John Brown, Soldier of Fortune: A Critique. Hill Peebles Wilson

and terms of payment. His experience with the Oberlin College people in relation to the Virginia lands, heretofore referred to, was probably of service to him in this transaction with Smith. The tracts which he selected were at Timbuctoo, or North Elba, and in the spring of 1849 he located his family upon the land; but in March, 1851, moved back to Akron. Brown himself did not go to North Elba to live. His time was taken up in liquidating the tangled affairs of Perkins and Brown, and with the extensive litigation involved in the settlement of them.

      Litigation seems to have been a constant and conspicuous feature of Brown's commercial life. Mr. Villard says[38] that "on the records of the Portage County Court of Common Pleas are no less than twenty-one lawsuits in which John Brown figured as defendant during the years 1820 to 1845. Of these, thirteen were actions brought to recover money loaned on promissory notes either to Brown singly or in company with others. The remaining suits were mostly claims for wages, or payments due, or for nonfulfillment of contracts. … In ten other cases he was successfully sued and judgments were obtained against him individually or jointly with others. In three cases those who sued him were non-suited as being without real cause for action, and two other cases were settled out of court. Four cases Brown won, among them being a suit for damages for false arrest and assault and battery, brought by an alleged horse thief, because Brown, and other citizens, had aided a constable in arresting him. A number of these suits grew out of Brown's failure in his real estate speculations. A serious litigation was an action brought by the Bank of Wooster to recover on a Bill of Exchange, drawn by Brown and others, on the Leather Manufacturers Bank of New York, and repudiated by that institution on the ground that Brown and his associates had no money in the bank. During the suit the amount claimed was rapidly reduced, and when the judgment was rendered against him it was for $917.65. … In 1845 Daniel C. Gaylord, who several times had sued Brown, succeeded in compelling him and his associates to convey to him certain Franklin lands, which they had contracted to sell, but the title for which they refused to convey. The court upheld Gaylord's claim. The only case in which Brown figured as plaintiff was settled out of court." This is consistently a bad record.

      The year 1854 brought the settlement of Kansas to the front and the wrecked and practically penniless Browns decided to emigrate to the new Territory. Not with the "ax and gun" went they, as will be seen, but with the ax, and with the hope of bettering their condition. The necessity for the gun was developed later—in 1855—and by the Free-State men who had preceded the Browns into the Territory.

      It seems the family planned to establish a little colony or group of farms—"Brownsville"—and that while the sons were to be engaged in opening up the farms, the father would try to earn some money in surveying, which would be a very grateful and necessary assistance to them while struggling with the many discouraging incidents which usually befell the impecunious preëmptor. That such were their conclusions appears from a letter which Brown wrote February 13, 1855, to Mr. John W. Cook, of Wolcottville, Connecticut. He said:[39] "Since I saw you I have undertaken to direct the operations of a Surveying & exploring party, to be employed in Kansas for a considerable time perhaps for some Two or Three years; & I lack for time to make all my arrangements, and get on the ground in season." In pursuance of his intention to move to Kansas, he relocated with his family on the North Elba farm.

      

      This review of Brown's career discloses a life spent, thus far, in a series of strenuous struggles with various problems, covering a wide range in the field of commercial activity. All his efforts had ended in disappointment and failure. The removal to North Elba marks his retirement, in defeat, from the world of trade, and finds him, as the result of his failures, living with his dependent family upon a small tract of mountain land, of little value, that had been given to him as a condition of his settlement thereon. They had "moved into an unplastered four-room house, the rudest kind of a pioneer home, built for him by his son-in-law, Henry Thompson, who had married his daughter Ruth."[40]

      What Brown's religious belief was is problematical. He was a student of the Bible, and, as he said, "possessed a most unusual memory of its entire contents." The Book, as a whole, was his creed, and upon its teachings he placed his personal interpretations. He spoke and wrote, when he so desired, in its phraseology; and by this distinction, in contradiction of the character of his actions, he gained a reputation for being a Christian. He may have been a Presbyterian, as has been said; or he may have been a Methodist, as has also been stated; and there is equal authority for the statement that he belonged to the Congregational church; but, it would seem that if he had been a consistent member of any of these churches, his historic name would have been proudly borne upon the rolls of membership, in the congregations to which he belonged; and the fact of his membership therein clearly established. It would further seem that he would have stated the fact of such membership in connection with what he did say, in 1857, in relation to his religious experience. It appears however, that while assuming to believe firmly in the divine authenticity of the Bible, he had become only to "some extent a convert to Christianity." There is no evidence that he ever attended public worship in Kansas, or at any place during the latter years of his life, or that he engaged in prayer. Also, it would seem, that if he had been "a student at Morris Academy" in either 1816 or 1819, as a preparation for college—Amherst—with an ultimate purpose so creditable as "entering the ministry," he would have referred to the fact, incidentally at least, in his Autobiography, which treats specifically of his education.[41]

      The Rev. H. D. King of Kinsman, Ohio, met Brown frequently at Tabor, Iowa, during August and September, 1857. He probably regarded him as an infidel, but did not wish to say so. "He was rather skeptical, I think," he said; "not an infidel, but not bound by creeds. He was somewhat cranky on the subject of the Bible as he was on that of killing people."[42] In the last letter which Brown wrote to his family, November 30, 1859, two days before his execution, he said:[43]

      I must yet insert the reason for my firm belief in the Bible, notwithstanding I am, perhaps, naturally skeptical—certainly not credulous. … It is the purity of heart, filling our minds as well as work and actions, which is everywhere insisted on, that distinguishes it from all other teachings, that commends it to my conscience. …

      The late Mr. George B. Gill of Kansas, who was a member of Brown's cabinet—secretary of the treasury—said of him: "He was very human. The angel wing's were so dim and shadowy as to be almost unseen."

      Brown's younger sons were infidels. They had "discovered the Bible to be all fiction."[44] To the Sabbath day and its sanctity, he was indifferent. In violation of the stricter conventions, which prevailed at that time, concerning the observance of it as "Holy unto the Lord," he committed the principal crimes incident to his career, wholly or in part, on the Sabbath. A part of the murders and thefts on the Pottawatomie were committed on Sunday morning, May 25, 1856. Returning to Kansas from Nebraska City (August 9th and 10th) half the journey was made on Sunday, August 10th. "On August 24," 1856 (Sunday), "the Brown and Cline companies set out for the South, marching eight miles and camping on Sugar Creek."[45] Sunday night, October 16, 1859, was the time fixed for the insurrection of the slaves to occur, and on that night, in pursuance of his plans, he occupied Harper's Ferry.

      Brown was averse to military operations, and military affairs. He refused to drill with the local militia, paying the fines instead, which were imposed by law for such delinquencies. In political matters he affiliated with the Abolitionists, or with those of the party who were "non-resistants."[46]

      The statements which have been put forth in support of the assumption that Brown's life was a devotion to the Anti-Slavery cause—a series of abnormal activities in opposition to slavery—are not confirmed, nor can they be justified by any contemporaneous evidence. For notwithstanding the persistent, if not offensive, insistence of his biographers to the contrary; and the pages without number which have been written in support of such insistence, the record of his life is practically barren in relation to the subject. There is not a scrap of concurrent evidence which, even remotely, suggests that prior to 1855 he might have taken more than a most ordinary interest in securing freedom for the slaves. Even in his letter of that year to Mr. John W. Cook (note 40), informing him of his intention to go to Kansas, and of his motive for going thereto, he made no reference to the subject whatever. A statement of everything which Brown did, or that he attempted to do up to that year, in opposition to slavery,