The widow of the late Major George L. Stearns gives the following personal recollections of John Brown, in a bright and entertaining style. Mrs. Stearns's noble husband was very intimately related to the "old hero," and what Mrs. Stearns writes is of great value.
"The passage of the Fugitive-Slave Bill in 1850, followed by the virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise, under the name of the Kansas Nebraska Act, in 1854, alarmed all sane people for the safety of republican institutions; and the excitement reached a white heat when, on the 22d of May, 1856, Charles Sumner was murderously assaulted in the Senate chamber by Preston S. Brooks, of South Carolina, for words spoken in debate: the celebrated speech of the 19th and 20th of May, known as 'The Crime Against Kansas.' That same week the town of Lawrence in the territory of Kansas was sacked and burned in the interest of the slave power. The atrocities committed by the 'Border Ruffians' upon the free-State settlers sent a thrill of terror through all law-abiding communities. In Boston the citizens gathered in Faneuil Hall to consider what could be done, and a committee was chosen, with Dr. S. G. Howe as chairman, for the relief of Kansas, called the 'Kansas Relief Committee.' After some $18,000 or $20,000 had been collected, chiefly in Boston, and forwarded to Kansas, the interest flagged, and Mr. Stearns, who had been working with that committee, saw the need of more energetic action; so one day he went to Dr. Howe, and told him he was ready to give all his time, and much of his money, to push forward the work. Dr. Howe seeing that here was the man for the hour, immediately resigned, and Mr. Stearns was chosen unanimously chairman of the 'Massachusetts State Kansas Committee,' which took the place of the one first organized. In the light of subsequent history it is difficult to believe the apathy and blindness which failed to recognize the significance of this attack upon Kansas by the slave-holding power. Only faithful watchmen in their high towers could see that it was the first battle-ground between the two conflicting systems of freedom and slavery, which was finally to culminate in the war of the Rebellion. 'Working day and night without haste or rest,' failing in no effort to rouse and stimulate the community, still Mr. Stearns found that a vitalizing interest was wanting. When Gov. Reeder was driven in disguise from the territory, he wrote to him to come to Boston and address the people. He organized a mass-meeting for him in Tremont Temple, and for a few days the story he related stimulated to a livelier activity the more conservative people, who were inclined to think the reports of the free-State men much exaggerated. Soon, however, things settled back into the old sluggish way; so that for three consecutive committee meetings the chairman was the only person who presented himself at the appointed time and place. Nothing daunted, he turned to the country towns, and at the end of five months he had raised by his personal exertions, and through his agents, the sum of $48,000. Women formed societies all over the State, for making and furnishing clothing, and various supplies, which resulted in an addition of some $20,000 or $30,000 more. In January, 1867, this species of work was stopped, by advices from Kansas that no more contributions were needed, except for defense. At this juncture Mr. Stearns wrote to John Brown, that if he would come to Boston and consult with the friends of freedom he would pay his expenses. They had never met, but 'Osawatomie Brown' had become a cherished household name during the anxious summer of 1856.[66] Arriving in Boston, they were introduced to each other in the street by a Kansas man, who chanced to be with Mr. Stearns on his way to the committee rooms in Nilis's Block, School Street. Captain Brown made a profound impression on all who came within the sphere of his moral magnetism. Emerson called him 'the most ideal of men, for he wanted to put all his ideas into action.' His absolute superiority to all selfish aims and narrowing pride of opinion touched an answering chord in the self-devotion of Mr. Stearns. A little anecdote illustrates the modest estimate of the work he had in hand. After several efforts to bring together certain friends to meet Captain Brown at his home in Medford, he found that Sunday was the only day that would serve their several convenience, and being a little uncertain how it might strike his ideas of religious propriety, he prefaced his invitation with something like an apology. With characteristic promptness came the reply: 'Mr. Stearns, I have a little ewe-lamb that I want to pull out of the ditch, and the Sabbath will be as good a day as any to do it.'
"It was this occasion which furnished to literature one of the most charming bits of autobiography. Our oldest son, Harry, a lad of eleven years, was an observant listener, and drank eagerly every word that was said of the cruel wrongs in Kansas, and of slavery everywhere. When the gentlemen rose to go, he privately asked his father if he might be allowed to give all his spending money to John Brown. Leave being granted, he bounded away, and returning with his small treasure, said: 'Captain Brown, will you buy something with this money for those poor people in Kansas, and some time will you write to me and tell me what sort of a little boy you were?' 'Yes, my son, I will, and God bless you for your kind heart!' The autobiography has been printed many times, but never before with the key which unlocked it.
"It may not be out of place to describe the impression he made upon the writer on this first visit. When I entered the parlor, he was sitting near the hearth, where glowed a bright open fire. He rose to greet me, stepping forward with such an erect, military bearing; such fine courtesy of demeanor and grave earnestness, that he seemed to my instant thought some old Cromwellian hero suddenly dropped down before me; a suggestion which was presently strengthened by his saying [proceeding with the conversation my entrance had interrupted]: 'Gentlemen, I consider the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence one and inseparable; and it is better that a whole generation of men, women, and children should be swept away, than that this crime of slavery should exist one day longer.' These words were uttered like rifle balls; in such emphatic tones and manner that our little Carl, not three years old, remembered it in manhood as one of his earliest recollections. The child stood perfectly still, in the middle of the room, gazing with his beautiful eyes on this new sort of man, until his absorption arrested the attention of Captain Brown, who soon coaxed him to his knee, tho' the look of awe and childlike wonder remained. His dress was of some dark brown stuff, quite coarse, but its exactness and neatness produced a singular air of refinement. At dinner, he declined all dainties, saying that he was unaccustomed to luxuries, even to partaking of butter.
"The 'friends of freedom' with whom Mr. Stearns had invited John Brown to consult were profoundly impressed with his sagacity, integrity, and devotion; notably among these were R. W. Emerson, Theodore Parker, H. D. Thoreau, A. Bronson Alcott, F. B. Sanborn, Dr. S. G. Howe, Col. T. W. Higginson, Gov. Andrew, and others. In February (1857) he appeared before a committee of the State Legislature, to urge that Massachusetts should make an appropriation in money in aid of those persons who had settled in Kansas from her own soil. The speech is printed in Redpath's 'Life.' He obtained at this time, from the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee,[67] some two hundred Sharp's rifles, with which to arm one hundred mounted men for the defense of Kansas, who could also be of service to the peculiar property of Missouri. In those dark days of slave-holding supremacy, the friends of freedom felt justified in aiding the flight of its victims to free soil whenever and wherever opportunity offered. The Fugitive-Slave Law was powerless before the law written on the enlightened consciences of those devoted men and women. These rifles had been forwarded previously to the National Committee at Chicago, for the defense of Kansas, but for some unexplained reasons had never proceeded farther than Tabor, in the State of Iowa. Later on, Mr. Stearns, in his individual capacity, authorized Captain Brown to purchase two hundred revolvers from the Massachusetts Arms Company, and paid for them from his private funds, thirteen or fifteen hundred dollars. During the summer of 1857 he united with Mr. Amos A. Lawrence and others in paying off the mortgage held by Mr. Gerritt Smith on his house and farm at North Elba, N. Y., he paying two hundred and sixty dollars. It would be difficult to state the entire amount of money Mr. Stearns put into the hands of John Brown for Anti-Slavery purposes and his own subsistence. He kept no account of what he gave. In April or May, 1857, he gave him a check for no less a sum than seven thousand dollars. Early in 1858, Hon. Henry Wilson wrote to Dr. S. G. Howe that he had learned John Brown was suspected of the intention of using those arms in other ways than for the defense of Kansas; and by order of the committee, Mr. Stearns wrote (under date May 14, 1858) to Brown not to use them for any other purpose, and to hold them subject to his order, as chairman of said committee. When the operations of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee virtually ceased, in June or July, 1858, it happened that this committee were some four thousand dollars in debt to Mr. Stearns, for advances of money from time to time to keep the organization in existence; and it was voted to make over to the chairman these two hundred Sharp's rifles as part payment of the committee's indebtedness. They were of small account to Mr. Stearns. He knew them to be in good hands, and troubled himself no further about them, either the rifles or the revolvers; although keeping up from time to time a correspondence with his friend upon the all-engrossing subject.
"In February of 1859, John Brown was in Boston, and talked with some of his friends about the feasibility of entrenching himself, with a little band of men, in the mountains of Virginia, familiar to him from having surveyed them as engineer in earlier life. His plan was to open communication with the slaves of neighboring plantations, collect them together, and send them off in squads, as he had done in Missouri, 'without snapping a gun.' Mr. Stearns had so much more faith in John Brown's opposition to Slavery, than in any theories he advanced of the modus operandi, that they produced much less impression on his mind than upon some others gifted with more genius for details. From first to last, he believed in John Brown. His plans, or theories, might be feasible, or they might not. If the glorious old man wanted money to try his plans, he should have it. His plans might fail; probably would, but he could never be a failure. There he stood, unconquerable, in the panoply of divine Justice. Both of these men were of the martyr type. No thought or consideration for themselves, for history, or the estimation of others, ever entered into their calculations. It was the service of Truth and Right which brought them together, and in that service they were ready to die.
"In the words of an eminent writer[68]: 'A common spirit made these two men recognize each other at first sight; and the power of both lay in that inability to weigh difficulties against duty, that instant step of thought to deed, which makes individuals fully possessed by the idea of the age, the turning-points of its destiny; hands in the right place for touching the match to the train it has laid, or for leading the public will to the heart of its moral need. They knew each other as minute-men on the same watch; as men to be found in the breach, before others knew where it was; they were one in pity, one in indignation, one in moral enthusiasm, burning beneath features set to patient self-control; one in simplicity, though of widely different culture; one in religious inspiration, though at the poles of religious thought. The old frontiersman came from his wilderness toils and agonies to find within the merchant's mansion of art and taste by the side of Bunker Hill, a perfect sympathy: the reverence of children, tender interest in his broken household, free access to a rich man's resources, and even a valor kindred with his own.'
"The attack upon Harper's Ferry was a 'side issue,' to quote the words of John Brown, Jr., and a departure from his father's original plan. It certainly took all his friends by surprise. In his letter of Nov. 15, 1859 (while in prison), to his old schoolmaster, the Rev. H. L. Vaill, are these words: 'I am not as yet, in the main, at all disappointed. I have been a good deal disappointed as it regards myself in not keeping up to my own plans; but I now feel entirely reconciled to that even: for God's plan was infinitely better, no doubt, or I should have kept my own. Had Samson kept to his determination of not telling Delilah wherein his great strength lay, he would probably have never overturned the house. I did not tell Delilah; but I was induced to act very contrary to my better judgment.'[69]
* * * * * * * * *
"It is idle to endeavor to explain, by any methods of the understanding, any rules of worldly wisdom, or prudence, this influx of the Divine Will, which has made John Brown already an ideal character. 'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and we hear the sound thereof; but know not whence it cometh, or whither it goeth.' So is every one that is born of the Spirit. Man works in the midst of laws which execute themselves, more especially, if by virtue of obedience he has lost sight of all selfish aims, and perceives that Truth and Right alone can claim allegiance. Emerson says: 'Divine intelligence carries on its administration by good men; that great men are they who see that the spiritual are greater than any material forces; and that really there never was any thing great accomplished but under religious impulse.'
"The deadly Atheism of Slavery was rolling its car of Juggernaut all over the beautiful Republic, and one pure soul was inspired to confront it by a practical interpretation of the Golden Rule.
"That Virginia would hang John Brown was a foregone conclusion. The Moloch of Slavery would have nothing less. His friends exerted themselves to secure the best counsel which could be induced to undertake the formality of a defense, foremost among whom was Mr. Stearns. A well-organized plan was made to rescue him, conducted by a brave man from Kansas, Col. James Montgomery, but a message came from the prisoner, that he should not feel at liberty to walk out, if the doors were left open; a sense of honor to his jailer (Captain Acvis) forbidding any thing of the kind.
"Not a little anxiety was felt lest certain of his adherents might be summoned as witnesses, whose testimony would lessen the chances of acquittal, and possibly involve their own lives. John A. Andrew (afterward Gov. Andrew) gave it as his opinion, after an exhaustive search of the records, that Virginia would have no right to summon these persons from Massachusetts, but subsequently changed his opinion, and urged Mr. Stearns to take passage to Europe, sending him home one day to pack his valise. The advice was opposed to his instincts, but he considered that his wife should have a voice in the matter, who decided, 'midst many tears and prayers, that if slavery required another victim, he must be ready.
"With Dr. Howe it was quite different. He became possessed with a dread that threatened to overwhelm his reason. He was in delicate health, and constitutionally subject to violent attacks of nervous headache. One day he came to Medford and insisted that Mr. Stearns should accompany him to Canada, urging that if he remained here he should be insane, and that Mr. Stearns of all his friends was the only one who would be at all satisfactory to him. This request, or rather demand, Mr. Stearns promptly declined. How well I remember his agitation, walking up and down the room, and finally entreating Mr. Stearns for 'friendship's sake' to go and take care of him. I can recall no instance of such self-abnegation in my husband's self-denying career. He did not stoop to an explanation, even when Dr. Howe declared in his presence, some months later, "that he never did any thing in his life he so much wished to take back." I had hoped that Dr. Howe would himself have spared me from making this contribution to the truth of history.
"On the 2d of December, Mr. Stearns yearned for the solitude of his own soul, in communion of spirit, with the friend who, on that day, would 'make the gallows glorious like the Cross'; and he left Dr. Howe and took the train for Niagara Falls. There, sitting alone beside the mighty rush of water, he solemnly consecrated his remaining life, his fortune, and all that was most dear, to the cause in whose service John Brown had died.
"How well and faithfully he kept his vow, may partly be seen in his subsequent efforts in recruiting the colored troops at a vital moment in the terrible war of the Rebellion which so swiftly followed the sublime apotheosis of 'Old John Brown.'"[70]
That John Brown intended to free the slaves, and nothing more, the record shows clearly. His move on Harper's Ferry was well planned, and had all the parties interested done their part the work would have been done well. As to the rectitude of his intentions he gives the world this leaf of history:
"And now, gentlemen, let me press this one thing on your minds. You all know how dear life is to you, and how dear your lives are to your friends: and in remembering that, consider that the lives of others are as dear to them as yours are to you. Do not, therefore, take the life of any one if you can possibly avoid it; but if it is necessary to take life in order to save your own, then make sure work of it."—John Brown, before the battle at Harper's Ferry.
"I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection. The design on my part was to free the slaves."—John Brown, after the battle at Harper's Ferry.
Distance lends enchantment to the view. What the world condemns to-day is applauded to-morrow.
We must have a "fair count" on the history of yesterday and last year. The events chronicled yesterday, when the imagination was wrought upon by exciting circumstances, need revision to-day.
The bitter words spoken this morning reproach at eventide the smarting conscience. And the judgments prematurely formed, and the conclusions rapidly reached, maybe rectified and repaired in the light of departed years and enlarged knowledge.
John Brown is rapidly settling down to his proper place in history, and "the madman" has been transformed into a "saint." When Brown struck his first blow for freedom, at the head of his little band of liberators, it was almost the universal judgment of both Americans and foreigners that he was a "fanatic." It seemed the very soul of weakness and arrogance for John Brown to attempt to do so great a work with so small a force. Men reached a decision with the outer and surface facts. But many of the most important and historically trustworthy truths bearing upon the motive, object, and import of that "bold move," have been hidden from the public view, either by prejudice or fear.
Some people have thought John Brown—"The Hero of Harper's Ferry"—a hot-headed, blood-thirsty brigand; they animadverted against the precipitancy of his measures, and the severity of his invectives; said that he was lacking in courage and deficient in judgment; that he retarded rather than accelerated the cause he championed. But this was the verdict of other times, not the judgment of to-day.
John Brown said to a personal friend during his stay in Kansas: "Young men must learn to wait. Patience is the hardest lesson to learn. I have waited for twenty years to accomplish my purpose." These are not the words of a mere visionary idealist, but the mature language of a practical and judicious leader, a leader than whom the world has never seen a greater. By greatness is meant deep convictions of duty, a sense of the Infinite, "a strong hold on truth," a "conscience void of offence toward God and man," to which the appeals of the innocent and helpless are more potential than the voices of angry thunder or destructive artillery. Such a man was John Brown. He was strong in his moral and mental nature, as well as in his physical nature. He was born to lead; and he led, and made himself the pro-martyr of a cause rapidly perfecting. All through his boyhood days he felt himself lifted and quickened by great ideas and sublime purposes. He had flowing in his veins the blood of his great ancestor, Peter Brown, who came over in the "Mayflower"; and the following inscription appears upon a marble monument in the graveyard at Canton Centre, New York: "In memory of Captain John Brown, who died in the Revolutionary army, at New York, September 3, 1776. He was of the fourth generation, in regular descent, from Peter Brown, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed from the 'Mayflower,' at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 22, 1620." This is the best commentary on his inherent love of absolute liberty, his marvellous courage and transcendent military genius. For years he elaborated and perfected his plans, working upon the public sentiment of his day by the most praiseworthy means. He bent and bowed the most obdurate conservatism of his day, and rallied to his standards the most eminent men, the strongest intellects in the North. His ethics and religion were as broad as the universe, and beneficent in their wide ramification. And it was upon his "religion of humanity," that embraced our entire species, that he proceeded with his herculean task of striking off the chains of the enslaved. Few, very few of his most intimate friends knew his plans—the plan of freeing the slaves. Many knew his great faith, his exalted sentiments, his ideas of liberty, in their crudity; but to a faithful few only did he reveal his stupendous plans in their entirety.