JOHN BROWN¹Born in Torrington, Connecticut, John Brown (1790-1859) grew up in Hudson, Ohio. After receiving a rudimentary education, he failed successively as a tanner, a wool dealer, and a farmer. Long a supporter of emancipation, Brown became more militant in his antislavery activities after passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850. In 1855, Brown followed four of his sons to Kansas, where he became a leader of the armed opposition to the admission of the territory as a slave state. His participation in the massacre of proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie Creek in May 1856 made him a nationally known figure. In 1857, Brown secretly began to recruit men and raise funds to establish a base in the southern Appalachian Mountains from which to raid plantations and free slaves. Brown’s plotting culminated in the unsuccessful attack by a small band on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. Captured and tried for treason under Virginia law, he was executed on 2 December 1859 and immediately became a martyr figure to many Northerners. Stephen Oates, , 2d. ed. (New York, 1984); Richard O. Boyer, (New York, 1973); , 1:404-07; , 2:307-08; , 3:131-34. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Akron, Ohio. 18 Aug[ust] 1853.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS, ESQ:

DEAR SIR : —

In your paper of the 12th inst., I find a letter from J. W. Loguen²Jermain Wesley Loguen (1813-72), a black abolitionist and minister, was born into slavery in Davidson County, Tennessee. Originally named Jarm Logue, he was the son of an enslaved woman and her white owner, David Logue. In 1835, after his father sold his mother and sister, Loguen chose to escape. He first fled to Upper Canada, but relocated to Rochester in 1837. He opened schools for black children in Utica and Syracuse before his ordination as a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1842. Loguen originally supported the antislavery principles of William Lloyd Garrison, believing in nonpolitical action and nonviolence, but in the 1840s began to endorse political action as a means for change in the struggle against slavery. By 1844 Loguen had become a regular lecturer on the antislavery circuit, working closely with the western New York abolitionist
circle that included Douglass, Samuel J. May, and Gerrit Smith. His house in Syracuse was an important stop for slaves bound for Canada on the Underground Railroad, and he devoted much time to the Syracuse Fugitive Aid Society. Fear of prosecution for his role in the rescue of the fugitive William “Jerry” McHenry led him to flee temporarily to Canada West, but he returned to Syracuse early in 1852 to resume his work on behalf of fugitives. He later recruited black troops for the Union army during the Civil War and established African Methodist Episcopal Zionist congregations in the South during Reconstruction. J[ermain] W[esley] Loguen, (Syracuse, N.Y., 1859), 425-33; Quarles, , 67; , 13:848-49. dated August 5th.—This letter has a certain music in it that so fills ear, that I cannot well suppress the pleasure it affords.³Brown refers to Jermain Wesley Loguen’s letter, which was published in the 12 August 1853 issue of . In his letter, Loguen states that he was caught while helping the fugitive slave “Jerry” and that he is scheduled to be tried on charges related to the Fugitive Slave Law. I allude to this language in particular, “and especially of one who is not only a fugitive but a prisoner under the, hellish Fugitive Slave Law for loving liberty, not only for myself, but also for a brother” Jerry. For this I am with others to be tried⁴Although indicted, Jermain Wesley Loguen was never tried for his role in the Jerry Rescue. To avoid arrest, Loguen fled to Canada, where he remained until the following spring. Of the thirteen indictments issued in the case, only four were ever heard in court. The trials were scheduled to begin in January 1852, but were postponed to June and then to October. They were finally heard in January of the following year. The remaining indictments, including Loguen’s, were again postponed and adjourned before finally being dropped. Loguen, , 437, 442; Earl E. Sperry, (Syracuse, N.Y., 1921), 27-28; Fergus M. Bordewich, (New York, 2005), 127, 434; , 2:298. in an American court on the 4th Tuesday of Sept. next, at Canandaigua. In this I glory, I can well assure you. That which so much charms me is this, “In this I glory.”⁵This phrase originated in Dante’s “Canzone 13,” a lyrical poem that dates to c. 1300: “You can give me what no one else can, for Love has put into your hands the power of life and death over me, and in this I glory.” K[enelm] Foster and P[atrick] Boyde, eds., , 2 vols. (London, 1967), 1:28-29. Allow me to say (in the language of another) hereafter, that shall be my music. This with me comes up to the full measure of a man. First, he puts his shoulder to the wheel of his own liberty; next he is in earnest to help his neighbor to secure the same right; and last, though not , he in the trials and sufferings he is subjected to for doing so. This is the “first ripe fruit my soul desired.[’’]⁶A slight misquoting of Mic. 7:1. When shall I taste it again? When shall it be filled? I would a thousand times rather share with Loguen in his , and his too, than to receive all the honors that ever Millard Fillmore,⁷Millard Fillmore (1800-84), thirteenth president of the United States, represented the Buffalo region in the New York state legislature (1828-32) and in the U.S. House of Representatives (1833-35, 1837-43), where he generally voted with the Henry Clay wing of the Whig party. Defeated in the 1844 New York governor’s race, Fillmore secured the Whig vice presidential nomination in 1848 and assumed the presidency upon Zachary Taylor’s death in July 1850. Fillmore vigorously advocated the passage of the Compromise of 1850 and signed each of its measures into law. Denied his party’s nomination in 1852, Fillmore ran for president on the American party ticket in 1856 and supported John Bell and the Constitutional Union party in 1860. , 6:177—78; >, 6:380-82. Daniel Webster,⁸Daniel Webster (1782-1852) was a lawyer and statesman known for his stirring oratory. As a lawyer, he successfully argued many cases before the Supreme Court, such as the 1816 Dartmouth College case and the 1819 McCulloch v. Maryland case, earning him a reputation as a strong nationalist. During the War of 1812, Webster represented New Hampshire in Congress (1812-16). In 1827 he was elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, where he remained in service through most of his life. He continued to take strong nationalist positions in political debates, attacking Andrew Jackson’s 1832 veto of the Second Bank of the United States and opposing Nullification in 1832-33. Webster accepted appointment as secretary of state under William Henry Harrison and was the sole cabinet member from Harrison’s presidency to retain his office during John Tyler’s administration. In 1842 he negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty with Great Britain, establishing the modern boundary between the United States and Canada, but resigned his post a year later and returned to the Senate in 1845. In 1848 Webster made an unsuccessful bid for the Whig presidential nomination, losing to Zachary Taylor, a hero of the Mexican War. In 1850, Webster again left the Senate to act as secretary of state, this time under Millard Fillmore, placing him in a good position for the presidency, but he lost the 1852 Whig nomination to Winfield Scott. Although not an abolitionist, he opposed the extension of slavery, taking stands against the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Mexican War, and the enforcement of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Robert V. Remini, (New York, 1997), 15-21; , 11:585-92; , 22: 865-68. and all other such like traitorous “lickspittles’’⁹A lickspittle, in common usage, was someone who exhibited the qualities of a toady, a sycophant, or a flatterer. Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, , ed. John Ayto (New York, 2005), 816. could even dream of. He says again, “and now, sir, I am to be tried in a Republican Court of JUSTICE for loving liberty for a Brother.’’ He says “I am glad of it.’’—Could the heroes of history (or of fable) surpass that? to your (if need be.) “The blood of the martyrs will be the seed of the church.’’¹⁰The phrase may originate with Tertullian’s , which was composed in 197 C.E. as an “open letter” to the Roman Empire objecting to the persecution of Christians. Roy Joseph Deferrari, ed., , series 10: Tertullian, (1950; Washington, D.C., 1962), 3-4, 125. go for agitating and agitating again in the true . “My dear friend, I have an old grey-headed mother, and sisters, and Brothers all in slavery at this time, and as God is my judge I would much much rather to day hear of them swimming in blood and nobly contending for their rights, even at cost of their own lives, than have them remain passive slaves all the rest of their days.” “I feel ready to try titles at any time with the slaveholder, or his meaner lickspittlers of the north.” “Death is sweeter than slavery.” Such language coming as it does from one on whom the forty (thousand) tyrants , on you cannot too often repeat in your Paper.

Friend Douglass I have been waiting and watching with longing eyes for many years to see some full sized colored men leaping their full length above the surface of the water and I hope some day to see Loguen, and to give him such a shake of the hand, as will make his snap. “ helps them that help themselves, as poor Richard says."¹¹The expression “God helps them that help themselves” is attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac (1732-58; New York, 1980), 54.

Yours in truth,

JOHN BROWN.

PLSr: , 26 August 1853.