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JOHN BROWN AT HARPER'S FERRY.

279

XX.

JOHN BROWN.

On the 17th of October, 1859, this country was bewildered and astounded, while the fifteen Slave States were convulsed with fear, rage, and hate, by telegraphic dispatches from Baltimore and Washington, announcing the outbreak, at Harper's Ferry, of a conspiracy of Abolitionists and negroes, having for its object the devastation and ruin of the South, and the massacre of her white inhabitants. A report that President Buchanan had been proclaimed Emperor and Autocrat of the North American continent, and had quietly arrested and imprisoned all the members of Congress and Judges of the Supreme Court, by way of strengthening his usurpation, would not have seemed more essentially incredible, nor have aroused a more intense excitement. Here follow the dispatches which gave the first tidings of this audacious and amazing demonstration:

"INSURRECTION AT HARPER'S FERRY! "To the Associated Press:

"BALTIMORE, Monday, Oct. 17, 1859. "A dispatch just received here from Frederick, and dated this morning, states that an insurrection has broken out at Harper's Ferry, where an armed band of Abolitionists have full possession of the Government Arsenal. The express train going east was twice fired into, and one of the railroad hands and a negro killed, while they were endeavoring to get the train through the town. The insurrectionists stopped and arrested two men, who had come to town with a load of wheat, and, seizing their wagon, loaded it with rifles, and sent them into Maryland. The insurrectionists number about 250 whites, and are aided by a gang of negroes. At last accounts, fighting was going on.

"The above is given just as it was received here. It seems very improbable, and should be received with great caution, until

affirmed by further advices. A later dispatch, received at the railroad office, says the affair has been greatly exaggerated. The reports had their foundation in a difficulty at the Armory, with which negroes had nothing to do.

"BALTIMORE, 10 o'clock. "It is apprehended that the affair at Harper's Ferry is more serious than our citizens seem willing to believe. The wires from Harper's Ferry are cut, and consequently we have no telegraphic communication with Monocacy Station. The southern train, which was due here at an early hour this morning, has not yet arrived. It is rumored that there is a stampede of negroes from this State. There are many other wild rumors, but nothing authentic as yet.

"BALTIMORE, Monday, Oct. 17-2 P. M. "Another account, received by train, filled with insurgents, all armed. Every says the bridge across the Potomac was light in the town was extinguished, and the hotels closed. All the streets were in the possession of the mob, and every road and lane leading thereto barricaded and guarded. Men were seen in every quarter with muskets and bayonets, who arrested the citizens, and impressed them into the service, including many negroes. This done, the United States Arsenal and Government Pay-house, in which was said to be a large amount of money, and all other public works, were seized by the mob. Some were of the opinion that the object was entirely plunder, and to rob the Government of the funds deposited on Saturday at the Payhouse. During the night, the mob made a demand on the Wager Hotel for provisions, and enforced the claim by a body of armed men. The citizens were in a terrible state of alarm, and the insurgents have threatened to burn the town.

"The following has just been received from Monocacy, this side of Harper's Ferry:

"The Mail Agent on the western-bound train has returned, and reports that the train was unable to get through. The town is in possession of the negroes, who arrest every one they can catch and imprison. The train due here at 3 p. m., could not get through, and the Agent came down on an empty engine.'"

Probably the more prevalent sen

sation at first excited by this intelligence was that of blank incredulity. Harper's Ferry being the seat of a National Armory, at which a large number of mechanics and artisans were usually employed by the Government, it was supposed by many that some collision respecting wages or hours of labor had occurred between the officers and the workmen, which had provoked a popular tumult, and perhaps a stoppage of the trains passing through that village on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; and that this, magnified by rumor and alarm, had afforded a basis for these monstrous exaggerations. Yet, as time wore on, further advices, with particulars and circumstances, left no room to doubt the substantial truth of the original report. An attempt had actually been made to excite a slave insurrection in Northern Virginia, and the one man in America to whom such an enterprise would not seem utter insanity and suicide, was at the head of it.

JOHN BROWN was sixth in descent from Peter Brown, a carpenter by trade, and a Puritan by intense conviction, who was one of the glorious company who came over in the Mayflower, and landed at Plymouth Rock, on that memorable 22d of December, 1620. The fourth in descent from Peter the pilgrim, was John Brown, born in 1728, who was captain of the West Simsbury (Connecticut) train-band, and in that capacity joined the Continental Army at New York in the Spring of 1776, and, after two months' service, fell a victim to camp-fever, dying in a barn a few miles north of the city. His grandson, John Brown, of Osawato

mie, son of Owen and Ruth Brown, was born in Torrington, Conn., May 9, 1800. On his mother's side, he was descended from Peter Miles, an emigrant from Holland, who settled at Bloomfield, Conn., about 1700; and his grandfather on this side, Gideon Mills, also served in the Revolutionary war, and attained the rank of lieutenant.

When John was but five years old, his father migrated to Hudson, Ohio, where he died a few years since, aged eighty-seven. He was engaged, during the last war, in furnishing beef cattle to our forces on the northern frontier; and his son, John, then twelve to fourteen years of age, accompanied him as a cattle-driver, and, in that capacity, witnessed Hull's surrender at Detroit, in 1812. He was so disgusted with what he saw of military life that he utterly refused, when of suitable age, to train or drill in the militia, but paid fines or evaded service during his entire liability to military duty. In an autobiographical fragment, written by him in 1857, for a child who had evinced a deep interest in his Kansas efforts, speaking of himself in the third person, he says:

"During the war with England, a circumstance occurred that in the end made him a most determined Abolitionist, and led him to He was staying, for a short time, with a declare, or swear, eternal war with Slavery. very gentlemanly landlord, once a United his own age, active, intelligent, and goodStates Marshal, who held a slave-boy near feeling, and 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 and friends-called their attention to every little smart thing he said or did, and to the fact of his being more than a hundred miles from home with a drove of cattle alone; while the negro boy (who was fully, clothed, poorly fed and lodged in cold weathif not more than, his equal,) was badly er, and beaten before his eyes with iron

THE EARLIER LIFE OF JOHN BROWN.

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Young John had very little of what is called education; poverty and hard work being his principal teachers. At sixteen years of age, he joined the Congregational Church in Hudson; and from fifteen to twenty he learned the trade of tanner and currier. He returned to New England while still a minor, and commenced, at Plainfield, Mass., a course of study with a view to the Christian ministry; but, being attacked with inflammation of the eyes, which ultimately became chronic, he relinquished this pursuit and returned to Ohio, where he married his first wife, Dianthe Lusk, when a little more than twenty years of age. By her, he had seven children; the last of whom, born in 1832, was buried with her three days after its birth. He next year married Mary A. Day (who survives him), by whom he had thirteen children, of whom three sons were with him at Harper's Ferry, two of whom lost their lives there, and the third escaped. Eight of his children were living at the time of his death. Brown worked for himself as a tanner and farmer five or six years in northern Ohio, and, for nine or ten years thereafter, in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, enjoying general respect as a sincere, earnest, upright, pious man.

ings of slaves.

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So early as 1839,

the idea of becoming himself a liberator of the unhappy race was cherished by him. From 1835 to 1846, he lived once more in northern Ohio, removing thence to Springfield, Mass., where he engaged in wool-dealing under the firm of Perkins & Brown, selling wool extensively on commission for growers along the southern shore of Lake Erie, and undertaking to dictate prices and a system of gra ding wools to the manufacturers of New England, with whom he came to an open rupture, which induced him at length to ship two hundred thousand pounds of wool to London, and go thither to sell it. This bold experiment proved a failure, wool bringing far higher prices in this country than in any other. He final ly sold at a fearful loss and came home a bankrupt. But, meantime, he had traveled considerably over Europe, and learned something of the ways of the world.

In 1849, he removed with his family to North Elba, Essex County, New York, to some land given him by Gerrit Smith. He went thither expressly to counsel and benefit the negroes settled in that vicinity, on lands likewise bestowed upon them by our noblest philanthropist. The location was a hard one, high up among the glens of the Adirondack Mountains, rugged, cold, and bleak. The negroes generally became discouraged, in view of the incessant toil, privation, and hardships, involved in hewing a farm and a habitation out of the primitive wilderness, in a secluded, sterile region, and gave over in despair after a brief trial; but John Brown and his sons persevered, ultimately mak

One who knew him in those days remembers that the wrong of Slavery was a favorite topic with him, and that, though stern in manner, he was often affected to tears when depicting the unmerited suffering homes for themselves, which,

though not luxurious nor inviting, | intimate follower and admiring biographer, Redpath, says of him:

their families retain. In 1851, the father returned with his family to Akron, Ohio, where he once more carried on the wool business and managed the farm of a friend; but, in 1855, on starting for Kansas, he moved his family back to their own home at North Elba, where they remain, with his grave in the midst of them.

In 1854, his four elder sons-all by his first wife, and all living in Ohio determined to migrate to Kansas. They went thither, primarily, to make that a Free State; secondly, to make homes for themselves and their families. They went unarmed, having a very inadequate idea of the nature and spirit of the fiend they were defying. They settled in Lykins County, southern Kansas, about eight miles distant from the present village of Osawatomie, and not far from the Missouri border. Here they were soon so harassed, threatened, insulted, and plundered, by gangs of marauding ruffians from Missouri, that they found it impossible to remain without arms, and they wrote to their father to procure such as they needed. He obtained them; and, to make sure work of it, went with them. Nearly all others went to Kansas in the hope of thereby improving their worldly condition, or, at least, of making homes there. John Brown went there for the sole purpose of fighting, if need were, for Liberty. He left his family behind him, for he had no intention of making Kansas his home. He was no politician, in the current acceptation of the term, having taken little or no interest in party contests for many years. His

1 "The Republicans of 1858 will be the Democrats of 1860'-a pithy prophecy, found among

"It has been asserted that he was a member of the Republican party. It is false. He despised the Republican party. It is true. that, like every Abolitionist, he was opposed to the extension of Slavery: and, like the of organized political action against it. But majority of anti-Slavery men, in favor, also, he was too earnest a man, and too devout a Christian, to rest satisfied with the only action against Slavery consistent with one's duty as a citizen, according to the usual Republican interpretation of the Federal Constitution. It teaches that we must content ourselves with resisting the extension of Slavery. Where the Republicans said, Halt!' John Brown shouted, 'Forward! to Bunker Hill school. He followed neither Garrison nor Seward, Gerrit Smith nor Wendell Phillips; but the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, in the spirit of the Hebrew warriors, and in the God-applauded mode that they adopted. who betrayed him, had manifestly a great influence on his actions.' He believed in huhe admired Nat Turner, the negro patriot, man brotherhood and in the God of Battles; equally with George Washington, the white American deliverer. He could not see that it was heroic to fight against a petty tax on tea, and war seven long years for a political principle, yet wrong to restore, by force of arms, to an outraged race, the rights with

the rescue!' He was an Abolitionist of the

The Bible story of Gideon,' records a man

which their Maker had endowed them, but of which the South, for two centuries, had robbed them. The old man distrusted the He thought that their Republican leaders. success in 1860 would be a serious check to

the cause he loved. His reason was that the people had confidence in these leaders, and would believe that, by their action in Congress, they would peacefully and speedily abolish Slavery. That the people would be deceived-that the Republicans would Democrats themselves-he sincerely and prophetically believed. Apathy to the welto avert this moral and national calamity, he hurried on to Harper's Ferry.

become as conservative of Slavery as the

fare of the slave would follow; and hence,

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He was no politician. He despised that class with all the energy of his earnest and determined nature. He was too large a man to stand on any party platform. He planted his feet on the Rock of Ages-the Eter

nal Truth-and was therefore never shaken

in his policy or principles."

the manuscripts at Harper's Ferry-is a brief and clear statement of John Brown's ideas."

JOHN BROWN IN KANSAS.

Of course, he was not pleased with what he found and saw in Kansas. There were too much policy, too much politics, and too general a regard for personal safety and comfort. He would have preferred a good deal less riding about, especially at night, with more solid fighting. Redpath, who visited him in his camp near Prairie City, not long before the battle of Black Jack, says:

"I shall not soon forget the scene that there opened to my view. Near the edge of the creek, a dozen horses were tied, all ready saddled for a ride for life, or a hunt after Southern invaders. A dozen rifles and sabres were stacked around the trees. In an open space, amid the shady and lofty woods, there was a great blazing fire with a pot on it; a woman, bare-headed, with an honest, sun-burnt face, was picking blackberries from the bushes; three or four armed men were lying on red and blue blankets on the grass; and two fine-looking youths were standing, leaning on their arms, on guard, near by. One of them was the youngest son of Old Brown, and the other was 'Charley,' the brave Hungarian, who was subsequently murdered at Osawatomie. Old Brown himself stood near the fire, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, and a large piece of pork in his hand. He was cooking a pig. He was poorly clad, and his toes protruded from his boots. The old man received me with great cordiality, and the little band gathered about

me.

But it was for a moment only; for the Captain ordered them to renew their work. He respectfully but firmly forbade conversation on the Pottawatomie; and said that, if I desired any information from the company in relation to their conduct or intentions, he, as their Captain, would answer for them whatever it was proper to communicate.

"In this camp, no manner of profane language was permitted; no man of immoral character was allowed to stay, except as a prisoner of war. He made prayers, in which all the company united, every morning and evening; and no food was ever tasted by his men until the Divine blessing

had been asked on it. After every meal, thanks were returned to the Bountiful Giver. Often, I was told, the old man would retire

to the densest solitudes to wrestle with his

God in secret prayer. One of his company subsequently informed me that, after these retirings, he would say that the Lord had directed him in visions what to do; that, for himself, he did not love warfare, but peace

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only acting in obedience to the will of the Lord, and fighting God's battles for His children's sake.

"It was at this time that the old man said to me: 'I would rather have the small-pox, yellow fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without principles. It's a mistake, Sir,' he continued, that bullies are the best fighters, or that that our people make, when they think they are the men fit to oppose these Southerners. Give me men of good principlesselves-and, with a dozen of them, I will God-fearing men, men who respect them

oppose any hundred such men as these Buford ruffians.'

Never before had I met such a band of men. "I remained in the camp about an hour. They were not earnest, but earnestness incarnate. Six of them were John Brown's

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In the August following, a new invasion, on an extensive scale, of Kansas, from the Missouri border, was planned and executed. Inflammatory proclamations were issued, which af firmed that the pro-Slavery settlers either had been or were about to be all killed or driven out of the Territory by the Abolitionists, and the Missourians were exhorted to rally all their forces for the conflict. Lexington, Mo., was assigned as the place, and August 20th as the time, of assemblage for La Fayette County, and New Santa Fe, Jackson County, as the general rendezvous. "Bring your guns, your horses, and your clothing, all ready to go on to Kansas: our motto will be this time, 'No Quarter!' Let no one stay away!" A similar appeal was issued from Westport, signed by Atchison, Stringfellow, and others. A force of two thousand men was, by virtue of these appeals, collected at the petty village of Santa Fe, directly on the border; but soon divided into two expeditions, one of which, led by Senator Atchison, was confronted at Bull's Creek by not more than half its number

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