USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Torrington > History of Torrington, Connecticut, from its first settlement in 1737, with biographies and genealogies > Part 37
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intrepid and magnanimous soldier, even when his bare name was but a terror the day previous. I
Now, dear sir, I have told you about as well as I know how, what I am anxious at once to secure. Will you write the tracts, or get them written, so that I may commence ' Colporteur ?'
Very respectfully, your friend, JOHN BROWN.
P. S. If I should never see you again, please drop me a line (enclosed to Stephen Smith, Esq., Lombard St., Philadelphia), at once, saying what you will encourage me to expect. You are at liberty to make any prudent use of this to stir up any friend.
Yours for the right,
J. B.
Probably Brown was not aware how hard was the task imposed by these masterly directions in the art of writing. It does not appear that Parker, who was then overweighted with work, ever under- took to write the tracts desired, or that they were written by any one else. Only one such was ever printed. It may be worth mentioning, that Parker sent Brown from his library on this Sunday, the report of McClellan on the European armies, which was then a new book, and was thought likely to be of service to Brown. At the same time Brown praised Plutarch's Lives as a book he had read with great profit for its military and moral lessons, and particularly mentioned the life of Sertorius, the Roman commander who so long carried on a partisan warfare in Spain. He wished to get a few copies of Plu- tarch for his men to read in camp, and inquired particularly about the best edition.
Although Brown communicated freely to the persons above named his plans of attack and defence in Virginia, it is not known that he spoke to more than one person in Boston of his purpose of surpris- ing the arsenal and town of Harper's Ferry. Both Dr. Howe and Mr. Stearns testified before Mason's committee, in 1860, that they were ignorant of Brown's plan of attack ; which was true so far as the place and manner of beginning the campaign were concerned. It is probable that in 1858, Brown had not definitely resolved to
I A Kansas paper said in 1859 : " At the sacking of Osawatomie, one of the most bit- ter pro-slavery men in Lykins county was killed. His name was Ed. Timmons. Some- time afterwards, Brown stopped at the log-house where Timmons had lived. His widow and children were there, and in great destitution. He inquired into their wants, relieved their distresses, and supported them until their friends in Missouri, informed, through Brown, of the condition of Mrs. Timmons, had time to come to her and carry her to her former home. Mrs. Timmons fully appreciated the great kindness thus shown her, but never learned that Captain John Brown was her benefactor. "
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seize Harper's Ferry, since, when he spoke of it to the person referred to, he put it as a question, and did not seem to have made up his mind to a course of action so immediately hazardous. He then argued that it would strike great terror into the whole slaveholding class to find that an armed force had strength enough to capture a place so important and so near Washington ; and it was to inspire terror, rather than to possess himself of the arms there, that he then proposed to capture the arsenal. It is believed that Theodore Parker was aware of this half-formed plan of Brown's, but it was not communicated to his men until a year and a half later, or just before the attack was actually made. Charles Plummer Tidd, one of Brown's men, who escaped from Harper's Ferry, afterwards enlisted in a Massachusetts regiment under the name of Plummer, and died under Burnside in North Carolina, is authority for this statement. He told me that when Brown called his small company together in October, 1859, on the Maryland side of the Potomac, and disclosed to them his plan for the capture of the town, they all declared that it would be fatal to attempt it, and refused to take part in it ; even his own sons, except Owen, being unwilling to follow their father to what they said would be certain defeat and death. But Brown had now decided upon his course, and adhered to it inflexibly ; he would make the attack with a single man, if only one man would obey him. His sons, finding their father so determined, and know- ing how impossible it was to change his purpose, first gave in their adhesion ; they believed it to be a fatal scheme, but they would not desert him. Gradually all the others came round to the same opin- ion, and the attack was made with precisely the result that Brown's followers had predicted. It is probable that Tidd's statement was true in substance, if not literally.
On the departure of Brown from Boston in March, 1858, the five persons mentioned - Parker, Howe, Higginson, Sanborn and Stearns - formed themselves into a secret committee to raise for him the money (now set at $1,000) which it was agreed should be raised in New England. Each of the five was to raise $100, and as much more as he could, Dr. Howe having hopes of securing a larger subscription from his friend Mr. George R. Russell. Mr. Stearns was made treasurer of the committee, and the small sum judged necessary for beginning the enterprise was nearly made up, either in money or pledges, before the Ist of May, at which time Brown was on his way from Iowa to Ohio, with the arms that had been stored
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in Iowa, and with some of his men. He was to enlist others in Canada about May 8th, and to strike his first blow in the latter part of the same month. On the 28th of April, Brown was in Chicago ; on the 2d of May at Chatham, in Canada. But, meanwhile, a for- midable obstacle had appeared. Hugh Forbes interposed again, writing from Washington, and threatened to disclose the whole plan to the republican leaders, and even to the government.
In these letters of April and May, Forbes insisted that Brown's enterprise should stop, that Brown himself should be dismissed as the leader of the movement, and Forbes be put in his place ; and these demands were accompanied by a threat of making public the whole transaction, so far as it had gone. To increase the difficulties of the situation, Forbes had evidently learned, from some quarter, of the countenance given to Brown, since the Ist of March, by his Boston committee. On the 2d of May these letters were submitted to this committee, Howe, Parker, Sanborn and Stearns being present, and Higginson being informed of them by mail. Parker, Sanborn and Stearns at once said that the blow must be deferred till another year, and in this opinion Howe partially coincided. Higginson thought otherwise, and so did Brown, who declared that he would go for- ward, in spite of Forbes and his threats, if the money promised him should be furnished. Here, however, another difficulty sprang up. Forbes, early in May, carried out his threat so far as to inform Sen- ators Hale, Seward and Wilson, and Dr. Bailey, in general terms, of Brown's purposes, and Wilson wrote to Dr. Howe, earnestly pro- testing against any such demonstration. As the rifles which had been purchased by the Massachusetts Kansas committee and intrusted to Brown by them were still, so far as Senator Wilson and the public knew, the property of that committee (though really, as has been explained, the personal property of Mr. Stearns, the chairman), it would expose the Kansas committee, who were ignorant of Brown's later plans, to suspicions of bad faith, if those arms were used by him in any expedition to Virginia. This awkward complication seems to have decided Dr. Howe in favor of postponing the attack, and both he and Mr. Stearns, as members of the Kansas Committee, wrote to Brown that the arms must not be used for the present, except for the defence of Kansas. Brown saw that nothing further could then be done, and yielded, though with regret, to the postponement. About the 20th of May, Mr. Stearns met Brown in New York, and arranged that hereafter the custody of the Kansas rifles should he
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Brown's, as the agent of Stearns, the real owner, and not of the nominal owners, the Kansas committee. On the 24th of May, a meeting of the Boston secret committee, with one of the principal friends of Brown's plan outside of New England, Mr. Gerrit Smith - took place at the Revere House in Boston - Parker, Howe, Sanborn and Stearns being present, as before ; and it was agreed that the exe- cution of the plan should be postponed till the spring of 1859. I the meantime a larger sum of money - from two to three thousand dollars - was to be raised, and Brown was to throw Forbes off his track by returning to Kansas and engaging in the defence of the free- state men on the border. The alleged property of the Kansas com- mittee was to be so transferred as to relieve that committee of all responsibility, and the secret committee were, in future, to know nothing in detail of Brown's plans. Brown was not himself present at this Revere House meeting, but came to Boston the next week, and was at the American House May 31st. Here he met all the committee, Higginson included ; and, in the two or three days that he stayed, the Revere House arrangement was completed. He re- ceived the sole custody of the arms which had belonged to the Kan- sas committee, and five hundred dollars beside ; was to go to Kansas at once, but after that to use his own discretion ; and, though still believing the postponement unwise, he left New England in good spirits the first week in June.
He reached Kansas June 26th, with about ten men, and in a week or two after was on the border, near the scenes of the Marais des Cygnes murders of May 19th, which he has described in one of his later letters soon to be cited, but written after he had made his incur- sion into Missouri, six months afterwards, and brought off some fugitive slaves. In the summer he was occupied with the defence of Kansas once more, and with plans for his next year's campaign in Virginia.
On the 28th of June, he wrote me from Lawrence a short letter addressed to " F. B. Sanborn and Dear Friends at Boston, Worcester, and -," and containing this passage : " I reached Kansas with friends, on the 26th inst. ; came here last night, and leave here to- day for the neighborhood of late troubles. It seems the troubles are not over yet. ... I do hope you will be in earnest now to carry out, as soon as possible, the measure proposed in Mr. Sanborn's letter inviting me to Boston this last spring." (This was the raising of money for a campaign in Virginia in 1859, after the Kansas fighting
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had ended.) "I hope there will be no delay of that matter. Can you send me by express, care of E. B. Whitman, Esqr., half a dozen or a full dozen whistles, such as I described, at once ?" These whistles were for use in making signals among his men when in night attacks, or amid woody or mountainous regions in the day-time, and he had both spoken and written to me about them before. They were to be " such as are used by boatswains on ships of war ; " and Brown thought them of great service. "Every ten men ought to have one at least." He had also requested me to procure for him " some little articles as marks of distinction," - badges, medals, or the like - to be given to his men in token of good conduct. Hap- pening to be at Dr. Howe's house in South Boston one day in the spring of 1858, the doctor (who was a chevalier of the Greek Legion of Honor, for services rendered in the Greek Revolution of 1820-27), had shown me his cross of Malta and other decorations, given by the Legion to its members, and some of these seemed to me exactly what Brown would want. I therefore made rude sketches of them and showed these to Brown, who selected the Maltese cross and one or two other designs, as suitable for his badges, but I doubt if they were ever used for that purpose.
How well Brown looked after Kansas matters will be seen by the following letter, a very long one for the old soldier to write :
" MISSOURI LINE (ON KANSAS SIDE), 20th July, 1858.
F. B. SANBORN, ESQ., AND FRIENDS AT BOSTON AND WORCESTER : I am here with about ten of my men, located on the same quarter section where the terrible murders of the 19th May were committed, called the Hamilton or Trading Post murders. Deserted farms and dwellings lie in all directions for some miles along the line, and the remaining inhabitants watch every ap- pearance of persons moving about, with anxious jealousy and vigilance. Four of the persons wounded or attacked on that occasion are staying with me. The blacksmith Snyder, who fought the murderers, with his brorher aud son, are of the number. Old Mr. Hargrove, who was terribly wounded at the same time, is another. The blacksmith returned here with me, and intends to bring back his family on to his claim, within two or three days. A constant fear of new troubles seems to prevail on both sides the line, and on both sides are companies of armed men. Any little affair may open the quarrel afresh. Two murders and cases of robbery are reported of late. I have also a man with me who fled from his family and farm in Missouri but a day or two since, his life being threatened on account of being accused of informing Kansas men of the whereabouts of one of the murderers, who was lately taken and brought to this side. I have concealed the fact of my presence pretty much, lest it should tend to create excitement; but it is getting leaked out, and will soon be
48
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known to all. As I am not here to seek or secure revenge, I do not mean to be the first to reopen the quarrel. How soon it may be raised against me, I cannot say, nor am I over-anxious. A portion of my men are in other neigh- borhoods. We shall soon be in great want of a small amount in a draft or drafts on New York, to feed us. We cannot work for wages, and provisions are not easily obtained on the frontier.
I cannot refrain from quoting or rather referring to a notice of the terrible affair before alluded to, in an account found in the New York Tribune of May 3 Ist, dated at Westport, May 21st. The writer says : 'From one of the prisoners it was ascertained that a number of persons were stationed at Snyder's, a short distance from the Post, a house built in the gorge of two mounds, and flanked by rock walls, a fit place for robbers and murderers.' At a spring in a rocky ravine stands a very small open blacksmith's shop, made of thin slabs from a saw-mill. This is the only building that has ever been known to stand there, and in that article is called a ' fortification.' It is to-day just as it was the 19th May, - a little pent-up shop, containing Snyder's tools (what have not been carried off) all covered with rust,- and had never been thought of as a 'fortification ' before the poor man attempted in it his own and his brother's and son's defense. I give this as an illustration of the truthfulness of that whole account. It should be left to stand while it may last, and should be known hereafter as Fort Snyder.
I may continue here for some time. Mr. Russell and other friends at New Haven assured me before I left that, if the Lecompton abomination should pass through congress, something could be done there to relieve me from a diffi- culty I am in, and which they understand. Will not some of my Boston friends 'stir up their minds' in the matter ? I do believe they would be listened to.I
You may use this as you think best. Please let friends in New York and at North Elba 2 hear from me. I am not very stout, have much to think of and to do, and have but little time or chance for writing. The weather of late has been very hot. I will write you all when I can.
I believe all honest, sensible Free State men in Kansas consider George Wash- ington Brown's Herald of Freedom one of the most mischievous, traitorous publications in the whole country.
July 23d. Since the previous date, another free state Missourian has been over to see us, who reports great excitement on the other side of the line, and that the house of Mr. Bishop (the man who fled to us) was beset during the night after he left ; but, on finding he was not there, they left. Yesterday a pro-slavery man from West Point (Missouri) came over, professing that he wanted to buy Bishop's farm. I think he was a spy. He reported all quiet
I The allusion here is probably to Brown's contract with Charles Blair of Collinsville, the blacksmith who was to make the thousand pikes. Brown had engaged them in 1857, and had paid in that year five hundred and fifty of the thousand dollars which the pikes were to cost when finished. In 1858, Brown had not been able, for lack of money, to complete the payment, and was afraid his contract would be forfeited and the money already paid would be lost. He therefore communicated (as I suppose) the facts in the case to Mr. Russell, who was then the head of a military school at New Haven, and had some assur- ance from him of money to be raised in Connecticut to meet this Connecticut contract.
2 His wife and children.
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on the other side. At present, along this part of the line the free state men may be said in some sense to 'possess the field,' but we deem it wise to 'be on the alert' Whether Missouri people are more excited through fear than otherwise I am not yet prepared to judge. The blacksmith (Snyder) has got his family back ; also some others have returned, and a few new settlers are coming in. Those who fled or were driven off will pretty much lose the season. Since we came here, about twenty-five to thirty of Governor Den- ver's men have moved a little nearer to the line, I believe.
August 6th. Have been down with ague since last date, and had no safe way of getting off my letter. I had lain every night without shelter, suffering from cold rains and heavy dews, together with the oppressive heat of the days. A few days since, Governor Denver's officer then in command bravely moved his men on to the line, and on the next adjoining claim with us. Several of them immediately sought opportunity to tender their service to me secretly. I, how- ever, advised them to remain where they were. Soon after I came on the line, my right name was reported, but the majority did not credit the report.
I am getting better. You will know the true result of the election of the 2d inst., much sooner than I shall, probably. I am in no place for correct general information. May God bless you all.
Your friend, JOHN BROWN.
Inclose in envelope directed to Augustus Wattles, Moneka, Linn County, Kansas ; inside direct to S. Morgan."
Some of the incidents and allusions in the above letter need to be further explained. The " Hamilton murders " are better known in border story as the Marais des Cygnes Massacre, a tragedy which Whittier has celebrated in verse. Near the river named by the old French voyageurs of Louisiana "The Swan's Marsh " (Marais des Cygnes or du Cygne), in Southern Kansas, was a little settlement of northern farmers. As they were planting their fields and fencing them in May, 1858, an unprovoked assault was made on them by a party from Missouri, under the lead of three brothers named Hamilton, from Georgia ; five farmers were killed and five wounded. The murderers were not Missourians, but men from farther south, who had been in Kansas but were driven out in some of the contests of 1856-57. They marched over in an armed band from Missouri, gathered up their victims from the prairie farms and the lonely roads, or took them from their cabins, formed them into a line, and shot them down by a platoon discharge. Then the invaders gave out word that they meant to shoot all the free state settlers in Linn county in the same way. The farmers mustered for defense, in a band of two hundred, near the Missouri line, and detailed a company of mounted men to stand guard, or to ride up and down the line and keep watch of the Hamiltons and their band. When Brown reached
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the spot a month later, he put his own men on guard, and the settlers went back to their work. The governor of Kansas, Denver, also sent armed men, perhaps United States troops, to keep the peace, and it is to these that Brown alludes as having offered to serve under him. Brown went to the spot where the massacre took place, assuming the name of " Captain Morgan " for the occasion, fortified himself, and gave out that he was there to fight or be peaceable as the other side might choose; "they could make him as good a neighbor or as bad as they pleased." Gradually his secret came out and the terror of his name frightened the enemy away ; the Hamil- tons left the neighborhood, and the trouble there ceased. But Brown himself fell sick and was obliged to take shelter for a few weeks with his friend Wattles, at Moneka. I wrote to him early in July a letter which reached him there, and to which he replied as follows :
OSAWATOMIE, KANSAS, 10th September, 1858.
DEAR FRIEND, AND OTHER FRIENDS - Your kind and very welcome letter of the 11th July was received a long time since, but I was sick at the time, and have been ever since until now ; so that I did not even answer the letters of my own family, or any one else, before yesterday, when I began to try. I am very weak yet, but gaining well. All seems quiet now. I have been down about six weeks. As things now look I would say that, if you had not already sent forward those little articles,I do not do it. Before I was taken sick there seemed to be every prospect of some business very soon; and there is some now that requires doing ; but, under all the circumstances, I think not best to send them.
I have heard nothing direet from Forbes for months, but expeet to when I get to Lawrence. I have but fourteen regularly employed hands, the most of whom are now at common work, and some are sick. Much sickness prevails. How we travel may not be best to write. I have often met the 'notorious' Montgomery,2 and think very favorably of him.
It now looks as though but little business can be accomplished until we get our mill into operation. I am most anxious about that, and want you to name the earliest date possible, as near as you can learn, when you can have your matters gathered up. Do let me hear from you on this point (as soon as consist- ent), so that I may have some idea how to arrange my business. Dear friends, do be in earnest ; the harvest we shall reap, if we are only up and doing.
13th September, 1858. Yours of the 25th August, containing draft of Mr. S. for fifty dollars is received. I am most grateful for it, and to you for your kind letter. This would have been sooner mailed but for want of stamps and envelopes. I am gaining slowly, but hope to be on my legs soon. Have no further news.
Mailed, September 15th. Still weak.
Your friend.
1 The boatswain's whistles.
2 This was James Montgomery, one of the bravest partisans on the Kansas border, and during the civil war colonel of a black regiment in South Carolina.
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The money which I sent to Brown, as above acknowledged, was probably contributed by Gerrit Smith, who, first and last, gave Brown or sent him more than a thousand dollars. Most of the smaller sums which Brown received during the years 1858-59, I suppose, passed through my hands, while the larger sums were paid to him directly by Mr. Stearns or other contributors. Most of the correspondence on this Virginia business also went through my hands ; it being Brown's custom to write one letter to be read by the half dozen persons with whom he desired to communicate ; and this letter generally (by no means always) coming to me in the first instance. My custom was to show it to Mr. Parker and Dr. Howe, when they were at home, then to send it to Mr. Stearns, who sometimes forwarded it to Colonel Higginson or some more distant correspondent, and sometimes returned it to me. It appears that both the letters just quoted came back to me in October, 1858, and were by me forwarded to Higginson on the 13th of that month.
Colonel Higginson expressed the hope that the enterprise would not be deferred longer that the spring of 1859, and made some con- tribution to the fund, as also did Mr. Parker and the other members of the secret committee. No active movement to raise money was undertaken, however, until the winter and spring of 1859.
In December 1858, Brown wishing to show by experiment in Missouri what he could do in Virginia, crossed the border from Kan- sas with a few men, and brought away a party of slaves, with whom he traveled in January and February, 1859, from the border of southern Kansas, through Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan, to Detroit, where he arrived March 12th, and landed his fugitives safely in Canada. In the latter part of March, 1859, he was at Cleveland, where he sold publicly the horses he had brought from Missouri. While still in Kansas he wrote this striking letter for publication in the New York Tribune and other friendly newspapers :
JOHN BROWN'S PARALLELS.
TRADING POST, KANSAS, January, 1859.
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