October 31st.
MY DEAR FRIEND — Such you prove to be, though a stranger – your
most kind letter has reached me, with the kind offer to come here and take care
of me. Allow me to express my gratitude for your great sympathy, and at the same
time to propose to you a different course, together with my reasons for wishing
it. I should certainly be greatly pleased to become personally acquainted with
one so gifted and so kind, but I cannot avoid seeing some objections to it,
under present circumstances. First, I am in charge of a most humane gentleman,
who, with his family, has rendered me every possible attention I have desired,
or that could be of the least advantage; and I am so recovered of my wounds as
no longer to require nursing. Then, again, it would subject you to great
personal inconvenience and heavy expense, without doing me any good. Allow me
to name to you another channel through which you may reach me with your
sympathies much more effectually. I have at home a wife and three young
daughters, the youngest but little over five years old, the oldest nearly
sixteen. I have also two daughters-in-law, whose husbands have both fallen near
me here. – There is also another widow, Mrs. Thompson, whose husband fell here.
Whether she is a mother or not, I cannot say. All these, my wife included, live
at North Elba, Essex county, New York. I have a middle-aged son, who has been,
in some degree, a cripple from his childhood, who would have as much as he
could well do to earn a living. He was a most dreadful sufferer in Kansas, and lost
all he had laid up. He has not enough to clothe himself for the winter
comfortably. I have no living son, or son-in-law, who did not suffer terribly
in Kansas.
Now, dear friend, would you not as soon contribute fifty
cents now, and a like sum yearly, for the relief of those very poor and deeply
afflicted persons, to enable them to supply themselves and their children with
bread and very plain clothing, and to enable the children to receive a common
English education? Will you also devote
your own energies to induce others to join you in giving a like amount, or any
other amount, to constitute a little fund for the purpose named?
I cannot see how your coming here can do me the least good;
and I am quite certain you can do immense good where you are. I am quite
cheerful under all my afflicting circumstances and prospects; having, as I
humbly trust, “the peace of God which passeth all understanding ” to rule in my
heart. You may make such use of this as you see fit. God Almighty bless and
reward you a thousand fold!
Yours in sincerity
and truth,
JOHN BROWN.
SOURCES: The American Anti-Slavery Society, Correspondence
between Lydia Maria Child and Gov. Wise and Mrs. Mason, of Virginia, p.
15-6; Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, p.
580-1; James
Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry,
p. 390.
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