by Tony Horwitz
“I sometimes”: John Brown to Owen Brown, Dec. 10, 1846, in Franklin Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, 22. Also see John Brown to John Brown, Jr., May 23, 1845: “I hope that entire leanness of soul may not attend any little success in business,” HLHS.
Douglass descriptions: Frederick Douglass, Autobiographies (New York: Library of America, 1994), 715–16.
“for the emancipation”: Douglass, Autobiographies, 717–18.
“Though a white gentleman”: Stephen Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of John Brown (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 1984), 63.
“purity”: See Graham’s Lectures on Chastity (Glasgow: Royalty Buildings, 1900). Graham’s beliefs were the origin of the now familiar Graham cracker.
“There are yet two places”: Henry H. Garnet to Frederick Douglass, North Star, (Rochester, N.Y.), Dec. 8, 1848.
On Brown’s surveying work in western Virginia, see Boyd Stutler, “John Brown and the Oberlin Lands,” West Virginia History, vol. 12, April 1951.
“I can think”: John Brown to Owen Brown, Jan. 10, 1849, KSHS.
Dana recollections: Richard Henry Dana, Jr., “How We Met John Brown,” The Atlantic Monthly, July 1871, 1–9.
“if lost”: John Brown to John Brown, Jr., Nov. 4, 1850, in Sanborn, The Life and Letters, 75.
“follies”: John Brown to Mary Brown, March 7, 1844, BSC.
“verry considerable … sometimes chide”: ibid.
“rather an invalid”: Dana, “How We Met John Brown,” 5.
“she must do something”: John Brown, Jr., to John Brown, Sept. 18, 1849, Houghton Library.
“a Scrofulous humor”: ibid.
“never believed”: Mary Brown to John Brown, Jr., Sept. 25, 1849, Ohio Historical Society.
“plunge, douche”: Ruggles advertisement, 1847, in North Star, HLHS. See also DeCaro, “Fire from the Midst of You,” 182–85.
“If you can send me” and “I went to hear”: Mary Brown to John Brown, Jr., Nov. 8, 1849, BSC.
“It is an existing”: Henry Mayer, All on Fire, 403.
“The workingmen”: Emory Holloway, ed., The Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Walt Whitman, vol. 1 (New York: Doubleday, 1921), 172.
“It now seems”: John Brown to Mary Brown, Nov. 28, 1850, in Sanborn, The Life and Letters, 106–7.
the United States League of Gileadites: “Words of Advice,” in Hinton, John Brown and His Men, 585–88.
“Let the first blow”: ibid.
“Cuba must be … a basin of water”: Jefferson Davis, May 5, 1848, Congressional Globe, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., 599.
“I want these countries”: Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (Peru, Ill.: Open Court Publishing, 1996), 96.
“doughfaces”: This phrase is believed to have arisen at the time of the Missouri Compromise and came to refer to Northerners who held southern principles.
“Slavery”: Horace Greeley in the New York Tribune, Jan. 11, 1854.
“forever prohibited”: Missouri Compromise (1820). Full text at http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.
“I could travel”: William McFeely, Frederick Douglass (New York: Norton, 1995), 188.
“My thoughts are murder”: Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau (New York: Dover, 1962), entry for June 16, 1854.
“a covenant”: William Lloyd Garrison, The Liberator, July 7, 1854. Also see Mayer, All on Fire, 445.
“atrocious plot”: National Era (Washington, D.C.), Jan. 24, 1854.
“grasping, skin-flint”: Virgil Dean, ed., Kansas Territorial Reader (Topeka: Kansas State Historical Society, 2005), 224.
“Pukes”: Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in Missouri During the American Civil War (New York: Oxford, 1990), 13, 271. Fellman suggests the name might be related to the malarial bottomlands of Missouri. For a classic characterization of Pukes, see William Phillips, The Conquest of Kansas (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1856), 28–29.
“disposed to go”: John Brown to John Brown, Jr., Aug. 21, 1854, OGV.
“If I were not”: ibid.
“more likely to benefit”: John Brown to his children, Sept. 30, 1843, HLHS.
“Every Slaveholding State”: John Brown, Jr., to John Brown, May 20, 24, 1855, HSP.
“exhibit”: ibid.
“We need them more”: ibid.
“Every day strengthens”: John Brown, Jr., to John Brown, May 5, 1855, Houghton Library.
“He has something”: Owen Brown to S. L. Adair and family, Aug. 8, 1855, KSHS.
Chapter 4: First Blood
“I certainly” and other descriptions of Kansas beauty: Wealthy Brown to Ruth Brown, June 12, 1855, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
“The prairies”: John Brown, Jr., to John Brown, June 22, 1855, KSHS.
“shivering”: Oswald Villard, John Brown, 88.
“we were all”: John Brown to Mary Brown, Oct. 13, 1855, KSHS.
“thinking it would afford”: John Brown, “brief history of John Brown otherwise (old B) & his family: as connected with Kansas,” HSP.
“I think, could I hope”: John Brown to his family, Sept. 4, 1855, KSHS.
“You are all”: John Brown to Mary Brown and his children, Oct. 13, 1855, KSHS.
“We will continue”: General Stringfellow, “Squatter Sovereign,” August 28, 1855, in Villard, John Brown, 93.
“Guns, Revolvers”: John Brown to family, Aug. 15, 1855, HLHS.
“Hearing that trouble”: John Brown to Owen Brown, Oct. 19, 1855, HLHS.
“shanties”: John Brown to Mary Brown, Nov. 30, 1855, BSC.
“silently suffered us to pass”: John Brown letter in Akron Beacon-Journal, Dec. 20, 1855, in Louis Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, 97–101.
“Our men have so much”: Wealthy Brown to Mary Brown, January 6, 1856, in Villard, John Brown, 127.
“to live rather slim”: Oliver Brown to family, Jan. 6, 1856, Ohio Historical Society.
“we got on”: Mary Brown to John Brown, May 20, 1856, Ohio Historical Society.
“Father seems”: Wealthy Brown to Owen Brown, March 19, 1856, HLHS.
“Should that take”: John Brown to family, Feb. 1, 1856, KSHS.
Pierce quotations: Nicole Etcheson, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 2004), 91, and Pierce, “State of the Union,” December 31, 1855, at http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3730.
“Hellish enactments”: John Brown to Joshua Giddings, Feb. 20, 1856, in Villard, John Brown, 131.
“I have no desire”: John Brown to family, April 7, 1856, KSHS.
“Matters”: John Brown to Samuel Adair, April 22, 1856, HLHS.
Buford quotes: “The Buford Expedition to Kansas,” Walter Fleming, The American Historical Review, October 1900, 38–48.
“We are constantly”: Florella Adair to family, May 16, 1856, OGV.
“law-abiding”: I. B. Donaldson, “Proclamation,” in Villard, John Brown, 143.
“Draw your revolvers”: David Atchison, “Speech to Pro-Slavery ‘Soldiers,’” May 21, 1856, KSHS.
“Now something”: interview with Jason Brown, OGV.
“commit”: Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood, 129.
“There was a signal”: interview with Owen Brown, Feb. 27, 1880, Houghton Library.
Charles Sumner quotations: Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., May 19, 1856.
“a libel on”: “Isaac Bassett: A Senate Memoir,” U.S. Senate website: http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/art/special/Bassett/tdetail.cfm?id=17.
“lashed into submission”: Richmond Enquirer, quoted in Mary Norton et al., eds., A People and a Nation, vol. 1 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 370.
“The men went”: interview with Salmon Brown, OGV.
“Northern army”: “Report of the Special Committee Appointed to Investigate the Troubles in Kansas,” House Report No. 200, 34th Cong. (Washington, D.C.: Co
rnelius Wendell, 1856), 1193–99. The report includes affidavits by the families attacked that night.
“My husband”: ibid., 1793.
“An old man”: ibid., 1195.
“I want you to tell me the way”: ibid., 1198.
“You are our prisoner”: ibid.
“You have neighbors?” ibid.
“His fingers”: ibid., 1195.
“Sherman’s skull”: ibid., 1197.
“tenderfoot”: interview with Salmon Brown, OGV.
Jason Brown confronting John: Jason Brown statement to F. G. Adams, April 2, 1884, OGV; also see Jason Brown, letter to Lawrence (Kansas) Journal, Feb. 8, 1880, OGV.
“Father never”: interview with Salmon Brown, OGV.
“old man Doyle”: Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, 202.
“For what purpose”: Salmon Brown to William Connelley, Nov. 6, 1913, BSC. He spoke of this also in a letter to Franklin Sanborn, Nov. 17, 1911, BSC. See also interview with Salmon Brown, OGV.
“death for death,” and “restraining fear”: John Brown, Jr., to Cleveland Leader, Nov. 29, 1883. Also see “John Brown of Osawatomie; A History, Not an Apology,” HLHS.
“I left for fear”: Report of the Special Committee, 1198.
“taken from their beds”: Samuel Adair to brother and sister, May 23, 1856, OGV.
“I never lie down”: William Stanley Hoole, ed., “A Southerner’s Viewpoint of the Kansas Situation, 1856–1857: The Letters of Lieutenant Col. A. J. Hoole, C.S.A.,” Kansas Historical Quarterly, Feb. 1934, 43–56.
“LET SLIP THE DOGS”: Border Times (Westport, Missouri), May 27, 1856, in Villard, John Brown, 189.
“He wanted”: interview with Salmon Brown, OGV.
“thought it”: interview with Owen Brown, June 27, 1880, Houghton Library.
“felt terribly”: Salmon Brown to William Connelley, May 28, 1913, BSC.
“When I came”: Villard, John Brown, 165.
“spells”: Annie Brown to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Nov. 29, 1859, BPL.
“subjected himself to the most dreadful”: John Brown, “brief history of John Brown,” HSP.
“the most terrible shock”: Jason Brown in Sanborn, The Life and Letters, 273, and 1880 statement in OGV.
“he became quite insane”: John Brown to family, June 1856, Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, 103.
“You cannot easily imagine”: Rev. Adair to “Dear Bro. & Sis. Hand,” May 23, 1856, OGV. Feeling badly exposed, the Adairs also came to resent John’s handling of money sent from Ohio. “One letter from father stated ‘I wish to have Adairs folks have a share,‘” Florella Adair wrote, “but he seemed to need it all & took it” (Florella Adair to “Dear Brother & Sister,” Nov. 9, 1856, HLHS).
Redpath quotations: James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston: Thayer and Eldridge, 1860), 106–7.
“I went to take”: Clay Pate, “John Brown as Viewed by Clay Pate,” BSC.
“He is not”: William Phillips, The Conquest of Kansas, 332.
For the details of the Browns’ diet, see Bondi File, OGV. Also, see Salmon Brown, “After the Battle of Black Jack,” BSC, and Salmon Brown to William Connelley, May 28, 1913, BSC.
“We have”: John Brown to family, June 1856, in Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, 104.
For details on the chaos of Kansas, see Nicole Etcheson’s Bleeding Kansas. Etcheson’s book is the best study of the conflict. She quotes a territorial governor saying of his job, “You might as well attempt to govern the devil in hell” (131).
“This has proven”: John Brown, Jr., to father and brother, Sept. 8, 1856, KSHS.
“God sees it”: interview with Jason Brown, OGV. The code phrase “into Africa” may have derived from the South’s large black population. But in “A Footnote to John Brown’s Raid” (Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, vol. 67, Oct. 1859, pp. 396–98), Phil Milhous points out another possible source. Brown’s reading included a popular work of ancient history by Charles Rollin, which tells of the Sicilian warrior Agathocles, who devised a daring plan to “make Africa the seat of war” by besieging Carthage. He set off with only fifty men and two of his sons, telling them “the only way to free their country, was to carry the war into the territories of their enemies,” and, further, that the oppressed natives “would run in crowds to join them on the first news of their arrival; that the boldness of their attempt would alone disconcert the Carthaginians, who had no expectation of seeing an enemy at their gates.” This sounds very much like what Brown intended.
Chapter 5: Secret Service
“Captain Brown of Osawatomie”: This is how Sanborn introduced him in Massachusetts. Stephen Oates, To Purge This Land with Blood, 195. See also Franklin Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, 374.
“You need not”: John Brown to wife and children, Oct. 11, 1856, BSC.
“death was”: Owen Brown to John Brown, March 27, 1856, KSHS.
“Your unfaithful Parent”: ibid.
“to witness”: John Brown to Owen Brown, March 26, 1856, HLHS.
“errand”: John Brown Speaking Notes, March 1857, KSHS.
“There is a divining”: Franklin Sanborn, Recollections of Seventy Years, vol. 1 (Boston: Richard G. Badger, 1909), 83. Sanborn later proposed to Emerson’s daughter and was refused. For more on Sanborn and his role as gatekeeper of Brown’s memory, see R. Blakeslee Gilpin, John Brown Still Lives! (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).
“He did not”: Sanborn, Recollections, 112.
“pent-up fire”: ibid.
“suppressed yet metallic” and other Alcott comments: Odell Shepard, ed., The Journals of Bronson Alcott (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1938), 316.
“I should hate”: Walter Muir Whitehill, “John Brown of Osawatomie in Boston, 1857,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. 69, 263–64.
“moral magnetism”: Mary Stearns to Franklin Sanborn, April 1885, in Sanborn, The Life and Letters, 510.
“it suddenly seemed”: ibid.
“John Brown”: Sanborn, The Life and Letters, 381.
“Minute Men”: John Brown to Heman Humphrey, April 18, 1857, HLHS.
For John Brown’s fund-raising pitch, see John Brown Speaking Notes, March 1857, KSHS.
“I have no other income”: John Brown to Amos Lawrence, March 19, 1857, in Oswald Villard, John Brown, 280.
“I fully sympathize” and other apologetic quotes: John Brown to Mary Brown, Nov. 2, 1855, Nov. 23, 1855, KSHS.
“to learn, & practice”: John Brown, quoting from Mary’s letter in his reply to her, March 31, 1857, BSC.