JOHN COCHRANE TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

New York[, N.Y.]¹Cochrane added “P. O. Box 250” to his address. 9 February 1878[.]

MY DEAR DOUGLASS

I am exceedingly rejoiced in your assistance. The whole family and I feel
that you are a tower of strength. You know the facts and the facts sustain
your opinion. Yours of yesterday²Douglass’s letter to John Cochrane cannot be located. is full to the conclusion at what I had
previously arrived on that prove the nature of the surrounding facts it
<(“the paper”)> must have been for the purpose which you state. You
saw what Mr. White³Horace White (1834–1916) was born in Colebrook, New Hampshire, to Dr. Horace and Elizabeth M. White. The family moved to Beloit, Wisconsin, when the younger White was about three years old. After graduating from Beloit College in 1853, he moved to Chicago and began working at the Chicago Evening Journal. After resigning that position in 1856, White spent a short time in Kansas in support of the free-state movement in that territory. He returned to Chicago in 1857 and took a position at the Chicago Tribune. White met Abraham Lincoln in 1854 and established a friendship with the future president, reporting on the famous Lincoln-Douglass debates of 1858. After being posted by the Tribune to Washington during the war, White returned to Chicago and became editor in chief and a part owner of the Tribune. He quit the Tribune in the late 1870s for health reasons and worked for western railroads owned by fellow Illinoisan Henry Villard. When Villard purchased the New York Evening Post and the Nation in 1881, White moved to New York to work for both publications. He eventually rose to become editor in chief of the Evening Post in 1899, serving until 1903. New York Times, 17 September 1916; “Horace White,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (1908–1984), 9: 388–98 (1916). said in Fridays Tribune about you & John Brown
Junior⁴The 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, after which the younger Brown farmed for himself in Ohio and lectured 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, 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 of the Seventh Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment during the Civil War, Brown retired to Ohio to raise grapes. Cleveland Press, 3 May 1895; Ohio Historical Society, Inventory and Calendar of the John Brown, Jr., Papers, 1830–1892 (Columbus, Ohio, 1962), 1–2; Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and His Men (1894; New York, 1968), 567; Oates, To Purge This Land, 140–45, 160, 173, 316. [illegible] [illegible] which he procures to be taken.⁵Included in an article in the New York Tribune on 8 February 1878 entitled “Was Gerrit Smith a Liar?” were letters by Octavius B. Frothingham to the Tribune and by Horace White to Frothingham. White wrote Frothingham: “General Cochrane is pleased to characterize as ‘hear-say’ the evidence which I claimed to possess to prove Gerrit Smith’s intimate knowledge of John Brown’s plans at or near Harper’s Ferry . . . This compels me to state that the evidence upon which I relied was the testimony of John Brown, Jr., and Frederick Douglass, taken under oath.” White claims to have access to said testimonies, probably from depositions gathered by the Chicago Tribune when Gerrit Smith threatened to sue that paper in 1867 for making the same charges that White now repeats. New York Tribune, 8 February 1878. To-day your
letters in the Tribune⁶The day after publishing White’s letter, the New York Tribune printed a follow-up article, quoting an unidentified letter from Douglass responding to questions about Gerrit Smith’s prior knowledge of John Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry. Douglass stated, “I distinctly remember asking Captain Brown whether he had explained his plans and purposes fully to Mr. Smith. ‘I have not’ was his answer. ‘I am afraid that he would pronounce me a dangerous man and refuse to help me.’” This public assertion from Douglass refuted White’s and Frothingham’s claims that Smith knew what John Brown had planned for Harpers Ferry, and Cochrane was pleased with Douglass’s public help in the matter. New York Tribune, 9 February 1878. show his mistake in respect to you: and therefore
there is reason I think to suppose that he is mistaken in respect to Brown
[illegible] If I knew where John Brown is, I should put myself in personal
communion with him. I was so much in the dark as to all these matters that as you see I am obliged to grope now for facts. Without your aid
I dont know what Elisabeth Miller & all of us should do.

You omitted to state to me the time & place when you asked John
Brown if he had explained his plans fully to my uncle as you wrote in
yours of the 4th inst.⁷A letter from Douglass to Cochrane written on 4 February 1878 has not been located. It is possible that this letter was shared with the New York Tribune and was the source of the passage by Douglass quoted in the article published on 9 February 1878. your first letter. They are important. I suppose Chamberburg to have been the place
and where you had your interview then with John Brown.

I will see that you have a Biography⁸Frothingham, Gerrit Smith. sent to you—It was suppressed
by Mrs Miller⁹Elizabeth Smith Miller. & therefore the difficulty of procuring a copy—I hope
as you do that the error may be corrected & the embargo removed from
the book

If any thing occurs to you to say pray do so: for your words are full of
solace to weary hearts—

You more than repay anything that Gerrit Smith may ever have contributed to you—I expect Elisabeth here very soon—

I am very truly & sincerely

Your Friend

JOHN COCHRANE

ALS: General Correspondence File, reel 3, frames 229L–31, FD Papers, DLC.