  best  to  take  all  the  little  things  out  of  his  hand  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  Squirel  tearing  off 
his  tail  in  doing  it ;  &  getting  severely  bitten  at  the  same  time 
himself.  He  however  held  to  the  little  bob  tail  Squirel ;  & 
finally  got  him  perfectly  tamed,  so  that  he  almost   idolized  his 


APPENDIX.  653 

pet.  This  too  be  lost ;  by  its  wandering'  away:  or  by  getting 
killed  :  &  for  a  year  or  Two  John  was  in  mourning;  and  look- 
ing at  all  the  Squirels  he  could  see  to  try  &  discover  Bob  tail, 
if  possible,  I  must  not  neglect  to  tell  you  of  a  very  bad  &* 
foolish  habbit  to  which  John  was  somewhat  addicted.  I  mean 
telling  lies:  generally  to  screen  himself  from  blame  ;  or  from 
punishment.  He  could  not  well  endure  to  be  reproached;  &  I 
now  think  had  he  been  oftener  encouraged  to  be  entirely  frank  ; 
by  making  frankness  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  quarrelsome;  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  opportunity  it  afforded  to  wrestle  &  Snow 
ball  &  run  &  jump  &  knock  off  old  seedy  wool  hats;  offered  to 
him  almost  the  only  compensation  for  the  confinement,  &  re- 
straints of  school.  I  need  not  tell  you  that  with  such  a  feeling 
&  but  little  chance  of  going  to  school  at  ail:  he  did  not  be- 
come 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 '&*  bareheaded: 
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,  inteligent,  &  on  many  accounts  a 
very  estimable  woman  :  yet  be  never  addopted  her  in  feeling  : 
but  continued  to   pine  after  his  own   Mother  for  years.     This 


654  JOHN    BROWN. 

opperated  very  unfavourably  uppon  him  :  as  he  was  both  natur* 
ally  fond  of  females ;  &  withall  extremely  diffident ;  &  deprived 
him  of  a  suitable  connecting  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  furnishing  the  troops  with  beef  cattle,  the  collect- 
ing &  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  fa- 
miliarly acquainted  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  gentlemanly  landlord 
once  a  United  States  Marshal  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;  &»  lodged  in  cold  weather;  <S^ 
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  Eatherless  &  Motherless  slave 
-  hilAren:  for  such  children  have  neither  Fathers  nor  Mothers 
to  protect,  &  provide  for  them.  He  sometimes  would  raise  the 
question  is  God  their  Father? 

"  At  the  age  of  Ten  years  an  old  friend  induced  him  to  read 


APPENDIX.  655 

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  &  intel- 
ligent persons.  He  never  attempted  to  dance  in  his  life;  nor 
did  he  even  learn  to  know  one  of  a  pack  of  cards  (rom  another. 
He  learned  nothing  of  Grammar;  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 ;  during  which  time  he  became  very  strong  &  large 
of  his  age  &  ambitious  to  perform  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  &*  persons ;  &  was 
often  greatly  obliged  by  the  kind  manner  in  which  older  &  more 
intelligent  persons  treated  him  at  their  houses :  &  in  conversa- 
tion; which  was  a  great  relief  on  account  of  his  extreme  bash- 
fulness. 

"  He  very  early  in  life  became  ambitious  to  excel  in  doing 
anything  he  undertook  to  perform.  This  kind  of  feeling  I 
would  recommend  to  all  young  persons  both  male  &*  female : 
as  it  will  certainly  tend  to  secure  admission  to  the  company  of 
the  more  intelligent ;  &  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  mis- 
fortunes 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  pe- 
cuniary loss  so  much  :  for  that  was  never  his  disposition ;  but 
so  strong  &  earnest  were  his  attachments. 

"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  extent  a  convert  to 


656  JOHN    BROWN. 

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  would  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  definite  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  undertak- 
ings. 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  was  acting  as  Cook ;  &  for  most  of  the  time  as  for- 
man  of  the  establishment  under  his  father.  During  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  con- 
science urging  him  forward  with  great  power  in  this  matter : 
but  his  close  attention  to  business;  &  success  in  his  manage- 
ment ;  together  with  the  way  he  got  along  with  a  company  of 
men,  &  boys ;  made  him  quite  a  favorite  with  the  serious  & 
more  intelligent  portion  of  older  persons.  This  was  so  much 
the  case;  &  secured  for  him  so  many  little  notices  from  those 
he  esteemed  ;  that  his  vanity  was  very  much  fed  by  it ;  &  he 


APPENDIX. 


657 


came  forward  to  manhood  quite  full  of  self  conceit ;  &  self- 
confident  ;  notwithstanding  his  extreme  bashfulness.  A  younger 
brother  used  sometimes  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  com- 
mon 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, 
&  more  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  circum- 
stances 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  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  written  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 


658  JOHN    BROWN. 

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  aknowledge  your  con- 
tribution in  aid  of  the  cause  in  which  I  serve.     God  Allmighty 
bless  you  ;  my  son.  J.  B." 


THE  JOHN  BROWN  FAMILY. 

{Those  living  are  given  in  roman,  those  who  died  in  italics, 
and  those  who  were  slain  are  in  capitals?) 

Children  by  his  wife  Bianthe  .-—John  Brown,  Jr.,  born  July 
25,  1821,  at  Hudson,  Ohio;  married  Wealthy  C.  Hotchkis,  July, 
1857;  issue,  son  and  daughter.  Lives  at  Putin-Bay  Island, 
Lake  Erie,  near  Sandusky,  Ohio,  aged  73.  John  served  in  the 
Kansas  troubles  and  as  a  captain  in  the  Union  army. 

Jason  Brown,  born  Jan.  19,  1823,  at  Hudson  ;  married  Ellen 
Sherbondy,  July,  1847;  living  issue  two  sons;  Jason,  71  years 
of  age,  resides  at  South  Pasadena,  Cal.   Jason  served  in  Kansas. 

Owen  Brown,  born  Nov.  4,  1824,  at  Hudson.  Never  mar- 
ried, and  died  at  Pasadena,  a  few  years  since,  about  66  years  of 
age.     Owen  was  in  Kansas  and  at  Harper's  Ferry. 

Frederick  (first),  Jan.  9,  1827,  at  Richmond,  Pa.;  died  at  four 
years  of  age,  March  31,  1831. 

Ruth,  born  Feb.  18,  1829,  at  Richmond,  Pa.;  married  to 
Henry  Thompson,  Sept.  26,  1850,  issue,  living,  three  daughters, 
residing  with  her  husband  (brother  of  William  and  Dauphin 
Thompson,  killed  at  Harper's  Ferry,  1859)  at  South  Pasa- 
dena, Cal. 

FREDERICK  (second),  Dec.  31,  1830,  at  Richmond,  Pa., 
unmarried,  and  slain  at  Osawatomie  in  a  border-ruffian  foray, 
August  30,  1856,  in  the  twenty-sixth  year  of  his  life. 

A  son  unnamed  was  buried  with  its  mother,  Aug.  id,  1832, 
at  Richmond,  Pa.,  three  days  after  birth. 

Children  by  his  wife  Mary : — Sarah,  born  May  11,  1834,  at 
Richmond,  Pa.;  died  in  her  ninth  year,  Sept.  23,  1843. 


APPENDIX. 


659 


WATSON,  born  Oct.  7,  1835,  at  Franklin,  Ohio;  married  Isa- 
bella  M.  Thompson  (sister  of  Henry,  William,  and  Dauphin), 
Sept.  1856;  slain  at  Harper's  Ferry,  Oct.  18,  1859,  m  n's  twenty- 
seventh  year.  Their  child  died  the  next  year.  The  widow  was 
married  again  in  1864,  to  Salmon  Brown,  a  cousin  of  Watson. 

Salmon  Brown,  born  Oct.  2,  1836,  at  Hudson,  Ohio;  married 
Abbie  C.  Hinckley,  Oct.  15,  1857;  he  lives  now  in  Wash- 
ington near  Tacoma,  in  his  fifty-seventh  year;  has  eight 
children.  He  served  in  Kansas,  and  as  a  lieutenant  in  the 
Civil  War. 

Charles,  born  Nov.  3,  1837,  at  Hudson;  died  in  his  fourth 
year,  Sept.  11,  1841. 

OLIVER,  born  March  9,  1839,  at  Franklin,  Ohio;  married 
Martha  E.  Brewster,  April  7,  1858,  slain  in  his  twenty-first 
year  at  Harper's  Ferry,  Oct.  17,  1859;  Martha  died  with  her 
baby  at  North  Elba  in  the  following  winter.  OLIVER  served 
in  Kansas. 

Peter,  born  1840  in  Ohio,  at  Hudson,  and  Austin,  born  1842 
at  Richfield,  Ohio,  both  died  in  September,  1843,  and  were 
buried  in  the  same  grave  with  their  sister  Sarah  and  brother 
Charles. 

Amelie,  born  June,  1845,  at  Akron,  Ohio,  died  October,  1848. 

Ellen,  born  May,  1848,  at  Springfield,  died  in  April  1849; 
also   infant    son,    born  and  died    at    Akron,    April    and   May, 

1847. 

Annie,  born  Dec,  7,  1843,  at  Richfield,  Ohio;  married  Mr. 
Adams,  mother  of  six  living  children,  and  resides  at  Petralia, 
Humboldt  Co.,  Cal. 

Sarah,  born  Sept.  11,  1846,  at  Akron,  Ohio,  lives  in  Santa 
Cruz  Co.,  Cal.,  unmarried. 

Ellen,  born  Sept.  25,  1854,  at  Akron,  Ohio,  married  in  Cali- 
fornia a  Mr.  Fablinger,  and  lives  in  Santa  Cruz  Co.,  that  State. 

The  North  Elba  homestead  is  inhabited  by  Mr.  Hinkley  and 
family.  He  is  a  brother-in-law  of  Salmon  Brown;  his  wife  is 
a  sister  of  William  and  Dauphin  Thompson,  killed  at  Harper's 
Ferry,  and  of  Henry,  Ruth  Brown's  husband,  and  Isabella,  the 
wife  of   Watson   Brown.     The  home  and  ground  are  now  a 


66o  JOHN    BROWN. 

trust,  Kiss  Kate  Field  having  raised  the  purchase  money.    Two 
of  the  California  grandchildren  died  recently. 


THE    BROWN    SETTLEMENT. 

KAIv'SAS    LETTERS   OF   CAPTAINS  JOHN     BROWN    AND 
JOHN    BROWN,   JR. 

[From  the  archives  of  the  Kansas  Historical  Society^ 

Brownsville,  Brown  Co.,  K.  T.,  ) 
Friday  Morning,  June  22,  1855.        \ 

Dear  Father — Day  before  yesterday  we  received  a  letter 
from  you,  dated  Rockford,  Illinois,  24th  May,  which  for  some 
unaccountable  cause  has  been  very  long  delayed  on  the  road. 
We  are  exceedingly  glad  to  hear  from  you,  and  that  you  still 
intend  coming  on.  Our  health  is  now  excellent,  and  our  crops, 
cattle,  and  horses  look  finely.  We  have  now  about  twelve 
acres  seed  corn  in  the  ground,  more  than  one-fourth  acre  of 
white  beans,  two  and  one-half  bushels  seed  potatoes  planted, 
and  once  hoed  ;  besides  a  good  garden  containing  corn,  pota- 
toes, beets,  cabbages,  turnips,  a  few  onions,  some  peas,  cucum- 
bers, melons,  squashes,  etc.  Jason's  fruit-trees,  grape-vines,  etc., 
that  survived  the  long  period  of  transportation,  look  very  well; 
probably  more  than  half  he  started  with  are  living,  with  the 
exception  of  peaches  ;  of  these  he  has  only  one  or  two  trees. 
As  we  arrived  so  late  in  the  season  we  have  but  little  expecta- 
tion of  harvesting  much  corn,  and  but  few  potatoes.  The  rainy 
season  usually  commences  here  early  in  April,  or  before,  and 
continues  from  six  to  eight  weeks,  during  which  a  great 
amount  of  rain  falls.  This  year  we  had  no  rain  of  any  con- 
sequence before  the  12th  or  15th  of  May.  Since  then  have 
had  two  heavy  rains,  accompanied  with  some  wind  and  most 
tremendous  thunder  and  lightning.  Have  also  had  a  num- 
ber of  gentle  rains,  continuing  from  one  to  twenty-four  hours; 
but,  probably,  not  more  than  half  the  usual  fall  of  rain  has  yet 
come.  As  the  season  last  year  was  irregular  in  this  respect, 
probably  this  will  be  to  some  extent.  We  intend  to  keep  our 
garden,  beans,  and  some  potatoes  watered  if  we  can,  so  as  to 


APPENDIX.  C6l 

have  something  if  our  corn  should  be  a  failure.  As  it  is,  the 
prospect  is  middling  fair,  and  the  ground  is  plowed,  ready  for 
early  planting  next  year.  Old  settlers  here  say,  that  people 
should  calculate  on  having  the  spring's  sowing  and  planting  all 
done  by  the  middle  of  April.  In  that  case  their  crops  arc- 
most  abundant.  The  prairies  are  covered  with  grass,  which 
begins  to  wave  in  the  wind  most  beautifully.  Shall  be  able  to 
cut  any  quantity  of  this,  and  it  is  of  far  better  quality  than  I 
had  any  idea. 

In  answer  to  your  question,  good  oxen  are  from  $50  to 
$60  per  yoke;  have  been  higher.  Common  cows  from 
$15  to  $25  each;  probably  will  not  be  higher.  Heifers  in 
proportion.  Limited  demand  as  yet  for  fine  stock,  very  best 
horses  from  $100  to  $150  each  ;  average  good  to  fair,  $75  to  $80. 
No  great  demand  now  for  cattle  or  horses.  A  good,  strong 
buggy  would  sell  well,  probably  a  Sumberee  best.  Mr.  Adair 
has  had  several  chances  to  sell  his.  Very  few  Sumberee 
buggies  among  the  settlers.  White  beans,  $5  per  bushel ;  corn- 
meal,  $1.75  per  bushel,  of  fifty  lbs.,  tending  downward.  Flour, 
$7  per  hundred  lbs.  Dried  apples,  twelve  and  a  half  cents 
per  lb.  Bacon,  twelve  to  fourteen  cents  here.  Fresh  beef, 
five  to  six  cents  per  lb.  Inclosed  is  a  slip,  cut  from  a  late 
number  of  the  Kansas  Tribune,  giving  the  markets  there.  It 
differs  some  from  what  it  is  in  this  section.  It  is  the  paper 
published  at  Lawrence  by  the  Speers.  I  have  no  doubt,  it 
would  be  much  cheaper  and  healthier  for  you  to  come  in  the 
way  you  propose,  with  a  covered  lumber  buggy  and  one  horse 
or  mule,  especially  from  St.  Louis  here.  The  navigation  of  the 
Missouri  River,  except  by  the  light-draft  boats  recently  built 
for  the  Kansas  River,  is  a  horrid  business  in  a  low  stage  of 
water,  which  is  a  considerable  portion  of  the  year.  You  will 
be  able  to  see  much  more  of  the  country  on  your  way,  and  if 
you  carry  provisions  along  it  is  altogether  the  cheaper  mode  of 
traveling,  besides  such  a  conveyance  is  just  what  you  want 
here  to  carry  on  the  business  of  surveying.  You  can  have  a 
good  road  here  "  whithersoever  "  you  may  wish  to  go.  Flour, 
white  beans,  and  dried  fruit  will  doubtless  continue  for  some 


662  JOHN    BROWN* 

time  to  come  to  be  high.  It  is  believed  that  a  much  larger 
emigration  will  arrive  here  this  fall  than  before.  Should  you 
buy  anything  to  send  by  water,  you  can  send  it  either 
to  Lawrence,  thirty  five  miles  north  of  us,  or  to  Kansas 
City,  Mo.,  care  of  Walker  &  Chick,  sixty  miles  northeast 
of  us. 

A  surveyor  would  soon  find  that  great  numbers  are  holding 
more  land,  and  especially  timber,  than  can  be  covered  by  160 
acres,  or  even  320  ;  that  great  numbers  are  holding  claims  for 
their  friends,  so  that  I  have  no  doubt  people  will  find  a  suffi- 
cient amount  of  timber  yet  for  a  long  time.  Owing  to  the 
rapid  settlement  of  the  country  by  squatters  it  does  not  open  a 
good  field  for  land  speculators. 

The  land  on  which  we  are  located  was  ceded  by  the  Potta- 
watomie Indians  to  the  Government.  The  Ottawa  lands  are 
soon  to  be  sold,  each  person  of  the  tribe  receiving  and  choos- 
ing 200  acres,  the  remainder  open  to  preemption  after  their 
choice  is  made.  The  Peoria  lands  have  been  bargained  for 
by  the  Government  and  are  to  be  sold  to  the  highest  bidder, 
without  reservation.  But  Missourians  have  illegally  gone  on 
to  these  Peoria  lands  intending  to  combine  and  prevent  their 
going  higher  than  $1.25  per  acre,  and  then  claim,  if  they  go 
higher,  a  large  amount  for  improvements,  thus  cheating  the 
Indians.  The  Ottawas  intend  to  divide  into  families  and  culti- 
vate the  soil  and  the  habits  of  civilized  life  as  many  of  them 
are  now  doing.  They  are  a  fine  people.  The  Peorias  are  well 
advanced  and  might  do  the  same  but  for  a  bad  bargain  with 
the  Government. 

There  is  a  town  site  recently  laid  out,  on  the  space  marked 
Village  Plat ; ]  as  there  are  two  or  three  in  view  it  is  uncertain 
which  will  be  taken.  The  semicircle  is  over  ground  sloping 
every  way,  and  affording  a  view  in  every  way  of  from  twenty  to 
thirty  miles  in  every  direction  except  one   small  point  in   the 


1  A  nicely  drawn  plat  accompanied  this  letter,  which  is  now  in 
the  archives  of  the  Kansas  Slate  Historical  Society. 


APPENDIX.  663 

direction    of    Osawatomie.      The   view   from    this   ground   is 
beautiful  beyond  measure. 

The  timbered  lands  on  Middle  Creek  are  covered  with 
claims,  the  claimants,  many  of  them  from  Ohio,  Illinois,  and 
the  East,  and  are  mostly  free-state  folks.  There  are  probably 
twenty  families  within  rive  or  six  miles  of  us. 

Day  before  yesterday  Owen  and  I  ran  the  Peoria  line  east  to 
see  if  there  might  not  be  found  a  patch  of  timber  on  some  of 
the  numerous  small  streams  which  put  into  the  Osage  and 
which  would  be  south  of  the  Peoria  line.  We  found  on  a 
clear  little  stream  sufficient  timber  for  a  log-house,  and  wood 
enough  to  last  a  hundred  families  for  two  or  three  years,  per- 
haps more,  and  until  we  could  buy  and  raise  more.  Here  a 
good  claim  could  be  made  by  some  one.  The  prairie  land 
which  would  be  included  is  of  the  very  best  I  have  ever  seen; 
plenty  of  excellent  stone  on  and  adjoining  it.  Claims  will  soon 
be  made  here  that  will  have  no  more  than  two  or  three  acres 
of  timber,  and  after  these  are  exhausted  prairie  claims  will  be 
taken,  the  claimants  depending  on  buying  their  timber.  Already 
this  is  the  case,  and  many  are  selling  off  twenty,  thirty,  and 
forty  acres  from  their  timber  claims  to  those  who  have  none. 
(From  John  Brown,  Jr.)  [Not  signed.] 


JOHN  BROWN  ON  THE  ROAD. 

Scott  Co.,  Iowa,  4th  Sept.,  1855,  in  morning. 
Dear  Wife  and  Children  All— I  am  writing  in  our 
tent,  about  twenty  miles  west  of  the  Mississippi,  to  let  you 
know  that  we  are  all  in  good  health  and  how  we  get  along. 
We  had  some  delay  at  Chicago  on  account  of  our  freight  not 
getting  on  as  we  expected  ;  while  there  we  bought  a  stout 
young  horse  that  proves  to  be  a  very  good  one;  but  he  has 
been  unable  to  travel  fast  for  several  days  from  having  taken 
the  distemper.  We  think  he  appears  quite  us  well  as  he  has 
done  this  morning  and  we  hope  he  will  not  fail  us.  Our  load 
is  heavy,  so  that  we  have  to  walk  most  of  the  time  ;  indeed,  all 
the  time  the  last  day.     The  roads   are  mostly  very  good  and 


664  JOHN    BROWN. 

we  can  make  some  progress  if  our  horse  does  not  fail  us.  We 
fare  very  well  on  crackers,  herring,  boiled  eggs,  prairie-chick- 
ens, tea,  and  sometimes  a  little  milk.  Have  three  chickens 
now  cooking  for  our  breakfast.  We  shoot  enough  of  them  on 
the  wing  as  we  go  along  to  supply  us  with  fresh  meat. 
Oliver  succeeds  in  bringing  them  down  quite  as  well  as  any  of 
us.  Our  expenses  before  we  got  away  from  Chicago  had  been 
very  heavy ;  since  then  very  light ;  so  that  we  hope  that  our 
money  will  not  entirely  fail  us ;  but  we  shall  not  have  any  of 
account  left  when  we  get  through.  We  expect  to  go  direct 
through  Missouri,  and  if  we  are  not  obliged  to  stop  on  account 
of  our  horse,  shall  soon  be.  there.  We  mean  to  write  you  often 
when  we  can.  We  got  to  Rock  Island  too  soon  for  any  letter 
from  you  ;  but  shall  not  be  too  early  at  Kansas  City,  where  we 
hope  to  hear  from  you.  The  country  through  which  we  have 
traveled  from  Chicago,  has  been  mostly  very  good  ;  the  worst 
fault  is  the  want  of  living  streams  of  water. 

With  all  the  comforts  we  have  along  our  journey,  I  think — 
could  I  hope  in  any  other  way  to  answer  the  end  of  my  being — 
I  would  be  quite  content  to  be  at  North  Elba.  I  have  directed 
the  sale  of  the  cattle  in  Connecticut,  and  to  have  the  balance 
sent  in  a  New  York  draft  payable  to  Watson's  order,  which  I 
hope  will  make  you  all  quite  comfortable,  Watson  should  get 
something  more  at  Elizabethtown  than  the  mere  face  of  the 
draft.  He  will  need  to  write  his  name  across  the  back  of  the 
draft  when  he  sells  it ;  about  two  inches  from  the  top  end 
would  be  the  proper  place.  I  want  you  to  make  the  most  of 
the  money  you  get,  as  I  expect  to  be  very  poor  about  money 
from  any  other  source.  Commend  you  all  to  the  mercy  and 
infinite  grace  of  God,  I  bid  you  all  good-bye  for  this  time. 
Your  affectionate  husband  and  father,         John  Brown. 


ARRIVAL    IN    KANSAS. 
Osawatomie,  K.  T.,  Oct.  13th,  1855,  Saturday  Evening. 
Dear  Wife  and  Children,  Every  One — We  reached 
the  place  where  the  boys  are  located  one  week  ago,  last  night ; 


APPENDIX.  665 

at  least  Henry  and  Oliver  did  ;  I,  being  tired,  staid  behind  in 
our  tent  a  mile  or  two  back.  As  the  mail  goes  from  here  early 
Monday  morning  we  could  get  nothing  here  in  time  for  that 
mail.  We  found  all  more  or  less  sick,  or  feeble  but  Wealthy 
and  Johnny.  All  at  Brownville  appear  now  to  be  mending. 
All  sick  or  feeble  here  at  Mr.  Adair's.  Fever  and  ague  and 
chill  fever  seem  to  be  very  general.  Oliver  has  had  a  turn  of 
the  ague  since  he  got  here,  but  has  got  it  broken.  Henry  has 
had  no  return  since  first  breaking  it.  We  met  with  no  diffi- 
culty in  passing  through  Missouri,  but  from  the  sickness  of  our 
horse  and  our  heavy  load  ;  the  horse  has  entirely  recovered. 
We  had  between  us  all  sixty  cents  in  cash  when  we  arrived. 
We  found  our  folks  in  a  most  uncomfortable  situation,  with  no 
houses  to  shelter  one  of  them,  no  hay  or  corn-fodder  of  any 
account  secured,  shivering  over  their  little  fires,  all  exposed  to 
the  dreadfully  cutting  winds,  morning  and  evening,  and  the 
stormy  days.  We  have  been  trying  to  help  them  all  in  our 
power  and  hope  to  get  them  more  comfortable  soon.  I  think 
much  of  their  ill  health  is  owing  to  most  unreasonable  ex- 
posure. Mr.  Adair's  folks  would  be  quite  comfortable  if  they 
were  well.  One  letter  from  wife  and  Anne  to  Salmon  of 
August  10th,  and  one  from  Ruth  to  John  of  September  19th  is 
all  I  have  seen  from  any  of  you  since  getting  here.  Henry 
found  one  from  Ruth  which  he  has  not  shown  me.  Need  I 
write  that  I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  from  you  ?  I  did  not  write 
while  in  Missouri  because  I  had  no  confidence  in  your  getting 
my  letter.  We  took  up  little  Austin  and  brought  him  on  here  ; 
which  appears  to  be  a  great  comfort  to  Jason  and  Ellen.  We 
were  all  out  a  good  part  of  last  night,  helping  to  keep  the 
prairie  fires  from  destroying  everything;  so  that  I  am  almost 
blind  to-day,  or  I  would  write  you  more. 

Sabbath  eve,  October  14th.  I  notice  in  your  letter  to  Salmon 
your  trouble  about  the  means  of  having  the  house  made  niuie 
comfortable  for  the  winter,  and  I  fondly  hope  you  have  been 
relieved  of  that  scare  before  now  by  funds  from  Mr.  Hulbert, 
of  Winchester,  Ct.,  from  the  sale  of  the  cattle  there.  Write  me 
all  about  your  situation,  for  if  disappointed  from  that  source  I 


£66  JOHN    BROWN. 

shall  make  every  effort  to  relieve  you  in  some  other  way.  Last 
Tuesday  was  an  election  day  with  free-state  men  in  Kansas, 
and,  hearing  that  there  was  a  prospect  of  difficulty  we  all  turned 
out  most  thoroughly  armed  (except  Jason  who  was  too  feeble), 
but  no  enemy  appeared ;  nor  have  I  heard  of  any  disturbance 
in  any  part  of  the  Territory.  Indeed,  I  believe  Missouri  is  fast 
becoming  discouraged  about  making  Kansas  a  slave  State,  and 
think  the  prospect  of  its  becoming  free  is  brightening  every 
day.  Try  to  be  cheerful ;  and  always  ''hope  in  God,"  who  will 
not  leave  nor  forsake  them  who  put  their  trust  in  Him.  Try  to 
comfort  and  encourage  each  other  all  you  can.  You  are  all  very 
dear  to  me ;  and  I  humbly  trust  we  may  be  kept  and  spared  to 
meet  again  on  earth ;  but  if  not ;  let  us  all  endeavor  earnestly 
to  secure  admission  to  that  eternal  home  where  will  be  no 
more  bitter  separations ;  "  where  the  wicked  shall  cease  from 
troubling,  and  the  weary  be  at  rest."  We  shall  probably  spend 
a  few  days  more  in  helping  the  boys  to  provide  some  kind  of 
shelters  for  winter,  and  I  mean  to  write  you  often.  May  the  God 
of  infinite  mercy  bless,  comfort,  and  save  you  all ;  for  Christ's 
sake. 

Your  affectionate  husband  and  father, 

John  Brown. 


SETTLERS'  PRIVATIONS. 
Brownsville,  Kansas  Territory,  Nov.  2d,  1855. 
Dear  Wife  and  Children,  Every  One — We  last  week 
received  Watson's  letters  too  late  to  answer  till  now ;  I  feel 
grateful  to  learn  that  you  were  all  then  well ;  and  I  think  I 
fully  sympathize  with  you  in  all  the  hardships  and  discourage- 
ments you  have  to  meet,  but  you  may  be  agreed  that  you  are 
not  alone  in  having  trials  to  meet.  I  believe,  I  wrote  you  that 
we  found  all  more  or  less  unwell  here  but  Wealthy  and  Tonny; 
without  any  sort  of  a  place  where  a  stout  man  even  could  pro- 
tect himself  from  the  cutting  cold  winds  and  storms  which  pre- 
vail here,  the  winds  I  mean  in  particular  much  more  than  in  any 
place  where  we  have  ever  lived ;  and  that  no  crops  of  hay  or 


APPENDIX.  667 

anything  raised  had  been  taken  care  of;  with  corn  wasting  by 

cattle  and  horses ;  without  fence  ;  and  I   may  add  without  any 

meat;     and   Jason's  folks  without   any   sugar  or  any  kind  of 

bread-stuffs   but  corn  ground  with  great  labor  in  a  hand-mill 

about  two   miles  off.     Since   I  wrote,  Wealthy,  Tonny,  Ellen, 

and  myself  have  escaped  being  sick  ;  some  have  had  the  ague 

but  lightly;  but  Jason  and  Oliver  have  had  a  hard   time  of  it, 

and  are  yet  feeble.  They  appear  some  better  just  now.    Under 

existing  circumstances  we  have  made   but  little  progress,  but 

we  have  made  a  little.     We  have  got  a  shanty  three  logs  high, 

chinked,  and  mudded.and  roofed  with  our  tent,  and  a  chimney 

so  far  advanced  that  we  can  keep  a  fire  in  it   for  Jason.    John 

has  his  shanty  a  little  better  fixed  than  it  was,  but  miserable 

enough  now,  and  we  have  got  their  little  crop  of  beans  secured, 

which,  together  with  a  johnny  cake,  mush,  and  milk  pumpkins, 

and  squashes,  constitute  our  fare. 

[  Unsigned '.] 

RENEWAL   OF    STRIFE. 

Osawatomie,  Kansas  Territory,  Feb.  1,  1856. 
Dear  Wife  and  Children,  Every  One— Your  and 
Watson's  letter  to  the  boys  and  myself  of  December  30th  and 
January  1st  were  received  by  last  mail.  We  are  all  very  glad 
to  hear  again  of  your  welfare,  and  I  am  particularly  grateful 
when  I  am  noticed  by  a  letter  iromyou.  I  have  just  taken  out 
two  letters  for  Henry,  one  of  which  I  suppose  is  from  Ruth. 
Salmon  and  myself  are  so  far  on  our  way  home  from  Missouri, 
and  only  reached  Mr.  Adair's  last  night.  They  are  all  well. 
and  we  know  of  nothing  but  all  are  well  at  the  boys'  shanties. 
The  weather  continues  very  severe  and  it  is  now  nearly  six 
weeks  that  the  snow  has  been  almost  constantly  driven  (like 
dry  sand)  by  the  fierce  winds  of  Kansas.  Mr.  Adair  has  been 
collecting  ice  of  late  from  the  Osage  River,  which  is  nine  and 
one-half  inches  thick,  of  perfect  clear,  solid  ice,  formed  under 
the  snow.  By  means  of  the  sale  of  our  horse  and  wagon,  our 
Dresent  wants  are  tolerably  well  met,  so  that  if  health  is  con- 


668  JOHN    BROWN. 

tinued  to  us  we  shall  not  probably  suffer  much.  The  idea  of 
again  visiting-  those  of  my  clear  family  at  North  Elba  is  so  cal- 
culated to  unman  me,  that  I  seldom  allow  my  thoughts  to  dwell 
upon  it,  and  I  do  not  think  best  to  write  much  about  it.  "  Suf- 
fice to  say,"  that  God  is  abundantly  able  to  keep  both  us  and 
you,  and  in  Him  let  us  all  trust.  We  have  just  learned  of 
some  new  and  shocking  outrages  at  Leavenworth,  and  that 
free-state  people  there  have  fled  to  Lawrence,  which  place  is 
again  threatened  with  an  attack.  Should  that  take  place,  we 
may  soon  again  be  called  upon  to  "  buckle  on  our  armor," 
which  by  the  help  of  God  we  will  do,  when  I  suppose  Henry 
and  Oliver  will  have  a  chance.  My  judgement  is  that  we  shall 
have  no  general  disturbance  until  warmer  weather.  I  have 
more  to  say,  but  not   time  now  to  say  it,  so  farewell    for  this 

time.      Write. 

Your  affectionate  husband  and  father, 

John  Brown. 

BORDER-RUFFIAN    RUMORS. 

Brown  Station,  Kansas  Territory,  7th  April,  1856. 
Dear  Wife  and  Children,  Every  One — I  wrote  you 
last  week  enclosing  New  York  draft  for  thirty  dollars,  made 
payable  to  Watson,  twenty  dollars  of  which  were  to  be  given 
to  Ruth  in  part  payment  for  the  spotted  cow;  the  balance  to 
be  used  as  circumstances  might  require.  I  would  have  sent 
you  more,  but  I  had  no  way  to  do  it,  and  money  is  very  scarce 
with  me  indeed.  Since  I  wiote  last  three  letters  have  been 
received  by  the  boys  from  Ruth,  dated  March  5th  and  9th,  and 
one  of  some  date  from  Watson.  The  general  tone  of  those 
letters  I  like  exceedingly.  We  do  not  want  you  to  boirow 
trouble  about  us,  but  trust  us  to  the  mercy  of  "  Him  who  feeds 
the  young  ravens  when  they  cry."  I  have,  as  usual,  but  little 
to  write.  We  are  doing  off  a  house  for  Orson  Day,1  which  we 
hope  to  get  through  with  soon,  after  which  we  shall  probably 
soon  leave  this  neighborhood,  but  will  advise  you  further  when 

1   Brother  to  Mrs.  Brown. 


APPENDIX.  669 

we  do  leave.  It  may  be  that  Watson  can  manage  to  get  a  little 
money  for  shearing  sheep  if  you  do  not  get  any  from  Con- 
necticut. I  still  hope  that  you  will  get  help  from  that  source. 
We  have  no  wars  as  yet,  but  we  have  abundance  of  "rumors." 
We  still  have  frosty  nights,  but  the  grass  starts  a  little.  There 
are  none  of  us  complaining  much  just  now,  all  being  able  to  do 
something.  John  has  just  returned  from  Topeka,  not  having 
met  with  any  difficulty,  but  we  hear  that  preparations  are  mak- 
ing in  the  United  States  Court  for  numerous  arrests  of  free- 
state  men.  For  one  I  have  no  desire  (all  things  considered)  to 
have  the  slave-power  cease  from  its  acts  of  aggression.  "  Their 
foot  shall  slide  in  due  time."  No  more  now  ;  may  God  bless 
and  keep  you  all.  Your  affectionate  husband  and  father. 

[Not  signed '.] 

FROM  THE  PRISONERS'  CAMP  NEAR  LECOMPTON. 

Monday  Morning,  September  8,  1856. 
Dear  Father  and  Brother— Colonel  Blood  has  just 
handed  me  your  letter,  for  which  I  am  most  grateful.  Having 
before  heard  of  Frederick's  death  and  that  you  were  missing, 
my  anxiety  on  your  account  has  been  most  intense.  Though 
my  dear  brother  I  shall  never  see  again  here,  yet  I  thank  God 
you  and  Jason  still  live.  Poor  Frederick  has  perished  in  a  good 
cause,  the  success  of  which  cause,  I  trust,  will  yet  bring  joy  to 
millions.  My  "circumstances"  and  prospects  are  much  the 
same  as  when  I  last  wrote  to  you.  The  trial  of  Mr.  Williams 
and  myself  is  before  Cato,  in  Olathe,  I  believe  the  4th.  Don't 
know  whether  or  not  the  others  will  get  any  trial  here.  Judge 
Lecompte  is  reported  sick,  and  as  no  notice  of  the  names  of  the 
jurors  and  witnesses  has  been  served  on  them,  it  looks  as  if  the 
intention  is  to  hold  them  over  to  another  term.  Wealthy  has 
the  chills  and  fever  almost  every  day.  She  succeeds  in  check- 
ing it  only  a  short  time.  It  would  afford  us  a  great  satisfaction 
to  see  you  and  Jason.  He  and  I  have  no  doubt  you  could 
come  up  with  some  one  without  any  risk.  If  Governor  Geary 
should  not  release  us  I  think  still  of  going  with  you,  when  you 


6y0  JOHN    BROWN. 

think  it  best,  to  some  place  out  of  reach  of  re-arrest.  I  can,  I 
have  no  doubt,  succeed  in  making  my  escape  to  you  from  here, 
where  W.  and  Johnny  might  join  us.  There  is  some  talk  of  our 
being  remanded  to  Leavenworth  soon.  If  we  are,  I  suppose, 
the  difficulty  of  escape  would  be  very  much  increased.  I  AM 
ANXIOUS  TO  SEE  YOU  both,  in  order  to  perfect  some  plan  of 
escape,  in  case  it  should  appear  best.  Come  up,  if  you  con- 
sistently can.  The  battle  of  Osawatomie  is  considered  here  as 
the  great  fight  so  far,  and  considering  the  enemies'  loss,  it  is 
certainly  a  great  victory  for  us  ;  certainly  a  very  dear  burning 
of  the  town  for  them.  This  has  proved  most  unmistakably 
that  "  Yankees  "  will  "  fight."  Every  one  I  hear  speaking  of 
you  is  loud  in  your  praise.  The  Missourians  in  this  region 
show  signs  of  great  fear.  Colonel  Cook  was  heard  to  say  that, 
"  if  our  parly  were  prudent  in  view  of  their  success,  there  was 
nothing  to  prevent  our  having  everything  our  own  way." 

Hoping  to  see  you  both  soon,  I  am  as  ever  your  affectionate 
son  and  brother, 

(On  margin)  J.  Brown,  Jr.,  in  prison. 


AN    INTERVIEW  WITH   JOHN    BROWN  AND  KAGI. 

[First  written  by  Richard  J.  Hinton  for  and  published  in  the 
"Public  Life  of  John  Brown"  by  James  Redpath, 
Boston,  i860,  tinder  the  caption  "  Some  Shadows  Before."] 

"  On  Sunday  I  held  a  very  interesting  conversation  with 
John  Brown,  which  lasted  nearly  the  whole  afternoon.  The 
purport  of  it  was,  on  his  part,  inquiries  as  to  various  public 
men  in  the  Territory,  and  the  condition  of  political  affairs.  He 
was  very  particular  in  his  inquiries  as  to  the  movements  and 
character  of  Captain  Montgomery.  The  massacre  of  the 
Marais  des  Cygnes  was  then  fresh  in  the  minds  of  the  people. 
I  remember  an  expression  which  he  used.  Warmly  giving 
utterance  to  my  detestation  of  slavery  and  its  minions,  and  im- 
patiently wishing  for  some  effectual  means  of  injuring  it,  Cap- 
tain Brown  said,  most  impressively:     *  Young  men  must  learn 


APPENDIX.  671 

to  wait  Patience  is  the  hardest  lesson  to  learn.  I  have  waited 
for  twenty  years  to  accomplish  my  purpose.' 

"  In  the  course  of  the  conversation  he  reminded  me  of  a  mes- 
sage that  I  had  sent  him  in  1857,  and  hoped  I  meant  what  I 
then  said,  for  he  should  ask  the  fulfillment  of  that  promise,  and 
that  perhaps  very  soon;  and  further  added  that  he  wanted  to 
caution  me  against  rash  promises.  Young  men  were  too  apt 
to  make  them,  and  should  be  very  careful.  The  promise  given 
was  of  great  importance,  and  I  must  be  prepared  to  stand  by 
or  disavow  it  now.  My  answer  need  not  be  stated.  In  this 
conversation  he  gave  me  no  definite  idea  of  his  plans,  but 
seemed  generally  bent  on  ascertaining  the  opinions  and  char- 
acters of  our  men  of  anti  slavery  reputation. 

"  Kagi,  at  the  same  time,  gave  me  to  understand  that  their 
visit  to  Kansas  was  caused  by  a  betrayal  of  their  plans,  by  a 
Colonel  Forbes,  to  the  administration,  and  that  they  wished  to 
give  a  different  impression  from  what  these  disclosures  had, 
by  coming  to  the  west.  Both  stated  they  intended  to  stay  some 
time,  and  that  night  (Sunday)  Captain  Brown  announced  they 
would  go  south  in  the  morning,  to  see  Captain  Montgomery, 
and  visit  his  own  relatives  at  Osawatomie. 

"  A  few  weeks  later  I  rode  to  Mr.  Adair's  house  at  Osawatomie 
and  met  Captain  Brown  again.  My  account  of  that  interview 
follows : 

"  Captain  Brown  had  been  quite  unwell,  and  was  then  some- 
what more  impatient  and  nervous  in  his  manner  than  I  had 
before  observed.  Soon  after  my  arrival,  he  again  engaged  in 
conversation  as  to  various  public  men  in  the  Territory;  Of  his 
own  treatment  at  the  hands  of  ambitious  leaders,  to  which  I 
had  alluded  in  bitter  terms,  he  said:  'They  acted  up  to  their 
instincts,  As  politicians,  they  thought  every  man  wanted  to 
lead,  and,  therefore,  supposed  I  might  be  in  the  way  of  their 
schemes.  While  they  had  this  feeling,  of  course,  they  opposed 
me.  Many  men  did  not  like  the  manner  in  which  I  conducted 
warfare,  and  they  too  opposed  me.  Committees  and  councils 
could  not  control  my  movements,  therefore  they  did  not  like 
me.    But  politicians  and  leaders  soon  found  that  I  had  different 


6y2  JOHN    BROWN. 

purposes,  and  forgot  their  jealousy.  They  have  been  kind  to 
me  since.' 

"  The  conviction  was  expressed  that  trouble  would  break  out 
again  in  southern  Kansas.  At  this  time  I  had  mentioned  my  in- 
tention of  embarking  in  a  newspaper  enterprise.  Captain  Brown, 
in  an  impressive  manner,  expressed  a  wish  that  I  should  not 
enter  into  any  entangling  engagements,  referring  to  my  letter 
of  1857.  He  said  that  he  thought  all  engagements  should  be 
considered  sacred,  and  liked  my  adhering  to  the  one  I  had  at 
the  time.  That  was  the  reason  he  had  not  sent  to  me ;  but 
now  he  hoped  I  would  keep  myself  free.  In  this  connection  he 
used  words  which  I  have  often  thought  of  since. 

"  '  For  twenty  years,'  he  said,  '  I  have  never  made  any  busi- 
ness arrangement  which  would  prevent  me  at  anytime  answer- 
ing the  call  of  the  Lord.  I  have  kept  my  business  in  such  con- 
dition that  in  two  weeks  I  could  always  wind  up  my  affairs, 
and  be  ready  to  obey  the  call.  I  have  permitted  nothing  to  be 
in  the  way  of  my  duty,  neither  my  wife,  children,  nor  worldly 
goods.  Whenever  the  occasion  offered,  I  was  ready.  The  hour 
is  very  near  at  hand,  and  all  who  are  willing  to  act  should  be 
ready.' 

"  I  was  not  at  this  time  aware  of  his  precise  plans,  but  had 
a  general  conception  of  his  purpose.  All  through  that  conver- 
sation I  had  the  impression  that  those  blue  gray  eyes,  mild  yet 
inflexible,  and  beaming  with  the  steady  light  of  a  holy  pur- 
pose, were  searching  my  soul,  and  that  my  whole  being  was  as 
transparent  to  him  as  the  bosom  of  one  of  his  own  Adirondack 
lakes.  I  shall  never  forget  the  look  or  the  expression  with 
which  he  said :  '  Young  men  should  have  a  purpose  in  life, 
and  adhere  to  it  through  all  trials.  They  would  be  sure  to 
succeed  if  their  purpose  is  such  as  to  deserve  the  blessing  of 
God.' 

"  After  dinner  Kagi  had  some  conversation  with  the  Captain 
apart.  He  then  asked  me  if  I  would  walk  down  to  the  Marais 
des  Cygnes,  'as  he  was  going  to  fish.'  I  acquiesced,  and  we 
started.  About  half  way  to  the  river  we  stopped  and  sat  on  a 
fence.     Kagi  asked  me  what  I  supposed  was  the  plan  of  Cap- 


APPENDIX. 


^73 


tain  Brown.  My  answer  was,  that  I  thought  it  had  a  reference 
to  the  Indian  Territory  and  the  Southwestern  States.  He 
shook  his  head,  and  gradually  unfolded  the  whole  of  their 
plans.  ...  A  full  account  of  the  conversation  in  Canada 
was  given,  as  well  as  of  the  organization,  its  extent  and  objects, 
thereby  effected.  The  mountains  of  Virginia  were  named  as 
the  place  of  refuge,  and  as  a  country  admirably  adapted  to 
carrying  on  a  guerilla  warfare.  In  the  course  of  the  conversa- 
tion, Harper's  Ferry  was  mentioned  as  a  point  to  be  seized — 
but  not  held — on  account  of  the  arsenal.  The  white  members 
of  the  company  were  to  act  as  officers  of  different  guerilla 
bands,  which,  under  the  general  command  of  John  Brown, 
were  to  be  composed  of  Canadian  refugees  and  the  Virginia 
slaves  who  would  join  them.  A  different  time  of  the  year  was 
mentioned  for  the  commencement  of  the  warfare  from  that 
which  has  lately  been  chosen.  It  was  not  anticipated  that  the 
first  movement  would  have  any  other  appearance  to  the  mas- 
ters than  a  slave  stampede,  or  local  outbreak  at  most.  The 
planters  would  pursue  their  chattels  and  be  defeated.  The 
militia  would  then  be  called  out,  and  would  also  be  defeated. 
It  was  not  intended  that  the  movement  should  appear  to  be  of 
large  dimensions,  but  that,  gradually  increasing  in  magnitude, 
it  should,  as  it  opened,  strike  terror  into  the  heart  of  the  slave 
States  by  the  amount  of  organization  it  would  exhibit,  and  the 
strength  it  gathered.  They  anticipated,  after  the  first  blow 
had  been  struck,  that,  by  the  aid  of  the  freed  and  Canadian 
negroes  who  would  join  them,  they  could  inspire  confidence  in 
the  slaves,  and  induce  them  to  rally.  No  intention  was  ex- 
pressed of  gathering  a  large  body  of  slaves,  and  removing  them 
to  Canada.  On  the  contrary,  Kagi  clearly  stated,  in  answer  to 
my  inquiries,  that  the  design  was  to  make  the  fight  in  the 
mountains  of  Virginia,  extending  it  to  North  Carolina  and 
Tennessee,  and  also  to  the  swamps  of  South  Carolina,  if  pos- 
sible. Their  purpose  was  not  the  expatriation  of  one  or  a 
thousand  slaves,  but  their  liberation  in  the  States  wherein  they 
were  born,  and  were  held  in  bondage.  'The  mountains  and 
the  swamps  of  the  South  were  intended  by  the  Almighty,'  said 


£74  JOHN     BROWN. 

John  Brown  to  me  afterwards,  '  for  a  refuge  for  the  slave,  and 
a  defense  against  the  oppressor.' 

"  Kagi  spoke  of  having  marked  out  a  chain  of  counties 
extending  continuously  through  South  Carolina,  Georgia, 
Alabama,  and  Mississippi.  He  had  traveled  over  a  large  por- 
tion of  the  region  indicated,  and  from  his  own  personal  knowl- 
edge, and  with  the  assistance  of  the  Canadian  negroes  who 
had  escaped  from  those  States,  they  had  arranged  a  general 
plan  of  attack.  The  counties  he  named  were  those  which  con- 
tained the  largest  proportion  of  slaves,  and  would,  therefore, 
be  the  best  in  which  to  strike.  The  blow  struck  at  Harper's 
Ferry  was  to  be  in  the  spring,  when  the  planters  were  busy, 
and  the  slaves  most  needed.  The  arms  in  the  arsenal  were  to 
be  taken  to  the  mountains,  with  such  slaves  as  joined.  The 
telegraph  wires  were  to  be  cut  and  railroad  tracks  torn  up  in 
all  directions.  As  fast  as  possible,  other  bands  besides  the 
original  one  were  to  be  formed,  and  a  continuous  chain  of 
posts  established  in  the  mountains.  They  were  to  be  sup- 
ported by  provisions  taken  from  the  farms  of  the  oppressors. 
They  expected  to  be  speedily  and  constantly  reinforced  ;  first, 
by  the  arrival  of  those  men,  who  in  Canada,  were  anxiously 
looking  and  praying  for  the  time  of  deliverance,  and  then  by 
the  slaves  themselves.  The  intention  was  to  hold  the  egress 
to  the  free  States  as  long  as  possible,  in  order  to  retreat  when 
that  was  advisable.  Kagi,  however,  expected  to  retreat  south- 
ward, not  in  the  contrary  direction.  The  slaves  were  to  be 
armed  with  pikes,  scythes,  muskets,  shot-guns,  and  other 
simple  instruments  of  defense;  the  officers,  white  or  black, 
and  such  of  the  men  as  were  skilled  and  trustworthy,  to  have 
the  use  of  the  Sharpe's  rifles  and  revolvers.  They  anticipated 
procuring  provisions  enough  for  subsistence  by  forage,  as  also 
arms,  horses,  and  ammunition.  Kagi  said  one  of  the  reasons 
that  induced  him  to  go  into  the  enterprise  was  a  full  conviction 
that  at  no  very  distant  day  forcible  efforts  for  freedom  would 
break  out  among  the  slaves,  and  that  slavery  might  be  more 
speedily  abolished  by  such  efforts  than  by  any  other  means. 
He  knew  by  observation  in  the  South,  that  in  no  point  was  the 


APPENDIX. 


675 


system  so  vulnerable  as  in  its  fear  of  a  slave  rising.  Believing 
that  such  a  blow  would  be  soon  struck,  he  wanted  to  organize 
it  so  as  to  make  it  more  effectual,  and  also,  by  directing  and 
controlling  the  negroes,  to  prevent  some  of  the  atrocities  that 
would  necessarily  arise  from  the  sudden  upheaving  of  such  a 
mass  as  the  Southern  slaves.  The  constitution  adopted  at 
Chatham  was  intended  as  the  framework  of  organization 
among  the  emancipationists,  to  enable  the  leaders  to  effect  a 
more  complete  control  of  their  forces.  Ignorant  men,  in  fact, 
all  men,  were  more  easily  managed  by  the  forms  of  law  and 
organization  than  without  them.  This  was  one  of  the  pur- 
poses to  be  subserved  by  the  Provisional  Government.  Another 
was  to  alarm  the  (slave-holding)  oligarchy  by  discipline  and  the 
show  of  organization.  In  their  terror  they  would  imagine  the 
whole  North  was  upon  them  pell-mell,  as  well  as  all  their 
slaves.  Kagi  said  John  Brown  anticipated  that  by  a  system  of 
forbearance  to  non-slave-holders  many  of  them  might  be  induced 
to  join  them. 

"  In  answer  to  an  inquiry,  Kagi  stated  that  no  politician,  in 
the  Republican  or  any  other  party,  knew  of  their  plans,  and  but 
few  of  the  Abolitionists.  It  was  no  use  talking,  he  said,  of 
anti-slavery  action  to  non-resistant  agitators.  That  there 
were  men  who  knew  John  Brown's  general  idea  is  most  true; 
but,  south  of  the  Canadian  Provinces  and  of  North  Elba,  there 
were  but  few  who  were  cognizant  of  the  mode  by  which  he  in- 
tended to  mould  those  ideas  into  deeds. 

"After  a  long  conversation,  the  substance  of  which  I  have 
given,  we  returned  to  the  house.  I  had  some  further  conversa- 
tion with  Brown,  mostly  upon  his  movements,  and  the  use  of 
arms.  An  allusion  to  the  terror  inspired  by  the  fear  of  slaves 
rising,  was  the  fact  that  Nat  Turner  with  fifty  men  held  a  por 
tion  of  Virginia  for  several  weeks.  The  same  number  well 
organized  and  armed,  can  shake  the  system  out  of  the  State. 
.  .  .  Much  more  was  said  which  I  cannot  recall.  The 
afternoon  had  more  than  half  passed  before  I  left  for  my  des- 
tination. I  rode  over  the  prairies  till  sunset ;  and  in  the  glory 
of  the  grand  ideas  which  had  been  opened  to  me,  it  seemed  as 


C-5  JOHN    BROWN. 

if  the  whole  earth  had  become  broader,  and  the  heavens  more 
vast." 


RICHARD    REALF'S    ACCOUNT    OF    CAPTAIN 
BROWN'S    PLANS, 

AS   GIVEN    IN    HTS  TESTIMONY  BEFORE  THE   UNITED  STATES 
SENATE  HARPER'S  FERRY    INVESTIGATION    COMMITTEE, 
i860. 

"  John  Brown  stated  that  for  twenty  or  thirty  years  the  idea 
had  possessed  him  like  a  passion  of  giving  liberty  to  the  slaves  ; 
that  he  made  a  journey  to  England,  during  which  he  made  a 
tour  upon  the  European  continent,  inspecting  all  fortifications, 
and  especially  all  earthwork  forts  which  he  could  find,  with  a 
view  of  applying  the  knowledge  thus  gained,  with  modifications 
and  inventions  of  his  own,  to  a  mountain  warfare  in  the  United 
States.  He  stated  that  he  had  read  all  the  books  upon  insur- 
rectionary warfare,  that  he  could  lay  his  hands  on,  the  Roman 
warfare,  the  successful  opposition  of  the  Spanish  chieftains 
during  the  period  when  Spain  was  a  Roman  province, — how, 
with  ten  thousand  men,  divided  and  subdivided  into  small  com- 
panies, acting  simultaneously,  yet  separately,  they  withstood  the 
whole  consolidated  power  of  the  Roman  Empire  through  a 
number  of  years.  In  addition  to  this  he  had  become  very 
familiar  with  the  successful  warfare  waged  by  Schamyl,  the 
Circassian  chief,  against  the  Russians  ;  he  had  posted  himself 
in  relation  to  the  war  of  Tousaint  L'Ouverture  ;  he  had  become 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  wars  in  Hayti  and  the  islands 
round  about ;  and  from  all  these  things  he  had  drawn  the  con- 
clusion,— believing,  as  he  stated  there  he  did  believe,  and  as  we 
all  (if  I  may  judge  from  myself)  believed, — that  upon  the  first 
intimation  of  a  plan  formed  for  the  liberation  of  the  slaves,  they 
would  immediately  rise  all  over  the  Southern  States.  He  sup- 
posed that  they  would  come  into  the  mountains  to  join  him, 
where  he  proposed  to  work,  and  that  by  flocking  to  his  stand- 
ard  they  would  enable  him  (making  the  line    of    mountains 


APPENDIX.  677 

which  cuts  diagonally  through  Maryland  and  Virginia,  down 
through  the  Southern  States  into  Tennessee  and  Alabama,  the 
base  of  his  operations)  to  act  upon  the  plantations  on  the  plains 
lying  on  each  side  of  that  range  of  mountains  ;  that  we  should 
be  able  to  establish  ourselves  in  the  fastnesses.  And  if  any 
hostile  action  were  taken  against  us,  either  by  the  militia  of 
the  States,  or  by  the  armies  of  the  United  States,  we  purposed 
to  defeat  the  militia  first,  and  next,  if  possible,  the  troops  of 
the  United  States;  and  then  organize  the  free  blacks  under  the 
provisional  constitution,  which  would  carve  out  for  the  locality  of 
its  jurisdiction  all  that  mountainous  region  in  which  the  blacks 
were  to  be  established,  in  which  they  were  to  be  taught  the 
useful  and  mechanical  arts,  and  all  the  business  of  life.  Schools 
were  also  to  be  established,  and  so  on.  The  negroes  were  to 
be  soldiers." 


THREE    REMARKABLE    INTERVIEWS. 

William  A.  Phillips,  of  Salina,  Kansas,  who  died  recently  at 
Washington,  went  in  1855  from  central  or  southern  Illinois.  He 
practised  law,  edited  a  newspaper,  and  was  the  author  of 
several  books.  Among  the  stalwart  free-soilers  of  Whig  lean- 
ings in  those  early  days,  he  had  been  for  some  time  a  contributor 
to  the  New  York  Tribune,  so  he  naturally  became  its  corre- 
spondent in  Kansas.  The  work  he  did  there  was  of  an  ad- 
mirable character,  clean,  faithful,  courageous,  yet  conservative 
in  temper.  He  was  from  the  first  an  active  supporter  of  the 
Topeka  Constitution  movement,  hoping  to  use  the  "Squatter 
Sovereignty"  idea,  which  he  no  more  than  any  of  us  believed 
in,  as  a  means  of  aiding  the  actual  majority  of  settlers  to  main- 
tain their  civic  rights  against  the  organized  assaults  of  the  slave- 
power.  Charles  Robinson  was  made  Governor  under  that 
effort.  It  was  Phillips's  pen  that  wrote  most  of  the  free-state 
papers,  the  addresses  to  the  country,  and  the  messages  of  Dr. 
Robinson.  He  was  much  esteemed,  and  thereby  managed  to 
hold-in  most  of  the  younger  and  ardent  men,  correspondents 
and  others,  from  extreme  and  radical   action.     Captain  Brown 


fiyg  JOHN    BROWN. 

had  a  great  regard  for  Colonel  Phillips.  (He  served  as  such 
in  the  Union  army,  and  was  for  six  years  in  Congress  after  the 
war,  in  June  1856.)  The  interviews  from  which  these  extracts 
are  taken,  were  originally  published  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly. 

"  We  placed  our  two  saddles  together,  so  that  our  heads  lay 
only  a  few  feet  apart.  He  spread  his  blanket  on  the  wet  grass, 
and  we  lay  together  upon  it,  mine  was  spread  over  us.  Previous 
to  doing  this  he  had  stationed  a  couple  of  guards.  It  was  past 
eleven  o'clock,  and  we  lay  there  until  two  in  the  morning, 
scarcely  time  enough  for  sleep,  indeed  we  slept  none.  He 
seemed  as  little  disposed  to  sleep  as  I  was,  and  we  talked,  or 
rather  he  did,  for  I  said  little  more  than  enough  to  keep  him 
going.  I  soon  found  that  he  was  a  very  thorough  astronomer, 
and  he  enlightened  me  on  a  good  many  matters  in  the  starry 
firmament  above  us.  He  pointed  out  the  different  constella- 
tions and  their  movements.  '  Now,'  he  said,  *  it  is  midnight," 
and  he  pointed  to  the  finger  marks  of  his  great  clock  in 
the  sky. 

"  In  his  ordinary  moods  the  man  seemed  so  rigid,  stern,  and 
unimpressible  when  I  first  knew  him  that  I  never  thought  a 
poetic  and  impulsive  nature  lay  behind  that  cold  exterior.  The 
whispering  of  the  wind  on  the  prairie  was  full  of  voices  to  him, 
and  the  stars  as  they  shone  in  the  firmament  of  God  seemed  to 
inspire  him.  '  How  admirable  is  the  symmetry  of  the  heavens,' 
he  said,  'how  grand  and  beautiful.  Everything  moves  in  su- 
blime harmony  in  the  government  of  God.  Not  so  with  us  poor 
creatures.  If  one  star  is  more  brilliant  than  others,  it  is  con-. 
tinually  shooting  in  some  erratic  way  into  space.' 

"  He  discussed  and  criticised  both  parties  in  Kansas.  Of  the 
pro-slavery  men  he  spoke  in  bitterness.  He  said  that  slavery 
besotted  everything,  and  made  men  more  brutal  and  coarse. 
Nor  did  the  free  state  men  escape  his  sharp  censure.  He  said 
that  we  had  many  noble  and  true  men,  but  that  we  had  too  many 
broken  down  politicians  from  the  older  States.  '  These  men/ 
he  said,  'would  rather  pass  resolutions  than  act,  and  they 
criticised  all  who  did  real  service.'  '  A  professional  politician; 
he  went  on,  'you  never  could  trust;  for  even  if  he  had  convie. 


APPENDIX. 


679 


tions,  he  was  always  ready  to  sacrifice  his  principles  for  his 
advantage.' 

"One  of  the  most  interesting  things  in  his  conversation  that 
night,  and  one  that  marked  him  as  a  theorist  (and  perhaps  to 
some  extent  he  might  be  styled  a  visionary),  was  his  treatment 
of  our  forms  of  social  and  political  life.  He  thought  society 
ought  to  be  organized  on  a  less  selfish  basis;  for,  while  material 
interests  gained  something  by  the  deification  of  pure  selfish- 
ness, men  and  women  lost  much  by  it.  He  said  that  all  great 
reforms,  like  the  Christian  religion,  were  based  on  broad,  gener- 
ous, self-sacrificing  principles.  He  condemned  the  sale  of  land 
as  a  chattel,  and  thought  that  there  was  an  infinite  number  of 
wrongs  to  right  before  society  would  be  what  it  should  be,  but 
that  in  our  country  slavery  was  the  'sum  of  all  villainies,'  and 
its  abolition  the  first  essential  work.  If  the  American  people 
did  not  take  courage,  and  end  it  speedily,  human  freedom  and 
republican  liberty  would  soon  be  empty  names  in  these  United 
States.  (John  Brown  evidently  saw  beyond  the  defeat  even. of 
chattel  slavery.) 

"  The  second  interview  occurred,  I  think,  in  February,  1857. 
When  I  reached  Mr.  Whitman's  (where  the  Captain  stopped)  I 
found  him,  and  with  him  Kagi  and  '  Whipple'  (that  is  Stevens), 
and  Cook ;  in  fact,  most 1  of  the  men  who  were  with  him  at 
Harper's  Ferry.  He  took  me  to  an  apartment  where  we  could 
be  alone,  and  then  he  first  inquired  as  to  the  condition  of  the 
free-state  cause.  He  was  very  apprehensive  that  many  of  the 
free-state  leaders  would  jeopardize  the  principles  of  the  party 
in  order  to  get  power.  He  asked  earnestly  many  questions 
about  the  free-state  leaders.  One  very  good  man  he  criticised 
for  several  things  he  had  done,  and  in  response  to  my  assur- 


1  The  only  others,  besides  one  of  Brown's  sons,  who  were  pres- 
ent al  Mr.  Whitman's,  besides  the  three  named,  were  Richard 
Realf  and  Luke  F.  Parsons,  who  did  not  go  to  Harper's  Ferry. 
C.  W.  Moffett,  of  Montour,  Iowa,  joined  them  atTopeka,  Kansas, 
and  at  Tabor,  Iowa,  they  met  Charles  W.  Tidd  and  Wm.  H, 
Leeman,  who  were  left  watching  the  arms,  etc.,  there. 


68o  JOHN    BROWN. 

ances  about  him  he  used  one  of  his  striking  comparisons.  He 
took  out  a  large  pocket-compass,  and  unscrewing  its  brass  lid 
laid  it  clown  on  the  table  before  me,  and  pointing  at  the  needle 
fixed  his  eyes  on  me,  while  he  said  : 

" '  You  see  that  needle  ;  it  wabbles  about  and  is  mighty 
unsteady,  but  it  wants  to  point  to  the  north.  Is  he  like  that 
needle  ?  ' 

"  He  told  me  that  some  friends  in  the  East  had  raised  for  him 
and  placed  in  his  hands  a  very  large  sum  of  money,  in  all 
nearly  five  thousand  dollars.  He  had  picked  his  company,  and 
would  like  a  few  more,  if  he  could  get  the  right  kind  of  men. 
He  had  spent  some  time  in  Iowa  and  some  on  the  Kansas 
border.  He  was  drilling  and  educating  his  company,  and 
training  them  to  hardship  and  to  be  perfectly  faithful  and 
reliable.  He  desired,  he  said,  to  get  my  advice  as  to  the  best 
way  of  using  his  force  and  resources,  so  as  to  advance  the 
great  interests  of  freedom  and  humanity. 

"  He  suggested  that  it  was  only  fair,  as  Missouri  had  under- 
taken to  make  a  slave  State  of  Kansas,  and  failed,  that  Kansas 
should  make  a  free  State  of  Missouri,  and  proceeded  at  length 
to  show,  in  the  most  logical  manner,  that  it  was  not  for  the 
interests  of  Kansas  to  have  a  powerful  slave  State  so  close  to 
it,  and  that  the  process  of  putting  an  end  to  slavery  there 
was  exceedingly  simple.  He  said  that  he  intended  to  spend 
some  time  near  Tabor,  Iowa,  where  he  expected  to  be  joined  by 
others,  who  would  need  discipline  and  organization;  and  that 
he  expected  also  to  visit  Canada,  with  the  view  of  studying 
personally  its  suitability  for  receiving  and  protecting  negro 
emigration.     And  so  we  parted  on  that  occasion." 


THE  PROPHETIC  INTERVIEW  AND  THE  LAST. 

John  Brown's  movements  in  1859  are  a^  we^  known,  and  the 
last  interview  to  which  Colonel  Phillips  refers,  must  have  been 
in  the  earlier  part  of  January,  1859,  as  John  Brown  was  then  in 
Lawrence  for  a  day  or  two,  preparing  to  bring  about  the  suc- 
cessful removal  of  his  eleven  bond  people  he  had  brought  out 
of  Missouri  on  the   preceding  Christmas  Eve.     These  fugitives 


APPENDIX.  68l 

had  been  left  on  the  Pottawatomie,  Lykens  Co.y  and  under  the 
protection  of  Dr.  (afterwards  Major-General)  James  G.  Blunt, 
and  three  citizens  of  that  vicinity.  The  fact  that  Kagi  called 
on  Phillips,  asking  the  latter  to  call  on  the  Captain,  also  serves 
to  fix  the  date.  He  was  found  at  the  Whitney  House.  At  the 
time  a  price  was  on  John  Brown's  head.     Phillips  says  : 

"  He  sketched  the  history  of  American  slavery  from  its  be- 
ginnings in  the  colonies  and  referred  to  the  States  that  were 
able  to  shake  it  off.  He  said  the  founders  of  the  Republic 
were  all  opposed  to  slavery,  and  that  the  whole  spirit  and 
genius  of  the  American  Constitution  antagonized  it,  and  con- 
templated its  early  overthrow.  .  .  .  This  remained  the 
dominant  sentiment  for  the  first  quarter  of  a  century  of  the 
Republic.  Afterwards  slavery  became  more  profitable,  and  as 
it  did  the  desire  grew  to  extend  and  increase  it.  The  con- 
dition of  the  enslaved  negroes  steadily  became  worse,  and  the 
despotic  necessities  of  a  more  cruel  system  constantly  pressed 
on  the  degraded  slaves.  Gradually  the  pecuniary  interests 
that  rested  on  slavery  seized  the  power  of  the  Government. 
Public  opinion  opposed  to  slavery  was  placed  under  ban.  Then 
began  an  era  of  political  compromises,  and  men  full  of  profes- 
sions of  love  of  country  were  willing,  for  peace,  to  sacrifice 
everything  for  which  the  Republic  was  founded. 

" 'And  now,' he  went  on,  'we  have  reached  a  point  where 
nothing  but  war  can  settle  the  question.  Had  they  succeeded 
in  Kansas,  they  would  have  gained  a  power  that  would  have 
given  them  permanently  the  upper  hand,  and  it  would  have 
been  the  death-knell  of  republicanism  in  America.  They  are 
checked,  but  not  beaten.  They  never  intend  to  relinquish  the 
machinery  of  this  Government  into  the  hands  of  the  opponents 
of  slavery.  It  has  taken  them  more  than  half  a  century  to  get 
it,  and  they  know  its  significance  too  well  to  give  it  up.  If  the 
Republican  party  elects  its  President  next  year,  there  will  be 
war.  The  moment  they  are  unable  to  control  they  will  go  out. 
and  as  a  rival  nation  alongside,  they  will  get  the  countenance 
and  aid  of  the  European  nations,  until  American  republicanism 
and  freedom  are  overthrown.' 


5g2  JOHN     BROWN. 

"  I  have  endeavored  to  quote  him,  but  it  is  quite  impossible 
to  quote  such  a  conversation  accurately.  I  well  remember  all 
its  vital  essentials  and  its  outlines.  He  had  been  more  ob- 
servant than  he  had  credit  for  being.  The  whole  powers  of 
his  mind  (and  they  were  great)  had  been  given  to  one  subject. 
He  told  me  that  a  war  was  at  that  very  moment  contemplated 
in  the  cabinet  of  President  Buchanan  ;  that  for  years  the  army 
had  been  carefully  arranged,  as  far  as  it  could  be,  on  a  basis  of 
Southern  power ;  that  arms  and  the  best  of  troops  were  being 
concentrated,  so  as  to  be  under  control  of  its  interests  if  there 
was  danger  of  having  to  surrender  the  Government;  that  the 
Secretary  of  the  Navy  was  then  sending  our  vessels  away  on 
long  cruises,  so  that  they  would  not  be  available,  and  that  the 
treasury  would  be  beggared  before  it  got  into  Northern  hands. 

"  All  this  has  a  strangely  prophetic  look  to  me  now  ;  then  it 
simply  appeared  incredible,  or  the  dream  and  vagary  of  a  man 
who  had  allowed  one  idea  to  carry  him  away.  I  told  him  he 
surely  was  mistaken,  and  had  confounded  every-day  occurrences 
with  treacherous  designs. 

"'  No,'  he  said,  and  I  remember  this  part  distinctly, — 'no, 
the  war  is  not  over.  It  is  a  treacherous  lull  before  the  storm. 
We  are  on  the  eve  of  one  of  the  greatest  wars  in  history,  and  I 
fear  slavery  will  triumph,  and  there  will  be  an  end  of  all  aspira- 
tions for  human  freedom.  For  my  part,  I  drew  my  sword  in 
Kansas  when  they  attacked  us,  and  I  will  never  sheathe  it  until 
this  war  is  over.  Our  best  people  do  not  understand  the  danger. 
They  are  besotted.  They  have  compromised  so  long  that  they 
think  principles  of  right  and  wrong  have  no  more  any  power 
on  this  earth.' 

"  My  impression  then  was  that  it  was  his  purpose  to  carry  on 
incursions  on  the  borders  of  the  free  and  slave  States,  and  I 
said  to  him, — 

"  '  Let  us  suppose  that  all  you  say  is  true.  If  we  keep  com- 
panies on  the  one  side,  they  will  keep  them  on  the  other. 
Trouble  will  multiply;  there  will  be  collision,  which  will  pro- 
duce the  very  state  of  affairs  you  deprecate.  That  would  lead 
to  war,  and,  to  some  extent,  we  should  be  responsible  for  it. 


APPENDIX.  683 

Better  trust  events.  If  there  is  virtue  enough  in  this  people  to 
deserve  a  free  government,  they  will  maintain  it.' 

" '  You  forget  the  fearful  wrongs  that  are  carried  on  in  the 
name  of  government  and  law.' 

" '  I  do  not  forget  them, — I  regret  them.' 

"  '  I  regret  and  will  remedy  them  with  all  the  power  that  God 
has  given  me.' 

''He  then  went  on  to  tell  me  of  Spartacus  and  his  servile 
war,  and  was  evidently  familiar  with  every  step  in  the  career 
of  the  great  gladiator.  I  reminded  him  that  Spartacus  and 
Roman  slaves  were  warlike  people  in  the  country  from  which 
they  were  taken,  and  were  trained  to  arms  in  the  arena,  in 
which  they  slew  or  were  slain,  and  that  the  movement  was 
crushed  when  the  Roman  legions  were  concentrated  against  it. 
The  negroes  were  a  peaceful,  domestic,  inoffensive  race.  In 
all  their  sufferings  they  seemed  to  be  incapable  of  resentment 
or  reprisal. 

'"You  have  not  studied  them  right,'  he  said,  'and  you  have 
not  studied  them  long  enough.  Human  nature  is  the  same 
everywhere.'  He  then  went  on  in  a  very  elaborate  way  to  ex- 
plain the  mistakes  of  Spartacus,  and  tried  to  show  me  how  he 
/mild  easily  have  overthrown  the  Roman  empire.  The  pith  of 
it  was  that  the  leader  of  that  servile  insurrection,  instead  of 
wasting  his  time  in  Italy  until  his  enemies  could  swoop  on  him, 
should  have  struck  at  Rome  ;  or,  if  not  strong  enough  for  that, 
he  should  have  escaped  to  the  wild  northern  provinces,  and 
there  have  organized  an  army  to  overthrow  Rome. 

"  I  told  him  that  I  feared  he  would  lead  the  young  men  with 
him  into  some  desperate  enterprise,  where  they  would  be  im- 
prisoned and  disgraced. 

"He  rose:  '  Well,' he  said,  *I  thought  I  could  get  you  to 
understand  this.  I  do  not  wonder  at  it.  The  world  is  very 
pleasant  to  you  ;  but  when  your  household  gods  are  broken,  as 
mine  have  been,  you  will  see  all  this  more  clearly  ' 

"  I  rose  then,  somewhat  offended,  and  said  '  Captain,  if  you 
thought  this,  why  did  you  send  for  me?'  and  walked  to  the 
door. 


1 


684  JOHN    BROWN. 

"  He  followed  me,  and  laid  his  hand  on  my  shoulder,  and 
when  I  turned  to  him  he  took  both  my  hands  in  his.  I  could 
see  that  tears  stood  on  his  hard,  bronzed  cheeks.  '  No,'  he 
said,  '  we  must  not  part  thus.  I  wanted  to  see  you  and  tell  you 
how  it  appeared  to  me.  With  the  help  of  God,  I  will  do  what 
I  believe  to  be  best.'  He  held  my  hands  firmly  in  his  stern, 
hard  hands,  leaned  forward,  and  kissed  me  on  the  cheek,  and 
I  never  saw  him  again." 


RICHARD    A.    DANA'S   ACCOUNT   OF   THE    NORTH 
ELBA  HOME,  ITS    HEAD,  AND  FAMILY. 

[From  the  Atlantic,  July,  187 1.] 

"  A  near  turn  in  the  road  brought  us  in  sight  of  a  log-house 
and  half-cleared  farm,  while,  had  we  gone  to  the  right,  we 
should  have  found  it  seven  miles  to  the  nearest  dwelling. 

"Three  more  worn,  wearied,  hungry,  black-fly-bitten  travel- 
ers seldom  came  to  this  humble,  hospitable  door.  The  people 
received  us  with  cheerful  sympathy,  and,  while  we  lay  down  on 
the  grass,  under  the  shadow  of  the  house,  where  a  smutch 
kept  off  the  black-flies,  prepared  something  for  our  comfort. 
The  master  of  the  house  had  gone  down  to  the  settlements, 
and  was  expected  back  before  dark.  His  wife  was  rather  an 
invalid,  and  we  did  not  see  much  of  her  at  first.  There  were  a 
great  many  sons  and  daughters — I  never  knew  how  many;  one 
a  bonny,  buxom  young  woman  of  some  twenty  summers,  with 
fair  skin  and  red  hair,  whose  name  was  Ruth,  and  whose  good 
humor,  hearty  kindness,  good  sense  and  helpfulness,  quite  won 
our  hearts.  She  would  not  let  us  eat  much  at  a  time,  and  cut 
us  resolutely  off  from  the  quantities  of  milk  and  cool  water  we 
were  disposed  to  drink,  and  persuaded  us  to  wait  until  some- 
thing could  be  cooked  for  us,  more  safe  and  wholesome  for 
faint  stomachs;  and  we  were  just  weak  enough  to  be  sub- 
missive subjects  to  this  backwoods  queen.  A  man  came  along 
in  a  wagon,  and  stopped  to  water  his  horses,  and  they  asked 


APPENDIX. 


685 


him  if  he  had  seen  anything  of  Mr.  Brown  below — which  it 
seemed  was  the  name  of  the  family.  Yes;  he  had  seen  him. 
He  would  be  along  in  an  hour  or  so.  '  He  has  two  negroes 
along  with  him,'  said  the  man,  in  a  confidential,  significant 
tone,  'a  man  and  a  woman.'  Ruth  smiled,  as  if  she  under- 
stood him.  Mr.  Aikens  told  us  that  the  country  about  here 
belonged  to  Gerrit  Smith ;  that  negro  families,  mostly  fugitive 
slaves,  were  largely  settled  upon  it,  trying  to  learn  farming; 
and  that  Mr.  Brown  was  a  strong  Abolitionist  and  a  kind  of 
king  among  them.  This  neighborhood  was  thought  to  be  one 
of  the  termini  of  the  underground  railroad. 

"  The  farm  was  a  mere  recent  clearing.  The  stumps  of 
trees  stood  out,  blackened  by  burning,  and  crops  were  growing 
among  them,  and  there  was  a  plenty  of  felled  timber.  The 
dwelling  was  a  small  log-house  of  one  story  in  height,  and  the 
outbuildings  were  slight.  The  whole  had  the  air  of  a  recent 
enterprise,  on  a  moderate  scale,  although  there  were  a  good 
many  neat  cattle  and  horses.  The  position  was  a  grand  one 
for  a  lover  of  mountain  effects  ;  but  how  good  for  farming  I 
could  not  tell.  Old  White  Face,  the  only  exception  to  the 
uniform  green  and  brown  and  black  hues  of  the  Adirondack 
hills,  stood  plain  in  view,  rising  at  the  head  of  Lake  Placid, 
its  white  or  pale- gray  side  caused,  we  were  told,  by  a  land- 
slide. All  about  were  the  distant  highest  summits  of  the 
Adirondacks. 

"  Late  in  the  afternoon  a  long  buckboard  wagon  came  in 
sight,  and  on  it  were  seated  a  negro  man  and  woman,  with 
bundles ;  a  tall,  gaunt,  dark-complexioned  man  walked  before, 
having  his  theodolite  and  other  surveyor's  instruments  with 
him,  while  a  youth  followed  by  the  side  of  the  wagon. 
The  team  turned  into  the  sheds,  and  the  man  entered  the 
house.  This  was  '  father.'  The  sons  came  out  and  put  up  the 
cattle,  and  soon  we  were  asked  in  to  the  meal.  Mr.  Brown 
came  forward  and  received  us  with  kindness  :  a  grave  serious 
man  he  seemed,  with  a  marked  countenance  and  a  natural  dig- 
nity of  manner — that  dignity  which  is  unconscious,  and  comes 
from  a  superior  habit  of  mind. 


6g6  JOHN    BROWN. 

"  We  were  all  ranged  at  a  long  table,  some  dozen  of  us,  more 
or  less;  and  these  two  negroes  and  one  other  had  their  places 
with  us.  Mr.  Brown  said  a  solemn  grace.  I  observed  that  he 
called  the  negroes  by  their  surnames,  with  the  prefixes  of  Mr. 
and  Mrs.  The  man  was  '  Mr.  Jefferson,'  and  the  woman 
'Mrs.  Wait.'  He  introduced  us  to  them  indue  form,  'Mr. 
Dana,  Mr.  Jefferson,'  '  Mr.  Metcalf,  Mrs.  Wait.'  It  was  plain 
they  had  not  been  so  treated  or  spoken  to  often  before,  perhaps 
never  until  that  day,  for  they  had  all  the  awkardness  of  field 
hands  on  a  plantation  ;  and  what  to  do  on  the  introduction,  was 
quite  beyond  their  experience,  There  was  an  unrestricted 
supply  of  Ruth's  best  bread,  butter,  and  corn-cakes,  and  we 
had  some  meat  and  tea,  and  a  plenty  of  the  best  of  milk.  We 
had  some  talk  with  Mr.  Brown,  who  interested  us  very  much. 
He  told  us  he  came  here  from  the  western  part  of  Massa- 
chusetts. As  some  persons  may  distrust  recollections,  after 
very  striking  intervening  events,  I  ask  pardon  for  taking  an 
extract  from  a  journal  I  was  in  the  habit  of  keeping  at  those 
times : — 

"  '  The  place  belonged  to  a  man  named  Brown,  originally 
from  Berkshire  in  Massachusetts,  a  thin,  sinewy,  hard-favored, 
clear-headed,  honest-minded  man,  who  had  spent  all  his  days 
as  a  frontier  farmer.  On  conversing  with  him,  we  found  him 
well  informed  on  most  subjects,  especially  in  the  natural 
sciences.  He  had  books,  and  had  evidently  made  a  diligent 
use  of  them.  Having  acquired  some  property,  he  was  able  to 
keep  a  good  farm,  and  had  confessedly  the  best  cattle  and  best 
farming  utensils  for  miles  round.  His  wife  looked  superior  to 
the  poor  place  they  lived  in,  which  was  a  cabin,  with  only  four 
rooms.  She  appeared  to  be  out  of  health.  He  seemed  to 
have  an  unlimited  family  of  children,  from  a  cheerful,  nice, 
healthy  woman  of  twenty  or  so,  and  a  full  sized  red-haired  son, 
who  seemed  to  be  foreman  of  the  farm,  through  every  grade  of 
boy  and  girl,  to  a  couple  that  could  hardly  speak  plain. 

"  How  all  these,  and  we  three  and  Mr.  Jefferson  and  Mrs, 
Wait,  were  to  be  lodged  here,  was  a  problem  ;  but  Aikens  said 
he  had   seen  as  much  done  here  before.     However,  we  were 


APPENDIX. 


687 


not  obliged  to  test  the  expanding  capacities  of  the  house,  for 
a  man  was  going  down  to  Osgood's,  by  whom  we  sent  a  mes- 
sage, and  in  an  hour  or  two  the  smiling  face  of  Tommy  ap- 
peared behind  his  mules,  and  we  took  leave  of  our  kind  enter- 
tainers. 

"  '  In  these  regions  it  is  the  custom  for  farmers  to  receive 
travelers ;  and,  while  they  do  not  take  out  licenses  as  inn- 
holders,  or  receive  strictly  pay  for  what  they  furnish,  they 
always  accept  something  in  the  way  of  remuneration  from  the 
traveler.  When  we  attempted  to  leave  something  with  Ruth, 
which  was  intended  to  express  our  gratitude  and  good  will, 
we  found  her  inflexible.  She  would  receive  the  bare  cost  of 
what  we  had  taken,  if  we  wished  it,  but  nothing  for  attentions, 
or  house-room,  or  as  gratuity.  We  had  some  five-dollar  bills 
and  some  bills  of  one  dollar  each.  She  took  one  of  the  one- 
dollar  bills  and  went  into  the  garret,  and  returned  with  some 
change.  It  was  too  piteous.  We  could  not  help  smiling,  and 
told  her  we  should  feel  guilty  of  highway  robbery  if  we  took 
her  silver.  She  consented  to  keep  the  one  dollar,  for  three  of 
us, — one  meal  apiece  and  some  extra  cooking  in  the  morning, 
— as  we  seemed  to  think  that  was  right.  It  was  plain  this 
family  acted  on  a  principle  in  the  smallest  matters.  They 
knew  pretty  well  the  cost  price  of  the  food  they  gave ;  and  if 
the  traveler  preferred  to  pay,  they  would  receive  that,  but  noth- 
ing more.  There  was  no  shamefacedness  about  the  money 
transaction  either.  It  was  business  or  nothing;  and  if  we  pre- 
ferred to  make  it  business,  it  was  to  be  upon  a  rule.' 

"  After  a  day  spent  on  Lake  Placid,  and  in  ascending  White 
Face,  we  returned  to  Osgood's,  and  the  next  day  we  took  the 
road  in  our  wagon  on  our  return  to  Westport.  We  could  not 
pass  the  Browns'  house  without  stopping.  I  find  this  entry  in 
my  journal : — 

"'June  29,  Friday. — After  breakfast,  started  for  home. 
.  .  .  We  stopped  at  the  Browns'  cabin  on  our  way,  and 
took  an  affectionate  leave  of  the  family  that  had  shown  us  so 
much  kindness.  Wefound  them  at  breakfast,  in  the  patriarchal 
style.     Mr.  and  Mrs.  Brown  and  their  large  family  of  children 


£gg  JOHN    BROWN. 

with  the  hired  men  and  women,  including  three  negroes,  all  at 
the  table  together.  Their  meal  was  neat,  substantial,  and 
wholesome.' 

"  It  seems  as  if  those  few  days  of  ours  in  the  Adirondacks,  in 
1849.  had  been  passed  under  a  spell  which  held  my  senses 
from  knowing  what  we  saw.  All  is  now  become  a  region  of 
peculiar  sacredness.  That  plain,  bare  farm,  amid  the  blackened 
stumps,  the  attempts  at  scientific  agriculture  under  such  dis- 
advantages, the  simple  dwelling,  the  surveyor's  tools,  the 
setting  of  the  little  scene  amid  grand,  awful  mountain  ranges, 
the  negro  colony  and  inmates,  the  family  bred  to  duty  and 
principle,  and  held  to  them  by  a  power  recognized  as  being 
from  above, — all  these  now  come  back  on  my  memory  with  a 
character  nowise  changed,  indeed,  in  substance,  but,  as  it  were, 
illuminated.  The  widow,  bearing  homeward  the  body  from 
the  Virginia  scaffold,  with  the  small  company  of  stranger 
friends,  crossed  the  lake,  as  we  had  done,  to  Westport ;  and 
thence,  along  that  mountain  road,  but  in  midwinter,. to  Eliza- 
bethtown  ;  and  thence,  the  next  day,  to  the  door  of  that  dwell- 
ing. The  scene  is  often  visited  now  by  sympathy  or  curiosity, 
no  doubt,  and  master  pens  have  made  it  one  of  the  most  marked 
in  our  recent  historv." 


{Letters  and  papers  relating  to  Kansas,  the  Pottawatomie 
affair,  George  L.  Steams,  the  Chatham  Convention,  with 
remi7iiscetices  of  a  member  of  the  John  Brown  party.'] 

THE    POTTAWATOMIE    SLAYING. 

HON.  CHARLES  A.  FOSTER,  OF  OSAWATOMIE,  FORMERLY 
THE   LEADING  FREE-STATE   LAWYER   IN   SOUTHERN 

KANSAS. 

"  Quincy,  Mass.,  Nov.  10,  1892. 
"  My  Dear  HlNTON — Very  soon   after   my  arrival  at  Osa- 
watomie,  I  became  acquainted  with  some  of  the   sons  of  John 
Brown,   viz.,   John,  Jr.,   Owen,  Jason,  and  Frederick.     It  came 


APPENDIX.  689 

about  in  this  way:  About  the  time — July  2,  1855 — a  delegate 
meeting-  was  called  at  Lawrence  to  take  action  in  relation  to 
the  meeting  of  what  we  called  the  '  Border  Ruffian  Legis- 
lature.' On  my  way  to  that  meeting  I  had  to  pass  the  place 
where  the  Brown  boys  had  taken  up  claims,  and  when  I 
reached  there  I  found  them  just  starting,  and  so  joined  them, 
and  after  the  meeting  was  over,  returned  in  their  company.  I 
formed  a  very  high  opinion  of  them  and  we  became  firm 
friends.  John,  Jr.,  had  brought  with  him  some  Morgan  horses 
for  breeding  purposes ;  Jason  proposed  to  engage  in  fruit ; 
Owen  in  sheep  husbandry,  and  Frederick  in  fine  cattle. 

"  During  the  rest  of  the  summer  they  frequently  called  at  my 
house,  and  as  my  profession  at  that  time  was  to  be  the  law, 
and  I  having  for  those  times  and  that  place  a  fairly  good  law 
library,  John  Brown,  Jr.,  proposed  when  he  had  got  a  little 
more  settled  to  take  up  the  study  of  the  law. 

"  You  are  more  or  less  knowing  to  the  current  of  events  dur- 
ing the  balance  of  the  summer  and  fall  of  that  year.  I  was  a 
delegate  to  the  '  Big  Springs  Convention,'  at  which  the  free- 
state  party  was  formally  organized,  and  was  also  elected  assist- 
ant secretary  of  the  '  Topeka  Convention.'  Previous,  however, 
to  the  meeting  of  the  last  named  body  the  election  was  held  by 
the  '  Free-State  party '  for  delegates  to  that  convention,  and  for 
Reiche  as  delegate  to  Congress. 

"  At  the  close  of  that  election  I  took  the  returns  from  my 
town  to  Lawrence.  Upon  my  return  trip  I  stopped  at  the 
Brown  settlement,  and  John,  Jr.,  said  that  his  father  was  going 
to  town  and  would  keep  me  company.  This  was  the  first  in- 
timation I  had  had  that  he  was  in  the  Territory.  We  were  ac- 
cordingly introduced  to  each  other ;  we  freely  conversed  upon 
the  various  interests  and  the  events  that  were  pressing  around 
us.  In  opinions  and  convictions,  I  soon  found,  he  was  more 
radical  than  any  person  whom  I  had  met.  I  left  him  at  Mr. 
Adair's  house,  and  I  do  not  remember  of  seeing  him  again  un- 
til some  time  the  next  spring.  In  my  intercourse  with  him  he 
reminded  me  more  fully  of  the  Scotch  Covenanters  described 
by  Sir  Walter  Scott. 


6oo  JOHN    BROWN. 

"At  the  time  of  the  '  Wakarusa  War '  (December,  1855),  I 
was  not  able  to  accompany  those  who  went  to  the  assistance 
of  the  people  of  Lawrence;  but,  you  know  that  John  Brown, 
with  all  his  family,  went,  and  came  home  disgusted  with  the 
manner  in  which  that  difficulty  was  settled.  In  the  meantime, 
John  Brown,  Jr.,  had  been  elected  a  member  of  the  House  of 
the  famous  '  Topeka  Legislature,'  and  attended  its  first  session 
and  helped  to  organize  the  same.  He  returned  home,  and,  until 
the  breaking  out  of  the  trouble  in  the  spring  of  1856, 1  saw  but 
little  of  the  family. 

"In  the  spring  of  1856,  as  you  know,  began  the  Southern 
immigration  under  Buford  and  others.  A  company  of  Ala- 
bamians  came  into  our  neighborhood  ;  I  frequently  saw  many 
of  them  in  our  town  ;  after  a  little  they  moved  up  Pottawatomie 
Creek  in  the  vicinity  of  where  Dr.  Gilpatrick,  Judge  Hanway, 
the  Wilkinsons,  Doyles,  and  Shermans  lived.  A  word  about 
the  Shermans:  they  were  either  Dutch  or  German.  Henry 
Sherman,  or  Dutch  Henry,  as  he  was  called,  had  strayed  into 
the  country  some  years  before  its  settlement,  and  had  been 
taken  into  the  employment  of  Mr.  Jones,  '  Ottawa  Jones  '  as  he 
was  known  all  over  the  country.  Jones  was  an  educated,  intel- 
ligent, Christian  Indian  who  had  married  a  white  lady  who  had 
come  out  from  Maine  as  a  missionary  teacher.  Jones  had  a 
fine  farm,  good  buildings,  and  for  those  times  the  best  herd  of 
cattle  in  the  Territory.  Dutch  Henry  staid  with  Jones  for 
several  years,  had  been  saving,  and  finally  moved  south  to 
Pottawatomie  Creek,  buying  from  Jones  some  of  his  cattle.  A 
remarkable  increase  of  his  stock  took  place  while  the  herd  of 
Jones  decreased  in  about  the  same  proportions.  Soon  after 
Henry  moved  South  his  brother  joined  him,  and  both  of  them 
became  at  once  active  pro-slavery  men. 

"Soon  after  the  arrival  of  the  Alabamians  on  the  Creek,  we 
began  to  hear  of  loss  of  horses  and  stock  of  free-state  men, 
and  also  threats  that  the  free-state  men  would  soon  be  driven 
out  and  their  claims  taken  by  the  Southern  immigrants.  Then 
we  received  news  of  the  proposed  attack  on  Lawrence,  and  a 
call  was  made  upon  us  for  assistance.      Previous  to  this,  how- 


APPENDIX.  691 

ever,  a  raid  had  been  made  into  our  town  soon  after  midday  by 
a  band  from  Missouri,  who  hurriedly  gathered  up  such  arms, 
money,  jewelry,  etc.,  as  they  could  lay  their  hands  upon. 

"  In  response  to  the  call  for  help  from  Lawrence,  a  company 
was  formed  of  about  forty  men,  and  Oscar  V.  Dayton  was 
chosen  commander,  and  we  started  on  our  way.  On  arrival 
near  the  Brown  settlement,  we  met  a  company  under  the 
command  of  John  Brown,  Jr.,  which  had  been  raised  on  Potta- 
watomie Creek.  We  joined  forces,  and  John  Brown,  Jr.,  was 
placed  in  command.  Mr.  Dayton  was  made  second.  Soon 
after  this  junction  of  forces,  I  had  a  long  talk  with  H.  H. 
Williams,  who  left  Pottawatomie  Creek  the  last  man  ;  he  told 
me  that  an  old  man  named  Morse,  who  had  sold  all  the  lead 
and  powder  he  had  in  his  little  store  to  the  free-state  men, 
had  been  visited  by  the  Doyles,  Wilkinson,  the  elder,  and 
Dutch  Henry,  who  threatened  to  hang  him  and  all  other  free- 
state  men  left  on  the  creek.  Williams  told  him  to  notify  all 
the  free  state  men  to  join  together  for  protection,  and  as  soon 
as  the  party  returned  the  disturbers  would  be  taken  care  of. 
The  first  night  the  two  companies  camped  on  the  prairie,  and 
in  the  morning  resumed  our  march  ;  soon  after  we  met  John 
Brown  and  his  sons  going  south. 

"  In  1883,  after  reading  Professor  Spring's  article,  I  wrote  to 
H.  H.  Williams,  asking  him  for  his  recollections,  and  I  have 
his  letter  before  me,  from  which  I  copy. 

"  '  January  20,  1883. 

"  '  DEAR  Sir — Your  letter  of  the  15th  inst.  came  yesterday, 
and  in  reply  would  say,  that  I  have  read  the  article  referred 
to,  written  by  L.  W.  Spring  ;  in  fact,  have  it  before  me  now  to 
refer  to,  and,  except  a  little  high  coloring  and  a  few  minor 
points,  it  is  correct.  I  don't  know  who  the  young  surveyor  re- 
ferred to  is,  I  saw  them  grinding  their  sabres,  but  don't  recol- 
lect who  was  turning  the  grindstone.  The  scout  referred  to 
as  carrying  the  news  of  the  threats  made  to  old  man  Morse 
and  others,  is  myself.  James  Townsley  lived  near  the  forks  of 
Pottawatomie,  now  near  the  corner  of  Miami,  Franklin,  Ander- 


Oo2  JOHN     BROWN. 

son,  and  Linn  counties.  In  the  party  that  left  Ottawa  Creek 
to  go  and  straighten  things  on  the  Pottawatomie,  and  which 
we  met  at  Jones's  on  our  return,  was  old  John  Brown,  three 
sons,  and  one  son-in-law,  Winer,  and  Townsley  ;  August  Bondi 
was  not  of  the  party,  and  he  may  have  been  the  young  sur- 
veyor referred  to. 

"'  When  this  party  met  us,  a  short  conference  was  had,  and 
we  learned  for  the  first  time  that  Lawrence  had  been  de- 
stroyed, Robinson,  Deitzler,  and  Brown  had  been  carried 
prisoners  to  Lecompton. 

"  '  The  two  parties  separated,  one  company  continuing  on  the 
way  towards  Lawrence,  and  John  Brown,  going  south.  That  day 
we  reached  "  Baldwin  City,"  on  the  Sante  Fe  Road,  and  sent  a 
committee,  of  which  I  was  one,  into  Lawrence,  to  learn  the 
situation  of  affairs,  and  also  to  learn  what  was  to  be  the  future 
line  of  action.  Early  the  next  morning — Sunday — we  took  up 
our  return  march,  and  in  the  afternoon  stopped  for  a  short 
time  at  "  Prairie  City,"  and  here  for  the  first  time  we  learned 
of  what  was  called  the  "  Pottawatomie  Massacre."  In  the 
form  in  which  the  news  reached  us,  we  were  struck  with 
amazement  and  repudiated  the  act. 

"'After  an  interview  with  John  Brown,  Jr.,  and  the  com- 
mander of  a  Company  of  U.  S.  dragoons,  we  resumed  our 
march,  and  that  night  camped  at  Ottawa  Jones's.  About  eleven 
o'clock  I,  being  on  guard  near  the  house,  heard  the  approach 
of  a  wagon,  and  soon  the  old  man  and  his  party  entered  the 
camp.  I  found  Frederick  and  questioned  him  about  the  affair, 
and  he  replied : 

'""I  can't  tell  you  anything  now,  but  when  you  hear  the 
whole  story  you  will  be  satisfied  that  everything  is  all  right." 

"  '  We  separated  and  I  never  saw  any  of  the  party  again. 

'"On  the  morning  we  resumed  our  march  and  arrived  at 
home  that  afternoon.  We  found  everybody  denouncing  the 
act,  and  in  a  few  days  the  country  was  overrun  by  Missourians 
and  all  the  pro-slavery  men  of  that  section.  John  Brown,  Jr., 
and  Jason  were  arrested  and  carried  to  Lecompton.' 

"Now,  there   are   two  questions  to   be   met:  First,  was   the 


APPENDIX.  693 

old  man  there  and  assisting  ?  Second,  was  the  act  justi- 
fiable ? 

"  In  i860,  in  a  talk  with  Capt.  Sam.  Walker,  he  said  :  '  Old 
man  Brown  never  lied,  he  told  me  himself  that  he  was  there,  and 
I  believe  him.'  Dr.  T.  H.Webb  told  me  that  Brown  said  to  him 
that  he  was  not  there:  'but  that,  if  that  was  murder,  he 
(Brown)  was  guilty  of  murder,  for  he  approved  of  the  acts, 
and  if  he  had  been  there  he  would  have  assisted.'  F.  B.  San- 
born, whose  life  of  Brown  I  have  not  read,  before  writing  the 
same,  went  over  the  whole  ground,  talked  with  all  the  witnesses 
then  living  whom  he  could  reach,  copied  from  Judge  Hanway's 
diary,  made  at  the  time,  and  told  me  that  the  only  conclusion 
he  could  arrive  at  was,  that  the  old  man  was  there  in  command. 

"  Second.  Was  the  party  justified  in  their  act  ?  I  will  only 
answer  by  giving  the  information  as  I  received  it  at  that 
and  subsequent  times. 

"After  the  excitement  had  subsided  we  began  to  gather 
facts.  When  the  parting  of  the  two  companies  took  place, 
which  I  have  previously  related,  John  Brown  and  his  partv 
started  for  home,  the  first  place  they  struck  was  the  cabin  of 
his  son-in  law,  which  he  found  empty,  next  John  Brown,  Jr.'s, 
which  he  also  found  empty,  a  neighbor  informed  them  that  the 
houses  had  been  visited  by  the  party  from  Pottawatomie,  who 
had  threatened  to  burn  them  over  their  heads  ;  the  women 
being  alarmed,  found  a  yoke  of  cattle,  yoked  them  to  a  cart, put 
their  valuables  into  it  with  the  children,  and  drove  down  to  Mr. 
Adair's  house,  where  we  found  them  upon  our  return.  The 
party,  leaving  Middle  Creek,  proceeded  on  their  way  to  Potta- 
watomie; coming  in  sight  of  where  Winer's  house  should  be, 
they  found  it  burned  with  a  small  stock  of  goods  which  it  con- 
tained ;  a  little  further  on  they  found  the  house  of  August 
Bondi  also  burned,  and  he  soon  after  appearing  told  them  it 
was  the  party  who  that  night  were  killed,  together  with  '  Dutch 
Henry  '  and  Judge  Wilson,  who  had  done  the  work.  You  now 
have  all  the  facts  within  my  recollection.  One  incident  more 
which  occurred  in  1857  :  A  land  sale  of  Indian  Lands  was  had 
at  Paola  during  the  fall  of  that  year;  the  election  for  members 


694  JOHN    BROWN. 

of  the  Legislature  was  to  take  place  ;  the  Free  State  party  had 
agreed  to  go  into  the  election  ;  in  view  of  this  fact  during  the 
sale,  notice  was  given  out  that  on  the  morrow  Gov.  Walker, 
Sec.  Stanton,  and  ex- Governor  Bigier,  of  Pennslyvania,  would 
address  the  people  on  the  issues  of  the  day. 

"  I  was  importuned  to  go  over  and  reply  to  them;  this  I  at 
first  promptly  refused  to  do,  as  I,  a  young  man,  did  not  con- 
sider myself  able  to  cope  with  gentlemen  of  such  great  ability; 
but  I  finally  consented.  In  my  reply  to  the  argument  that  we 
should  vote  for  the  Democratic  candidates,  I  said  among  other 
things,  '  that  we  did  not  like  that  kind  of  Democracy,  that  if 
they  would  come  oxer  to  Osawatomie  I  would  show  them  the 
graves  of  five  men  killed  in  cold  blood,  the  ruins  of  thirty  cabins, 
all  done  by  Kansas  Democrats  ;  '  upon  which  Judge  Wilson 
stepped  forward  and  said  :  '  Bro.  Foster,  how  is  it  about  the 
men  your  friend  John  Brown  killed  up  Pottawatomie?'  I  re- 
plied, 'Judge  Wilson,  you  are  the  last  man  in  this  world  who 
should  ask  that  question  ;  you  know  that  if  you  had  not  been 
an  unworthy  member  of  a  world-wide  secret  fraternity  you  would 
have  paid  the  penalty  of  your  crimes  with  your  life  that  night, 
but  you  got  warning  in  time  and  escaped.'  Then  was  the  time 
for  him  and  his  friend  to  have  disclaimed,  but  he  slunk  away 
without  a  reply  and  was  heard  of  no  more." 


FROM    HON.    JAMES    HANWAY, 
SHERMANSVILLE,  K.  T. 

[  The  writer  of  this  letter,  addressed  in  December,  1S5Q,  to  the 
present  author,  was  one  of  Joint  Brown's  sincere  friends 
and  a  citizen  of  Kansas  of  high  repute  and  character.  He 
died  full  of  honor  and  respected  by  all,  within  the  past 
three  years.} 

"  Presuming  you  are  well  acquainted  with  the  leading  inci- 
dents in  the  life  of  John  Brown,  during  the  difficulties  in  Kan- 
sas, I,  therefore,  pass  over  these  events  and   will  only  relate  a 


APPENDIX.  695 

few  items,  which  came  more  immediately  under  my  own  obser- 
vation— to  show  his  character  and  his  motives  which  led  him 
onwards. 

"  I  was  in  the  military  company  which  marched  to  the 
rescue  of  Lawrence  in  May,  1856,  from  Pottawatomie  Creek. 
I  became  acquainted  with  our  hero  in  the  spring  of  that  year. 
While  our  company  was  camped  on  Ottawa  Creek,  waiting 
orders  from  headquarters,  a  movement  was  set  on  foot  by 
John  Brown.  Jr.,  and  others,  to  form  a  company  of  their  own 
and  march  back  to  the  Pottawatomie  Creek.  Only  a  few  knew 
what  the  object  of  this  new  movement  was,  but  the  general 
opinion  in  camp  was  that  old  Brown  would  undertake  some 
'  rash  '  enterprise,  and  bring  trouble  on  the  free-state  cause ; 
therefore  several  individuals  were  deputized  to  talk  to  Brown 
and  caution  him  to  act  with  discretion.  An  old  gent  approached 
Brown  and  inquired  if  he  (Brown)  had  concluded  to  undertake 
some  new  enterprise.  Yes,  was  the  response.  Well,  sir.  said 
the  old  gent  to  Brown,  I  hope  you  will  act  with  great  caution. 
At  this  Brown,  who  was  packing  up  his  camp  fixtures,  instantly 
stood  erect  and  said,  '  Caution,  caution,  sir,  I  am  eternally 
tired  of  hearing  that  word  caution,  it  is  nothing  but  the  words 
of  cowardice.' 

"  On  another  occasion  some  one  was  questioning  the  bold- 
ness of  his  movements,  and  he  said,  '  I  would  rather  my  body 
was  ground  into  the  earth  than  yield  to  the  despotism  of  the 
slave-power.'  In  regard  to  the  exit  of  the  three  Doyles,  Win, 
Sherman,  and  Wilkinson  (the  postmaster),  who  lived  on  the 
Pottawatomie  Creek,  I  could  perhaps  give  you  the  correct  facts 
in  connection  with  this  'tragedy' — but  I  presume  you  know 
them.  However,  I  can  give  you  Brown's  opinion  of  this  event. 
In  conversation  with  him,  he  remarked  (about  a  year  ago)  that 
it  was  a  just  act,  to  take  the  lives  of  those  five  pro-slavery 
ruffians.  That  it  had  saved  the  lives  of  many  good  men,  that 
he  knew  it  was  the  intention  of  the  bonier  ruffians  to  '  clear ' 
the  Creek  of  every  free-state  man,  by  driving  them  off  by 
threats,  burning  and  taking  of  human  life.  You,  perhaps,  are 
aware  that  John  Brown  was  a  surveyor. 


60fi  JOHN    BROWN. 

"  This  gave  him  an  excellent  opportunity  to  gain  information. 
He  run  his  compass  into  the  pro-slavery  camps.  The  ruffians 
!  >ok  it  for  granted  that  all  surveyors  were  pro-slavery  and 
<  Dosed  to  the  'abolitionists,'  and  believing  that  the  adminis- 
i  ..ition  would  only  employ  those  faithful  to  the  slavery  cause. 
John  Brown  received  the  information  directly  from  these  pro- 
slavery  banditti ;  and  he  only  took  the  advance  step  upon  them, 
and  thus  blasted  their  hellish  designs.  The  old  settlers,  almost 
unanimously,  justify  this  tragic  act,  and  they  feel  as  if  a  debt  of 
thanks  was  due  to  John  Brown  and  his  confederates  in  check- 
ing the  hand  of  border  ruffianism  in  that  section  of  the  country. 

"  Before  this  Pottawatomie  tragedy  took  place,  a  man  known 
by  the  name  of  Squire  Morse,  an  old,  inoffensive  man,  was  noti- 
fied to  leave  in  three  days  or  they  (the  Doyles)  would  burn 
down  his  house  and  store — other  individuals  received  informa- 
tion of  like  character. 

"  Last  year  there  was  a  common  report  that  Martin  White, 
of  Mo.,  had  been  shot  and  killed.  Of  course  everybody 
thought  that  old  Brown  had  taken  revenge  on  Martin  White 
for  the  murderous  act  of  shooting  Frederick  Brown  a  few  hours 
before  the  Osawatomie  fight.  The  old  man  was  asked  if  he 
knew  whether  M.  White  had  been  thus  disposed  of.  He 
replied,  he  believed  that  White  was  still  living,  that  he  knew 
many  persons  suppose  that  he  (Brown)  had  sought  revenge, 
etc.  '  People,'  says  he,  '  mistake  my  objects.  I  would  not  hurt 
one  hair  of  his  head.  I  would  not  go  one  inch  to  take  his  life; 
I  do  not  harbor  the  feeling  of  revenge.  I  act  from  a  principle. 
My  aim  and  object  is  to  restore  human  rights.' 

"  After  the  battle  of  Osawatomie  he  called  at  the  house  con- 
taining the  corpse  of  his  son  Frederick.  He  requested  permis- 
sion to  be  left  alone.  For  one  hour  he  devoted  to  silent  medi- 
tation, then  left,  to  gather  together  his  scattered  men  who  had 
been  with  him  in  the  fight,  leaving  to  his  friends  the  perfor- 
mance of  the  rite  of  sepulture.  You  must  deny  the  error  of 
Geary,  that  Frederick  Brown  was  insane.  He  certainly  was 
not  insane.  He  was  very  excitable  in  debate  and  a  man  of 
good  argumentive  power. 


APPENDIX.  697 

"Dec.  10. — I  have,  since  writing  the  above,  endeavored  to 
get  other  matter,  but  have  not  been  able  to  gain  any  thing 
new.  We  have  just  heard  of  the  execution  of  John  Brown. 
He  has  many  warm  friends  in  Kansas,  and,  however  they  maj 
regret  his  late  movement,  they  admire  his  bold  and  heroic  con- 
duct during  his  imprisonment.  John  Brown  is  the  Oliver 
Cromwell  of  America.  1  think  that  Brown  possessed  more 
humanity  in  his  character  than  Cromwell." 


A  SECRET  FREE-STATE  ORDER. 

[Air.  yames  F.  Legate,  still  a  prominent  citizen  and  public 
man  in  Kansas,  writes  me  copiously  in  relation  to  the 
Pottaivatomie  slaying  and  agents  that  led  thereto.  Part 
of  what  he  said  I  have  retained  as  confidential,  as  I  under- 
stand he  proposes  to  use  such  information  in  a  book  of  his 
own,  but  the  following  is  so  thoroughly  a  part  of  the 
record  of  the  period,  that  1  may  be  pardoned  for  pre- 
senting it  here  with  other  matter.] 

FORMING  THE  DANITES. 

In  the  fall  of  185$,  meetings  for  consultations  were  fre- 
quently held  in  the  house  of  Charles  Robinson,  on  the  hill 
where  the  State  University  now  stands.  Murder  and  arson 
were  of  frequent  occurrence  ;  all  the  time  Robinson  under  the 
dictation  of  our  Boston  friends,  was  counseling  peace  and  non- 
resistance,  till  it  became  tiresome  to  some  of  us  who  were 
young  and  thoughtless.  I  had  lived  South,  in  Mississippi,  for 
six  years,  and  I  felt  I  knew  the  Southern  mind  too  well  to  be- 
lieve that  they  would  respect  us  as  "peace  men  in  time  of 
war,"  and  that  was  war. 

At  one  of  those  meetings,  just  after  an  old  man  whose  name 
has  escaped  my  memory,  had  been  seized  and  robbed  and 
brutally  treated  by  the  border  ruffians,  while  returning  from 
Westport,    Robinson    gave   a   lecture   on  a   peaceful    bearing 


698  JOHN    BROWN. 

towards  those  men,     I  replied  by  saying,  **  I  thought  I  TcneW 
the  Southern  mind  better  than  he  did— I  did  not  believe  they 
would  respect  us  as  worthy  to  be  called  American  citizens,  to 
endure  these  great   wrongs  without  trying  to  put  a  stop  to 
them,  and  the  only  way  to  do  that  was  to  retaliate  in  kind— if 
they  burned  a   free-state  man's  house,  burn  two   pro-slavery 
men's  houses — if  they  robbed  a  free-state  man,  we  must  rob 
two  pro-slavery  men — if  a  free-state  man  was  killed,  we  must 
kill  two  pro-slavery  men."     This  seemed  to   strike  all   present 
with   wonderful    force,  or    rather  it    was  giving   language  to 
thoughts  that  were  in  the  discontented  brain  of  the  young  men 
of  those  days.     Even  Robinson  was  "  almost  persuaded,"  but 
clung  with  wonderful  tenacity  to  his  instructions.     Lane  heard 
of  what  I  had  said,  and  fawned   all   over  me  for  my   "  noble 
utterances,"  as  he  styled   them.     He  corralled    the    spirit   of 
unrest  panting  to  do  and  dare  anything,  the  tendency  of  which 
would  be  to  put  a  stop  to  those  border-ruffian  crimes ;  so  a 
secret  society  was  formed,  the  purposes  of  which  were  to  re- 
taliate against  the  ruffians  for  the  crimes  they  were   commit- 
ting.    .     .     .     James  H.  Lane  was  a  member  and  a  leader. 
John    Speer,    Charles   Robinson,    Captain   Shore,   and    many 
others,  whose  names  I  cannot  recall,  were  members.     Charles 
Robinson,  however,  soon  failed  to  attend,  becoming  more  earnest 
in  his  Boston  theory  of  non-resistance.     The  society  had  not 
much  more  than  a  year's  duration,  because  Lane  was  continu- 
ally calling  meetings,  and  would  invariably  have  a  long  paper 
of  "  whereas"  Bill  Smith,  a  "  pro-slavery  hell  hound  "  had  been 
guilty  of  stealing  free-state  men's  horses,  or  burning  someone's 
house,  or  some  crime  of  less  grade,  and  then,  "  Therefore  Re- 
solved "  that  Bill  Smith  shall  be  brought  before  this  body  of 
men.  his  case  investigated    and  adjudicated,   and   the  decree 
shall  be  executed  by  one  or  more  men  appointed  by  the  com- 
mander   of    this    council,    or    of    some    sub-council.     Lane's 
"  Whereases  "  killed  the  society.    This  society  had  its  birth  be- 
cause of  the  murder  of  Dow,  Barber,  and  the   robbery  and 
house-burning  that  were  frequent  in  those  clays. 

Robinson's  Kansas  Conflict   is   a   burlesque  on  history.     It 


APPENDIX.  gort 

belittles  himself — he  makes  the  Kansas  conflict  a  war  waged 
by  murderers,  thieves,  and  cutthroats  for  free-Kansas,  against 
a  law-abiding.  Christian  community,  who  were  simply  holding- 
colored  men  in  happy  bondage.  He  makes  the  heroes  of  Kan- 
sas, who  risked  everything  for  free  Kansas,  murderers  and 
thieves,  and  the  murderers  and  thieves  who  risked  everything  for 
slavery  in  Kansas,  heroes  and  patriots.  His  services  in  behalf 
of  free  Kansas  deserve  and  will  receive  in  history  the  highest 
encomium,  but  his  later  conduct  will  remain  a  stain  upon  his 
memory  through  all  the  annals  of  time.  Robinson  could  not 
control  the  spirit  of  unrest,  which  permeated  the  young  blood 
of  the  free-state  settlers.  Lane  came  and  seeing  at  a  glance  the 
situation  seized  the  leadership  of  these  young  spirits,  who 
were  thirsting  to  do  or  dare  anything  that  would  redound  to  the 
freedom  of  Kansas.  Robinson  was  a  safe  counselor.  Lane 
was  "one  of  the  boys,"  always  sharing  or  pretending  to  share 
their  danger,  but  always  absorbing  all  their  glory.  Lane  ul- 
timately was  completely  successful;  Robinson  failed  as  a 
popular  man.  Robinson  has  ever  since  had  the  unhappy 
faculty  of  getting  on  the  wrong  side  at  the  right  time. 

John  Brown  never  had  any  faith  in  making  Kansas  a  free 
State,  and  preserving  slavery  in  Missouri  He  felt  his  life's 
mission  was  to  destroy  slavery,  and  that  it  never  could  be 
destroyed  but  by  means  of  war  between  the  free  and  slave 
States;  whatever  he  did  was  designed  to  bring  about  a  war,  so 
that  by  it  the  slave  chattel  should  become  a  human  being  and 
be  possessed  of  all  the  God-given  rights  of  an  American 
citizen.  He  religiously  believed  that  God  had  sent  him  as  a 
special  messenger  to  win  freedom  for  the  downtrodden  slaves 
in  this  land,  and  he  was  equally  certain  that  it  would  not  be 
done  only  by  war.  Whatever  he  did  or  said  was  done  and  said 
as  "  Thus  said  the  Lord,"  and  his  attack  upon  Harper's  Ferry 
and  his  death  upon  the  gallows  did  more  to  prepare  the  mind 
of  the  South  that  war  was  a  necessity,  and  commenced  the  con- 
flict which  ended  slavery,  than  all  things  else  combined.  He 
was  prophetic  in  his  theory  and  utterances,  as  subsequent 
events  so  clearly  demonstrate.     He  cannot   be  blotted  out  of 


y00  JOHN     BROWN. 

history,  or  proved  to  be  a  bad  man.  He  gave  his  life  freely 
that  liberty  to  the  slaves  might  become  a  living  fact.  The  good 
that  men  do  should  never  die,  but  that  which  is  bad  in  good 
men  should  be  permitted  to  die  with  them. 


STATEMENT  BY  JOHN    EDWIN   COOK 

OF   HIS   CONNECTION    WITH    CAPTAIN   JOHN    BROWN. 

{This paper,  usually  stigmatized  as  a  "  Confession,"  was  pre- 
pared by  Captain  Cook  while  in  prisoJi  and  on  trial 
for  his  life  at  Charlestown,  Va.,  during  the  month  of 
November,  iS"jq.  It  was  prepared  under  the  pressure 
brought  upon  him  by  his  counsel,  Hon.  Daniel  W.  Voorhees, 
and  his  brother-in  law,  Lieutenant-Governor  Willard,  of 
Indiana,  who  seriously  hoped  thereby  to  savi  Cook's  life. 
For  one,  involved  as  I  was,  I  never  regarded  the  paper  as 
an  offeiise,  but  rather  as  a  weakness.  Cook  told  nothing 
that  Governor  Wise  and  his  advisers  did  not  know,  when 
the  paper  was  read  in  court.     R.  J.  H.] 

THE    STATEMENT. 

I  became  acquainted  with  Capt.  John  Brown  in  his  camp  on 
Middle  Creek,  Kansas  Territory,  just  after  the  battle  of  Black 
Jack,  and  was  with  him  in  said  camp  until  it  was  broken  up 
and  his  company  disbanded  by  Col.  Sumner,  of  the  First 
Cavalry,  United  States  Army. 

I  next  saw  him  at  the  convention  at  Topeka,  which  was  on 
the  4th  of  July,  1856.  I  next  met  him  some  days  afterward  in 
Lawrence.  Did  not  see  him  again  until  the  fall  of  1857,  when 
1  met  him  at  the  house  of  E.  B.  Whitman,  about  four  miles 
from  Lawrence,  K.  T.,  which.  I  think,  was  about  the  1st  of 
November  following.  I  was  told  that  he  intended  to  organize 
a  company  for  the  purpose  of  putting  a  stop  to  the  aggressions 
of  the  pro-slavery  men.     I  agreed  to  join  him,  and  was  asked 


APPENDIX.  ~OI 

if  I  knew  of  any  other  young  men  who  were  perfectly  reliable 
whom  I  thought  would  join  also.  I  recommended  Richard 
Realf,  L.  F.  Parsons,  and  R.  J.  Hinton.  I  received  a  note  on 
the  next  Sunday  morning,  while  at  breakfast  in  the  Whitney 
House,  from  Capt.  Brown,  requesting  me  to  come  up  that  day, 
and  to  bring  Realf,  Parsons,  and  Hinton  with  me.  Realf  and 
Hinton  were  not  in  town,  and  therefore  I  could  not  extend  to 
them  the  invitation.  Parsons  and  myself  went  and  had  a  long 
talk  with  Capt.  Brown. 

A  few  days  afterward  I  received  another  note  from  Capt. 
Brown,  which  read,  as  near  as  I  can  recollect,  as  follows: 

"Date . 


"Capt.  Cook: — Dear  Sir — You  will  please  get  everything 
ready  to  join  me  at  Topeka  by  Monday  night  next.  Come  to 
Mrs.  Sheridan's,  two  miles  south  of  Topeka,  and  bring  your 
arms,  ammunition,  clothing,  and  other  articles  you  may  require. 
Bring  Parsons  with  you,  if  he  can  get  ready  in  time.  Please 
keep  very  quiet  about  this  matter.     Yours,  etc., 

"John  Brown." 

I  made  all  my  arrangements  for  starting  at  the  time 
appointed.  Parsons,  Realf,  and  Hinton  could  not  get  ready.  I 
left  them  at  Lawrence,  and  started  in  a  carriage  for  Topeka. 
Stopped  at  the  hotel  over  night,  and  left  early  next  morning 
for  Mrs.  Sheridan's,  to  meet  Capt.  Brown.  Staid  a  day  and  a 
half  at  Mrs.  S.'s — then  left  for  Topeka,  at  which  place  we  were 
joined  by  "  Whipple,"  Moffett,  and  Kagi.  Left  Topeka  for 
Nebraska  City,  and  camped  at  night  on  the  prairie  northeast  of 
Topeka.  Here,  for  the  first,  I  learned  that  we  were  to  leave 
Kansas  to  attend  a  military  school  during  the  winter.  It  was 
the  intention  of  the  party  to  go  to  Ashtabula  county,  Ohio.  Next 
morning  I  was  sent  back  to  Lawrence  to  get  a  draft  of  $80 
cashed,  and  to  get  Parsons,  Realf,  and  Hinton  to  go  back  with 
me.  I  got  the  draft  cashed.  Captain  Brown  had  given  me 
orders  to  take  boat  to  St.  Joseph,  Mo.,  and  stage  from  there  to 
Tabor,  Iowa,  where  he  would  remain  for  a  few  days.  I  had  to 
wait  for  Realf  for  three  or  four  days  ;  Hinton  could  not  leave 


-02  JOHN    BROWN. 

at  that  time.  I  started  with  Realf  and  Parsons  on  a  stage  for 
Leavenworth.  The  boats  had  stopped  running  on  account  of 
the  ice.  Staid  one  day  in  Leavenworth  and  then  left  for 
Weston,  where  we  took  stage  for  St.  Joseph,  and  from  thence 
to  Tabor.  I  found  C.  P.  Tidd  and  Leeman  at  Tabor.  Our 
party  now  consisted  of  Captain  John  Brown,  Owen  Brown, 
A.  D.  Stevens  ("  Whipple"),  Charles  Moffett,  C.  P.  Tidd,  Richard 
Robertson,  Richard  Realf,  L.  F.  Parsons,  Wm.  Leeman  and 
myself.  We  stopped  some  days  at  Tabor,  making  preparations 
to  start.  Here  we  found  that  Captain  Brown's  ultimate  des- 
tination was  the  State  of  Virginia.  Some  warm  words  passed 
between  him  and  myself  in  regard  to  the  plan,  which  I  had 
supposed  was  to  be  confined  entirely  to  Kansas  and  Missouri. 
Realf  and  Parsons  were  of  the  same  opinion  with  me.  After  a 
good  deal  of  wrangling  we  consented  to  go  on,  as  we  had  not 
the  means  to  return,  and  the  rest  of  the  party  were  so  anxious 
that  we  should  go  with  them.  At  Tabor  we  procured  teams  for 
the  transportation  of  about  200  Sharp's  rifles,  which  had  been 
taken  on  as  far  as  Tabor,  one  year  before,  at  which  place  they 
had  been  left  awaiting  the  order  of  Captain  Brown.  There 
were,  also,  other  stores,  consisting  of  blankets,  clothing,  boots, 
ammunition,  and  about  two  hundred  revolvers  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts Arms  patent,  all  of  which  we  transported  across  the 
State  of  Iowa  to  Springdale.  and  from  there  to  Liberty,  at 
which  place  they  were  shipped  for  Ashtabula  county,  Ohio, 
where  they  remained  till  brought  to  Chambersburg,  Pa.,  and 
were  from  there  transported  to  a  house  in  Washington  county, 
Md.,  which  Captain  Brown  had  rented  for  six  months,  and 
which  was  situated  about  five  miles  from  Harper's  Ferry.  It 
was  the  intention  of  Captain  Brown  to  sell  his  teams  in  Spring- 
dale,  and  with  the  proceeds  to  go  on  with  the  rest  of  the  com- 
pany to  some  place  in  Ashtabula  county,  Ohio,  where  we  were 
to  have  a  good  military  instructor  during  the  winter  ;  but  he 
was  disappointed  in  the  sale.  As  he  could  not  get  cash  for  the 
teams  it  was  decided  we  should  remain  in  the  neighborhood 
of  Springdale,  and  that  our  instructor,  Col.  H.  Forbes,  should 
be  sent  on.     We  stopped  in   Pedee  (Springfield),  Iowa,  over 


APPENDIX.  703 

winter,  at  Mr.  Maxson's,  where  we  pursued  a  course  of  military 
studies.  Col.  H.  Forbes  and  Captain  Brown  had  some  words,  and 
he  (Col.  F.)  did  not  come  on  ;  consequently  A.  D.  Stevens  was 
our  drillmaster.  The  people  of  the  neighborhood  did  not  know 
of  our  purpose.  We  remained  at  Pedee  till  about  the  middle  of 
April,  when  we  left  for  Chatham,  Canada,  via  Chicago  and 
Detroit.  We  staid  about  two  weeks  in  Chatham — some  of  the 
party  staid  six  or  seven  weeks.  We  left  Chatham  for  Cleve- 
land, and  remained  there  until  iate  in  June.  In  the  meantime, 
Captain  Brown  went  East  on  business;  but  previous  to  his 
departure  he  had  learned  that  Colonel  Forbes  had  betrayed  his 
plans  to  some  extent.  This,  together  with  the  scantiness  of  his 
funds,  induced  him  to  delay  the  commencement  of  his  work, 
and  was  the  means,  for  the  time  being,  of  disbanding  the  party. 
He  had  also  received  some  information  which  called  for  his 
immediate  attention  in  Kansas.  I  wished  to  go  with  him,  but 
he  said  that  I  was  too  well  known  there,  and  requested  me  and 
some  others  to  go  to  Harper's  Ferry,  Va.,  to  see  how  things 
were  there,  and  to  gain  information.  While  we  were  in 
Chatham  he  called  a  convention,  the  purpose  of  which  was 
to  make  a  complete  and  thorough  organization.  He  issued  a 
written  circular,  which  he  sent  to  various  persons  in  the  United 
States  and  Canada.  The  circular,  as  near  as  I  can  recollect, 
read  as  follows  : 

"Chatham,  May — ,  1858. 

"  Mr. : — Dear  Sir — We  have  issued  a  call  for  a  very  quiet 

convention  at  this  place,  to  which  we  shall  be  happy  to  see  any 
true  friends  of  freedom,  and  to  which  you  are  most  earnestly 
invited  to  give  your  attendance.     Yours  respectfully, 

"John  Brown." 

As  the  names  were  left  blank  I  do  not  know  to  whom  they 
were  sent,  though  I  wrote  several  of  them.  I  learned,  how- 
ever,  that  one  was  sent  to  Frederick  Douglass,  and  I  think 
Gerrit  Smith  also  received  one.  Who  the  others  were  sent  to 
I  do  not  know.  Neither  Douglass  nor  Smith  attended  the  con- 
vention.    I  suppose  some  twenty-five  or  thirty  of  these  circu- 


704  JOHN    BROWN. 

lars  were  sent,  but  as  they  were  directed  by  Captain  Brown  or 
J.  H.  Kagi  I  do  not  know  the  names  of  the  parties  to  whom 
they  were  addressed.  I  do  know,  however,  that  they  were  sent 
to  none  save  those  whom  Captain  Brown  knew  to  be  radical 
abolitionists.  I  think  it  was  about  ten  days  from  the  time  the 
circulars  were  sent  that  the  convention  met.  The  place  of 
meeting  was  in  one  of  the  negro  churches  in  Chatham.  The 
convention,  I  think,  was  called  to  order  by  J.  H.  Kagi.  Its 
object  was  then  stated,  which  was  to  complete  a  thorough  or- 
ganization and  the  formation  of  a  constitution.  The  first  busi- 
ness was  to  elect  a  president  and  secretary.  Elder  Monroe,  a 
colored  minister,  was  elected  President,  and  J.  H.  Kagi,  Sec- 
retary. The  next  business  was  to  form  a  constitution.  Cap- 
tain Brown  had  already  drawn  up  one,  which,  on  motion,  was 
read  by  the  Secretary.  On  motion  it  was  ordered  that  each 
article  of  the  constitution  be  taken  up  and  separately  amended 
and  passed,  which  was  done.  On  motion,  the  constitution  was 
then  adopted  as  a  whole.  The  next  business  was  to  nominate 
a  Commander-in-Chief,  Secretary  of  War,  and  Secretary  of 
State.  Captain  John  Brown  was  unanimously  elected  Com- 
mander-in-Chief; J.  H.  Kagi,  Secretary  of  War,  and  Richard 
Realf,  Secretary  of  State.  Elder  Monroe  was  to  act  as  Presi- 
dent until  another  was  chosen.  A.  M.  Chapman,  I  think,  was 
to  act  as  Vice-President.  Doctor  M.  K.  Delany  was  one  of 
the  Corresponding  Secretaries  of  the  organization,  There  were 
some  others  from  the  United  States,  whose  names  I  do  not 
now  remember.  Most  of  the  delegates  to  the  Convention  were 
from  Canada.  After  the  constitution  was  adopted,  the  members 
took  their  oath  to  support  it.  It  was  then  signed  by  all  present. 
During  the  interval  between  the  call  for  the  convention  and  its 
assembling,  regular  meetings  were  held  at  Barbour's  Hotel, 
where  we  were  stopping,  by  those  who  were  known  to  be  true 
10  the  cause,  at  which  meetings  plans  were  laid  and  discussed. 
There  were  no  white  men  at  the  convention  save  the  members 
of  our  company.  Men  and  money  had  both  been  promised 
from  Chatham  and  other  parts  of  Canada.  When  the  conven- 
tion broke  up,  news  was  received  that  Col.  H.  Forbes,  who  had 


APPElNDTX.  7°5 

joined  in  the  movement,  had  given  information  to  the  govern- 
ment. This,  of  course,  delayed  the  time  of  attack.  A  day  or 
two  afterward  most  of  our  party  took  the  boat  to  Cleveland — 
Jno.  H.  Kagi,  Richard  Realf,  Win.  H.  Leeman,  Richard  Ro- 
bertson, and  Capt.  Brown  remaining.  Capt.  B.,  however, 
started  in  a  day  or  two  for  the  East.  Kagi,  I  think,  returned  to 
some  other  town  in  Canada,  to  set  up  the  type  and  to  get  the 
constitution  printed,  which  he  completed  before  he  went  to 
Cleveland.  We  remained  in  Cleveland  for  some  weeks,  at 
which  place,  for  the  time  being,  the  company  disbanded.  Capt. 
Brown  had  had  the  plan  of  the  insurrection  in  contemplation 
for  several  years — in  fact,  told  me  that  it  had  been  the  chief 
aim  of  his  life  to  carry  out  and  accomplish  the  abolition  of 
slavery. 

In  his  trip  East  he  did  not- realize  the  amount  of  money  that 
he  expected.  The  money  had  been  promised  bona  fide,  but 
owing  to  the  tightness  of  the  money  market  they  failed  to 
comply  with  his  demands.  The  funds  were  necessary  to  the 
accomplishment  of  his  plans.  I  afterwards  learned  that  there 
was  a  lack  of  confidence  in  the  success  ot  his  scheme.  It  was., 
therefore,  necessary  that  a  movement  should  be  made  in 
another  direction  to  demonstrate  the  practicability  of  his  plan. 
This  he  made  about  a  year  ago  by  his  invasion  of  Missouri, 
and  the  taking  of  about  a  dozen  slaves,  together  with  horses, 
cattle,  etc.,  into  Kansas,  in  defiance  of  the  United  States  mar- 
shal and  his  posse.  From  Kansas  he  took  them  to  Canada  via 
Iowa  City  and  Cleveland.  At  the  latter  place  he  remained 
some  days,  and,  I  think,  disposed  of  his  horses  there.  It  seems 
that  the  United  States  marshal  was  afraid  to  arrest  him,  and 
this  was  all  that  was  wanting  to  give  confidence  to  the  waver- 
ing in  the  practicability  of  his  plan  and  its  ultimate  success. 
He  came  to  Harper's  Ferry  about  the  last  of  June,  though  I 
did  not  see  him  till  late  in  July  or  the  early  part  of  August, 
when  we  met  on  Shenandoah  street,  Harper's  Ferry,  opposite 
Tcarney's  store.  I  do  not  know  who  were  his  aiders  or  abet- 
tors, but  have  heard  him  mention  in  connection  with  it  the 
names  of  Gerrit  Smith,  of  New  York;  Howe,  of  Boston,  and 


706  JOHN    BROWN. 

Sanborn  and  Thaddeus  Hyatt,  of  New  York  city.  What  con- 
nection, and  how  far  connected  with  his  plan,  I  do  not  know, 
but  I  know  he  wrote  a  letter  a  few  weeks  previous  to  his  attack, 
to  some  gentlemen  in  Boston,  which  read,  as  near  as  I  can  re- 
collect, as  follows: — 

"  Date . 

"  Gentlemen — I  have  got  nearly  all  my  machines  on,  and 
shall  be  ready  to  start  them  in  a  few  days,  unless  prevented  by 
a  special  Providence.  Everything  is  working  well.  I  shall 
want  all  the  funds  you  promised  me  in  a  few  days.  Yours, 
truly,  "  Calm  &  Still." 

In  the  mean  time  the  men  who  had  engaged  to  go  with  him 
had  most  of  them  arrived  at  Chambersburg,  Pa.,  and  been 
sent  to  the  place  which  he  had  rented  in  Washington  county, 
Md.,  about  five  miles  from  Harper's  Ferry.  The  greater  part 
of  the  men  kept  out  of  sight  during  the  day,  for  fear  of  attract- 
ing attention.  The  arms,  munitions,  etc.,  were  carted  from 
Chambersburg  to  his  rendezvous.  The  spear-heads  and  guards 
came  in  strong  boxes,  and  the  shafts  passed  for  fork  handles. 
They  were  put  together  by  our  own  men,  at  the  house  where 
most  of  them  were  found.  Letters  of  importance  came  to  the 
Chambersburg  post-office,  and  were  sent  by  some  of  our  own 
party  to  headquarters.  The  letters  of  minor  importance  came 
to  the  Ferry  to  J.  Smith  &  Sons.  All  allusions  to  our  business 
were  made  in  such  a  blind  way,  that  they  would  not  have  been 
understood  by  any  outside  parties,  even  should  they  have  been 
miscarried.  The  attack  was  made  sooner  than  it  was  intended, 
owing  to  some  friends  in  Boston  writing  a  letter  finding  fault 
with  the  management  of  Captain  Brown,  and  what  to  them 
seemed  his  unnecessary  delay  and  expense.  I  do  not  know 
who  those  persons  were,  or  how  far  they  were  cognizant  of  his 
(Captain  Brown's)  plans;  but  I  do  know  that  Dr.  Howe  gave 
Captain  Brown  a  breech- loading  carbine  and  a  pair  of  muzzle- 
loading  pistols,  all  of  Government  manufacture.  They  were 
left  either  at  the  house  of  Captain  Brown,  or  at  the  school- 
house,  where  most  of  the  arms  were  conveyed.     At  what  time 


APPENDIX. 


707 


and  for  what  purpose  they  were  given  to  Captain  Brown,  I  do 
not  know.     It  was  supposed  that  Col.  Hugh  Forbes  was  dead. 
I  was  told  by  Captain  Brown  that  when  on  East,  he   had  been 
told  by  Thaddeus  Hyatt,  of  New  York,  that  some  of  the  negroes 
at  that  place  had  informed  him  (Hyatt)  that  Forbes  had  "gone 
up  " — a  phrase  which  Captain  Brown  and  the  rest  of  our  com- 
pany understood  to  mean  that  he  had  been  killed.     I  do  not 
think  that  Forbes  had  any  cognizance  of  our  plans  from  the 
time  of  our  leaving  Pedee,  a  year  ago,  last  April.     Previous  to 
his  quarrel  with  Captain  Brown,  we  considered  that  he  would 
hold  a  place  next  to  Brown  in  command.     I  do   not   know  the 
present  whereabouts  of  Luke  F.   Parsons  or  Charles  Moffett. 
The  last  I  heard  of  Parsons  was  through  Captain  Brown,  who 
informed  me  that  Parsons  had  started  for  Pike's  Peak,  and  that 
he  (Brown)  thought  he  would  be  pretty  tolerably  peaked  before 
he  got  there.     A   short  time  before  the  attack  on  Harper's 
Ferry,  Captain  Brown  requested  me  to  find  out  in  some  way, 
without  creating  suspicion,  the  number  of  male  slaves  on  or 
near  the  roads  leading  from  the  Ferry,  for  a  distance  of  eight 
:>r  ten  miles,  and  to  make  such  memoranda  that  it  would  be 
unintelligible  to  others,  but  in  such  a  manner  that  I  could  make 
it  plain  to  him  and  the  rest  of  the  company.     He  gave  me  two 
dollars  to  pay  my  expenses  with.     I  took  the  road  from  Har- 
per's Ferry  to  Charlestown,  under  the  plea  of  gaining  statistics 
for  a  work  to  be   published  by  John  Henri,  and  to  decide  a 
wager  between  him  and  Mr.  Smith.     I  did  not  go  on  any  other 
road.     A  few  days  after  this,  Captain  Brown  sent  his  wagon 
over  by  his  son  Oliver  and  Jeremiah  Anderson,  to  bring  my 
wife  and  myself  to  his  house.     They  gave  me  a  note  from  him, 
which,  as  near  as  I  can  recollect,  read  as  follows  := 

"Mr.  Cook: — Dear  Sir — You  will  please  get  everything 
ready  to  come  with  your  wife  to  my  house  this  morning.  My 
wagon  will  wait  for  you.  I  shall  take  your  wife  to  Chambers- 
burg,  and  shall  start  early  to-morrow  morning.  Be  as  expe- 
ditious as  possible.  Be  very  careful  not  to  say  or  do  anything 
which  will  awaken  any  suspicion.     You   can  say  your  wife  is 


yo8  JOHN     BROWN. 

going  to  make  a  visit  to  some  friends  of  her's  in  the  country. 
Be  very  careful  that  you  do  not  let  any  of  our  plans  leak  out. 
Yours,  etc.,  J-  Smith." 

My  wife  and  myself  accordingly  left  Harper's  Ferry  that 
night,  accompanied  by  Oliver  Brown  and  Jeremiah  Anderson, 
for  Captain  Brown's  House  in  Washington  county,  Md. 

The  next  day,  after  dinner,  Captain  Brown  and  his  son  Wat- 
son, together  with  my  wife  and  child,  started  for  Chambers- 
burg.  When  Captain  Brown  returned,  he  told  me  that  he  had 
got  her  a  good  boarding-place  in  Chambersburg,  at  Mrs. 
Ritner's,  and  that  she  liked  her  boarding-place  very  well. 

There  were  some  six  or  seven  in  our  party  who  did  not 
know  anything  of  our  constitution,  and,  as  I  have  since  under- 
stood, were  also  ignorant  of  the  plan  of  operations,  until  the 
Sunday  morning  previous  to  the  attack.  Among  this  number 
were  Edwin  Coppoc,  Barclay  Coppoc,  Francis  J.  Merriam, 
Shields  Green,  John  Copeland,  and  Leary. 

The  constitution  was  read  to  them  by  A.  D.  Stevens,  and 
the  oath  afterwards  administered  by  Captain  Brown.  Sunday 
evening,  previous  to  our  departure,  Captain  Brown  made  his 
final  arrangements  for  the  capture  of  Harper's  Ferry,  and  gave 
to  his  men  their  orders.     In  closing,  he  said: — 

"  And  now,  gentlemen,  let  me  press  this  one  thing  on  your 
minds.  You  all  know  how  dear  life  is  to  you,  and  how  dear 
your  lives  are  to  your  friends;  and,  in  remembering  that,  con- 
sider that  the  lives  of  others  are  as  clear  to  them  as  yours  are 
to  you  ;  do  not,  therefore,  take  the  life  of  any  one  if  you  can 
possibly  avoid  it,  but  if  it  is  necessary  to  take  life  in  order  to 
save  your  own,  then  make  sure  work  of  it." 

After  taking  the  town,  I  was  placed  under  Capt.  Stevens, 
who  received  orders  to  proceed  to  the  house  of  Col.  Lewis 
Washington  and  to  take  him  prisoner,  and  to  bring  his  slaves, 
horses,  and  arms,  and  as  we  came  back  to  take  Mr.  Altstadtt 
and  his  slaves,  and  to  bring  them  all  to  Capt.  Brown  at  the 
armory.  When  we  returned,  I  staid  a  short  time  in  the  engine- 
house  to  get   warm,   as  I   was  chilled  through.     After   I  gor, 


APPENDIX. 


709 


warm,  Capt.  Brown  ordered  me  to  go  with  C.  P.  Tidcl,  who 
was  to  take  William  H.  Leeman,  and,  I  think,  four  slaves  with 
him,  in  Col.  Washington's  large  wagon,  across  the  river,  and 
to  take  Terrence  Burns  and  his  brother  and  their  slaves  pris- 
oners. My  orders  were  to  hold  Burns  and  brother  as  prisoners 
at  their  own  house,  while  Tidd  and  the  slaves  who  accom- 
panied him  were  to  go  to  Capt.  Brown's  house  and  to  load  in 
the  arms  and  bring  them  down  to  the  school  house,  stopping 
for  the  Burnses  and  their  guard.  William  H.  Leeman  re- 
mained with  me  to  guard  the  prisoners.  On  return  of  the 
wagon,  in  compliance  with  orders,  we  all  started  for  the  school- 
house.  When  we  got  there,  I  was  to  remain,  by  Capt.  Brown's 
orders,  with  one  of  the  slaves  to  guard  the  arms,  while  C.  P. 
Tidd,  with  the  other  negroes,  was  to  go  back  for  the  rest  of 
the  arms,  and  Burns  was  to  be  sent  with  William  H.  Leeman 
to  Capt.  Brown  at  the  Armory.  It  was  at  this  time  that  Will- 
iam Thompson  came  up  from  the  Ferry  and  reported  that 
everything  was  all  right,  and  then  hurried  on  to  overtake  Will- 
iam H.  Leeman.  A  short  time  after  the  departure  of  Tidd  I 
heard  a  good  deal  of  firing  and  became  anxious  to  know  the 
cause,  but  my  orders  were  strict  to  remain  in  the  school- house 
and  guard  the  arms,  and  I  obeyed  the  orders  to  the  letter. 
About  four  o'clock  in  the  evening  C.  P.  Tidd  came  with  the 
second  load.  I  then  took  one  of  the  negroes  with  me  and 
started  for  the  ferry.  I  met  a  negro  woman  a  short  distance 
below  the  school-house,  who  informed  me  they  were  fighting 
hard  at  the  ferry.  I  hurried  on  till  I  came  to  the  lock  kept  by 
George  Hardy,  about  a  mile  above  the  bridge,  where  I  saw  his 
wife  and  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Read,  who  told  me  that  our  men  were 
hemmed  in,  and  that  several  of  them  had  been  shot.  I  ex- 
pressed my  intention  to  try  to  get  to  them,  when  Mrs.  Hardy 
asked  me  to  try  to  get  her  husband  released  from  the  engine- 
house.  I  told  her  I  would.  Mrs.  Read  begged  of  me  not  to 
go  down  to  the  ferry.  She  said  I  would  be  shot.  I  told  her  I 
must  make  an  attempt  to  save  my  comrades,  and  passed  on 
down  the  road.  A  short  distance  below  the  lock  I  met  two 
boys  whom  I  knew,  and  they  told  me  that  our  men  were  all 


710  JOHN    BROWN. 

hemmed  in  by  troops  from  Charleston,  Martinsburg,  Hagers- 
town,  and  Shepherdstown.  The  negro  who  was  with  me  had 
been  very  mucli  frightened  at  the  first  report  we  received,  and 
as  the  boys  told  me  the  troops  were  coming  up  the  road  after 
us  soon,  I  sent  him  (the  negro)  back  to  inform  Ticld,  while  I 
hastened  down  the  road.  After  going  down  opposite  the  ferry, 
I  ascended  the  mountain  in  order  to  get  a  better  view  of  the 
position  of  our  opponents. 

I  saw  that  our  party  were  completely  surrounded,  and  as  I 
saw  a  body  of  men  on  High  street  firing  down  upon  them — 
they  were  about  a  half  a  mile  distant  from  me — I  thought  I 
would  draw  the  fire  upon  myself;  I  therefore  raised  my  rifle 
and  took  the  best  aim  I  could  and  fired.  It  had  the  desired 
effect,  for  the  very  instant  the  party  returned  it.  Several  shots 
were  exchanged.  The  last  one  they  fired  at  me  cut  a  small 
limb  I  had  hold  of  just  below  my  hand,  and  gave  me  a  fall 
of  about  fifteen  feet,  by  which  I  was  severely  bruised  and 
my  flesh  somewhat  lacerated.  I  descended  from  the  mountain 
and  passed  down  the  road  to  the  Crane  on  the  bank  of  the 
canal,  about  fifty  yards  from  Mr.  W.'s  store.  I  saw  several 
heads  behind  the  door-post  looking  at  me  ;  I  took  a  position 
behind  the  Crane,  and,  cocking  my  rifle,  beckoned  to  some  of 
them  to  come  to  me ;  after  some  hesitation,  one  of  them 
approached,  and  then  another,  both  of  whom  knew  me.  I 
asked  them  if  there  were  any  armed  men  in  the  store.  They 
pledged  me  their  word  and  honor  that  there  were  none.  I 
then  passed  down  to  the  lock-house,  and  went  down  the  steps 
to  the  lock,  where  I  saw  William  McGreg,  and  questioned  him 
in  regard  to  the  troops  on  the  other  side.  He  told  me  that  the 
bridge  was  filled  by  our  opponents,  and  that  all  of  our  party 
were  dead  but  seven  ;  that  two  of  them  were  shot  while  trying 
to  escape  across  the  river.  He  begged  me  to  leave  immedi- 
ately. After  questioning  him  in  regard  to  the  position  and 
number  of  the  troops,  and  from  what  sources  he  received  his 
information,  I  bade  him  good  night,  and  started  up  the  road 
at  a  rapid  walk.  I  stopped  at  the  house  of  an  Irish  family,  at 
the  foot  of  the  hill,  and  got  a  cup  of  coffee  and  some  eatables. 


APPENDIX.  -j  n 

I  was  informed  by  them  that  Captain  Brown  was  dead;  that 
he  had  been  shot  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  At  the 
time  I  believed  the  report  to  be  true.  I  went  on  up  to  the 
school-house,  and  found  the  shutters  and  door  closed  ;  called 
to  Tidd  and  the  boys,  but  received  no  answer  ;  cocked  my 
rifle,  and  then  opened^the  door  ;  it  was  dark  at  the  time.  Some 
of  the  goods  had  been  placed  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  and,  in 
the  dark,  looked  like  men  crouching-.  I  uncocked  my  rifle 
and  drew  my  revolver,  and  then  struck  a  match  ;  saw  that 
there  was  no  one  in  the  school-house ;  went  into  the  bushes 
back  of  the  school-house,  and  called  for  the  boys.  Receiving 
no  answer,  I  went  across  the  road  into  some  pines,  and  again 
called,  but  could  find  no  one.  I  then  started  up  the  road 
towards  Captain  Brown's  house ;  I  saw  a  party  of  men  coming 
down  the  road  ;  when  within  about  fifty  yards,  I  ordered  them 
to  halt ;  they  recognized  my  voice  and  called  me  ;  I  found  them 
to  be  Charles  P.  Tidd,  Owen  Brown,  Barclay  Coppoc,  F.  J. 
Merriam,  and  a  negro  who  belonged  to  Washington  or  Alstadtt. 
They  asked  me  the  news,  and  I  gave  the  information  I  received 
on  the  canal  lock  and  on  the  road.  It  seemed  that  they  thought 
it  would  be  sheer  madness  in  them  to  attempt  a  rescue  of  our 
comrades,  and  it  was  finally  determined  to  return  to  the  house 
of  Captain  Brown.  I  found  that  Tidd,  before  leaving  the 
school-house  to  go  for  Brown,  Coppoc,  and  Merriam,  had 
stationed  the  negroes  in  a  good  position  in  the  timber  back  of 
the  school-house.  On  his  return,  however,  they  could  not  be 
found.  We,  therefore,  left  for  Captain  Brown's  house.  Here 
we  got  a  few  articles  which  would  be  necessary,  and  then  went 
over  into  the  timber  on  the  side  of  the  mountain,  a  few  yards 
beyond  the  house,  where  the  spears  were  kept.  Here  we  laid 
down  and  went  to  sleep.  About  three  o'clock  in  the  morning 
one  of  our  party  awakened  and  found  that  the  negro  had  left 
us.  He  immediately  aroused  the  rest  of  the  party,  and  we 
concluded  to  go  to  the  top  of  the  mountain  before  light.  Here 
we  remained  for  a  few  hours,  and  then  passed  over  to  the  other 
side  of  the  mountain,  where  we  waited  till  dark,  and  then 
crossed  the  valley  to  the  other  range  beyond. 


712  JOHN    BROWN. 

I  have  forgotten  to  state  previously,  that  before  I  left  Cap- 
tain Brown  in  Cleveland,  O.,  he  gave  me  orders  to  trust  no  one 
with  our  secret,  and  to  hold  no  conversation  with  the  slaves, 
which  orders  I  obeyed  with  but  a  single  exception,  which  I 
here  mention.  The  exception  to  which  I  allude  is  simply  this  : 
I  met  a  party  of  four  negroes,  two  free  and  two  slave,  near 
Bolivar,  Jefferson  County,  Va.  I  asked  them  if  they  had  ever 
thought  about  their  freedom.  They  replied,  "they  thought 
they  ought  to  be  free,"  but  expressed  doubts  that  they  ever 
would  be.  I  told  them  that  time  might  come  before  many 
years,  but  for  the  present  to  keep  dark  and  look  for  the  good 
time  coming,  and  left  them. 

I  see  from  some  of  the  newspapers,  that  I  have  been  repre- 
sented as  Captain  Brown's  chief  aid.  This  is  incorrect.  Kagi 
was  second  in  command,  Stevens  third,  Hazlitt  fourth. 
Further  than  this,  I  do  not  know  that  Captain  Brown  had 
made  known  any  preference  as  to  superiority  or  rank.  Edward 
Coppoc  and  Dauphin  Thomas  were  the  only  lieutenants  he  com- 
missioned. Owen  Brown,  Barclay  Coppoc,  and  F.  J.  Merriam 
were  not  at  the  Ferry  during  the  time  the  attack  was  made, 
but  remained  by  order  of  Captain  B.  to  take  charge  of  the 
premises,  and  to  guard  the  arms  left  at  Brown's  house,  in  case 
of  an  attack.  I  do  not  know  of  any  person  in  the  Ferry  or  its 
neighborhood  who  knew  of  our  plan,  save  our  own  party,  and 
they  were  pledged  to  keep  it  secret. 

Richard  Realf,  one  of  our  original  party,  and  our  Secretary 
of  State,  came  from  Chatham  to  Cleveland,  a  few  clays  before 
Captain  Brown's  arrival  from  the  East.  Soon  after  his  arrival 
he  (Captain  B.)  sent  Realf  to  New  York  city,  at  which  place  he 
embarked  for  England,  for  the  purpose  of  carrying  out  the 
plans  of  Captain  Brown.  Realf  was  born  and  raised  in  Eng- 
land. He  is  a  peasant's  son,  but  his  native  talents  brought 
him  into  the  notice  of  some  of  the  nobility,  who  took  charge  of 
him,  and  made  arrangements  to  give  him  a  finished  education. 
He  was  taken  into  the  family  of  Lady  Noel  Byron,  where  he 
made  his  home  while  pursuing  his  studies.  Falling  in  love 
with  a  young  lady  of  noble  birth,  who  was  a  relative  of  Lady 


APPENDIX.  yr^ 

Byron,  he  was  censured  by  Lady  B.  for  his  presumption.  He 
became  offended  at  her  interference,  and  finally  left  Lady  B.  to 
work  his  own  way  in  the  world.  About  this  time  the  Chartist 
move  was  made,  Realf  joined,  and  the  result  was  he  was 
obliged  to  seek  safety  by  emigrating  to  America.  He  made 
his  home  some  years  in  New  York  city.  A  part  of  the  time  he 
was  there  he  was  engaged  as  assistant  superintendent  of  the 
Five-Points  Mission.  He  is  well  known  as  an  author  and  a 
poet.  He  gave  up  his  situation  as  assistant- superintendent, 
and  went  to  Kansas  in  the  summer  or  fall  of  1856.  I  first  met 
him  in  Lawrence,  Kan.  No  word  was  received  of  him,  to  my 
knowledge,  after  he  left  for  England,  to  which  place  he  went 
in  his  own  capacity  and  that  of  our  Secretary  of  State,  to  solicit 
funds  for  the  support  of  our  organization.  He  proposed  to 
deliver  a  course  of  lectures  in  various  parts  of  England,  the  net 
proceeds  of  which  were  to  be  given  to  carry  out  Captain 
Brown's  plan.  He  is  a  man  of  rare  talents,  and  a  powerful 
and  fluent  speaker.  He  is  about  twenty-eight  years  of  age. 
Mr.  Kagi,  I  believe,  got  a  letter  from  some  one  in  England  a 
few  months  ago,  stating  that  Realf  had  sailed  for  this  country, 
and  that  he  had  quite  a  sum  of  money  with  him  ;  but  further 
than  that  we  have  been  unable  to  find  any  trace  of  him. 
Captain  Brown  and  the  rest  of  our  company  who  knew  him 
think  that  he  is  dead. 

At  the  time  Mr.  Alstadtt  was  taken,  I  was  not  at  his  house, 
Dut  in  the  carriage  with  Col.  Lewis  Washington,  opposite  the 
house.  I  do  not  think  any  arms  were  placed  in  the  hands  of 
his  slaves  till  they  arrived  at  the  musket  armory.  I  did  not 
see  any  of  the  spears  on  our  way  from  the  Ferry  to  Col. 
Washington's — there  were  none  taken  out  to  my  knowledge. 
After  stopping  about  half  an  hour  at  the  engine-house  to  get 
warm,  I  was  called  out  by  Captain  Brown,  and  then  saw,  for 
the  first  time,  the  slaves  with  the  spears  in  their  hands.  I  do 
not  know  who  gave  them  the  spears,  but  it  was  some  of  our 
party,  and  probably  by  the  order  of  Captain  Brown. 

The  negro  who  was  with  me  on  Monday  evening,  when  I 
left  the  school-house  for  the  Ferry,  was  armed  with  a  double- 


^4  JOHN    BROWN. 

barreled  shotgun,  and,  I  think,  a  revolving  pistol  of  the  Mass- 
achusetts arms  manufacture.  Who  delivered  him  the  arms  I 
do  not  know.  He  was  under  my  control  till  I  sent  him  back  to 
report  to  Tidd  that  the  troops  were  coming  up.  He  obeyed 
orders  while  with  me. 

I  was  commissioned  as  a  captain  on  the  Sunday  of  the  insur- 
rection, at  the  same  time  the  others  were,  and  with  them  took 
the  oath  prescribed  in  Article  48  of  the  Constitution. 

George  B.  Gill  joined  us  before  leaving  Iowa,  in  the  spring, 
as  did  Stewart  Taylor.  John  E.  Cook. 


THE  CHATHAM,  CANADA,  CONVENTION. 

FROM  ONE  OF  THE  COLORED  MEMBERS  THEREOF. 

[Martin  R.  Delany.  M.  D.,  afterwards  Major  and  Brigadier- 
General,  United  States  Colored  Volunteers,  gives  i?i  a 
biographical  volume '  the  following  interesting  account  of 
his  ineeting  John  Brown  and  of  the  Chatham  Con- 
vention^ 

"  In  April,  prior  to  his  departure  for  Africa,  while  making 
final  completions  for  his  tour,  on  returning  home  from  a  pro- 
fessional visit  in  the  country,  Mrs.  Delany  informed  him  that 
an  old  gentleman  had  called  to  see  him  during  his  absence. 
She  described  him  as  having  a  long,  white  beard,  very  gray 
hair,  a  sad  but  placid  countenance;  in  speech  he  was  peculi- 
arly solemn ;  she  added,  '  He  looked  like  one  of  the  old  proph- 
ets. He  would  neither  come  in  nor  leave  his  name,  but  promised 
to  be  back  in  two  weeks'  time.'     Unable  to  obtain  any  infor- 


1  '*  Life  and  Public  Services  of  Martin  R.  Delany,  Sub- Assis- 
tant Commissioner,  Bureau  of  Refugees,  Freedmen,  and  Aban- 
doned Lauds,  and  late  Major  104th  United  States  Colored  Troops." 
By  Frauk  A.  Rollins  (Mrs.  Whipple),  Boston:  Lee  &  Sheppard. 
1868.    pp.  85-90. 


APPENDIX. 


715 


mation  concerning-  his  mysterious  visitor,  the  circumstance 
would  have  probably  been  forgotten,  had  not  the  visitor  re- 
turned at  the  appointed  time;  and  not  finding  him  at  home  a 
second  time,  he  left  a  message  to  the  effect  that  he  would  call 
again  ' in  four  days ;  and  must  see  him  then.'  This  time  the 
interest  in  the  visitor  was  heightened,  and  his  call  was  eagerly 
awaited.  At  the  expiration  of  that  time,  while  on  the  street, 
he  recognized  his  visitor,  by  his  wife's  description,  approaching 
him,  accompanied  by  another  gentleman  ;  on  the  latter  intro- 
ducing him  to  the  former,  he  exclaimed,  'Not  Capt.  John 
Brown  of  Osawatomie ! '  not  thinking  of  the  grand  old  hero 
as  being  east  of  Kansas,  especially  in  Canada,  as  the  papers 
had  been  giving  such  contradictory  accounts  of  him  during  the 
winter  and  spring. 

" '  I  am  sir,'  was  the  reply ;  '  and  I  have  come  to  Chatham 
expressly  to  see  you,  this  being  my  third  visit  on  the  errand. 
(  must  see  you  at  once,  sir,'  he  continued,  with  emphasis,  'and 
ihat,  too,  in  private,  as  I  have  much  to  do  and  but  little  time 
oefore  me.  If  I  am  to  do  nothing  here,  I  want  to  know  it  at 
once.'  Going  directly  to  the  private  parlor  of  a  hotel  near  by, 
says  Major  Delany,  he  at  once  revealed  to  me  that  he  desired 
to  carry  out  a  great  project  in  his  scheme  of  Kansas  emigra- 
tion, which,  to  be  successful,  must  be  aided  and  countenanced 
by  the  influence  of  a  general  convention  or  council.  That  he 
was  unable  to  effect  in  the  United  States,  but  had  been  advised 
by  distinguished  friends  of  his  and  mine,  that,  if  he  could  but 
see  me,  his  object  could  be  attained  at  once.  On  my  express- 
ing astonishment  at  the  conclusion  to  which  my  friends  and 
himself  had  arrived,  witli  a  nervous  impatience,  he  exclaimed, 
•  Why  should  you  be  surprised  ?  Sir,  the  people  of  the  North- 
ern States  are  cowards;  slavery  has  made  cowards  of  them  all. 
The  whites  are  afraid  of  each  other,  and  the  blacks  are  afraid 
of  the  whites.  You  can  effect  nothing  among  such  people,'  he 
added,  with  decided  emphasis.  On  assuring  him  if  a  council 
were  all  that  was  desired,  he  could  readily  obtain  it,  he  re- 
plied, '  That  is  all  ;  but  that  is  a  great  deal  to  me.  It  is  men  I 
want,  and  not  money;  money  I  can  get  plentiful  enough,  but 


jl6  JOHN    BROWN. 

no  men.  Money  can  come  without  being  seen,  but  men  are 
afraid  of  identification  with  me,  though  they  favor  my  meas- 
ures. They  are  cowards,  sir  !  cowards ! '  he  reiterated.  He 
then  fully  revealed  his  designs.  With  these  I  found  no  fault, 
but  fully  favored  and  aided  in  getting  up  the  convention. 

"  The  convention,  when  assembled,  consisted  of  Captain 
John  Brown,  his  son  Owen,  eleven  or  twelve  of  his  Kansas 
followers,  all  young  white  men,  enthusiastic  and  able,  and  prob- 
ably sixty  or  seventy  colored  men,  whom  I  brought  together. 

"  His  plans  were  made  known  to  them  as  soon  as  he  was 
satisfied  that  the  assemblage  could  be  confided  in,  which  con- 
clusion he  was  not  long  in  finding,  for  with  few  exceptions  the 
whole  of  these  were  fugitive  slaves,  refugees  in  her  Britannic 
majesty's  dominion.  His  scheme  was  nothing  more  than  this : 
To  make  Kansas,  instead  of  Canada,  the  terminus  of  the 
Underground  Railroad ;  instead  of  passing  off  the  slave  to 
Canada,  to  send  him  to  Kansas,  and  there  test,  on  the  soil  of 
the  United  States  territory,  whether  or  not  the  right  of  freedom 
would  be  maintained  where  no  municipal  power  had  authorized. 

"  He  stated  that  he  had  originated  a  fortification  so  simple, 
that  twenty  men,  without  the  aid  of  teams  or  ordnance,  could 
build  one  in  a  day  that  would  defy  all  the  artillery  that  could 
be  brought  to  bear  against  it.  How  it  was  constructed  he 
would  not  reveal,  and  none  knew  it  except  his  great  confiden- 
tial officer,  Kagi  (the  secretary  of  war  in  his  contemplated  pro- 
visional government),  a  young  lawyer  of  marked  talents  and 
singular  demeanor. 

."  Major  Delany  stated  that  he  had  proposed,  as  a  cover  to 
the  change  in  the  scheme,  as  Canada  had  always  been  known 
as  the  terminus  of  the  Underground  Railroad,  and  pursuit  of 
the  fugitive  was  made  in  that  direction,  to  call  it  the  Subter- 
ranean Pass  Way,1  where  the  initials  would  stand  S.  P.  W„  to 

1  The  "  Subterranean  Pass  Way  "  title  was  used  by  John  Brown 
as  early  as  1850,  This  is  proved  by  a  daguerreotype  of  that 
period,  in  which  John  Brown  appears  with  John  Thomas,  of 
Springfield,  Mass.  The  latter,  a  colored  man,  holds  in  his  hand  a 
banneret  marked  "  S.  P.  W." — Subterranean  Pass  Way. — R.  J.  H. 


APPENDIX. 


7T7 


note  the  direction  in  which  he  had  gone  when  not  sent  to 
Canada.  He  further  stated  that  the  idea  of  Harper's  Ferry  was 
never  mentioned,  or  even  hinted  in  that  convention. 

"  Had  such  been  intimated,  it  is  doubtful  of  its  being  favor- 
ably regarded.  Kansas,  where  he  had  battled  so  valiantly  for 
freedom,  seemed  the  proper  place  for  his  vantage-ground,  and 
the  kind  and  condition  of  men  for  whom  he  had  fought,  the 
men  with  whom  to  fight.  Hence  the  favor  which  the  scheme 
met  of  making  Kansas  the  terminus  of  the  Subterranean  Pass 
Way,  and  there  fortifying  with  these  fugitives  against  the  bor- 
der slaveholders,  for  personal  liberty,  with  which  they  had  no 
right  to  interfere.  Thus  it  is  clearly  explained  that  it  was  no 
design  against  the  Union,  as  the  slaveholders  and  their  satraps 
interpreted  the  movement,  and  by  this  means  would  anticipate 
their  designs. 

"  This  also  explains  the  existence  of  the  constitution  for  a 
civil  government  found  in  the  carpet-bag  among  the  effects  of 
Captain  Brown,  after  his  capture  in  Virginia,  so  inexplicable  to 
the  slaveholders,  and  which  proved  such  a  nightmare  to  Gov- 
ernor Wise,  and  caused  him,  as  well  as  many  wiser  than  him- 
self, to  construe  it  as  a  contemplated  overthrow  of  the  Union. 
The  constitution  for  a  provisional  government  owes  its  origin 
to  these  facts. 

"  Major  Delany  says,  '  The  whole  matter  had  been  well  con- 
sidered, and  at  first  a  state  government  had  been  proposed, 
and  in  accordance  a  constitution  prepared.  This  was  pre- 
sented to  the  convention  ;  and  here  a  difficulty  presented  itself 
to  the  minds  of  some  present,  that,  according  to  American 
jurisprudence,  negroes,  having  no  rights  respected  by  white 
men  consequently  could  have  no  right  to  petition,  and  none  to 
sovereignty. 

"  Therefore  it  would  be  mere  mockery  to  set  up  a  claim  as  a 
fundamental  right,  which  in  itself  was  null  and  void. 

"  To  obviate  this,  and  avoid  the  charge  against  them  as  law- 
less and  unorganized,  existing  without  government,  it  was  pro- 
posed that  an  independent  community  be  established  within 
and   under  the  government  of  the  United  States,  but  without 


jl8  JOrlN    BROWN. 

the  state  sovereignty  ot  the  compact,  similar  to  the  Cherokee 
nation  of  Indians,  or  the  Mormons.      To  these  last  named, 
references  were  made,  as   parallel   cases,  at  the  time.      The- 
necessary  changes  and  modification  were  made  in  the  consti- 
tution, and  with  such  it  was  printed. 

"  Captain  Brown  returned  after  a  week's  absence,  with  a 
printed  copy  of  the  corrected  instrument,  which,  perhaps,  was 
the  copy  found  by  Governor  Wise. 

"  During  the  time  this  grand  old  reformer  of  our  time  was 
preparing  his  plans,  he  often  sought  Major  Delany,  desirous 
of  his  personal  cooperation  in  carrying  forward  his  work.  This 
was  not  possible  for  him  to  do,  as  his  attention  and  time  were 
directed  entirely  to  the  African  Exploration  movement,  which 
was  planned  prior  to  his  meeting  Captain  Brown,  as  before 
stated.  But  as  Captain  Brown  desired  that  he  should  give 
encouragement  to  the  plan,  he  consented,  and  became  presi- 
dent of  the  permanent  organization  of  the  Subterranean  Pass 
Way,  with  Mr.  Isaac  D.  Shadd,  editor  of  the  Provincial  Free- 
man, as  secretary. 

"  This  organization  was  an  extensive  body,  holding  the  same 
relation  to  his  movements  as  a  state  or  national  executive  com- 
mittee hold  to  its  party  principles,  directing  their  adherence  to 
fundamental  principles. 

"  This,  he  says,  was  the  plan  and  purpose  of  the  Canada 
Convention,  whatever  changed  them  to  Harper's  Ferry  was 
known  only  to  Captain  Brown,  and  perhaps  to  Kagi,  who  had 
the  honor  of  being  deeper  in  his  confidence  than  any  one  else. 
Mi.  Osborn  Anderson,  one  of  the  survivors  of  that  immortal 
band,  and  whose  statement  as  one  of  the  principal  actors  in 
that  historical  drama  eannot  be  ignored,  states  that  none  of 
the  men  knew  that  Harper's  Ferry  was  the  point  of  attack 
until  the  order  was  given  to  march." 


APPENDIX. 


7T9 


GEORGE    LUTHER    STEARNS    AND    JOHN    BROWN. 

[A  manuscript  sent  to  the  author  of  this  volume  by  his 
widow,  Mrs.  Mary  E.  Steams.] 

"The  passage  of  the  Fugitive-Slave  Bill,  in  1850,  followed 
by  the  virtual  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  under  the 
name  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Act,  in  1854,  alarmed  all  sane 
people  for  the  safety  of  republican  institutions;  and  the  excite- 
ment reached  a  white  heat  when,  on  the  22d  of  May,  1856, 
Charles  Sumner  was  murderously  assaulted  in  the  Senate 
chamber  by  Preston  S.  Brooks,  of  South  Carolina,  for  words 
spoken  in  debate:  the  celebrated  speech  of  the  19th  and  20th 
of  May,  known  as '  The  Crime  Against  Kansas.'  That  same 
week  the  town  of  Lawrence  in  the  Territory  of  Kansas  was 
sacked  and  burned  in  the  interest  of  the  slave-power.  The 
atrocities  committed  by  the  '  border  ruffians' upon  the  free- 
state  settlers  sent  a  thrill  of  terror  through  all  law-abiding 
communities.  In  Boston  the  citizens  gathered  in  Faneuil  Hall 
to  consider  what  could  be  clone,  and  a  committee  was  chosen, 
with  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe  as  chairman,  for  the  relief  of  Kansas, 
called  the  '  Kansas  Relief  Committee.'  After  some  $18,000  or 
$20,000  had  been  collected,  chiefly  in  Boston,  and  forwarded  to 
Kansas,  the  interest  flagged,  and  Mr.  Stearns,  who  had  been 
working  with  that  committee,  saw  the  need  of  more  energetic 
action;  so  one  day  he  went  to  Dr.  Howe,  and  told  him  he  was 
ready  to  give  all  of  his  time,  and  much  of  his  money,  to  push 
forward  the  work.  Dr.  Howe,  seeing  that  here  was  the  man 
for  the  hour,  immediately  resigned,  and  Mr.  Stearns  was  chosen 
unanimously  chairman  of  the  '  Massachusetts  State  Kansas 
Committee,'  which  took  the  place  of  the  one  first  organized. 
In  the  light  of  subsequent  history  it  is  difficult  to  believe  the 
apathy  and  blindness  which  failed  to  recognize  the  significance 
of  this  attack  upon  Kansas  by  the  slave  holding  power.  Only 
faithful  watchmen  in  their  high  towers  could  see  that  it  was 
the  first  battle-ground  between  two  conflicting  svstems  of 
freedom  and  slavery,  which  was  finally  to  culminate  in  the  War 


720  JOHN    BBOWN. 

of  the  Rebellion.  'Working:  day  and  night  without  has*e  or 
rest,'  failing  in  no  effort  to  rouse  and  stimulate  the  community, 
still  Mr.  Stearns  found  that  a  vitalizing  interest  was  wanting. 
When  Governor  Reeder  was  driven  in  disguise  from  the  Ter- 
ritory, he  wrote  to  him  to  come  to  Boston  and  address  the 
people.  He  organized  a  mass-meeting  for  him  in  Tremort 
Temple,  and  for  a  few  days  the  story  he  related  stimulated  to 
a  livelier  activity  the  more  conservative  people,  who  were 
inclined  to  think  the  reports  of  the  free-state  men  much 
exaggerated.  •  Soon,  however,  things  settled  back  into  the  old 
sluggish  way,  so  that  for  three  consecutive  committee-meet- 
ings the  chairman  was  the  only  person  who  presented  himself 
at  the  appointed  time  and  place.  Nothing  daunted,  he  turned 
to  the  country  towns,  and  at  the  end  of  five  months  he  had 
raised  by  his  personal  exertions,  and  through  his  agents  the 
sum  of  $48,000.  Women  formed  societies  all  over  the  State 
for  making  and  furnishing  clothing  and  various  supplies,  which 
resulted  in  an  addition  of  some  $20,000  or  $30,000  more.  In 
January,  1857,  this  species  of  work  was  stopped,  by  advices 
from  Kansas  that  no  more  contributions  were  needed,  except 
for  defense.  At  this  juncture  Mr.  Stearns  wrote  to  John 
Brown,  that  if  he  would  come  to  Boston  and  consult  with  the 
friends  of  freedom,  he  would  pay  his  expenses.  They  had 
never  met,  but  '  Osawatomie  Brown'  had  become  a  cherished 
household  name  during  the  anxious  summer  of  1856.  Arriving 
in  Boston,  they  were  introduced  to  each  other  in  the  street  by 
a  Kansas  man,  who  chanced  to  be  with  Mr.  Stearns  on  his  way 
to  the  committee-rooms  in  Nilis's  Block,  School  street.  Cap- 
tain Brown  made  a  profound  impression  on  all  who  came 
within  the  sphere  of  his  moral  magnetism.  Emerson  called 
him  •  the  most  ideal  of  men,  for  he  wanted  to  put  all  his  ideas 
into  action.'  His  absolute  superiority  to  all  selfish  aims  and 
narrowing  pride  of  opinion  touched  an  answering  chord  in  the 
self-devotion  of  Mr.  Stearns.  A  little  anecdote  illustrates  the 
modest  estimate  of  the  work  he  had  in  hand.  After  several 
efforts  to  bring  together  certain  friends  to  meet  Captain  Brown 
at  his  home,  in  Medford,   he  found  that  Sunday  was  the  only 


APPENDIX.  72I 

day  that  would  serve  their  several  conveniences,  and  being  a 
little  uncertain  how  it  might  strike  his  ideas  of  religious  pro- 
priety, he  prefaced  his  invitation  with  something  like  an 
apology.  With  characteristic  promptness  came  the  reply: 
'Mr.  Stearns,  I  have  a  little  ewe-lamb  that  I  want  to  pull  out 
of  the  ditch,  and  the  Sabbath  will  be  as  good  a  day  as  any  to 
do  it.' 

"  It  was  this  occasion  which  furnished  to  literature  one  of 
the  most  charming  bits  of  autobiography.  Our  oldest  son, 
Harry,  a  lad  of  eleven  years,  was  an  observant  listener,  and 
drank  eagerly  every  word  that  was  said  of  the  cruel  wrongs  in 
Kansas,  and  of  slavery  everywhere.  When  the  gentlemen  rose 
to  go,  he  privately  asked  his  father  if  he  might  be  allowed  to 
give  all  his  spending  money  to  John  Brown.  Leave  being 
granted,  he  bounded  away,  and,  returning  with  his  small 
treasure,  said  :  '  Captain  Brown,  will  you  buy  something  with 
this  money  for  those  poor  people  in  Kansas,  and  some  time  will 
you  write  to  me  and  tell  mo.  what  sort  of  a  little  boy  you  were  ?' 
'  Yes,  my  son,  I  will,  and  God  bless  you  for  your  kind  heart.'1 
The  autobiography  has  been  printed  many  times,  but  never 
before  with  the  key  which  unlocked  it. 

"  It  may  not  be  out  of  place  to  describe  the  impression  he 
made  upon  the  writer  on  this  first  visit.  When  I  entered  the 
parlor,  he  was  sitting  near  the  hearth,  where  glowed  a  bright, 
open  fire.  He  rose  to  greet  me,  stepping  forward  with  such  an 
erect,  military  bearing,  such  fine  courtesv  of  demeanor  and 
grave  earnestness,  that  he  seemed  to  my  instant  thought  some 
old  Cromwellian  hero  suddenly  dropped  down  before  me  ;  a 
suggestion  which  was  presently  strengthened  by  his  saying 
(proceeding  with  the  conversation  my  entrance  had  interrupted), 
*  Gentlemen,  I  consider  the  Golden  Rule  and  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  one  and  inseparable  ;  and  it  is  better  that  a 
whole  generation  of  men,  women,  and  children  should  be  swept 
away  than  that  this  crime  of  slavery  should  exist  one  day 
longer.'      These  words  were  uttered  like  rifle  balls;  in  such 


1  This  was  in  the  last  days  of  1856. 


*22  JOHN    BROWN. 

emphatic  tones  and  manner  that  our  little  Carl,  not  three  years 
old,  remembered  it  in  manhood  as  one  of  his  earliest  recollec- 
tions. The  child  stood  perfectly  still,  in  the  middle  of  the 
room,  gazing  with  his  beautiful  eyes  on  this  new  sort  of  man, 
until  his  absorption  arrested  the  attention  of  Captain  Brown, 
who  soon  coaxed  him  to  his  knee,  tho'  the  look  of  awe  and 
childlike  wonder  remained.  His  dress  was  of  some  dark  brown 
stuff,  quite  coarse,  but  its  exactness  and  neatness  produced  a 
singular  air  of  refinement.  At  dinner,  he  declined  all  dainties, 
saying  that  he  was  unaccustomed  to  luxuries,  even  to  partak- 
ing of  butter. 

"The  'friends  of  freedom,'  with  whom  Mr.  Stearns  had  in- 
vited John  Brown  to  consult,  were  profoundly  impressed  with 
his  sagacity,  integrity,  and  devotion  ;  notably  among  these  were 
R.W.Emerson,  Theodore  Parker,  H.  D.  Thoreau,  A.  Bronson 
Alcott,  F.  B.  Sanborn,  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe,  Col.  T.  W.  Higginson, 
Gov.  Andrew,  and  others.  In  February  (1857)  he  appeared 
before  a  committee  of  the  State  Legislature,  to  urge  that  Mas- 
sachusetts should  make  an  appropriation  in  money  in  aid  of 
those  persons  who  had  settled  in  Kansas  from  her  own  soil. 
The  speech  is  printed  in  Redpath's  '  Life.' '  He  obtained  at  this 
time  from  the  Massachusetts  State  Kansas  Committee,  some 
two  hundred  Sharpe's  rifles,  with  which  to  arm  one  hundred 
mounted  men  for  the  defense  of  Kansas,  who  could  also  be  of 
service  to  the  peculiar  property  of  Missouri.2  In  those  dark 
days  of  slave-holding  supremacy,  the  friends  of  freedom  felt 
justified  in  aiding  the  flight  of  its  victims  to  free  soil  whenever 
and  wherever  opportunity  offered.  The  Fugitive-Slave  Law 
was  powerless  before  the  law  written  on  the  enlightened  con- 
sciences of  those  devoted  men  and  women.  These  rifles  had 
been  forwarded  previously  to  the  National  Committee  at  Chicago, 
for  the  defense  of  Kansas,  but  for  some  unexplained  reasons 
had  never  proceeded  farther  than  Tabor,  in  the  State  of  Iowa. 


1  This  speech  failed  to  secure  any  financial  aid. — M.  E.  S. 

2  The  committee  also  authorized  him  to  draw  on    Patrick  J. 
Jackson  (their  treasurer)  for  $500. 


APPENDIX. 


723 


Later  on,  Mr.  Stearns,  in  his  individual  capacity,  authorized 
Captain  Brown  to  purchase  two  hundred  revolvers  from  the 
Massachusetts  Arms  Company,  and  paid  for  them  from  his 
private  funds,  thirteen  or  fifteen  hundred  dollars.  During  the 
summer  of  1857,  he  united  with  Mr.  Amos  A.  Lawrence  and 
others  in  paying  off  the  mortgage,  held  by  Mr.  Gerrit  Smith, 
on  his  house  and  farm  at  North  Elba,  N.  Y.,  he  paying  two 
hundred  and  sixty  dollars.  It  would  be  difficult  to  state  the 
entire  amount  of  money  Mr.  Stearns  put  into  the  hands  of  John 
Brown  for  anti-slavery  purposes  and  his  own  subsistence.  He 
kept  no  account  of  what  he  gave.  In  April  or  May,  1857,  he 
gave  him  a  check  for  no  less  a  sum  than  seven  thousand  dollars. 
Early  in  1858,  Hon.  Henry  Wilson  wrote  to  Dr.  S.  G.  Howe 
that  he  had  learned  John  Brown  was  suspected  of  the  intention 
of  using  those  arms  in  other  ways  than  for  the  defense  of 
Kansas  ;  and,  by  order  of  the  committee,  Mr.  Stearns  wrote 
(under  date  May  14,  1858)  to  Brown  not  to  use  them  for  any 
other  purpose,  and  to  hold  them  subject  to  his  order,  as  chair- 
man of  said  committee.  When  the  operations  of  the  Massa- 
chusetts State  Kansas  Committee  virtually  ceased,  in  June  or 
July,  1858,  it  happened  that  this  committee  were  some  four 
thousand  dollars  in  debt  to  Mr.  Stearns,  for  advances  of  money 
from  time  to  time  to  keep  the  organization  in  existence  ;  and  it 
was  voted  to  make  over  to  the  chairman  these  two  hundred 
Sharpe's  rifles  as  part  payment  of  the  committee's  indebtedness. 
They  were  of  small  account  to  Mr.  Stearns.  He  knew  them  to 
be  in  good  hands,  and  troubled  himself  no  further  about  them, 
either  the  rifles  or  the  revolvers,  although  keeping  up  from 
time  to  time  a  correspondence  with  his  friend  upon  the  all- 
engrossing  subject. 

"  In  February  of  1859,  John  Brown  was  in  Boston,  and  talked 
with  some  of  his  friends  about  the  feasibility  of  entrenching 
himself,  with  a  little  band  of  men,  in  the  mountains  of  Virginia, 
familiar  to  him  from  having  surveyed  them  as  engineer  in 
earlier  life.  His  plan  was  to  open  communication  with  the 
slaves  of  neighboring  plantations,  collect  them  together,  and 
send  them  off  in  squads,  as  he  had  done  in  Missouri,  '  without 


■J24  JOHN    BROWN. 

snapping  a  gun.'  Mr.  Stearns  had  so  much  more  faith  in  John 
Brown's  opposition  to  Slavery,  than  in  any  theories  he  advanced 
of  the  modus  operandi,  that  they  produced  much  less  impres- 
sion on  his  mind  than  upon  some  others  gifted  with  more 
genius  for  details.  'From  first  to  last,'  he  believed  in  John 
Brown.  His  plans  or  theories  might  be  feasible,  or  they 
might  not.  If  the  glorious  old  man  wanted  money  to  try  his 
plans,  he  should  have  it.  His  plans  might  fail ;  probably  would, 
but  he  could  never  be  a  failure.  There  he  stood,  unconquer- 
able, in  the  panoply  of  divine  Justice.  Both  of  these  men  were 
of  the  martyr  type.  No  thought  or  consideration  for  themselves, 
for  history,  or  the  estimation  of  others,  ever  entered  into  their 
calculations.  It  was  the  service  of  Truth  and  Right  which 
brought  them  together,  and  in  that  service  they  were  ready 
to  die. 

"In  the  words  of  an  eminent  writer:1  'A  common  spirit 
made  these  two  men  recognize  each  other  at  first  sight;  and 
the  power  of  both  lay  in  that  inability  to  weigh  difficulties 
against  duty,  that  instant  step  of  thought  to  deed,  which  makes 
individuals  fully  possessed  by  the  idea  of  the  age,  the  turning- 
points  of  its  destiny  ;  hands  in  the  right  place  for  touching 
the  match  to  the  train  it  has  laid,  or  for  leading  the  public  will 
to  the  heart  of  its  moral  need.  They  knew  each  other  as 
minute-men  upon  the  same  watch ;  as  men  to  be  found  in  the 
breach  before  others  knew  where  it  was ;  they  were  one  in 
pity,  one  in  indignation,  one  in  moral  enthusiasm,  burning 
beneath  features  set  to  patient  self-control ;  one  in  simplicity, 
though  of  widely  different  culture  ;  one  in  religious  inspiration, 
though  at  the  poles  of  religious  thought.  The  old  frontiersman 
came  from  his  wilderness  toils  and  agonies  to  find  within  the 
merchant's  mansion  of  art  and  taste,  by  the  side  of  Bunker  Hill, 
a  perfect  sympathy:  the  reverence  of  children,  tender  interest 
in  his  broken  household,  free  access  to  a  rich  man's  resources, 
and  even  a  valor  kindred  with  his  own.' 


1  Samuel   Johnson,  the  accomplished  Oriental  scholar,  in    The 
Radical,  1867.     A  faithful  friend  of  the  slave. 


APPENDIX.  725 

"The  attack  upon  Harper's  Ferry  was  a  'side  issue,'  to 
quote  the  words  of  John  Brown,  Jr.,  and  a  departure  from  his 
father's  original  plan.  It  certainly  took  all  his  friends  by 
surprise.  In  his  letter  of  Nov.  15,  1859  (while  in  prison),  to  his 
old  schoolmaster,  the  Rev.  H.  L.  Vaill,  are  these  words:  I  am 
not  as  yet,  in  the  main,  at  all  disappointed.  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  my  own.  Had  Samson  kept  to  his  determina- 
tion of  not  telling  Delilah  wherein  his  great  strength  lay,  he 
would  probably  never  have  overturned  the  house.  I  did  not 
tell  Delilah,  but  I  was  induced  to  act  very  contrary  to  my 
better  judgment} 

^  +  *  *  *  *  * 

"It  is  idle  to  endeavor  to  explain,  by  any  methods  of  the 
understanding,  any  rules  of  worldly  wisdom,  or  prudence,  this 
influx  of  the  divine  will,  which  has  made  John  Brown  already 
an  ideal  character.  'The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth.  and 
we  hear  the  sound  thereof;  but  know  not  whence  it  cometh,  or 
whither  it  goeth.'  So  is  every  one  that  is  born  of  the  Spirit. 
Man  works  in  the  midst  of  laws  which  execute  themselves. 
more  especially  if,  by  virtue  of  obedience,  he  has  lost  sight  of 
all  selfish  aims,  and  perceives  that  truth  and  right  alone  can 
claim  allegiance.  Emerson  says  :  '  Divine  intelligence  carries 
on  its  administration  by  good  men;  that  gi  eat  men  are  they 
who  see  that  the  spiritual  are  greater  than  any  material  forces; 
and  that  really  there  never  was  anything  great  accomplished 
but  under  religious  impulse. 

"  The  deadly  Atheism  of  Slavery  was  rolling  its  car  of 
Juggernaut  all  over  the  beautiful  republic,  and  one  pure  soul 
was  inspired  to  confront  it  by  a  practical  interpretation  of  the 
Golden  Rule. 

"That  Virginia  would  hang  John  Brown  was  a  foregone 
conclusion.     The  Moloch  of  Slavery  would  have  nothing  less. 


1  The  italics  are  Brown's. 


726  JOHN    BROWN. 

His  friends  exerted  themselves  to  secure  the  best  counsel 
which  could  he  induced  to  undertake  the  formality  of  a 
defense,  foremost  among  whom  was  Mr.  Stearns.  A  well- 
organized  plan  was  made  to  rescue  him,  conducted  by  a  brave 
man  from  Kansas,  Col.  James  Montgomery,  but  a  message 
came  from  the  prisoner,  that  he  should  not  feel  at  liberty  to 
walk  out  if  the  doors  were  left  open  ;  a  sense  of  honor  to  his 
jailer  (Captain  Avis)  forbidding  anything  of  the  kind. 

"  Not  a  little  anxiety  was  felt  lest  certain  of  his  adherents 
might  be  summoned  as  witnesses,  whose  testimony  would 
lessen  the  chances  of  acquittal,  and  possibly  involve  their  own 
lives.  John  A.  Andrew  (afterward  Governor  Andrew)  gave  it 
as  his  opinion,  after  an  exhaustive  search  of  the  records,  that 
Virginia  would  have  no  right  to  summon  these  persons  from 
Massachusetts,  but  subsequently  changed  his  opinion  and 
urged  Mr.  Stearns  to  take  passage  to  Europe,  sending  him 
home  one  day  to  pack  his  valise.  The  advice  was  opposed  to 
his  instincts,  but  he  considered  that  his  wife  should  have  a 
voice  in  the  matter,  who  decided,  'midst  many  tears  and  prayers 
that,  if  slavery  required  another  victim,  he  must  be  ready. 

"  With  Dr.  Howe  it  was  quite  different.  He  became  pos- 
sessed with  a  dread  that  threatened  to  overwhelm  his  reason. 
He  was  in  delicate  health,  and  constitutionally  subject  to  violent 
attacks  of  nervous  headache.  One  day  he  came  to  Medford, 
and  insisted  that  Mr.  Stearns  should  accompany  him  to  Canada, 
urging  that  if  he  remained  here  he  should  be  insane,  and  that 
Mr.  Stearns,  of  all  his  friends,  was  the  only  one  who  would  be 
at  all  satisfactory  to  him.  This  request,  or  rather  demand, 
Mr.  Stearns  promptly  declined.  How  well  I  remember  his 
agitation,  walking  up  and  down  the  room,  and  finally  entreating 
Mr.  Stearns,  for  '  friendship's  sake,'  to  go  and  take  care  of  him. 
I  can  recall  no  instance  of  such  self-abnegation  in  my  husband's 
self-denying  career.  He  did  not  stoop  to  an  explanation,  even 
when  Dr.  Howe  declared  in  his  presence,  some  months  later, 
'  that  be  never  did  anything  in  his  life  he  so  much  wished  to 
take  back.'  I  had  hoped  that  Dr.  Howe  would  himself  have 
spared  me  from  making  this  contribution  to  the  truth  of  history. 


APPENDIX.  727 

"On  the  2d  of  December,  Mr.  Stearns  yearned  for  the  soli- 
tude of  his  own  soul,  in  communion  of  spirit,  with  the  friend 
who,  on  that  day,  '  would  make  the  gallows  glorious  like  the 
Cross';  and  he  left  Dr.  Howe  and  took  the  train  for  Niagara 
Falls.  There,  sitting  alone  beside  the  mighty  rush  of  water, 
he  solemnly  consecrated  his  remaining  life,  his  fortune,  and  all 
that  was  most  dear  to  the  cause  in  whose  service  John  Brown 
had  died. 

"  How  well  and  faithfully  he  kept  his  vow  may  partly  be 
seen  in  his  subsequent  efforts  in  recruiting  the  colored  troops 
at  a  vital  moment  in  the  terrible  War  of  the  Rebellion,  which  so 
swiftly  followed  the  sublime  apotheosis  of  '  Old  John  Brown.'  " 

[Note. — Two  points  in  Mrs.  Stearns's  valuable  paper  require  an 
explanation.  The  testimony  is  overwhelming  that  "  Harper's 
Ferry,"  and  the  mountain  section  to  which  it  is  the  key,  was  John 
Brown's  original  and  continued  objective.  He  was  "  diverted"  to 
Kansas,  and  at  times  discussed  oilier  points  of  attack,  but  always 
returned  to  the  West  Virginia  Alleghenies  and  Harper's  Ferry. 
The  plans  John  Brown  did  not  keep  "up  to"  were  his  early 
return  to  the  mountains.  His  failuie  to  do  that  ended  in  defeat 
and,  in  the  end,  a  greater  victory.  The  other  reference  is  the 
statement  Col.  James  Montgomery  was  to  have  "conducted" 
a  "  well  organized  plan"  for  the  "rescue"  of  John  Brown.  No 
such  plan  was  formed.  James  Montgomery  did  not  propose  nor 
consent  to  lead  one.  A  rescue  of  Aaron  D.  Stevens  and  Albert 
Hazlett  was,  however,  planned  in  about  the  middle  of  January, 
l36o.  In  attempting  to  carry  it  out,  the  writer  went  to  Kansas 
and  induced  James  Montgomery  and  others  there  to  come  East. 
Montgomery  was  to  be  the  leader.  After  the  plan  was  abandoned, 
on  the  advice  of  Montgomery  himself,  coupled  with  a  protest 
from  both  Stevens  and  Hazlett  against  attempting  it,  because  it 
would  involve  the  life  of  Captain  Avis  and  others,  James  Mont- 
gomery visited  Boston  and  there  met  Mr.  and  Mis.  Stearns.  'I  his 
was  in  the  middle  of  March,  1S60.  I  give  more  details  in  the 
chapter  relating  to  the  John  Brown  men. — R.   J.    H.] 


728  JOHN    BROWN, 

REMINISCENCES   OF   GEORGE    B.   GILL, 

[A  MEMBER  OF  JOHN  BROWN'S  COMMAND  FROM  1 856  TO 
THE  SPRING  OF  1859,  AND  SELECTED  BY  THE  CHATHAM 
CONVENTION  TO  SERVE  AS  SECRETARY  OF  THE  TREAS- 
URY, UNDER  THE  PROVISIONAL  FORM  OF  GOVERNMENT 
PREPARED  BY  JOHN  BROWN  AND  ADOPTED  AT  CHATHAM, 
CANADA,  WEST,  MAY   THE    IITH    AND    I2TH,  1858.] 

{Mr.  George  B.  Gill,  now  living  in  the  neutral  strip,  Terri- 
tory of  Oklahoma,  who  was  a  faithful  and  able  member  of 
the  original  John  Brown  party,  prevented  only  by  severe 
sickness  from  being  at  Harper 's  Ferry,  has  furnished  me 
with  a  large  amount  of  manuscript  notes,  for  the  prep- 
aration of  which  I  am,  as  well  as  the  truth  of  history 
itself,  greatly  indebted.  These  original  notes  will  all  be 
deposited  with  other  material  by  me  in  the  Kansas  State 
Historical  Society  to  form  an  important  part,  I  trust, 
of  its  very  valuable  collection.  I  have  made  large  tise  of 
Mr.  Gill 's  data  in  the  body  of  this  book,  but  have  deemed 
that  what  follows  was  more  appropriately  to  be  placed  in 
this  Appendix,  and  duly  credited  as  a  whole  to  its  author, 
to  whom  again  I  return  my  grateful  thanks  for  all  his 
aid.  1  am  sure,  too,  that  the  reader  of  this  volume  will 
be  gratified  at  the  opportunity  and  insight  this  paper 
affords  as  to  the  mariner  of  men  that  traveled  with  John 
Brown  from  Kansas  to  Harper's  Ferry. — R  J.  Hinlon.] 

Those  who  wintered  at  Mr.  William  Maxon's.  in  eastern 
Iowa,  and  who  had  connected  themselves  with  .Bvown,  were 
Kagi,  Stevens,  Realf,  Parsons,  Tidd,  Leeman,  Moffett,  Cook, 
Owen  Biown,  and  Richard  Richardson  (Col.).  Of  these  Kagi, 
Realf,  and  Cook  were  more  or  less  addicted  to  literary  persuits. 
Springdale,  a  village  of  Quaker  origin,  noted  for  its  lyceums 
and  debating  clubs,  was  but  a  short  distance  from  their  ren- 
dezvous. 

Never  before,  nor  since,  has  that  community  been  so  mentally 
feasted  as  they  were  that  winter.     Realf,  with  fie^y  eloquence, 


APPENDIX.  729 

would  hold  his  audience  spellbound  ;  Kagi  with  calm,  logical 
deductions  would  be  invincible,  and  Cook  would  hold  an  inter- 
mediate position — comic,  poetic,  or  mirthful,  as  the  occasion 
demanded. 

While  not  noted  in  public  debates,  Owen  Brown  and  Stevens 
were  not  to  be  dispised  in  private  discussion.  Owen  with  his 
calm,  orderly,  and  honest  ways,  Stevens  with  his  fine,  rich 
voice,  and  passionate  thoughts  made  life  worth  living  in  their 
boarding-house  and  all  around  them.  Their  boarding-house 
would  sometimes  remind  one  of  a  boiling,  seething,  roaring 
Vesuvius.  A  stranger  would  have  supposed  a  battle  imminent, 
but  in  a  moment  there  would  come  a  cheery,  hearty  laugh. 
They  were  earnest  men,  and  as  libera"!  towards  others  as  they 
were  positive  in  their  own  convictions.  The  people  around 
Springdale  were  intensely  anti-slavery.  It  soon  became  an 
open  secret  that  these  men  were  waiting  and  preparing  to  strike 
a  blow  whose  rebound  would  probably  be  death  to  the  heroes 
that  gave  it.  Details  were  not  known,  nor  even  surmised,  yet 
sympathetic  instructions  were  so  correctly  formed  that  no  sur- 
prise was  felt  when  the  sacrifice  was  made. 

In  their  home  at  Mr.  Maxon's  they  amused  themselves  at 
intervals  in  singing.  Several  of  them  had  superior  voices,  and 
when  on  some  patriotic  refrain  would  make  the  welkin  ring. 
Mr.  Maxon  lived  in  the  extreme  west  edge  of  Iowa  Township, 
in  Cedar  County,  and  adjoining  Springdale  Township.  The 
.majority  of  the  people  in  Iowa  Township  were  as  rabidly  pro- 
slavery  as  they  were  intensely  anti-slavery  in  Springdale  Town- 
ship. On  learning  the  character  of  Mr.  Maxon's  boarders, 
the  pro-slavery  citizens  of  Iowa  Township  held  an  indignation 
meeting  and  passed  resolutions  denying  the  fact  of  Mr.  Maxon 
being  a  resident  of  Iowa  Township,  alleging  that  he  was  a 
citizen  of  Springdale  Township.  Mr.  Maxon  accepted  the 
change  proudly.  Brown  paid  one  dollar  per  week  to  Mr.  Maxon 
for  each  man  boarded,  a  rate  at  which  he  probably  lost  money. 
The  original  intention  was  to  familiarize  themselves  with  mili- 
tary tactics  and  drill,  but  the  instructor  that  they  had  expected 
had   proven  a  failure  in  all  ways      Stevens   undoubtedly  was 


73°  JOHN    BROWN. 

very  capable  of  instructing  them  in  drill,  but  the  original  pn> 
gramme  was  neVer  fully  carried  out,  except  in  a  mental  way, 
by  reading  and  discussing.  This,  however,  was  very  thorough. 
Not  alone,  however,  in  military  discipline  and  strategy,  but  in 
all  things,  theological  or  philosophical.  No  question  too 
abstruse,  none  too  prominent.  Some  genius  among  them,  Owen 
Brown,  whittled  out  some  wooden  swords  with  which  they 
practiced.  Whenever  any  one  of  them  who  had  been  accustomed 
to  manual  labor  could  get  work  to  do,  husking  corn  or  similar 
labor,  they  would  gladly  seize  hold  of  it. 

I  think  that  it  must  have  been  in  the  early  winter  of  1857 
that  Brown  came  to  Springdale  with  his  men.  I  had  come 
from  Kansas  much  earlier,  and  was  living  at  West  Liberty 
(some  seven  miles  from  Springdale  or  about  ten  miles  from 
Maxon's),  when  I  became  cognizant  of  the  fact  of  their  being 
in  that  locality.  How  I  found  it  out  I  do  not  now  remember, 
neither  do  I  now  remember  as  to  who  I  was  acquainted  with 
previous  to  that  time,  with  the  exception  of  Realf.  I  knew 
Brown  slightly.  Some  of  the  others  I  had  seen  but  was  really 
not  acquainted  with  them.  The  two  Coppocs  and  Steward 
Taylor  were  old  Iowa  acquaintances.  I  was  well  enough  ac- 
quainted with  Brown  to  be  recognized  by  him  when  I  took 
Steward  Taylor  up  to  introduce  him.  In  April  (1858),  Brown 
returned  from  the  East,  and  preparations  for  an  advance  forward 
were  made,  Parsons  leaving  Springdale  in  advance  of  the  others 
in  order  that  Parsons  might  visit  his  people,  a  few  days,  some- 
where in  Illinois.  I  should  have  said  that  Kagi  and  Tidd  ac- 
companied Parsons  to  his  home  there  previous  to  the  balance 
of  the  party  leaving  Springdale.  From  Attalissa,  the  point  at 
which  they  expected  to  take  the  cars,  there  came  a  character- 
istic letter  from  Kagi,  telling  that  they  had  come  in  sight  of  the 
station  and  train  just  in  time  '  to  give  the  lie  to  that  old  adage' 
that  distance  lends  enchantment  to  the  view  ;  they  being  too 
late.  At  11.45  A.M.,  on  Tuesday,  April  27,  1858,  we  left  Spring- 
dale  for  West  Liberty,  where  we  boarded  the  cars  at  three  P.M., 
and  crossed  the  Mississippi,  at  Davenport,  just  as  the  sun  was 
setting.     Our  company  then  consisted  of  John  Brown,  Owen 


APPENDIX.  731 

Brown,  A.  D.  Stevens,  Moffett,  Taylor,  Leeman,  Realf,  Cook, 
myself,  and  Richardson,  a  colored  man.  During  the  process 
of  changing-  cars,  at  Rock  Island,  some  demonstrations  were 
made  towards  arresting  our  colored  man  as  a  '  runaway 
nigger.'  We  were  speedily  relieved  of  this  by  the  conductor 
taking  him  by  the  arm  and  pushing  him  into  the  car  and  imme- 
diately starting  the  train.  We  were  passing  for  a  company  of 
surveyors  returning  from  the  West.  After  starting,  the  con- 
ductor came  around  congratulating  himself  as  to  how  nicely  he 
had  given  them  the  slip.  Arriving  at  Chicago  at  five  o'clock 
on  the  morning  of  the  28th,  we  stopped  at  the  Massasoit  House. 
We  ate  our  breakfast  all  right,  but  just  previous  to  going  into 
dinner  the  landlord  informed  the  old  patriarch  that  our  colored 
man  would  have  to  wait  and  eat  with  the  servants.  The  old 
man  would  not  accept  the  proposition,  but,  instead,  gave  the 
landlord  a  little  of  his  terse  logic,  and  left.  We  dined  at  the 
Adams  House,  where  the  conditions  were  altogether  suitable, 
caste  and  color,  accidental  and  otherwise,  not  being  considered. 
Leaving  Chicago  at  4.30  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  we  reached 
Detroit  at  6  o'clock  a.m.  on  the  29th,  taking  up  quarters  at  the 
villa  tavern;  Parsons,  Kagi,  and  Tidd  arrived  next  day.  Noth- 
ing of  any  importance  was  done  until  Saturday,  May  8th,  with 
the  exception  of  sending  out  a  few  notes  to  friends,  inviting 
them  to  a  proposed  convention.  This  body  convened  on  Sat- 
urday, May  8th  (1858).  It  had  26  in  attendance,  14  colored 
and  12  white.  Another  session  was  held  on  Monday.  William 
Charles  Monroe  was  made  president  and  John  Henri  Kagi 
was  secretary. 

[Mr.  Gill  wrote  in  this  paper  a  brief  resume  of  the  convention 
proceedings,  which  is,  however,  used  in  the  general  narra- 
tive with  due  credit.  He  then  resumes  the  story  of  the 
movements  of  the  party  up  to  the  early  part  of  iSjp.] 

On  Tuesday,  May  nth,  at  9  A.M  ,  Stevens,  Tidd,  Parsons, 
Owen  Brown,  Taylor,  Cook,  Moffett,  and  myself  left,  on  the 
steamer  Swan,  for  Detroit,  destination  being  Cleveland.  We 
arrived  there  at  5  A.M.,  on  the  12th,  and  stopped  for  breakfast 


732  JOHN    BROWN. 

at   the  Bennett  House.      After  breakfast,  we  engaged   board 

at   85    Water    street.       From    Chatham,    Brown    went    East. 

Kagi  went  down  to  St.  Catherine's  to  set  up  the  work  of  the 

convention,  including  commissions,  in  James  M.  Bell's  (colored) 

printing-office,  Kagi  doing  the  work    himself.     Between  that 

time  and  the   21st  of  June  we  were  compelled   to  resort  to 

various  expedients   to   maintain   ourselves,  our   money  being 

about  all  gone.     I  had  loaned  the  little  that   I    had   to   various 

members  of  the  party,  some  to  Brown  himself.     Parsons  had 

quite   a   little    supply,   but   had   distributed   his   in  the   same 

way.     Times  were  hard,  and  business  that  we  could  do  was 

not   to    be    found.     I    concluded    to   take    a   little  trip   up  to 

Sandusky  city  to  see  Reynolds,  a  member  of  the  convention, 

and  to  take  in  Oberlin,  Berlin  Heights,  and  Milan,  on  the  way. 

I  persuaded  Steward  Taylor  to  accompany  me.     The  trip  and 

style   of  traveling  was  too  much  for  Steward  ;    after  walking 

half-way  and   lying  out  one  night  he  took  the  back  track,  and 

arrived  at  Cleveland  worn  out  in  body  and  spirit.     At  Milan,  I 

discovered    rumors   of   John    Brown's    hidden    arms    and    the 

locality  that  they  were  stored  in  ;   in  fact,  exactly  where  they 

were  stored.     My  object  in  wishing  to  see  Mr.  Reynolds,  who 

was  a   colored    man    (very   little   colored,   however),   was   in 

regard  to  a  military  organization  which,  I  had  understood,  was 

in  existence  among  the  colored  people.     He  assured  me  that 

such  was  the  fact,  and  that  its  ramifications  extended  through 

most,  or  nearly  all,  of  the  slave  States.     He  himself,  I  think, 

had    been    through    many   of    the    slave    States   visiting   and 

organizing.    He  referred  me  to  many  references  in  the  Southern 

papers,  telling  of  this  and  that  favorite  slave  being  killed  or 

found  dead.     These,  he  asserted,  must  be  taken  care  of,  being 

the  most  dangerous  element  they  had  to  contend  with.     He 

also  asserted  that  they  were  only  waiting  for  Brown,  or  some 

one   else,    to    make   a    successful    initiative    move  when  their 

forces   would    be    put  in   motion.     None  but  colored  persons 

could  be  admitted  to  membership,  and,  in  part  to  corroborate 

his  assertions,  took  me  to  the  room  in  which  they    held    their 

meetings   and   used  as  their  arsenal.     He  showed  me  a  fine 


APPENDIX.  733 

collection  of  arms.  He  gave  me  this  under  the  pledge  of  secrecy 
which  we  gave  to  each  other  at  the  Chatham  Convention. 

On  my  return  to  Cleveland  he  passed  me  through  the  or- 
ganization, first  to  J.  J,  Pierce,  colored,  at  Milan,  who  paid  my 
bill  over  night  at  the  Eagle  Hotel,  and  gave  me  some  money, 
and  a  note  to  E.  Moore,  at  Norwalk,  who  in  turn  paid  my 
hotel  bill  and  purchased  a  railroad  ticket  through  to  Cleveland 
for  me.  At  Cleveland  I  found  that  Realf  and  Leeman  had 
arrived  from  Chatham.  Realf  had  rented  a  room  and  estab- 
lished a  kind  of  headquarters.  Stevens,  Tidd,  and  Owen 
Brown  were  working  for  the  Shakers,  some  six  or  seven  miles 
from  Cleveland,  receiving  the  munificent  sum  of  fifty  cents  per 
day ;  more,  however,  than  they  could  get  anywhere  else.  I 
went  out,  thinking  that  perhaps  I  might  get  something  to  do; 
they  then  had  all  the  help  they  needed.  I  suggested  that  I  would 
work  for  my  board,  if  they  would  let  me  do  so.  They  said 
that  they  never  turned  any  one  away.  From  June  ist  to  June 
21st  I  worked  in  company  with  Owen,  mostly  on  repairing  a 
dam,  Stevens  and  Tidd  leaving  soon  after  I  arrived.  Steward 
Taylor  worked  for  some  one  in  the  vicinity  of  Cleveland. 
Moffet  had  a  married  sister  living  in  Cleveland  with  whom  he 
stopped.  Parsons  paid  his  board.  Just  what  Cook,  Leeman, 
and  the  others  were  doing  this  time  I  cannot  now  remember, 
but  they  were,  however,  within  call. 

On  June  21,  1858,  we  were  notified  that  Brown  had  returned 
from  the  East  and  wanted  us.  On  leaving,  the  Shaker  super- 
intendent handed  me  several  dollars.  I  inquired  as  to  what  it 
was  for.  He  said  that  it  was  to  pay  me  for  my  work.  Yes, 
but  I  told  him  I  had  agreed  to  work  for  my  board.  His  answer 
was :  "  Keep  the  money,  the  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire." 
On  meeting  Brown,  he  explained  to  us  that  the  friends  on  whom 
he  relied  for  money  were,  as  he  expressed  it,  in  a  panic  on  ac- 
count of  Forbes,1  and  that  nothing  could  be  done  for  the  pres- 


1  Col.  Hugh  Forbes,  the  Englishman,  originally  employed  as 
military  instructor,  and  who  wrote  denouncing  Brown  to  anti- 
slavery  friends. 


734  JOHN    BROWN. 

ent.  He  planned  for  us  as  well  as  he  could  considering  the 
financial  basis.  Kagi,  Tidd,  and  himself  were  to  go  directly  to 
Kansas  by  way  of  St.  Louis.  Stevens  and  myself  were  to  go 
by  the  way  of  Iowa,  and  there  raise  some  funds,  and  come  on 
to  Kansas  as  soon  as  we  could.  Realf  was  to  go  to  New  York 
and  watch  the  movements  of  Forbes.  Owen  wns  to  go  out  to 
Jason's,  at  Akron,  taking  either  Leeman  or  Taylor,  or  both, 
with  him,  though  it  seems  to  me  that  Taylor  was  afterwards 
reported  in  Illinois.  Moffett  was  already  at  home  in  Cleve- 
land, but  afterwards  worked  west  to  Iowa.  I  am  of  the 
opinion  that  both  Moffett  and  Parsons  had  lost  faith  in  the 
movement. 

Brown  reasoned  out  a  necessity  for  himself  and  some  others 
to  go  to  Kansas,  and,  if  possible,  to  make  some  demonstration 
as  an  offset  to  Forbes's  revelations,  either  made  or  threatened. 
This  was  the  true  meaning  of  his  return  to  Kansas.  By  going 
to  Kansas,  discredit  would  naturally  follow  Forbes's  evidence, 
making  it  so  unreliable  and  worthless  that  neither  friend  nor  foe 
would  be  influenced  by  it. 

Cook  was  to  go  to  Harper's  Ferry.  To  me  this  does  not 
admit  of  a  single  doubt.  He  did  all  in  his  power  to  persuade 
me  to  go  along,  but  just  then  I  did  not  have  entire  faith  in  the 
scheme  being  carried  to  a  successful  conclusion,  or  even  an 
attempt  made  to  execute  it  for  a  long  time.  The  condition  of 
the  treasury  also  made  it  objectionable  to  me,  and  I  also  feared 
a  lack  of  reserve  on  the  part  of  Cook.  I  am  satisfied  that 
Brown  furnished  Cook  with  money  to  go  with,  and  remember 
distinctly  of  the  caution  and  advice  given  him  by  Brown.  I  do 
not  think  that  Brown  first  suggested  his  going,  but,  after  being 
suggested  by  Cook,  I  am  confident  that  Brown  acquiesced  in 
his  going.  This  I  say  emphatically,  and  feel  that,  if  Brown 
had  been  correctly  reported,  that  there  never  would  have  been 
any  denial. 

Brown,  Kagi,  and  Tidd  must  have  reached  Kansas  about 
June  24,  1858;  Stevens  and  myself  reached  Iowa  on  the  25th. 
1  reached  Kansas  about  the  10th  of  August,  Stevens  somewhat 
later.     Brown  I   found  was  in  Linn  County ;  getting  my  cue 


APPENDIX.  735 

from  William  A.  Phillips,  I  found  Kagi  and  Tidd  at  Augustus 
Wattles  s  and,  in  company  with  Kagi,  found  the  old  man  quite 
sick  at  John  Jones's  (the  Ottawa  Indian). 

[The  balance  of  Mr.  Gill's  fin fier  has  been  made  use  of  in  the 
chapter  on  Events  in  Kansas  from  September,  jS5S  to 
January,  iSjp.— R.   J.  H.\  ' 


INDEX. 


Abbott,  Major,  50,  77,  223. 

Adair,  Rev.,  39,  212,  221. 

Alcott,  Bronson,  238. 

Ancestors,  Brown,  John  of,  9,  10,  12;  Anderson's,  J.  G.,  542  ; 
Brown's,  John,  II,  12;  Cook's,  J.  E.,  466;  Kagi's,  J.  H.,  455; 
Stevens's,  Aaron  D.,  492. 

Anderson,  Captain  U.  S.  A.,  209,  210. 

Anderson,  Jeremiah  G.,  210,  216,  217,  218,  236,  238,  239,  240, 
248.  249-284,  285-286,  299,  306,  307,"  309,  311,  463,  487,  534, 
542-548,  581. 

Anderson,  Osborne  Perry,  175,  176,  177,  178,  185,  186,  190-244, 
261,  262,  2.72,  275,  276,  278-282,  286,  291,  293,  307,  312,  504- 
507,  512,  515,  551. 

Andrews,  John  A.,  139,  345. 

Annals  of  Kansas,  194.  212  ;  of  Harper's  Ferry,  308. 

Antecedents,  Harper's  Ferry  Men,  of,  449-551. 

Anthony,  Col.  Daniel  R.,  40,  522. 

Appendix,  583-745. — Advice,  Words  of,  U,  S.  League  of 
Gileadites  ;  Agreement,  585-586;  Arrival  in  Kansas,  664-666; 
Autobiography,  John  Brown's,  651-658 ;  Before  the  Massa- 
chusetts Legislature,  John  Brown,  606-61 1  ;  Black  Jack,  Fight 
at,  List  of  Volunteers,  and  List  of  Wounded  at,  etc.,  596-597  ; 
Bibliography,  Brown,  John,  Kansas  Free  State  Struggle  and 
Harper's  Ferry  Raid,  736-745 ;  Border  Ruffian  Rumors, 
668-669;  Brown  Papers,  The,  Account  of  Carpet-bag  Con- 
tents, 619;  Brown  Settlement,  The,  660-663;  Chatham, 
Canada,  Convention,  The,  Martin  R.  Delany's  Account  of, 
714-718;  Cook,  John  Edwin,  Statement  of,  690-716;  Decla- 
ration of  Liberty,  A  (Representatives  of  the  Slave  Popula- 
tion), 637-643;  Duty  of  the  Soldier,  No.  I.,  61 5-618;  Family, 
The  John  Brown,  658-660 ;  Farewell,  Old  John  Brown's,  to 
Plymouth  Rock,  etc.,  614-615;  General  Orders,  War  De- 
partment Provisional  Army,  Harper's  Ferry,  646-647 ;  Gill, 
George  B.,  Reminiscences  of,  728-735 ;  North  Elba  Home, 
Its  Head  and  Family,  Richard  A.  Dana,  684-688 ;  On  the 
Road,  Letters  of  John  Brown,  663-664;  Osawatomie.  Battle 
of,  John  Brown's  Account,  604-606;  Parallels,  John  Brown's, 
644-646;  Pottawatomie  Slaying,  The,  Hon.  Charles  A. 
Forster,  688-694;  Hon.  James  H  an  way,  694-697  ;  Prisoner's 
Camp  near  Lecompton,  From  the,  669-670;  Provisional  Con- 
stitution and  Ordinance,  etc.,  619-634;  Provisional  Conven- 


738 


INDEX. 


tion  (Chatham.  Can.).  Journal  of,  634-637  ;  Recollection  of 
Harper's  Ferry  Raid,  Hon,  A.  R,  Boteler,  647-650;  Regulars, 
John  Brown's  Articles  of  Enlistment,  etc.,  592-596;  Renewal 
of  Strife,  667-668  ;  Richard  Realf's  Account  of  John  Brown's 
Plans,  676-678 ;  Sambo's  Mistakes,  588-592 ;  Secret  Free 
State  Order,  Jas.  F.  Legate,  697-700;  Settlers'  Privations, 
666-667  ;  Shubel  Morgan's  Company,  Article  of  Agreement 
for,  643-644;  Slaves,  An  Act  to  Punish  Offenses  against 
Slave  Property.  601-602;  Some  Shadows  Before,  John  Brown's 
and  J.  Kagi's  Account  of  Plans,  to  R.  J.  Hinton,  660-676; 
Sons  in  Kansas,  John  Brown's,  603-604;  George  Luther 
Stearns  and  John  Brown  (Mrs.  Mary  E.  Stearns).  719-727; 
Three  Interviews,  Wm,  A.  Phillips,  677-684;  "  Wakarusa 
War,"  John  Brown's  Account,  697-699;  Notes  of,  699-700, 

Arms  Purchased  for  Free  Struggle,  50,  55,  56,  117,  119,  120, 
121,  122,  123.  131,  132,  142,  143,  145,  149,  239. 

Armstrong,  William  Jackson,  397,  398. 

Army  Officers  in  Kansas,  98. 

Arrest,  Reward  for  John  Brown's,  126,  196. 

Amy,  W.  M.  F.,  96,  117,  123,  132. 

Atchison,  Senator  David  R.,  73. 

Attack  and  Fight,  Harper's  Ferry,  285-314. 

Avis,  Jailer  John,  144,  145,  345,  359,  390,  391,  394,  509. 

Bahb,  Edmund,  41,  211,  254-256. 

Bain,  Captain  O.  P.,  221,  222. 

Ballot  Box  Guards.  112. 

Baptiste,  Jean  De,  25,  261. 

Barber  Thomas,  71,  104. 

Barnes,  Secretary  Wm.,  National  Convention,  115. 

Barry,  Joseph,  308-311. 

Baylor,  Col.  Robert  W.,  299,  321,  322,  330,  331. 

Beckham,  Major  Fountain.  35,  299,  313,  369,  530. 

Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  238. 

Beecher's  Sermon,  John  Brown's  Comments  on,  433-437. 

Benton,  Senator  Thomas  H.,  73. 

Big  Springs,  Convention,  20. 

Black  Jack.  Kansas  Fight  of,  36,  45,  54,  321. 

Blair,  Charles  W.   20,  125,  144,  239. 

Blair,  Montgomery,  349,  371,  372,  373. 

Blake,  Little  J..  209,  216,  218,  233. 

Blanton's  Bridge  and  Store,  yj. 

Blood,  James  G.,  20. 

Blunt,  Major-General  James  G.,  85,  223,  22?. 

Boerly,  U.  S.  Armorer,  512,  530. 


index.  739 

Booth,  John  Wilkes,  396. 

Bonde,  August,  40. 

Border  Ruffian  Militia,  73. 

Botts,  Counselor  Lawson,  340,  341,  349,  355,  358,  367. 

Bowditch,  Dr.,  139. 

Bowles,  Col.  John,  48,  102,  103,  107. 

Bowles,  William,  48,  102,  103,  107. 

Brackett,  William,  the  Sculptor,  419,  520. 

Bradford,  Governor  Win,,  9. 

Bradford,  Sarah  H.,  173. 

Branson,  Jacob,  Rescue  of,  etc.,  72,  75,  76. 

Brisbane,  Albert,  231. 

Brooks,  Preston,  97. 

Brown,  George  W.,  20,  47,  49,  50,  51,  no,  134,  155,  166,  174. 

Brown.  O.  B.,  40. 

Brown,  R.  P.,  71. 

Brown,  Anne,  Mrs.  Adams,  14,  245-253,  260,  264,  265,266,  332, 

450,467,  49(>-49I.  498-  5°5-5°7»  5J5>  5^9-  532>  547.  557.  581. 
Brown,  Mrs.  Dianthe  Lusk,  13. 
Brown,  Ellen,  14,  332. 
Brown,  Ellen,  Mrs.  Jason,  39,  332. 
Brown,  Frederick,  14,  19,  20,  21,  39,  62,  63, 
Brown,  Isabella  (Thompson),  Mis.  Watson,  332,  577. 
Brown,  Jason,    14,   19,  20,  21,  23.  39,  53,  60,  62,  6},  84,  95,  247, 

332. 
Brown,  Jeremiah  L.  (half  brother),  353. 
Brown.  John,   Jr.,    13,   19,  20,  21,  23,  39,  53,  60,  62,  67,,  84,  95, 

163,  164,  166,  167,  180,  236,  239,  260,  261,  26^,  332,  382. 
Brown,  Martha  Eveline  (Brewster),  Mrs.  Oliver,  245,  264,  266, 

276,  332,  547,  578,  581. 
Brown,  Mary  A.  (Day  Mrs.  John),  18,  22,  332. 
Brown,   Oliver,    14,  21,  39,  52,  53,  60,  62.  63,  99,  108,  240,  247, 

248,  249-284.  286,  287,  289,  299,  300,  307,  310,  318,  577-5S1. 
Brown,  Owen,    14,  20,  21,  23,  24,  39,  52    54,  60,  62,  63.  95.  114, 

115,  144,  155-158,  178,  240,  248.  249-284,  294,  307.  316,  374- 

382,  475.  539,  549.  550.  553-558,  561,  562,  572-574. 
Brown,  Ruth,  Mrs.  Henry  Thompson,  14,  21,  39.  260,  332. 
Brown,  Salmon,  14,  20,  21,  39,  52,  53,  62,  63,  95,  99,  332,  577. 
Brown,  Sarah,  14.  39,  332. 
Brown,  Watson,   14,  117,  118,  240,  2J.7,  24S-284,  299,  300,  307, 

310,  318,  488,  489,  506,  577-581. 
Brown,  Wealthy  C.  Mrs.  John,  Jr.,  39,  332, 
Brownsville,  Settlement  at,  20. 
Bryant,  William  Cu'len,  161. 
Buchanan,  President  James,  59,  196,  198,  216,  384    385,  386. 


740 


INDEX. 


Buffum,  David,  85,  104. 

Buford,  Col.  Thomas,  55,  71,  72,  109,  210. 

Burlingame,  Anson,  169. 

Burns,  Terence,  286,  294,  450,  512,  534. 

Cabot,  Dr.  Samuel  G.,  50,  54,  139,  142. 

Campbell,  Sheriff,  314,  345.  355.  393.  396- 

Capture  of  John  Brown,  315-321. 

Carpet-Bag,  Contents  of,  330,  331. 

Cato,  Federal  Judge,  47,  85. 

Cattle  Breeder,  John  Brown  as,  15. 

Cleveland,  John  Brown  at,  231,  232,  233,  234,  235. 

Chase,  Salmon  P.,  135,  254,  385,  387. 

Chatham,  John  Brown's  Convention  at,  32,  128,  151,  152,  170- 

190,  377,   379 
Chatham  Convention,  List  of  Colored  Members,  171,  172,  175- 

179,  180,  185. 
Chatham  Convention,  John  Brown's  Men  at,  1 53-1 54,  I77~i79» 

185. 
Chilton,  Counselor  Samuel,  349,  359,  366-373. 
Chambers,  George,  317. 
Channing,  Dr.  Henry,  55. 
Choate,  Rufus,  15. 
Chateau  Trading  Post,  195,  197. 
Coleman,  Deputy  Marshall,  77,  79,  8o,  85. 
Coleman,  E.  A.  83,  84, 
College,  Amherst,  11-13. 
College,  Oberlin,  II. 
Colony  Colored  People  of,  16,  17. 
Colored  Infantry,  First  Kansas,  48,  107. 
Colored  Men,  John  Brown's,  504-506. 
Congress,  Thirty-fourth,  Committee  of,  62. 
Constitutional  Convention,  Lecompton,  108,  no,  iii„    . 
Constitutional  Convention,  Leavenworth,  ill. 
Constitutional  Convention,  Topeka,  20,  in. 
Constitution.  Lecompton,  154,  155,  157.  193-  !97>  209. 
"  Constructive  Treason,"  Lecompte's  charge  on,  58. 
Contributions  for  Free  State  Kansas,  122,  131-132,  133. 
Contributions  for  John  Brown,  125,  128,  129,  130,  143. 
Cook,  John  Edwin,  78,79.  no,  153,  155,  156,  158,  178,194,228, 

249-284,  285,  286,  288,  291    294.  307.  316,  329.  342,  359,  368, 

374-  375.  377-  383-  397.  400--406,  466-474,  487,  489,  490,  553, 

558,  561-564. 
Cook,  Virginia  Kennedy,  wife  of  John  E.,  249,  266,  272,  276, 

333,  474,  481-483- 


INDEX.  741 

Cooke,  Col.  Phillip  St.  George,  52,  93. 

Copeland,   John  A.,  78,   108,  246,  247,  249,  266,  273,  275,  281, 

283,  286,  293,  307,  325,  342,  351.  369,  499,  508-511. 
Coppoc,  Barclay,  24,  117,  155,  248,  275,  280,  307,  334.  374,382, 

383.475.476,  506.  539-543.  549-554.  562-565,  573,  574. 
Coppoc,  Edwin,  78,  117,  155.  247,  248,  249,  276,  281,  283,  286, 

295.  306,  307,  316,  325,  334,  339.  342,  351,  368,  375.376,  400- 

406,  473,  487-49 L  499.  534.  553.  578. 
Correspondents,  Newspaper,  40,  50,  103;  Kagi  as,  457,  458. 
Cosgrove,  Border  Ruffian,  77. 
Council  at  Kennedy  Farm,  258,  259,  260. 
Cruse,  Missouri  Slave  Owner,  221. 
Crowley,  Robert,  488,  499,  550-553. 
Cushing,  Caleb,  1  5. 
Cutter,  Dr.,  of  Mass.,  200,  561,  564,  566,  567. 

Dana,  Charles  A..  465. 

Daingerfield,  John  E.  R.,  300-305,  360. 

"  Danites,"  The.  86,  87. 

Daniels,  rescued  slave,  218,  219,  220,  223. 

Daniels,  Col.  Edward,  56. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  38,  56,  101. 

Davis,  Col.  Lewis  J.,  345,  346,  433. 

Day,  Orson,  39,  80. 

Delany,  Dr.  Martin  R.,  32,  171,  175,  176,  177,  178,  179,  180, 
184,  185. 

Deitzler,  General  George  W.,  47,  50. 

Denver,  Governor  J.  W.,  120,  169,  193,  211,  214,  254. 

Descriptions,  Personal :  Anderson,  J.  G.,  546;  Anderson,  O.  P., 
505,  506;  Avis,  John,  345;  Brown,  John,  13,  18,  62,  118,  119, 
140,  175,  176,  201-206,  316,  362,  367,  421  ;  Brown,  Mrs.  Martha 
Evelyn,  445,  446;  Brown,  Mary  A..  291,  292,  374,  375,  443; 
Brown,  Oliver,  577,  578  ;  Brown,  Owen,  455,  456,  549;  Brown, 
Watson,  576,  577;  Botts,  Lawson,  349;  Campbell,  Sheriff, 
345;  Copeland,  John  A.,  505;  Coppoc,  Barclay,  536,  549; 
Coppoc,  Edwin,  490,  491  ;  Cook,  John  E.,456,  479,  480,  487  ; 
Cook,  Mrs.  Virginia  K.,  481,  482  ;  Davis,  Col.  J.  Lewis,  345; 
Green,  Counselor,  348;  Green,  Lieutennant,  346;  Green, 
Shields,  505,  507;  Harding,  Charles  B.,  345  ;  Hazlett,  Albert, 
515;  Hunter,  Andrew,  346;  Kagi,  J.  H.,  453,  454,455;  Lee- 
man,  Wm.  H  ,  535;  Leonhardt,  C.  W.,  254;  Merriam,  F.  J., 
549,  568,  569;  Newby,  Dangerfield,  505  ;  Stevens,  A.  D..  264, 
368,  492,  494,  495,  496,  500,  503;  Tidd,  Charles  P.,  264,  549, 
550;  Thompson,  A.  Dauphin,  529;  Thompson,  Mrs.  Mary, 
447;  Thompson,  William,  204.  530,  532;  Washington,  Lewis 
A.,  293,  346. 


742  INDEX. 

Dole,  George  W.,  115,  127. 

Douglass,  Frederick,   27,  28,  29..  30,  35,  36,  149,  150,  162-165, 

227,  239,  260-263,  334,  360,  506,  507,  581,  582. 
Dow,  Free  State  Victim,  71,  72,  77,  85,  104. 
Doy,  Dr.  John,  383. 

Doyle,  John,  and  two  others,  61,  82,  83. 
Doyle,  Mahala,  313. 
Dred  Scott  Decision,  72,  73. 
Dunbar,  Jennie,  501-504. 

Easton,  Editor,  31,  91. 

Eggleston,  Mary,  10. 

Election  in  Kansas,  43,  70,  71,  113,  137. 

Eldridge,  Shaler,  59,  120. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  28,  140,  238,  450. 

Emigrant  Aid  Society,  New  England,  69,  70,  139. 

Escape,   Anderson,  O.  P.,  of,   507,  551  ;  Attempt  at,  Cook  and 

Coppoc's,  401-403;   Capture,   Hazlett,  Albert,  of,  476,    507, 

515-518;  Owen  Brown's  Party,  of,   475,  476,  539,  558-565. 

572-574. 
Europe,  Travel  and  Military  Studies  in,  16,  35,  182. 
Execution  of  John  Brown,  392-398 ;  Cook,  Coppoc,  Copeland, 

and  Green,  400-405  ;  Stevens  and  Hazlett,  411. 

Family,  The  John  Brown.  9,  10,  1 1,  12,  13,  14,  18,  19,20,22,23, 
30,  85,  130,  131,  132,  237,  238,  332,  439-448,  556>  567>  581. 

Faulkner,  Charles  J.,  340. 

Fayette,  Rev.  Mr.,  23. 

Favorite  Books,  John  Brown's,  181. 

Favorite  Hymns,  John  Brown's,  264,  419. 

Favorite  Songs,  A.  D.  Stevens's,  264. 

Featherstonhaugh,  Dr.  Thomas.  VIII,  286,  304. 

Federal  Indictment,  Stevens.  Against,  377. 

Floyd,  Secretary  of  War,  144,  255,  256. 

Foulke,  C.  C,  530,  531. 

Forbes.  Col.  Hugh,  145,  146.  147.  148,  H9-  l5°>  l5l>  l$2>  1 55. 
156-164,  185.  190,  192. 

Forbes,  John  M.,  237. 

Forts,  John  Brown's,  35,  36. 

Fremont's  Candidacy,  Resistance  proposed,  278. 

Franklin  Mills,  Settled  at,  14,  23,  24. 

Franklin,  Kansas,  46,  75,  79. 

Friends  of  Freedom,  Appeal  to,  144. 

Fund,  John  Brown,  521. 


index  743 

Gallaher,  J.  W.  and  W.  D.  B.,  337,  395,  433,  443. 

Gardiner,  Joseph,  Rev,,  521. 

Garnett,  Henry  Highland,  28,  169. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  26,  27,  336. 

Gathering-  the  Men,  John  Brown,  260,  261,  262,  263. 

Gay,  Shawnee  Indian  Agent,  67. 

Geary,  Governor  John  \V.,  46,   47,  51,  85,  93,  98,  99,  100,  101, 

102,  108,  109,  120,  251. 
Gibson,  Col.  J.  T..  330. 
Giddings,  Joshua  R.,  231. 
Gileadites,  League  of,  25,  34. 
Gill,  George  B.,  117,  146,   155,  156,  212,  216,  217-227,  245,  454, 

486,  490,  515,  539,  546. 
Gill,  Dr.  H.  C,  198. 
Gillett,  Jonathan,  10. 
Gloucester,  Dr.  and  Mrs.,  334. 
Golden  Circle,  Knights  of,  and  Blue  Lodges,  68. 
Graham,  Jesse  W.,  300,  304-307,  316. 
Greeley,  Horace,  119,  135,  151,  331. 
Green,  Counselor,  340,  341.  348,  353,  355,  358,  367. 
Green,  Lieutenant  (J.  S.  Marines,  303,  304,  306,  315,  316. 
Green,  Shields,  78,  251,  252,  261,  265,  275,  298,  305,  307,  325, 

342,  351,  368,  375,  488,  489,  499,  507,  508,  511,  515, 
Grimes,  Governor,  Iowa,  56,  231. 
Grinnell,  J.  B.,  231. 
Griswold,  Judge,  349.  366,  367.  368. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  69. 

Hallocks.The,  Gerard,  Rev.  Herman;  Jeremiah,  Rev.  Moses.  13. 

Hamiltons,  The  Marais  du  Cygne  Murderers,  194,  195,211,212. 

Hanway,  Judge  James,  40. 

Hannibal  and  St.  Joseph  R.  R.,  139. 

Harding,  County  Attorney  Charles  B.,  340  345. 

Harrison,  Glover,  174. 

Hazlett,  Albert  (W.  H.  Harrison),  78,  158,  159,  210,  216,  217, 

218,  223.  228,  231,  247,  248,  275,  281,  291,  307,  312,  34.2,  383, 

388,  405-411.  476.  499.  507.  512-527. 
Harper's  Ferry   Raid,  References  to,   30,    34,  41,   74.   89,   116, 

118,  119,  124,  136,  137,  167,  174,  182,  190.  214,  307,  330,  345. 
Harvey,  Colonel  (Free  State),  46,  47,  99. 
Hayden,  Lewis,  267,  268,  271,  274.  570,  572. 
Hicks,  Governor,  Maryland,  385-387. 
Hicklan,  Missouri  Slave-owner,  219,  22?, 
Hickory  Point,  Fight  at,  46,  102. 
Higgins,  Watchman  Patrick,  288-292. 


744 


INDEX. 


Higginson,  Col.  Thomas  Wentworth,  55,  57,  117,  122,  133  142, 

160,  165-167,  191,  206,  521,  524,  525. 
Hinton,  Richard  J..  40.  44,45,49,  52,  55,  105,  109,  128,  146,  149, 

153,  198,  200,  201.  202,  203,  204,  205,  206,  212,  214,  235,  252, 

384,  464-465,  485,  520,  522-526. 
Historical  Society,  Kansas,  VIII,  42,  131,  133,  463,  522. 
Holmes,  James  H.,  40. 
Holt,  James,  317. 
House,  Edward,  336,  370. 
Howard.  Representative  William,  62. 
Howe,  Dr.  Samuel  G.,  54,  56,  117,  124,  130,  133,  137,  138,  142, 

151-160,  168,  169,  329-331,  334,  363. 
Howells,  William  Dean,  Poem,  379. 
Hovt,  George  Henry,    Counselor,  343,  346,  355-359-  365~377» 

381. 
Hudnal.  Henry,  330. 
Hudson,  Ohio,  12,  13,  14. 
Hudson,  Squire,  25,  26,  144. 
Humphrey,  Rev.  Herman,  II. 
Humphrey,  Rev.  Luther,  II 
Hunter,  Andrew,  310-412 
Hunter,  Henry,  317,  382,  530. 
Hurd,  Harvey  B.,  114,  115,   119,  121,  122,  123,  124,  126,  127, 

129,  132. 
Hutchinson,  William,  viii,,  40,  252. 
Huysenmuysen,  Peter  Van,  11. 
Hyatt,  Thaddeus,  55,  56,  115,  123,  124,  125,  129,  252,  329,  506. 

Imprisonment,  John  Brown,  of,  321-395. 

Indian  Tribes,  Relation  to  Pro-Slavery  Propaganda.  66,  67. 

Indictments,    Character  of,  against  John  Brown,  J.   E.  Cope- 

land,  Edwin  Coppoc,  John  E.  Cook,  Shields  Green,  Albert 

Hazlett,  34. 
Insanity,  Plea  of,  353,  372,  373. 

Jail.  Charlestown,  Plan  of,  342,  343. 

Jenkins,  Eames,  47. 

Jennison,  Col.  Charles,  218,  220. 

Jones,  John   C,  "  Ottawa,"  81,  82,  153.  223/ 

Johnson,  Col.  Hampton  P.,  119. 

Jones,  Sheriff,  72. 

Jones.  John,  of  Tabor,  96. 

Jones,  Blanton's  Bridge,  Free-State  victim,  76,  77,  78,  79. 

Julian,  George  W.,  231. 


INDEX. 


745 


Kagi,  John  Henri,  35,  40,  56,  102,  103,  104,  119,  155,  156.  157, 
158,  178,  179,  180,  181,  206,  212,  216,  217,  228,  232,  233,  234, 
235,  236,  237,  239,  246.  247,  249,  254,  259,  275!  276,'  281,'  283! 
307,  312,  313,  331,  451-466.  502,  558,  569,  571,  572,  294. 

Kansas  Aid  Committee,  National,  55,  57,  99,  100,  115,  116,  121- 
132,  133,  143.  145,  146,  147,  166. 

Kansas  Aid  Committee,  Massachusetts,  55,97,  122,  129,  140, 
142,  143,  144,  160,  161,  191. 

Kansas  Election  Frauds,  193. 

"Kansas  in  1858,"  194. 

Keagy,  Franklin,  246,  452,  552,  553. 

Keeler,  Ralph,  298,  475,  552,  553,  562,  572, 

Kennedy  Farm,  Life  at,  198,  240,  245,  247-252,  263-280,  551, 
552,  556. 

Kenny,  Judge,  Va.,  500,  502. 

Kentucky,  Fugitive  Slaves',  Routes  in,  173,  174, 

La  Grange,  Col.,  56. 

Lambert,  William,  173. 

Land  Surveyor,  John  Brown  as,  14,  82,  95. 

Lane,  Senator  James  H„  42.  47.  5°.  53-  57>  58,97,  117,  123. 

Langstons,  Charles  H.  and  John  M.,  25,  263, 

Lawrence,  Amos  A.,  27,  50,  70,  jj,  131,  142,  166. 

Lawrence,  Defense  of,  45,  46,  47,  48,  49.  50,  51,  52,  63,  70,  93. 

League  of  Freedom,  171,  172,  174.  261. 

Leary,   Sherrard   Lewis,   56,   119,  246,  247,  263,266,286.294, 

296,  307.  312,  313.  317,334.  508. 
Le  Barnes,  John  W.,  365,  366,  372,  377,  520-526. 
Lecompte,  Chief  Justice,  58,  73. 
Lecompton,  Free-State  Struggle  and,  46,  48,  54,  71,  102,  104, 

108,  137. 
Lecompton  Prison,  Kagi  in,  458,  459. 
Lecompton  Prisoners,  List  of,  102,  103,  104,  105,  106,  107. 
Lee,  General  Albert  L.,  514,  523. 
Lee,  General  Robert  E,,  300,  301,  315. 
Leeman,  William  Henry,  56,  95,  119,  153,  178,  198,  200,212,  216, 

228,  236,  248,  249,  256,  259,  265,  275,  276,  294,  307,  312,  313, 

334.   534-538,  581. 
Legislature,  Territorial,  no,  112. 
Lenhart,  Charles,  78,  79.  80,  247,  254,  256,  396,  397. 
Leonhardt,  C.  W.,  253,  254,  255,  286. 
Letcher,  Governor,  Virginia,  of,  203,  519. 
Letters:  Adams,  Anne  Brown,  248-252,  265.  445-448,  490,  506, 

520,   532,   546-548;    Anderson,   J.    G.,    238.    239,   544,    545; 

Anthonv,  Col.   D.    R.,    522;  Bavlor,   Col.   R.  W.,    321,  322; 


746 


INDEX. 


Brown,  John,  166-169,  191,  192,  213,  214,  226,  246,  247,  321, 
322.  330,  331,  364,  391,  421-424.  428-432,  438~443,  498>  499  I 
Brown,  Oliver,  578,  579;  Brown,  Owen,  557,  558;  Brown, 
Watson,  578;  Buchanan,  James,  385,386,407;  "Calm  and 
Still  "  (J.  B.)  124;  Chase,  Governor  S.  P.,  387,410;  Copeland, 
John  A.,  509,  510,  511  ;  Coppoc,  Edwin,  402,  403,  488-490; 
Cook,  John  E.,  402.  403,  47Q-473-  483,  484;  Dunbar,  Jennie, 
502,  503;  Foulke.  Miss  C,  531  ;  Galbraith,  F.  C,  540;  Gill, 
George  B.,  185,  186,217-227,454,490,515,  544"556;  Hazlett, 
Albert  (W.  H.  Harrison),  514,  515,526,  527;  Hicks,  Governor, 
Maryland,  387;  Higginson,  Col.  I.  W.,  521,  524,  525;  Hinton- 
Harrison,  The,  514,  515;  Historical  Society,  in  Kansas,  VIII, 
131  ;  Hoyt,  George  H.,  366-370,  371-373.  374,  375,  376,  377; 
Hurd,  Harvey  B..  121-127;  Keagy,  Franklin,  452,  481,  550, 
551  ;  Kagi,  John  H.,  271.459,460,  461,  462,464,465,  55°,  55 l  "> 
Le  Barnes,  John  W.,  365,  366;  Leeman,  VVm.  H.,  537,  538  ; 
McDill,  Hon.  James  W.,  543;  Merriam,  F.  J.,  267,  569,  570, 
575,  576;  Neff,  W.  C,  415-418;  Packer,  Governor,  Pennsyl- 
vania. 387;  Phillips,  Col.  Win.  A.,  444,445,463;  Political. 
Southern,  278;  Porter,  Rev.  E.  J.,  466,  467;  Realf,  Richard, 
136.137;  Ross,  Dr.  Alexander,  M.,  174;  Russell,  Edward, 
522,  523;  Sennott,  George,  406,  407 ;  Spring,  Mrs.  Rebecca, 
520;  Stevens,  Aaron  D.  (Chas.  Whipple),  491,  492,  496,  497, 
498.  499.  500  ;  Tappan.  Col.  S.  F.,  90,  91  ;  Taylor,  Steward, 
533.534;  Thompson,  Dauphin  277;  Thompson.  Henry,  82, 
83;  Thompson.  Ruth  Brown, 444;  Tidd,  Charles  P.,  560,  561, 
564.  565  ;  White,  Horace,  129,  130;  Wise,  Henry  A,,  384-387. 

Lincoln.  President  Abraham.  27,  141,  142,  386,  546. 

Logan.  Daniel.  Captuier  of  Cook,  476-479. 

Loguen,  Rev  ,  Syracuse,  25.  261,  262. 

Loss,  Slave  Property,  of,  325. 

Lovejoy,  Owen.  Murder  of,  66. 

Lowell,  James  Russell,  141. 

Loomis,  Elizabeth,  10, 

Maraisdu  Cygne  Massacre,  194,  195,  196,  197,211.212,213,  215. 

"  Marooned."  Negroes,  Florida,  in,  172. 

Maryland  Border,  Suspicions  aroused,  266,  267. 

McClure,  Col.  A.  K.,  476-481,  57*,  572. 

McKim,  Miller.  319,  320. 

Meadville,  24. 

Medaiy,  Governor,  196. 

Mennonites,  555. 

Metternich.  Richard,  524,  525. 

Merriam,   Francis  Jackson,    119,  252,  266,  267,268,271,274, 


index.  747 

275,  280,  307,  316,  449,  450,  464,  475,  476,  506,  539,  552,  555, 

556,  562,  567-576. 
Mills,  U.  S.  Master-Armorer,  360. 
Mills,  Ruth,  11,  12. 
Mills.  Rev.  Gideon,  12. 

Missouri  Compromise,  Passage  and  Repeal  of,  65,  167,  169. 
Missouri  River,  Blockade  of,  71. 
Missouri  Slaves,  Rescue  of,  217,  218,  219,  220,  221,  222,  223. 

224,  225,  226,  227,  228. 
Mitchell,  General  Robert  B.,  195. 

Moffett,  Charles  W.,  103,  153,  155,  178,  198,  245.  253,  539,  540. 
Montgomery,  Col.  James,  40,  101,  114,  145,  195,  196,  209,  210, 

211,  212,  215,  216,  217,  222,  520-526,  539,  540. 
Montgomery,  Col.  U.  S.  A.,  101. 
Morton,  Edwin,  167. 

Newton,  B.  B.,  128. 

North  Elba  Homestead,   16,   17,  18,  35,  36   131,  166-168,  399, 

400,  443,  447- 
Northern  Feeling,  John  Brown  on,  292,  327,  329,  345,  335-337, 

379,  386,  398.  379,  388,  399,  400. 
Newby,  Dangerfield,  275,  278,  297,  298,  307,313,457,  487,  511  ; 

Harriet,  wife  of,  275,  334. 

Oberlin,  236,  237. 

Objects  Summarized.  Attacking  Slavery,  189,  190. 

Officers.  Provisional  Government  of.  185. 

Olcott,  Correspondent,  336  396. 

Oliver,  Representative  Mordecai,  62,  91. 

Olmstead.  Frederick  Law,  50,  142. 

Order  of  March,  Harper's  Ferry,  On,  280,  281,  282,  283,  284. 

Original  Plans,  John  Brown's   30.  31    32,  33  34. 

Osawatomie.  Kansas,  39,  46,  89 

Overthrow  of  Government,  John  Brown  not  for,  179,  180,  181. 

Owen,  Elijah,  Hannah,  and  John,  10. 

Packer,  Governor  Pennsylvania,  385-387,  524,  525. 

Parker,  John  Brown's  Judge,  345-371,  376,  377.  519. 

Parker,  Rev.  Theodore,    54,   117,   133,   137,  138,  139,  140,  160, 

168,  191,  331. 
Parsons,  Luke  F.,  153,  155,  178,  198,  253. 
Partridges,  George  and  William,  40. 
Pate,  Henry  Clay,  45,  101. 
Patriotic  Volunteer,  Manual  of,  149,  150,  155. 
Pennsylvania  Border,   Movements  on  the,  239,  249,  251,  265, 

270-271,  273. 


748  INDEX. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  26,  34,  133,  138,  399.  400,  506. 

Phillips   Col   Wm    A.,  40,  44,  45,  76,  80,  223,  231,  462. 

Pierce,  President  Franklin,  69. 

Porte  Crayon  (D,  H    Strothers),  320,  392. 

Plumb,  Senator  Preston  B.,  105,  117,  119. 

Plumb,  Ralph,  232. 

Pomeroy.  Senator  S.  C,  56,  59. 

Porte  Crayon    320. 

Pottawatomie  Rifles,  62. 

Pottawatomie  Slaying,  The,  45,46,  61,  92,  119,  120,  235. 

Price,  Hiram,  231. 

Proctor,  Edna  Dean,  Poem,  399. 

Property  Seized,  John  Brown's,  319,  320,  370,  371,  389. 

Provisional  Constitution,  John  Brown's,  179, 180, 181,  186,  187- 

190,  323.  328,  330.  331. 
Puritan  Characteristics,  11. 

Ouantrill.  W.  C,  the  Guerilla,  81,  149,  214,  541. 
Quinn,  Marine,  316. 

Race  Hatred,  Colored,  451,  511. 

Realf,  Richard,  no,  117,  136,  137,  145,  153,  154,  155,  178,  181, 

182,  197.  247,  252,  253,  487. 
Redpath,  James,  28,  40.  41,  44,  45,  117,  205,  253,  374,  464,468, 

473.  487,  506,  521. 
Reeder.  Governor  Andrew  H.,  69,  101,  121. 
Reid,  General,  of  Missouri,  50,  52,  55. 
Reisher,  Trial-Judge.  Pa..  478,  481. 

Rescue,  John  Brown's,  Talk  of,  365,  367.  368,  381-387,  397. 
Rescue,  Stevens  and  Hazlett,  Plan  for,  384,  501,  502,  520-526. 
Rewards.  Escaped  Men,  for,  517,  548,  549. 
Reynolds,  G.  J.,  25,  174,  175. 
Rice.  Benjamin  M.,216. 
Richardson,  Richard,  153,  155,  178. 
Ritchie,  Col,  John,  40.  224.  245.  262.  512. 
Ritner,  Mrs.  Mary  A.,  249,  465,  481,  482,  514,  5l8»  552>  553. 

561,  573- 
Robinson,  Charles,  20,  42,  44,  45,  47.  57,  77.86,  88,89, IIQ.  *»• 

207,  211.  254,  314. 
Rohan.  William  De,  146,  150. 
Ross,  Dr.  Alexander  Melton,  171,  174,  180. 
Ross,  Senator  Edmund  G.,  56. 
Russell,  Edward,  522.  523. 
Russell.  Judge  Thomas    54.  133,  366. 
Russell,  Major  U.  S  ,  Marine,  315. 


INDEX. 


749 


Rush  Elmore's  Assault  on  Kagi,  460,  461,  463,  465. 
Rutherford,  Dr.,  524. 


Sackett,  Captain,  U.  S.  A.,  52. 

Safety  Fund,  The,  328. 

Sanborn,  Frank  B.  (Life  and  Letters  of  John  Brown),  27,  55, 
58,59,  117,  131,  132,  133,  140,  142,  145,  146,  160-166,  167,' 
212,  237,  238,  240,  329,  331,  415,  426,  520,  569,  570. 

Schamyl,  Circassian  Chief,  185. 

Schoeper.  George,  317. 

School,  Plainrield,  Massachusetts,  At,  13. 

Scott,  General  Winfield,  315. 

Seamen,  Captain   Henry,  107. 

Sennott,  Counselor  George,  349,  369,  381,  499,  502. 

Shawnee  Mission,  The,  101. 

Shepherd,  Haywood,  288,  289. 

Sherman,  "  Dutch  "  Henry,  80,  81,  87. 

Sherman,  Representative  John,  61. 

Sherman   William    81.  82.  83. 

"Shubel  Morgan's"  Company,  212,  213,  544. 

Shore,  Captain,  and  Brothers,  63. 

Simons,  Captain  Fredericksburg  Guards,  360. 

Slave  Insurrections,  References  to,  66. 

Slave  Property,  Loss  in,  30. 

Slavery,  Against.  Movement  in  Southwest,  157,  158,  159, 

Smith,  Gerrit,  16,  19,  34,  116,  123,  129,  130,  131,  166,  225,  286, 

329'  331-  36°- 
Smith,  Judge  G.  W.,  47. 
Smith,  Nicholas  V.,  119. 
Smith,  General  Persifer  F.,  97,  238. 
Smith,  Stephen,  169, 
Snyder's  Fort,  213,  214,  216,  217. 
Snyder,  Samuel,  360. 

"Some  Shadows  Before  "  (Hinton),  28,  206,  212."* 
Songs,  Stevens's  Favorite,  497,  502. 
Southeast  Kansas,  Troubles  in,  194-197,  206-209. 
Southern  Feeling,  John  Brown  on,  314,  321-330,  372,  373,  377, 

378,  379-  385,  386,  387- 

Soule,  Silas,  581, 

Spartacus,  Reference  to,  23,  25,  79. 

Speeches,  and  Reference  to,  John  Brown,  by,  19,  49,  144,  1S2- 
185,  233-235,  324.  339,  340,  351,  352,  353,  357,  362,  363.  364; 
Douglass,  Frederick,  581,  582;  Grinnel,  Hon,  J.  B.,  226; 
Green,  Shields,  Relating  to,  348;  Hazlett,  Albert,  519;  Hun- 
ter, Andrew,  348,  349,  376;    Kagi,  J.  H  ,  233,  234;    Phillips, 


750  INDEX. 

Wendell,  399,  400;  Robinson,  Charles,  88,  89;  Sennott,  George, 
408;  Seward,  Hon.  Wm.  H  ,  337  ;  Vcorhees,  Hon.  D.  W  , 
350,376;  Willard,  Lieutenant-Governor,  376;  Wise,  Henry 
A  ,  327.  328.  329. 

Spring,  Prof.  Leverett  W.,  41,  75,  76. 

Spring.  Mrs.  Rebecca,  318,  375.  376,  496,  497,  499,  518,  520. 

Springdale,  Winter  at,  156,  164,  170,  172-192,  223,  497,  539, 
540,  556,  560. 

Springfield.  Residence  at,  16,  28,  29,  36, 

Spurs,  Battle  of,  224. 

Stanton.  Secretary  F.  P.,  109. 

Stedman  Edmund  Clarence,  Poem  of,  335. 

Stearns,  George  Luther,  14,  129,  130,  131,  133,  1 37,  139,  140, 
143,  160,  161,  227,  261,  331,  334,  424,  425,  450. 

Stearns.  George  Prescott,  168. 

Stearns,  Henry  L.,  140,  142. 

Stearns,  Mrs.  Mary  E  ,  131,  139,  140,  429. 

Stewart,  James,  521. 

Stewart.  Kansas  Medical  Student,  76,  78,  79,  85. 

Steven,  Alvin,  New  York,  78. 

Stevens,  Aaron  D wight  (''Charles  Whipple"),  47,  54,  59,99, 153, 
155,  156,  178,  198,  201,  202,  212,  216,  219,  221,  228,  247,  248, 
259,  264,  275.  276,  281,  283.  284,  285,  286,  290,  293,  294,295, 
297  305.  307,  316  321.  325,  329,  333,  339,  342,  368,  374,  377, 
378   405-411.  450- 457- 459-462.488,  489,  490,  491-503. 

Stevens'  Sister.  Mrs.  Pierce,  501,  502. 

Still,  William,  25.  169,374. 

Store.r  College.  581. 

Stuart,  General  J.  E.  B     301.  302.  316,  321,  324. 

Stubbs  Rifles.  "  Defense  of  Lawrence,"  49,  51,  75, 

Stowell,  Martin.  200.  206. 

Subterranean  Pass  Way,  27,  32. 

Sumner,  Col.,  97. 

Sumner,  Senator  Charles,  97,  151,  160. 

Tanner,  John  Brown  as,  13,  14,  24. 

Tappan,  Lewis,  174,  21  r. 

Tappan,  Col.  Samuel  F.,  59,  90,  91,  100. 

Thayer,  W.  W.,  520-524. 

Thayer,  Doctor  David,  133.  134,  220,  576. 

Thayer,  Eli,  36,  42,  77.  89.  133,  134,  142,  155,  166,  314. 

Thoreau,  Henry  D.,  28,  238. 

Taylor,   Steward,   155,    198,  228,  248,  257,  275,  281,  305,  307, 

312,  313.487.  531-534.  581. 
Thomas  Thomas,  27,  512. 


INDEX.  751 

Thompson,  Adolphus  Dauphin,  270,  274,  275,  276,  281,  307. 
Thompson,  Henry,  39,  60,  54,  80,  82,  83,  95,  99.  201,  270,  332, 

487,  522,  530. 
Thompson,  Mary,  wife  of  William,  332,  529. 
Thompson,  Roswell — Homestead,  332,  528,  529. 
Thompson,  Willard,  332. 
Thompson,   William,  60,  99,  201,   204,  240,  274.  275,  281,  286, 

289,  290,  309,  313,  317,  382,  529-530. 
Tidd,   Charles    Plummer,   24,   95,    155,    178,  212,217,228,236, 

247,  248,  249,  250,  257,  258,  275,  276,  280,  283,  285,  286,  294, 

3°7.  3»6,  334,  374.  434-  476,  489,  539,  549,  550,  552,  554,  555, 

558-567.  573.  574- 
Tilden,  Judge,  349,  366. 

Tombstone,  John  Brown's,  Revolutionary  Grandfather's,  144. 

Tomlinson,  W.  P.,  194. 

Topeka,  Free  State  Capital,  20. 

Topeka  Legislature,  Dispersal  of,  54,  78. 

Townley,  James  O.,  62,  1 18. 

Townsend,  George  A.,  119,  158. 

Torrington,  Town  of,  9-12. 

Toussaint,  L'Overture,  183. 

Treason,  Virginia,  Against,  337-339. 

Tubman,  Harriet,  34,  172,  173. 

Tyndale,  General  Hector,  389. 

Trial,  Brown,  John,  of,  337-369 ;  Copeland,  J.  A.,  351,  375,  376  ; 
Coppoc,  Edwin,  339,  351,  368,  369,  375;  Cook,  J.  E.,  359, 
375.376,475-481;  Green,  Shields,  351,  369,  375,376  ;  Hazlett, 
Albert,  388,  410,  500,  512,  518,  519;  Stevens,  A.  D.,  377,  385, 
406-409,  500. 

Underground  Railroad,  24,  165,  166,  170,  172,  173 

Updegraft,  Dr.,  40,  85. 

Union  Soldiers.  Free- State  men  as,  230,  231. 

Unseld,  John  C,  240-243. 

Utter,  Rev.  David  N.,  41,  314. 

Vallandingham,  Clement  L.,  314,  320,  321,  323,  324. 

Verdict,  Against   Brown,   John.  361,  375;  Copeland,  J.  A.,  3, 

Coppoc,  Edwin.  376;  Cook,  J.  E.,  377;  Green,  Shields,  378; 

Hazlett,  Albert,  411  ,  Stevens,  A.  D.,  411. 
Virginia  Statutes,  337,  338. 
Von  Hoist,  Hermann  E.,  24,  141,  186. 
Voorhees,  Senator  Daniel  W.,  314,  350. 

Wakarusa  War,  76. 


752  INDEX. 

Wakefield,  Judge,  91. 

Walker,  Col.  Samuel  J  ,  50,  85,  86,  94,  95,  195,  201. 

Walker.  Governor  R.  J.,  109,  113.  154. 

Ward,  Col   Richard,  48. 

Washington,  "Jim,"  Slave  of,  511. 

Washington,  Lewis  A.,  286.  293,  295,  300,  346,  354,  463  468. 

Wattles,  Augustus.  40,  66,  67,  153   154,  216,  221,  222,  230. 

Watson   Henry  and  Thomas,  246,  247,  249. 

Webb,  Dr.  Thomas  H.,  69. 

Webb,  William,  227. 

Webster,  General  J.  D.,  115,  127. 

Weiner,  Theodore,  62,  84. 

Western  Railroads,  Initiative  of,  139 

Western  Reserve   References  to,  12. 

Wetherell,  Prof.  L   H.,  118. 

Whipple,  Mrs.  (Frank  Rollins),  32. 

White,  Horace,  56,  116,  117,  127,  128,  129,  131,  132.' 

Whitman,  E.  B..  40. 

Whittier,  John  G.,  146    147. 

Wilder,  Daniel  Webb.  194.  195,  448. 

Wilkinson,  Allen,  61,  82. 

Wilkinson,  Louisa  Jane,  62. 

Wills,  John  Brown's,  389,  390,  391,  393,  394,  395. 

Williams   Col.  James  M..  48,  108. 

Williams.  Major  H.  H.  40.  85. 

Williams.  Watchman  Bill,  285. 

Willard,  Gov.  and  Mrs.,  376,  401. 

Wilson.  Senator  Henry,  107,  135,  137.  151,  185,  192,  209. 

Winebrenarians,  Sect  of,  264  265.  274.  277,  282. 

Windsor,  Conn.,  10;  Canada,  227,  228. 

Wise,  Governor  Henry  A.,  34,  159,  214,  310-412.  553,  544. 

Wright,  Judge  John,  211. 

Wright.  General  Marcus  J.,  304. 

Wood,  Dr.  J.  N.  O.  P.,  107.  ~ 

Wood-Growing  and  Dealing,  John  Brown  in,  14-16,  36,  37^ 


314.77-2