USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Torrington > History of Torrington, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1737, with biographies and genealogies > Part 32
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Soon after Brown's return to Hudson from Massachusetts, he married his first wife, Dianthe Lusk, who is mentioned, though not by name, in the autobiography. The marriage took place June 21, 1820, and was terminated in August, 1832, when the wife died in childbirth. There were six other children of this marriage, the eldest of whom, John Brown, Jr., was born July 25, 1821 ; Jason Brown was born January 19, 1823, Owen Brown, November 4, 1824, Ruth (now Mrs. Henry Thompson), February 18, 1829, and Frederick Brown, December 21, 1830. The last named son was killed at the fight of Osawatomie in Kansas, August 30, 1856. The others, who were all in Kansas then with their father, are still living, and Owen is the last survivor of the company which invaded Virginia in October, 1859. By a second marriage with Mary Anne Day, of Meadville, Penn., in 1833, John Brown became the father of thirteen children, seven of whom died in childhood, two were slain at Harper's Ferry, and four survive. These are Salmon Brown, born October 2, 1836; Anne, born September 23, 1843; Sarah born September 11, 1846; and Ellen, born September 25, 1854. In all, therefore, John Brown was the father of twenty children, of whom ten grew to manhood, and eight are still living.
Having begun thus early to " give hostages of fortune," as Lord Bacon says, John Brown devoted himself with diligence to his occu- pation, for the support of his young family. He was a tanner and land-surveyor at Hudson until 1826, when he removed to Richmond,
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near Meadville, in Pennsylvania, and there carried on the same voca- tions. He remained there until 1835, then removed to Franklin Mills, Portage county, Ohio, and there mingled speculation in land with his tanning. He lost heavily in the panic of 1837, and in 1839 he seems to have given up tanning, and entered upon a new pursuit, that of wool-growing and wool-dealing. In that year he drove a herd of cattle from Ohio to Connecticut and returned in July, 1839, with a few sheep, the nucleus of his great flock. In 1840 he returned to Hudson, where his father, Owen Brown, senior, still lived, and there engaged largely in sheep-raising. His partner at first was Captain Oviatt of Richfield, a neighboring town, and in 1842, Brown re- moved to Richfield, where he lived for two years, and where his daughter Anne (who was with him just before the attack on Harper's Ferry) was born. Here, too, he lost four children in less than three weeks -Sarah aged nine ; Charles, almost six ; Peter, not quite three and Austin, a year old. Three of these were carried out of his house at one funeral, and were buried in the same grave, in September, 1843. The next year he left this fatal spot, and settled in Akron, not far off ; whence he removed, in 1846 to Springfield, in Massa- chusetts. It was while tending his flocks in Ohio, with his sons and daughters about him, that he first communicated to them his purpose of attacking slavery by force. From that time forward, a period of twenty years, he devoted himself, not exclusively but mainly, to that undertaking, in which he sacrificed his life. At this point, therefore, it will be well to pause a moment and see what manner of man John Brown had shown himself to be in the ordinary affairs of life.
He was industrious in whatever he undertook, upright and scru- pulous in his business transactions, but with a touch of eccentricity, which showed itself particularly, his friends thought, in his deeds of charity. While living in Pennsylvania he declined to do military duty, and paid his fine rather than encourage war by learning the art, resolving, as Thoreau said in 1859, " that he would have nothing to do with any war unless it were a war for liberty." He caused the arrest of an offender of Pennsylvania, who had done him no injury, but was, as Brown thought, a plague to the community, and while he was in prison, Brown supplied his wants, and supported his family until the trial, out of his own scanty earnings. One of the ap- prentices in his tan yard at that time, bears testimony to the singular probity of his life. He refused to sell his leather until the last drop of moisture had been dried out of it, saying that he " did not mean
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to sell his customers water by the pound, and reap an unjust gain." "I have known him from boyhood through manhood," said Mr. Oviatt of Richfield, " and he has always been distinguished for his truthfulness and integrity ; he has ever been esteemed a very con- scientious man." Another Ohio acquaintance, who first knew him in 1835, says, "Soon after my removal to Akron, he became a client of mine, subsequently a resident of the township in which the town of Akron is situated, and during a portion of the time, a member of a Bible class taught by me. I always regarded him as a man of more than ordinary mental capacity, of very ardent and excitable tempera- ment, of unblemished moral character ; a kind neighbor, a good Christian, deeply imbued with religious feelings and sympathies. In a business point of view, his temperament led him into pecuniary difficulties, but I never knew his integrity questioned by any person whatsoever." He brought up his children to read the Bible daily, and it was the book of all others with which he was most familiar. "He had such a perfect knowledge of it," says his daughter Ruth, " that when any person was reading it, he would correct the least mistake. When he would come home at night, tired out with labor, he would, before going to bed, ask some of the family to read chapters (as was his usual course, night and morning), and would almost always say, 'Read one of David's Psalms.'" He was a singer himself, and taught his children to sing psalms and hymns. Among those sung most frequently about his fireside altar were, " Blow ye the trumpet blow," " I'll praise my Maker with my breath," "With songs and honors sounding loud," and " Ah, lovely appearance of death." Bun- yan's Pilgrim and Baxter's Saint's Rest were constantly read in his family, but the Bible took precedence of every thing. In his will he bequeathed a Bible to each of his children, and grandchildren, and wrote to his family a few days before his execution, "I beseech you every one to make the Bible your daily and nightly study.
Such was the man, of the best New England blood, of the stock of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and bred up like them "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," who was selected by God, and knew him- self to be so chosen, to overthrow the bulwark of oppression in Ame - rica. His prayers and meditations from childhood had been leading him towards this consecration of himself to a great work, and from the year 1839 till his death he had no dearer purpose in life than to fulfil this mission. He seems to have formed a definite plan of attacking slavery in one of its strongholds, by force, as early as 1838, but his
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purpose was modified in detail afterward, and, no doubt, changed from time to time, as the circumstances of the country changed. It is quite probable that, in early life, John Brown, like many other Americans, anticipated an uprising of the slaves themselves in large numbers, such as had taken place in St. Domingo, during the French Revolution. Mr. Elizur Wright, of Boston (already mentioned as a schoolmate of John Brown at Tallmadge in Ohio), informs me that old Squire Hudson, for whom the town so called in Ohio was named, and who was the leading man in that section where Brown spent his boyhood, was not only an abolitionist fifty years ago, but that he favored forcible resistance by the slaves. Mr. Wright says that he met Squire Hudson, one day in September, 1831, coming from his post-office, and reading a newspaper which he had just received, and which seemed to excite him very much as he read it. As Mr. Wright came within hearing, the old Connecticut Calvinist was ex- claiming, " Thank God for that ! I am glad of it. Thank God they have risen at last !" Inquiring what the news was, Squire Hudson replied, " Why the slaves have risen down in Virginia, and are fighting for their freedom as we did for ours. I pray God they may get it." This was the famous " Southampton massacre " of August 23, 1831, in which Nat Turner, with six fellow slaves, raised a revolt in South- ampton county, on the edge of the Dismal Swamp in Virginia, and had killed more than fifty whites, without the loss of a single follower, when his band was dispersed on the 25th of August. Turner him- self escaped arrest for eight weeks longer, but was finally captured October 30, 1831, tried November 5, and hanged November 11, almost exactly twenty-eight years before John Brown's execution, December 2, 1859. If the Ohio neighbors of John Brown in 1831 thanked God for Nat Turner's revolt, no wonder that he too should have expected and favored an armed insurrection. What he did actually engage in, after meditating upon his plans for so many years, was something very different, namely, a partisan warfare, led and controlled by white men, with the purpose and hope of abolishing slavery, state by state, without the horrors of massacre and insurrec- tion which attended the uprising of Turner in Virginia, and of the Hay- tian negroes in 1791, and which would have followed the remarkable plot of Denmark Vesey in South Carolina in 1822 had that well-laid scheme not been frustrated by its discovery, before the time fixed for the outbreak. It was the peculiarity of John Brown's final plan, that he concealed its purpose for years, and until the moment of its
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execution ; that he had so carefully thought out its details as probably to insure its success, had he not been providentially led to strike the first blow in a place where complete success was impossible ; and that its execution would have been found as free from the traditional horrors of slave insurrections as the best antecedent ar- rangements could make it. In fact, it was not an insurrection in any sense of the word, but an invasion or foray, similar in its charac- ter to that which Garibaldi was to make six months later in Sicily for the overthrow of the infamous Bourbon tyranny there. The Italian hero succeeded, and became dictator of the island he had con- quered ; the American hero failed for the moment, and was put to death. But his soul went marching on, and millions of his country- men followed in his footsteps two years later, to complete the cam- paign in which Brown had led the forlorn hope. As usual, the forlorn hope was sacrificed, but by their death the final victory was won.
In 1838, when Brown formed his plans for attacking American slavery, and even in 1858, wheni he had organized an armed force to carry them out, his scheme would have seemed mere madness to most persons. But Brown had the spirit of his ancestors, the Pilgrim Fathers, and entered upon his perilous undertaking with deliberate resolution, after considering what was to be said for and against it, ' as did the Pilgrims before they set forth from Holland to colonize New England. Governor Bradford, one of their bravest leaders and their historian, has recorded the arguments for attempting the voyage to America, in words which will apply, with very little change, either in spelling or of spirit, to the adventure undertaken two cen- turies and a half later, by Peter Brown's stalwart descendant, " the last of the Puritans."
" It was answered," says Bradford in his History " that all great and honour- able actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate ; the difficulties were many, but not invincible, For though there were manie of them likely, yet they were not certain ; it might be sundrie of the things feared might never befall ; others, by provident care and the use of good means might in a great measure be prevented ; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience might either be borne or overcome. True it was that such attempts were not to be made and under- taken without good ground and reason; not rashly or lightly as many have done for curiosity or hope of gaine, etc. But their condition was not ordinarie ; their ends were good and honourable ; their calling lawfull and urgente ; and there- fore they might expecte the blessing of God in their proceeding. Yea, though
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they should loose their lives in this action, yet might they have comforte in the same, and endeavors would be honourable."
The world now sees how " honorable " the "endeavors" of Bradford and of John Brown were, and what momentous conse- quences have followed. For events in history, as all who read history know, have their importance measured by final results, rather than by their apparent magnitude at the moment. The passage of the Rubicon by Cæsar (about which Lucan makes so much ado, and Plutarch tells one of his striking anecdotes), would have had no significance but for the victories that followed it and placed the ad- venturous general at the head of the Roman empire. And again, the assassination of Cæsar, startling and dramatic as it was, had ac- tually no historical result, and only serves to mark the date of transi- tion in Rome from one form of government to another. The short campaign of John Brown in Virginia not only possesses the dramatic interest that belongs to a striking event, but will always be worthy of note as the beginning of that forcible attack upon a form of slavery and a political power which within two years afterward convulsed the whole world with its consequences. It was the first decisive act of an in- evitable tragedy, and such were its romantic features that, in the lapse of time, it will no doubt be gravely expounded as a myth to those who shall read American history some centuries hence. There seems to be no reason why John Brown, any more than William Tell, should escape this skeptical and generalizing spirit, which trans- forms history and even biography into a record of natural science. " King Arthur," says a recent Welch writer who resolves history into astronomy, "is the Great Bear, and perhaps this constellation, being so near the pole, and visibly describing its circle in a small space, is the origin of the famous Round Table." Will there come a time when the Underground rail road shall be regarded as typical of some geologic transition, and the foray at Harper's Ferry pass for the legendary symbol of a chemic reaction ?
John Brown was, indeed, no mythical nor in any respect dubitable personage. It was his fortune to play a great part, but no son of Adam was ever less theatrical in his aim, or more iutensely practicas in his result. An idealist in spirit, he was a realist in activity, and accomplished the grand task assigned to him with a plain, forthright sincerity which comports little with the romantic circumstances of his life and death. He was easily and naturally great,
" And, as the greatest only are, In his simplicity sublime."
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His character needs, therefore, only to be honestly set forth ; not to be adorned with epithets and compliments. The chronicle of his life is his best monument ; let us now resume this, for the sake of pointing out some of the steps by which he prepared himself for the last scene of this life, that drew upon him the eyes of all mankind. He did not hasten forward towards the achievement of what he had un- dertaken, until the fulness of time had come, and he had furnished himself with such military and general knowledge as he deemed re- quisite to the execution of his plan. He kept it steadily before him for twenty years, educated himself and his children for it, and made it as much a part of his household discipline as were his prayers at morning and evening. Mr. Emerson, indeed, in his speech at Salem, a month before Brown's death, fixes a much earlier date than I have given for the beginning of his enterprise against slavery in Virginia. "It was not a piece of spite or revenge,- a plot of two years or of twenty years - but the keeping of an oath made to heaven and earth forty-seven years before. Forty-seven years at least, though I in- cline to accept his own account of the matter, at Charlestown, which makes the date a little older, when he said, ' This was all settled millions of years before the world was made.' Mrs. Brown told me in 1860, that she had known his design and been pledged to aid it for more than twenty years ; and John Brown himself had said in 1857, early in my acquaintance with him, ' I always told her that when the time came to fight against slavery, that conflict would be the signal for our separation. She made up her mind to have me go long before this, and, when I did go, she got ready bandages, and medicine for the wounded.'"
In 1846, while in the midst of his occupations as a wool-grower and wool-dealer, John Brown came back to New England for a few years, and took up his abode at Springfield, in Massachusetts, not very far from the first Connecticut home of his ancestors in Wind- sor. He went there to reside as one of the wool dealing firm of Perkins and Brown, and as the agent of the sheep-farmers and wool- merchants of northern Ohio, whose interests then required, as they thought, an agency to stand between them and the wool-manufac- turers of New England, to whom they sold their fleeces. The Ohio wool-growers fancied that they were fleeced as well as their flocks, in the transactions they had with the manufacturers, who would buy wool before it was graded, pay for it at the price of a low grade, and then sort it so as to bring themselves a large profit, exclu-
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sive of the process of manufacturing. John Brown undertook to prevent this, and with this view, initiated a system of grading wools before they passed into the manufacturers' hands. The system after- ward prevailed and was successful, but the manufacturers were too powerful then for the western farmer. They bribed his clerk (as he always believed), to change the marks of his wool, so that what they paid for as a low grade, was really one degree better. This transac- tion led to several law suits, one of which was tried in Boston in the winter of 1852-3 (after Brown had withdrawn from business in Springfield and retired to the Adirondac woods), and it went against him. The next year he won a similar suit, which was tried in a New York court, and Brown always believed he should have won in the Boston case, had it been tried upon its merits, and not settled by a compromise between the counsel. It is worth noting that the judge who held the court at Boston was Caleb Cushing, who was just then invited by Franklin Pierce to leave the supreme bench of Massachusetts and become attorney-general of the United States, and that the counsel against Brown was Rufus Choate.
While in Springfield John Brown lived in a house in Franklin street, a little north of the Boston and Albany rail road. His wool warehouses were close by the rail road, and at one time contained a great stock of Ohio wool, which had accumulated on his hands while he was at variance, as to price and grade of wool, with his New England customers. Wishing to make a market for his stock, and be- lieving that he could sell it in Europe to advantage, he went abroad in 1848-9, and traversed a considerable part of England and the con- tinent, on business connected with his merchandise, but also, with an eye to his future campaigns against slavery. He visited wool-markets and battle fields in impartial succession, and took notice of the tricks of trade and the maneuvers of armies with equal interest. He was then noted among wool dealers for the delicacy of his touch in sorting the different qualities, and his skill in testing them when submitted to him. Give him three samples of wool, one grown in Ohio, another in Vermont, and a third in Saxony, and he would distinguish one from the other in the dark, by his sense of touch. Some Englishmen, during his sojourn abroad, put this power of Brown's to the test, in an amusing manner, one evening, in company with several English wool dealers, each of whom had brought samples in his pocket. Brown was giving his opinion as to the best use to which certain grades and qualities should be put. One of the party very gravely
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drew a sample from his pocket, handed it to the Yankee farmer, and asked him what he would do with such wool as that. Brown took it, and had only to roll it between his fingers to know that it had not the minute hooks by which the fibres of wool are attached to each other. "Gentlemen," said he, "if you have any machinery in Eng- land that will work up dog's hair, I would advise you to put this into it." The jocose Briton had sheared a poodle and brought the fleece in his pocket, but the laugh went against him when Brown handed back his precious sample. His skill in trade was not so great, and after trying the mrkets of Europe, he finally sold his Liverpool con- signments of wool at a lower price than it would have brought in Springfield. This ill-success, and the expenses of his venture, finally ruined his business, and in 1849 he gave it up and went to live for some years at North Elba, where he was buried.
In Springfield, from 1846 to 1849, John Brown had the reputation of " a quiet and peaceable citizen and a religious man." The late Chief Justice Chapman, who said this of him in 1859, also wrote at the same time ; " Mr. Brown's integrity was never doubted, and he was honorable in all his dealings, but peculiar in many of his notions, and adhering to them with great obstinacy. Rev. Mr. Conklin, who was settled in the North Congregational church, and who separated himself in a great measure from other ministers in Springfield, be- cause he thought them culpably indifferent to the sin of slavery, was intimate with Brown, and they sympathized in their anti-slavery ideas. His bookkeeper tells me that Brown and his eldest son (John Brown Jr.), used to discuss slavery by the hour in his counting room, and he used to say that it was right for slaves to kill their masters and escape." This son, it may be mentioned, came with some of the other children to reside in Springfield before his father took up his abode there. The sons went on Sundays to the little African church, and there formed the acquaintance of a colored man, Thomas Thomas by name, a fugitive slave from the eastern shore of Mary- land. Learning something of Thomas's history and observing his upright and courageous character, they engaged him to work for their father when he should come to take charge of the wool business in Springfield. This soon happened, and John Brown sent for Thomas, and directed him to begin work at the wool warehouse, as a porter, the next morning. "How early shall I come ?" " We begin work at seven," was Brown's answer, " but I wish you would come round earlier, for I want to talk with you." Thomas went to his work the
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next morning, between five and six ; found Brown (who was always an early riser) waiting at the counting room for him ; and there re- ceived, instead of directions for his day's work, an invitation to join in Brown's enterprise for the liberation of the slaves, which was briefly explained to him, and in which Thomas agreed to join. Meantime he was to work in the warehouse, and did so during the three years that Brown remained in Springfield. During that time he was sent by Brown to look up Madison Washington, the leader of the courageous slaves of the vessel Creole, whom Brown wanted as a leader among his colored recruits. But Washington, when found, proved to be an unfit person for such a responsible place.I
It was in the hope of enlisting and drilling these colored recruits for this company of liberators, that Brown went to live in North Elba, among the colored men to whom Gerrit Smith had given land among the Adirondac woods in 1848. Mr. Smith (who con- tinued to be Brown's friend from their first acquaintance in 1849, until his death in Virginia), had inherited from his father landed estate in more than three-fourths of the counties of New York. In Essex county, among the Adirondac mountains and lakes, he owned thousand of acres, and these he offered to give away in farms of suitable size to such colored men as would live upon the land, clear it, and cultivate it. On his return from England in 1849, Brown heard of the offer, and soon presented himself, for the first time, at the hospitable house of Mr. Smith in Peterboro, where he was ever after a welcome visitor. By this time a small colony of colored people had gone to North Elba to clear up the forest land given them by Mr. Smith, and were braving the hardships of their first year in the cold backwoods of northern New York. Brown introduced himself to Mr. Smith and made him this proposal : "I am some- thing of a pioneer, having grown up among the woods and wild Indians of Ohio, and am used to the climate and the way of life that your colony find so trying ; I will take one of your farms myself, clear it up and plant it, and show my colored neighbors how such work should be done ; will give them work as I have occasion, look after them in all needful ways, and be a kind of father to them." The landlord readily consented to have such a tenant, and Brown soon
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