John Brown, Jr., to Frederick Douglass, August 15, 1855
JOHN BROWN, JR.,1The eldest son of John Brown, John Brown, Jr. (1821-95), was born near Hudson, Ohio. In 1826 he moved with his family to Pennsylvania, where he was educated. Brown assisted his father in farming and tanning ventures until 1849, when the younger Brown began farming for himself in Ohio and lecturing on phrenology. In 1855 he joined the rest of his family in Kansas to fight in the Free-State cause. He was arrested and imprisoned for three months in Lecompton, Kansas, after his father killed five proslavery sympathizers in the Pottawatomie Creek massacre of May 1856. Although he assisted his father in raising funds and volunteers, the younger Brown played no active role in the raid on Harpers Ferry and went into hiding in Ashtabula, Ohio, immediately following his father’s capture. After rheumatism ended his brief service as captain of Company K, Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War, Brown retired to Ohio to raise grapes. Cleveland , 3 May 1895; Ohio Historical Society, (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), 1-2; Richard J. Hinton, (1894; New York, 1968), 567; Oates, , 140-45, 160, 173, 316. TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS
Lawrence, Kansas Tr., 15 Aug[ust] 1855.
FRIEND DOUGLASS :
I reached this place yesterday to attend a Convention of the Free State men2Two simultaneous conventions met in Lawrence on 14-15 August 1855. The larger convention, led by James H. Lane and Charles Robinson, committed to organizing a Free-State party in a subsequent September convention at Big Springs. The second, more radical convention, attended by Brown, began organizing a rival Free-State government in opposition to the authority of the proslavery legislature recognized by the territorial governor, Andrew H. Reeder. Nicole Etcheson, (Lawrence, Kans., 2004), 69-71; Oswald Garrison Villard, , rev. ed. (New York, 1943), 102-03. to take into consideration what means should be adopted by us in view of the present crisis in our political affairs, and though the weather has been very unfavorable, (rain every day for the past week and still raining,) yet a great number are here, and exceedingly in earnest to do something. Yesterday little more was done than accept the Report of the Business Committee.3A committee chaired by Charles Robinson drafted the “Report of the Commission” created by the larger Lawrence gathering. It denounced the “bogus” territorial government and endorsed drafting a state constitution for Kansas’s admission to the Union that would prohibit slavery. Villard, , 102.
This morning the people in great numbers have gathered in the street and are discussing, what do you imagine? why question which more than any other is to shake the free State party here to its very centre. I[t] is “Shall Kansas be a free State only, or a State in which shall have their rights protected irrespective of color?” There is a portion of the Free State party here who will recognize as a Free State that which in and will carry on the sublime principles of the Declaration of
Independence; another, and perhaps larger portion, is in favor of making a free State for the , while they would impose the most outrageous
restrictions upon the colored man.4 The Free-State party faction led by James H. Lane endorsed legislation to exclude all black immigration into the territory. When the party drafted the “Topeka Constitution” in late 1855, the document prohibited not only slavery but also free black settlement in the territory. A referendum on 15 December 1855 ratified the constitution overwhelmingly, including the exclusionary provision, by a vote of 1,287 to 453. Etcheson, , 71, 75. I have said this is perhaps the largest portion of those calling themselves free State men.—Of this I am not certain; but, if they exceed [in] , they do not equal in intellectual strength and discipline, and are wholly shorn of force. When the time comes for them to vote, the proclivities they now exhibit induce the belief that they will join the Slave State party. As usual in every great struggle between the Right and the Wrong, there is here a portion who say “let us drop all differences for the [illegible] of , let us adopt a upon which free State men can stand.” These would have us even sacrifice our most cherished anti-Slavery principles for the sake of gaining numbers.
Col. Lane,5The flamboyant politician James Henry Lane (1814-66) was the son of Amos Lane, a prominent Indiana Democratic congressman and friend of Andrew Jackson. The younger Lane studied law under his father and followed him into Democratic party politics. After serving as a colonel of a volunteer regiment in the Mexican War, Lane was elected lieutenant governor of Indiana (1849-53) and then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (1853-55). He declined to run for a second congressional term when his vote in favor the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 generated considerable discontent among his constituents; he instead immigrated to the Kansas Territory. After failing to create a regular Democratic party organization in Kansas, Lane took a leading role in the free-state faction in territorial politics. He became an important militia commander of the free-staters, and in 1856 he established the “Jim Lane Trail” through Iowa to circumvent a blockade by Missourians. When Kansas was admitted to the Union in 1861, the legislature elected Lane to the U.S. Senate as a Republican. Without resigning that office, he briefly fought in Union army campaigns in the West and was among the first to recruit blacks as soldiers. Loudly condemned by most Kansas Republicans for having endorsed Andrew Johnson’s veto of the Civil Rights Bill of 1866, Lane became despondent and committed suicide. John Speer, , 2d ed. (Garden City, Kan., 1897); William Elsey Connelley, (Topeka, Kans., 1899); Glenn Noble, (Broken Bow, Neb., 1977), 29-31, 43-50, 54-57; , 3:606; >, 10:576-78. formerly Member of Congress, [illegible] Indiana, is now addressing the Convention. He is endeavoring to extricate himself from
the which attaches to him here, far away, [illegible] to the very outskirts of civilization, for [having] voted in favor of the Kansas Nebraska [Bill]. He says, “I was so instructed to vote by my constituents, and as a faithful representative [am] bound to obey.”6According to another report, Lane told the Lawrence Convention on the previous day that while he desired the Kansas Territory to become a free state, his faith in the principle of popular sovereignty would have guided him to vote for the Kansas-Nebraska Act again. He also denied that his former Indiana constituents would have rejected his bid for another term in Congress after that 1854 vote, had he sought it. Wakarusa , 18 August 1855; Etcheson, , 71. But this don’t take “away [out] west.” Mr. Schuyler7Douglass reported staying at the home of Philip Church Schuyler (1805-72) in Ithaca, New York, during the preceding July. He praised Schuyler as “not merely an abolitionist at the ballot box, but in all relations to life.” In 1855, Schuyler moved to Kansas and became active in the territory’s free-state movement. He founded the community of Burlingame in Osage County, Kansas. , 30 July 1852, 22 September 1854, 27 July 1855; Harlow, , 344. of “Council City” has [illegible]ed to him, and he is “done for” in Kansas. The resolution now under discussion repudiates [a] so-called Legislature, and declares we will obey no law of its enacting. It has just passed unanimously. Another has just passed, declaring that we will by > the execution of [the] laws.8These were the sentiments of the resolutions passed by the smaller, more radical convention in Lawrence. John Brown, Jr., was a member of the business committee that drafted those resolutions. Villard, , 102-03.
Another resolution now before us calls for a Convention of delegates from the people to draft a State Convention for Kansas, and to ask for a speedy admission as a State. Upon this resolution, Col. Lane is now speaking. He says, “.”9Another reporter at this Lawrence convention stated that Lane claimed both he and President Franklin Pierce hoped to see the Kansas Territory enter the Union as a free state, but also that he “would prefer to see Kansas a slave State in preference to seeing it an abolition State.” Wakarusa Kansas Herald of Freedom, 18 August 1855; Etcheson, , 71.
As this is the sentiment of many here who [illegible] themselves “as good free State men as any body,” it is to be hoped that Anti-Slavery people at the East will, in their sympathies for the settlers of Kansas, make a just discrimination. It is certain that men pass here as good free State men, and at the same time are regarded by the pro-slavery party, as the Missourians say, all right on the goose question.”10To be sound on the slavery question. Emmett Redd and Nicole Etcheson, “‘Sound On the Goose’: A Search for the Answer to an Age Old ‘Question,’” , 32:204 (Autumn 2009).
The last resolution referred to above has passed unanimously. Another resolution has passed approving the course of Gov. Reeder,11The Pennsylvania lawyer Andrew Horatio Reeder (1807-64) was an active Democrat but never held elective political office. President Franklin Pierce appointed Reeder the first territorial governor of Kansas in June 1854. When Reeder objected to the participation of Missourians in the first election for a congressional delegate, Pierce removed him on the bogus charge of illegal land speculation. Thomas A. McMullen and David Walker, eds., (Westport, Conn., 1984), 161-62. and the Convention has adjourned ,12Adjournment sine die is from the Latin “without day,” meaning without assigning a future meeting date. but not without showing that element of division, (the “Black law” question) though comparatively smothered, is yet sure to break out.
Another Convention is now called to be held at a place known as Big Spring,13A “Free State Convention,” called by the larger convention at Lawrence, met at Big Springs, Kansas Territory, and officially organized a Free-State party, repudiated the proslavery legislature, and called for a convention to meet at Topeka on 19 September to draft a state constitution. Lane’s followers dominated and blocked endorsements of abolition and pushed for a prohibition of free black settlers in the territory. Andrew H. Reeder, recently dismissed as territorial governor by President Pierce, attended this convention and became the Free-State party’s candidate for congressional delegate. Allen Nevins, , 2 vols. (New York, 1947), 2:306-11, 384-90; Potter, , 199-204; Etcheson, , 70-72. 12 or 15 miles above this, near the Kansas river. It was originally called by the “free State” men in that region, and the intention is to adopt there a platform for the free State party of this Territory. While the “free State” men loudly proclaim that they are most anxious to harmonize, and avoid any thing like division, it is perfectly evident that they are determined to secure a platform with such planks in it, that no anti-Slavery man can stand upon it. I feel grieved to think that the ardent sympathies of anti-Slavery people at the North and East, and indeed of the , are likely to be chilled if not entirely towards us, as a people, who, while struggling to defend our own rights, will consent to a scheme which robs our own fellow citizens of this republic of theirs, and that, too, in the most palpably unconstitutional manner.
God grant that we may be saved from the infamy which must attach to us in the judgment of all who merit the name of by so shaping our course that we shall by our united efforts promote the cause of , not that of , under the specious name of the “Free State party of Kansas Territory!”
Yours, for the Right,
JOHN BROWN, JR.
AUGUST 16TH.
P. S. I have to-day the happiness to find a much greater number of true anti-Slavery men among us than I yesterday feared, and that these are to maintain their in the trying hour. The Black Law question appears to have been sprung upon us at this juncture by those who not only hate the colored man but all lovers of for all.
PLSr: , 7 September 1855.