CHILDHOOD AND THE VOW
The birth of John Brown is recorded in the following laconic style by
his father in a little autobiography he wrote for his children in the
closing days of his life. 'In 1800, May 8, John was born one hundred
years after his great-grandfather; nothing else very uncommon.' In the
year mentioned the family were living at Torrington, Connecticut,
whence they shortly removed to Ohio, then the haunt of the Red Indian.
They were of the pioneer farming class, which has supplied so many of
the shapers of American history. The one great honour in their
pedigree was that they descended from a man of the MAYFLOWER--Peter
Brown, a working carpenter who belonged to that famous ship's company.
We might say, indeed, that the story of John Brown flows from the
events of 1620, the year of the MAYFLOWER. Two landings on the
American coast that year were destined to be memorable. In August a
Dutch vessel disembarked the first cargo of imported slaves--twenty of
them; and that day Slavery struck deep root in the new land. And in
November of that same year the MAYFLOWER, with her very different cargo
of brave freemen, dropped anchor in Cape Cod Bay. The stream of ill
results from that first landing and the stream of Puritan blood,
generous in its passion for liberty, that flowed unimpoverished from
Peter Brown through generations of sturdy ancestors--these are the
streams destined to meet turbulently and to supply us with our story.
Owen Brown, the father of John, thus testifies to his own fidelity to
the tradition of liberty. 'I am an Abolitionist. I know we are not
loved by many. I wish to tell how I became one. Our neighbour lent my
mother a slave for a few days. I used to go out into the field with
him, and he used to carry me on his back, and I fell in love with him.'
There we have the clue to the history of the household of the Browns
for the next two generations. They FELL IN LOVE With the despised
negro, and this glorious trait passed like an heritage from generation
to generation.
There is a letter extant which supplies us with the best information on
John Brown's own boyhood. It was written for a lad in a wealthy home
where he stayed in later days, who had asked him many questions about
his experiences in early life. He humorously calls it a 'short story
of a certain boy of my acquaintance I will call John.' A few extracts
will reveal his character in the forming. Here, for instance, you may
trace the conscientiousness (often morbid) which was so marked a
feature in his later days. 'I cannot tell you of anything in the first
four years of John's life worth mentioning save that at that early age
he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging to a girl who lived
in the family, and stole them. In this he was detected by his mother;
and after having a full day to think of the wrong, received from her a
thorough whipping.' He adds, 'I must not neglect to tell you of a very
foolish and bad habit to which John was somewhat addicted. I mean,
telling lies, generally to screen himself from blame or from
punishment. He could not well endure to be reproached, and now I think
had he been oftener encouraged to be entirely frank, by MAKING
FRANKNESS A KIND OF ATONEMENT for some of his faults, he would not have
had to struggle so long with this mean habit.'
A story is told of John's schooldays which is an amusing and quite
characteristic instance of his ethical eccentricities. For a short
time he and his younger brother Salmon were at a school together, and
Salmon was guilty of some offence which was condoned by the master.
John had serious concern for the effect this might have upon his
brother's morals, and he sought the lenient teacher and informed him
that the fault was much deprecated by their father at home, and he was
sure castigation there would have been inevitable. He therefore
desired it should be duly inflicted, as otherwise he should feel
compelled to act as his father's proxy. Finding discipline was still
lax, he proceeded with paternal solemnity to administer it himself.
His brother acknowledged that this was done with reluctant fidelity!
Truly the moral instincts of the family were worthy of their Puritan
ancestry.
Although naturally self-conscious and shy, his precociousness in
boyhood, bringing him into association, as it did, with much older
folk, bred a somewhat arrogant manner. The rule he exercised over
younger members of the family also made him somewhat domineering, a
fault which he diligently sought to correct in later life. At fifteen
he had become a miniature man of business and was driving cattle on
long journeys with all the confidence of mid-age. The letter from
which we have already quoted has one or two more passages which may
enlighten us as to his rearing. Still writing in the third person, he
says, 'John had been taught from earliest childhood to fear God and
keep His commandments, and though quite sceptical he had always by
turns felt much doubt as to his future well being. He became to some
extent a convert to Christianity, and ever after a firm believer in the
divine authenticity of the Bible. With this book he became very
familiar, and possessed a most unusual memory of its entire contents.'
Here are hints as to his early pursuits: 'After getting to Ohio in
1805, he was for some time rather afraid of the Indians and their
rifles, but this soon wore off, and he used to hang about them quite as
much as was consistent with good manners and learned a trifle of their
talk. His father learned to dress deer-skins, and at six years old
John was installed a young Buck-skin. He was, perhaps, rather
observing, as he ever after remembered the entire process of deer-skin
dressing, so that he could at any time dress his own leather, such as
squirrel, racoon, cat, wolf, and dog skins, and also learned to make
whiplashes, which brought him some change at times, and was of
considerable service in many ways. He did not become much of a
scholar. He would always choose to stay at home and work hard rather
than be sent to school, and during the warm season might generally be
seen barefooted and bareheaded, with buck-skin breeches suspended often
with one leather strap over his shoulder, but sometimes with two. To
be sent off through the wilderness alone to very considerable distances
was particularly his delight; in this he was often indulged, so that by
the time he was twelve years old he was sent off more than a hundred
miles with companies of cattle. He followed up with tenacity whatever
he set about so long as it answered his general purpose, and thence he
rarely failed in some good degree to effect the things he undertook.'
'From fifteen years and upward he felt a good deal of anxiety to learn,
but could only read and study a little, both for want of time and on
account of inflammation of the eyes. He managed by the help of books,
however, to make himself tolerably well acquainted with common
arithmetic and surveying, which he practised more or less after he was
twenty years old.' 'John began early in life to discover a great
liking to fine cattle, horses, sheep, and swine; and as soon as
circumstances would enable him, he began to be a practical shepherd--it
being a calling for which, in early life, he had a kind of enthusiastic
longing, together with the idea that as a business it bade fair to
afford him the means of CARRYING OUT HIS GREATEST OR PRINCIPAL OBJECT.'
Here we touch the keynote of this life of manifold outward occupations,
but of one consuming desire. That PRINCIPAL OBJECT filled his horizon
even in childhood. He loved to tell how, like his father before him,
he fell captive to the slave's dumb plea and pledged his whole strength
to the chivalrous task of breaking his fetters. It happened on this
wise. In those long journeys he was allowed to take, he was the
'business guest' of a slave-owner, who was pleased with his
resourcefulness at such an age. He was the object of curious attention,
and was treated as 'company' at table. On the estate was a young negro
just his own age, and as intelligent as he. Young John struck up an
acquaintance with him, and could not fail to contrast the fashion in
which he himself was pampered with the way the young darkie was
coarsely treated with scant fare and ill-housing. His frequent
thrashings seemed to bruise young John's spirit as much as they did his
flesh. They were not always administered with the orthodox whip, but
with a shovel or anything else that came first to hand. Young John
pondered long upon this contrast, and tells us how the iniquity of
slavery was borne in upon his young heart, and he was drawn to this
little coloured playmate, who had neither father nor mother known to
him. The Bible was the final court of appeal in the Brown family, and
the verdict of that court was that they two--the slave and the
guest--were brothers, so henceforth the instinct of fraternal loyalty
drew young John to 'swear eternal war with slavery.' That vow, never
recanted or forgotten, became the text of his life. It interprets all
his vagaries and reconciles what else were hopeless inconsistencies. It
was a devout obsession which made him a wanderer all his days, and in
the end carried him to prison and to death. To a child a great call
had come, and a child's voice had replied, 'Speak, Lord, Thy servant
heareth.' And ears and heart tingled at messages that seemed to come
from the Unseen.