OLD BROWN'S FAREWELL
To the Plymouth
Rocks, Bunker Hill Monuments, Charter Oaks, and Uncle Tom's Cabins.
He has left for Kansas; has been trying since he came out of
the Territory to secure an outfit, or, in other words, the means of arming and
thoroughly equipping his regular minute-men, who are mixed up with the people
of Kansas. And he leaves the States with a feeling of deepest sadness, that
after having exhausted his own small means, and with his family and his brave
men suffered hunger, cold, nakedness, and some of them sickness, wounds,
imprisonment in irons, with extreme cruel treatment, and others death; that
after lying on the ground for months in the most sickly, unwholesome, and uncomfortable
places, some of the time with sick and wounded, destitute of any shelter,
hunted like wolves, and sustained in part by Indians; that after all this, in
order to sustain a cause which every citizen of this “glorious republic” is
under equal moral obligation to do, and for the neglect of which he will be
held accountable by God, — a cause in which every man, woman, and child of the
entire human family has a deep and awful interest, — that when no wages are asked or expected, he
cannot secure, amid all the wealth, luxury, and extravagance of this “heaven-exalted”
people, even the necessary supplies of the common soldier. “How are the mighty
fallen!”
I am destitute of horses, baggage-wagons, tents, harness,
saddles, bridles, holsters, spurs, and belts; camp equipage, such as cooking
and eating utensils, blankets, knapsacks, intrenching-tools, axes, shovels,
spades, mattocks, crowbars; have not a supply of Ammunition; have not money
sufficient to pay freight and travelling expenses ; and left my family poorly
supplied with common necessaries.
Boston, April,
1857.
SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of
John Brown, p. 508-9
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