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From the Archives:
Biographies:
John Brown:
What Others had to Say About John Brown
“In firing
his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is. It
is high noon, thank God.”
William Lloyd
Garrison
Publisher of The Liberator newspaper
*****
John Brown, if he
shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross.
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
*****
He was one who
recognized no unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. No
man in America has ever stood up so persistently for the dignity of
human nature, knowing himself for man, and the equal of any and all
governments. He could not have been tried by his peers, for his peers
did not exist.
Henry David
Thoreau
*****
“Old John Brown
has been executed for treason against a state. We cannot object, even
though he agreed with us in thinking slavery was wrong. That cannot
excuse violence, bloodshed and treason.”
Abraham Lincoln
While campaigning for President against Stephen Douglas
*****
Are They
Responsible?
An effort is being
made by the Republican press to belittle and cast ridicule on the
Harper’s Ferry affair. They say old John Brown was crazy – that he
was a madman – that he was not a reasoning, responsible being and they
ridicule the idea that the (unreadable) countenanced and received “aid
and comfort” from any one outside of the twenty-one engaged in it.
This of course will not do. Brown was no more insane that hundreds of
others who are leaders in the Republican party… No crazy man – no man
without aid – no many without the countenance of just such men as sent
Sharp’s rifles to Kansas instead of Bibles – could have procured
fifteen hundred stand of arms in Connecticut and transported them to
Maryland and Virginia unknown and unsuspected. Gentlemen, it won’t do
– your Harper’s Ferry card has been plaid a little too soon, and you
must now bear the responsibility.
The (Erie)
Observer
Saturday Morning, October 29, 1859
*****
On the day John
Brown was hung, his friend Miles Barnett in Waterford tolled the
Methodist Church bell for two solid hours. It is believed that
Barnett, a fellow tanner and anti-slavery man, worked with Brown in
the early 1830s to transport fugitives on the Underground Railroad.
*****
Frank Henry, an
Underground Railroad conductor in Wesleyville, named one of his
children after John Brown, and another after Gerrit Smith, a wealthy
upstate New Yorker who financed some of John Brown’s activities.
Henry was an active in the anti-slavery movement, helping Major
Frederick Fitch and David Chambers hide runaway slaves in the
Wesleyville Methodist Church.
Frank Henry was a
regular contributor to the Erie Gazette, where he published numerous
accounts of Underground Railroad activity when it was safe to reveal
details after the Civil War.
"He took an ardent
part in the Underground Railway and assisted scores of hunted
fugitives to freedom. He enlisted with John Brown and was to have been
one of that hero's guards in his historic raid, but the assault was
made five days earlier than had been planned and so Mr. Henry was not
among the martyrs."
The Obituary of
Frank Henry
Erie
Weekly Gazette
14 October 1889 |
