JOHN BROWN, JR., TO FREDERICK DOUGLASS

[Troy, N.Y. 15 December 1851].

FRIEND DOUGLASS:—

I have little further to add than to enclose an additional $2 bill for your paper, to be sent to me at Vernon, Trumbull County, Ohio, and to express my joy that you are bringing the strong batteries of fundamental constitutional law to bear upon the injustice of our government. I am glad that there is one paper in existence whose mission is to teach the people of this land what law is, and that that paper is your own. Perhaps on no other question of equal importance are our people more ignorant.—They have not yet learned to distinguish between statutes or enactments and law. The work is a great one in which you are engaged. You may meet with much to discourage you; yet in time the lesson will be learned, the principles of justice, of right, national, eternal right, will triumph. There are many at the West who are ready to take the ground advocated by Gerrit SmithSmith, Gerrit

Gerrit Smith (1797– 1874), a New York businessman and land speculator, became best known for his philanthropic work for such reform causes as temperance and abolition. Between 1828 and 1835, he donated large sums of money to the American Colonization Society, but abandoned that movement in 1835 when his sympathies shifted to the immediate abolitionists. In the 1840s, he gave approximately 140,000 acres of land in upstate New York to three thousand black settlers, thus qualifying them to vote. Smith was a founder and frequent candidate of the Liberty party, running for governor of New York on that ticket in 1840 and winning a seat in Congress in 1852. When the Free Soil merger with moderate antislavery Democrats and Whigs lured away many Liberty party supporters, Smith helped bankroll that organization until 1860. Smith befriended Douglass when the latter moved to Rochester, and Smith frequently helped finance Frederick Douglass’ Paper. Like Douglass, Smith supported John Brown, but psychological stress caused by the failure at Harpers Ferry brought on the first of a series of bipolar episodes that greatly reduced his subsequent reform activities. Ralph Volney Harlow, Gerrit Smith: Philanthropist and Reformer (1939; New York, 1972); Gerald Sorin, The New York Abolitionists: A Case Study of Political Radicalism (Westport, Conn., 1971), 269– 87; Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca, N.Y., 1973), 170– 80; John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier, 20:61– 76 (Fall 1985); NCAB , 2:322– 23; DAB, 17:270– 71. , yourself and others, and if we can only get these views you hold thoroughly disseminated among our people, it would not long be said that the Liberty Party comprises only “a baker’s dozen.”¹A baker’s dozen is thirteen counted as twelve. Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 6th ed. (New York, 1967), 26.

I will if I can, get some subscribers for you on my return to Ohio. I, for one, am resolved to vote for the Liberty candidate if I cannot get another in my town to join me.

With best wishes, I am Faithfully yours,

JOHN BROWN, JR.Brown, John, Jr.

The 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 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 services as captain of Company K, 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.

PLSr: FDP, 25 December 1851.