Saturday, June 7, 2014

John Brown to Mary Ann Day Brown, November 28, 1850

Springfield, Mass., Nov. 28, 1850.

Dear Wife, —  . . . Since leaving home I have thought that under all the circumstances of doubt attending the time of our removal, and the possibility that we may not remove at all, I had perhaps encouraged the boys to feed out the potatoes too freely. . . .  I want to have them very careful to have no hay or straw wasted, but I would have them use enough straw for bedding the cattle to keep them from lying in the mire. I heard from Ohio a few days since; all were then well. It now seems that the Fugitive Slave Law was to be the means of making more Abolitionists than all the lectures we have had for years. It really looks as if God had his hand on this wickedness also. I of course keep encouraging my colored friends to “trust in God, and keep their powder dry.” I did so to-day, at Thanksgiving meeting, publicly. . . .  While here, and at almost all places where I stop, I am treated with all kindness and attention; but it does not make home. I feel lonely and restless, no matter how neat and comfortable my room and bed, nor how richly loaded may be the table; they have few charms for me, away from home. I can look back to our log-cabin at the centre of Richfield, with a supper of porridge and johnny-cake, as a place of far more interest to me than the “Massasoit”1 of Springfield. But “there's mercy in every place.”
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SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p. 106-7

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