Charlestown, Jefferson County, Va., Nov. 1, 1859.
My Dear Friend E. B. Of
R. I., — Your most cheering letter
of the 27th of October is received; and may the Lord reward you a
thousandfold for the kind feeling you express toward me; but more especially
for your fidelity to the “poor that cry, and those that have no help.” For this
I am a prisoner in bonds. It is solely my own fault, in a military point of
view, that we met with our disaster. I mean that I mingled with our prisoners
and so far sympathized with them and their families that I neglected my duty in
other respects. But God's will, not mine, be done.
You know that Christ once armed Peter. So also in my case I
think he put a sword into my hand, and there continued it so long as he saw
best, and then kindly took it from me. I mean when I first went to Kansas. I
wish you could know with what cheerfulness I am now wielding the “sword of the
Spirit” on the right hand and on the left. I bless God that it proves “mighty
to the pulling down of strongholds.” I always loved my Quaker friends, and I
commend to their kind regard my poor bereaved widowed wife and my daughters and
daughters-in-law, whose husbands fell at my side. One is a mother and the other
likely to become so soon. They, as well as my own sorrow-stricken daughters,
are left very poor, and have much greater need of sympathy than I, who, through
Infinite Grace and the kindness of strangers, am “joyful in all my
tribulations.”
Dear sister, write them at North Elba, Essex County, N. Y.,
to comfort their sad hearts. Direct to Mary A. Brown, wife of John Brown. There
is also another — a widow, wife of Thompson, who fell with my poor boys in the
affair at Harper's Ferry — at the same place.
I do not feel conscious of guilt in taking up arms; and had
it been in behalf of the rich and powerful, the intelligent, the great (as men
count greatness), or those who form enactments to suit themselves and corrupt
others, or some of their friends, that I interfered, suffered, sacrificed, and
fell, it would have been doing very well. But enough of this. These light
afflictions, which endure for a moment, shall but work for me “a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” I would be very grateful for another
letter from you. My wounds are healing. Farewell. God will surely attend to his
own cause in the best possible way and time, and he will not forget the work of
his own hands.
Your friend,
John Brown.
SOURCES: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters
of John Brown, p. 582-3
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