John Brown is known as an abolitionist, with a deeply held moral abhorrence for slavery, who resorted to violent measures in his attempt to end the institution in 19th century America. His attempt to steal arms from the government at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia resulted in his arrest, trail and execution. During his incarceration in Virginia, many in this country were talking about whether he was a hero or a madman, and much correspondence was sent to Governor Wise of Virginia either asking him to commute the sentence, or the opposite.
Quite a few of these letters have found their way into the collections at the Newport Historical Society. We are not yet sure how. Among them are also several letters from Brown himself, including the one shown here. In this letter, written from jail while he was awaiting execution, he tells his cousin that he feels no shame for what he has done. He writes:
I suppose I am the first since the landing
of Peter Brown from the Mayflower that has either been sentenced to
imprisonment; or to the Gallows. But y dear old friend; let not that fact
alone grieve you. You cannot have forgotten how; & where our Grand
Father Capt (John Brown) fell in 1776; & that he too might have perished on
the Scaffold had circumstances been but very little different. The fact that
a man dies under the hand of an executioner (or otherwise) has but little to do with his true character…
Several Newport abolitionists supported Brown’s plans for an armed slave rebellion, and our archives will allow us to tell more of this story as we assemble the information.
UPDATE: Since adding this post, we have learned the following from Louis A. DeCaro:
In the 20th century, the master scholar of John Brown studies, Boyd B. Stutler, investigated this particular letter, from which a good many facsimile letters were produced. He concluded that the original copy of this letter was in the hands of Storer College, a black college located near Harper’s Ferry, West Va. He mentioned a number of editions of this letter and also which schools/archives possessed copies, but he did not mention your historical society as one of them. Regardless, unless your archive obtained the original from the long defunct Storer College, yours is likely a copy.
It seems that a lithograph was made from the original letter, and what we possess, most likely, is one of the lithograph prints.