And so by his own pen, we have had illuminated for us the life of John
Brown up to his twentieth year. We see him, a big, strong boy, fond
of hard work, capable in all he put his hand to, a young man bred in
the hard college of life in an early pioneer settlement. He was fond
of reading good books, and improving his mind; he was rather shy, and
yet filled with an extraordinary self-confidence, which made him a
born leader, one who could show the way to men older than himself, and
command them, and himself, in the straight line of duty.
The subsequent life of John Brown cannot be understood unless one knows
all the environmental forces and the heredity that went to mould him.
John Brown, a Puritan in the austerity of his manner of living, the
narrow yet burning reality of his vision, and the hardships he later
underwent, came of a family of American pioneers. To John Brown life
from the outset meant incessant strife, first against unconquered
nature, then in the struggle for a living, and finally in that effort
to be a Samson to the pro-slavery Philistines in which his existence
culminated.
At twenty John Brown married Dianthe Lusk, a plain but quiet and
amiable girl, as deeply religious as her young husband, and as ready as
he to assume all the serious burdens of life.
He was working in his father’s tanning establishment at this time,
at Hudson, Ohio. But in May, 1825, John Brown moved his family to
Richmond, near Meadville, Pennsylvania, the first of his many moves for
he was imbued with a deep restlessness, the hunger of the pioneer for
virgin lands and new enterprises.
Here, with his characteristic energy, he cleared twenty-five acres of
timber land, built a fine tannery, sunk vats, and in a few months had
leather tanning in all of them. Like his father, Owen Brown, John was
of a marked ethical and social nature. He proved of great value to the
new settlement at Richmond by his devotion to the cause of religion and
civil order. He surveyed new roads, was instrumental in building school
houses, procuring preachers, “and encouraging anything that would
have a moral tendency.” It became almost a proverb in Richmond, so an
early neighbor records, to say of a progressive man that he was “as
enterprising and honest as John Brown, and as useful to the county.”
In Richmond the family dwelt for ten years. John Brown raised corn,
did his tanning, brought the first blooded stock into the county, and
became the first postmaster. Here, also, at Richmond, the first great
grief came into John Brown’s life, to school him in that stoicism that
later made him the hero of a great cause. A four year old son died in
1831, and the next year his wife, Dianthe, died after having lived and
worked beside him like a good, faithful woman for twelve years, giving
birth to seven children in that time, five of whom grew to vigorous
manhood and womanhood.
Nearly a year later John Brown was married for the second time, to Mary
Anne Day, daughter of a blacksmith. She was then a large, silent girl
of sixteen, who had come to John Brown’s home with an older sister to
care for his children after his wife’s death. He quickly grew fond of
the young pioneer girl; one day he gave her a letter offering marriage.
She was so overcome that she dared not read it. Next morning she found
courage to do so, and when she went down to the spring for water for
the house, he followed her and she gave him her answer there.
Mary Brown was the best wife a John Brown could have found. She had
great physical ruggedness, and she bore for her husband thirteen
children, seven of whom died in childhood, and two of whom were killed
in early manhood at Harper’s Ferry. She did more than her full share
of the arduous labor of a large pioneer household, and she endured
hardships like a Spartan mother. She was strong; and she had a noble
and unflinching character. It was only a heroic woman such as this who
could have been the wife of a hero; who could have given husband and
sons cheerfully to the cause of abolition, and been so silent and brave
even after their death.
John Brown worked hard; he had no vices, he was honest and painstaking,
but somehow success in business always eluded him. This was another of
the griefs of his life. He blamed himself for his failures, but it was
really not his fault. It requires a real worship of money to make one
a business success, and John Brown never took money as seriously as it
demands of its lovers. After ten years in Pennsylvania, of much hard
work with little results, he moved to Franklin Mills, in Ohio, where
he entered the tanning business with Zenas Kent, a well-to-do business
man of that town. Here he also became involved in a land development
scheme that was ruined by a large corporation’s maneuvers. He was so
deeply involved in this and other ventures that in the bad times of
1837 he failed. In 1842 he was again compelled to go through bankruptcy
proceedings.
In after years John Brown explained these failures to his oldest son as
the result of the false doctrine of doing business on credit.
“Instead of being thoroughly imbued with the doctrine of pay as you
go,” he wrote, “I started out in life with the idea that nothing could
be done without capital, and that a poor man must use his credit and
borrow; and this pernicious doctrine has been the rock on which I, as
well as many others, have split. The practical effect of this false
doctrine has been to keep me like a toad under a harrow most of my
business life. Running into debt includes so much evil that I hope all
my children will shun it as they would a pestilence.”
John Brown never gave up in despair anything he had attempted; his
business failures bruised him sorely, but he arose each time like
a rugged wrestler and began a new endeavor. In 1839, at one of his
darkest periods, he began a sheep growing and wool marketing venture
in which he engaged for many years, going into partnership with Simon
Perkins, a wealthy merchant of Akron, Ohio. This partnership was the
longest and final one of Brown’s business career.
So that is how one must think of Brown, too; not only as the
consecrated, almost inhuman battler and martyr, but also as the sane,
plodding, patient farmer, tanner, surveyor, real estate speculator,
and practical shepherd. He was a tall, spare, silent man, terribly
pious, terribly honest, a good neighbor and community leader, and the
father of a large family of sons and daughters--a patriarch out of the
Bible, tending his flocks and gathering about him a tribe of young and
stalwart sons.
He was a typical pioneer American of those rough days in the settling
of the middle west. He had no time for frivolity, though there was a
grim humor in the man; he brought his children up strictly, yet with a
justice that made them all love, revere and respect him until the end;
and he had his share of those private sorrows that crush so many men;
his first beloved wife had died, with an infant son; he had failed in
business; and he had lost by death no less than nine children, three
of whom perished in one month in those hard surroundings, and one of
whom, a little daughter, was accidently scalded to death by an elder
sister. These deaths hurt John Brown cruelly, for though stern and
stoic, he was a fiercely tender father; all his affections were fierce,
though inexpressible and deep, as a lion’s.
“I seem to be struck almost dumb by the dreadful news,” he wrote his
family, when he heard of this accident. “One more dear little feeble
child I am to meet no more till the dead, small and great, shall stand
before God. I trust that none of you will feel disposed to cast an
unreasonable blame on my dear Ruth on account of the dreadful trial we
are called to suffer. This is a bitter cup indeed; but blessed be God;
a brighter day shall dawn; and let us not sorrow as they who have no
hope.”
The Browns had made at least ten moves in the years from 1830 to 1845,
and John Brown had engaged in no less than seven different occupations.
But always, under the business man and farmer, there had been the
solemn philosopher brooding on God and the mystery and terror of
life; and always, under the sober father and citizen, there had been
planning and brooding and suffering keenly the tender humanitarian, the
Christ-like martyr, the relentless fighter who would finally pay with
his life to strike a blow at Slavery, “that sum of all villainies.”
In this patriarchal farmer of the middle west, Freedom was forging and
sharpening a terrible weapon that was some day to be turned against
Tyranny. Quietly, in peaceful surroundings the work was being done; no
one knew the fire in this man, least of all himself.