John Brown, 1800-1859; a biography fifty years after

Preface

"There never was more need for a good life of any man than there was for one of John Brown," wrote Charles Eliot Norton in March, i860, in expressing in the Atlantic Monthly his dissatisfaction with the first biography of the leader of the attack upon Harper's Ferry. Twenty-six years later, in the same publication, Mr. John T. Morse, Jr., wrote that "so grand a subject cannot fail to inspire a writer able to do justice to the theme; and when such an one draws Brown, he will produce one of the most attractive books in the language. But meantime the ill-starred 'martyr' suffers a prolongation of martyrdom, standing like another St. Sebastian to be riddled with the odious arrows of fulsome panegyrists." Since 1886 there have appeared five other lives of Brown, the most important being that of Richard J. Hinton, who in his preface gloried in holding a brief for Brown and his men.

The present volume is inspired by no such purpose, but is due to a belief that fifty years after the Harper's Ferry tragedy, the time is ripe for a study of John Brown, free from bias, from the errors in taste and fact of the mere panegyrist, and from the blind prejudice of those who can see in John Brown nothing but a criminal. The pages that follow were written to detract from or champion no man or set of men, but to put forth the essential truths of history as far as ascertainable, and to judge Brown, his followers and associates in the light thereof. How successful this attempt has been is for the reader to judge. That this volume in nowise approaches the attractiveness which Mr. Morse looked for, the author fully understands. On the other hand, no stone has been left unturned to make accurate the smallest detail ; the original documents, contemporary letters and living witnesses have been examined in every quarter of the United States. Materials never before utilized have been drawn upon, and others discovered whose existence has heretofore been unknown. Wherever sources have been quoted, they have been cited verbatim et literatim, the effort being to reproduce exactly spelling,

Vlll

PREFACE capitalization and punctuation, particularly in John Brown's own letters, which have suffered hitherto from free-hand editing. If at times, particularly in dealing with the Kansas period of John Brown's life, it may seem as if there were a superfluity of detail, the explanation is that already a hundred myths have attached themselves to John Brown's name which often hinge upon a date, or the possibility of his presence at a given place at a given hour. Over some of theni have raged long and bitter controversies which give little evidence of the softening effects of time.

So complex a character as John Brown's is not to be dismissed by merely likening him to the Hebrew prophets or to a Cromwellian Roundhead, though both parallels are not inapt; and the historian's task is made heavier since nearly all characterizations of the man have been at one extreme or another. But there is, after all, no personality so complex that it cannot be tested by accepted ethical standards. To do this sincerely, to pass a deliberate and accurate historical judgment, to bestow praise and blame without favor or sectional partisanship, has been the author's endeavor.

His efforts have been generously aided by the friends, relatives and associates of John Brown, whenever approached, and by many others who pay tribute, by their deep interest, to the vital force of John Brown's story. It would be impossible to mention all here. But to Salmon Brown and Henry Thompson is due the writer's ability to record for the first time the exact facts as to the happenings on the Pottawatomie, and the author is also particularly indebted to Jason Brown, Miss Sarah Brown, Mrs. Annie Brown Adams, and Mrs. John Brown, Jr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, F. B. Sanborn, Horace White, George B. Gill, Luke F. Parsons, Mrs. Emma Wattles Morse, Mrs. Rebecca Spring, Jennie Dunbar (Mrs. Lee Garcelon) and R. G. Elliott, of Lawrence, are a few of the survivors of John Brown's time who have aided by counsel or reminiscence. Special thanks are due to George W. Martin, Miss Adams and Miss Clara Francis, of the Kansas Historical Society, for valuable assistance, as well as to the Historical Department of Iowa, the Western Reserve Historical Society, the Department of Archives and History of the Virginia State Library, the Pennsylvania and Massa-

PREFACE

IX chusetts Historical Societies, and to Louis A. Reese, lately of Brown University, who generously placed at the author's disposal the manuscript of his admirable work on "The Admission of Kansas as a State." Mrs. S. L. Clark, of Berea, Kentucky, Mrs. S. C. Davis, of Kalamazoo, Miss Leah Taliaferro, of Gloucester County, Virginia, Miss Mary E. Thompson, Mrs. Ellen Brown Fablinger, Mrs. J. B. Remington, of Osawatomie, Kansas, Dr. Thaddeus Hyatt, the family of the late Joshua R. Giddings, Dr. Frederick C. Waite, of Western Reserve University, Dr. Henry A. Stevens, of Boston, Cleon Moore, of Charlestown, West Virginia, William E. Connelley, of Topeka, Kansas, and Edwin Tatham, of New York, have placed the author under special obligations here gratefully acknowledged.

Dr. Thomas Featherstonhaugh, of Washington, has been most generous in giving the author free access to his rich collections of books, pamphlets and photographs, and they have been largely drawn upon. The author also gladly records his lasting indebtedness to Miss Katherine Mayo, whose journeys in search of material for his use have covered a period of more than two years and many thousands of miles. But for her judgment, her tact and skill, and her enthusiasm for the work, it could hardly have approached its present comprehensiveness. Finally, without the approval, generous aid and encouragement of his uncle, Francis Jackson Garrison, of Boston, the author could not have undertaken or completed this book.

New York, August i, 1910.

Contents

I. The Moulding of the Man i

II. "His Greatest or Principal Object" 42

III. In the Wake of the War Cloud 79

CHAPTER I THE MOULDING OF THE MAN Red Rock, Iowa 15th July, 1857

Mr. Henry L. Stearns.

My Dear Young Friend I have not forgotten my promise to write you ; but my constant care, & anxiety : have obliged me to put it off a long time. I do not flatter myself that I can write anything that will very much interest you : but have concluded to send you a short story of a certain boy of my acquaintance : & for convenience & shortness of name, I will call him John. This story will be mainly a naration of follies and errors; which it is to be hoped you may avoid; but there is one thing connected with it, which will be calculated to encourage any young person to persevereing effort ; & that is the degree of success in accomplishing his objects which to a great extent marked the course of this boy throughout my entire acquaintance with him ; notwithstanding his moderate capac it\' ; & still more moderate acquirements.

John was born May 9th, 1800, at Torrington, Litchfield Co. Connecticut ; of poor but respectable parents : a decendant on the side- of his Father of one of the company of the Mayflower who landed at Plymouth 1620. His mother was decended from a man who came at an early period to New England from Amsterdam, in Holland. Both his Fathers and his Mothers 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 vou of anvthing in the first Four years of John's life worth mentioning save that at that early age he was tempted b^• Three large Brass Pins belonging to a girl who lived in the famih' & 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 was performed in part or mostly with an Oxteam; 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 ; & riding the horses. Sometimes he met with Rattle Snakes w^hich 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 observing as he ever after remembered the entire process of Deer Skin dressing; so that he could at any time dress his own leather such as Squirel, Raccoon, Cat, Wolf or Dog Skins; and 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 and Squirrels and sometimes a wild Turkeys nest. But about this period he was placed in the School of adversity; which my young friend was a most necessary part of his early training. You may laugh when you come to read about it; but these were sore trials to John: whose earthly treasures were very few, & small.

These were the beginning of a severe but much needed course of dicipline 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 hands which he has ever placed in them. When John was in his Sixth year a poor Indian boy gave him a Yellow Marble the first he had ever seen. This he thought a great deal of ; & kept it a good while ; but at last he lost it beyond recovery. // took years to heal the wound & I think he cried at times about it. About Five months after this he caught a young Squirel tearing off his tail in doing it ; & getting severely bitten at the same time himself. He however held on to the little bob tail Squirrel ; & finally got him perfectly tamed, so that he almost idolized his pet. This too he lost; by its wandering away; or by getting killed ; & for a year or two John was m mourning; and looking at all the Squirrels he could see to try & discover Bobtail, if possible. I must not neglect to tell you of a verry 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 in after life of this fault ; nor have been obliged to struggle so long with so mean a habit.

John was 7iever 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, & restraints of school. I need not tell you that with such a feeling & but little chance of going to school at all: he did not become much of a schollar. He would always choose to stay at home & work hard rather than be sent to school ; & during the Warm season might generally be seen barefooted & 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 bo}^ which loss was complete & permanent for notwithstanding his Father again married to a sensible, inteligent, and on many accounts a very estimable woman; yet he never adopted her in feeling; but continued to pine after his own Mother for years. This opperated very unfavorably uppon him ; as he was both naturally 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 collecting & driving of which afforded him some opportunity for the chase (on foot) of wild steers & other cattle through the woods. During this war he had some chance to form his own boyish judgment of men & measures : & to become somewhat familiarly 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 A bolitionist : & led him to declare, or Swear : Eternal war with Slavery. He was staying for a short time with a very gentlemanly landlord since a United States Marshall who held a slave boy near his own age very active, inteligent, 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 ; & beaten before his eyes with Iron Shovels or any other thing that came first to hand.

This brought John to reflect on the wretched, hopeless condition, of Fatherless & Motherless slave children: for such children have neither Fathers or 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 a little history, & offered him the free use of a good library ; b}^ ; 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 verry fond of the company & conversation of old & inteligent persons. He never attempted to dance in his life; nor did he ever learn to know one of a pack of Cards from another. He learned nothing of Grammer ; nor did he get at school so much knowledge of comm[on] Arithmetic as the Four ground rules. This will give you some general 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 inteligent persons treated him at their houses : & in conversation ; which was a great relief on account of his extreme bashfulness. He very early in life became ambitious to excel in doing anything he undertook to perform. This kind of feeling I would recommend to all young persons both Male & jemale: as it will certainly tend to secure admission to the company of the more inteligent; & better portion of every community. By all means endeavour to excel in some laudable pursuit. I had like to have forgotten to tell you of one of John's misfortunes which set rather hard on him while a young boy. He had by some means perhaps by gift of his Father become the owner of a little Ewe Lamb which did finely till it was about Two Thirds grown; & then sickened and died. This brought another protracted mourning season : not that he felt the pecuniary loss so heavily : for that was never his disposition ; but so strong & earnest were his attachments. John had been taught from earliest childhood to "fear God & 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 Christianity & ever after a firm believer in the divine authenticity 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 would 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 deffinite plan. Many seem to have none ; & others never to 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 degree to effect the things he undertook. This was so much the case that he habitually expected to succeed in his undertakings. With this feeUng 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 these means was to exchange with his Father for something of far less value. Another was by trading with other persons for something his Father had never owned. Older persons have sometimes found difficulty with titles.

From Fifteen to Twenty years old, he spent most of his time working at the Tanner & Currier's trade keeping Bachelors hall ; & he officiating as Cook ; & for most of the time as foreman 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 of : his conscience urging him forward with great power in this matter: but his close attention to business; & success in its management ; together with the way he got along with a company of men, & boys ; made him quite a favorite with the serious & more inteligent portion of older persons. This was so much the case ; & secured for him so many little notices from those he esteemed ; that his vanity was very much fed by it : & he 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 or dictating way. From Fifteen years & upward he felt a good deal of anxiety to learn ; but could only read & studdy a little ; both for want of time ; & on account of inflammation of the eyes. He however managed by the help of books to make himself tolerably well acquainted with common Arithmetic ; & Surveying ; which he practiced more or less after he was Twenty years old. At a little past Twenty years led by his own inclination & prompted also by his Father, he married a remarkably plain;

but neat industrious & economical girl ; of excellent character ; earnest piety; & good practical common sense; about one year younger than himself. This woman by her mild, frank, & 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 circumstances would enable him he began to be a practical Shepherd : it being a calling for which in early life he had a kind of enthusiastic longing: together with the idea that as a business it bid fair to afford him the means of carrying out his greatest or principal object. I have now given you a kind of general idea of the early life of this boy; & if I beheved 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 I should have written what I have. With an honest desire for your best good, I subscribe myself,

J. Brown.

P. S. I had like to have forgotten to acknowledge your contribution in aid of the cause in which I serve. God Allmighty bless you; my son.

J. B.

In this simple, straightforward, yet remarkable narrative * John Brown of Osawatomie and Harper's Ferry outlined his youth to the thirteen-year-old son of his benefactor, George Luther Stearns. It remains the chief source of knowledge as to the formative period of one who for a brief day challenged the attention of a great nation, compelled it to heart searchings most beneficent in their results, and through his death of apparent ignominy achieved not only an historical immortality, but a far-reaching victory over forces of evil against which he had dared and lost his life. John Brown, a Puritan in the austerity of his manner of living, the narrowness of his vision and the hardships he underwent, came of a family of pioneers. But he was not of those adventurers into the wilderness who are content, after carving out with the axe a little kingdom for themselves, to rule peacefully to the end of their days. His early adventures, his contact with the American aborigines, his boyish experiences with the flotsam and jetsam of armies in the field, all bred up in him a restlessness not characteristic of the original Puritans, but with him a dominant feature of his whole career. To John Brown life from the outset meant incessant strife, first against unconquered nature, then in the struggle for a living, and finally in that effort to be a Samson to the pro-slavery Philistines in which his existence culminated. "I expect nothing but to endure hardness," he wrote to a friend in an attempt to enlist him in the Harper's Ferry enterprise. It would have been surprising, indeed, had he expected anything else, for to nothing else was he accustomed. From the " school of adversity" in which he was placed, as he wrote, at the age of six years, he graduated only at his death.

The picture which John Brown drew of his experiences in the early settlement of Ohio, just a century ago, was by no means over-colored. The American public is apt to think that pioneering was difficult only in New England in the seventeenth century, in Kentucky and Tennessee in the eighteenth, and in the far West in the nineteenth. But the story of the settlement of the Middle West reads in no essential differently, if perhaps less dramatically, than the better known extensions of the ever-expanding frontier. There were the same hardships, the same facing of death by disease or, at times, in ambush, the same exhausting toil, the same terrifying loneliness, the same never-ending battling against relentless elements. This struggle for existence Brown's family shared with those fellow emigrants who ventured with them into the Ohio forest primeval, destroying it with great labor, driving the wolves, panthers and bears from their rude cabin doors, and subsisting, penuriously enough, on the wild game of the woods and such scanty crops as the squirrels, blackbirds, raccoons and porcupines permitted to grow to maturity among the stumps of the cleared tracts. As late as 1817 there were bears who helped themselves in this district of Ohio to the settlers' pigs, and in 18 19, in a great hunt, no less than one hundred deer and a dozen and a half bears and wolves were corralled and shot down by the hunters of four townships ^ around Hudson. These wild animals of the forest not only supplied meat for the scantily furnished larders, but skins wherewith to make clothing and caps for others besides John Brown.

Farms were bought and paid for in hard and bitter experiences. The roads were but a pretence, rough log bridges led across the swamps, and the only means of transportation w^hich could survive long were the roughest sleds, ox-carts and stone-boats. In the summer of 1806, the year after John Brown arrived, there were, according to an old settler,^ frosts every month, "no corn got ripe, and the next spring w^e had to send to the Ohio river for seed corn to plant." This w^as the beginning of the "school of adversity" for John Brown, and the next summer's session was one of the hardest that the pioneers ever stored away in their recollections. But not the worst; that John Brown thought the summer of 1817, which he described as a period " of extreme scarcity of not only money, but of the greatest distress for want of provisions known during the nineteenth century." * He and three others were destitute "between the seaside and Ohio," but they had learned not to be afraid of "spoiling themselves by hard work," and they managed to keep body and soul together. Even in times of plenty, provisions were hard to get, and were best purchased by labor of those fortunate enough to have an abundance, the rate being three and a half pounds of pork for a day's service. Fortunately, the neighboring Indians, Senecas, Ottawas and Chippewas, were well behaved and friendly, rarely sinning, but often sinned against. It was in this atmosphere so friendly to the steeling of muscles, the training of eyes and hands, the enduring of arduous labor and the cultivation of the primal virtues, that John Brown grew up to self-reliant manhood. Under these conditions was his character moulded and forged, until there emerged a man of singular natural force, direct of speech, earnest of purpose, and usually resolute, with the frontiersman's ability to shift readily from one occupation to another and an incurable readiness to wander.

lo JOHN BROWN

"Although the time when a man comes into the world and the place where he appears are in certain ways important and may well begin his story," declared Professor N. S. Shaler in his all too brief autobiography, ' ' the really weighty question concerns his inheritances and the conditions in which they were developed. That he brings with him something that is in a measure independent of all his progenitors, a certain individuality which makes him distinct in essentials from like beings he succeeds, is true — vastly true ; but the way he is to go is, to a great extent, shaped by those who sent him his life." ^ The conditions of early life in Ohio were precisely those for which John Brown's inheritances should best have fitted him. He came of simple, frugal, hard-working folk, deeply interested in religion and the church into which they sent some of their best, and, above all, imbued with a strong love of liberty. His father's father, who died "in a barn in New York" while a captain of the Ninth Company, or Train-band 9, in the Eighteenth Regiment of the Connecticut Colony, likewise bore the name of John Brown, and on the other side the tradition of arms came down to him from his maternal grandfather. The Revolutionary Captain John Brown was the son and grandson of men of the same name, likewise citizens of Connecticut, the senior of whom, born February 4, 1694, was the son of Peter Brown, of Windsor, Connecticut. Through this Peter Brown, John Brown of Osawatomie, like many another of his patronymic, believed himself descended from Peter Brown of the goodly Mayflower company, — erroneously, for modern genealogical research has proved that the Mayflower Peter Brown left no male issue. ^ But the possession of an actual Mayflower progenitor is not indispensable to the establishment of a long line of ancestry, and so Peter Brown of Windsor, born in 1632, can surely lay claim to being among the earliest white colonists on this continent, — early enough at least to make it plain that in John Brown of Osawatomie's veins ran the blood of solid middle-class citizens, the bone and sinew of the early colonies, as of the infant American republic.