Old John Brown, the man whose soul is marching on

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.'