USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Torrington > History of Torrington, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1737, with biographies and genealogies > Part 36
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It was on this visit to North Elba that John Brown carried with him the old tombstone of his grandfather, Captain John Brown, the revolutionary soldier, from the burial place of his family in Canton, Connecticut. He caused the name of his murdered son Frederick,
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who fell in Kansas, to be carved on this stone, with the date of his death, and placed it where he desired his own grave to be, beside a huge rock on the hillside where his house stands, giving directions that his own name and the date of his death should be inscribed there too, when he should fall, as he expected in the conflict with slavery. That stone now marks his grave and tells a story which more costly monuments and longer inscriptions could not so well declare.
Although Capt. Brown spent the winter of 1856-57 in New Eng- gland, he did not by any means forget or neglect his family at North Elba, but busied himself in securing for them an addition to the two farms in the wilderness on which his wife and his married daughter, Mrs. Thompson, were then living. Several of his Massachusetts friends, chief among whom were Mr. Amos A. Lawrence and Mr. Stearns, raised a subscription of $1,000 to purchase one hundred and sixty acres of land for division in equal portions between these farms. Mr. Stearns contributed $260 to this fund, and Mr. Lawrence about the same amount ; these two gentlemen having made up the sum by which the original subscription fell short of $1,000. The connec- tion of Mr. Lawrence with this transaction, and his personal acquaint- ance with Brown in 1857, were afterwards held to imply that he had some knowledge of Brown's plans, which was not the case. The subscription thus raised was expended in completing the pur- chase of the tract in question, originally sold by Gerrit Smith to the brothers of Henry Thompson, Brown's son-in-law, but which had not been wholly paid for. In August, 1857, as the agent of Messrs. Stearns and Lawrence, I visited North Elba, examined the land, paid the Thompsons their stipulated price for improvements, and to Mr. Smith the remainder of the purchase money ; took the necessary deeds and transferred the property to Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Thomp- son, according to the terms arranged by Captain Brown in the pre- ceding spring. At this time neither Gerrit Smith, nor Mr. Stearns, nor myself had any knowledge of Brown's scheme for a campaign in Virginia. But that he was preparing for it at that time is clear from certain arrangements he had made in Connecticut in this same spring of 1857.
It was at this date that John Brown engaged Mr. Charles Blair of Collinsville, to make for him the thousand pikes which he carried to Harper's Ferry in 1859. At the senatorial investigation of 1859- 60, Mr. Blair told the story, and it is curious enough to be given here, somewhat abridged. Mr. Blair testified (January 23, 1860):
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"I knew the late John Brown who was recently executed under the laws of Virginia. I made his acquaintance in the early part of 1857, in the latter part of February or the fore part of March. He came to our place, Collinsville, as I suppose, to visit connections who lived in our town. He himself was born, as I have understood, at Torringford, ten miles from there, and some of his relatives lived in a town ten miles from our village. He spoke in a public hall one evening, and gave an account of some of his experiences in Kansas, and, at the close of the meeting, made an appeal to the audience. After stating the wants of many of the free settlers in Kansas, their privations and need of clothing, etc., he made an appeal for aid, for the purpose of fur- nishing the necessaries of life, as he declared. I think there was no collection taken up for him at that time. On the following morning, he was exhibiting to some gentlemen who happened to be collected together in a druggist's store, some weapons which he claimed to have taken from Captain Pate in Kansas. Among them was a two edged dirk, with a blade about eight inches long and he remarked that, if he had a lot of those things to attach to poles about six feet long, they would be capital weapons of defence for the settlers of Kansas to keep in their log-cabins, to defend themselves against any sudden attack that might be made on them.I
" He turned to me, knowing, as I suppose, that I was engaged in edge-tool making, and asked me what I would make them for ; what it would cost to make 500 or 1,000 of those things, as he described them. I replied, without much consideration, that I would make him 500 of them for $1.25 apiece; or, if he wanted 1,000, I thought they might be made for a dollar apiece."
Brown at once contracted for 1,000 of these pikes at one dollar each, and Mr. Blair made them for him, doing a part of the work in the spring of 1857, and the rest in the summer of 1859, just before the attack on Harper's Ferry. They were all along intended to be put in the hands of freed slaves, for the defence of the log forts which Brown proposed to build in Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, or wherever his attack should finally be made. They were sent by Mr. Blair to Chambersburg, Pa., early in September, 1859, were taken to the Kennedy farm, and a portion of them were carried by Brown's men across the Potomac to arm the slaves with. They were paid for in the early summer of 1859, with money given to Brown by Gerrit Smith and George L. Stearns.
Notwithstanding the success attending some of his efforts in New England in the spring of 1857, John Brown failed to raise at that time a sufficient sum of money to equip and support his company of mounted minute-men, and he left Massachusetts, late in April, much
" I remember Brown's showing me this knife of Pate's, which he was then in the habit of carrying in the leg of bis boot, in order that it might not be unpleasantly obvious. It was what is jocularly known as an " Arkansas toothpick."
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saddened by this failure. Before leaving Boston he wrote a brief paper headed " Old Brown's Farewell to the Plymouth Rocks, Bun- ker Hill Monuments, Charter Oaks, and Uncle Tom's Cabins," in which he says he had been trying, since he came out of Kansas, " to secure an outfit, or, in other words, the means of arming and thoroughly equipping his regular minute men, who are mixed up with the people of Kansas ;" but that he goes back "with a feeling of deepest sadness that, after having exhausted his own small means, and with his family and his brave men suffered hunger, cold, naked- ness, and some of them sickness, wounds, imprisonment in irons, with extreme cruel treatment, and others death, ...... he cannot secure, amidst all the wealth, luxury, and extravagance of this ' Heaven-exalted ' people, even the necessary supplies of the common soldier." He had formed an elaborate plan for raising and drilling such a company of men, and, without the knowledge of his Massa- chusetts friends, had engaged an English Garibaldian, Hugh Forbes, whom he found giving fencing-lessons in New York, to go out with him to Western Iowa, and there train his recruits for service in the field against slavery. Disappointed in raising the money he had ex- pected, Captain Brown was obliged to cancel his engagement with Forbes, who, as the event proved, was a very useless and embarrass- ing person. Forbes had traveled from New York to Tabor in Iowa, in July and August, 1857, and returned early in November, angry and disappointed, to New York, whence he soon began to write abusive and threatening letters, denouncing Brown, and speaking of his plans in a way that surprised Brown's Massachusetts friends, who had never heard of Forbes before, and who knew absolutely nothing of the grand scheme for invading Virginia. It may be that this quarrel with Forbes impelled Brown to impart his plans more fully to his Massachusetts friends, or a few of them ; at any rate, he did so impart them, early in the year 1858, and in a manner which will be hereafter related.
It is to this period of Brown's life that the incident belongs which Mr. Redpath alone has commemorated, and which some have doubted-his single interview with Charles Sumner in the spring of 1857. Mr. Redpath says :
" I visited Senator Sumner in his house in Hancock street to introduce John Brown, then known only as a Kansas captain who had done some service in driving back the Southern invaders. The classical orator and the guerilla chief then met for the first time, and, I believe, for the only time in their lives. Each
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was impressed with the character of the other, and they talked long and earnestly about the struggle in the Far West.
This I recall ; but I wrote down a single sentence only that each of them uttered on that topic.
' No,' said Brown, 'I did not intend ever to settle in Kansas unless I happened to find my last home there.'
'In that case,' rejoined Sumner, ' yours, like mine, would be a long home.'
The senator was suffering from the blows of the assassin Brooks, of South Carolina, at this time, and lay on his bed during the whole of the interview.
The talk turned on the assault. Suddenly the old man asked Mr. Sumner :
' Have you still the coat ?'
' Yes,' replied Sumner ; ' it is in that closet. Would you like to see it ?'
' Very much, indeed,' returned the captain.
Mr. Sumner rose slowly and painfully from his bed, opened a closet door and handed the garment to John Brown. I shall never forget that impressive picture. Mr. Sumner was bending slightly, and supported himself by resting his hand on the bed, while Captain Brown stood erect as a pillar, holding up the blood-smeared coat and intently scanning it. The old man said nothing, but his lips were compressed and his eyes shone like polished steel."
In the autumn of 1857, John Brown was in Western Iowa, and wrote from there to his friend Theodore Parker, on the 11th of September, enclosing an address to soldiers of the United States army on the subject of slavery, which was written by Brown's drill master, Hugh Forbes, and was intended to be, as Brown tells Parker, " the first number of a series of tracts," for distribution when his great work should really begin. It was a dull and heavy paper, like most that Forbes wrote, and probably Parker caused Brown to know what his opinion of it was. In the same letter, Brown says : "My particular object in writing is to say that I am in immediate want of $500 or $1000, for secret service and no questions asked. I want the friends of freedom to 'prove me one herewith.' Will you bring this matter before your congregation, or exert your influence in some way to have it, or some part of it, raised and put in the hands of George L. Stearns Esq., Boston, subject to my order ?" Similar letters were sent to Mr. Stearns and to me, but it was not easy in that autumn, when business was greatly depressed by the panic of 1857, to raise money for so indefinite an object. I find that I sent him some money, which he received on the 3d of October, and others contributed something. But no movement was made before winter, nor did he disclose to us his purposes. In January, 1858, however, he suddenly left Kansas without the knowledge of his friends there, and appeared, in the beginning of February, at the house of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York. From there he wrote, February 2, 1858, to Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns,
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F. B. Sanborn, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, asking them to aid him in raising a small sum of money to carry out "an important measure in which the world has a deep interest." This he tells Mr. Parker, is his only errand at the east, and he goes on ; "I have written some of our mutual friends in regard to it, but none of them understand my views so well as you do, and I cannot explain with- out their committing themselves more than I know of their doing. I have heard that Parker Pillsbury, and some others in your quarter, hold out ideas similar to those on which I act, but I have no personal acquaintance with them, and know nothing of their influence or means. Do you think any of our Garrisonian friends, either at Bos- ton, Worcester, or in any other place, can be induced to supply a little straw " if I will absolute make ' bricks ? I must beg of you to con- sider this communication strictly confidential, unless you know of parties who will feel and act and hold their peace."I
Brown's letters of the same date and for a few weeks after, to Col. Higginson and to me, were of a similar tenor, though rather more explicit, but they conveyed no distinct intimation of his plans. He wrote to Higginson, February 2, from Rochester : " I am here, concealing my whereabouts for good reasons (as I think), not, how- ever, from any anxiety about my personal safety. I have been told that you are both a true man and a true abolitionist, and I partly be- lieve the whole story. Last fall I undertook to raise from five hun- dred to one thousand dollars for secret service, and succeeded in getting five hundred dollars. I now want to get, for the perfecting of by far the most important undertaking of my whole life, five hun- dred to eight hundred dollars within the next sixty days. I have written Rev. Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns, and F. B. San- born, Esquires, on the subject, but do not know as either Mr. Stearns or Mr. Sanborn are abolitionists. I suppose they are." On the 12th of February he wrote again in response to a remark in Higginson's reply about the Underground rail road in Kansas : " Rail road business on a somewhat extended scale is the identical object for which I am trying to get means. I have been connected with that business, as commonly conducted, from my boyhood, and never let an opportunity slip. I have been operating to some purpose the past season, but I now have a measure on foot that I feel sure would awaken in you something more than a common interest, if you could understand it. I have just written my friends G. L. Stearns
I Weiss's Life of Theodore Parker, vol. II, pp. 163, 164.
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and F. B. Sanborn, asking them to meet me for consultation at Peterboro, N. Y. I am very anxious to have you come along, certain as I feel that you will never regret having been one of the council." It was inconvenient for any of the persons addressed to take the long journey proposed, and on the 13th, I wrote for myself and Mr. Stearns, inviting Brown to visit Boston, and offering to pay his traveling expenses. To this request Brown replied, February 17th : " It would be almost impossible for me to pass through Albany, Springfield, or any of those parts, on my way to Boston, and not have it known ; and my reasons for keeping quiet are such that, when I left Kansas, I kept it from every friend there ; and I suppose it is still understood that I am hiding somewhere in the territory; and such will be the idea until it comes to be generally known that I am in these parts. I want to continue that impression as long as I can, or for the present. I want very much to see Mr. Stearns, and also Mr. Parker, and it may be that I can before long ; but I must decline accepting your kind offer at present, and sorry as I am to do so, ask you both to meet me by the middle of next week at the furthest. I wrote Mr. Higginson of Worcester to meet me also. It may be he would come on with you. My reasons for keeping still are sufficient to keep me from seeing my wife and children, much as I long to do so. I will endeavor to explain when I see you." This letter was written from Rochester.
Mr. Stearns being still unable to accept this second and pressing request from Brown for a meeting at Peterboro, I determined to go, and invited Colonel Higginson to join me at Worcester on the 20th. In fact I made the journey alone, and reached the place of meeting on the evening of Washington's birthday, February 22d. A few friends of Brown were there gathered, among them another Massa- chusetts man, Mr. Edwin Morton of Plymouth, now of Boston, but then residing in the family of Mr. Gerrit Smith as tutor and private secretary. In the long winter evening which followed, the whole outline of Brown's campaign in Virginia was laid before the little council, to the astonishment and almost the dismay of all present. The constitution which he had drawn up for the government of his men, and such territory as they might occupy, and which was found among his papers at the Kennedy farm, was exhibited by Brown, its provisions recited and explained, the proposed movements of his men indicated, and the middle of May was named as the time of the at- tack. To begin this hazardous adventure he asked for but eight
47
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hundred dollars, and would think himself rich with a thousand. Being questioned and opposed by his friends, he laid before them in detail his methods of organization and fortification ; of settlement in the South, if that were possible, and of retreat through the North, if necessary ; and his theory of the way in which such an invasion would be received in the country at large. He desired from his friends a patient hearing of his statements, a candid opinion concern- ing them, and, if that were favorable, then that they should co-ope- rate with him and persuade others to do so. This was the important business which he had to communicate on the anniversary of Wash- ington's birthday.
After what has passed in the last twenty years, no one can picture to himself the startling effect of such a plan, heard for the first time in the dismal days of Buchanan's administration, when Floyd was secretary of war, and Jefferson Davis and Senator Mason omnipo- tent in congress. Those who listened to Captain Brown had been familiar with the bold plots and counter-plots of the Kansas border, and had aided the escape of slaves in various parts of the South. But to strike at once at the existence of slavery, by an organized force, acting for years, if need be, on the dubious principles of guer- illa warfare, and exposed, perhaps, to the whole power of the country, was something they had never contemplated. That was the long meditated plan of a poor, obscure, old man, uncertain at best of another ten years' lease of life, and yet calmly proposing an enter- prise which, if successful, might require a whole generation to accomplish. His friends listened until late at night, proposing ob- jections and raising difficulties, but nothing shook the purpose of the old Puritan. To every objection he had an answer ; every difficulty had been foreseen and provided for ; the great difficulty of all, the apparent hopelessness of undertaking anything so vast with such slender means, he met with the words of scripture, " If God be for us, who can be against us ? " and " Except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain."
To all suggestions of delay until a more favorable time, he would reply, "I am nearly sixty years old ; I have desired to do this work for many years ; if I do not begin soon, it will be too late for me." He had made nearly all his arrangements ; he had so many hundred weapons, so many men enlisted, all that he wanted was the small sum of money. With that he would open his campaign with the spring, and he did not doubt that his enterprise would pay. But
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those who heard him, while they looked upon the success of Brown's undertaking as a great blessing and relief to the country, felt also that to fail, contending against such odds, might hazard for many years the cause of freedom and union. They had not yet fully attained the sublime faith of Brown when he said, " A few men in the right, and knowing they are right, can overturn a king. Twenty men in the Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in two years."
On the 23d of February, the discussion was renewed, and, as usually happened when he had time enough, Captain Brown began to prevail over the objections of his friends. At any rate, they saw that they must either stand by him, or leave him to dash himself alone against the fortress he was determined to assault. To withhold aid would only delay, not prevent him; nothing short of betraying him to the enemy would do that. As the sun was setting over the snowy hills of the region where we met, I walked for an hour with the principal person in our little council of war, leaving Captain Brown to discuss re- ligion with an old captain of Wellington's army who, by chance, was a guest in the house. My companion, of equal age with Brown, and for many years a devoted abolitionist, said, " You see how it is ; our old friend has made up his mind to this course of action, and cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone ; we must stand by him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for him ; you must lay the case before your friends in Massachusetts and perhaps they will do the same. I see no other way." For myself, I had reached the same conclusion, and I engaged to bring the scheme at once to the attention of the three Massachusetts men to whom Brown had written, and also of Dr. S. G. Howe, who had sometimes favored action almost as extreme as this proposed by Brown.
I returned to Boston on the 25th of February, and on the same day communicated the enterprise to Theodore Parker and Colonel Higginson. At the suggestion of Parker, Brown, who had gone to Brooklyn, New York, was invited to visit Boston secretly, and did so the 4th of March, taking a room at the American House, in Hano- ver street. He registered himself as " J. Brown," instead of writing out the customary " John " in full, and remained for the most part in his room (No. 126) during the four days of his stay. Parker was one of the first persons to call on him, and promised aid at once. He was deeply interested in the project, but not very sanguine of its success. He wished to see it tried, believing that it must do good even if it failed. John Brown remained at the American House until
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Monday, March 8th, when he departed for Philadelphia. On the Friday, Saturday and Sunday intervening, he had seen at his hotel Mr. Parker, Dr. Howe, Mr. Stearns, Mr. Wentworth Higginson and two or three other persons. He did not think it prudent to show himself at Mr. Parker's Sunday evening reception, on the 7th of March, as he had done when he was in Boston the year before ; and therefore he wrote Mr. Parker a letter which I carried to him that afternoon, and which shall here be copied entire :
To REV. THEODORE PARKER, BOSTON. BOSTON, MASS., March 7th, 1858.
MY DEAR SIR, Since you know I have an almost countless brood of poor hungry chickens to "scratch for," you will not reproach me for scratching even on the Sabbath. At any rate, I trust God will not. I want you to under- take to provide a substitute for an address you saw last season, directed to the officers and soldiers of the United States army. The ideas contained in that address, I of course like, for I furnished the skeleton. I never had the ability to clothe those ideas in language at all to satisfy myself ; and I was by no means satisfied with the style of that address, and do not know as I can give any correct idea of what I want. I will, however, try.
In the first place it must be short, or it will not be generally read. It must be in the simplest or plainest language, without the least affectation of the scholar about it, and yet be worded with great clearness, and power. The anonymous writer must (in the language of the Paddy) be " afther others, " and not " afther himself at all, at all." If the spirit that communicated Frank- lin's Poor Richard (or some other good spirit) would dictate, I think it would be quite as well employed as the " dear sister spirits " have been for some years past. The address should be appropriate, and particularly adapted to the peculiar circumstances we anticipate, and should look to the actual change of service from that of Satan to the service of God. It should be, in short, a most earnest and powerful appeal to men's sense of right and to their feelings of humanity. Soldiers are men, and no man can certainly calculate the value and importance of getting a single " nail into old Captain Kidd's chest." It should be provided before hand, and be ready in advance to distribute, by all persons, male and female, who may be disposed to favor the right.
I also want a similar short address, appropriate to the peculiar circumstances, intended for all persons, old and young, male and female, slave-holding and non slave holding, to be sent out broadcast over the entire nation. So by every male and female prisoner on being set at liberty, and to be read by them during confinement. I know that men will listen and reflect too, under such circumstances. Persons will hear your anti-slavery lectures and abolition lectures when they have become virtually slaves themselves. The impressions made on prisoners by kindness and plain dealing, instead of barbarous and cruel treat- ment, such as they might give, and instead of being slaughtered like wild rep- tiles, as they might very naturally expect, are not only powerful but lasting. Females are susceptible of being carried away entirely by the kindness of an
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