Old John Brown
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OLD JOHN BROWN
THE MAN WHOSE SOUL IS MARCHING ON
by WALTER HAWKINS
PREFACE
This book is for busy people who have not the time to read at
large upon the subject. Those who would adequately master all
the bearings of the story here briefly told must read American
history, for which facilities are rapidly increasing. As to John
Brown himself, his friend F. B. Sanborn's LIFE AND LETTERS is a
mine of wealth. To its pages the present writer is greatly
indebted, and he commends them to others.
W. H.
Kilburn, May 1913.
CONTENTS
I. WHY WE WRITE OUR STORY
II. CHILDWOOD AND THE VOW
III. THE LONG WAITING-TIME
IV. HOW THE CALL CAME
V. BIBLE AND SWORD
VI. THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
VII. HARPER'S FERRY
VIII. THE HALT OF THE BODY AND THE MARCH OF THE SOUL
CHAPTER I
WHY WE WRITE OUR STORY
There are few who have not a dim notion of John Brown as a name
bound up with the stirring events of the United States in the
period which preceded the Civil War and the emancipation of the
slave. Many English readers, however, do not get beyond the
limits of the famous couplet,
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul is marching on.
That statement is authentic in both its clauses, but it is
interesting to learn what he did with the body before it
commenced a dissolution which seems to have been regarded as
worth recording. Carlyle says in his grimly humorous way of the
gruesome elevation of the head of one of his patriotic heroes on
Temple Bar, 'It didn't matter: he had quite done with it.' And
we might say the same of the body which was hanged at Charlestown
in 1859. In his devoutly fatalistic way John Brown had presented
his body a living sacrifice to the cause of human freedom, and
had at last slowly reached the settled opinion that it was worth
more to the cause dead than alive. Such a soul, so masterful in
its treatment of the body, was likely to march on without it.
And it did in the years that followed, This Abolitionist raider,
with a rashness often sublime in its devotion, precipitated the
national crisis which issued in the Civil War and Emancipation.
There are lives of brave men which set us thinking for the most
part of human power and skill: we watch bold initiators of some
wise policy carrying their enterprise through with indomitable
courage and in-exhaustible patience, and we are lost in
admiration of the hero. But there are other brave lives which
leave us thinking more of unseen forces which impelled them than
of their own splendid qualities. They never seem masters of
destiny, but its intrepid servants. They shape events while they
hardly know how or why; they seem to be rather driven by fate
than to be seeking fame or power. They go out like Abraham, 'not
knowing whither they go,' only that, like him, they have heard a
call. Sometimes they sorely tax the loyalty of their admirers
with their eccentricities and their defiance of the conventions
of their age. Wisdom is only justified of these, her strange
children, in the next generation. Prominent among such lives is
that of John Brown. The conscience of the Northern States on the
question of slavery needed but some strong irritant to arouse it
to vigorous action, and, the hanging of John Brown sufficed.
The institution of slavery became both ridiculous and hateful to
multitudes because so good a man must be done to death to
preserve it. The verdict of Victor Hugo, 'What the South slew
last December was not John Brown, but slavery,' found an echo in
many minds. And when the long, fierce conflict, through which
Emancipation came, was begun, the quaint lines,
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul is marching on,
became one of the mightiest of the battle-songs which urged the
Federal hosts to victory. His name kindled the flame of that
passion for freedom which made the cause of the North triumphant,
and there was awe mingled with the love they bore his memory.
Perhaps no man had been oftener called with plausible reason a
fool; but those who knew the single-hearted devotion to a great
cause of this ready victim of the gallows came reverently to
think of him as 'God's fool.' When they sang 'John Brown died
that the slave might be free' they were singing more than a
record of John Brown's generous motive; it was a record of one of
God's strange counsels. 'For God chose the foolish things of the
world that He might put to shame the things that are strong, and
the base things of the world, and the things that are despised,
did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that He might
bring to nought the things that are, that no flesh should glory
before God.' Verily, then, it might seem worth while to set the
story of John Brown in such a plain, brief form as to make it
available for busy folk who have no time to read longer accounts
of him. If it sets some thinking of the ways of God rather than
admiring John Brown, that will be just what he would have
ardently wished who desired always that God should be magnified
in his body, whether in the fighting which he never loved and
never shirked, or the hanging which he often foresaw and never
feared.
CHAPTER II
CHILDHOOD AND THE VOW
The birth of John Brown is recorded in the following laconic
style by his father in a little autobiography he wrote for his
children in the closing days of his life. 'In 1800, May 8, John
was born one hundred years after his great-grandfather; nothing
else very uncommon.' In the year mentioned the family were
living at Torrington, Connecticut, whence they shortly removed to
Ohio, then the haunt of the Red Indian. They were of the pioneer
farming class, which has supplied so many of the shapers of
American history. The one great honour in their pedigree was
that they descended from a man of the MAYFLOWER--Peter Brown, a
working carpenter who belonged to that famous ship's company. We
might say, indeed, that the story of John Brown flows from the
events of 1620, the year of the MAYFLOWER. Two landings on the
American coast that year were destined to be memorable. In
August a Dutch vessel disembarked the first cargo of imported
slaves--twenty of them; and that day Slavery struck deep root in
the new land. And in November of that same year the MAYFLOWER,
with her very different cargo of brave freemen, dropped anchor in
Cape Cod Bay. The stream of ill results from that first landing
and the stream of Puritan blood, generous in its passion for
liberty, that flowed unimpoverished from Peter Brown through
generations of sturdy ancestors--these are the streams destined
to meet turbulently and to supply us with our story. Owen Brown,
the father of John, thus testifies to his own fidelity to the
tradition of liberty. 'I am an Abolitionist. I know we are not
loved by many. I wish to tell how I became one. Our neighbour
lent my mother a slave for a few days. I used to go out into the
field with him, and he used to carry me on his back, and I fell
in love with him.' There we have the clue to the history of the
household of the Browns for the next two generations. They FELL
IN LOVE With the despised negro, and this glorious trait passed
like an heritage from generation to generation.
There is a letter extant which supplies us with the best
information on John Brown's own boyhood. It was written for a
lad in a wealthy home where he stayed in later days, who had
asked him many questions about his experiences in early life. He
humorously calls it a 'short story of a certain boy of my
acquaintance I will call John.' A few extracts will reveal his
character in the forming. Here, for instance, you may trace the
conscientiousness (often morbid) which was so marked a feature in
his later days. 'I cannot tell you of anything 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, and stole them. In this he was detected by
his mother; and after having a full day to think of the wrong,
received from her a thorough whipping.' He adds, 'I must not
neglect to tell you of a very foolish and bad habit 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, and now I 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 had to struggle so long
with this mean habit.'
A story is told of John's schooldays which is an amusing and
quite characteristic instance of his ethical eccentricities. For
a short time he and his younger brother Salmon were at a school
together, and Salmon was guilty of some offence which was
condoned by the master. John had serious concern for the effect
this might have upon his brother's morals, and he sought the
lenient teacher and informed him that the fault was much
deprecated by their father at home, and he was sure castigation
there would have been inevitable. He therefore desired it should
be duly inflicted, as otherwise he should feel compelled to act
as his father's proxy. Finding discipline was still lax, he
proceeded with paternal solemnity to administer it himself. His
brother acknowledged that this was done with reluctant fidelity!
Truly the moral instincts of the family were worthy of their
Puritan ancestry.
Although naturally self-conscious and shy, his precociousness in
boyhood, bringing him into association, as it did, with much
older folk, bred a somewhat arrogant manner. The rule he
exercised over younger members of the family also made him
somewhat domineering, a fault which he diligently sought to
correct in later life. At fifteen he had become a miniature man
of business and was driving cattle on long journeys with all the
confidence of mid-age. The letter from which we have already
quoted has one or two more passages which may enlighten us as to
his rearing. Still writing in the third person, he says, 'John
had been taught from earliest childhood to fear God and keep His
commandments, and though quite sceptical he had always by turns
felt much doubt as to his future well being. He became to some
extent a convert to Christianity, and ever after a firm believer
in the divine authenticity of the Bible. With this book he
became very familiar, and possessed a most unusual memory of its
entire contents.' Here are hints as to his early pursuits:
'After getting to Ohio in 1805, he was for some time rather
afraid of the Indians and their rifles, but this soon wore off,
and he used to hang about them quite as much as was consistent
with good manners and learned a trifle of their talk. His father
learned to dress deer-skins, and at six 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 squirrel, racoon, cat, wolf, and dog skins, and also
learned to make whiplashes, which brought him some change at
times, and was of considerable service in many ways. He did not
become much of a scholar. He would always choose to stay at home
and work hard rather than be sent to school, and during the warm
season might generally be seen barefooted and 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 followed up with tenacity whatever
he set about so long as it answered his general purpose, and
thence he rarely failed in some good degree to effect the things
he undertook.'
'From fifteen years and upward he felt a good deal of anxiety to
learn, but could only read and study a little, both for want of
time and on account of inflammation of the eyes. He managed by
the help of books, however, to make himself tolerably well
acquainted with common arithmetic and surveying, which he
practised more or less after he was twenty years old.' 'John
began early in life to discover a great liking to fine cattle,
horses, sheep, and swine; and 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 bade fair
to afford him the means of CARRYING OUT HIS GREATEST OR PRINCIPAL
OBJECT.'
Here we touch the keynote of this life of manifold outward
occupations, but of one consuming desire. That PRINCIPAL OBJECT
filled his horizon even in childhood. He loved to tell how, like
his father before him, he fell captive to the slave's dumb plea
and pledged his whole strength to the chivalrous task of breaking
his fetters. It happened on this wise. In those long journeys
he was allowed to take, he was the 'business guest' of a slave-
owner, who was pleased with his resourcefulness at such an age.
He was the object of curious attention, and was treated as
'company' at table. On the estate was a young negro just his own
age, and as intelligent as he. Young John struck up an
acquaintance with him, and could not fail to contrast the fashion
in which he himself was pampered with the way the young darkie
was coarsely treated with scant fare and ill-housing. His
frequent thrashings seemed to bruise young John's spirit as much
as they did his flesh. They were not always administered with
the orthodox whip, but with a shovel or anything else that came
first to hand. Young John pondered long upon this contrast, and
tells us how the iniquity of slavery was borne in upon his young
heart, and he was drawn to this little coloured playmate, who had
neither father nor mother known to him. The Bible was the final
court of appeal in the Brown family, and the verdict of that
court was that they two--the slave and the guest--were brothers,
so henceforth the instinct of fraternal loyalty drew young John
to 'swear eternal war with slavery.' That vow, never recanted or
forgotten, became the text of his life. It interprets all his
vagaries and reconciles what else were hopeless inconsistencies.
It was a devout obsession which made him a wanderer all his days,
and in the end carried him to prison and to death. To a child a
great call had come, and a child's voice had replied, 'Speak,
Lord, Thy servant heareth.' And ears and heart tingled at
messages that seemed to come from the Unseen.
CHAPTER III
THE LONG WAITING-TIME
For over thirty years did this man both 'hope and quietly wait
for the salvation of the Lord' to come for the slaves of his
land. The interval is full of interest for those who care to
watch the development of a life-purpose. Only for three, or four
years was he destined to figure in the eyes of the world. Those
years, as we shall hereafter see, were crowded with events; but
for a generation he felt an abiding conviction of impending
destiny.
There is something fateful about the constant indications of this
spirit of readiness. His commercial pursuits were multifarious,
but none of them was greatly successful. At Hudson, Ohio, till
1825, and afterwards at Richmond, Pennsylvania, he was tanner,
land-surveyor, and part of the time postmaster. He became
skilful at his father's business of tanning, but is a typical
Yankee in the facility with which he turns his hand to anything.
From 1835 to 1839 he was at Franklin, Ohio, where we find him
adding to his former occupations the breeding of horses, and also
dabbling in land speculation, with the, result that he became
bankrupt. But when he failed in business he set to work to pay
his debts in full. His death found him still striving to achieve
that end. He was regarded as whimsical and stubborn, yet through
years of struggle, endeavour, and even failure he was known as
trusty and honourable.
From 1841 to 1846 he lived at Richfield, Ohio, where he took to
shepherding and wool-dealing, which he continued in 1849 at
Springfield, Massachusetts. He seems to have developed much
capacity for wool-testing. When he came to England with a cargo
of wool, some English dealers sought to practise a fraudulent
joke upon his quick fingers. They stripped a poodle of the best
of his fleece and handed it to the oracular Yankee with the
inquiry, 'What would you do with that wool?' But there was
wisdom in him down to the finger-ends, for he rolled it there,
and in a moment handed it back with the confounding retort,
'Gentlemen, if you have any machinery in England for working up
dog's hair I would advise you to put this into it.'
Had he known how to sell wool as well as he knew how to test it;
had he known how to sell his sheep as well as he knew hundreds of
sheep faces apart, and like a diviner could interpret their
inarticulate language; had he been as apt upon the market as he
was upon the farm, he might have made money. As it was, there
was never more than enough for the wants of a severely plain
household life.
But this business record was (and herefrom its frequent
misfortune may have largely proceeded) in no wise the history of
John Brown. We must catch, if we can, indications of the
unfolding of his soul, and of the inward preparation for what he
felt was his divine destiny; and these may best be gathered as we
watch the simple home life of the family. At an early age, while
residing at Hudson, Ohio, he married his first wife, Dianthe
Lusk; and though he was but twenty years of age, his was no rash
choice. A description by one who had been brought up with her
may be fitly quoted: 'Plain but attractive, because of a quiet
amiable disposition, sang beautifully, almost always sacred
music; she had a place in the wood not far from the house where
she used to go alone to pray.' John Brown, servant as he already
accounted himself of the Invisible Powers, is drawn to one who
thus communes with the Unseen. She will have sympathy with his
moral aims and a source of strength when he may be absent from
her in pursuit of them. The sketch proceeds, 'She was pleasant
but not funny; she never said what she did not mean.' Here,
truly, was the wife for a man in dead earnest and who could keep
a boyish oath even unto death. For twelve years she proved a
good comrade, and of the seven children of this marriage five
survived, from whom testimonies concerning the domestic life are
forthcoming.
The wife who succeeded her (Mary Ann Day) seems to have been no
less a help-meet in his enterprises. Thirteen children, many of
whom died young, were the off-spring of this second marriage, so
that in a hereditary sense the soul of John Brown may be said to
have marched on.
He infected all his children with his passionate love of liberty.
Many are his cares for their spiritual welfare. Some of them
sorely tried his patience by their aloofness from the Christian
conventions that were dear to him; he yearns over their souls as
he fears their experience of the inner working of grace is not as
his own, but they swerved not in their allegiance to the cause of
the slave. Let us avail ourselves of some of their memories of
their remarkable father. How early the house became a city of
refuge for the runaway negro we learn from the eldest son, who
tells us he can just recollect a timid knock at the door of the
log cabin where they lived. A fugitive slave and his wife were
there, for they had heard that there were a couple residing in
the house who loved the negro and would lend him a rescuing hand.
They were speedily made to know they were welcome, and the
negress, relieved of her last fear, takes young John in a
motherly fashion upon her knee and kisses him. He almost
instinctively scampers off to rub the black from his face.
Returning, he watches his mother giving them supper. Presently
father's extraordinarily quick ear detects the sound of
horsehoofs half a mile away; weapons are thrust into the hands of
the terrified pair, and they are taken out to the woody swamps
behind the house to lie in hiding. Father then returns, only to
discover that it is a false alarm, whereupon he sallies forth to
bring them into shelter and warmth once more, and tells the
assembled family on their arrival how he had difficulty in the
dark in recognizing the hiding-place and really discovered them
at length by hearing the beating of their frightened hearts. No
wonder. Quick as any faculty he had was that of hearing a
slave's heart beat. Had it not been for that keen instinct there
would have been no tale to tell of John Brown.
The daughter says her earliest memory is of her father's great
arms about her as he sang to her his favourite hymn:
Blow ye the trumpet, blow
The gladly solemn sound:
Let all the nations know
To earth's remotest bound.
The year of Jubilee is come,
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home.
Then, ceasing, he would tell her with heart brimming with
tenderness of poor little black children who were slaves. What
were slaves? she wanted to know. And he was ready enough to
tell her of those who were riven from father and mother and sold
for base coin, whom in some States it was illegal to teach their
A B C, but quite lawful to flog; and then the daughter would be
asked, by way of application to his moving discourse, if she
would like some of them to come some time and share her home and
food.
Thus continually to that rising family there was unfolded the
horror of the slavery system. That horror had faded in the minds
of many in the Northern States whose ancestry had held freedom
dear; while in the Southern States, for the most part, the
possession of your fellow creatures as if they were so much farm
stock had become too familiar a feature of common life to evoke
any conscientious misgiving, much less shame. The enormous
additions to the cotton trade had made slave labour increasingly
gainful, and the capital invested in this living property was
immense. Careful rearing of slaves for the market as well as
their purchase brought wealth to many, and fierce was the
resentment when any one publicly criticized the institution.
There was by no means an absence of humane regard far the
wellbeing of the negroes; a kind of patriarchal tenderness
towards them was distinctly 'good form.' But there was the
deadly fact that they were human goods and chattels, with no
civil rights worth mentioning--for laws in their defence were
practically worthless, seeing they could not appear as witnesses
in the court. Public whipping-houses were provided for the
expeditious correction of the refractory, and a mere suspicion of
intent to escape was legal justification for the use of the
branding-irons upon their flesh. If they did contrive to escape
there were dogs bred on purpose to hunt them down. If the slave
resisted his master's will he might be slain, and the law would
not graze the master's head. Domestic security he had none, for
wife might be wrenched from husband or child from mother
according to the state of the market. And, strangest of all to
our ears, the pulpits of the South extolled slavery as appointed
of Heaven, and solemnly quoting the prophecy that Ham should be
the servant of his brethren, the pulpiteer would ask who would
dare to resist the will of God Most High? Not content to hold
their views tenaciously, the slave-holders and their followers
dealt out threatenings and slaughter to all who by lip or pen
opposed them. The household of Brown pondered all this invasion
of the great natural right of freedom, and with one accord pined
for the opportunity of checking, or, it might be, ending it.
It is on record how they were taught to repeat their father's
vow. It was in 1839, when they were living at Franklin, Ohio,
that he called them around him, and on bended knee declared the
secret mission with which, he believed, High Heaven had charged
him--to labour by word or sword, by any means opportunity might
offer, for the overthrow of slavery, which he believed to be the
very citadel of evil in America. 'Swear, children, swear,' said
he; and from that little group in the log house there went up an
appeal for a blessing upon their oath--an oath which they could
truly protest was likely to bring nought to them but peril,
disaster, and, perchance, death, but which they were well assured
must bring glory to Eternal God. And so their oath was
registered in heaven.
For many years it was only in indirect ways they could promote
their end. Early they gave themselves to help the tentative
endeavours that were often on foot to educate those slaves who
did make good their escape, and especially to train them to
independent agriculture, so that evidence might be afforded that
they could use their liberty to good purpose, and become useful
citizens. The Browns were always active in promoting such
apprenticeship to freedom.