Bra-Bro: Brackett through Brown

See below for annotated biographies of American abolitionists and anti-slavery activists. Sources include: Scribner’s Dictionary of American Biography and Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography.


BRACKETT, Josiah, Boston, Massachusetts, abolitionist, American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Executive Committee, 1841-43.


BRADBURN, George, 1806-1880, Nantucket, Massachusetts, politician, newspaper editor, Unitarian clergyman, abolitionist, women’s rights activist, lecturer.  Member, American Anti-Slavery Society.  Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-1845.  Attended World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in June 1840, where he protested the exclusion of women from the conference.  Lectured for the American Anti-Slavery Society with fellow abolitionists William A. White and Frederick Douglass in 1843.  Editor, the Pioneer and Herald of Freedom from 1846 to 1849 in Lynn, Massachusetts.

(Wilson, Henry, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, Volume 2.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1872, p. 345; Minutes, Convention of the Liberty Party, June 14, 15, 1848, Buffalo, New York)


BRADFORD, William, 1663-1752, Leicester, England, Society of Friends, Quaker, printed first anti-slavery publication in the colony in 1693, titled “An Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning Buying or Keeping of Negroes”.

(Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, p. 14; Soderlund, Jean R. Quakers & Slavery: A Divided Spirit. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985, p. 194; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 350; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, pp. 463)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, pp. 463:

BRADFORD, WILLIAM (May 20, 1663- May 23, 1752), pioneer printer of the English middle colonies, was the son of William and Anne Bradford, humble folk of the Established Church in the parish of Barnwell, Leicestershire, England, where he was born. He was apprenticed to Andrew Sowle, chief London Quaker printer, and united with his master's sect. On April 28, 1685, in London, he married his master's daughter, Elizabeth, who died in New York, July 8, 1731, aged sixty-eight years. Bradford afterward married the widow Cornelia Smith, through whose relatives he suffered pecuniary losses. The assumption that he accompanied Penn to America in 1682 seems untenable, notwithstanding the claim on his tombstone. Hildeburn (James G. Wilson, Memorial History of New York, I, 572) declares that another of the name then came, who attained some local importance in Sussex (now part of Delaware) County. Our Bradford, on leaving London with Penn's consent, in 1685, brought over a letter recommendatory from George Fox. It appears that Bradford and his wife resided temporarily at Philadelphia on their arrival late that year, but that soon residence and printery were removed to Oxford township, where the domicile continued until removal to New York, whilst the press was reestablished at Philadelphia in 1688, where Bradford added a bookstore. The first issue of his press, in 1685, was an almanac by Samuel Atkins, in which Penn was dubbed "Lord Penn," an offense for which Bradford was reprimanded and ordered to print no more without license by the council (Pennsylvania Colonial Records, I, 165). In 1687 he was warned not to print anything about the Quakers without their official consent. He was reprehended by Governor John Blackwell and his council, in 1689, for printing Penn's charter. So, harassed by both civil and religious leaders and disappointed in the unproductiveness of his press and the lack of encouragement in his pet scheme to print an English Bible in 1688, he transferred his press to his "assignes" and, on receiving a certificate of removal in July 1689, returned to England. Better encouragement from the Yearly Meeting induced him to return and resume his press. In 1690 he was associated in founding the fir st pa per-mill in English America. In 1692 he was released from his official printing contract, and became involved in the turbulence that had arisen from the schism led by George Keith, whose propaganda he forwarded by the press. Bradford was arrested; his types, paper, and other things were seized by the sheriff. The case is enmeshed in conflicting partisan statements. A summa tion seems to show that he refused to furnish security for his recognizance, so was committed in a dwelling, but allowed considerable freedom. At his trial he pleaded his  own cause with great skill, maintaining the right of peremptory challenge of biased jurors in a libel action, and that the burden of proof was upon his prosecutors, whilst the jurors were judges of law as w ell as of fact. At a subsequent term he pleaded not guilty; and the jury,-out forty-eight hours,-not agreeing, he was discharged. On April 28, 1693, Governor Fletcher ordered the restoration of his seized property. Meanwhile, on March 23, 1693, the New York council, under Fletcher's direction, offered inducements for a printer to come to New York, to print the acts of assembly and other official papers, and have the bene fit of serving the public. Bradford accepted the offer and was established as "Printer to King William and  Queen Mary." His first warrant for salary was retroactive to April 10, 1693. From 1693 to 1724 he printed more than 250 pieces, and from 1725 to 1743 about 150 more. In the beginning, his issue s were mainly public documents and religious controversial pamphlets, but after 1710 they w ere more varied. Bradford was admitted a freeman of New York in 1695, and the same year began to print the "Votes" of the assembly, which were the earliest legislative proceedings to be printed in America. In 1694, 1710, 1713, 1716, and 1726, he printed collections of New York laws. He printed the first New York paper currency (May 31, 1709), the first America n Book of Common Prayer (1710), the first drama written in English America (1714), the first history of New York (1727), and the first copperplate plan of New York (Lyne's survey, undated, but 1730). He was a vestryman of Trinity Church, 1703-10; official printer to New Jersey, 1703-33, with slight interruption, and clerk of New Jersey, 1711. In his sixty-third year, he began New York's first news paper, the New-York Gazette, November 8, 1725 (earliest issue extant No. 18), which apparently expired on November 19, 1744. Until 1733 it was the only newspaper in New York. It was never a well-edited product. Foreign news copy predominated and advertising was sparse. Journalism was for Bradford a losing venture. Having been printer to the Crown under four reigns, he retired in 1742, in his eightieth year, succeeded by his former apprentice, James Parker. He lived in retirement with his son, William, at New York, until his sudden death on the evening of May 23, 1752. Parker (Post-Boy, May 25, 1751) paid high tribute to Bradford as "a Man of great Sobriety and Industry;-a real Friend to the Poor and Needy; and kind and affable to all his Temperance was exceedingly conspicuous, and he was almost a Stranger to sickness all his Life." No portrait of Bradford exists. His first tombstone was damaged and removed to the New York Historical Society, whilst a new one of Italian marble was dedicated in Trinity churchyard, May 20, 1863, and that night an august celebration took place in Cooper Institute. The Bradford Club was named for him in 1859. The Grolier Club, in April 1893, paid him tribute in a "Bradford Exhibition." On November 8, 1925, journalists and printers celebrated the founding of his newspaper, and in 1926 there was formed the William Bradford Memorial Fellowship in Journalism. There are historical markers on the sites of his printing shops, at 81 Pearl St., and in Hanover Square.

[A collation of a great variety of conflicting statements in the following books and articles is imperative for the elimination of error:  Antiquarian Researches, by Nathan Kite (Manchester, 1844), reprinted from the Friend, volumes XVI and XVII (Philadelphia, 1843); Memoir of Bradford in the Home Journal" February 14, 1852, anonymous; "Wm. Bradford," by W. IL, in History Magazine, III (1859), 171 ff.; Address at Celebration, May 20, I863, by John Wm. Wallace (1863), the fullest biography, in which real facts are hidden in a mass of pedantry and irrelevancy; chapter headed "Of Persecution and Prosecution" in News of a Trumpet sounding in the Wilderness, by Daniel Leeds (New York, 1697), and for Bradford's birth date American Almanack, 1739, of Titan Leeds, under May 20. The following works of Chas. R. Hildeburn are indispensable:  A Century of Printing: the Issues of the Press in Pennsylvania, Volume I (1885); List of the Issues of the Press in New York (1889); chap. XV in Wilson's Memorial History of New York, Volume I (1891), containing facts not found elsewhere; Catalog of Books Printed by Wm. Bradford (1893); Sketches of Printers and Printing in Colonial New York (1895); see also I. N. P. Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, chronology and appendix, Volume IV (1922).

V. H. P.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 350:

BRADFORD, William, printer, born in Leicester, England, in 1658; died  in New York, 23 May, 1752. He was one of the Quakers brought over by Penn in 1682, who founded in the midst of the forest the town of Philadelphia. In 1685 he set up his printing-press, the first one south of New England, and the third one in the colonies. The same year he issued the “Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense” for 1686. In 1690 he joined with two others in building a paper-mill on the Schuylkill. Among his earliest publications were Keith's polemical tracts against the New England churches. In 1691, having sided with Keith in his quarrel with the authorities, and printed his “Appeal to the People,” and other tracts on his side of the controversy, Bradford was arrested for seditious libel, and his press, forms, materials, and publications were confiscated. He was tried on the charge of having printed a paper tending to weaken the hands of the magistrates, but, conducting his own case with shrewdness and skill, escaped punishment through the disagreement of the jury. In his defence he contended, in opposition to the ruling of the court directing the jury to find only as to the facts of the printing, that the jurors were judges of the law as well as of the fact, and competent to determine whether the subject-matter was seditious, a point that, in after times, was much controverted in similar cases. Having incurred the displeasure of the dominant party in Philadelphia, and receiving an invitation to establish a printing-press in New York, he settled there in 1693, set up the first press in the province, and the same year printed the laws of the colony. He was appointed public printer with an allowance of £50 per annum, and also received the appointment of printer to the government of New Jersey. He retained an interest in the press in Philadelphia, which was managed by a Dutchman named Jansen until Bradford's eldest son, Andrew, took charge of it in 1712, and obtained the appointment of public printer. On 16 October, 1725, William Bradford began the publication of the “New York Gazette,” the fourth newspaper in the colonies, and in 1728 he established a paper-mill at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. He was the only printer in the colony for thirty years, and retained the office of public printer for more than fifty years. He is buried in Trinity church-yard. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 350.


BRADLEY, Henry, New York, abolitionist leader
(Sorin, 1971)


BRADLEY, Phineas, Washington, DC, American Colonization Society, Manager, 1834-1839. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


BRADLEY, Stephan Row, 1754-1830, jurist, Member of Congress, U.S. Senator, New Jersey, opposed slavery in U.S. Congress.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume 1, p.353; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, pp. 575-576; Locke, Mary Stoughton. Anti-Slavery in America from the Introduction of African Slaves to the Prohibition of the Slave Trade (1619-1808). Boston: Ginn & Co., 1901, pp. 94, 149f; Annals of Congress)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, pp. 575-576:

BRADLEY, STEPHEN ROW (February 20, 1754-December 9, 1830), jurist, senator, was descended from Stephen Bradley, one of Cromwell's Ironsides who emigrated, about the year 1650, from England to Connecticut. S. R. Bradley was born in the town of Wallingford (later known as Cheshire), the son of Moses and Mary (Row) Bradley. He graduated from Yale College in 1775, and early in 1776 was commissioned a captain of volunteers in the American army. He served in various capacities as commissary, quartermaster, aide to General Wooster, and at the end of the war retired with the rank of colonel. He studied law in the famous school of Judge Tapping Reeve, at Litchfield, Connecticut, and in 1779 like many other active and ambitious young men, he emigrated from Connecticut to the district known as the New Hampshire Grants, where the Green Mountain Boys sought to establish a new Commonwealth of Vermont, in opposition to the claims of New York. Bradley was one of two lawyers who were the first to be admitted to the Vermont bar. He opened a law office in Westminster. His rapid rise in influence is shown by the fact that before the end of his first year in Vermont he had been chosen as one of the agents to present Vermont's cause to the Continental Congress, and had written a pamphlet entitled Vermont's Appeal to the Candid and Impartial World (1780), an eloquent and militant argument for Vermont's right to statehood. By direction of Governor Chittenden the appeal was "published to the world," and circulated throughout several states. Bradley served as a member of the legislature and as speaker, and was the second judge of the supreme court who was a lawyer, most of the early judges being laymen. He was an active member of the commission that negotiated a settlement with New York, which made possible Vermont's admission as the first state to come into the Union after the original thirteen. In the convention called to consider ratification of the United States Constitution, Bradley was one of the leaders in the debate, favoring appr oval, which was carried by a large majority. He was elected one of Vermont's first United States senators, drawing the four-year term. He was defeated in 1794 for a reelection, but was chosen in 1801 to fill a vacancy and was reelected for a full term, this period continuing from October 1801 to March 1813. He served as president pro tempore, 1802-03 and in 1808.

Bradley introduced the bill which established a national flag of fifteen stripes and fifteen stars and this flag, sometimes known as the Bradley flag, was used from 1795 to 1814. His leadership is indicated by the fact that he issued the call for the caucus of Republican members of Congress which nominated James Madison as a candidate for president. Bradley was not an active partisan and his independence of party ties was shown on various occasions. In the controversy between the schools of political thought represented by Chief Justice Marshall and President Thomas Jefferson, which culminated in the establishment of a powerful and independent judiciary, Bradley, although a Republican, did not support the attempt to impeach certain judges. In a speech delivered in the Senate on April 25, 1812, he protested against a declaration of war before an army was organized, and S. G. Goodrich, better known by his pen name, "Peter Parley," a son-in-law of Bradley, in his Recollections of a Lifetime (1856), says that the senator retired from public life because of his dissatisfaction with the war policy of the Madison administration. Jeremiah Mason, one of the famous lawyers of the time, was a student in Bradley's office and in his Memoir and Correspondence (1873), he tells of Bradley's sagacity, his wit, and his great store of anecdotes. Other contemporaries mention his urbanity and social charm, He was thrice married: to Merab Atwater, to Thankful Taylor, and to Belinda Willard.

[A. J. Beveridge, Life of John Marshall (1916-19); Chas. Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of J. Q. Adams (1874-77); F. B. Dexter, Biography Sketches Graduates Yale College, Volume III (1903); B. H. Hall, History of Eastern Vermont (1858); W. H. Crockett, Vermont (1921), volumes II, III; Records of the Governors and Council of the State of Vermont (1874.), II, 200-22; P. C. Dodge, ed., Encyclopedia of Vermont Biography (1912).]

W. H. C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume 1, p.353:

BRADLEY, Stephen Row, senator, born in Wallingford (now Cheshire), Connecticut, 20 October, 1754; died  in Walpole, New Hampshire, 16 December, 1830. He was graduated at Yale in 1775, studied law under Judge Reeve, and was admitted to the bar in 1779. During the revolutionary war he commanded a company of the Cheshire volunteers, and was the aide of General Wooster when that officer was killed at Danbury. In 1779 he settled in Vermont and became active in the organization of the state. He was one of its first senators, being elected as a democrat to the 2d, 3d, and 7th, to 12th congresses, and was president pro tem. during portions of the 7th and 10th congresses. He was the author of “Vermont's Appeal” (1779), which has been ascribed.  Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 353.


BRAINERD, Lawrence, 1794-1870, anti-slavery activist, capitalist, statesman, U.S. Senator, member of the Liberty and Free Soil Parties.  Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1833-1839.  Originally a Democrat, he was affiliated with the Free-Soil wing of the party. In 1834 he was a member of the legislature and in 1846, 1847, 1848, 1852, and 1854, he was a candidate of the Free-Soil Democratic party for governor. He was elected United States senator in 1854.

(Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 358; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, p. 594)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume I, Pt. 2, p. 594:

BRAINERD, LAWRENCE (March 16, 1794- May 9, 1870), capitalist, senator, one of twelve children born to Ezra and Mabel (Porter) Brainerd, was a native of East Hartford, Connecticut. At the age of nine years he went to Troy, New York, to live with Joseph S. Brainerd, an uncle. Five years later, he removed with this uncle to St. Albans, Vermont. He attended the St. Albans Academy for two years and entered the store of a local merchant as clerk. At the age of twenty-two he established a mercantile business of his own in which he was very successful. He bought a large tract of swamp land near Lake Champlain, drained and improved it, and developed it into a 1,200-acre farm, one of the best in Vermont. When the Bank of St. Albans was established in 1826, he became a heavy stockholder, a director, and later its president. He was active in steamboat enterprises in the early days of that method of transportation, in 1847 superintending the building at Shelburne Harbor of the United States, then considered one of the finest steamboats ever built. He became interested early in railroad development and the construction of the Vermont & Canada line was due largely to his energy and aid, in cooperation with John Smith and Joseph Clark. He pledged practically his entire fortune to make possible the building of the railroad. From the construction of the road until his death he was a director and in later years was associated with his son-in-law, Governor John Gregory Smith, in the management of the corporation. He was also engaged in railroad building in Canada and was a promoter of the Missisquoi Railroad. He took an active interest in public affairs, being particularly interested in the anti-slavery cause and in temperance reform. Originally a Democrat, he was affiliated with the Free-Soil wing of the party. In 1834 he was a member of the legislature and in 1846, 1847, 1848, 1852, and 1854, he was a candidate of the Free-Soil Democratic party for governor. He was elected United States senator in 1854 to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Upham, was president of the convention called to organize the Republican party in Vermont, was a delegate to a preliminary national Republican convention at Pittsburgh in February 1856, and called to order the first Republican national convention, held at Philadelphia in June 1856. Much interested in agricultural development, he was a president of the Vermont Agricultural Society. In 1819 he married Fidelia B. Gadcomb and twelve children were born to them. He was a man of large frame and great physical strength. [St. Albans Daily Messenger, May 9, 1870; W. H. Crockett, Vermont, Volume III (1921); H. C. Williams, ed., Biography Encyclopedia of Vermont (1885).]

W.H.C.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 358:

BRAINERD, Lawrence, senator, born in 1794; died  in St. Albans, Vt., 9 May, 1870. He was active in forwarding the political, commercial, and railroad interests of Vermont, and was for several years candidate for governor. After the death of Senator Upham, Mr. Brainerd was chosen to the senate as a Free-Soiler for the remainder of the term, serving from 5 December, 1854, till 3 March, 1855. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 358.


BRAMHALL, Cornelius, New York, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1856-64.


BRANAGAN, Thomas, former slaveholder in West Indies, wrote anti-slavery book in the United States.  Wrote, The Penitential Tyrant; or, Slave Trader Reformed: A Pathetic Poem, and A Preliminary Essay on the Exiled Sons of Africa Consisting of Animadversions on the Impolicy and Barbarity of the Deleterious Commerce and Subsequent Slavery of the Human Species (1801). 

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 45, 80; Mason, 2006, pp. 26, 248n111; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 30-31)


BRANCH, John, 1782-1863, Raleigh, North Carolina, statesman, political leader, Secretary of the Navy, Governor of North Carolina.  President, Raleigh auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 358; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 1, Pt. 2, p. 594; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 71)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 358:

BRANCH, John, secretary of the navy, born in Halifax, North Carolina, 4 November, 1782; died  in Enfield, North Carolina, 4 January, 1863. After graduation at the university of North Carolina in 1801, he studied law, became judge of the superior court, and was a state senator from 1811 till 1817, in 1822, and again in 1834. He was elected governor of his state in 1817, and from 1823 till 1829 was U. S. senator, resigning in the latter year, when he was appointed secretary of the navy by President Jackson. He held this office till 1831, when the cabinet broke up, more on account of social than political dissensions, as was commonly thought. A letter from Sec. Branch on the subject is published in Niles's “Register” (vol. xli.). Judge Branch was elected to congress as a democrat in 1831. In 1838 he was defeated as democratic candidate for governor of his state, and in 1844-'5 was governor of the territory of Florida, serving until the election of a governor under the state constitution.  Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BRAND, Benjamin, Richmond, Virginia.  Treasurer of the Richmond auxiliary of the American Colonization Society. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 109)


BRANDEGEE, Augustus, 1828-1904, lawyer, jurist, abolitionist.  Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Connecticut.  Voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery.  Elected to Connecticut State House of Representatives in 1854.  There, he was appointed Chairman of the Select Committee to pass a “Bill for the Defense of Liberty,” which was to prevent the Fugitive Slave Law from being enforced in the state.

(Biographical Directory of the United States Congress; Congressional Globe)


BREATHITT, John, 1798-1834, Kentucky, lawyer, political leader, Lieutenant Governor of Kentucky.  Strong supporter of the American Colonization Society, and of colonization. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 363; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 139)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 363:

BREATHITT, John, governor of Kentucky, born near New London, Virginia, 9 September, 1786; died in Frankfort, Kentucky, 21 February, 1834. He removed with his father to Kentucky in 1800, was a surveyor and teacher, studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1810. He was an earnest Jacksonian democrat, and for several years was a member of the legislature. He was lieutenant-governor of Kentucky in 1828-'32, and governor in 1832-'4. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BRECKINRIDGE, James, 1763-1833, lawyer, founding officer and charter member of the American Colonization Society in Washington, DC, in 1816. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 364; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 5; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 258n14)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 364:

BRECKENRIDGE, James, lawyer, born near Fincastle, Botetourt county, Virginia, 7 March, 1763; died in Fincastle, 9 August, 1846. He was a grandson of a Scottish covenanter, who escaped to America on the restoration of the Stuarts. James served, in 1781, in Colonel Preston’s rifle regiment under Greene, was graduated at William and Mary college in 1785, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1787, and began practice in Fincastle. He was for several years a member of the general assembly of Virginia, and a leader of the old federal party in that body, and from 22 May, 1809, till 3 March, 1817, represented the Botetourt district in congress. He was a candidate for governor against James Monroe. He co-operated with Thomas Jefferson in founding the university of Virginia, and was one of the most active promoters of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal. Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BRECKINRIDGE, John, Reverend, 1797-1841, Maryland, clergyman.  Board of Managers, Maryland Society of the American Colonization Society. 

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 365; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 7; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 111, 231, 235)

Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 365:

BRECKENRIDGE, John, clergyman, son of John, born at Cabell’s Dale, near Lexington, Kentucky, 4 July, 1797; died there, 4. August, 1841, was graduated at Princeton in 1818, united with the Presbyterian church while in college, and chose the clerical profession, although his father had intended him for the law. He was licensed to preach in 1822 by the presbytery of New Brunswick, and in 1822-'3 served as chaplain to congress. On 10 September, 1823, he was ordained pastor of a church in Lexington, Kentucky, over which he presided four years. While there he founded a religious newspaper called the “Western Luminary.” In 1826 he was called to the 2d Presbyterian church of Baltimore as colleague of Dr. Glendy, and in 1831 he removed to Philadelphia, having been appointed secretary and general agent of the Presbyterian board of education. This place he resigned in 1836, to become professor of theology in the Princeton seminary. While occupying that chair he engaged in a public controversy with Archbishop Hughes, of New York, on the subject of the doctrines of their respective churches, and their arguments have been published in a volume entitled “A Discussion of the Question, ‘Is the Roman Catholic Religion, in any or in all its Principles or Doctrines, inimical to Civil or Religious Liberty?’—and of the Question, ‘Is the Presbyterian Religion, in any or all its Principles or Doctrines, inimical to Civil or Religious Liberty?’” (Philadelphia, 1836). Mr. Breckenridge took a prominent part in the controversies in the Presbyterian church, upholding, in the discussions in presbyteries, synods, and general assemblies, the principles of old-school Presbyterianism, and published a number of polemical writings. He was a keen debater, and was noted for his concise, accurate, and logical extempore speeches and sermons. He became secretary and general agent of the Presbyterian board of foreign missions upon its organization in 1838, and devoted his energies to superintending its operations until he broke down under his exhaustive labors, and died while on a visit to his early home. Just before his death he received a call to the presidency of Oglethorpe university in Georgia. In 1839 he published a “Memorial of Mrs. Breckenridge.” Appletons’ Cylcopædia of American Biography, 1888.


BRECKINRIDGE, Robert Jefferson, 1800-1871, Kentucky, lawyer, clergyman, state legislator, anti-slavery activist.  Supported gradual emancipation.  Opponent of slavery and important advocate for colonization and the American Colonization Society (ACS).  He argued emancipation was the goal of African colonization and it was justified.  He worked with ACS agent Robert S. Finley to establish auxiliaries. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 10; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 144-145, 183, 231)


BREWSTER, Henry, LeRoy, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1837-40


BREWSTER, J. M., Pittsfield, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Massachusetts Abolition Society, Vice-President, 1842-45.


BRICE, Nicholas, Baltimore, Maryland, jurist.  Board of Managers of the Maryland American Colonization Society. 

(Campbell, Penelope. Maryland in Africa: The Maryland State Colonization Society, 1831-1857. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1971, pp. 18, 19, 38, 52, 193; Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 111)


BRIDGE, J. D., Duxbury, Massachusetts, abolitionist, Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, Vice-President, 1840-41.


BRINKERHOFF, James, 1810-1880, U.S. Congressman, member anti-slavery Free-Soil Party, author of the Wilmot Proviso Bill.

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).


BRINKERHOFF, JACOB (August 31, 1819 July 19, 1880), jurist and legislator. In Congress he was identified with a small group of northwestern Democrats, advocates of a low tariff, expansionists, and Free-Soilers. He proposed an amendment to the joint resolution for the annexation of Texas, providing that, "as a fundamental condition, ... the existence of slavery shall be forever prohibited in one-half of all the annexed territory"

(Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, p. 49:

BRINKERHOFF, JACOB (August 31, 1819 July 19, 1880), jurist and legislator, was the eldest son of Henry I. Brinkerhoff and Rachel Bevier, the father a member of an old Dutch family of New York, the mother of Huguenot ancestry (Roeliff and T. Van Wyck Brinkerhoff, Family of Joris D. Brinckerhoff, 1887, pp. 11-13, 67). Brinkerhoff was born at Niles, New York, and attended the public schools of his native town and the academy of Prattsburg, New York. He studied law for two years in a law office in Bath, New York. In 1836 he moved to Mansfield, Ohio, where he began the practise of law. He was twice married to Caroline Campbell of Lodi, New York, and after her death, to Marion Titus of Detroit. His public life consisted of two terms as prosecutor of Richland County, two terms as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives (1843-47), and three terms in the supreme court of Ohio (1856-71). In Congress he was identified with a small group of northwestern Democrats, advocates of a low tariff, expansionists, and Free-Soilers. He proposed an amendment to the joint resolution for the annexation of Texas, providing that, "as a fundamental condition, ... the existence of slavery shall be forever prohibited in one-half of all the annexed territory" (Congressional Globe, 28 Congress, 2 Session, p. 192). This amendment failing, Brinkerhoff voted against the resolution. On the Oregon question he defended the claim of the United States to the whole territory. "We do not want war," he exclaimed, "but if we must have it, we would a great deal rather fight Great Britain than some other Powers, for we do not love her" (Ibid., 29 Congress, l Session, pp. 203 ff.). When President Polk asked for $2,000,000 to negotiate peace with Mexico, Brinkerhoff supported an amendment to prohibit slavery in the acquired territory. The facts in his contention of twenty years later that he was the author of the Wilmot Proviso are shrouded in some doubt. It is quite possible that he may have suggested to Wilmot in part or in entirety the particular verbal form of the proposed amendment (see Brinkerhoff's statement in Congress, February 10, 1847, Ibid., 29 Congress, 2 Session, p. 377). The Proviso attached to the Two Million Bill in Wilmot's handwriting is in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Brinkerhoff's alleged original draft, the evidence for his part, has unfortunately been lost (C. B. Going, David Wilmot, 1924, ch. ix). Brinkerhoff again became a conspicuous opponent of slavery when the Oberlin rescue cases came before the supreme court of Ohio, 1859. The court sustained the Fugitive Slave Law, the vote of the judges being three to two. Brinkerhoff wrote a dissenting opinion, falling back upon the strict construction theory, and so denying to Congress, the power to legislate upon the subject of fugitives from labor (Ex parte Bushnell, ex parte Langston, IX Critchfield's Ohio State Reports, 221- 29). Through the period of the slavery controversy Brinkerhoff passed from the ranks of the anti-slavery Democrats to the Free-Soil party and then to the Republican party. In 1872 he strongly indorsed the Liberal Republican movement (see Chicago Tribune, February 12, 1872). Little is known of his personal traits or his private life. He had a local reputation as a public speaker of more than average ability, quick at repartee, having read much and possessing a remarkable memory (A. A. Graham, History of Richland County, 1880, pp. 381-82).

[In addition to references given above, see obituary in Ohio Liberal (Mansfield), Volume VIII, No. 14; and The Recollections of a Life Time (1900), by General Roeliff Brinkerhoff.]

E.J.B.


BRISBANE, William Henry, 1803-1878, South Carolina, abolitionist leader.  Executive Committee of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.  Clergyman, Baptist Church in Madison, Wisconsin.  Chief Clerk of the Wisconsin State Senate.  He inherited slaves, however he realized slavery was wrong.  In 1835, Brisbane freed 33 of his slaves, bringing them to the North where he helped them settle.  As a result, he was criticized by his family and friends.  He moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he worked for the abolitionist cause. He founded the Baptist Anti-Slavery Society in 1841.  He was fired for being too anti-slavery.  Leader in the Liberty Party in the Cincinnati area in early 1840s.  He was active with Levi Coffin in the Underground Railroad.  He was publisher of the Crisis, an abolitionist newspaper, which was widely distributed.  He wrote two anti-slavery books.

(Dumond, Dwight Lowell, Antislavery: The Crusade for Freedom in America, University of Michigan Press, 1961, pp. 93, 286; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 378)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, p. 378:

BRISBANE, William H., clergyman, born about 1803; died in Arena, Wisconsin, in 1878. He inherited a large number of slaves, but became convinced that slavery was wrong, and in 1835 brought thirty-three of them to the north, manumitting them and aiding them to settle in life. In consequence of this, he was obliged to take rank among the poor men of the country. Making his home in Cincinnati, he became the associate of prominent abolitionists, and a constant worker in their cause. In the early days of the anti-slavery agitation he was among its foremost advocates. In 1855 he removed to Wisconsin, was chief clerk of the state senate in 1857, became pastor of the Baptist church in Madison, and early in the civil war was tax commissioner of South Carolina. In June, 1874, he took an active part in the reunion of the old abolition guards in Chicago. Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 378.


BROADNAX, William H., Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Virginia state lawmaker.  Formerly supported the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the Virginia state legislature.  He stated that slavery was a “mildew which has blighted in its course every region it has touched, from the creation of the world.” 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, p. 181)


BROCKETT, Zenas, Manheim, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1852-1853.


BRODERICK, David Colbert, 1820-1859, Anti-Slavery U.S. Senator, member  Free-Soil Party. 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, Volume I, p. 382 Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, pp. 61-62; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe).

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, pp. 61-61:

BRODERICK, DAVID COLBRETH (February 4, 1820-September 16, 1859), forty-niner, politician, was born in Washington, D. C. He was of Irish stock, and his father, a stone-mason for a time employed on the national Capitol, was doubtless an immigrant. Of the mother, whose maiden name was Copway, little is recorded except that she was idolized by her son. The boy had little schooling. Before he was fourteen the family moved to New York. About 1837 the father died, and the boy began his struggle for a living for himself, his mother, and his younger brother. Industrious, ambitious, belligerent, of strong physique and able to give a good account of himself in a street brawl, he literally fought his way to the front. By the time he was twenty he was a member of an engine company (of which later he became foreman) and was active in ward politics as an adherent of Tammany Hall. His mother dying and his brother being accidentally killed, he was left without kin. His struggles had molded his character; he was "stubborn, positive, unrelenting and unforgiving," self-centered also, and determined upon his advancement to the utmost of his powers. He owned a saloon, which seems to have netted a good profit, and he became politically prominent. He was a member of the city charter convention of 1846, over which he several times presided, and in the same year he was the unsuccessful Tammany nominee for Congress in the 5th district.

In the spring of 1849 he determined to go to California. Closing his saloon, emptying his casks in the street, and vowing that he would never again "sell or drink liquor, smoke a cigar or play a card," he took passage by way of Panama, and in June arrived in San Francisco. Here he found old friends ready to back him alike in business and politics. He formed a partnership with an assayer for the coining of gold "slugs" of four-dollar and eight-dollar values in metal, which passed readily, because of the scarcity of coin, for five dollars and ten dollars. The business, though highly profitable, was sold some months later, and Broderick turned his attention to the still more profitable enterprise of trading in shore-front lots. From the time he landed he was in politics. In August he was chosen a delegate to the constitutional convention, and in January of the following year was elected to fill a vacancy in the Senate. On the succession of Lieutenant-Governor McDougal to the governorship, in January 1851, Broderick was elected president of the Senate. Though his private life was exemplary, in politics he was unscrupulous. An adept in Tammany methods, he soon became a political boss; and it is said of him that from 1851 (when he was reelected to the Senate) to 1854 he was "the Democratic party of California." He now determined upon a seat in the United States Senate, and set about to compass the defeat of William M. Gwin, whose term would expire on March 4, 1855. The attempt served for the time only to divide the party and to deadlock the legislature, but on January 10, 1857, he won the election by 79 votes out of 111. At the same time, through a bargain made with his rival, Gwin, he brought about the latter's reelection and obtained the promise of a monopoly of the Federal patronage for the state.

President Buchanan refused to recognize the bargain, and Gwin, in spite of his promise, continued to distribute the patronage. Broderick turned on both men with bitter resentment. At what time he first developed sentiments hostile to the slave power and to political corruption cannot be said. But he now vehemently attacked the administration, both for its policy in Kansas and for its alleged venality, and he carried the war into his own state, where pro-slavery feeling was for the time dominant and aggressive. His attitude brought him into national prominence, but made him a marked man at home. Both he and his friends felt that he was now regarded as a menace and that means would be taken to get rid of him. A remark made by him on June 27, 1859, concerning Chief Justice David S. Terry, one of the leaders of the proslavery element, brought a challenge from Terry, who resigned his judgeship, and Broderick accepted. They met on the early morning of September 13. The pistol furnished Broderick was so "light on the trigger" that it was prematurely discharged by the act of raising his arm. Terry's bullet struck Broderick in the breast, and he fell mortally wounded. Conveyed to a near-by farmhouse, he lingered for three days. On his deathbed he said: "They have killed me because I was opposed to the extension of slavery and a corrupt administration." The dead body was conveyed to the city, where on September 18 funeral services were held at which Colonel Edward D. Baker [q.v.] delivered an eloquent and impressive eulogy. On February 13, 1860, memorial services were held by both houses of Congress. Broderick was buried at the foot of Lone Mountain.

He is pictured by Lynch as a large man, robust, and of great strength, with steel-blue eyes, a large mouth filled with strong white teeth, a ruddy brown beard, and a plentiful shock of "slightly dark" hair. His face, says Lynch, was not attractive. His character has been variously portrayed; Bancroft says that it has been "distorted into something abnormal by both his enemies and his friends." The identification of the man shot down by Terry with the ward-heeler of 1850 is no easy task. He had become a student and a man of thought, an advocate of many measures of broad social significance. He read not only the historians and the statesmen, but the poets, and his favorite bard was Shelley. By whatever circumstances he had been led to a hatred of the slave power and a heightened devotion to the Union, the change was one which in a measure transformed him. Though martyrdom invested him with a glamour beyond his meed, he had given substantial promise of a great and useful career.

[Jeremiah Lynch, A Senator of the Fifties (1911); John W. Dwinelle, A Funeral Oration upon David C. Broderick, including memorial addresses delivered in Congress, February 13, 1860 (pamphlet, 1860); Jas. O'Meara, Broderick and Gwin (1881); H. H. Bancroft, History of Cal. (1888); Theodore H. Hittell, History of Cal. (1897); Hermann Schussler, The Locality of the Broderick-Terry Duel (pamphlet, 1916).]

W.J.G.


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.


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, Volume 3, p. 602)


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, Volume I, p. 387)

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume 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 removed 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 removed 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.


BROOMALL, John M., Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted for Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery

(Congressional Globe; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)


BROWN, A. B., La Poret County, Indiana, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-1842.


BROWN, Abel, Reverend, 1810-1844, Springfield, Massachusetts, New York, abolitionist leader.  Aided fugitive slaves in the Underground Railroad in Albany, New York.  Founder, Eastern New York Anti-Slavery Society (NYASS) and the Albany Vigilance Committee.  Supported women’s rights.  Wrote for Garrison’s Liberator.  Founded Tocsin of Liberty, later the Albany Patriot.  Died at age 34.  His wife published his autobiography in 1849. (Sinha, 2016, p. 395; Sorin, 1971)


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’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 105; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928); Congressional Globe)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 105:

BROWN, BENJAMIN GRATZ (May 28, 1826-December 13, 1885), senator, governor of Missouri, was born at Lexington, Kentucky, the son of Mason and Judith (Bledsoe) Brown. His father, Mason Brown, was a jurist of some note who served as judge of a Kentucky circuit court and, from 1856 to 1859, as secretary of state. His grandfather, John Brown, was the first United States senator from Kentucky. The Browns were related to the Prestons, Breckenridges, Blairs, Bentons, and other well-known Kentucky families.

Brown entered Transylvania University but withdrew in 1845 and entered Yale University, where he was graduated in 1847. He then studied law in Louisville, was admitted to the Kentucky bar, and, in 1849, moved to St. Louis. The same year he took the stump in support of Thomas H. Benton's attack upon the "Jackson Resolutions" adopted by the Missouri legislature that year. He again came actively to the support of Benton in the Atchison-Benton senatorial contest of 1852-53. Appreciating the importance of the large German vote in St. Louis, he early cultivated its support; and, largely as a result, he was elected, and reelected, to the lower branch of the state legislature between 1852 and 1859. For upward of two decades the St. Louis Germans constituted the principal element in his political following. In the Missouri legislature of 1857, Brown took an especially prominent part. A joint resolution was introduced declaring emancipation of the slaves to be impracticable, and that any movement in that direction was "inexpedient, impolitic, unwise, and unjust." In reply to this, Brown, at some personal risk, it is said, made an able and forceful anti-slavery speech in which he advocated and prophesied the abolition of slavery in Missouri on economic grounds-more out of regard to the interest of poor white laborers than as an act of humanity to the slaves. This incident has been regarded by some as the beginning of the Free-Soil movement in Missouri (Speech of Hon. B. Gratz Brown of St. Louis on the Subject of Gradual Emancipation in Missouri, February 12, 1857, Pamphlet, 1857). Brown's speech apparently made him the Free-Soil Democratic candidate for governor the same year. He failed of election by the narrow margin of about 500 votes.

Between 1854 and 1859, most of Brown's energies were absorbed in newspaper editorial work for the Missouri Democrat-a paper of strong Free-Soil, and, later, Republican, principles. In its columns, Brown persistently assailed the institution of slavery in Missouri and advocated emancipation. In 1856 he fought a duel with Thomas C. Reynolds over differences growing out of editorials relating to the Know Nothing movement in St. Louis. Brown was shot near the knee, and limped during the rest of his life.

In the formation of the Republican party in Missouri in 1860 Brown took an active part and was a delegate-at-large to the Chicago convention which nominated Lincoln. At the opening of the Civil War, he became colonel of the 4th Regiment of Missouri (three months) Volunteers, and energetically cooperated with General Lyon and Frank P. Blair, Jr.. in circumventing the Missouri secessionists.

In the state election of 1862 the abolition of slavery was the outstanding issue, especially in the eastern part of the state. Brown led the radicals, who insisted upon immediate emancipation, in opposition to the gradual emancipationists led by his cousin, Frank P. Blair, Jr. Although the policy of the latter was indorsed two years later by the state convention which adopted an ordinance for the gradual extinction of slavery, Brown's faction won a majority of the seats in both branches of the next legislature, and nominated him for the United States Senate. After a prolonged contest, Brown was elected on the thirty-second ballot (1863) for the unexpired term of W. P. Johnson, who had been expelled as a secessionist. He took the oath of office December 14, 1863, and served until March 4, 1867. In 1864, he was one of the signers of the call for the Cleveland convention of radicals who opposed the renomination of Lincoln and nominated Fremont and Cochrane.

While in the Senate, Brown served upon the committees on military affairs, Indian affairs, Pacific railroad, printing, public buildings and grounds, and also as chairman of the committee on contingent expenses. Although frequently taking part in Senate debates, he made only one extended speech. This was in support of an amendment to a bill to promote enlistments in the army, confirming and making of full effect as law the President's emancipation proclamation, and adding a section declaring the immediate abolition of slavery in all states and territories of the United States, as a war measure (March 8, 1864. Congressional Globe, 38 Congress, I Session pt. II, pp. 984-90). His next longest speech was in opposition to the proposed reading and writing tests for voting in the District of Columbia and in advocacy of woman suffrage for the District. "I stand," he declared, "for universal suffrage, and as a matter of fundamental principle do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race, color, or sex ... I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right . . . " (December 12, 1866. Congressional Globe, 39 Congress, 2 Session, pt. I, p. 76). He also spoke, or introduced resolutions, in favor of the eight-hour d ay for government employees, approving retaliation for rebel mistreatment of Northern prisoners of war, advocating government construction, ownership, and operation of telegraph lines, and urging the establishment of the merit system in the civil service. His speeches are noteworthy for their obvious sincerity and absence of buncombe, their dignified simplicity of diction, and unusual directness and incisiveness.

Before the end of his senatorial career, Brown became prominently identified with the so-called Liberal movement in Missouri for the repeal of the drastic test-oaths prescribed in the Missouri constitution of 1865 and aimed at sympathizers with the Confederate cause. Later, this Liberal movement, which came to embody a reaction against the radical Republican reconstruction policy and in favor of amnesty for former rebels and reconciliation between the sections, culminated in the nomination of Brown for governor, in 1870, and his triumphant election by a majority of more than 40,000. At the same election, constitutional amendments were approved repealing the obnoxious test-oaths.

In his messages as governor (1871-73), Brown recommended constitutional amendments reorganizing the courts, including the grand jury system, and the better regulation of railroads through the creation of a board of railroad commissioners. The bankruptcy of a number of railroads whose bonds had been guaranteed by the state embarrassed his administration, and resulted in a loss to the state of approximately $25,000,000.

The success of the Liberal movement in Missouri encouraged liberals and reformers in other states and led directly to the launching of the Liberal Republican party in 1872 in opposition to the renomination of President Grant and in favor of tariff and civil service reform and abandonment of radical Republican reconstruction policies. Brown's prominence naturally led to serious consideration of his availability as the presidential candidate of this independent movement; and at the Cincinnati convention of the Liberal Republicans, in May 1872, he stood fourth on the first ballot for the presidential nomination, receiving ninety-five votes. Suspecting that his delegates were being enticed away by the friends of Charles Francis Adams, Brown unexpectedly appeared in Cincinnati, obtained permission to address the convention, and in his speech astonished the delegates by warmly urging the nomination of Horace Greeley. On the sixth ballot Greeley was nominated, and, later, Brown himself received the vice-presidential nomination. Afterward, Carl Schurz and others charged that the ticket was the result of a deliberate bargain between the friends of Greeley and Brown (F. Bancroft, Speeches, Correspondence, and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, 1907-08, II, 362-63). Brown's nomination, however, seems to have been of little or no help to the Liberal Republican campaign, although he participated actively in the canvass. In August he attended a class banquet at Yale, became intoxicated, and made a speech in bad taste, criticizing things eastern (E. D. Ross, The Liberal Republican Movement, 1919, p. 156). Following this campaign, Brown gave up active participation in politics and devoted himself to the practise of law, making a specialty of railway cases. By 1876 he had virtually gone over to the Democratic party. He attended that party's national convention, where "loud calls for Gratz Brown brought that gentleman to the rostrum, accompanied by a round of applause" (Official Report of the Proceedings, p. 91). In his brief response, he expressed sympathy with Democratic demands for reform and the belief that former Liberals would warmly support those demands. Brown's death in 1885 was the direct result of overwork, following close upon a serious illness, in completing a report as referee in an important railroad case pending in the federal court at St. Louis. In person, Brown is described as of medium height, of very slender figure, and "immediately noticeable for his wealth of red hair and beard."

[A disparaging sketch by a political opponent in 1872, pointing out Brown's weaknesses, appears in E. Chamberlin, The Struggle of '72 (1872), pp. 540-47. A more favorable, and generally more satisfactory sketch is printed in W. B. Davis and D. S. Durrie, An Illus. History of Missouri (1876), pp. 482-83. Other Missouri histories contain scattered reference to Brown's opposition to secession, advocacy of emancipation in Missouri, and administration as governor, especially, W. F. Switzler, Illus. History of Missouri (1879); and The Province and States (1904), ed. by W. A. Goodspeed, Volume IV. The Brown-Reynolds duel is described in some detail in W. B. Stevens, St. Louis-the Fourth City, 1764- 1911 (1911), I, 377-85; Missouri Historical Review, XIX, 423- 26. Brown's senatorial speeches appear in the Congressional Globe for the 38th and 39th Congresses. For his political campaign speeches one must consult contemporary newspaper files. Interesting light on Brown's appearance at the Cincinnati convention is shed by H. Watterson, "The Humor and Tragedy of the Greeley Brown Campaign," Century, LXXXV, 27-45. His connection with the earlier stages of the Liberal Movement may best be traced in T. S. Barclay, "The Liberal Republican Movement in Missouri," Missouri Historical Review, Volume XX .]

P.O.R.


BROWN, David Paul, 1795-1872, lawyer, orator, and dramatist, lawyer.  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. 

(Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp 111-112; Rodriguez, 2007, p. 156; Sinha, 2016, pp. 119-120, 122, 248, 387, 511-512) .

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, pp 111-112:

BROWN, DAVID PAUL (September 28, 1795- July 11, 1872), lawyer, orator, and dramatist, was the only child of well-born, well-educated, and wealthy parents. His father, Paul Brown, was descended from Quaker ancestors who came from England with Lord Berkeley and settled in New Jersey. In 1790 Paul Brown removed from Berkeley, New Jersey, to Philadelphia, where he married Rhoda Thackara of Salem, New Jersey, and where in 1795 their son David Paul was born. David was taught by his mother till he was eight and he owed to her his unusual discrimination in speech. Later he was trained by tutors and attended the best local schools. His parents brought him up in an atmosphere of wealth, and encouraged him to spend money freely and intelligently. After the death of his mother in 1810 he was sent to the home of the Reverend Dr. Daggett, a Massachusetts clergyman, who directed the youth's education until 1812. Although David favored the profession of law, he then took up medicine to please his father and became a pupil of the famous Philadelphian, Dr. Benjamin Rush. Six months later (1813) Dr. Rush died; David was then permitted to transfer his studies to law, with an equally famous lawyer, William Rawle, as his preceptor. He read zealously, attended the courts, and enjoyed the society of such leaders at the bar as Lewis, Tilghman, Ingersoll, Dallas, and Binney. His father died in 1815, leaving him a comfortable fortune. In September 1816, just as he attained his majority, Brown was admitted to the Philadelphia bar and soon afterward to the bar of the supreme court of Pennsylvania, the district and circuit courts, and the Supreme Court of the United States.

His reputation as a public speaker quickly vied with his professional fame. At twenty-four he addressed a notable audience at the celebration of Washington's birthday. Five years later (1824) he delivered the address of welcome to Lafayette. During the same year he won distinction for his brilliant and successful defense of Judge Robert Porter, who had been impeached before the Senate of Pennsylvania. On December 24, 1826, he married Emmeline Catharine Handy. Meanwhile he continued to be honored with invitations to deliver his florid eulogiums whenever a notable occasion suggested a speaker of unusual oratorical repute.

In spite of his growing practise and the numerous demands on his time, he found opportunity to write reviews of current books and likewise to try his hand at poems and plays. His casual poetry, which appeared in the Philadelphia Sunday Despatch and elsewhere, is largely negligible. His efforts as a dramatist, however, are more significant. Within two weeks, and principally while riding on horseback to a fashionable suburban spa, he composed a tragedy in verse entitled Sertorius; or, The Roman Patriot, which was produced December 14, 1830, at the Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, with Junius Brutus Booth in the title role. Sertorius is a somewhat vapid imitation of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Addison's Cato, but its sonorous lines were so well delivered by the famous actor that it was presented nine times. It was revived at the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, on February 6, 1832, and figured thereafter in the repertoire of the elder Booth. A romantic comedy, The Prophet of St. Paul's, also written in 1830, received a wretched belated performance at the Walnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia, on March 20, 1837, and succumbed after the third performance. It dealt with the popular love story of Princess Mary and Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. Less significant plays were The Trial, a tragedy, and a farce called Love and Honor, or, The Generous Soldier.

 Brown was not concerned over the failure of his dramatic efforts, as they represented mere diversions in the life of a busy lawyer. His skill in cross-examination resulted in his being retained in almost every important criminal case in the Philadelphia courts. Though his practise was lucrative, it did not result in the accumulation of a fortune. He lived on a most lavish scale in accord with his father's theory that a prosperous man should spend his income freely to avoid the evils of indolence. He thought sufficiently well of himself to publish his reminiscences in two large volumes (1856) under the title The Forum; or, Forty Years Full Practice at the Philadelphia Bar.

Brown was a man of medium height, compactly built, with a high broad forehead, flashing dark eyes, a large mouth, and a voice of great compass. Friends testified to his amiable disposition, his urbanity of manner, and his other social graces. In court he was preeminently histrionic and perhaps too fond of the orotund phraseology that characterized the old-school lawyer. In 1873 his son, Robert Eden Brown, edited The Forensic Speeches of David Paul Brown, Selected from Important Trials and Embracing a Period of Forty Years. Brown regularly declined to consider public office and rarely practised in any courts outside of Pennsylvania.

[In addition to The Forum and The Forensic Speeches above mentioned, see Philadelphia North American and U. S. Gazette, July 12, 1872, and Philadelphia Public Ledger, July 15, 1872. For an account of the performances of Sertorius and The Prophet of St. Pauls, see Charles Durang, "The Philadelphia Stage" (in Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch), series III (beginning July 8, 1860), chapters IV, XLVIII, respectively. These plays were printed in Philadelphia, the first in 18 30, the second in 1836. See also the reprint of Sertorius in M. J. Moses, Representative Plays by American Dramatists, II (1925), 185-252, which is preceded by a critical note on Brown. A. H. Quinn, A History of the American Drama from the Beginning to the Civil War (1923), 249-50, cites passing references to Brown in Rees, Wemyss, Wood, and other commentators. For portraits of Brown, see J. T. Scharf and T. Westcott, History of Philadelphia (1884), II, 1549, and American History Register (1896),III, 622]

J. L.H.


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, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 206; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


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, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 388-389; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 52, 184, 204-205, 464, 489; Ruggles, 2003; Stearns, 1848)


BROWN, James C., Putnam, Ohio, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1838-39


BROWN, James C., Putnam, Ohio, Ohio Anti-Slavery Society, Recording Secretary, 1835-36


BROWN, John Mifflin, 1817-1893, educator, clergyman, African American, eleventh Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, abolitionist.

(Angell, 1992; Murphy, 1993; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 42, 207-208; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 138)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 138:

BROWN, JOHN MIFFLIN (September 8, 1817- March16, 1893), bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was a mulatto born at what is now called Odessa, Delaware. There he spent the first ten years of his life. He then moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he lived with a Quaker family. These Friends gave him religious instruction at home and sent him to a private school. He had the opportunity for further instruction under a Catholic priest, but declined it for the reason that he desired to adhere to the principles of the Methodist Church. He next found friends in Philadelphia, where he lived in the home of Dr. Emerson and Henry Chester, who continued his education. For a number of years he attended the St. Thomas Protestant Episcopal Church, but in 1836 united with the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church. There he attended an evening school and began his preparation for the ministry. He made several efforts to obtain advanced training, but had his first such opportunity when he entered the Wesleyan Academy at Wilbraham, Massachusetts. He studied there from 1838 to 1840, when he had to leave on account of poor health. After recovery, he studied further at Oberlin, but did not complete a course. Much better educated than most of his fellows, however, he began a private school in Detroit in 1844. At the same time he was engaged in religious work, for he had charge of a church in that city the following three years. He next served as a pastor in Columbus from 1844 to 1847. From this position he was called to the most significant work with which he had ever been connected. He was chosen the principal of Union Seminary, organized as a result of a vote of the African Methodist Episcopal Conference in 1844. This is often referred to as the original Wilberforce University. It was started in the African Methodist Episcopal Chapel in Columbus; but, being unsuccessful, it was soon moved twelve miles from the city and established on a farm of 120 acres. This was the first national educational effort of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Being in need of educated ministers, the conference established this institution on the manual labor plan by which poor students could work at some useful occupation to earn what they learned. Brown started the school with three students and left it with mo. Eventually Union Seminary was merged with the actual Wilberforce University founded by the Methodists in 1856 at Tawawa Springs, near Xenia.

Prior to this time, however, Brown had resumed his work in the church. In 1853 he had married Mary Louise Lewis of Louisville, who bore him eleven children. He became a pastor in New Orleans and served at various other places in the South. In 1864 he was chosen editor of the Christian Recorder, the organ of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, which still exists as the oldest negro newspaper in the United States. Brown did not remain in this position long. During the same year he was made director of the rapidly expanding missionary work of the church, which required systematization and stimulus. He continued in this capacity for four years. In 1868, the unusual growth of the church after the emancipation of the freedmen necessitated his advancement to the highest post in the denomination, and he was ordained bishop. In this position he toiled successfully for twenty-five years, contributing to the urgent needs of belated people who now had their first opportunity for intellectual and spiritual uplift. To him belongs the credit for establishing Payne Institute, now Allen University, at Columbia, South Carolina; and for founding Paul Quinn College at Waco, Tex. He died at his home in Washington, D. C.

[Sketches of Brown appear in Wm. J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887) and in the A. M. E. Church Review, July 1893; for additional facts see Daniel A. Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years (1888); and B. T. Tanner, Outline of Our History and Govt. for African Methodist Churches.]

C.G.W.


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, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 189, 192, 200; Du Bois, 1909; Oates, 1970; Quarles, 1974; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 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, Volume I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 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, Volume 3, p. 690; The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volume II. New York: James T. White, 1892, pp. 307-308)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 2, Pt. 1, pp. 131-134:

BROWN, JOHN (May 9, 1800-December 2, 1859), "Old Brown of Osawatomie," is now chiefly remembered for his raid on Harper's Ferry. He was born at Torrington, Connecticut, the son of Owen and Ruth (Mills) Brown. His biographers have pointed out with much satisfaction that he came of the best New England stock, with only slight dilution of the strain from a Dutch ancestor on the maternal side. They have passed over lightly much more significant facts of inheritance. John Brown's mother, who died when he was only eight years old, was insane for a number of years before her death and died insane, as had her mother before her. A sister of Ruth Mills had also died insane, while three sons of her brother Gideon Mills became insane and were confined in asylums (affidavit of Gideon Mills). Two sons of another brother were also adjudged insane. Owen Brown plied various trades in the Connecticut villages in which he sojourned. By his own admission he was "very quick on the moove." One of these moves took him to Hudson, Ohio, where John passed his boyhood. Owen Brown was twice married and became the father of sixteen children. He was a man of much piety, an abolitionist, and an agent of the underground railroad.

John's schooling was scanty, and reading formed the principal part of his early education. As he himself said, school always meant to him, even in later life, confinement and restraint. More to his liking was the free life of the wilderness. He delighted in the long journeys with droves of beef cattle with which he was sent to supply troops in the War of 1812. Later he worked at the tanner's trade, acting as his father's foreman (letter to Henry L. Stearns, July 15, 1857, in F. B. Sanborn's Life and Letters of John Brown, ch. I). In 1820 he married Dianthe Lusk, who in the twelve years of her married life bore him seven children. She, like her husband's mother, suffered from mental aberration in her later years and died in 1831. Two of her sons were of unsound mind. Within a year John Brown married Mary Anne Day, a girl of sixteen, of robust physique, who in twenty-one years bore him thirteen more children.

In 1825 Brown moved to Richmond, Pennsylvania, where he cleared the land of timber and set up a tannery. This was the first of ten migrations before his adventures in Kansas, in the course of which he established and sold tanneries, dabbled unsuccessfully in land speculation, and incurred debts. Then he turned shepherd, buying Saxon sheep on credit. One sum advanced by the New England Woolen Company he seems-apparently without any dishonest intent-to have diverted to his own use, but he was treated with leniency by his creditors after he had declared himself a bankrupt. He earnestly hoped that "Devine Providence" would enable him to make full amends-but it never did. His family also changed its abode frequently as he changed his pursuits; but he was often absent for long stretches of time. The story of his business career is a tale of repeated failures, complicated by law-suits which aggrieved parties instituted to recover money loaned on notes or to secure damages for non-fulfilment of contracts. Many of these were decided against the defendant, proving clearly enough his utter incapacity for business. His last business venture was a partnership with one Simon Perkins to raise sheep and to establish a broke rage for wool-growers. Brown went to Springfield, Massachusetts, and opened an office, but failure soon overtook this enterprise. Prolonged litigation followed; and one suit involving $60,000 for breach of contract was settled out of court by Brown's counsel (O. G. Villard, John Brown, p. 66). As his various ventures came to naught and his inability to earn a livelihood for his numerous progeny became manifest, he began to take more thought about the affairs of others, particularly about those who were or who had been in bondage. He determined to settle with his family in a newly-founded community of negroes at North Elba, New York, on lands donated by Gerrit Smith. His purpose was "to aid them by precept and example," avers his latest biographer without any intentional humor. Within two years, however, he had again moved, to Akron, Ohio, followed by his family.

Brown was well over fifty years of age before the idea of freeing the slaves by force dominated his mind. He had always been an abolitionist; he had made his barn at Richmond a station on the underground railroad; he had formed a League of Gileadites among the negroes in Springfield, to help them protect themselves and fugitive slaves. Now he began to have visions of a servile insurrection-the establishment of a stronghold somewhere in the mountains whence fugitive slaves and their white friends could sally forth and terrorize slaveholders (Ibid., pp. 53-56). These visions were never very clear or very coherent, and they were overcast by events in Kansas where protagonists of slavery and free-soilers from the North were contending passionately for possession of the territorial government and where a condition bordering on civil war was soon to exist. In the spring of 1855, five of his sons went to Kansas to help win the territory for freedom and incidentally to take up lands for themselves. In May John Brown, Jr., sent a Macedonian cry to his father for arms to fight the battle for free soil (Ibid., pp. 83-84). Brown then transferred what was left of his family to North Elba again, and in August set out for Kansas in a one-horse wagon filled with guns and ammunition. Ostensibly he was to join the colony on the Osawatomie as surveyor. At once, however, he became their leader and captain of the local militia company. As such he commanded it in the bloodless Wakarusa War, whose indecisive outcome left him ill at ease. The ensuing disorders, particularly the sack of Lawrence in May 1856 by the pro-slavery forces, preyed upon his mind. The cause of free-soil took on the aspect of a crusade. Members of his company met and resolved that acts of retaliation were necessary "to cause a restraining fear" (Ibid., p. 152). A list of victims was made out and on May 23, Captain John Brown with a party of six, four of whom were his sons, set out for the Potawatomi country to discharge their bloody mission. During the night of May 24 they fell upon their five hapless victims without warning and hacked them to pieces with their sabers. Probably Brown killed no one with his own hand. but he assumed full re sponsibility for the massacre, asserting as he was wont to do that he was but an instrument in the hands of God. From this time on the name of "Old Osawatomie Brown" became a terror to pro-slavery settlers. Eventually, however, he and his men were beaten and dispersed, while in revenge Osawatomie was sacked and burned. In this guerrilla warfare, Frederick, one of the sons whose mind had become unbalanced, was killed.

Old acquaintances who saw Brown after his return from Kansas, in the autumn of 1856, commented on the change in his appearance and manner. With his gray hair and bent figure he looked like an old man. His inability to talk about anything except slavery, and that always with abnormal intensity, left many with the impression that he had become a monomaniac (affidavits). One keen observer, who did not know Brown's family history, detected "a little touch of insanity about his glittering gray-blue eyes" (Letters and Recollections of John Murray Forbes, 1899, I, 179). Upon less keen observers in Massachusetts-less keen perhaps, because more preoccupied with the struggle for Kansas he made a happier impression. Emerson spoke of him as "a pure idealist of artless goodness." It is charitable to suppose that the Concord philosopher was at this time ignorant of the murders on the Potawatomi; but another ardent resident of Concord, Frank B. Sanborn, could hardly have been so ignorant, nor his friends, G. L. Stearns, T. W. Higginson, Theodore Parker, and S. G. Howe, who were members of the Massachusetts Sta te Kansas Committee and who gave Brown some supplies and arms, a little money, and many assurances of moral support in the fight for freedom in Kansas. When Brown returned to Kansas in the late autumn of 1857, he found both parties disposed to have recourse to ballots instead of bullets, and therefore had no opportunity to employ his peculiar methods of persuasion. He now began to recruit a body of men for a new enterprise. He proposed to transfer his offensive against slavery to a new front. In the following spring, at an extraordinary convention of his followers and negroes at Chatham in Canada, he divulged his plans for the liberation of slaves in the Southern states. He and his band were to establish a base in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia, to which slaves and free negroes would resort, and there-beating off all attacking forces whether state or federal-were to form a free state under a constitution. A provisional constitution was then adopted by the convention and Brown elected commander-in-chief (Villard, pp. 331-36).

Brown's funds were now exhausted, and he turned again to Gerrit Smith and to his Massachusetts friends. That they were aware of the wide reach of his new plans cannot now be doubted; yet they encouraged him with promises of financial support in what was essentially a treasonable conspiracy. For the immediate present, however, they counseled delay; and in the early summer of 1858 Brown returned to Kansas to resume operations under the name of Shubel Morgan. His chief exploit was a descent upon some plantations across the border in Missouri, in the course of which one planter was killed while defending his property and some eleven slaves were liberated. In the eyes of the government he was now no better than a dangerous outlaw. The president of the United States and the governor of Missouri offered rewards for his arrest; but Brown and his men, appropriating horses, wagons, and whatever served their purpose, eluded pursuit and finally succeeded in reaching Canada with the liberated slaves. Even this exploit did not cost Brown the confidence of his supporters. He made public speeches at Cleveland and at Rochester, and no one attempted to arrest him. Gerrit Smith declared him "most truly a Christian" and headed a subscription list with a pledge of $400. From the Massachusetts group Brown received $3,800, "with a clear knowledge of the use to which it would be put" (Sanborn, p. 523).

In the early summer of 1859, Brown fixed upon Harper's Ferry as the base of his operations in Virginia and rented a farm about five miles distant where he could collect his arms and his band of followers. By midsummer his little army of twenty-one men had rendezvoused secretly at Kennedy Farm; but it was not until the night of October 16 that the commander-in-chief gave the order to proceed to the Ferry. Even after all these weeks of preparation he seems to have had no coherent plan of attack. That he should have fixed upon this quiet town of mechanics, many of whom came from the North, as the place for an assault upon slavery, is inexplicable on any rational grounds. Neither it nor its environs contained many slaves; and it is one of the tragic ironies of the affair that the first man killed should have been a respectable free negro what was discharging his duty as baggage-master at the railroad station. When morning dawned, Brown and his men were in possession of the United States armory and the bridges leading to the Ferry, had made many inhabitants prisoners, among them one slaveholder from a plantation five miles away, and had persuaded a few slaves to join them; but there Brown's initiative failed. For some unexplained reason he did not make off to the mountains as he might easily have done. Meantime the news of the raid spread through the country-side. By mid-day local militia companies from Charlestown had arrived on the scene and had closed Brown's only way of escape. Desultory firing followed, with some casualties on both sides, while Brown with the remnant of his forces, the slaves, and some of his prisoners were shut up in the engine-house of the armory. During the following night a company of United States marines arrived under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee; and at dawn, upon Brown's refusal to surrender, carried the building by assault. Brown fought with amazing coolness and courage over the body of his dying son but was finally overpowered with four of his men. Seven had already been taken prisoner and ten had either been killed or mortally wounded, including two of Brown's sons. Brown himself was wounded but not seriously. Next morning he was taken to Charlestown and lodged in the jail. One week later he was indicted for "treason to the Commonwealth, conspiring with slaves to commit treason and murder." His trial was conducted with expedition but with exemplary fairness and decorum. It ended inevitably in the sentence of death; and on December 2, John Brown was hanged.

From the moment of his capture to his execution Brown conducted himself with a fortitude and dignity that commanded the respect of his captors and judges. To all questions regarding his motives he had only one answer: he had desired to free the slaves-he believed himself an instrument in the hands of Providence to this end. When confronted with the bloody consequences of his acts and with the designs he had entertained to incite a slave insurrection, he would recognize no inconsistency. It was this obsession regarding his mission and his unaccountableness to anybody but his Maker that created doubts as to his sanity. Before his execution seventeen affidavits from neighbors and relatives who believed Brown to be insane were sent to Governor Wise, but he decided for some reason not to follow his first inclination and have an alienist examine Brown. These remarkable affidavits with their unimpeachable testimony as to Brown's family history and his own erratic behavior constitute prima facie evidence which no modern court of law could ignore.

It is significant of the passions aroused by the Harper's Ferry raid that Brown was hailed both as a noble martyr in a great cause and as a common assassin. Probably Abraham Lincoln anticipated the final verdict of history when he said in his Cooper Union speech (February 27, 1860): "That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts, related in history, at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were in their philosophy precisely the same."

[The first biography of John Brown was written by James Redpath: The Public Life of Captain John Brown, published in 1860 with a preface dated December 25, 1859. It is valuable only as reflecting the contemporary opinion of Brown's partisans. Equally partisan but valuable for its letters, documents, and personal recollections is F. B. Sanborn's The Life and Letters of John Brown (1885). The references in the text are to the fourth edition (1910). Richard J. Hinton in his John Brown and His Men (1894) also holds a brief for his hero. Of the later biographies O. G. Villard's John Brown (1910) is by far the best and most extensive. It contains much new material on the earlier career of Brown, drawn from widely scattered sources. Considering the undisguised admiration of the author for Brown as "a great and lasting figure in American History," he has written with commendable fairness. The question of Brown's insanity, however, he dismisses too readily. A valuable bibliography of the literature concerning John Brown is appended to the book. The affidavits relating to Brown' s alleged insanity are in the possession of Mr. Edwin Tatham of New York, who has permitted the writer to examine them.]

A.J.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 404-407;

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 removed 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 removed 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 removed 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 Lieut. 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, East Greenwich, Rhode Island, abolitionist, Manager, American Anti-Slavery Society, 1840-1846.


BROWN, John B., politician, born in Richfield, New York, 16 July, 1807; died in Washington, D. C., 9 December, 1867. In 1849 he removed 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 thrown into prison on the charge of circulating incendiary documents. At the beginning of the civil war the confederate authorities offered $1,000 for his apprehension. He subsequently received an appointment in Washington.

(Appleton’s Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I. pp. 404-407).


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, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 138)


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


BROWN, Moses, 1738-1836, Maine, Providence, Rhode Island, abolitionist, industrialist, 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, Volume 1, p. 396; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 146; Bruns, Roger, ed. Am I Not a Man and a Brother: The Antislavery Crusade of Revolutionary America, 1688-1788. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1977, pp. 308-313, 492-493, 515; Drake, Thomas. Quakers and Slavery in America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1950, pp. 79-80, 89, 97, 102, 123; Van Broekhoven, 2002, pp. 2, 7, 17, 60, 87, 111; Zilversmit, Arthur. The First Emancipation: The Abolition of Slavery in the North. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 107, 120-121, 156, 157; Abolitionist, Volume I, No. XII, December, 1833)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 146:

BROWN, MOSES (September 12/23, 1738-September 7, 1836), manufacturer and philanthropist, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the youngest of the four distinguished sons of James and Hope (Power) Brown, the others being Nichola s, John, and Joseph [qq.v.]. James Brown died in 1739, leaving his boys to be brought up by their mother, a woman " of rare force of mind and character." At thirteen, Moses left school and went to live with his uncle, Obadiah Brown, part of whose fortune he inherited. In 1763 he was admitted to the firm of Nicholas Brown & Company, established by his brothers, but retired in 1773. In 1764 he married his cousin, Anna Brown, by whom he had three children, Sarah, Obadiah [q.v.], and a daughter who did not survive infancy. Mrs. Brown's death in 1773 was a crushing blow to her husband, temporarily turning his mind away from worldly matters. A year later he became a Quaker, freed his slaves, and helped to start the Rhode Island Abolition Society. After the Revolutionary War, he was one of the first in this country to become interested in cotton manufacturing and in 1789 he purchased a carding machine, which he set up under the management of his son-in-law, William Almy, and a young relative, Smith Brown, the firm name being Brown & Almy. Having made some experiments with a jenney and spinning frame which operated by hand, in the manner of Arkwright's famous invention, Moses Brown induced Samuel Slater [q.v.], one of Arkwright's men, to come to America, writing him (December 12, 1789, "Come and work our machines, and have the credit as well as advantage of perfecting the first water mill in America." Slater evaded the stringent British laws and came to Rhode Island, where, under Brown's patronage, he built from memory, without plans or drawings, a frame of twenty-four spindles and put it into successful operation. The venture was prosperous from the beginning, and added to Brown's already large estate. Although he was troubled with attacks of vertigo, Brown was able, by living quietly, to keep his health, and all his senses were alert up to the time of his death near the close of his ninety-eighth year. In 1779 he married Mary Olney, who died in 1798, and a year later he took a third wife, Phoebe Lockwood, who died in 1808.

In 1770 Moses Brown took the leading step toward moving Rhode Island College (founded at Warren, Rhode Island, in 1764) to Providence, where it was later, because of the benefactions of his family, renamed Brown University; and in 1771 he gave $1,000 to its endowment. In 1780 when subscriptions were solicited for a Friends' School, he contributed £115 and, when it was opened at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1784 under Isaac Lawton as principal, he became its treasurer. Owing to lack of funds, the school was discontinued four years later, but it was reopened in 1819 in Providence, its property having accumulated in Brown's hands to $9,300. Brown provided regularly for the school from that time on, and gave it in his will the sum of $15,000, with some land and his library. It is to-day known as the Moses Brown School. Brown was a member of the Rhode Island General Assembly from 1764 to 1771, and was the founder of many societies, including the Providence Atheneum Library, the Rhode Island Bible Society, and the Rhode Island Peace Society. His punctuality in business became proverbial. Although he was retiring by nature, he had many interests and left behind him an enormous private correspondence. He was a man of sound judgment, unblemished integrity, and liberal spirit.

[The best and fullest account of Brown's career is a sketch read, October 18, 1892, before the Rhode Island History Society by Augustine Jones, principal of the Friends' School, and later printed under the title Moses Brown; His Life and Services. See also J. N. Arnold, Vital Records of Rhode Island, Volume II (1892), pt. I, p. 214, and obituary in Mfrs. and Farmers Journal (Providence), September 7, 1836.]

C.M.F.

Appletons, 1888, Volume 1, p. 396;

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, Volume I. pp. 396.


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


BROWN, Nicholas, Providence, Rhode Island, American Colonization Society, Vice-President, 1837-1841. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961)


BROWN, Obadiah B., Reverend, Washington, DC, Baptist clergyman.  American Colonization Society, Manager, 1833-1834. 

(Staudenraus, P. J. The African Colonization Movement, 1816-1865. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 30, 109)



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, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 206, 327, 328; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)


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, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 206, 327; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume 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, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, p. 206; Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, 1888, Volume I, pp. 404-407; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 2, pp. 131-134)

BROWN, Samuel F., Maine, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1840-1842


BROWN, Stephen W., Canaan, New York, abolitionist, American Anti-Slavery Society, Manager, 1844-45


BROWN, William C., Chelsea, Massachusetts, abolitionist.  Massachusetts Abolition Society, Manager, 1839-.


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

(Congressional Globe; Biographical Dictionary of the U.S. Congress 1774-1927 (1928)


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, Carleton. Black Freedom: The Nonviolent Abolitionists from 1830 Through the Civil War. London: Macmillan, 1970, pp. 52, 61, 65, 96-98, 137, 140, 145, 159, 161, 203, 221, 252, 258, 265, 333, 371, 390; Rodriguez, Junius P., Slavery in the United States: A Social, Political, and Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, 2007, pp. 29, 50, 55, 57, 61, 72, 179, 208-209, 246; Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 161; American National Biography, Oxford University Press, New York, 2002, Volume 3, p. 751; Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., & Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, eds. African American National Biography. Oxford University Press, 2013, Volume 2, p.  325)

Dictionary of American Biography, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, 1936, Volume II, Pt. 1, p. 161;

BROWN, WILLIAM WELLS (c. 1816-November 6, 1884), negro reformer, historian, was born in Lexington, Kentucky. The year is variously given as 1814, 1815, and 1816. His mother was a slave, his father is said to have been one George Higgins, a white slaveholder. When a youth Brown was taken to St. Louis and was hired out on a steamboat. He was next employed in the printshop of Elijah P. Lovejoy, then editor of the St. Louis Times. Working in this capacity, Brown got his start in education; but he was hired out on a steamboat again at the close of the next year. In 1834 he escaped into Ohio, intending to cross Lake Erie into Canada. On the way he was sheltered by a Quaker, Wells Brown, whose name he as s um ed in addition to the name William which he had borne as a slave. He now took up steam-boating on Lake Erie and obtained the position of steward in which he was able to help many a fugitive to freedom. In the year of his escape he married a free colored woman by whom he had two daughters. Profiting by school instruction and some help from friends, he acquired considerable knowledge of the fundamentals. In the North he soon learned to speak the English language so fluently that he could easily present the claims of the negro for freedom. During 1843-49 he was variously employed as a lecturer of the Western New York Anti-Slavery Society, and the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society. He was also interested in temperance, woman's suffrage, and prison reform, and was associated with the most ardent abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison and Wendell Phillips. In 1849 he visited England and represented the American Peace Society at the Peace Congress in Paris. Highly recommended by the American Anti-Slavery Society as an apostle of freedom, he was welcomed by famous Europeans such as Victor Hugo, James Haughton, George Thompson, and Richard Cobden. He remained abroad until the autumn of 1854. During these years of his activity as a reformer Brown found time also to study medicine. Like many of the physicians of his time, he did not undergo formal training in this field. He attended lectures in medical science and obtained privately other knowledge requisite to service a s a practitioner. But although he knew sufficient medicine to be useful in the profession, the urgent need for fighting the battles of the negro kept him in the work of reform. Brown's reputation rests largely on his ability as an historian. His writings covered various fields. The first to appear was his Narrative of William W. Brown, a Fugitive Slave (1847). His next important book was Three Years in Europe (1852). In 1853 he published Clotel, or the President's Daughter, a Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. He next wrote a drama entitled The Dough Face, which was well received and was followed by another play, The Escape or A Leap for Freedom. In 1863 he published his first history entitled, The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements, including an autobiographical memoir, which ran through ten editions in three years. The Negro in the American Rebellion, His Heroism and His Fidelity (1867) also made a favorable impression and supplied the need for an account of the part played by the negroes in the Civil War. The last work of importance which he wrote was The Rising Son: or, the Antecedents and the Advancement of the Colored Race (1874). In this treatise he undertook to trace the history of the negro from Africa to America. The abolitionists gave the author unstinted praise and widely circulated his books in this country and Europe. Although, like most historians of his day, he did not approach his subject scientifically, he passed for many years as the outstanding authority on the negro. At the time of his death his home was in Chelsea, Massachusetts.

[In addition to Brown's autobiographical writings, see Josephine Brown, The Biography of an American Bondman, by His Daughter (1856); memoir by Wm. Farmer in Three Y ears in Europe (1852); memoir by Alonzo D. Moore in The Rising Son (1874); W.J. Simmons, Men of Mark (1887), pp. 447-50; C. G. Woodson, The Negro in Our History (4th ed., 1927), pp. 266-69; obituary in the Boston Transcript, November 8, 1884.]

C.G.W.



Sources:
Dictionary of American Biography, Volumes I-X, Edited by Dumas Malone, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930.

Appletons’ Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Volumes I-VI, Edited by James Grant Wilson & John Fiske, New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1888-1889.