USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Torrington > History of Torrington, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1737, with biographies and genealogies > Part 33
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I Thomas Thomas still lives in Springfield, and is now (May, 1877), as he has been for some years, the keeper of an eating house near the rail road station. He retains the most loyal affection for John Brown, and it is from his own lips that I have had some of the above facts concerning Brown in Springfield.
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removed his family from Springfield to North Elba, where they re- mained for the greater part of the time between 1849 and 1862, and where they lived when John Brown was attacking slavery in Kansas, in Missouri and in Virginia. Besides the other inducements which this rough and bleak region offered him, he considered it a good place of refuge for his wife and younger children, when he should go on his campaign, a place where they would not only be safe and inde- pendent, but could live frugally and both learn and practice those habits of thrifty industry which Brown thought indispensable in the training of children When he went there his youngest son, Oliver, was ten years old, and his daughters, Anna and Sarah, were six and three years old. Ellen, his youngest child, was born afterwards.
In 1849, the great current of summer and autumn travel, which now flows through the Adirondac wilderness every year, had scarcely begun to set that way. There were in North Elba few roads, schools or churches, and only one or two good farms. The life of a settler there was wild pioneer work; the forest was to be cut down, and the land burnt over; the family supplies must be produced mainly in the household itself. The men made their own sugar from the maple trees, which grew everywhere ; and the women spun and wove garments for both sexes, out of the wool that was sheared from the family flock of sheep; cows and especially sheep were the wealth of the farmer. As Colonel Higginson mentions, the widow of Oliver Brown, after his death at Harper's Ferry in 1859, was considered not to be absolutely penniless, because Oliver had left her five sheep, valued at ten dollars. Winter lingers in these forests for six months of the year, and in the short summers, neither wheat nor Indian corn will come to maturity ; the crops are grass, oats and potatoes, a few vegetables, and the fruit of the woods and meadows.
In the summer, for a few months, this wilderness is charming. The mountains rise, grand and beautiful on all sides; the untamed forest clothes their slopes and fills up the plains and valleys, save where the puny labors of men have here and there rescued a bit of fertile land from its gloom. On such spots the houses are built, and around them grow the small cultivated crops that can endure the climate. The wild fruits are in abundance, the woods (when I first saw them in 1857) were full of game, and the streams and lakes of fish. But the mode of life is rude and primitive, with no elegance, and little that we should call comfort. Many of the dwellings are log cab-
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ins, and in the whole township of North Elba, there was then scarcely a house worth a thousand dollars, or one which was finished throughout. Mrs. Brown's house, in 1857, had but two plastered rooms, yet two families lived in it, and at my second visit, in February, 1860, two widowed women besides, whose husbands were killed at Har- per's Ferry. I slept on both occasions in a little chamber partitioned off with a rude frame-work, but not plastered, the walls only orna- mented with a few pictures ; and in winter the snow sifted through the roof and fell upon the bed. I arrived at nightfall, on my second visit, closely pursued from the shore of Lake Champlain by a snow- storm, which murmured and moaned about the chamber all night, and in the morning I found a small snow-drift on my coverlet, and another on the floor near my bed." This house had been built by John Brown about 1850, and the great rock beside which he lies buried, is but a few rods from its door.
One of the first things that Brown did in this wilderness was to introduce his favorite breed of cattle there, and to exhibit them for a prize at the annual cattle show of Essex county in September 1850. They were a grade of Devons, and the first improved stock that had ever been seen at the county fair. The agricultural society in its an- nual report for 1850, said "The appearance upon the grounds of a number of very choice and beautiful Devons, from the herd of Mr. John Brown, residing in one of our most remote and secluded towns, attracted great attention, and added much to the interest of the fair. The interest and admiration they excited have attracted public atten- tion to the subject, and have already resulted in the introduction of several choice animals into this region." The same result on a much grander scale, was observed ten years later, when John Brown ex- hibited, at the world's fair, specimens of a choicer and bigger breed of men than had been seen lately in Virginia or New England. " We have no doubt," added the Essex county farmers, " that this influence upon the character of our stock will be permanent and decisive." Let us hope the same for our country and its men.2
I The new-born babe of Oliver Brown (the captain's youngest son, who had been killed at Harper's Ferry four months before) died in the house that night, and the poor young mother did not long survive.
2 Writing on the 30th day of September, 1850, to an inquiring correspondent, John Brown said : " None of my cattle are pure Devons, but a mixture of that and a particular favorite stock from Connecticut, a cross of which I much prefer to any pure English cattle after many years experience, of different breeds. I was several months in England last season, and saw no one stock on any farm, that would average better than my own."
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Another word may here be said, before leaving this period, of Brown's journey in Europe in 1848-9. Some letters of his from Europe are still in existence, and it is hoped they will soon be pub lished. The only other record of his European experiences, so far as I know, is that noted down by me from conversations in 1857-8, in which he told me about what he chiefly noticed abroad, the agri- cultural and military equipment of the countries he visited, and the social condition of the people. He thought a standing army the greatest curse to a country, because it drained away the best of the young men, and left farming and the industrial arts to be managed by inferior persons. The German farming, he said, was bad hus- bandry, because the farmers there did not live on their land, but in villages, and so wasted the natural manures, which ought to go back without diminution to the soil. He thought England the best cultivated country he had ever seen ; but as we were driving away one morning in 1859, from the country seat of Mr. John M. Forbes at Milton, near Boston, he told me that he had seen few houses of rich men in England so full of beauty and comfort as this, in which he had passed the night." He had followed the military career of Napoleon with great interest, and visited some of his battlefields. We talked of such things while driving from Concord to Medford, to visit Mr. Stearns, one Sunday in April, 1857. He then told me that he had kept the contest against slavery in mind while traveling on the continent, and had made an especial study of the European armies and battle-fields. He had examined Napoleon's positions, and assured me that the common military theory of strong places was unsound ; that a ravine was in truth more defensible than a hill-top.2 So it is, for an army of heroes, as Leonidas demonstrated at Thermopyla ; but for ordinary warfare, we may believe that Napoleon was right. Brown often witnessed the evolutions of the Austrian troops, and declared that they could always be defeated (as they have since been in Italy and elsewhere) by soldiers who should maneuver more rapidly. The French soldiers he thought well drilled, but lacking individual prowess ; for that he gave the palm, and justly, to our own countrymen. He returned from Europe
I Probably he saw few of the castles and seats of the nobility and the richer gentry, which are certainly superior to what is seen in New England.
2 As we passed through West Medford he pointed out several such defensible ravines.
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more in love than before with American institutions, and more than ever convinced that slavery must be destroyed. He came back poor, for his mercantile ventures had failed ; it was not destined that he should grow rich, as he had hoped, and thus be able to aid the op- pressed from his abundance. Ever afterwards he accepted cheerfully the narrow path of poverty, but gave all his spare time to the work he had at heart.
There is a phase of John Brown's life concerning which much has been said, without at all exhausting the subject, his efforts in behalf of the fugitive slaves who had taken refuge in the north, long before the troubles in Kansas began. These efforts were especially active after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, when the poor refugees were in danger of being hunted down, even in New England, and sent back to the bondage from which they had freed themselves by courage or cunning. In January, 1851, while Brown was nominally a resident of the Adirondac woods, he was at his old home in Springfield, and there formed an organization among the colored people, many of whom were fugitives, to resist the capture of any fugitive, no matter by what authority. The letter of instructions given by Brown at that time to his Springfield " Gileadites," as he called them, still exists in his handwriting, and has been once or twice printed. It deserves to be cited here, as an authentic document, throwing much light on the character and purposes of Brown at that time, nearly nine years before his campaign in Virginia. Here it is, without the signatures of the forty-five men and women who in Springfield had enrolled themselves as liberators or " Gileadites."
" WORDS OF ADVICE.
" Branch of the United States League of Gileadites. Adopted January 15, 1851, as written and recommended by John Brown.
"'UNION IS STRENGTH.'
" Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. The trial for life of one bold and to some extent successful man, for defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy throughout the nation than the accumulated. wrongs and sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive colored population. We need not mention the Greeks struggling against the oppressive Turks, the Poles against Russia, nor the Hungarians against Austria and Russia combined, to prove this. No jury can be found in the Northern states that would convict a man for defending his rights to the last extremity. This is well understood by Southern Congressmen, who insisted that the right of trial by jury should not be granted to the fugitive. Colored people have more
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fast friends amongst the whites than they suppose, and would have ten times the number they now have were they but half as much in earnest to secure their dearest rights as they are to ape the follies and extravagances of their white neighbors, and to indulge in idle show, in ease, and in luxury. Just think of the money expended by individuals in your behalf in the past twenty years. Think of the number who have been mobbed and imprisoned on your account Have any of you seen the Branded Hand ? Do you remember the names of Lovejoy and Torrey ?
"Should one of your number be arrested, you must collect together as quickly as possible, so as to outnumber your adversaries who are taking an active part against you. Let no able-bodied mnan appear on the ground unequipped, or with his weapons exposed to view ; let that be understood beforehand. Your plans must be known only to yourself, and with the understanding that all traitors must die, wherever caught and proven to be guilty. 'Whosoever is fearful or afraid, let him return and part early from Mount Gilead.' (Judges, vii chap , 3 verse ; Deut., xx chap., 8 verse.) Give all cowards an oppor- tunity to show it on condition of holding their peace. Do not delay one moment after you are ready; you will lose all your resolution if you do. Let the first blow be the signal for all to engage, and when engaged do not do your work by halves ; but make clean work with your enemies, and be sure you meddle not with any others. By going about your business quietly, you will get the job disposed of before the number that an uproar would bring together can collect ; and you will have the advantage of those who come out against you, for they will be wholly unprepared with either equipments or matured plans ; all with them will be confusion and terror. Your enemies will be slow to attack you after you have done up the work nicely; and, if they should, they will have to encounter your white friends as well as you, for you may safely calculate on a division of the whites, and may by that means get to an honorable parley.
" Be firm, determined, and cool ; but let it be understood that you are not to be driven to desperation without making it an awful dear job to others as well as to you. Give them to know distinctly that those who live in wooden houses should not throw fire, and that you are just as able to suffer as your white neighbors. After effecting a rescue, if you are assailed, go into the houses of your most prominent and influential white friends with your wives, and that will effect- ually fasten upon them the suspicion of being connected with you, and will compel them to make a common cause with you, whether they would otherwise live up to their profession or not. This would leave them no choice in the matter. Some would, doubtless, prove themselves true of their own choice ; others would flinch. That would be taking them at their own words. You may make a tumult in the court room where a trial is going on by burning gunpowder freely in paper packages, if you cannot think of any better way to create a momentary alarm, and might possibly give one or more of your enemies a hoist. But in such case the prisoner will need to take the hint at once and bestir himself; and so should his friends improve the opportunity for a general rush.
" A lasso might possibly be applied to a slave catcher for once with good effect. Hold on to your weapons, and never be persuaded to leave them, part with them, or have them far away from you Stand by one another, and by your friends, while a drop of blood remains ; and be hanged, if you must, but tell no tales out of school. Make no confession.
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AGREEMENT.
" As citizens of the United States of America, trusting in a just and merciful God, whose spirit and all powerful aid we humbly implore, we will ever be true to the flag of our beloved country, always acting under it. Wewhose names are hereunto affixed do constitute ourselves a branch of the United States League of Gileadites. That we will provide ourselves at once with suitable implements, and will aid those who do not possess the means, if any such are disposed to join us. We invite every colored person whose heart is engaged in the per- formance of our business, whether male or female, old or young. The duty of the aged, infirm, and young members of the League shall be to give instant notice to all members in case of an attack upon any of our people. We agree to have no officers except a treasurer and secretary pro tem, until after some trial of courage and talent of able-bodied members shall enable us to elect officers from those who shall have rendered the most important services. Nothing but wisdom and undaunted courage, efficiency, and general good conduct shall in any way influence us in electing our officers."
Then follows, in the original manuscript, a code of laws or regula- tions, such as John Brown, with his methodical, forward-looking mind, was in the habit of drawing up whenever he organized any branch of his grand movement against slavery. Some features of this organiza- tion strikingly resemble that formed by him in Canada, in May, 1858 (the Constitution of which was captured, among his papers at Har- per's Ferry), especially the agreement that "we will ever be true to the flag of our beloved country, always acting under it." This was reproduced in the " Provisional Constitution of 1858," the forty-sixth article of which reads thus : -
" ART. XLVI. These articles are not for the Overthrow of Government. 'The foregoing articles shall not be construed so as in any way to encourage the overthrow of any State Government, or of the General Government of the United States, and look to no dissolution of the Union, but simply to amend- ment and repeal, and our flag shall be the same that our fathers fought under in the Revolution."
This devotion to the flag and the principles of the Revolution, the latter as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, was fixed and constant in Captain Brown's mind, as it had been in the hearts of his two grandfathers who fought under Washington. He did not believe in the possibility of dissolving the Union, would not willingly hear it discussed, and once said to me with the most serious emphasis, weighing every word as he uttered it (such was his manner), "I be- lieve in the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence. I think they both mean the same thing; and it is better that a whole generation should pass off the earth, men, women, and children, by
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a violent death, than that one jot of either should fail in this country." He acted consistently on this principle, though a man of peace from his youth up, and inclining to the Quaker habit of not bearing arms in time of peace. Writing to his wife at North Elba, from Spring- field, about the time he formed his "league " there, in 1851, he says : " Since the sending off of Long (a fugitive) from New York, I have improved my leisure hours quite busily with colored people here, in advising them how to act, and in giving them all the en- couragement in my power. They very much need encouragement and advice, and some of them are so alarmed that they tell me they cannot sleep, on account of either themselves or their wives and children. I can only say I think I have been enabled to do some- thing to revive their broken spirits. I want all my family to imagine themselves in the same dreadful condition." Such was the practical way in which he made his exegesis of that text so often on his lips and in his heart: "Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them." No occasion was offered of putting in practice his di- rections for resisting the seizure of fugitives in Springfield, such as occurred soon after in Worcester and Boston, nor does it appear that Brown was present at any of the fugitive slave trials which disgrace the annals of Massachusetts, though he was with difficulty prevented by his friends in New York, in May, 1854, from going to Boston to head a movement for the rescue of Anthony Burns.
The career of John Brown in Kansas is the most romantic chapter in the history of that state, and the services he rendered to the cause of freedom there were very important. It will be remembered that the great question in Kansas for four or five years was whether the new territory, to which the south wished to extend slavery, should be settled by anti-slavery men or by slave holders and their negroes. John Brown at once saw here was an opportunity for him. Re- solved as he was and long had been, to attack slavery in its own stronghold, he yet recognized the necessity of first checking its growth. He therefore made his arrangements very early to establish himself and his stalwart family in Kansas. The repeal of the Mis- souri compromise, which opened the broad prairies west of the Mis- souri river to slavery, was finally consummated on the 25th of May, 1854. At that time John Brown had seven sons and one son-in-law living ; the youngest son, Oliver, was a boy of fifteen, while Watson was but eighteen. These, with Salmon Brown, who still survived, were children of the second marriage, and were neither of them mar-
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ried at this date. Of the four sons of the first marriage who were then living, two were married and one, Frederick, was engaged to be married. Ruth, the eldest daughter, had married Henry Thompson, a sturdy farmer of New Hampshire origin, who lived near the Brown farm at North Elba. He was in sympathy with Brown's great pur- pose, and readily consented to join the family in Kansas.
In the winter of 1854-55 the four older sons of John Brown, John, Jason, Owen, and Frederick, living in or near Akron, Ohio, made their arrangements to settle in Kansas, then just opened to emigrants, and they did establish themselves the next spring in Ly- kins county, about eight miles from Osawatomie, a town afterwards made famous by their father's defence of it, August 30, 1856. John Brown himself did not go to Kansas till the autumn of 1855, and in the preceding summer, shortly before he set out to join his sons there, he was again in Massachusetts, and saw some of his old friends in Springfield,- among them, Thomas, the Maryland fugitive, who had engaged with him in the great work nine years before. He ex- pressed his belief that the struggle for the liberation of the slaves was soon to come on, but does not seem to have made, at that time, any special effort to enlist men for service in Kansas. Probably with his characteristic caution, he meant first to explore the ground and see what was necessary, and what could be done. Nor did he re- ceive any of the money which, in 1855 and 1856, was raised in Massachusetts for the benefit of the free state men in Kansas, to the amount of $100,000 and upward. He was aided by a subscription in central New York, to which Gerrit Smith contributed, but the amount was not large, and he and his family, for the most part, carried on their Kansas campaign at their own charges. Before going to Kansas he carried back his family, who had been in Ohio with him, to his farm at North Elba, where they remained for several years after his death.
From a paper in Brown's hand writing, found at North Elba after his death, the biographers of the Brown family have taken these particulars of their first setting forth as pioneers towards the state which now holds the memory of these men so dear :
"In 1854 the four eldest sons of John Brown, named John, Jr., Jason, Owen and Frederick (all children by a first wife), then living in Ohio, de- termined to remove to 'Kansas. John, Jr., sold his place, a very desirable little property, near Akron in Summit county. Jason Brown had a very valuable collection of grape vines, and also of choice fruit trees which he took up and
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shipped in boxes at a heavy cost. The other two sons held no landed property, but both were possessed of some valuable stock (as were also the two first named) derived from that of their father, which had been often noticed by liberal pre- miums, both in the state of New York, and also of Ohio. The two first named, John and Jason, had both families. Owen had none. Frederick was engaged to be married, and was to return for his wife.
In consequence of an extreme dearth in 1854, the crops in northern Ohio were almost an entire failure, and it was decided by the four brothers that the two youngest should take the teams, and entire stock, cattle and horses, and move them to southwestern Illinois to winter, and to have them on early in the spring of 1855. This was done at a very considerable expense, and with some loss of stock to John, Jr., some of his best stock having been stolen on the way. The wintering of the animals was attended with great expense, and with no little suffering to the two youngest brothers ; one of them, Owen, being to some extent a cripple from childhood, by an injury of the right arm ; and Frederick, though a very stout man, was subject to periodical sickness for many years, attended with insanity. It has been stated that he was idiotic ; nothing could be more false." He had sub- jected himself to a most dreadful surgical operation but a short time before starting for Kansas, which had well nigh cost him his life; and was buc just through with his confinement, when he started on his journey, pale and weak. They were obliged to husk corn all winter, out of doors, in order to obtain fodder for their animals. Salmon Brown, a very strong minor son of the family, eighteen years old, was sent forward early in 1855, to assist the two last named, and all three arrived in Kansas early in the spring."
In such patriarchal fashion did the Browns enter the land which they were foreordained to defend. These young men were of the true stuff, worthy sons of such a sire. As Owen Brown said to me, many years afterwards, so the world will say, " I never could dis- cover any symptoms of cowardice in any of those boys." All were active, enterprising persons, fond of labor, inured to hardship, and expecting, as their father had taught them, to earn their living with the toil of their own hands. The narrow circumstances of the family made it quite necessary that these young men should support themselves somewhere. Love of freedom, love of adventure, and a desire for independence in fortune combined to tempt the young men, while the older brothers acted from a sense of duty. The other men of the family, some with their wives, emigrated from time to time, and though the whole nine, including Captain Brown, were never in Kansas together, yet for a long time the father, with six sons and his son-in-law, was there, and they all rallied to the defense of Lawrence in May, 1856. John Brown himself went to Kansas in the fall of 1855, having already, in the spring of that year, taken his wife and infants back to their home in the Adirondac mountains.
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