Broad Run, Virginia through Bryant

BROAD RUN, VIRGINIA, April 1, 1863. Detachments of the 1st Vermont and 5th New York Cavalry. The Confederate General Mosby was known to be in the vicinity with a small force of men and Captain Flint was sent out at the head of the detachment to rout or capture him. They came upon Mosby and about 65 of his men at a house on Broad run, not far from the Leesburg and Alexandria road, and before the Confederates knew that any Union men were in the immediate neighborhood they received a volley that wounded 4 of their number. Owing to the arrangement of the fences a charge was impossible, and while Flint's men were crowded about a narrow gate in their efforts to get through they were subjected to a galling fire from the enemy. This increased the confusion, the men became panic stricken and fled in disorder. The Union loss was 25 killed and wounded and about 80 prisoners, stragglers picked up in squads of 3 or 4. Mosby's loss was the 4 wounded at the first fire.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 168-169.


BROCK ROAD, VIRGINIA, May 5-7, 1864. (See Wilderness.)

BROCK'S GAP, VIRGINIA, October 6, 1864. 3d Cavalry Division, Army of the Shenandoah. As Custer's division was going into camp near Brock's gap the 5th New York and 18th Pennsylvania were attacked by the Confederate cavalry under Rosser and 75 men of the New York regiment were cut off from the main body, but succeeded in getting away from the enemy and came in later. Custer ordered out enough of his command to repulse the attack.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 169.


BROCKETT, LINUS PIERPONT, author, born in Canton, Connecticut, 16 October, 1820. He studied at Brown, but left, on account of delicate health, before graduation, taught for some time, studied medicine in Washington, D.C., the College of physicians and surgeons in New York, and Yale Medical College, and was graduated as M. D. at the last in 1843. After practicing his profession for several years he devoted himself to literary pursuits in Hartford, Connecticut From 1847 till 1857 he was engaged in the publishing business in that city. In 1854 he was appointed by the legislature a commissioner to investigate idiocy in Connecticut, in which task he spent two years. Since 1856 he has been connected with several religious papers, and has contributed to cyclopedias, magazines, and reviews. He has been at different times editor of the magazines called the “Brooklyn Monthly,” the “Brooklyn Advance,” and “Descriptive America.” Besides these labors he has published forty-six distinct works on geographical, biographical, historical, religious, professional, social, and literary subjects. is works include a “History of Education ” 1859); “Philanthropic Results of the Civil War” 1864); “Our Great Captains” (1865); with S. M. Schmucker, a “History of the Civil War” (1866); in collaboration with Mrs. M. C. Vaughan, “Woman’s Work in the Civil War ” ''. 1867); “Men of Our Day” (Philadelphia, 1868; revised ed., 1872); “Woman: Her Rights, Wrongs, Privileges, and Responsibilities” (Hartford, 1869); “The Year of Battles, a History of the Franco-German War of 1870-1” (1871); “Epidemic and Contagious Diseases" (1873); and “The Silk Industry in America” (1876).  p. 382


BRODERICK, DAVID COLBRETH, 1820-1859, Washington, DC, forty-niner, political leader, elected to the California State Senate in January 1851.  Elected U.S. Senator from California in 1857.  Member of the Free-Soil Party.  He was opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 and the admission of Kansas as a state under the Lecompton Constitution.  He left the Democratic Party on the issue of slavery in 1858.  California had much pro-slavery sentiment, and this affected Broderick’s career.  Broderick was killed in a dual with California Supreme Court Chief Justice David S. Terry.  Terry was a leader of the pro-slavery movement in California.  (Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 382.  Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. III, pp. 61-62; Lynch, Jeremiah, A Senator of the Fifties, 1911)

BRODERICK, David Colbreth, senator, born in Washington, D.C., 4 February, 1820; died near Lake Merced, California, 16 September, 1859. His father, who had emigrated from Ireland, was employed in cutting stone for the capitol. In 1823 the family moved to New York, where young Broderick received a public-school education, after which he was apprenticed to learn the stone-cutter's trade. He became actively connected with the volunteer fire department of New York, and at the same time acquired considerable political influence. In 1846 he was defeated as a Democratic candidate for Congress from New York. Three years later he went to California, where he at once became prominent in politics. In 1849 he was a member of the California constitutional Convention. He was elected to the state senate in 1850 and again in 1851, when he became the presiding officer of that body. In 1856 he was elected U. S. Senator from California, serving from 4 March, 1857, until his death. He was eminent as a debater, the admission of Kansas as a state under the Lecompton constitution, and became separated from the Democratic Party on the slavery question in 1858. His death resulted from a wound received in a duel fought with David S. Terry, chief justice of the supreme court of California. Political differences and personal abuse in public speeches, of which Terry and Broderick were about equality, led to the duel. Judge Terry was the challenger. Mr. Broderick fell at the first fire, his own pistol being discharged before he could level it. . Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 382.


BRODESS, HENRY BISHOP, 1830-1881, Ashland, Kentucky, abolitionist, mayor, jurist, newspaper publisher.  Published anti-slavery newspaper, the American Union.  Served as an officer in the Fourteenth Kentucky Volunteer Infantry.


BROADHEAD, THORNTON F., soldier, born in New Hampshire in 1822; died in Alexandria, Virginia, 31 August, 1862. He studied law at Harvard, and practised in Detroit, Michigan He served through the Mexican War as an officer in the 15th U.S. Infantry, and was twice brevetted for bravery. Resuming the practice of his profession after the war, he was elected to the state senate, and in 1852 appointed postmaster of Detroit. At the beginning of the Civil War he raised the 1st Michigan Cavalry Regiment, at the head of which he served under Generals Banks, Frémont, and Pope. He died of wounds received at the second battle of Bull Run.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 383.


BROOK CHURCH, VIRGINIA, May 11, 1864. (Same as Ground Squirrel Church, q. v.)


BROOKE, ABRAHAM, 1806(8?)-1867, physician, radical reformer, abolitionist, Quaker, from Maryland, later moved to Ohio.  Strong supporter of William Lloyd Garrison and immediate abolition of slavery in the U.S.  Leader in Ohio American Anti-Slavery Society (AASS).  Organized the Society for Universal Inquiry and Reform in October 1842.  Active supporter of women’s rights.  Leader in Western Anti-Slavery Society.  (American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3, p. 602)


BROOKE, JOHN R., soldier, born in Pennsylvania. He enlisted in the 4th Pennsylvania Infantry in April, 1861, became captain at the organization of the regiment, and on 7 November was made colonel of the 53d Pennsylvania Infantry. He was promoted brigadier-general of volunteers 12 May, 1864, and brevetted major-general of volunteers 1 August, 1864. In the regular service he takes rank from 28 July, 1866, when he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the 37th U.S. Infantry, one of the new regiments, created by Congress at that time. He was transferred to the 3d U.S. Infantry 15 March, 1869 —the 37th U.S. Infantry being consolidated with that corps and discontinued by Act of Congress. He was promoted colonel, 13th U.S. Infantry, 20 March, 1879, and re-transferred to the 3d U.S. Infantry 14 June, 1879. In the regular army he received brevets as colonel and brigadier-general for gallantry in several battles—Cold Harbor (27 June, 1862); Gettysburg (1–3 July, 1863); Spottsylvania Court-House; and Tolopotomy (May, 1864). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 385.


BROOKE, WALKER, senator, born in Virginia, 13 December 1813; died in Vicksburg, Mississippi, 19 February 1869. He was graduated at the University of Virginia in 1835, studied law, emigrated to Kentucky, where he taught school two years, and then began to practice law in Lexington, Mississippi He was elected a senator in Congress in place of Henry S. Foote, who had resigned in order to accept the governorship, and served from 11 March, 1852, till 3 March, 1853. He was a member of the Mississippi Seceding Convention of 1861, elected a member of the Provisional Confederate Congress, in which he sat on 18 February, 1861, till 18 February, 1862, and was a candidate for the Confederate Senate, but defeated by James Phelan. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 385.


BROOKHAVEN, MISSISSIPPI, April 29, 1863. Part of Grierson's Brigade of Cavalry. The main body of the brigade bivouacked at Union Church on the night of the 28th and early the next morning made a demonstration on Fayette, to create the impression that Port Gibson was the objective point, and then suddenly turned and took the road to Brookhaven. Before reaching the town General Grierson learned that a force of some 500 conscripts and citizens was organized to resist his further progress. The Union forces charged into the town, when the enemy fled in all directions. Grierson captured over 200 prisoners, several hundred tents, and a large amount of quartermaster's and commissary stores. This engagement occurred during Grierson's raid. Brookhaven, Mississippi, July 18, 1863. Fullerton's Cavalry Brigade, 13th Army Corps. Major Fullerton's brigade consisted of three companies of the 2nd Illinois, three companies of the 3d Illinois, one company of the 4th Indiana and seven companies of the 6th Missouri On the 17th he was ordered to go down the New Orleans & Jackson railroad as far as Brookhaven. That town was reached on the 18th and a small Confederate picket found there. This was driven back with a loss of 45 prisoners. The expedition lasted four days, during which time 4 railroad depots, a number of switches, 40 or 50 cars, 4 locomotives and a large amount of public stores were destroyed. Brooklyn, Kansas, August 21, 1863. Troops belonging to the Army of the Border. The Brooklyn skirmish was one growing out of Quantrill's raid into Kansas. After sacking the town of Lawrence, Quantrill turned eastward toward the Missouri border. All the available troops were summoned for pursuit and he was overtaken near Brooklyn. A slight skirmish ensued there and from that time on he was so closely followed to the state line that he had no time for further depredations. In his flight much of the plunder taken from the Lawrence stores was abandoned. Several of his men were killed and the rest scattered through the timber upon reaching Missouri, where they were acquainted, many of them forsaking their horses to save their lives.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 169.


BROOKS, JAMES, journalist, born in Portland. Maine , 10 November, 1810; died in Washington, D.C., 30 April, 1873. His father, a sea-captain, was lost at sea while James was yet a child, and the family were left destitute. He was sent to a public school in Portland, and at eleven years of age be- came a clerk in Lewiston, Maine , then a frontier town. His employer, observing the fondness of the boy for learning, offered to release him from his apprenticeship and to aid him in obtaining an education. He at once entered the academy at Monmouth, taught school at ten dollars a month and board, and was graduated at Waterville in 1831. Returning to Portland, he began to study law, teaching meanwhile a Latin school in that city. He contributed to the Portland “Advertiser,” and in 1832 went to Washington as its correspondent, thus introducing the fashion of regular Washington letters. After that he travelled through the south, writing letters from the Creek, Cherokee, and Choctaw country in Georgia and Alabama, at the time when those tribes were compelled to move west. His correspondence at this period was a revelation in journalism. In 1835 he was a member of the Maine Legislature, and introduced the first proposition for a railroad from Portland to Montreal and Quebec. After the adjournment he sailed for Europe, and travelled on foot over Great Britain and the continent, writing letters descriptive of his travels. In 1836 he came to New York and established the “Express,” of which, for a time, both a morning and an evening edition were published, and, although he met with discouragement at first, the paper soon became a success. Mr. Brooks made political speeches in Indiana for Harrison in 1840. In 1841 he married Mrs. Mary Randolph, a widow, of Richmond, Virginia, whom he was required to manumit three or four slaves before the wedding. In 1847 he was elected to the New York legislature, and two years later to con where he remained two terms, 1849-53. He took ground in 1850 in favor of the compromise measures, in 1854 became identified with the American Party and after 1861 with the Democratic Party. He was elected to Congress again in 1865, and, by repeated re-elections, served till 1873. He made two later trips to Europe, and acquired four languages. In 1867 he was a member of the state constitutional convention, and in 1869 was one of the government directors of the Union Pacific Railway. In February, 1873, the house censured Mr. Brooks “for the use of his position of government director of the Union Pacific Railroad, and a member of this house, to procure the assignment to himself or family of stock in the Crédit Mobilier. Mr. Brooks believed that this was undeserved, and the mortification it caused him probably hastened his death. In 1871–2 Mr. Brooks, in pursuit of health, made a voyage around the world, and gave the results of his observations first in letters to the “Express,” and afterward in “A Seven Months' Run, Up and Down and Around the World” (New York, 1872). His valuable library was sold at auction in New York in June, 1886.—His brother, Erastus, journalist, born in Portland, Maine , 31 January, 1815. When eight years old he was clerk for a Boston grocer, who taught him to sand the sugar and water the milk, attending an evening school at the same time. He afterward became a printer, and edited and published a newspaper, called the “Yankee,” at Wiscasset, Maine , acting as his own compositor, press-boy, and carrier. Leading articles, essays, and stories were composed as he set the types, without the intervention of manuscript. In addition to this work he began to prepare himself for college, teaching school at the same time. After studying for some time at Brown, he took charge of a grammar school at Haverhill, Massachusetts, and at the same time became editor and part proprietor of the Haverhill “Gazette,” which he finally sold to John G. Whittier. In 1836 he was engaged as Washington correspondent of the New  “Daily Advertiser,” and of several New England papers, and in the same year became joint editor and proprietor, with his brother, of the New York “Express,” retaining the place until 1877. He acted as Washington correspondent of the “Express” during sixteen successive sessions of Congress, and in 1843 went abroad as one of its foreign correspondents. He was elected to the New York State Senate in 1853, and again in 1855. His support of the bill divesting Roman Catholic bishops of the title to church property in real estate involved him in a controversy with Arch-Bishop Hughes, which was afterward published in two rival volumes (New York, 1855). In 1856 he was nominated for governor of New York by the American Party, but was not elected, though leading his party vote by several thousand. He subsequently joined the Democratic Party. He was a delegate to the state constitutional convention in 1867, and in 1871 was appointed a member of the constitutional commission. In 1878, 1879, and 1881 he was elected to the assembly, and in each of these years was the Democratic candidate for speaker, and the leading Democratic member on the committee of ways and means. In May, 1880, Mr. Brooks became a member of the State Board of Health. In April, 1886, he delivered before the New York Legislature, by its invitation, a eulogy on his friend Horatio Seymour.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p.  386-87.


BROOKS, JOSEPH, 1821-1877, abolitionist, clergyman, newspaper editor, Union Army chaplain, political leader.  In 1856, moved to St. Louis and was editor of the Central Christian Advocate, a Methodist anti-slavery newspaper.  He was an ardent abolitionist and supporter of women’s suffrage.  In 1863, Brooks recruited and organized African American regiments.  He was appointed Chaplain of Fifty-Sixth U. S. Colored Infantry.  (Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 387).

BROOKS, Joseph, clergyman, born in Butler County, Ohio, 1 November, 1821; died in Little Rock, Arkansas, 30 April, 1877. He was graduated at Indiana Asbury University, and in 1840 entered the Methodist ministry. He moved to Iowa in 1846, and in 1856 became editor of the St. Louis “Central Christian Advocate,” the only anti-slavery paper published on slave soil west of the Mississippi. When the Civil War began, he became chaplain of the 1st Missouri Artillery, Colonel Frank P. Blair's regiment. He afterward aided in raising the 11th and 33d Missouri Regiments, and was transferred to the latter as chaplain. Early in the war Mr. Brooks urged the enlistment of colored troops, and, when it was decided to employ them, he was offered a major-general's commission if he would raise a division, but he declined. He afterward became chaplain of the 3d Arkansas colored Infantry. After the war Mr. Brooks became a planter in Arkansas, and was a leader in the state constitutional Convention of 1868. During the presidential canvass of that year an attempt was made to assassinate Mr. Brooks and Congressman C. C. Hines, which resulted in the death of the latter and the wounding of Mr. Brooks. He moved to Little Rock in the autumn of 1868, and was elected state senator in 1870. In 1872 he was a candidate for governor, and, when his opponent was declared to be elected by the legislature, he claimed that the election was fraudulent, and, relying on the decision of a state court in his favor, took forcible possession of the state-house, 13 April, 1874, and held it till dispossessed by proclamation of President Grant, 23 May, 1874. (See BAXTER, ELISHA.) Mr. Brooks was appointed postmaster at Little Rock in March, 1875, and held the office till his death. He was a man of great will-power and a strong speaker. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888. Vol. I p. 387.


BROOKS, HORACE, soldier, born in Boston, Massachusetts, 14 August, 1814, was appointed to the U.S. Military Academy, through the influence of Lafayette, whom his mother met abroad, and was graduated there in 1835. He served in the Seminole War of 1835–'6, receiving, 31 December, 1835, the brevet of first lieutenant for gallantry and good conduct. He was assistant professor of mathematics in the U.S. Military Academy from November, 1836, till August, 1839, and served on garrison and recruiting duty at various places till the Mexican War. On 18 June, 1846, he became captain in the 2d U.S. Artillery, and served through Scott's campaign. For his services during the war he received two brevets—that of major, 20 August, 1847, for Churubusco and Contreras, and that of lieutenant- colonel, 8 September, 1847, for Molino del Rey. From this time until the Civil War he was stationed in various forts, taking part in the Utah Expedition of 1855 and in quelling the Kansas disturbances of 1860–1. On 28 April, 1861, he became major in the Second Artillery, and on 1 August, lieutenant-colonel. He served in defence of Washington from February till March, 1861, at Fort Pickens, Florida, until October, and at Fort Jefferson, Florida, until March, 1862. From September, 1862, till September, 1863, at the time of the Morgan raid, he was chief mustering and pay officer for the state of Ohio, under Governor Todd, and during the year $1,000.000 passed through his hands without an error in his accounts. After this he served on various military boards at Washington and else-where, becoming colonel on 1 August, 1863, and brevet brigadier-general at the close of the war. From 1866 till 1868, and from 1869 till 1872, he commanded a regiment at Fort McHenry, Maryland, being at the head of the Department of Washington in the interim. From 18 November, 1872, till 10 January, 1877, he commanded the Presidio at San Francisco, and on the latter date was retired from active service, being over sixty-two years of age. He is now a resident of Baltimore, Maryland Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 388.


BROOKS, PRESTON SMITH, Congressman, born in Edgefield District, South Carolina, 4 August, 1819; died in Washington, D.C., 27 January, 1857. He was graduated at the South Carolina College in 1839, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in May, 1843. He divided his time between the practice of law and planting. In 1844 he was elected to the state legislature. During the Mexican War he served as captain in the Palmetto Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers, and on his return he gave his exclusive attention to planting. He was elected a representative from South Carolina to Congress, as a state-rights Democrat, in 1853, and was re-elected twice. On 22 May, 1856, Senator Sumner having incensed the members from South Carolina by expressions in his speech on “the crime against Kansas,” Mr. Brooks entered the Senate-chamber after that body had adjourned, approached Mr. Sumner from behind,  the senator was still seated at his desk, and struck him repeatedly on the head with a cane, till Mr. Sumner fell insensible to the floor. Friends of Mr. Brooks, among them Mr. Barksdale, of Mississippi, accompanied him, and with drawn revolvers prevented any interference. Subsequently a committee of the house reported in favor of Mr. Brooks's expulsion; but in the final action on the report there were 121 votes in favor and 95 opposing it, which, being less than the requisite two thirds, prevented the house from agreeing to the resolution. Afterward, during a debate in the house, words were passed between Anson Burlingame, then a member from Massachusetts, and Mr. Brooks, in consequence of which the former was challenged to a duel. The challenge was accepted, Canada chosen as the place of meeting, and rifles as the weapons; but Mr. Brooks failed to appear, giving as his reason that he would  have to “pass through the enemy's country” to get there. The poet Bryant celebrated the event some verses in the “Evening Post,” in which the refrain was, “Bully Brooks is afraid.” Mr. Brooks resigned his seat, and was unanimously reelected by his constituents. He also received numerous costly canes and other testimonials from different parts of the south. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 389-390


BROOKS, THOMAS BENTON, engineer, born in Monroe, Orange County, New York, 15 June, 1836. He was graduated at the engineering department of Union in 1858. During the Civil War he was captain in the 1st New York Volunteer Engineers, afterward becoming major and aide on the general staff of the army. As such he served under General Gillmore in the reduction of Fort Pulaski and Fort Wagner and before Charleston. His reports are given in full in General Gillmore's “Siege and Reduction of Fort Pulaski” (New York, 1862), and in his “Operations against the Defences of Charleston Harbor” (1863). At the time of his resignation he held the brevet rank of colonel. From 1869 till 1879 he was assistant geologist in charge of the Surveys of the Lake Superior iron regions. In this connection he was associated with Raphael Pumpelly, and prepared “Geological Survey of Michigan” (vols. i. and ii., New York, 1873, also “Geology of Wisconsin.” (part of vol. iii., Madison, 1879). is health having failed, in 1879 he turned his attention to farming, and now resides at Newburg, New York Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 390.


BROOKS, WILLIAM THOMAS HARBAUGH, soldier, born in New Lisbon, Ohio, 28 January, 1821; died in Huntsville, Alabama, 19 July, 1870. He was graduated at the U.S. Military Academy in 1841 and served in Florida in 1841–’2. In 1843–’5. He was on frontier duty in Kansas, and in 1845–6 served in the military occupation of Texas, becoming first lieutenant in the 3d U.S. Infantry, 21 September, 1846. He was in nearly all the battles in the Mexican War, was brevetted captain, 23 September, 1846, for his conduct at Monterey, and major, 20 August, 1847, for services at Contreras and Churubusco. In 1848–51 he was aide-de-camp to General Twiggs, and on 10 November, 1851, became captain in the 3d U.S. Infantry. From this time until the Civil War he served in various forts. In 1854 and again in 1858 he was on scouting duty, and from 1858 till 1860 was given sick leave. On 28 September, 1861, he was made brigadier-general of volunteers, and served in the Peninsular Campaign of 1862, being engaged at Yorktown, Lee's Mills,  Golden's Farm, Glendale, and Savage Station, where he was wounded. In September, 1862, during the Maryland Campaign, he was in the battles of South Mountain and Antietam, being wounded in at the latter place. In October and November 1862, on the march to Falmouth, Virginia, he commanded a division, and again in the Rappahannock Campaign, December, 1862, to May, 1863. From 11 June, 1863, until 6 April, 1864, he commanded the Department of the Monongahela, and in the operations before Richmond in 1864 was at the head of the 10th Army Corps, being at Swift's Creek, Drury's Bluff, Bermuda Hundred, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. His health failing on account of wounds and exposure, he resigned on 14 July, 1864, and in 1866 went to a farm in Huntsville, Alabama, where he remained until his death. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 390.


BROOKS' MILL, ARKANSAS, March 27, 1864. (See Camden, Arkansas, Expedition to.)


BROOK TURNPIKE, VIRGINIA, March 1, 1864. Cavalry, Army of the Potomac. The skirmishing on this date was a part of the famous Kilpatrick raid. The 1st brigade, 3d division, commanded by Brigadier-General Henry Davies. crossed the Chickahominy, struck the Brook turnpike and advanced on Richmond. After proceeding some distance he encountered numerous small parties of the enemy's pickets, several of whom were captured. No serious resistance was met, however, until about 1 p. m. when a considerable force of the enemy was found intrenched in a line of earthworks. That portion of the works directly in front was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel James Howard, who ordered Rives' battery to engage the Union troops. Davies deployed the 5th New York as skirmishers on the right and left, while an attacking force of 500 men was placed in charge of Major Patton of the 3d Indiana, with instructions to keep well to the left until he obtained a position where he could bring his fire to bear on the battery and then make a determined assault on the works. The main body of the brigade was held ready to charge as soon as Patton made this attack. What the ultimate success of the plan would have been is problematical, as Davies was recalled before he had time to execute the movement.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 169-170.

BROOKVILLE, KENTUCKY, September 28, 1862. 44th Ohio' Infantry, 14th Kentucky Cavalry, and Kentucky Home Guards. Colonel Basil W. Duke, with about 700 of Morgan's guerrillas, while making a demonstration against Cincinnati, made a descent on the towns of Augusta and Brookville. The greater part of the town of Augusta was burned on the 27th. Lieutenant-Colonel H. B. Wilson, commanding the Union forces at Maysville, gathered together all his available force—about 325 infantry and 100 cavalry—and started for Augusta. Learning that Duke had retired to Brookville he changed his course and reached the latter place about 8 a. m. on the 28th. The 44th Ohio charged at double-quick into the town, while the remainder of the force was used to support the charge. Duke was in the court house, engaged in paroling prisoners. He rushed out, mounted his horse and with his body-guard of about 25 men dashed off down the Falmouth road, whither the main body had preceded him. Wilson then ordered up his one piece of artillery and commenced shelling them. The third shot exploded in their midst, killing 6, wounding 1, and scattering the rest. About 40 were captured. The Union loss was 1 man killed.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 170.


BROOMALL, JOHN M., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Congressional Globe)


BROOME, JOHN L., soldier, born in New York City, 8 March, 1824. He was appointed second lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, 12 January, 1848; promoted first lieutenant, 28 September, 1857; captain, 26 July, 1861; major, 8 December, 1864; and lieutenant-colonel, 16 March, 1879. During the war with Mexico he served with his corps. In 1862 he commanded the marine guard of the “Hartford,” Farragut's flag-ship, and was present at the passage of Forts Jackson and St. Philip (24 April), and in the various engagements at Vicksburg, and Port Hudson, which resulted in wresting the Mississippi River from the Confederate forces. He was twice wounded during the war, and at its close received the brevets of major and lieutenant-colonel for gallant and meritorious services. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 390.


BROSS, WILLIAM, journalist, born in Montague, Sussex County, New Jersey, 4 November, 1813. He was fitted for college at Milford Academy, Pennsylvania, and was graduated at Williams in 1838, after which he taught school for ten years. He then went to Chicago, where, from 1849 till 1851, he was a dealer in books, and published the “Prairie Herald.” He formed a partnership with J. L. Scripps in 1852, and established the “Daily Democratic Press,” which was consolidated with the Chicago “Tribune,” 1 July, 1858. For several years he was president of the “Tribune” Company. During 1855 and 1856 he was a member of the Chicago City Council. He was lieutenant-governor of Illinois from 1865 till 1869. He has travelled extensively in America and Europe, and has published in the “Tribune” many letters from abroad, and from almost every part of this country. He became a member of the American Society for the Advancement of Science in 1853, and has read papers before that association, as well as before the Chicago Historical Society and the Academy of Sciences. He was identified with the Republican Party from the first, and took a prominent part in its campaigns as a public speaker. He is the author of several publications in book or pamphlet form, including “A History of Chicago” (Chicago, 1876); “A Compilation of Editorials from the Chicago Tribune” and “Immortality” (1877); “A History of Camp Douglas” (1878); “Punishment” and “Chicago and the Sources of her Future Growth” (1880); “The Winfield Family” (1882); and “Illinois and the Thirteenth Amendment” (1884). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 391.


BROUGH, JOHN (bruff), governor of Ohio, born in Marietta, Ohio, in 1811; died in Cleveland, 29 August, 1865. At the age of twelve, and with only the rudiments of a common-school training, he became an apprentice in the office of the Marietta “Gazette.” Here he stayed for two years, but all the time sought opportunities for education, and in 1825 secured a place in the office of the Athens “Mirror,” within reach of the Ohio University, then in its infancy. He entered at once as a student, and so improved his time that he more than made good his lack of early advantages. At the same period he was so successful in business that in 1831 he became proprietor of the “Washington County Republican,” a Democratic paper published in Marietta. This journal he sold in 1833, and, in company with his brother, Charles Henry Brough, purchased the Lancaster “Eagle,” and soon made its influence felt as a democratic organ throughout the state. In 1835 Mr. Brough was elected clerk of the Ohio Senate, which office he held until 1838, when he was elected to the state legislature from Fairfield and Hocking Counties. During this period (1835–6), he was member of a joint commission to adjust the boundary between Virginia and Ohio. He was elected state auditor in 1839, and entered upon the duties of his office at a time when the whole country still felt the effects of the panic of 1837, and when the state of Ohio was peculiarly burdened with liabilities for which there appeared to be no adequate relief. Mr. Brough devoted himself to reconstructing the whole financial system of the state, and retired from office in 1846 with a high reputation as a public officer. In partnership with his brother Charles he undertook the management of the Cincinnati “Enquirer,” which was soon one of the most powerful democratic journals in the west. At the same time he opened a law office in Cincinnati. Personally, Mr. Brough took an active part in politics, and became the most popular democratic orator in the state. He retired from active political life in 1848, and in 1853 was elected president of the Madison and Indianapolis Railway, then one of the great lines of the west. He moved his residence to Cleveland, and, when the Civil War began in 1861, he was urged to become a candidate of the Republican Union Party for governor. This honor he declined, although his position as a “war Democrat” was always distinctly understood. The canvass of 1863 was held under very difficult conditions. The Civil War was at its height, a large proportion of the loyal voters were in the army, and southern sympathizers, led by Clement L. Vallandigham, were openly defiant. Vallandigham was arrested for disloyal utterances, tried by court-martial, and banished from the United States. He was sent within the Confederate lines, and subsequently received the regular Democratic nomination for Governor of Ohio. There was apparently some anger that he would actually be elected by the “peace” faction of the party. At this crisis Mr. Brough made a patriotic speech at Marietta, declaring slavery destroyed by the act of rebellion, and earnestly appealing to all patriots, of whatever previous political affiliations, to unite against the southern rebels. He was immediately put before the people by the Republican Union Party as a candidate for governor, and the majority that elected him (101,099) was the largest ever given for a governor in any state up to that time. In the discharge of his duties as chief magistrate he was laborious, patriotic, far-sighted, clear in his convictions of duty, firm in their maintenance, and fearless in their execution. He was distinctly the “war governor” of Ohio. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 391.


BROWN, AARON VENABLE, statesman.  B. 1795 He moved with his parents to Tennessee in 1815, studied law, and when admitted to practice became the partner of James K. Polk. From 1821 till 1832 he was almost continuously a member of the state legislature. He was elected to Congress in 1839, and re-elected in 1841 and 1843. On retiring from Congress, in 1845, he was chosen governor of Tennessee, serving until 1847. He was a delegate to the Southern Convention at Nashville in 1850, and is the author of "The Tennessee Platform," brought forward at that time, a document that aroused much comment. In 1852 he was a delegate to the Democratic Convention in Baltimore, and reported the platform that was adopted. The last office held by Mr. Brown was that of Postmaster-General in President Buchanan's cabinet. Among the measures adopted during his administration of this office was the establishment of a new and shorter oceanic mail-route to California by way of Tehuantepec, and of the transcontinental mail-routes from St. Louis west-ward, prior to the construction of the railroads. He was for twenty years one of the most trusted leaders of the Democratic Party. A volume of his speeches was published in Nashville in 1854. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 393.


BROWN, ALBERT GALLATIN, statesman, born in Chester District, South Carolina, 31 May, 1813; died near Jacksonville, Mississippi, 12 June, 1880. His parents moved to Mississippi while he was a child. He took a boyish interest in military affairs, and was made a brigadier-general in the state militia when only nineteen years of age. He adopted the law as a profession, gaining admission to the bar in 1834, and was a member of the state legislature from 1835 till 1839, and member of Congress from Mississippi in 1840-'l. He was also a judge of the circuit superior court in 1841-'3; governor of Mississippi on successive re-elections from 184 till 1848; again member of Congress from 1848 till 1854; and U. S. Senator from 1854 till 1858. He was re-elected for six years, beginning 4 March, 1859, but resigned in 1861 to join in the rebellion. His colleague in the U. S. Senate at the time was Jefferson Davis, and they both attended the caucus of seceding senators, held in Washington 6 January, 1861. He was an uncompromising adherent of the Democratic Party in the south. A volume of his speeches was published in 1859. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 393-394.


BROWN, BENJAMIN, abolitionist, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1841-1842.


BROWN, BENJAMIN GRATZ, 1826-1885, lawyer, soldier.  Anti-slavery activist in Missouri legislature from 1852-1859.  Opposed pro-slavery party.  Commanded a regiment and later a brigade of Missouri State Militia.  U.S. Senator 1863-1867, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Appletons’, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 105; Congressional Globe)


BROWN, DAVID PAUL, 1795-1872, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lawyer, orator, playwright, abolitionist leader.  President of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery Society (PASS).  Worked with prominent lawyers to prosecute cases of wrongful enslavement.  Worked with the Pennsylvania Abolition Society (PAS).  Argued the case of fugitive slave Basil Dorsey.  (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 156; Sinha, 2016, pp. 119-120, 122, 248, 387, 511-512)


BROWN, EGBERT BENSON, soldier, born in Brownsville, Jefferson County, New York, 24 October, 1816. He obtained the rudiments of education in a log school- house in Tecumseh, Missouri; but when he was thirteen years old he began work with such diligence and success that in twenty years (1849) he was chosen mayor of Toledo, Ohio. In the meanwhile he had half round the world on a whaling voyage spending nearly four years in the Pacific Ocean. £. From 1852 until 1861 he was a railway manager, but resigned his place when Civil War was imminent, and organized a regiment of infantry at St. Louis in May, 1861. He was instrumental in saving that city from falling into the hands of the secessionists, and was appointed brigadier of Missouri volunteers in May, 1862. After the battle of Springfield, 8 January, 1863, where he was severely wounded, he was appointed brigadier-general of U. S. volunteers. He served through the Civil War, mainly in Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas, and left the army with one shoulder almost wholly disabled and a bullet in his hip. The legislature of Missouri officially complimented the troops of his command for their conduct at the battle of Springfield. From 1866 till 1868 he was U. S. pension-agent at St. Louis. He retired to a farm at Hastings, Calhoun County, Illinois, in 1869, and has since resided there, serving, however, on the state board of equalization from 1881 till 1884. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 398.


BROWN, FREDERICK, radical abolitionist, son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859, was killed during the raid.  (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 206; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, GEORGE, naval officer, born in Indiana, 19 June, 1835. He was appointed midshipman from his native state, 5 February, 1849, was attached to the frigate “Cumberland,” and in 1851 to the “St. Lawrence,” cruising in both vessels. He was promoted to passed midshipman, and afterward to master, in 1856. On 2 June, 1856, he became lieutenant, and served in the Brazilian and African Squadrons until 1860, when he was ordered to special service on the steam sloop “Powhatan,” and in 1861 transferred to the “Octorora” gun-boat, which was attached, as flag-ship, to Commodore Porter's mortar-boat flotilla. He participated in the hazardous ascent of the Mississippi River under Farragut, and in the first attack on Vicksburg in June, 1862, and for his conduct on this occasion was commended in the official report. The fleet dropped down the river to avoid the season of low water, and the “Octorora” was ordered to blockading duty off Wilmington, North Carolina Lieutenant Brown was promoted lieutenant-commander 16 July, 1862, and shortly afterward placed in charge of the “Indianola" iron-clad, of the Mississippi Squadron. The batteries at Vicksburg and Warrenton were successfully passed 14 February, 1863. An engagement took place near upper Palmyra Island, on 24 February, 1863, between the “Indianola” and four Confederate gun-boats, manned by more than a thousand men. The fight lasted an hour and twenty-seven minutes, and Lieutenant-Commander Brown, severely wounded, surrendered, with his ship in a sinking condition. The officers and crew were  a few months afterward, and Lieutenant Brown was assigned to the steam gun-boat “Itasca,” of the Western Gulf Blockading Squadron, which he commanded in the action of 5 August, 1864, in Mobile Bay, and in the naval operations against Spanish Fort and the defences of Mobile, in March and April, 1865. He was promoted commander, 25 July, 1866, and stationed at the Washington Navy-yard until 1867, when he was granted leave of absence to serve as agent for the Japanese government in command of an iron-clad man-of-war purchased from the United States. He was promoted captain 25 April, 1877, and placed in command of the U.S. Navy-yard at Norfolk, Virginia, in 1886. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 399.


BROWN, HARVEY, soldier, born in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1795; died in Clifton, New York, 31 March, 1874. After graduation, at the U.S. Military Academy, in 1818, he joined the light artillery, and served on garrison and staff duty until, on the reorganization of the army in 1821, he was assigned to the 1st and shortly afterward to the 4th U.S. Artillery, when he was promoted first lieutenant. After ten years' service in this grade he was promoted captain. He was in the Black Hawk Expedition in 1832, but saw no actual fighting. After four years in garrison he was ordered to Florida, in 1836, and took part in the arduous campaigns against the Seminole Indians. He was again in Florida in 1838-’9, and later in 1839 was ordered to the northern frontier, to quell expected disturbances on the Canadian Border. He was major of the artillery battalion, in the Army of Occupation in Mexico, and was present at many battles of the campaign. For gallantry on these occasions he received successive brevets, including that of colonel, 13 September, 1847, and was promoted to the full grade of major, 9 January, 1851. He was superintendent of recruiting in New York in 1851–2, and was in Florida fighting the Seminoles in 1852-’3, and still again in 1854–6. After an interval of garrison and recruiting duty, he was placed in command of the artillery school for practice at Fort Monroe, remaining there, with brief details on other duty, until the Civil War began, in 1861. He commanded the regulars in the defences of  Washington until 4 April, 1861, when he was ordered to Fort Pickens, in Pensacola Harbor, Florida, and on 28 April was promoted lieutenant-colonel. He repelled the Confederate attack of 9 October, and in turn bombarded their works, with partial success, 22–23 November, and again 1 January, 1862. For these services he was brevetted brigadier in the regular service, and promoted colonel, 5th U.S. Artillery, 14 May, 1861; but he declined a command as brigadier in the volunteers. He was in command of the forces in New York City during the formidable draft riots of 12–16 July, 1863, and was brevetted major-general, U.S.A., for distinguished services at that time. He was retired from active service 1 August, 1863, having been borne on the army register more than forty-five years, and having passed the legal limit of age for active duty. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 399-400.


BROWN, BENJAMIN GRATZ, lawyer, born in Lexington, Kentucky, 28 May, 1826; died in St. Louis, Missouri, 13 December, 1885, was graduated at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky, in 1845, and at Yale in 1847, was admitted to the bar in Louisville, Kentucky, and soon afterward settled in St. Louis. He was a member of the Missouri legislature from 1852 till 1859, and in 1857 made there a remarkable anti-slavery speech, which is said to have been the beginning of the Free-Soil movement in that state. He edited the “Missouri Democrat,” a journal of radical Republican principles, which had for its most violent political opponent “The Missouri Republican,” a Democratic sheet of the most uncompromising character. For five years (1854–'9) he constantly opposed the pro-slavery party, and was often threatened with personal violence, on one occasion being wounded by a pistol-shot. In 1857 he was the Free-Soil candidate for governor, and came within 500 votes of election. At the beginning of the Civil War, in 1861, he gave all his influence to the support of the union, and was in close consultation with General Lyon when he planned the capture of Camp Jackson and broke up the first secession movement in St. Louis. Brown commanded a regiment of militia on that occasion, and afterward, during the invasion of the state by Confederate generals Price and Van Dorn, commanded a brigade. He was a member of the U.S. Senate from 1863 till 1867, and lent his powerful influence in 1864 to favor the passage of the ordinance of emancipation by the Missouri state Convention. In 1871 he was elected governor of Missouri, on the liberal Republican ticket, by a majority of 40,000. In 1872 he was the candidate for vice-president on the Democratic ticket with Horace Greeley, and after the election, which resulted in the defeat of the Democrats and the election of the Republican candidate, General Grant, he resumed his law practice. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 403


BROWN, Henry Kirke, sculptor, born in Leyden, Massachusetts 24 February 1814; died in Newburg, New York 16 July, 1886. In early boyhood he evinced a talent for painting, and when about fourteen years old, without any instruction, and before he had ever seen a work of art, he executed a creditable portrait of an old man. At the age of seventeen he began to study with Chester Harding, a portrait-painter of Boston. The summers from 1836 till 1839 were spent in surveying on the Illinois Central Railroad, and the winters in Cincinnati painting and modelling in clay. His first finished work in this line was an ideal female head. After a winter in Boston he moved first to Troy and soon afterward to Albany, New York, where he devoted himself to sculpture, executing portrait busts of many gentlemen of Albany and the neighboring cities. Among these are the Reverend William B. Sprague, D. D., Erastus Corning, Dr. Eliphalet Nott, and Silas Dutcher. He also produced two ideal statues, “Hope,” and a discobolus. Accompanied by his wife, he went to Italy in 1842 and remained there until 1846. During this period he executed “Ruth." a group representing a boy and a dog, now owned by the Historical Society of New York, a “Rebecca, and a “David,” which was destroyed. On his return to the United States he opened a temporary studio in New York, brought over skilled workmen from Europe, and did some preliminary work in bronze casting, the first attempted in this country. In 1848 he went among the Indians and modelled many interesting subjects, some of which were reproduced in bronze. About this time he made the altar-piece for the church of the Annunciation in New York, and modelled portrait busts of William Cullen Bryant and Dr. Willard Parker, both of whom were his warm personal friends. About 1850 he built a studio in Brooklyn, and for two years was engaged with the statue of De Witt Clinton for Greenwood cemetery. This was the first bronze statue cast in this country. During these years and until 1855 he was at work on the fine equestrian statue of Washington in Union Square, New York. In 1857 he was invited by the state of South Carolina to undertake the decoration of the state-house in Columbia, which current rumor made the capital of the then projected confederacy. The principal design was a group for the main pediment, a colossal ideal figure of South Carolina, with Justice and Liberty on either hand, while the industries were represented the slaves at work in cotton-and rice-fields. The figure of South Carolina was nearly finished when the Civil War began, and Sherman's soldiers, regarding it as the typical genius of secession, destroyed it when they passed through Columbia in 1865. Mr. Brown made many friends during his residence in the south, was strongly urged to cast his lot with the seceding states, and remained in fulfilment of his professional contract until hostilities actually began. During 1859 and 1860 he served on an art commission appointed by President Buchanan, and wrote a report, submitted 9 March, 1860, which to some extent disseminated correct ideas about art among members of both houses of Congress. During the Civil War he was an active officer of the Sanitary Commission. Mr. Brown's average work undeniably suffers by comparison with the highest standards; but his best efforts evince earnestness and dignity and no small degree of artistic talent. The equestrian statues are particularly good, a result doubtless due to his love for horses. His artistic career will always be noteworthy as covering the whole period of American sculpture from its very beginning until a time when our sculptors had worked their way to the foremost rank of contemporary artists. The following-named statues are among his principal works: “Dr. Geo. W. Bethune,” in Packer institute, Brooklyn New York “Lincoln,” in Prospect Park Brooklyn (1866); “General Nathanael Greene,” or the state of Rhode Island, presented to the national gallery in the capitol at Washington (1867); “Lincoln,” in Union Square, New York “Equestrian Statue of General Scott,” for the U. S. government (begun in 1871), considered his best work: “General George Clinton,” for presentation to the U.S. government by the State of New York (1873); “General Philip Kearny,” in Newark, New Jersey, also “Richard Stockton,” for the state of New Jersey (1874); “An Equestrian Statue of General Nathanael Greene,” for the national government (1875-'7); “The Resurrection” (1877). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, pp. 400-401.


BROWN, Henry "Box," c. 1815-1878, former slave, author, orator, abolitionist, wrote Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown, Written from a Statement of Fact by Himself (1849), published by abolitionist Charles Stearns. (Brown, 2002; Mabee, 1970, pp. 388-389; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 52, 184, 204-205, 464, 489; Ruggles, 2003; Stearns, 1848)


BROWN, John, 1800-1859, (known as “Old Brown of Osawatomie”), radical abolitionist leader, wrote Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States (1858); condemned slavery; led raid against the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859.  He was captured, tried and convicted and was executed on December 2, 1859 along with four of his co-defendants.  (De Caro, 2002; Drake, 1950, pp. 189, 192, 200; Du Bois, 1909; Oates, 1970; Quarles, 1974; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 58, 59, 61, 62, 138, 153, 198, 205-207, 226, 264, 327-329, 338, 422, 427, 478, 675-676; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. 2, Pt. 1, pp. 131-134; American Reformers: An H.W. Wilson Biographical Dictionary, New York, 1985; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3, p. 690; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 307-308)

BROWN, John, of Osawatomie, abolitionist, born in Torrington, Connecticut, 9 May, 1800; executed in Charlestown, Virginia, 2 December, 1859. His ancestor, Peter Brown, came over with the historic party in the “Mayflower” in 1620. Peter was unmarried, by trade a carpenter, and drew his house-lot in Plymouth with the rest; but he moved soon afterward, with Bradford, Standish, and Winslow, to the neighboring settlement of Duxbury. He was twice married, and died early. One of his descendants in the main line was a Captain John Brown, of the Connecticut militia, who died of disease in the revolutionary service in 1776. This revolutionary captain married Hannah Owen, of Welsh origin; and their son, Owen Brown, married Ruth Mills, who was of Dutch descent; so that John Brown of Osawatomie, their son, had a mingling of the blood of three races in his veins, resulting in a corresponding mixture of strong qualities. Owen Brown left a brief autobiography, which begins by saying: “My life has been of little worth, mostly filled up with vanity.” Then he goes on to describe, with some fulness, this career of frivolity, which will seem to most readers grave and decorous to the last degree. The most interesting entry is the following: “In 1800, May 9, [my son] John was born, one hundred years after his great-grandfather; nothing else very uncommon”; and he adds, in tranquil ignorance of the future: “We lived in peace with all mankind, so far as I know.” How far the parent would have approved the stormy career of the son is now matter of inference only; but we have it in Owen Brown's own declaration that he was one of that early school of abolitionists whom Hopkins and Edwards enlightened; and he apparently took part in the forcible rescue of some slaves claimed by a Virginia clergyman in Connecticut in 1798, soon after that state had abolished slavery. The continuous anti-slavery devotion of the whole family, for three generations, was a thing almost unexampled. Mr. Sanborn has preserved verbatim a most quaint and graphic fragment of autobiography, written by John Brown, of Osawatomie, in 1859. In this he records with the utmost frankness his boyish pursuits and transgressions; how at the age of four he stole three brass pins, and at the age of five moved with his parents to Ohio, where he grew familiar with the Indians, who were then dwelling all around them. He says of himself: “John was never quarrelsome; but was exceedingly fond of the harshest and roughest kind of plays; and could never get enough [of] them. Indeed, when for a short time he was sometimes sent to school, the opportunity it offered to wrestle and snow-ball and run and jump and knock off old seedy wool hats, offered to him almost the only compensation for the confinement and restraint of school.” In this boyish combativeness, without personal quarrelsomeness, we see the quality of the future man. He further records that in boyhood his great delight was in going on responsible expeditions, and by the age of twelve he was often sent a hundred miles into the wilderness with cattle. This adventurous spirit took no military direction; he was disgusted with what he heard of the war of 1812, and for many years used to be fined for refusing to do militia duty. He was very fond of reading, and familiar with every portion of the Bible; but he never danced, and never knew one card from another. Staying in a house where there was a slave-boy almost his own age, and seeing this boy ill-treated—even beaten, as he declares, with an iron fire-shovel—he became, in his own words, “a most determined abolitionist,'” and was led “to declare, or swear, eternal war with slavery.” From the fifteenth to the twentieth years of his age he worked as a farmer and currier, chiefly for his father, and for most of the time as foreman. He then learned surveying, and followed that for a while, afterward gratifying his early love for animals by becoming a shepherd. Mean-while he married, as he says, “a remarkably plain, but neat, industrious, and economical girl, of excellent character, earnest piety, and good practical common sense,” who had, he asserts, a most powerful and good influence over him. This was Dianthe Lusk, a widow, and they had seven children. His second wife was Mary Anne Day, by whom he had thirteen children, and who survived him twenty-five years, dying in San Francisco in 1884. She also was a woman of strong and decided character; and though among the twenty children of the two marriages eight died in early childhood, the survivors all shared the strong moral convictions of their father, and the whole family habitually lived a life of great self-denial in order that his purposes might be carried out.  

The contest for Kansas in 1855-'6 between the friends of freedom and those of slavery was undoubtedly, as it has since been called, the skirmish-line of the Civil War. It was there made evident—what an anti-slavery leader so conspicuous as Joshua R. Giddings had utterly refused to believe—that the matter was coming to blows. The condition of affairs was never better stated than in the Charleston “Mercury” by a young man named Warren Wilkes, who had commanded for a time a band of so-called southern “settlers” in Kansas. He wrote in the spring of 1856: “If the south secures Kansas, she will extend slavery into all territories south of the fortieth parallel of north latitude to the Rio Grande; and this, of course, will secure for her pent-up institution of slavery an ample outlet, and restore her power in Congress. If the north secures Kansas, the power of the south in Congress will be gradually diminished, and the slave property will become valueless. All depends upon the action of the present moment.” Here was a point on which young Wilkes on the one side, and John Brown on the other, were absolutely agreed; and each went to work in his own way to save Kansas to his side by encouraging immigration from their respective regions. We can, at this distance of time, admit that this was within the right of each; but the free-state men went almost wholly as bona-fide settlers, while numbers of those who went from Missouri, Virginia, and South Carolina viewed the enterprise simply as a military foray, without intending to remain. It was also true that the latter class, coming from communities then more lawless, went generally armed; while the free-state men went at first unarmed, afterward arming themselves reluctantly and by degrees. The condition of lawlessness that ensued was undoubtedly demoralizing to both sides; it was to a great extent a period of violence and plunder—Civil War on a petty scale; but the original distinction never wholly passed away, and the ultimate character of the community was fortunately shaped and controlled by the free-state settlers. However it might be with others, for John Brown the Kansas contest was deliberately undertaken as a part of the great war against slavery. He went there with more cautious and far-reaching purposes than most others, and he carried out those purposes with the strength of a natural leader. As early as 1834, by a letter still in existence, he had communicated to his brother Frederick his purpose to make active war upon slavery, the plan being then to bring together some “first-rate abolitionist families” and undertake the education of colored youth. “If once the Christians of the free states would set to work in earnest teaching the blacks, the people of the slave-holding states would find themselves constitutionally driven to set about the work of emancipation immediately.” This letter was written when he was postmaster under President Jackson, at Randolph, Pennsylvania, and was officially franked by Brown, as was then the practice. When we consider what were Jackson's views as to anti-slavery agitation, especially through the mails, it is curious to consider what a firebrand he was harboring in one of his own post-offices. It appears from this letter and other testimony that Brown at one time solemnly called his older sons together and pledged them, kneeling in prayer, to give their lives to anti-slavery work. It must be remembered that Prudence Crandall had been arrested and sent to jail in Connecticut, only the year before, for doing, in a small way, what Brown now proposed to do systematically. For some time he held to his project in this form, removing from Pennsylvania to Ohio in 1835-'6, and from Ohio to Massachusetts in 1846, engaging in different enterprises, usually in the wool business, but always keeping the main end in view. For instance, in 1840 he visited western Virginia to survey land belonging to Oberlin College, and seems to have had some plan for colonizing colored people there. At last, in 1846, on the anniversary of West India emancipation, Gerrit Smith, a great land-owner in New York state, offered to give a hundred thousand acres of wild land in northern New York to such colored families, fugitive slaves, or others as would take them in small farms and clear them. It was a terribly hard region into which to invite those children of the south; six months of winter and no possibility of raising either wheat or Indian corn. Brown convinced himself, nevertheless, that he could be of much use to the colored settlers, and in 1848-'9 purchased a farm from Mr. Smith and moved the younger part of his family to North Elba, which was their home until his death. His wife and young children lived there in the greatest frugality, voluntarily practised by them all for the sake of helping others. He, meanwhile, often absented himself on anti-slavery enterprises, forming, for instance, at Springfield, Massachusetts, his former home, a “League of Gileadites,” pledged to the rescue of fugitive slaves. In one of his manuscript addresses to this body he lays down the rule, “Stand by one another and by your friends while a drop of blood remains; and be hanged if you must, but tell no tales out of school.” This was nearly nine years before his own death on the scaffold.  

In 1854 five of Brown's sons, then resident in Ohio, made their arrangements to remove to Kansas, regarding it as a desirable home, where they could exert an influence for freedom; but they were so little prepared for an armed struggle that they had among them only two small shot-guns and a revolver. They selected claims eight or ten miles from Osawatomie, and their father, contrary to his previous intention, joined them there in October, 1855. In March of that year the first election for a territorial constitution had taken place. Thousands of Missourians, armed with rifles, and even with cannon, had poured over the border, and, although less than a thousand legal votes were thrown in the territory, more than six thousand went through the form of voting. This state of things continued through that year and the next, and the present writer saw an election precisely similar in the town of Leavenworth, in the autumn of 1856. Hostilities were soon brought on by the murder and unlawful arrest of men known to be opposed to slavery. The Brown family were mustered in as Kansas militia by the Free-State Party, and turned out to defend the town of Lawrence from a Missourian invasion, which was compromised without bloodshed. A few months later Lawrence was attacked and pillaged. Other murders took place, and a so-called grand jury indicted many free-state men, including in the indictment the “Free State Hotel” in Lawrence. Two of Brown's sons were arrested by United States cavalry, which, at this time, Pierce being president, acted wholly with the pro-slavery party. John Brown, Jr., the oldest, was driven on foot at the head of a cavalry company, at a trot, for nine miles to Osawatomie, his arms being tied behind him. This state of things must be fully remembered in connection with the so-called “Pottawatomie massacre,” which furnishes, in the opinion of both friends and foes, the most questionable incident in Brown's career. This occurrence took place on 25 May, 1856, and consisted in the deliberate assassination of five representatives of the pro-slavery party at night, they being called from their beds for the purpose. It was done in avowed retribution for the assassination of five free-state men, and was intended to echo far beyond Kansas, as it did, and to announce to the slave-holding community that blood for blood would henceforth be exacted in case of any further invasion of rights. It undoubtedly had that effect, and though some even in Kansas regarded it with disapproval, it is certain that leading citizens of the territory, such as Governor Robinson, themselves justified it at the time. Robinson wrote, as late as February, 1878: “I never had much doubt that Captain Brown was the author of the blow at Pottawatomie, for the reason that he was the only man who comprehended the situation, and saw the absolute necessity of some such blow, and had the nerve to strike it.” Brown himself said, a few years later: “I knew all good men who loved freedom, when they became better acquainted with the circumstances of the case, would approve of it.” It is, nevertheless, probable that the public mind will be permanently divided in judgment upon this act; just as there is still room, after centuries have passed, for two opinions as to the execution of Charles I. or the banishment of Roger Williams. Much, of course, turns upon the actual character of the five men put to death—men whom the student will find painted in the darkest colors in Mr. Sanborn's life of John Brown, and in much milder hues in Mr. Spring's “History of Kansas.” The successive phases of sentiment on the whole subject may be partly attributed to the fact that the more pacific Kansas leaders, such as Robinson and Pomeroy, have happened to outlive the fighting men, such as Brown, Lane, and Montgomery; so that there is a little disposition just now to underrate the services of the combatants and overrate those of the noncombatants. As a matter of fact, there was in the territory at the time no noticeable difference of opinion between those two classes; and it is quite certain that slavery would have triumphed over all legal and legislative skill had not the sword been thrown into the balance, even in a small way. The largest affairs in which Brown and his sons took part, “Black Jack” and “Osawatomie,” for instance, seem trifling amid the vast encounters of the Civil War; but these petty skirmishes, nevertheless, began that great conflict.  

The purpose that finally took John Brown to Virginia had doubtless been many years in his mind, dating back, indeed, to the time when he was a surveyor in the mountains of that state, in early life. Bishop Meade says, in his “Old Churches and Ministers of Virginia,” that he wrote the book in view of a range of mountains which Washington had selected as the final stronghold of his revolutionary army, should he be defeated in the contest with England; and it was these same mountains which John Brown regarded as having been designed by the Almighty, from all eternity, as a refuge for fugitive slaves. His plan for his enterprise varied greatly in successive years, and no doubt bore marks of the over-excited condition of his mind; but as he ordinarily told it to the few with whom he had consulted outside of his own band, there was nothing incoherent or impracticable about it; it was simply the establishment on slave soil of a defensible station for fugitive slaves, within the reach of the Pennsylvania border, so that bodies of slaves could hold their own for a time against a superior force, and could be transferred, if necessary, through the free states to Canada. Those who furnished him with arms and money at the north did so from personal faith in him, and from a common zeal for his objects, without asking to know details. He had stated his general plan to Douglass and others in 1847, and in 1857 had established at Tabor, in Iowa, a town peculiarly friendly to the free-state men during the Kansas troubles, a sort of school of military drill under the direction of a Scottish adventurer, Hugh Forbes, who attempted to betray him. He afterward had a similar school at Springfield, Iowa, and meanwhile negotiated with his eastern friends for funds. He had already in his hands two hundred rifles from the national Kansas Committee; and although these were really the property of George L. Stearns, of Medford, Massachusetts, representing a small part of the $10,000 which that gentleman had given to make Kansas free, yet this was enough to hamper in some degree the action of his Boston allies. Their position was also embarrassed by many curious, rambling letters from his drill-master, Forbes, written to members of Congress and others, and disclosing what little he knew of the plans. This led the eastern allies to insist—quite unnecessarily, as it seemed to one or two of them—on a postponement for a year of the whole enterprise. On 3 June, 1858, Brown left Boston, with $500 in gold and with liberty to keep the Kansas rifles. Most of his friends in the eastern states knew nothing more of his movements until it was announced that he had taken possession of the U. S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia A few, however, were aware that he was about to enter on the execution of his plans somewhere, though they did not know precisely where. Late in June, 1859, Brown and several of his men appeared in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, and soon afterward hired a small farm, which they occupied. Then his daughter Anne, a girl of fifteen, together with his daughter-in-law, wife of Oliver Brown, appeared upon the scene and kept house for them. There they lived for many weeks, unsuspected by their neighbors, and gradually receiving from Ohio their boxes of rifles and pistols, besides a thousand pikes from Connecticut. In August he was visited by Frederick Douglass, to whom he disclosed his plan of an attack on Harper's Ferry, which Douglass opposed, thinking it would not really be favorable to his ultimate object of reaching the slaves. But he persevered, and finally began his operations with twenty-two men, besides himself. Six of these were colored; and it may be added that only six of the whole party escaped alive, and only one of these is now (September, 1886) living—Owen Brown.  

On Sunday evening, 16 October, 1859, Brown mustered eighteen of his men—the rest having been assigned to other duties—saying: “Men, get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry.” It was a cold, dark night, ending in rain. At half-past ten they reached the armory-gate and broke it in with a crow-bar, easily overpowering the few watchmen on duty. Before midnight the village was quietly patrolled by Brown's men, without firing a gun, and six men had been sent to bring in certain neighboring planters, with their slaves. He had taken several leading citizens prisoners, as hostages, but had allowed a rail way train to go through northward, which of course carried the news. The citizens of the town gradually armed themselves, and some shots were exchanged, killing several men; and before night Brown, who might easily have escaped, was hopelessly hemmed in. Colonel Robert E. Lee, afterward well known in history, arrived from Washington at evening with a company of U.S. Marines, and all was practically over. Brown and his men, now reduced to six, were barricaded in a little building called the engine- house, and were shot down one by one, thousands of bullets, according to a Virginia witness, having been imbedded in the walls. Brown constantly returned the fire, refusing to surrender; but when some of his men aimed at passers-by who had taken no part in the matter, he would stop them, according to the same Virginia witness, Captain Dangerfield, saying: “Don't shoot! that man is unarmed.” Colonel Washington, another Virginia witness, has testified to the extraordinary coolness with which Brown felt the pulse of his dying son, while holding his own rifle with the other hand, and encouraging his men to be firm. All this time he was not recognized, until Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, who had known him in Kansas, called him by his name. When he was finally captured, his two sons were dead, and he himself was supposed to be dying.  

No one will ever be able exactly to understand that mood of John Brown's mind which induced him to remain in Harper's Ferry to certain death. His reason for taking possession of the town and arsenal was undoubtedly a desire to alarm the country at large, and not merely secure arms, but attract recruits to his side, after he should have withdrawn. Why did he remain? Those who escaped from the terrible disaster could not answer. Brown himself is reported as saying that it was preordained; that if he had once escaped, he knew the Virginia mountains too well to be captured; but that he for the first time lost command of himself and was punished for it. Governor Wise, of Virginia, with several hundred men, reached Harper's Ferry by the noon train of 18 October, and Brown held conversations, which have been fully reported, with him and others. Governor Wise said of him: “They are mistaken who take Brown to be a madman. He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw; cut and thrust and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, indomitable; and it is but just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners, and he inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth.” This opinion, coming from the man whose immediate duty it was to see him tried and executed as a felon, may be regarded as a final and trustworthy estimate.  

John Brown was tried before a Virginia court, legal counsel going to him from Massachusetts. All thought of a rescue was precluded by strong messages of prohibition sent by him. The proposal to send his wife to him, this being planned partly in the hope that she might shake his determination, was also refused, and she did not see him until after his trial. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and this sentence was executed 2 December, 1859. On the day of his death he handed to one of his guards a paper on which he had written this sentence: “Charlestown, Virginia, December 2, 1859. I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.” Within eighteen months this prophecy was fulfilled, and many a northern regiment, as it marched to the seat of war, sang that which will always remain, more than any other, the war-song of the great conflict: 

“John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul is marching on.” 

His bearing on the scaffold, under exceptionally trying circumstances, evinced wonderful fortitude. After the sheriff had told him that all was ready, and had adjusted the rope and the cap, ten or fifteen minutes passed, while the military escort formed a hollow square. During this painfully long interval, John Brown, blindfolded, stood alone erect, like a statue unsupported. An eyewitness who was very near him could not detect a tremor. A further delay occurred while the sheriff descended the steps of the scaffold, but Brown never wavered, and died apparently with muscles and nerves still subject to his iron will. His career is remarkable for its dramatic quality, for the important part he played in events preliminary to the great Civil War, and for the strong and heroic traits shown in his life and death. He belonged to a class of men whose permanent fame is out of all proportion to their official importance or contemporary following; and indeed he represents a type more akin to that seen among the Scottish covenanters of two centuries ago than to anything familiar in our own days. With John Brown were executed Copeland, Green, Cook, and Coppoc, of his company.  Stephens and Hazlett were put to death in the same way later. An effort for their rescue, organized in Boston, with men brought mainly from Kansas, under Captain Montgomery as leader, proved abortive.  

In regard to the bearing of John Brown's enterprise upon subsequent history, it is enough if we recall the fact that a select Committee of the U. S. Senate investigated the whole affair, and the majority, consisting of John M. Mason, Jefferson Davis, and Graham N. Fitch, submitted a report in which occurs the following passage: “The invasion (to call it so) by Brown and his followers at Harper's Ferry was in no sense of that character. It was simply the act of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political authority—distinguishable only from ordinary felonies by the ulterior ends in contemplation by them, and by the fact that the money to maintain the expedition, and the large armament they brought with them, had been contributed and furnished by the citizens of other states of the union, under circumstances that must continue to jeopardize the safety and peace of the southern states, and against which Congress has no power to legislate. If the several states, whether from motives of policy or a desire to preserve the peace of the union, if not from fraternal feeling, do not hold it incumbent on them, after the experience of the country, to guard in future by appropriate legislation against occurrences similar to the one here inquired into, the committee can find no guarantee elsewhere for the security of peace between the states of the union.” It is a sufficient commentary on the implied threat with which this report concludes, to point out that two of its three signers, within the year following, became leaders of the movement for a forcible division of the union. In view of this fact, it is impossible to doubt that the enterprise of John Brown was an important link in the chain of historical events. The life of Captain Brown has been at least three times written—by James Redpath, by Richard D. Webb, of Dublin, and by Frank B. Sanborn. The last named is the fullest work, and has the approval of John Brown's family; it is the result of much personal research, and is, with some defects of arrangement, a mine of information in regard to one of the most remarkable men of his time. 


BROWN, John B., politician, born in Richfield, New York, 16 July, 1807; died in Washington, D. C., 9 December, 1867. In 1849 he moved to Virginia, where he became prominent in politics in that state. In 1856 he was one of the electors for Frémont, and in 1860 a delegate to the Chicago Convention, where Lincoln was nominated. On his return to Virginia he was arrested and thrown into prison on the charge of circulating incendiary documents. At the beginning of the Civil War the Confederate authorities offered a reward of $1,000 for his apprehension. He subsequently received an appointment in Washington. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 407.


BROWN, John Calvin, soldier, born in Giles County, Tennessee, 6 January, 1827. He was graduated at Jackson College, Tennessee, in 1846. He entered the military service of the Confederate States at the beginning of the Civil War, and was successively promoted to colonel, brigadier-general, and major-general. Left nearly penniless by the war, he found employment as a railroad surveyor at a small salary, but proved so efficient a manager that he was made president of the Nashville Railroad. After constructing several small lines in Tennessee, he entered the service of the Texas Pacific Railroad and had charge of it during its extension westward to the Rio Grande and eastward to New Orleans. Later he was appointed receiver of the entire property. He was president of the constitutional convention of Tennessee, and was twice governor of the state—in 1870 and 1875. He has travelled extensively in Europe, Asia, Africa, and North America.—His brother, Neil S., died in February, 1888, was governor of Tennessee in 1847 and 1849, and was U. S. minister to Russia under Taylor's administration. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 407-408.


BROWN, JOHN L. was sentenced to hang in South Carolina for aiding a female enslaved person to escape.  This event set off a protest among abolitionists.  A memorial was signed by Reverend William Jay in England and was published.  The memorial was addressed from churches and benevolent societies in Lancashire, England.  The memorial was then sent to churches in South Carolina and throughout the United States.  The memorial was signed by 1,300 prominent clergymen in England, including Thomas Clarkson.  (Wilson, 1872, p. 565)


BROWN, John Mifflin, 1817-1893, educator, clergyman, African American, eleventh Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, abolitionist. (Angell, 1992; Murphy, 1993; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 42, 207-208; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 138)


BROWN, Joseph Emerson, statesman, born in Pickens County, South Carolina, 15 April, 1821. When fifteen years old he moved with his father to Georgia, and, after being educated at Calhoun Academy, taught school at Canton, Georgia, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in August, 1845. He was graduated at Yale law-school in 1846, and began practice at Canton, Georgia, was elected to the state senate in 1849, chosen a presidential elector on the Pierce ticket in 1852, and in 1855 became judge of the superior courts of the Blue Ridge circuit He was elected governor by the Democrats in 1857, and was re-elected by increased majorities in 1859, 1861, and 1863. He was an active secessionist, seizing Forts Pulaski and Jackson, near Savannah, on 3 January, 1861, sixteen days before his state seceded, and taking possession of the U. S. Arsenal, Augusta, five days after the passage of the ordinance. During the war he was a vigorous supporter of the Confederate Government, but disputed with Mr. Davis the constitutionality of the conscription measures. During Sherman's invasion he put into the field an army of 10,000 men,  made up of state officers, youth, aged men, and others usually exempt from military duty, but refused to send them out of the state when requisition for them was made by the Confederate Government. In October, 1864, he refused General Sherman's request for a conference, denying that he had power to act without the permission of the legislature. On his release from the prison, where he had been confined by the national authorities at the conclusion of the war, he resigned the governorship, and, after a visit to Washington, in 1866, strongly advised his state to accept the situation and comply with the terms of reconstruction. This position made him unpopular, and for a time he acted with the Republicans, supporting General Grant in 1868. and being the defeated Republican candidate for U. S. Senator in the same year. After his defeat he was appointed chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, which office he resigned in December, 1870, and temporarily left public life. Since that time he has been president of the Western and Atlantic Railroad Company, and of several other large corporations, and has promoted the development of the resources of his state. Since 1872 he has acted with the Democrats, and in 1880 was chosen U. S. Senator to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of General Gordon. In 1884 he was re-elected, with but a single opposing vote, for the term ending in March, 1891. After his election in 1880 he made a speech before the assembly, justifying his course in 1866, and declaring that the results of the war must be accepted as final; that the sentiments of the former slave-holding aristocracy must be rejected; and that the Negroes must be assured absolute civil and political equality. See " Life and Times of Joseph E. Brown, by H. Haifa (Springfield, Massachusetts, 1883). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 408-409.


BROWN, Josephine, 1839-1874, abolitionist, daughter of William Wells Brown.


BROWN, Moses, 1738-1836, Maine, Providence, Rhode Island, abolitionist, industrialist, philanthropist, educator, Quaker.  A slaveholder who released his own slaves in 1773.  His brothers continued to own slaves.  One of Rhode Island’s principal abolitionists.  Helped lobby bill before U.S. Congress to outlaw the provisioning of slave ships at any U.S. port.  Vice president and founding member of the American Anti-Slavery Society, December 1833.  Co-founder of Brown University.  Co-founded Providence Society for Abolishing the Slave Trade in 1789. (Appletons, 1888, Vol. 1, p. 409; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 146; Bruns, 1977, pp. 308-313, 492-493, 515; Drake, 1950, pp. 79-80, 89, 97, 102, 123; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 2, 7, 17, 60, 87, 111; Zilversmit, 1967, pp. 107, 120-121, 156, 157; Abolitionist, Vol. I, No. XII, December, 1833)

BROWN, Moses, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 23 September, 1738; died there, 6 September, 1836. He was brought up in the family of his uncle, Obadiah Brown, whose daughter he married, and a portion of whose estate he inherited by will. In 1763 he became engaged in business with his three brothers, but, after ten years' active experience, withdrew to follow more congenial interests. Although brought up in the Baptist faith, he became, subsequent to severe domestic affliction, a member of the Society of Friends, and remained until his death a firm adherent to the doctrines of that society. He exerted a strong influence in all its concerns, and filled many of its important offices with dignity and usefulness. The Friends' boarding-school in Providence was founded by him, and his donations to its support were frequent and liberal. In 1773 he manumitted his slaves, and was one of the founders of the Abolition Society of Rhode Island. He was also an active member and liberal supporter of the Rhode Island Peace and Bible Societies. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I. pp. 409.


BROWN, Nathan, 1807-1886, New Ipswich, New Hampshire, American Baptist clergyman, Bible translator, abolitionist.  Brother of abolitionist William Brown.


BROWN, Oliver, radical abolitionist, son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859, was killed during the raid  (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 206, 327, 328; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, Owen, 1771-1856, Torrington, Connecticut.  Father of abolitionist John Brown.  Owen Brown co-founded the Western Reserve Anti-Slavery Society (Western Reserve College).


BROWN, Owen, 1824-1889, radical abolitionist, third son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859; he escaped capture by the U.S. Marines.  He later served as an officer in the Union Army during the Civil War.  (Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 206, 327; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, Salmon, radical abolitionist, son of abolitionist John Brown, accompanied his father on the raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, October 16, 1859, was killed during the raid  (Rodriguez, 2007, p. 206; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


BROWN, William G., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Congressional Globe)


BROWN, William Wells, 1814-1884, African American, abolitionist leader, author, historian, former slave, anti-slave lecturer, temperance activist. Wrote Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave, Written by Himself, 1847, also The American Fugitive in Europe, 1855.  Lecturer for Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, Massachusetts and American Anti-Slavery Society.  Wrote anti-slavery plays, “Experience; or How to Give a Northern Man a Backbone,” “The Escape; or A Leap for Freedom,” 1856. (Brown, 1856; Brown, 1847; Farrison, 1969; Greenspan, 2008; Mabee, 1970, pp. 52, 61, 65, 96-98, 137, 140, 145, 159, 161, 203, 221, 252, 258, 265, 333, 371, 390; Rodriguez, 2007, pp. 29, 50, 55, 57, 61, 72, 179, 208-209, 246; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 161; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3, p. 751; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Vol. 2, p.  325)


BROWN HILL, KENTUCKY, October 7, 1862. Confederate General Joseph Wheeler reported that his cavalry ambushed some Federal troops, fired upon them at a range of 200 yards, when they stampeded, leaving 8 men as prisoners, together with 50 stands of arms, a number of blankets, etc., in Wheeler's hands. Union reports do not mention the affair.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 170.


BROWNSBURG, VIRGINIA, June 10, 1864.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 170.


BROWN'S FERRY, TENNESSEE, October 27, 1863. Troops of the Army of the Cumberland. The battle of Chickamauga was fought on the 19th and 20th of September. After the battle the Union forces occupied Chattanooga, where they were practically in a state of siege, the Confederate forces being so placed that the only route open for the transportation of supplies lay through the Sequatchie valley, and even there everything would have to be hauled in wagons over rough mountain roads a distance of 60 miles. To supply an army of 40,000 men by this means was an impossibility and no one knew it better than the Confederate General Bragg, who was now playing a waiting game, confident that it was only a question of time when the whole Army of the Cumberland would capitulate. But there was one point that he had overlooked. The Tennessee river was open and in possession of the Union forces to within a few miles of Chattanooga. To establish communication by this route with a base of supplies it was necessary to force a passage across the narrow neck of land known as Moccasin Point and secure possession of Brown's ferry, almost directly west of Chattanooga. From there to Kelley's ferry was but a short distance across another bend in the river, and from Kelley's ferry the river was open. This plan was worked out by General Rosecrans, but before he had time to complete his designs he was superseded by General Grant in command of the Department of the Cumberland. Hooker, with the 11th and 12th corps, had been added to the army, and had taken possession of the Chattanooga railroad to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy. Grant assumed command on the 23d and the next day, in company with General George H. Thomas and Brigadier-General W. F. Smith, chief engineer of the department, made an examination of the ground on the opposite side of the river. He approved Rosecrans' plan for the capture and occupancy of Brown's ferry, and as the army had now been on half rations for almost a month, took steps to insure its immediate execution. The capture of the ferry was left to Smith, who had thoroughly reconnoitered the ground for Rosecrans. At 3 o'clock on the morning of October 27, about 1,600 men belonging to Turchin's and Hazen's brigades, under the command of Colonel T. R. Stanley, of the 18th Ohio infantry, embarked at Chattanooga in 52 pontoons and 2 large flatboats and drifted silently down the river. A slight fog aided the expedition to escape the notice of the enemy's pickets stationed along the banks, and at 5 o'clock the first boat reached the ferry. In the meantime the remainder of the two brigades had marched across the neck and were waiting to be ferried across, while three batteries of artillery, under Major Mendenhall, had been stationed in the woods opposite the ferry to cover the retirement of the troops in case a retreat became necessary. As soon as the first boat landed it was greeted by a volley from the Confederate pickets stationed near. The men were disembarked quickly and in order. Hazen formed his men, marched forward and occupied the crest of the ridge, threw out a skirmish line under Lieutenant-Colonel James C. Foy, of the 23d Kentucky, and set the rest of his force to work with axes felling trees to form an abatis. Just beyond the crest was a body of Confederates numbering about 1,000 men, with 3 pieces of artillery. Alarmed by the firing of the pickets, this force was hurried to the front and in a short time was engaged with the skirmishers under Foy. The men with axes were compelled to desist from their work and take up their guns against this assault. Just as Hazen's right flank was about to be turned by the enemy the men who had marched across the neck reached the scene of action, having been ferried across as soon as the boats were emptied, and turned the defeat into victory. By the middle of the afternoon a pontoon bridge was thrown across the river, works constructed on the. ridge, a road opened from the bridge in the direction of Kelley's ferry, additional troops brought over and the siege of Chattanooga was broken. In this engagement the Union loss was 6 killed, 23 wounded and 9 missing. Of the enemy 6 were buried by the Union troops, several were known to have been wounded, among them the colonel of the 15th Alabama Twenty beeves, 6 pontoons and about 2,000 bushels of corn fell into the hands of Hazen.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 170-171.

BROWN'S FERRY, VIRGINIA, May 12, 1864. Expedition against the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad. The expedition, under the command of Brigadier-General George Crook, was composed of the 2nd infantry division of the Department of West Virginia and Averell's cavalry. For several days prior to this date Averell had been engaged in skirmishing with detachments of Confederate cavalry belonging to the commands of Generals Morgan and Jones. On the morning of the 12th he crossed New river, much swollen by recent rains and still rising. Soon after he had crossed a considerable body of the enemy appeared upon the bank he had just left. The Confederates, unwilling to undertake the crossing, fired a few shots at long range and then stood helplessly by while Averell's men destroyed the railroad bridge and tore up a long stretch of the track. About the same time the 17th and 19th Virginia Confederate cavalry, under French and Jackson, were making an effort to obtain possession of Gap mountain. They reached the vicinity too late, for they found the gap in possession of Crook, whose forces drove the two regiments back to Brown's ferry, not far from where Averell had crossed the stream. In their retreat they came between Averell and the main body of the expedition, and Averell fell back over the Catawba route.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 171.


BROWN'S GAP, VIRGINIA, September 26, 1864. (See Port Republic.)


BROWN'S LANDING, FLORIDA, May 22, 1864. United States Gunboat Ottawa. The Ottawa was acting as convoy for the transports Columbine and Charles Houghton, engaged in conveying General Gordon's troops up the St. John's river to Palatka and Volusia. Palatka was reached about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and after landing the troops there the vessels continued on up the river. The Columbine being the fastest was allowed to go on ahead, the object being to reach Volusia as soon as possible. Owing to the narrowness of the river above Brown's landing the pilot declined to proceed any further with the Ottawa, as it would be difficult to turn such a long vessel in the narrow stream. While the gunboat and the Houghton, which had come along for protection, were lying at Brown's landing waiting for the Columbine to return, they were fired into by a battery of 6 and 12-pounders from the woods on the bank. Lieutenant-Commander Breese responded with his 150-pounder rifle, aiming in the darkness at the flash of the enemy's guns, and after the third shot the Confederates ceased firing. No one was hurt on either side and the damage to the gunboat was comparatively slight. It was afterward learned that the battery was that of Lieutenant Mortimer Bates, one of the best in the Confederate service.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 172

BROWN'S MILL, GEORGIA, July 30, 1864. (See McCook's Raid.) Brown's Plantation, Louisiana, May 11, 1865. Scout from the 16th Indiana Mounted Infantry. Major Hildreth, who commanded the scouting party, ported coming in contact with a small company of Brown's guerrillas near Andrews' plantation. After firing one round they fled in the direction of Brown's plantation. No casualties on either side. Brown's Plantation, Mississippi, August 11, 1862.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 172.


BROWN'S SPRING, MISSOURI, July 27, 1862. Detachment of 9th Missouri and 3d Iowa Cavalry. Colonel Guitar of the 9th Missouri led the detachment, numbering 186 men against a force of some 600 or 700 under Cobb, Porter and others, at Brown's spring, intending to surprise them. Upon approaching the camp the enemy fled in such haste as to leave uneaten a dinner already prepared. A party of 10 or 15 men on their way to the Confederate camp was fired on by Captain Cook's company and 3 men unhorsed. It was afterward learned that one of these men was mortally wounded and another seriously. Aside from this the affair was a bloodless battle.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 172.


BROWNE, Francis Fisher, editor, born in South Halifax, Vermont, 1 December, 1843. His father, William Goldsmith Browne, born in Vermont in 1812, is the author of the popular song "A Hundred Years to Come," and other poems, Francis was educated at the high school of Chicopee, Massachusetts, which he left to enlist in the 46th Massachusetts Volunteers in 1862, serving till its discharge. He studied law in Rochester, New York, and at the University of Michigan (1866-'7). He edited the "Lakeside Monthly," Chicago, from 1869 till 1874; afterward was literary of the "Alliance"; and in 1880 became editor of the Chicago "Dial." He has compiled and edited "Golden Poems, by British and American authors " (Chicago, 1881); "The Golden Treasury of Poetry and Prose" (St. Louis, 1883); and "Bugle Echoes," a collection of poems of the Civil War, both National and Confederate (New York, 1886). He has written "The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln" (St. Louis, 1886).  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 413.


BROWNELL, Henry Howard, author, born in Providence, Rhode Island, 6 February 1820; died in East Hartford, Connecticut, 31 October, 1872. He was a nephew of Bishop Brownell, was graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, in 1841, studied law, and was admitted to the bar, but became a teacher, and settled in Hartford. Early in the Civil War he turned into £ verse the “General Orders” issued by Farragut for the guidance of his fleet in the attack on the defences of New Orleans. This piece of verse, floating through the newspapers, came to Farragut's notice, and so pleased him that he made inquiry for the author. In a correspondence that ensued, Brownell expressed a strong desire to witness a naval battle, and Farragut promised to gratify him, a promise that was fulfilled in Brownell's appointment as acting ensign on the flag-ship “Hartford,” and his participation in the battle of Mobile Bay. “The River Fight” and “The Bay Fight,” describing the naval actions at New Orleans and Mobile, are his longest and finest poems. Oliver Wendell Holmes said of them: “They are to all the drawing-room battle-poems as the torn flags of our victorious armadas to the stately ensigns that dressed their ships in the harbor.” After the war he accompanied Admiral Farragut on his cruise in European waters. He published “Poems.” (New York, 1847); “The People's Book of Ancient and Modern History” (Hartford, 1851); “The Discoverers, Pioneers, and Settlers of North and South America” (Boston, 1853); “Lyrics of a Day, or Newspaper Poetry, by a Volunteer in the U.S. Service” (New York, 1864); and a revised edition of his poems, containing all that he cared to preserve (Boston, 1866). See “Our Battle Laureate,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes, in the “Atlantic Monthly" for May, 1865.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, p. 414.


BROWING, Orville Hickman, senator, born in Harrison County, Kentucky, in 1810; died in Quincy, Illinois, 10 August, 1881; He moved to Bracken County, Kentucky, early in life, and received a classical education at Augusta College, being at the same time employed in the county clerk's office. He afterward studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1831, and began practice in Quincy, Illinois. He served in the Black Hawk war of 1832, and was a member of the state senate from 1836 till 1840, when he was elected to the lower branch of the legislature and served till 1843. At the Bloomington Convention he assisted Abraham Lincoln to organize the Republican Party of Illinois. He was a delegate to the Chicago Convention of 1860, which nominated Lincoln for the presidency, and was an active supporter of the government during the Civil War. In 1861 he was appointed by Governor Yates to the U.S. Senate, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Stephen A. Douglas, and served till 1863. On 18 July, 1861, he spoke in the Senate, declaring in favor of the abolition of slavery, should the south force the issue, and on 25 February, 1862, took an active part in the debate on the Confiscation Bill, speaking in opposition to it. While in Washington he practised law with Jeremiah Black and Thomas G. Ewing. Mr. Browning was an active member of the Union Executive Committee in 1866, and in the same year was Secretary of the Interior by President Johnson, serving till 3 March, 1869. After March, 1868, he also acted as Attorney-General. In 1869 he was a member of the state constitutional convention, and from that time till his death practised his profession at Quincy, Illinois.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 414.


BROWNLOW, William Gannaway, journalist, born in Wythe County, Virginia, 29 A'. 1805; died in Knoxville, Tennessee, 29 April, 1877. He was left an orphan at the age of eleven, but, having earned enough by hard work as a carpenter to give himself a fair English education, he entered the Methodist ministry in 1826, and labored for ten years as an itinerant preacher. He began to take part in politics in 1828 by advocating, in Tennessee, the reelection of John Quincy Adams to the presidency; and while travelling the South Carolina circuit, in which John C. Calhoun lived, made himself unpopular by publicly opposing nullification. He afterward published a pamphlet in vindication of his course. He became editor of the Knoxville “Whig” in 1838, and from his trenchant mode of expression became known as “the fighting parson.” He was a candidate for Congress against Andrew Johnson in 1843, and in 1850 was appointed by President Fillmore one of several commissioners to carry out the provisions made by Congress for the improvement of navigation on the Missouri. Although an advocate of slavery, he boldly opposed the secession movement, taking the ground that southern institutions were safer in the union than out of it. His course subjected him to much persecution. For a time his house was the only one in Knoxville where the union flag was displayed; but all efforts to make him haul it down were unsuccessful. His paper was finally suppressed by the Confederate authorities, and in the last issue, that of 24 October, 1861, he published a farewell address to his readers, in which he said that he preferred imprisonment to submission. Refusing to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate government, he was at last persuaded by his friends to leave Knoxville for another district. During his absence he was accused of burning railway bridges in east Tennessee, and a company of troops was sent out with orders to shoot him on sight; but he escaped by secreting himself among the loyalists on the North Carolina border. He was finally induced, by the promise of a free pass to Kentucky, to return to Knoxville, but was arrested there, 6 December, 1861, on charge of treason, and thrown into jail, where he was confined without fire, and suffered much during his imprisonment. He was released at the close of the month, but was detained at his own house under guard. Hearing that Judah P. Benjamin had called him a “dangerous man,” and had wished him out of the confederacy, Brownlow wrote him a characteristic letter, in which occur the words, “Just give me my port, and I will do more for your confederacy t'. the devil has ever done—I will leave the country.” Benjamin advised his release, to relieve the government from the odium of having entrapped him. Brownlow was taken at his word '' sent inside the union lines at Nashville, on 3 March, 1863. After this he made a tour through the northern states, speaking to immense audiences in the principal cities, and at Philadelphia was joined by his ally, who had also been expelled from Knoxville. He returned to Tennessee in 1864, and, on the reconstruction of the state in 1865, was elected governor, serving two terms. In his me of October, 1865, he advocated the removal of the Negro population to a separate territory, and declared it policy to give them the ballot. In that of November, 1866, he reiterated these sentiments, but recognized the fact that the blacks had shown greater aptitude for learning than had been expected, and, although confessing to “caste prejudice,” said he desired to act in harmony with the great body of loyal people throughout the union. In 1867 Governor Brownlow came into conflict with Mayor Brown, of Nashville, over the manner of appointing judges of election under the new franchise law. The U.S. troops were ordered to sustain the governor, and the city authorities finally submitted. During the ku-klux troubles Governor Brownlow found it necessary to proclaim martial law in nine counties of the state. In 1869 he was elected to the U.S. Senate, and resigned the office of governor. In 1875 he was succeeded in the Senate by ex-President Johnson. After the close of his term he returned to Knoxville, bought a controlling interest in the “Whig,” which he had sold in 1869, and edited it until his death. He published “The Iron Wheel Examined, and its False Spokes Extracted,” a reply to attacks on the Methodist Church (Nashville, 1856); “Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated?” a debate with Reverend A. Prynne, of New York, in which Mr. Brownlow took the affirmative (Philadelphia, 1858); and “Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession, with a Narrative of Personal Adventures among the Rebels” (1862). Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 415-416.


BROWNSVILLE, ALABAMA, October 30, 1864. 7th Iowa and 11th Missouri Cavalry.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 172.


BROWNSVILLE, ARKANSAS, July 25, 1863.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p.


BROWNSVILLE, ARKANSAS, August 25, 1863. Davidson's Cavalry Division, Department of Missouri. The expedition against Little Rock, under command of Major-General Frederick Steele, left Helena early in August. When Devall's bluff was reached General Davidson was sent with his cavalry division to Deadman's lake, with instructions to reconnoiter the enemy's position at Brownsville. At that time the Confederates occupied Brownsville with two brigades (Shelby's and Marmaduke's) under command of Brigadier-General John S. Marmaduke. About sunrise the Confederate pickets reported Davidson advancing in force, and the two brigades moved out to meet him. A line of battle was formed on the prairie east of town, with Bledsoe's battery occupying and commanding the road and Elliott's battery over a mile in advance as skirmishers. As the Union lines approached Elliott opened fire. His first volley was met by Davidson's buglers sounding a charge and the Federal cavalry came rushing like a whirlwind across the prairie. Unable to resist the -force of such an onset, Marmaduke retired through the town to another prairie some 5 or 6 miles west, where he again formed his men in line of battle in a more advantageous position than the one formerly occupied. Here the skirmishing continued until nightfall, when the entire Confederate force withdrew beyond the Bayou Meto, where the fight was continued the next day. In the first engagement the Confederates lost 1 killed and 4 captured, among them Colonel John Q. Burbridge, of the 4th Missouri Confederate cavalry.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 172.


BROWNSVILLE, ARKANSAS, September 14-16, 1863. 5th Kansas Cavalry. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 12.


BROWNSVILLE, ARKANSAS, July 13, 1864. 22nd Ohio Infantry. A force of Confederates estimated at 150 men attacked the Union pickets at Brownsville. Colonel Wood sent a detachment in pursuit and they were followed for about 15 miles, when they divided into small squads and took different directions. One of the pickets lost his horse and equipments, and 5 guns were captured from the enemy. Brownsville, Arkansas, July 30, 1864. (See Hay Station No. 3.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 173.


BROWNSVILLE, ARKANSAS, September 4, 1864.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 173.


BROWNSVILLE, KENTUCKY, November 20, 1861. Detachment of the 3d Kentucky Cavalry. Brigadier-General T. C. Hindman, of the Confederate army, in a report of an expedition to Brownsville, states that he entered the town with 50 mounted men and a piece of artillery and opened fire from the public square upon a "party of Yankees" belonging to the 3d Kentucky cavalry, killed 6, wounded several and captured 2 pickets and a stand of colors with a loss of 1 man wounded. Union reports make no mention of the affair.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 173.


BROWNSVILLE, MARYLAND, July 7, 1864. Brownsville, Mississippi, September 28, 1863. Parts of 4th, 5th and 11th Illinois, 4th Iowa and 10th Missouri Cavalry. The expedition, numbering some 900 men, was sent out from Messinger's ford under command of Colonel E. F. Winslow, of the 4th la. cavalry. At Brownsville they were feebly resisted by a force of about 50 of Whitfield's cavalry, who were soon driven from the town.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 173.


BROWNSVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, October 15-16, 1863. Portion of the 15th and 17th Corps. An expedition comprising Logan's division of the 17th corps (3,500 men), Tuttle's division of the 15th (3,000), and Winslow's cavalry brigade (1,500), was sent out from Messinger's ferry, under the command of Major-General J. B. McPherson, against Canton. The command left the ferry early on the morning of the 15th. At Queen's hill church, on the Brownsville road, Colonel Winslow was ordered to take his cavalry down the Clinton road, making a detour to the south, and join the main body that same evening at Brownsville. He proceeded down the Clinton road for 7 or 8 miles without hearing anything of the enemy, and then turned in the direction of Brownsville, which place he reached about 2 hours ahead of the infantry. There he found a small force of Confederate cavalry. This force was soon driven from the town but was not pursued, Winslow waiting for further orders from the commanding officer. As soon as McPherson arrived Winslow was sent in pursuit and at the forks of the road about a mile east of town found a portion of Cosby's brigade drawn up in line awaiting the attack. A brisk skirmish was carried on until dark and the Union forces bivouacked on the ground to be ready to renew hostilities early the next morning. In the morning the march was continued, the cavalry taking the right hand road and the infantry the direct road. Winslow had gone but a short distance when the enemy was found in a strong position, with 4 pieces of artillery commanding the road. He sent word to McPherson that he was unable to drive them back and General Maltby's brigade was sent to his aid, while three regiments of Leggett's brigade were moved across on a by-road to the right and rear of the enemy. The Confederate commander, seeing that he was about to be surrounded, retired to the opposite side of Bogue Chitto creek. (See Bogue Chitto, October 17, 1863.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 173


BROWNSVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, October 22, 1863.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 173.


BROWNSVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, March 3, 1864. 1st Brigade, Leggett's Division, 17th Army Corps. The Union forces left Canton on the 2nd, on the Meridian expedition sent out from Vicksburg, and the rear was pursued and harassed by Jackson's cavalry under General Ferguson and Colonel P. B. Starke. When within about 4 miles of Brownsville Starke came up with the wagon train and prepared to strike on both the flank and rear with a view to capturing or destroying it. Before the movement could be executed, Leggett's division, formed and held the Confederates in check until the train was safely across  Bogue Chitto Creek. Slight casualties on both sides.


BROWNSVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, March 7-8, 1864.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 174.


BROWNSVILLE, MISSISSIPPI, September 28, 1864. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 174.


BROWNSVILLE, TENNESSEE, July 25, 1862. Cavalry commanded by Major Wallace. The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 174.


BROWNSVILLE, TENNESSEE, July 29, 1862. One company of the 15th Illinois Cavalry.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 174.


BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS, May 13, 1865. 62nd U. S. Colored Troops, 2nd Texas Cavalry, and 34th Indiana Infantry. Colonel T. H. Barrett commanding the Union forces at Brazos Santiago, sent 250 men of the 62nd colored infantry and 50 of the 2nd Texas cavalry, not mounted, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel David Branson, against a strong Confederate outpost at the Palmetto ranch on the Rio Grande. After an all night march the attack was made early on the morning of the 12th. The enemy was driven from his position in confusion, all his camp equipage, stores and a number of horses and cattle falling into Branson's hands. Branson took advantage of the situation to rest and refresh his men after their long night's march and remained in possession of the ranch. About 3 o'clock that afternoon a considerable body of the enemy put in an appearance, Captain Robinson, the commandant of the outpost, having received reinforcements from Colonel Ford. Deeming his position unsafe, Branson hurriedly destroyed such of the stores as he could and fell back to White's ranch, skirmishing on the way. At daylight the next morning he was reinforced by 200 men of the 34th Indiana under Lieut-Colonel Robert G. Morrison. A little later Barrett arrived and assumed the command. An advance upon Palmetto ranch was ordered, the pickets driven in and about 8 o'clock the Confederates were again driven from their post. Such of the stores as escaped destruction the day before were now destroyed and the ranch buildings burned. Again the enemy was reinforced and Barrett slowly retired toward Brazos Santiago, fighting as he went. In his report of the affair Barrett says: "The last volley of the war, it is believed, was fired by the 62nd U. S. colored infantry about sunset of the 13th of May, 1865,' between White's ranch and the Boca Chica, Texas"  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 174.


BROXTON'S BRIDGE, SOUTH CAROLINA, February 2, 1865. (See Salkehatchie River.) Broylesville, Tennessee, June —, 1864. Detachment 3d North Carolina Volunteer Infantry. The detachment, commanded by Captain G. W. Kirk, while on an expedition from Morristown, Tennessee, into North Carolina, was met at Broylesville by a small force of Confederates, but they were routed and scattered with a loss of 11 killed and a number wounded. (The exact date of the affair is not given in the official records of the war.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 174.


BRUCE, Blanche K., senator, born in Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1 March, 1841. He is of African descent, was born a slave, and received the rudiments of education from the tutor of his master's son. When the Civil War began he left his young master, whose companion he had been, and who went from Missouri to join the Confederate Army. Mr. Bruce taught school for a time in Hannibal, Mo., became a student at Oberlin, afterward pursued special studies at home, and after the war went to Mississippi. In 1869 he became a planter in Mississippi. He was sergeant-at-arms of the legislature, a member of the Mississippi Levee Board, sheriff of Bolivar County in 1871–4, county superintendent of education in 1872-’3, and was elected U. S. Senator on 3 February, 1875, as a Republican, taking his seat on 4 March, 1875, and serving till 3 March, 1881. He was a member of every Republican convention held after 1868. On 19 May, 1881, he entered upon the office of register of the treasury, to which he was appointed by President Garfield. In 1886 he delivered a lecture on the condition of his race, entitled “The Race Problem, and one on “Popular Tendencies.” Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p .418.


BRUCE, Henry, naval officer, born in Machias, Maine , 12 February, 1798. He was appointed to the navy as midshipman from Massachusetts on 9 November, 1813, and was captured while attached to the “Frolic,” 18 guns, when she surrendered to the British man-of-war “Orpheus,” 36 guns, remaining for six months as prisoner of war in Halifax, N. S. He became lieutenant on 13 January, 1825, was attached to the “Macedonian” and afterward to the “Franklin,” when she conveyed Minister Rush to England. He was appointed to the frigate “Brandywine,” of the Mediterranean squadron, in 1837, and was commissioned commander, 8 September, 1841. In 1845 he was appointed to the brig “Truxtun,” on the African Coast, capturing the slaver “Spitfire” during his cruise, and in 1848–50 commanded the naval rendezvous at Boston, Massachusetts He was put on the reserved list, 13 September, 1855, commissioned commodore, 16 July, 1862, and retired, 4 April, 1867. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 419.


BRUCETOWN, VIRGINIA, September 7, 1864. 2nd Brigade, 3d Cavalry Division, Army of West Virginia. The brigade, under the command of Brigadier-General George H. Chapman, made a reconnaissance on the Berryville and Winchester pikes toward Brucetown as far as Opequan creek, where the enemy's pickets were encountered and driven back about 2 miles upon the infantry lines, when, finding the Confederate force too strong to engage, Chapman ordered his command back to Berryville. No casualties reported.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 174.


BRUINSBURG LANDING, Mississippi, May 6, 1863. Troops belonging to 3d Brigade, 7th Division, 17th Army Corps. A detachment of the brigade was guarding a train from Bruinsburg landing to the camp on the Big Black river. A short distance from the landing a Confederate picket was discovered occupying the road. Lieutenant McElrea deployed his men and advanced, but soon discovered a larger force with 2 howitzers and sent back for reinforcements. When they arrived he again advanced. The right of the line fired and one man was seen to fall from his horse. The rest of the force retreated rapidly closely followed by McElrea's men for about 3 miles, when he met the 6th Missouri cavalry, who continued the chase, but without accomplishing anything in the way of capturing the enemy. Bruneau Valley, Indian Territory, February iS, 1865. 1st Washington Territory Infantry. A party of Indian marauders had stolen 8 cattle in the vicinity of the camp on the 13th and a detachment was sent out under command of Sergt. John Storan, of Company I, to catch the Indians and recover the cattle if possible. On the evening of the 15th the Indians were found encamped in a canon about 8 miles from Bruneau valley. They numbered about 80 warriors and at the time they were first discovered were engaged in dressing the carcasses of the stolen cattle. Storan immediately attacked the savages and after a sharp fight of an hour and a half, 30 of them were killed, several wounded and the rest driven from the field. Not a single white man was hurt during the skirmish.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, pp. 174-175.


BRUNOT, Felix R., philanthropist, born in Newport, Kentucky, 7 February, 1820. He was educated at Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pennsylvania, followed the profession of civil engineer until 1842, became a miller at Rock Island, Illinois, and in 1847 returned to Pittsburg, where his early years had been spent, and purchased an interest in a steel furnace. He devoted his mind largely to benevolent schemes, and when the Civil War began he went to the seat of war in charge of a corps of volunteer physicians, with medicines and comforts for the sick and wounded. In 1865 President Grant appointed him one of the commissioners to investigate Indian grievances. He was chosen president of the board, and spent five summers in visiting the tribes. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 419.


BRUNSWICK, GEORGIA, June 8, 1863. Confederate accounts state that on this date two U. S. gunboats and a transport towing two large boats loaded with troops left St. Simon's island and started in the direction of Brunswick, where the landing was successfully disputed by the Brunswick pickets. Captain Hazzard, of Company G, 4th Georgia cavalry, upon seeing two of the boats ascend the river, sent Lieutenant Grant with 30 men to protect the salt works some 7 miles up the river. Grant found one boat lying at the mouth of the creek near the works and the other going back toward Brunswick. After firing about fifty shots he compelled the boat at the landing to cast off and drop down the river. The Federals fired the railroad bridge near the salt works, but Grant compelled them to retreat to their barge, upon which he fired at a range of 100 yards, killing 2 officers and wounding 3 of the oarsmen. Union reports do not mention the affair.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 175.


BRUNSWICK, MISSOURI, August 17, 1861. 5th Missouri Reserves. Brunswick, Missouri, September 6, 1864. 35th Infantry Enrolled Missouri Militia. Sergt. Henry Shrader and a small squad of men belonging to the 35th were sent out to get clean clothes and notify absent men to come to the camp. The squad was delayed by a severe storm and a band of bushwhackers, learning of their whereabouts, surrounded and captured them. Shrader and his men were subjected to the indignity of being stripped and disarmed.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 175.


BRUNSWICK, MISSOURI, October 11, 1864. 43d Missouri Infantry. Colonel Chester Harding commanding the 43d Missouri, with six companies of his regiment, left Fort Leavenworth on the 7th on the steamboats Benton and West Wind, for Jefferson City. They reached Brunswick on the morning of the 11th and found the town occupied by Captain Kennedy, of Price's army, with about 80 men, most of whom he had recruited in the town the day before. This force was well posted in a log and earth work. Harding landed a portion of his men under Lieutenant Simmonds at the mouth of Grand river, with instructions to deploy as skirmishers and attack the works. At the first fire Kennedy and his men vacated their position, mounted their horses and made for the timber, taking with them 2 of their number seriously wounded. The boats then landed, Harding took possession of all the horses he could find, mounted about 50 of his men and sent them in pursuit. These men returned the next morning without having overtaken Kennedy, and the boats proceeded on their way.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 175.


BRUSH MOUNTAIN, GEORGIA, June 10-27, 1864. Sherman's Army. While General Sherman's forces were gradually driving the Confederates under Johnson back toward Atlanta, a position was taken by the Federals about Kennesaw and Brush mountains on the 10th, and from that time until the enemy evacuated his lines about the two mountains there was almost constant skirmishing. Brush mountain is east of Kennesaw mountain and the enemy here was confronted by the Army of the Tennessee under General McPherson. (See Kennesaw mountain and Atlanta.)  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 175.


BRYAN COURT HOUSE, GEORGIA, December 8, 1864. Detachment 15th Army Corps. In the advance on Savannah the 15th corps, commanded by Major-General P. J. Osterhaus, reached the Cannouchee river near Bryan Court House on the 8th and found the approach to the bridge guarded by a strong force of infantry and artillery, well protected by earthworks. The ground on either side of the road was too swampy to permit an assault, but Osterhaus found an old ferry some distance below the bridge and that night sent over troops in a boat. This detachment drove in the Confederate pickets and created such alarm in the enemy's camp that it was evacuated shortly after midnight. No casualties reported. Bryant's Plantation, Florida, October 21, 1864.  The Union Army, 1908, Vol. 5, p. 176.


BRYANT, William Cullen, 1794-1874, author, poet, editor, abolitionist.  Wrote antislavery poetry.  Free Soil Party.  Editor of the Evening Post, which supported Congressman John Quincy Adams’ advocacy for the right to petition Congress against slavery, and was against the annexation of Texas.  After 1848, the Evening Post took a strong anti-slavery editorial policy and supported the Free Soil Party, supporting Martin Van Buren.  It opposed the Compromise of 1850.  Bryant and the Post opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854.  In 1856, the Post broke with the Democratic Party, endorsing the new Republican Party and its anti-slavery faction.  They supported John C. Frémont as the presidential candidate.  Bryant opposed the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court.  He endorsed John Brown’s raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in1859.  He strongly supported the nomination of Lincoln as the Republican candidate for president in 1860.

(Rodriguez, 2007, p. 326; Staudenraus, 1961, pp. 101-102; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Vol. I, pp. 422-426; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Vol. II, Pt. 1, p. 200; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Vol. 3)

BRYANT, William Cullen, poet and editor, born in Cummington, Massachusetts, 3 November, 1794; died in New York, 12 June, 1878. His ancestry might have been inferred from the character of his writings, which reflect whatever is best and noblest in the life and thought of New England. The first Bryant of whom there is any account in the annals of the New World, Stephen, came over from England, and was at Plymouth, Massachusetts, as early as 1632, of which town he was chosen constable in 1663. He married Abigail Shaw, who had emigrated with her father, and who bore him several children between 1650 and 1665. Stephen Bryant had a son Ichabod, who was the father of Philip Bryant, born in 1732. Philip married Silence Howard, daughter of Dr. Abiel Howard, of West Bridgewater, whose profession he adopted, practising in North Bridgewater. He was the father of nine children, one of whom, Peter, born in 1767, succeeded him in his profession. Young Dr. Bryant married in 1792 Miss Sarah Snell, daughter of Ebenezer Snell, of Bridgewater, who moved his family to Cummington, where the subject of this sketch was born. Dr. Bryant was proud of his profession; and in the hope, no doubt, that his son would become a shining light therein, he perpetuated at his christening the name of a great medical authority, who had died four years before, William Cullen. The lad was exceedingly frail, and had a head the immensity of which troubled his anxious father. How to reduce it to the normal size was a puzzle that Dr. Bryant solved in a spring of clear, cold water, into which the child was immersed every morning, head and all, by two of Dr. Bryant's students. William Cullen Bryant's mother was a descendant of John Alden; and the characteristics of his family included some of the sterner qualities of the Puritans. His grandfather Snell was a magistrate, and without doubt a severe one, for the period was not one that favored leniency to criminals. The whipping-post was still extant in Massachusetts, and the poet remembered that one stood about a mile from his early home at Cummington, and that he once saw a young fellow of eighteen who had received forty lashes as a punishment for theft. It was, he thought, the last example of corporal punishment inflicted by law in that neighborhood, though the whipping-post remained in its place for several years.

Magistrate Snell was a disciplinarian of the stricter sort; and as he and his wife resided with Dr. Bryant and his family, the latter stood in awe of him, so much so that William Cullen was prevented from feeling anything like affection for him. It was an age of repression, not to say oppression, for children, who had few rights that their elders were bound to respect. To the terrors of the secular arm were added the deeper terrors of the spiritual law, for the people of that primitive period were nothing if not religious. The minister was the great man, and his bodily presence was a restraint upon the unruly, and the ruly too, for that matter. The lines of our ancestors did not fall in pleasant places as far as recreations were concerned; for they were few and far between, consisting, for the most part, of militia musters, “raisings,” corn-huskings, and singing-schools, diversified with the making of maple sugar and cider. Education was confined to the three R's, though the children of wealthy parents were sent to colleges as they now are. It was not a genial social condition, it must be confessed, to which William Cullen Bryant was born, though it might have been worse but for his good father, who was in many respects superior to his rustic neighbors. He was broad-shouldered and muscular, proud of his strength, but his manners were gentle and reserved, his disposition serene, and he was fond of society. He was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives several times, afterward to the state senate, and associated with the cultivated circles of Boston both as legislator and physician.

We have the authority of the poet himself that his father taught his youth the art of verse. His first efforts were several clever “Enigmas,” in imitation of the Latin writers, a translation from Horace, and a copy of verses written in his twelfth year, to be recited at the close of the winter school, “in the presence of the master, the minister of the parish, and a number of private gentlemen.” They were printed on 18 March, 1807, in the “Hampshire Gazette,” from which these particulars are derived, and which was favored with other contributions from the pen of “C. B.” The juvenile poems of William Cullen Bryant are as clever as those of Chatterton, Pope, and Cowley; but they are in no sense original, and it would have been strange if they had been. There was no original writing in America at the time they were written; and if there had been, it would hardly have commended itself to the old-fashioned taste of Dr. Bryant, to whom Pope was still a power in poetry. It was natural, therefore, that he should offer his boy to the strait-laced muses of Queen Anne's time; that the precocious boy should lisp in heroic couplets; and that he should endeavor to be satirical. Politics were running high in the first decade of the present century, and the favorite bugbear in New England was President Jefferson, who, in 1807, had laid an embargo on American shipping, in consequence of the decrees of Napoleon, and the British orders in council in relation thereto. This act was denounced, and by no one more warmly than by Master Bryant, who made it the subject of a satire: “The Embargo; or, Sketches of the Times” (Boston, 1808). The first edition was sold, and it is said to have been well received; but doubts were expressed as to whether the author was really a youth of thirteen. His friends came to his rescue in an “Advertisement,” prefixed to a second edition (1809), certifying to his age from their personal knowledge. They also certified to his extraordinary talents, though they preferred to have him judged by his works, without favor or affection, and concluded by saying that the printer was authorized to disclose their addresses.

The early poetical exercises of William Cullen Bryant, like those of all young poets, were colored by the books he read. Among these were the works of Pope, and, no doubt, the works of Cowper and Thomson. The latter, if they were in the library of Dr. Bryant, do not appear to have impressed his son at this time; nor, indeed, does any English poet except Pope, so far as we can judge from his contributions to the “Hampshire Gazette.” They were bookish and patriotic; one, written at Cummington, 8 January, 1810. being “The Genius of Columbia”; and another, “An Ode for the Fourth of July, 1812,” to the tune of “Ye Gentlemen of England.” These productions are undeniably clever, but they are not characteristic of their writer, nor of the nature that surrounded his birthplace, with which he was familiar, and of which he was a close observer.

He entered Williams College in his sixteenth year, and remained there one winter, distinguishing himself for aptness and industry in classical learning and polite literature. At the end of two years he withdrew, and began the study of law, first with Judge Howe, of Worthington, and afterward with William Baylies, of Bridgewater. So far he had written nothing but clever amateur verse; but now, in his eighteenth year, he wrote an imperishable poem. The circumstances under which it was composed have been variously related, but they agree in the main particulars, and are thus given in “The Bryant Homestead Book”: “It was here at Cummington, while wandering in the primeval forests, over the floor of which were scattered the gigantic trunks of fallen trees, mouldering for long years, and suggesting an indefinitely remote antiquity, and where silent rivulets crept along through the carpet of dead leaves, the spoil of thousands of summers, that the poem entitled ‘Thanatopsis’ was composed. The young poet had read the poems of Kirke White, which, edited by Southey, were published about that time, and a small volume of Southey's miscellaneous poems; and some lines of those authors had kindled his imagination, which, going forth over the face of the inhabitants of the globe, sought to bring under one broad and comprehensive view the destinies of the human race in the present life, and the perpetual rising and passing away of generation after generation who are nourished by the fruits of its soil, and find a resting-place in its bosom.” We should like to know what lines in Southey and Kirke White suggested “Thanatopsis,” that they might be printed in letters of gold hereafter.

When the young poet quitted Cummington to begin his law studies, he left the manuscript of this incomparable poem among his papers in the house of his father, who found it after his departure, “Here are some lines that our Cullen has been writing,” he said to a lady to whom he showed them. She read them, and, raising her eyes to the face of Dr. Bryant, burst into tears — a tribute to the genius of his son in which he was not ashamed to join. Blackstone bade his Muse a long adieu before he turned to wrangling courts and stubborn law; and our young lawyer intended to do the same (for poetry was starvation in America four-score years ago), but habit and nature were too strong for him. There is no difficulty in tracing the succession of his poems, and in a few instances the places where they were written, or with which they concerned themselves. “Thanatopsis,” for example, was followed by “The Yellow Violet,” which was followed by the “Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,” and the song beginning “Soon as the glazed and gleaming snow.” The exquisite lines “To a Waterfowl” were written at Bridgewater, in his twentieth year, where he was still pursuing the study of law, which appears to have been distasteful to him. The concluding stanza sank deeply into a heart that needed its pious lesson:

“He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.”

The lawyer-poet had a long way before him, but he did not tread it alone; for, after being admitted to the bar in Plymouth, and practising for a time in Plainfield, near Cummington, he moved to Great Barrington, in Berkshire, where he saw the dwelling of the Genevieve of his chilly little “Song,” his Genevieve being Miss Frances Fairchild of that beautiful town, whom he married in his twenty-seventh year, and who was the light of his household for nearly half a century. It was to her, the reader may like to know, that he addressed the ideal poem beginning “O fairest of the rural maids” (circa 1825), “The Future Life” (1837), and “The Life that Is” (1858); and her memory and her loss are tenderly embalmed in one of the most touching of his later poems, “October, 1866.”

“Thanatopsis” was sent to the “North American Review” (whether by its author or his father is uncertain), and with such a modest, not to say enigmatical, note of introduction, that its authorship was left in doubt. The “Review” was managed by a club of young literary gentlemen, who styled themselves “The North American Club,” two of whose members, Richard Henry Dana and Edward Tyrrel Channing, were considered its editors. Mr. Dana read the poem carefully, and was so surprised at its excellence that he doubted whether it was the production of an American, an opinion in which his associates are understood to have concurred. While they were hesitating about its acceptance, he was told that the writer was a member of the Massachusetts Senate; and, the Senate being then in session, he started immediately from Cambridge for Boston. He reached the statehouse, and inquired for Senator Bryant. A tall, middle-aged man, with a business-like look, was pointed out to him. He was satisfied that he could not be the poet he sought, so he posted back to Cambridge without an introduction. The story ends here, and rather tamely; for the original narrator forgot, or perhaps never knew, that Dr. Bryant was a member of the Senate, and that it was among the possibilities that he was the senator with a similar name. American poetry may be said to have begun in 1817 with the September number of the “North American Review,” which contained “Thanatopsis” and the “Inscription for the Entrance of a Wood,” the last being printed as a “Fragment.” In March, 1818, the impression that “Thanatopsis” created was strengthened by the appearance of the lines “To a Waterfowl,” and the “Version of a Fragment of Simonides.”

Mr. Bryant's literary life may now be said to have begun, though he depended upon his profession for his daily bread. He continued his contributions to the “North American Review” in prose papers on literary topics, and maintained the most friendly relations with its conductors; notably so with Mr. Dana, who was seven years his elder, and who possessed, like himself, the accomplishment of verse. At the suggestion of this poetical and critical brother, he was invited to deliver a poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard College an honor which is offered only to those who have already made a reputation, and are likely to reflect credit on the society as well as on themselves. He accepted, and in 1821 wrote his first poem of any length, “The Ages,” which still remains the best poem of the kind that was ever recited before a college society either in this country or in England; grave, stately, thoughtful, presenting in animated picturesque stanzas a compact summary of the history of mankind. A young Englishman of twenty-one, Thomas Babington Macaulay, delivered in the same year a poem on “Evening,” before the students of Trinity College, Cambridge; and it is instructive to compare his conventional heroics with the spirited Spenserian stanzas of Bryant. The lines “To a Waterfowl,” written at Bridgewater in 1815, were followed by “Green River.” “A Winter Piece,” “The West Wind,” “The Burial-Place,” “Blessed are they that mourn,” “No man knoweth his Sepulchre,” “A Walk at Sunset,” and the “Hymn to Death.” These poems, which cover a period of six busy years, are interesting to the poetic student as examples of the different styles of their writer, and of the changing elements of his thoughts and feelings. “Green River,” for example, is a momentary revealment of his shy temperament and his daily pursuits. Its glimpses of nature are charming, and his wish to be beside its waters is the most natural one in the world. The young lawyer is not complimentary to his clients, whom he styles “the dregs of men,” while his pen, which does its best to serve them, becomes “a barbarous pen.” He is dejected, but a visit to the river will restore his spirits; for, as he gazes upon its lonely and lovely stream,

“

An image of that calm life appears

That won my heart in my greener years.”

“A Winter Piece” is a gallery of woodland pictures, which surpasses anything of the kind in the language. “A Walk at Sunset” is notable in that it is the first poem in which we see (faintly, it must be confessed) the aboriginal element, which was soon to become prominent in Bryant's poetry. It was inseparable from the primeval forests of the New World, but he was the first to perceive its poetic value. The “Hymn to Death” — stately, majestic, consolatory — concludes with a touching tribute to the worth of his good father, who died while he was writing it, at the age of fifty-four. The year 1821 was important to Bryant, for it witnessed the publication of his first collection of verse, his marriage, and the death of his father.

The next four years of his life were more productive than any that had preceded them, for he wrote more than thirty poems during that time. The aboriginal element was creative in “The Indian Girl's Lament,” “An Indian Story,” “An Indian at the Burial-Place of his Fathers,” and, noblest of all, “Monument Mountain”; the Hellenic element predominated in “The Massacre at Scio” and “The Song of the Greek Amazon”; the Hebraic element touched him lightly in “Rizpah” and the “Song of the Stars”; and the pure poetic element was manifest in “March,” “The Rivulet” (which, by the way, ran through the grounds of the old homestead at Cummington), “After a Tempest,” “The Murdered Traveller,” “Hymn to the North Star,” “A Forest Hymn,” “Fairest of the Rural Maids,” and the exquisite and now most pathetic poem, “June.” These poems and others not specified here, if read continuously and in the order in which they were composed, show a wide range of sympathies, a perfect acquaintance with many measures, and a clear, capacious, ever-growing intellect. They are all distinctive of the genius of their author, but neither exhibits the full measure of his powers. The publication of Bryant's little volume of verse was indirectly the cause of his adopting literature as a profession. It was warmly commended, and by no one more so than by Gillian C. Verplanck in the columns of the New York “American.” He was something of a literary authority at the time, a man of fortune and college-bred. Among his friends was Henry D. Sedgwick, a summer neighbor, so to speak, of Bryant's, having a country-house at Stockbridge, a few miles from Great Barrington, and a house in town, which was frequented by the literati of the day, such as Cooper, Halleck, Percival, Verplanck, and others of less note. An admirer of Bryant, Mr. Sedgwick set to work, with the assistance of Mr. Verplanck, to procure him literary employment in New York in order to enable him to escape his bondage to the law; and he was appointed assistant editor of a projected periodical called the “New York Review and Athenæum Magazine.” The at last enfranchised lawyer dropped his barbarous pen, closed his law-books, and in the winter or spring of 1825 moved with his household to New York. The projected periodical was begun, as these sanguine ventures always are, with fair hopes of success. It was well edited, and its contributors were men of acknowledged ability. The June number contained two poems that ought to have made a great hit. One was “A Song of Pitcairn's Island”; the other was “Marco Bozzaris.” There was no flourish of trumpets over them, as there would be now; the writers merely prefixed their initials, “B.” and “H.” The reading public of New York were not ready for the “Review,” so after about a year's struggle it was merged in the “New York Literary Gazette,” which had begun its mission about four years earlier. This magazine shared the fate of its companion in a few months, when it was consolidated with the “United States Literary Gazette,” which in two months was swallowed up in the “United States Review.” The honor of publishing and finishing the last was shared by Boston and New York. Profit in these publications there was none, though Bryant, Halleck, Willis, Dana, Bancroft, and Longfellow wrote for them. Too good, or not good enough, they lived and died prematurely.

Mr. Bryant's success as a metropolitan man of letters was not brilliant so far; but other walks than those of pure literature were open to him as to others, and into one of the most bustling of these he entered in his thirty-second year. In other words, he became one of the editors of the “Evening Post.” Henceforth he was to live by journalism. Journalism, though an exacting pursuit, leaves its skilful followers a little leisure in which to cultivate literature. It was the heyday of those ephemeral trifles, “Annuals,” and Mr. Bryant found time to edit one. with the assistance of his friend Mr. Verplanck and his acquaintance Robert C. Sands; and a very creditable work it was. His contributions to “The Talisman” included some of his best poems. Poetry was the natural expression of his genius, a fact he could never understand, for it always seemed to him that prose was the natural expression of all mankind. His prose was masterly. Its earliest examples, outside of his critical papers in the “North American Review” and other periodicals (and outside of the “Evening Post,” of course), are two stories entitled “Medfield” and “The Skeleton's Cave,” contributed to “Tales of the Glauber Spa” (1832), a collection of original stories by Paulding, Verplanck, Sands, William Leggett. and Catharine Sedgwick. Three years before (1828) he had become the chief editor of the “Evening Post.” Associated with him was Mr. Leggett, who had shown some talent as a writer of sketches and stories, and who had failed, like himself, in conducting a critical publication for which his countrymen were not ready. He made a second collection of his poems at this time (1832), a copy of which was sent by Mr. Verplanck to Washington Irving, who was then, what he had been for years, the idol of English readers, and not without weight with the trade. Would he see if some English house would not reprint it? No leading publisher nibbled at it, not even Murray, who was Irving's publisher; but an obscure bookseller named Andrews finally agreed to undertake it if Irving would put his valuable name on the title-page as editor. He was not acquainted with Bryant, but he was a kind-hearted, large-souled gentleman, who knew good poetry when he saw it, and he consented to “edit” the book. It was not a success in the estimation of Andrews, who came to him one day, by no means a merry Andrew, and declared that the book would ruin him unless one or more changes were made in the text. What was amiss in it? He turned to the “Song of Marion's Men,” and stumbled over an obnoxious couplet in the first stanza:

“

The British soldier trembles

When Marion's name is told.”

“That won't do at all, you know.” The absurdity of the objection must have struck the humorist comically; but, as he wanted the volume republished, he good-naturedly saved the proverbial valor of the British soldier by changing the first line to

“The foeman trembles in his camp,”

and the tempest in a teapot was over, as far as England was concerned. Not as far as the United States was concerned, however, for when the circumstance became known to Mr. Leggett he excoriated Irving for his subserviency to a bloated aristocracy, and so forth. Professor Wilson reviewed the book in “Blackwood's” in a half-hearted way, patronizing the writer with his praise.

The poems that Bryant wrote during the first seven years of his residence in New York (about forty, not including translations) exhibited the qualities that distinguished his genius from the beginning, and were marked by characteristics rather acquired than inherited; in other words, they were somewhat different from those written at Great Barrington. The Hellenic element was still visible in “The Greek Partisan” and “The Greek Boy,” and the aboriginal element in “The Disinterred Warrior.” The large imagination of “The Hymn to the North Star” was radiant in “The Firmament” and in “The Past.” Ardent love of nature found expressive utterance in “Lines on Revisiting the Country,” “The Gladness of Nature,” “A Summer Ramble,” “A Scene on the Banks of the Hudson,” and “The Evening Wind.” The little book of immortal dirges had a fresh leaf added to it in “The Death of the Flowers,” which was at once a pastoral of autumn and a monody over a beloved sister. A new element appeared in “The Summer Wind,” and was always present afterward in Mr. Bryant's meditative poetry — the association of humanity with nature — a calm but sympathetic recognition of the ways of man and his presence on the earth. The power of suggestion and of rapid generalization, which was the key-note of “The Ages,” lived anew in every line of “The Prairies,” in which a series of poems present themselves to the imagination as a series of pictures in a gallery — pictures in which breadth and vigor of treatment and exquisite delicacy of detail are everywhere harmoniously blended and the unity of pure art is attained. It was worth going to the ends of the world to be able to write “The Prairies.”

Confiding in the discretion of his associate, Mr. Leggett, and anxious to escape from his daily editorial labors, Bryant sailed for Europe with his family in the summer of 1834. It was his intention to perfect his literary studies while abroad, and devote himself to the education of his children; but his intention was frustrated, after a short course of travel in France, Germany, and Italy, by the illness of Mr. Leggett, whose mistaken zeal in the advocacy of unpopular measures had seriously injured the “Evening Post.” He returned in haste early in 1836, and devoted his time and energies to restoring the prosperity of his paper. Nine years passed before he ventured to return to Europe, though he visited certain portions of his own country. His readers tracked his journeys through the letters that he wrote to the “Evening Post,” which were noticeable for justness of observation and clearness of expression. A selection from his foreign and home letters was published in 1852, under the title of “Letters of a Traveller.”

The last thirty years of Bryant's life were devoid of incident, though one of them (1865) was not without the supreme sorrow, death. He devoted himself to journalism as conscientiously as if he still had his spurs to win, discussing all public questions with independence and fearlessness; and from time to time, as the spirit moved him, he added to our treasures of song, contributing to the popular magazines of the period, and occasionally issuing these contributions in separate volumes. He published “The Fountain and Other Poems” in 1842; “The White-Footed Deer and Other Poems” in 1844; a collected edition of his poems, with illustrations by Leutze, in 1846; an edition in two volumes in 1855; “Thirty Poems” in 1864; and in 1876 a complete illustrated edition of his poetical writings. To the honors that these volumes brought him he added fresh laurels in 1870 and 1871 by his translation of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” — a translation which was highly praised both at home and abroad, and which, if not the best that the English language is capable of, is, in many respects, the best that any English-writing poet has yet produced.

There comes a day in the intellectual lives of most poets when their powers cease to be progressive and productive, or are productive only in the forms to which they have accustomed themselves, and which have become mannerisms. It was not with Mr. Bryant. He enjoyed the dangerous distinction of proving himself a great poet at an early age; he preserved this distinction to the last, for the sixty-four years that elapsed between the writing of “Thanatopsis” and the writing of “The Flood of Years” witnessed no decay of his poetic capacities, but rather the growth and development of trains of thought and forms of verse of which there was no evidence in his early writings. His sympathies were enlarged as the years went on, and the crystal clearness of his mind was colored with human emotions. To Bryant the earth was a theatre upon which the great drama of life was everlastingly played. The remembrance of this fact is his inspiration in “The Fountain,” “An Evening Revery,” “The Antiquity of Freedom,” “The Crowded Street,” “The Planting of the Apple-Tree,” “The Night Journey of a River,” “The Sower,” and “The Flood of Years.” The most poetical of Mr. Bryant's poems are, perhaps, “The Land of Dreams,” “The Burial of Love,” “The May Sun sheds an Amber Light,” and “The Voice of Autumn”; and they were written in a succession of happy hours, and in the order named. Next to these pieces, as examples of pure poetry, should be placed “Sella” and “The Little People of the Snow,” which are exquisite fairy fantasies. The qualities by which Bryant's poetry are chiefly distinguished are serenity and gravity of thought; an intense, though repressed, recognition of the mortality of mankind; an ardent love for human freedom; and unrivalled skill in painting the scenery of his native land. He had no superior in this walk of poetic art — it might almost be said no equal, for his descriptions of nature are never inaccurate or redundant. “The Excursion” is a tiresome poem, which contains several exquisite episodes. Bryant knew how to write exquisite episodes and omit the platitudes through which we reach them in other poets.

It is not given to many poets to possess as many residences as Bryant, for he had three — a town-house in New York, a country-house, called “Cedarmere,” at Roslyn, Long Island, and the old homestead of the family at Cummington, Massachusetts The engraving on page 424 represents the house in Cummington; that on this page is a view of his home in Roslyn. He passed the winter months in New York, and the summer and early autumn at his country-houses. No distinguished man in America was better known by sight than he.

“O good gray head that all men knew”

rose unbidden to one's lips as he passed his fellow-pedestrians in the streets of the great city, active, alert, with a springing step and a buoyant gait. He was seen in all weathers, walking down to his office in the morning, and back to his house in the afternoon — an observant antiquity, with a majestic white beard, a pair of sharp eyes, and a face that, when observed closely, recalled the line of the poet:

“A million wrinkles carved his skin.”

Bryant had a peculiar talent, in which the French excel — the talent of delivering discourses upon the lives and writings of eminent men; and he was always in request after the death of his contemporaries. Beginning with a eulogy on his friend Cole, the painter, who died in 1848, he paid his well-considered tributes to the memory of Cooper, Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck, and Verplanck, and assisted at the dedication in the Central park of the Morse, Shakespeare, Scott, and Halleck statues. His addresses on these and other occasions were models of justice of appreciation and felicity of expression. His last public appearance was at the Central park, on the afternoon of 29 May, 1878, at the unveiling of a bust of Mazzini. It was an unusually hot day, and after delivering his address, which was remarkable for its eloquence, he accompanied General Jas. Grant Wilson, a friend of many years' standing, to his residence, No. 15 East Seventy-fourth street. General Wilson reached his door with Mr. Bryant leaning on his arm; he took a step in advance to open the inner door, and while his back was turned the poet fell, his head striking on the stone platform of the front steps. It was his death-blow; for, though he recovered his consciousness sufficiently to converse a little, and was able to ride to his own house with General Wilson, his fate was sealed. He lingered until the morning of 12 June, when his spirit passed out into the unknown. Two days later all that was mortal of him was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, beside his wife, who died 27 July, 1865.

Since the poet's death the name of one of the city pleasure-grounds has been changed (in 1884) to Bryant park, where there will be soon unveiled a noble bronze statue of the poet, to be erected by his many friends and admirers. In the Metropolitan museum of art may be seen a beautiful silver vase, presented to Bryant in 1876, and an admirable bronze bust of heroic size, executed from life by Launt Thompson. Among the many portraits of Bryant, painted by prominent American artists, the poet preferred Inman's and Durand's; but these were supplanted in his estimation by photographs of later days, from one of which was taken the fine steel portrait that accompanies this article. A complete edition of his poetical and prose works (4 vols., 8vo) was published in 1883-'4. See “Homes of American Authors” (New York, 1853); “The Bryant Homestead Book” (1870); “Presentation to Bryant at Eighty Years” (1876); “Bryant Memorial Meeting of the Goethe Club” (1878); Symington's “Biographical Sketch of Bryant” (1880); Godwin's “Life of Bryant” (1883); Wilson's “Bryant and his Friends” (1886, two editions, one on large paper and illustrated). A new life of Bryant, by John Bigelow, was issued three years later. Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. pp. 422-427

BRYANT, John Howard, born in Cummington, Massachusetts, 22 July, 1807. He studied at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, but was never graduated. He moved to Illinois in 1831, became justice of the peace for Putnam County in 1834, and in 1837 was elected first recorder of deeds for the newly organized Bureau County He was twice a member of the legislature, frequently served on the board of supervisors, and was for fifteen years a member of the board of education, and most of the time its chairman. President Lincoln made him collector of internal revenue in 1862, and he held the office till 1864. Until his sixtieth year Mr. Bryant took charge of the farm on which he has always lived, laboring on it with his own hands for the greater part of the time. He is the author of “Poems,” a small volume (New York, 1855); “Poems written from Youth to Old Age; 1824-1884” (printed privately, Princeton, Illinois, 1885); and several addresses.  Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1887, Vol. I, p. 426.