Material related to Brown and Harpers Ferry is widely scattered in libraries, archives, museums, and other sites from New York to California. Over the years, many documents have been reproduced, sometimes in slightly different form. Whenever possible, I have quoted from the original handwritten sources. But in some instances, the citations below refer to transcriptions or copies, particularly those available in the wonderfully rich and accessible Clarence Gee Collection at the Hudson Library and Historical Society in Ohio.
Three other collections deserve special mention. The Oswald Garrison Villard papers at Columbia University are an almost bottomless trove. Particularly valuable are the interviews done by Villard’s intrepid researcher, Katherine Mayo, in the early 1900s. The Kansas State Historical Society is equally indispensable, and the best place to research the many players apart from Brown who figure in this story. The historical society also has one of the best online archives I came across in my research:
http://www.kansasmemory.org/
.
In West Virginia, Boyd Stutler, like Clarence Gee, was an indefatigable compiler of Brown material. The West Virginia State Archives has digitized most of Stutler’s collection, as well as his correspondence and articles over many decades. For the monomaniacal, there is no better place to lose oneself in every detail of Brown’s story, as Stutler did, than by browsing his
collection at
http://www.wvculture.org/HiStory/wvmemory/imlsintro.html
.
Manuscript Collections
Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson Papers
Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Ill.
John Brown Family Papers
Columbia Rare Book Library, Columbia University, New York, N.Y.
Oswald Garrison Villard John Brown Papers
The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, New York, N.Y.
Gilder Lehrman Collection
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Harpers Ferry, W.Va.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa.
Ferdinand J. Dreer Collection
Miscellaneous John Brown Papers
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Franklin Sanborn Papers
Hudson Library and Historical Society, Hudson, Ohio
Clarence Gee Collection
Jefferson County Museum, Charles Town, W.Va.
John Brown Collection
Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kans.
John Brown Collection
Adair Family Collection
Richard Hinton Papers
Ohio Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio
John Brown, Jr., Papers
Oliver Brown Papers
Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University, Atlanta, Ga.
John Brown Collection
Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.
Gerrit Smith Papers
State Library of Virginia, Richmond, Va.
John Brown’s Raid: Records and Resources
West Virginia State Archives, Charles Town, W.Va.
Boyd Stutler Collection
Abbreviations Used in the Notes
BPL: Boston Public Library
BSC: Boyd Stutler Collection, West Virginia State Archives
HFNHP: Harpers Ferry National Historical Park
HLHS: Hudson Library and Historical Society
HSP: Historical Society of Pennsylvania
KSHS: Kansas State Historical Society
OGV: Oswald Garrison Villard John Brown Papers
RWL: Robert W. Woodruff Library
Prologue: October 16, 1859
“Men, get on”: Osborne P. Anderson, “A Voice from Harper’s Ferry” (Boston: printed for the author, 1861), 31. See also Annie Brown Adams in Franklin Sanborn,
Recollections of Seventy Years
(Boston: The Gorham Press, 1909), 177–78. Some observations of landscape are taken from my own retracing of the route on the night of October 16, 2009, with Dennis Frye, the chief historian at the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.
“When in the course”: “A Declaration of Liberty,” H. W. Flournoy, ed.,
Calendar of Virginia State Papers,
vol. 9,
The John Brown Insurrection
(Richmond, Va., 1893), 275–79. Also see Richard Hinton,
John Brown and His Men
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1894; Michigan Historical Reprint Series, 2005), 637–43.
“Open the gate!”: testimony of Daniel Whelan, Jan. 6, 1860, Report of the Select Committee of the Senate Appointed to Inquire into the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property at Harper’s Ferry (“Mason Report”), 36th Cong., 1st Sess., 1860; BSC.
“I came here”: ibid.
“infidels”: Aaron Stevens to James Redpath, Dec. 17, 1859, KSHS, among other examples. Stevens told Redpath “all were infidels but three or four.” Brown’s son Oliver also wrote approvingly of “infidels,” which sometimes referred to those who had left their church over slavery (June 18, 1859, to wife Martha; HLHS).
“HOW WOULD”:
Baltimore American,
Nov. 14, 1859, citing the list first published in the
New York Express.
The first reference I can find to the “John Brown Raid” was in the
New York Herald,
Dec. 9, 1859, and this phrase appeared sporadically in 1860. But “John Brown’s Raid” didn’t become the norm until after the Civil War.
“I do not suppose”:
The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,
vol. 3 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1953), 181. Lincoln said this on Sept. 18, 1858, during his famous debates with Stephen Douglas.
“even if it rushes”: Jefferson Davis, Remarks to U.S. Senate, Dec. 8, 1859,
Congressional Globe,
36th Cong., vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.: John C. Rives, 1860), 69.
“In firing his gun”: Archibald Grimké,
William Lloyd Garrison: The Abolitionist
(New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1891), 367. For a discussion of Garrison and Brown, see Henry Mayer’s outstanding
All on Fire: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), particularly 494–505.
Chapter 1: School of Adversity
“for want of”: This and other statements by Owen Brown are quoted from Clarence S. Gee, “Owen Brown’s Autobiography,” HLHS. John Brown’s birthplace no longer stands, but a plaque marks the site on a small road near Torrington, Connecticut. For more on Owen Brown, tanning and shoemaking, and the Torrington
area at the time of Brown’s birth, see David Ross Bennett,
The John Brown Birthplace
(Westport, Conn.: Torrington Historical Society, 2002).
“I cannot tell you”: John Brown to Henry L. Stearns, July 15, 1857, in Oswald Garrison Villard,
John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), 1. For Henry Stearns’s account, see “Why John Brown Wrote the Letter to Me,” Oct. 26, 1902, BSC.
“I came with”: “Owen Brown’s Autobiography,” HLHS.
Brown on his early life: John Brown to Henry L. Stearns, July 15, 1857, in Villard,
John Brown,
2–5.
“worldly”: This and other Sabbath rules adopted in 1819 are in “Minutes of the First Congregational Church, Hudson, Ohio, 1802–1837,” 6–7, HLHS.
“did open his house”: “Records of the Congregational Church in Hudson,” 71, HLHS.
“the conversation”: James Foreman to James Redpath, Dec. 28, 1859, KSHS.
Stubborness, temper, and vanity: John Brown to Henry L. Stearns, July 15, 1857, in Villard,
John Brown
, 2–5.
“Species of”: Charles Pinckney, quoted in Walter A. McDougall,
Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New History, 1585–1928
(New York: Harper-Collins, 2004), 317.
“This momentous question”: Thomas Jefferson to John Holmes, April 22, 1820, Library of Congress.
“
Eternal war
”: John Brown to Henry L. Stearns, July 15, 1857, in Villard,
John Brown
, 4.
“Some Persons”: “Owen Brown’s Autobiography,” HLHS.
“used to hang about”: John Brown to Henry L. Stearns, July 15, 1857, in Villard,
John Brown
, 2.
“An inspired paternal ruler”: George B. Delameter, undated manuscript, OGV. For more on Brown in Pennsylvania, see “John Brown Pennsylvania Citizen,” by Ernest Miller (Warren, Pa.: Penn State Press, 1952).
Brown and corporal punishment: Salmon Brown on Jason Brown, BSC; interview with Jason Brown, in OGV; Salmon Brown, “My Father, John Brown,” in
The Outlook
, Jan. 25, 1913; Lou V. Chapin, “The Last Days of Old John Brown,”
Overland Monthly,
April 1899; and James Foreman to James Redpath, Dec. 28, 1859, KSHS.
“little folks”: John Brown to Mary Ann Brown, Nov. 26, 1838, BSC.
“strangeness”: Louis DeCaro, Jr.,
“Fire from the Midst of You”
(New York: New York University Press, 2002), 69, 300. See also Robert McGlone,
John Brown’s War Against Slavery
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 162–63.
“a difficulty about her heart”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, Aug. 13, 1832, RWL.
“with instruments”: John Brown to Owen Brown, Aug. 11, 1832, HLHS.
“great bodily pain”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, Aug. 13, 1832, RWL.
“Farewell Earth”: interview with Jason Brown, OGV. Also see “Monument Inscriptions,” HLHS.
“I have been growing numb” and “Getting more & more unfit”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, Aug. 13, 1832, RWL.
For more on Brown’s proposal to Mary Day, see interview with Sarah Brown, OGV.
“Remedy for”:
Ohio Cultivator,
April 15, 1846, BSC.
“In summer”: John Brown Memorandum Books, BPL.
“I am running”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, January 6, 1828, RWL.
“I was unable”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, Nov. 3, 1832, RWL.
“I have been”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, March 1, 1834, RWL.
“I have aroused”: John Brown to Owen Brown, June 12, 1830, HLHS. See also Boyd Stutler, “John Brown and the Masonic Order,” BSC.
Chapter 2: I Consecrate My Life
Nat Turner quotes: Kenneth Greenberg, ed.,
The Confessions of Nat Turner and Related Documents
(Boston: Bedford Books, 1996), 38–57. See also my own “Untrue Confessions,”
The New Yorker,
Dec. 13, 1999.
“Tell a man”: Henry Mayer,
All on Fire,
112. Also, the free black activist David Walker published his fiery “Appeal” in 1829, calling on blacks to violently overthrow their masters.
“with the express”: Governor John Floyd, quoted in Greenberg,
Confessions of Nat Turner,
107.
“I take higher ground”: John C. Calhoun, “Speech on Slavery,” U.S. Senate,
Congressional Globe,
24th Cong., 2nd Sess. (Feb. 6, 1837), 157–59. On George Fitzhugh, see C. Vann Woodward’s introductory essay in 1959 to
Cannibals All! or, Slaves Without Masters,
online at
http://www.ditext.com/woodward/fitzhugh.html
. See also Paul Finkelman, ed.,
Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South
(New York: Bedford/St. Martins, 2003).
“The first step”: Mayer,
All on Fire,
218.
“I have been trying”: John Brown to Frederick Brown, Nov. 21, 1834, BSC.
“non-resistant”: Archibald Grimké,
William Lloyd Garrison
, 367.
“I deny the right”: Mayer,
All on Fire,
121.
“all on fire”: ibid., 119–20. In full: “I have need to be
all on fire,
for I have mountains of ice about me to melt.”
“Total with”: ibid., 50.
“resist not evil”: Matthew 5:38–39.
“Here before God”: Edward Brown, in Louis Ruchames, ed.,
A John Brown Reader
(London: Abelard-Schuman, 1959), 189. For another account of the meeting, see Lora Case,
Hudson of Long Ago
(Hudson, Ohio: The Hudson Library and Historical Society, 1963), 53–54.
“He asked”: Franklin Sanborn, ed.,
The Life and Letters of John Brown
(Boston: Roberts Bros., 1891), 39, 138.
“dead to the world”: Salmon Brown, “My Father, John Brown,” in
The Outlook,
Jan. 25, 1913.
“held firmly”: ibid.
“There was”: John Brown, Jr., quoted in Oswald Villard,
John Brown,
45–46.
“The sword”: Judges 6–8.
“I do think”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, Dec. 30, 1836, RWL.
“The prospect”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, July 10, 1839, RWL.
“flat down”: John Brown to Seth Thompson, July 21, 1840, RWL.
Ohio bankruptcy details: “Bankruptcy Inventory,” BSC. Brown was named in more than twenty lawsuits in the Portage County, Ohio, Court of Common Pleas between 1820 and 1845, mostly for unpaid debts (Villard,
John Brown,
36–37).
“abandon anything”: James Foreman to James Redpath, Dec. 28, 1859, KSHS.
“Unworthily”: John Brown to George Kellog, Aug. 27, 1839, HLHS.
“many faults”: John Brown to family, Dec. 5, 1838, BSC.
“the sharer of my poverty”: John Brown to Mary Brown, March 7, 1844, BSC.
John Brown on children’s deaths: John Brown to John Brown, Jr., Sept. 25, 1843, HLHS. In his diary, Brown sketched the floor plan of one of his family’s many dwellings; he included a chamber labeled “sick room.” Memorandum Books, BPL.
“a calamity”: Salmon Brown, “My Father, John Brown.”
“I felt”: John Brown to Franklin Sanborn, Feb. 24, 1858, in Sanborn,
The Life and Letters,
444.