After the work of Sanborn, Hinton, Connelley, and Redpath, the only excuse for another life of John Brown is an opportunity to lay new emphasis upon the material which they have so carefully collected, and to treat these facts from a different point of view. The view-point adopted in this book is that of the little known but vastly important inner development of the Negro American. John Brown worked not simply for Black Men—he worked with them; and he was a companion of their daily life, knew th

“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, ‘Out of Egypt have I called My son.’” The mystic spell of Africa is and ever was over all America. It has guided her hardest work, inspired her finest literature, and sung her sweetest songs. Her greatest destiny—unsensed and despised though it be,—is to give back to the first of continents the gifts which Africa of old gave to America’s fathers’ fathers. Of all inspiration which America owes to Africa, however, the

“There was a man called of God and his name was John.” A tall big boy of twelve or fifteen, “barefoot and bareheaded, with buckskin breeches, suspended often with one leather strap over his shoulder” [3] roamed in the forests of northern Ohio. He remembered the days of his coming to the strange wild land—the lowing oxen, the great white wagon that wandered from Connecticut to Pennsylvania and over the swelling hills and mountains, where the wide-eyed urchin of five sat staring at the new world o

“Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” In 1819 a tall, sedate, dignified young man named John Brown was entered among the students of the Rev. Moses Hallock at Plainfield, Mass., where men were prepared for Amherst College. He was beginning his years of wandering—spiritual searching for the way of life, physical wandering in the wilderness where he must earn his living. In after years he wrote

“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. “And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid.” The vastest physical fact in the life of John Brown was the Alleghany Mountains—that beautiful mass of hill and crag which guards the sombre majesty of the Maine coast, crumples the rivers on the rocky soil of New England, and rolls and leaps down through busy Penn

“Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.” There was hell in Hayti in the red waning of the eighteenth century, in the days when John Brown was born. The dark wave of the French Revolution had raised the brilliant sinister Napoleon to its crest. Already he had stretched greedy arms toward American empire in the rich vale of the Mississippi, when in a flash, out of the dirt and sloth and slavery of the West Indies, the black inert and heavy cloud of African degradation writhed to sudde

“Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” Just three hundred years before John Brown pledged his family to warfare against slavery, a black man stood on the plains of the Southwest looking toward Kansas. It was the Negro Steven, once slave of Dorantes, now leader and interpreter of the Fray Marcos explorers, and the first man of the Old World to look upon the great Southwest, if not upon Kansas itself. Whi

“And his fellow answered and said, This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hands hath God delivered Midian, and all the host.” “Did you go out under the auspices of the Emigrant Aid Society?” asked the Inquisition of John Brown in after years. He answered grimly: “No, sir, I went out under the auspices of John Brown.” In broad outline the story of his coming to Kansas has been told in the last chapter, but the picture needs now to be filled i

“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” “Sir, the angel of the Lord will camp round about me,” said John Brown with stern eyes when the timid foretold his doom. [137] With a steadfast almost superstitious faith in his divine mission, the old man had walked unscathed out of Kansas in the fall of 1856, two years and a half before the slave raid into Missouri related in th

“Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion.” The decade 1830 to 1840 was one of the severest seasons of trial through which the black American ever passed. The great economic change which made slavery the corner-stone of the cotton kingdom was definitely finished and all the subtle moral adjustments which follow were in full action. New immigrants took advantage of the growing prejudice which found a profitable place for the Negro in slavery, and was determined to keep him in it. They began to c

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because of the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; He hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” Half-way between Maine and Florida, in the Heart of the Alleghanies, a mighty gateway lifts its head and discloses a scene which, a century and a a quarter ago, Thomas Jefferson said was “worth a voyage across the Atlantic.” He continues: “You st

“At eight o’clock on Sunday evening, Captain Brown said: ‘Men, get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry.’ His horse and wagon were brought out before the door, and some pikes, a sledge-hammer and a crowbar were placed in it. The captain then put on his old Kansas cap, and said: ‘Come, boys!’ when we marched out of the camp behind him, into the lane leading down the hill to the main road.” [232] The orders given commanded Owen Brown, Merriam and Barclay Coppoc to watch the house and arms un

“Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” The deed was done. The next day the world knew and the world sat in puzzled amazement. It was ever so and ever will be. When a prophet like John Brown appears, how must we of the world receive him? Must we follow out t

“Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” “I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.” These were the last written words of John Brown, set down the day he died—the culminating of that wonderful message of his

For the general reader the following works are indispensable : Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin. The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia. 1885. (The most complete collection of John Brown letters.) Hinton, Richard Josiah. John Brown and His Men, with some account of the roads they traveled to reach Harper’s Ferry. 1894. (Valuable for its treatment of Kansas and its lives of Brown’s companions.) Redpath, James. Public Life of Captain John Brown, with autobiograph