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FOMENTING OF RACE WAR (RATHER THAN CIVIL WAR)

IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Luke Fisher Parsons was a free-state fighter seasoned in “Bleeding Kansas.” He took part in the battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City on June 2d, 1856, the battle of Osawatomie on August 30th, 1856, and the raid on Iowa during Winter 1857/1858. His name “L.F. Parsons” was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in John Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when the raiders were subdued at Harpers Ferry. He had gone off toward a supposed Colorado gold rush and, summoned by letters from Brown and Kagi, did not manage to make it back to take part in the raid on the federal arsenal, or to attempt to rescue the prisoners once they were waiting to be hanged, at the jail in Charlestown, Virginia. He started a family and lived out a long life as a farmer in Salina, Kansas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

THOSE INVOLVED, ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY

SECRET “SIX”

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Charles Francis Adams, Sr. No No No Finance white

Charles Francis Adams, Sr. subscribed to the racist agenda of Eli Thayer’s and Amos Lawrence’s New England Emigrant Aid Company, for the creation of an Aryan Nation in the territory then well known as “Bleeding Kansas,” to the tune of $25,000.

Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson Yes Yes Captain or Lt. 26 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

The maternal grandfather of Jeremiah Goldsmith Anderson, Colonel Jacob Westfall of Tygert Valley, Virginia, had been a soldier in the revolution and a slaveholder. Jeremiah had gone to school at Galesburg, Illinois and Kossuth, Iowa and had worked as a peddler, farmer, and sawmill laborer before settling a mile from Fort Bain on the Little Osage in Bourbon County in “Bleeding Kansas” during August 1857. He had twice been arrested by proslavery activists, and had been held for 10 weeks at Fort Scott. He then became a lieutenant of Captain Montgomery and was with him in the attack on Captain Anderson’s troop of the 1st US Cavalry. He witnessed a murder, of a Mr. Denton, on his own doorstep by border ruffians. He went with John Brown on the slave raid into Missouri and remained with him thereafter. He was “J. Anderson” among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. On July 5th, 1859 this 27-year-old had written of his determination to continue to fight for freedom: “Millions of fellow-beings require it of us; their cries for help go out to the universe daily and hourly. Whose duty is it to help them? Is it yours? Is it mine? It is every man’s, but how few there are to help. But there are a few who dare to answer this call and dare to answer it in a manner that will make this land of liberty and equality shake to the centre.” He was thrust through with a bayonet by one of the Marines, and pinned against the wall “vomiting gore.” A white man, he was tortured because he was perceived by the attackers as a light mulatto: “One of the prisoners described Anderson as turning completely over against the wall [to which he was pinned by the bayonet] in his dying agony. He lived a short time, stretched on the brick walk without, where he was subjected to savage brutalities, being kicked in body and face, while one brute of an armed farmer spat a huge quid of tobacco from his vile jaws into the mouth of the dying man, which he first forced open.” A local commented “Well, it takes you a hell of a long time to die.” When opportunistic medical students would go to transport the remains to their college in Winchester, Virginia for dissection, their treatment of this corpse was so casual as to be recorded by a bystander: “In order to take him away handily they procured a barrel and tried to pack him into it. Head foremost, they rammed him in, but they could not bend his legs so as to get them into the barrel with the rest of the body. In their endeavor to accomplish this feat, they strained so hard that the man’s bones or sinews fairly cracked.” His remains were taken to the college along with the remains of Watson Brown (a corpse found on the banks of the Shenandoah River was more likely that of a local slave).

John Anderson ? ? Private < 30 of color

John Anderson, a free black youth from Boston allegedly killed at Harpers Ferry. Nothing is known as to who he was, other than that he was young, or where he came from, other than from Boston — and it is even possible that actually there had been no such person as this in John Brown’s company. (The John Anderson we do know about had an entirely different life trajectory, in Canada.)

Osborn Perry Anderson Yes No No Private 29 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Osborn Perry Anderson, “O.P. Anderson, or as we used to call him Chatham Anderson,” the only participant of color to survive Harpers Ferry and elude capture, had been born free on July 27, 1830 in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania. He had learned the printing trade in Canada, where he had met John Brown in 1858. He was a member of Congress of John Brown’s Provisional Government in Chatham, Ontario in May 1858 and was “Osborn Anderson” on the list of signatories of the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States”; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858. He would write later of the fight at Harpers Ferry and his escape in A VOICE FROM HARPER’S FERRY: “We were together eight days before [John Edwin Cook and Albert Hazlett were] captured, which was near Chambersburg, and the next night Meriam [Francis Jackson Meriam] left us and went to Shippensburg, and there took cars for Philadelphia. After that there were but three of us left [Brown’s son Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, and Charles Plummer Tidd], and we kept together, until we got to Centre County, Pennsylvania, where we bought a box and packed up all heavy luggage, such as rifles, blankets, etc., and after being together three or four weeks we separated….” Anderson, Coppoc, and Meriam had journeyed separately to safe exile in the area of St. Catharines, Canada. Anderson enlisted in the US Army in 1864, becoming a recruiter and/or noncommissioned officer for a unit as yet undetermined, and mustered out in Washington DC at the close of the war (he would be identified by his father Vincent Anderson in 1872 as having been a recruiter for the “western regiments”). He was a member of the Equal Rights League in 1865, and represented Michigan at the National Convention of Colored Men in 1869. He died a pauper of TB and lack of care in Washington on December 13, 1872.

John Albion Andrew No white

Despite the fact that John Albion Andrew was a prominent Massachusetts politician, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret “Six” would indicate long after the raid on Harpers Ferry, John Brown’s “general purpose of attacking slavery by force, in Missouri or elsewhere, was known in 1857-8-9” to Governor Andrew.

Henry Ward Beecher No No No Propaganda white

The Reverend Henry Ward Beecher induced the congregation of his Plymouth Church to procure a crate of 25 rifles to ship illegally to “Bleeding Kansas” and to stamp upon that crate the term of art BIBLES. The Reverend’s personal attitude toward American blacks was that although those like Frederick Douglass whose blood had become partly mingled with the blood of whites were worthy of consideration as human beings, those who yet remained of pure African stock were still in such a “low animal condition” (his category, his words) of pure blackness that such consideration as human beings would be inappropriate.

Charles Blair No No No Armament white

Charles Blair supplied the pikes.

Ann Brown No No No Supporter white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Ann Brown, a daughter of Captain John Brown, was with the conspirators at the Kennedy farm until shortly before the attack upon Harpers Ferry. In the aftermath she would move to the West Coast.

Frederick Brown No No No Supporter white

Frederick Brown was fanatically religious to the extent that he attempted to sever his sexual organs when he was attracted to a young lady. He would have been 28 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, but in 1856 had been killed in the fighting in “Bleeding Kansas.”

Jason Brown No No No Supporter 38 white

Jason Brown, one of the elder sons of Captain John Brown, was a gentle sort of person who actually was trying to become an inventor. He took part in the battle at Black Jack in “Bleeding Kansas,” and in the killings on the Osawatomie Creek, but was not at Harpers Ferry. He and his brother Owen Brown would become grape growers in the mountains above Pasadena, California.

John Brown Yes Multiple Yes Commander white wounds

John Brown, “Captain” John “Nelson Hawkins” “Shubel Morgan” “Isaac Smith” Brown.

John Brown, Jr. No No No Supporter 38 white

John Brown, Jr., 38 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid and Captain John Brown’s eldest son, had trained as a phrenologist. After the raid he would go into hiding in Ohio and, when summoned to appear before the investigatory committee of the US Senate, would refuse to appear. During the Civil War he served as Captain of Company K of the 7th Kansas Cavalry. He and his family would then find permanent safe haven on South Bass Island in Lake Erie.

Martha Brewster Brown No No No Supporter white

Martha Brewster Brown, wife of Oliver Brown and daughter-in-law of Captain John Brown, was with the conspirators at the Kennedy farm until shortly before the attack upon Harpers Ferry.

Oliver Brown Yes Yes Captain 20 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Oliver Brown, the youngest of John Brown’s sons to reach adulthood, had been born in Franklin, Ohio on March 9, 1839. He was a bookish lad, considered by his mother Mary Ann Day Brown to be the most promising. He went to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1855 with his father and returned to North Elba during October 1856, where he got married with Martha E. Brewster in 1858. She was sent back north just before the raid on Harpers Ferry. “I think there is no good reason why any of us should be discouraged,” he had written his family, “for if we have done but one good act, life is not a failure.... Keep a stiff lip, a sound pluck, and believe that all will come out right in the end.” He had reached the age of 20 when he was shot while serving as a sentinel at the river bridge. His body was dumped into a shallow hole on the bank of the Shenandoah River, with the bodies of other fighters.

Owen Brown Yes No No Captain 35 white

Owen Brown, 3d of John Brown’s sons and his stalwart aid both in “Bleeding Kansas” and at Harper’s Ferry, was born November 4, 1824 at Hudson, Ohio. With a withered arm, he had been attempting to make a career of writing humor articles for newspapers. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. He was 35 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid. He escaped on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. It was due largely to his psychological grit and his endurance that the little group of survivors of which he was the leader managed to make it out. He and Charles Plummer Tidd found work and safety under assumed names on an oil-well crew in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He was the only one of the 5 escaped raiders not to participate in the civil war. He would never marry. He would grow grapes for some time in Ohio in association with 2 of his brothers, and then migrate west, and would be the final survivor of the raiders when he would die on January 9, 1891 at his mountain home “Brown’s Peak” near Pasadena, California. A marble monument marked the mountain grave, until during July 2002 it mysteriously disappeared — since the grave was not a registered historical landmark, and not in a cemetery, there would be no investigation.

Salmon Brown No 23 white

Salmon Brown, 23 at the time of the Harpers Ferry raid, was said to have been exactly like his father, Captain John Brown, in every particular. He would once comment to a newspaper reporter that “The tannery business, farming, wool buying and the raising of blooded stock were my father’s life occupations, though all of them were subordinated to his one consuming passion — freeing the slaves.” Salmon would die in Portland, Oregon in 1919.

Watson Brown Yes Yes Captain 24 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Watson Brown, born at Franklin, Ohio on October 7, 1835, got married with young Isabella M. Thompson during September 1856. “Dear Belle,” he had written to his child-wife, “I would gladly come home and stay with you always but for the cause which brought me here — a desire to do something for others, and not live wholly for my own happiness.... I sometimes feel as if I could not make this sacrifice, but what would I not want others to do were I in their place?” Their son would live only to his 5th year but would nevertheless survive his father, because he was sent out with a white flag by his father John Brown to parley and was gut-shot by the citizens of Harpers Ferry. He managed to crawl back to the shelter of the engine house and live on, groaning, his head cradled in Edwin Coppoc’s lap, for a longish period. When one of his captors asked “What brought you here?” he responded “Duty, sir.” The corpse would be sent for the instruction of students at the medical college in Winchester, Virginia. Recovering the skeleton from this college during the Civil War, his mother Mary Ann Day Brown eventually would be able to rebury it in the Adirondacks, before heading off to her retirement in California.

John E. Cook Yes No Yes Captain 29 white

John Edwin Cook, a well-connected 5'7" gentleman with blue eyes and long, curly blond hair, born during Summer 1830 to a well-to-do family in Haddam, Connecticut, had been a law clerk in Brooklyn and Manhattan after being expelled from Yale College on account of some student indiscretion, and had in 1855 become a member of the guerrilla force operated out of Lawrence in “Bleeding Kansas” by Charles Lenhart and had made himself an excellent shot. The name “John E. Cook” was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He had been dispatched by John Brown to Harpers Ferry more than a year before the raid to work out the details on the ground and had secured employment as a lock tender on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, as a schoolteacher, and as a bookseller. He had gotten married with a Chambersburg, Pennsylvania woman, Mary V. Kennedy, on April 18th, 1859. After being sent out by Captain Brown to collect weapons, and having escaped by climbing into a tree and watching the events transpire, and after having evaded capture for some months, against the advice of his comrades he became reckless in his search for food and was captured on October 25th, 8 miles from Chambersburg. As an incessant and compulsive communicator he had always been considered by the Brown operatives to be indiscreet. In a confession which would be published as a pamphlet at Charles Town in the middle of November 1859 for the benefit of Samuel C. Young, a man who had been crippled for life in the fighting, Cook would detail for his captors all his movements from the point of his 1st meeting with Brown after the battle of Black Jack in June 1856 until after his capture. At the last moment he would seek to save himself by representing that he had been deceived through false promises. For this revelation Cook would be severely censured at the time, being termed “Judas.” Despite his confession, and despite his brother-in-law A.P. Willard being the governor of Indiana, he would in the end, one of the last, be also hanged for treason and murder at Harpers Ferry, on December 16th.

John Anderson Copeland, Jr. Yes No Yes Private < 30 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

John Anderson Copeland, Jr. was an Oberlin, Ohio carpenter and freeborn black American who was the son of a slave. He was active in the Oberlin Anti-Slavery Society. It was rumored that he escorted John Price to Canada after the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. Copeland later participated in the raid on the Harpers Ferry armory with John Brown. He got trapped in “Hall’s Rifle Works” along with his uncle Lewis Sheridan Leary and John Henry Kagi. When the 3 made a run for the Shenandoah River they got caught in a crossfire, but after Kagi had been killed and Leary had been shot several times and placed under arrest, Copeland was able to surrender without having been wounded. He refused to speak during his trial and was hanged with too short a drop and thus strangled slowly. On December 29, when a crowd of 3,000 would attend his funeral in his hometown of Oberlin, Ohio, there would be no body to bury, for after his cadaver had been temporarily interred in Charles Town it had been dug up and was in service in the instruction of students at the medical college in Winchester, Virginia. A monument was erected by the citizens of Oberlin in honor of their three fallen free citizens of color, Copeland, Leary, and Shields Green (the 8-foot marble monument would be moved to Vine Street Park in 1971). Judge Parker would assert in his story of the trials (St. Louis Globe Democrat, April 8, 1888) that Copeland had been “the prisoner who impressed me best. He was a free negro. He had been educated, and there was a dignity about him that I could not help liking. He was always manly.” Andrew Hunter at the same time was quoted as saying– “Copeland was the cleverest of all the prisoners ... and behaved better than any of them. If I had had the power and could have concluded to pardon any man among them, he was the man I would have picked out.” On the day that he died Copeland declared, “If I am dying for freedom, I could not die for a better cause — I had rather die than be a slave!” (Paul Finkelman avers on page 49 of HIS SOUL GOES MARCHING ON: RESPONSES TO JOHN BROWN AND THE HARPERS FERRY RAID that his middle name was “Anthony” rather than “Anderson.”)

Barclay Coppoc Yes No No Private < 21 white

Barclay Coppoc, from the Quaker settlement of Springdale, Iowa, was born in Salem, Ohio on January 4, 1839, and had not attained his majority at the time of the raid on Harpers Ferry. This Quaker escaped, although his adopted brother Edwin Coppoc surrendered and was tried and hanged. “We were together eight days before [John Edwin Cook and Albert Hazlett were] captured, which was near Chambersburg, and the next night Meriam [Francis Jackson Meriam] left us and went to Shippensburg, and there took cars for Philadelphia. After that there were but three of us left [John Brown’s son Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, and Charles Plummer Tidd], and we kept together, until we got to Centre County, Pennsylvania, where we bought a box and packed up all heavy luggage, such as rifles, blankets, etc., and after being together three or four weeks we separated and I went on through with the box to Ohio on the cars.” Osborn Perry Anderson, Barclay Coppoc, and Francis Jackson Meriam would travel separately to safe exile in the area of St. Catharines, Canada. Barclay then went to his family home in Iowa, with Virginia agents in close pursuit. There a band of young men armed themselves to defend him, and the Religious Society of Friends disowned him for bearing arms. He was back in “Bleeding Kansas” in 1860, helping to run off some Missouri slaves, and nearly lost his life in a second undertaking of this kind. He became a 1st Lieutenant in Colonel Montgomery’s regiment, the 3d Kansas Infantry. Soon he was killed by the fall of a train into the Platte river from a trestle 40 feet high, the supports of which had been burned away by Confederates.

Edwin Coppoc Yes Unwounded Yes Lieutenant < 30 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Edwin Coppoc, who had been born on June 30, 1835 and orphaned and adopted at the age of 6 into a nonresistant- abolitionist Quaker farm family first of Salem, Ohio and then of Springdale, Iowa. On March 6, 1857 he was disowned by the Religious Society of Friends and in the spring of 1858 went to “Bleeding Kansas” as a settler — but did not take part in the fighting. It was during a visit to Springdale in the fall of 1858 that he met John Brown. He would surrender with Captain Brown in the engine house at Harpers Ferry, and would be tried by a jury of his white male peers immediately after the conclusion of the trial of Captain Brown while his still-Quaker brother Barclay Coppoc was eluding capture. He was sentenced on November 2. From prison before his hanging, he wrote his adoptive mother that he was

“sorry to say that I was ever induced to raise a gun.” THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

He was hung with John Edwin Cook on December 16th, 1859 and a day later his brother turned up at home in Iowa (he also would soon be disowned). The body of Edwin Coppoc was buried in Winona, Iowa after a funeral attended by the entire town (later the body would be reburied in Salem, Ohio).

Richard Henry Dana, Jr. No No No Enabler white

Treason being punished as what it is, why would the downtown Boston lawyer Richard Henry Dana, Jr. allow himself to become legal counsel to a “Secret Six” committee that was funding the activities of Captain John Brown, as that loose cannon prepared to raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia? He was going to be implicated as having obviously had guilty prior knowledge, and was obviously making himself of necessity a prime candidate for the noose. As the going got hot he would make himself unavailable for prosecution –by venturing on a luxury trip around the globe– but the issue is not how he might extricate himself from this, but why he would have so endangered himself.

Martin Robison Delany No No No Supporter of color

Dr. Martin Robison Delany, Pennsylvania, 1843; attended the Colored National Convention of 1848; attended the Emigration Convention of 1854; a member of the Niger Valley Exploring Party in 1858; a member of the Vigilance Committee in Chatham and Windsor in September 1858. At a meeting of the conspirators in Chatham in Canada West in May 1858, “M.R. Delany,” the Reverend William Charles Munroe of Detroit, and several other leaders of the large black expatriate community approved something termed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the people of the United States,” as the charter for the pike-wielding fugitive society of raiders which was to be created in the remote fastness of the Allegheny Mountains by Captain John Brown subsequent to his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. That document would be discovered on Brown’s person when he was taken into custody. He would be a Major in the 104th Colored Infantry, and Sub-Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau in South Carolina, in 1865. He was a Freemason.

Frederick Douglass No No No Supporter 41 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Waldo Emerson urged Frederick Douglass early on, to make himself into the General Toussaint Louverture of the North American continent. When Captain John Brown made a speech offering himself as the leader for the forces of freedom in “Bleeding Kansas”, Douglass stood in the audience and endorsed Brown and his mission despite the unpleasant fact that the plan of the abolitionists was to permanently exclude all persons of color, whether free or enslaved, from that new state. When the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry was raided, his role was intended to be the raising aloft of the sword of General George Washington and the generaling of the black forces. His involvement in this raid was acceptable to such personages as the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher only because his blood had been mixed with white it was removed to a degree from its original “low animal condition” (the Reverend’s category, the Reverend’s words) of blackness. At the very last moment Douglass perceived that the prospects of the raid were for either failure or betrayal, and fled by way of Canada to England.

Ralph Waldo Emerson No No No Supporter white

Waldo Emerson, acting as an agent provocateur of race war, recommended to Frederick Douglass in 1844 that he become the liberator of his people on the North American continent, modeling himself upon the leader of the successful Haitian revolution of the turn of the century, Toussaint Louverture. “Let me hold your coat while some white man kills you,” or something to that effect. We only know about this because Henry Thoreau rushed down to Boston right after the lecture, and had the lecture printed up as a pamphlet — after which there was no lying about the provocation that had been made and so all Emerson could do was pretend that Douglass hadn’t been present.

John Buchanan Floyd No No No Supporter white

Secretary of War John Buchanan Floyd was one of those who had been warned, months in advance, that Captain John Brown was planning to attack a federal arsenal to seize weapons with which to arm black slaves, in the creation of a servile insurrection (he didn’t know precisely when, and didn’t know it would be at Harpers Ferry, Virginia). Such a prospect did not alarm him in the slightest. The official story, if the official story is what you want to believe, is that our Secretary of War would pass this warning along to no-one. I myself find it difficult to regard this as anything more than a cover. I think the truth was that these folks were aware that such a servile insurrection could lead to nothing but a race genocide, with white Americans exterminating the black ones, and what I fear is that such a race genocide would have been considered to be just fine, an improvement in our national condition. Let’s not have ourselves a civil war of brother against brother, that would be so nasty — let’s prevent that by having ourselves a nice little race war!

Hugh Forbes No No No Lieutenant white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Captain John Brown’s scheme, which he referred to as the “Subterranean Pass Way,” was that the escaped, armed slaves were to “swarm” into and set up a center of resistance in the Alleghenies from which they could liberate Virginia and then invade Tennessee and northern Alabama. Such a scoping of the situation never met with much respect from other of the other schemers. In particular, the Scottish adventurer Hugh Forbes, Brown’s onetime principal lieutenant, regarding blacks as inherently childlike, credulous, and cowardly, believed such a scheme to be doomed to failure from its inception. The scenario preferred by Forbes would have involved the herding of the slaves together by armed bands of white men and the driving of such herds of humans up the mountain chain toward Canada, neatly disposing of America’s entire race problem — by simple relocation of it to another nation. Evidently the two planners parted company over issues such as this after Forbes had functioned in Tabor, Iowa as the leader of military training for the recruits (Forbes was a veteran of the Grenadier Guards, and had fought along with Garibaldi in defense of the Roman Republic of 1849), and then Forbes attempted blackmail. When not offered a payoff, he wrote long, detailed letters to congressmen and to others, and it is one of the unresolved issues, how anyone in high office in Washington DC could have avoided knowing in advance that Brown was plotting a strike of some sort against slavery (another of the unresolved issues is what happened to Forbes once his extortion had failed — he simply disappeared from the pages of history).

George B. Gill

George B. Gill had come to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1857 after whaling in the Pacific Ocean, and had there been recruited by John Brown. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. During the year before the raid, Captain Brown sent Gill to visit a black con artist named Mr. Reynolds who persuaded Gill that he had gone through the South organizing and had brought into existence in areas of the South a militant organization of black men and women. Pointing out to Gill that Southern newspapers carried numerous references to the death of a favorite slave, he alleged that these were leaders of servile insurrection plots who were being discovered and offed. According to this “mumper” Southern blacks were ready and needed only to be given a cue. There is evidence that several slaves from the vicinity of the arsenal did participate in the raid itself, but returned hastily to their plantations when it became obvious that the raid was a failure. Several fires were set in the vicinity of Harpers Ferry in the week after the raid, probably by slaves and free black Americans (Richard Hinton estimates that $10,000,000 was lost in the sale of Virginia slaves in the year 1859; census figures show that between 1850 and 1860 there was almost a 10% decline in blacks in the three counties surrounding Harpers Ferry, a period during which the total number of blacks in Maryland and Virginia was increasing by about 4%).

The Rev. and Mrs. Gloucester No Financial support of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

The Reverend James Newton Gloucester and Elizabeth A. Parkhill Gloucester of Brooklyn, New York were wealthy financial supporters of the servile-insurrection plot of Captain John Brown, or “Shubel Morgan,” or “Isaac Smith” (depending on what alias he was using at the time), and had put him up for a week at their home while he was enroute to Harpers Ferry. According to a report in a local newspaper: Brown said, “Goodbye, Sister Gloucester. I’ve only sixteen men, but I’m to conquer.” Mrs. Gloucester said to him, “Perhaps you will lose your life.” “Well, my life,” he replied, “is not worth much. I’m an old man. In Kansas, the balls flew around my head as thick as hail. I’ll never be killed by a ball. If I fall, I’ll open a ball in this country that will never stop until every slave is free.”

Shields Green Yes No Yes Private < 30 of color

Shields Green was an escapee from South Carolina who had served as clothes cleaner in Rochester, New York (his business card there declared “I make no promise that I am unable to perform”) and acted as a bodyguard for Frederick Douglass. He was known as “Emperor,” although how he obtained this nickname is not now known. He decided to go with John Brown when Douglass turned back at the stone quarry prior to the Harpers Ferry raid, saying to his boss “I believe I’ll go with the old man.” He took part in the raid and then refused to speak during his trial. At the time of his hanging he was about 23 years of age. His cadaver would be dug up and used for the instruction of students at the medical college in Winchester, Virginia. He, like John Anderson Copeland, Jr. and Lewis Sheridan Leary, had been a resident of Oberlin, Ohio. A monument was erected by the citizens of Oberlin in honor of their 3 fallen free citizens of color (the 8-foot marble monument would be moved to Vine Street Park in 1971).

James Henry Harris HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

No one associated with Captain John Brown, and no one associated with politics in North Carolina, has ever been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. “J.H. Harris” signed, as a member of a Vigilance Committee, on May 8th, 1858, the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario West, Canada, a document which would be found on the person of John Brown when he was captured at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. Although another person of this name, James Henry Harris, had been born a slave in Granville County, North Carolina and had gained his freedom at the age of 18 in about 1848, he was not this “J.H. Harris.” Educated at Oberlin College, he would hold a teaching certificate from the New England Freedman’s Aid Society. He was of Cleveland in 1859, and a member of the 102d US Colored Infantry formed in Michigan by George DeBaptiste that included so many men from Chatham. He would attend the 1st Freedmen’s Convention in the South, held in what would become the St. Paul A.M.E. Church on Edenton Street in Raleigh during September 1865 as a representative of Wake County. He would become the 1st black alderman from Raleigh, and a delegate from Raleigh to the North Carolina Constitutional Convention of 1868; he got married with Bettie Miller, a daughter of Addison J. Smith and Mary Anderson, a cousin of Osborn Perry Anderson; he died in 1891 in Washington DC and the remains are at Mount Hope Cemetery in Raleigh. There is yet a 3d James H. Harris, who was not this “J.H. Harris” signatory, who was belatedly awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and is interred in the remote section of Arlington National Cemetery that was reserved for colored soldiers, and for contrabands.

Lewis Hayden

Lewis Hayden, a black leader in downtown Boston whose escape from Kentucky had been aided by Delia Webster in 1844. Eight years after escaping from slavery, he raised, as an act of gratitude and duty, a sum of $650, in order to ransom the Reverend Calvin Fairbanks out of the Kentucky State Prison at Frankfort, where the Reverend had been languishing under the accusation that he had assisted 47 slaves in their escape, and had served 14 years, and had been whipped and beaten. Just before the raid on Harpers Ferry, Hayden helped recruit Francis Jackson Meriam to carry a message and cash money to the hideout of John Brown, and take part in that struggle.

Albert Hazlett Yes No Yes Capt. or Lt. < 30 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Albert Hazlett, born in Pennsylvania on September 21st, 1837, did not take part in the fight at Harpers Ferry but, with John Edwin Cook who had escaped from that fight by climbing a tree and who later identified him to the prosecutors, would be belatedly hanged. Before the raid he had worked on his brother’s farm in western Pennsylvania, and he had joined the others at Kennedy Farm in the early part of September 1859. He was arrested on October 22d in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, near Chambersburg, where he was using the name “William Harrison,” was extradited to Virginia, was tried and sentenced at the spring term of the Court, and was hanged on March 16th, 1860. George B. Gill wrote “I was acquainted with Hazlett well enough in Kansas, yet after all knew but little of him. He was with Montgomery considerably, and was with [Aaron D. Stevens] on the raid in which Cruise was killed. He was a good-sized, fine-looking fellow, overflowing with good nature and social feelings.... Brown got acquainted with him just before leaving Kansas.” He wrote to Mrs. Rebecca B. Spring on March 15th, 1860, the eve of his hanging, “Your letter gave me great comfort to know that my body would be taken from this land of chains.... I am willing to die in the cause of liberty, if I had ten thousand lives I would willingly lay them all down for the same cause.”

Reverend T. W. Higginson No White

The Reverend Thomas Wentworth “Charles P. Carter” Higginson of the Secret “Six”’s earliest American ancestor was the 1st minister of Salem. He believed that “Never in history was there an oppressed people who were set free by others” (it was therefore up to American black people to demonstrate their courage, and their worthiness to be free — basically by getting themselves exterminated). After Harpers Ferry he would attempt to organize an expedition to raid the Charles Town lockup and rescue the accused — this was an expedition Henry Thoreau would oppose, asserting that to the contrary Captain Brown’s highest and best purpose was to be hung.

Richard J. Hinton

Richard J. Hinton, abolitionist journalist whose opposition to slavery led him to transform himself into a gunslinger. Refer to: Richard J. Hinton, JOHN BROWN AND HIS MEN (NY: Funk & Wagnalls, 1894; Reprint NY: The Arno Press, 1968).

WHAT TO TAKE: Let your trunk, if you have to buy one, be of moderate size and of the strongest make. Test it by throwing it from the top of a three-storied house; if you pick it up uninjured, it will do to go to Kansas. Not otherwise. — James Redpath and Richard J. Hinton, HAND-BOOK TO KANSAS TERRITORY, 1859, as quoted on page 3 of William Least Heat-Moon’s PrairyErth (a deep map) [Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1991].

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and others of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee raised $5,000 in one day, to buy enough Sharp’s rifles to arm 200 men to the teeth in “Bleeding Kansas.” He, as well as the Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns, fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war (black Americans against white), would be, at least initially, a defeat of the black forces of servile insurrection. These 5 of the white conspirators of the Secret “Six” finance committee clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies in order to foment sectional civil war between Northern and Southern white Americans.

Julia Ward Howe No White

Julia Ward Howe was a racist and, because she carried out errands for her husband Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe who was on the Secret “Six” finance committee (such as having a surreptitious meeting in their home with Captain John Brown), must surely have been aware of and must surely have approved of that committee’s agendas.

Thaddeus Hyatt No white

Thaddeus Hyatt was a businessman and financier involved in the preparation of “Bleeding Kansas” as a “free soil” or “Aryan Nation” enclave. Summoned to give testimony before the congressional committee investigating the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, he would refuse to appear and would be imprisoned for a period —but ultimately would get away with this refusal.

John Jones No No No Support of color

John Jones was a Chicago businessman of mixed race, an upscale tailor (John Brown visited his home). He and his wife Mary Jane Richardson Jones were active abolitionists whose home was a station on the Underground Railroad while they agitated for repeal of “Black Laws” (not only did these laws obligate black Americans to prove that they were free to enter the state of Illinois but, once there, these laws barred them from visiting the homes of whites, owning any property or merchandise, or entering into any contract).

John Henry Kagi Yes Yes Secretary of War 24 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Although John Henry Kagi, alias Maurice Maitland, alias John Henrie, was largely self-taught, his letters to the New-York Tribune, the New-York Evening Post, and the National Era reveal him as the best educated of the raiders. A debater, public speaker, stenographer, wannabee writer, and total abstainer from alcohol, he was cold in manner and rough in appearance. A nonparticipant in organized religion, he was an able man of business. He had been born on March 15, 1835, a son of the blacksmith for Bristolville, Ohio in a family of Swiss descent (the name originally having been Kagy). During 1854/1855 he had taught school at Hawkinstown, Virginia but had indicated an objection to the system of slavery there and been compelled to return to Ohio with a pledge never to return. He had gone to Nebraska City in 1856 and been admitted to the bar. He then entered Kansas with one of General James H. Lane’s parties and enlisted in Aaron D. Stevens’s (“Colonel Whipple’s”) 2d Kansas Militia. In fighting in the town of Tecumseh in “Bleeding Kansas” he proved himself by killing at least one man, who had been coming after him with a club. After being captured by US troops he had been imprisoned at Lecompton and at Tecumseh, but was finally released. On January 31, 1857 he had been struck on the head with a gold-headed cane by a slaveowning territorial judge, drew his revolver and shot the judge in the groin, but Judge Physic Rush Elmore got off 3 shots and one struck Kagi over the heart, the bullet being stopped by a memorandum-book. He was long with his family in Ohio recovering from these wounds, but then returned to Kansas and joined John Brown. He bore the title of Secretary of War in the provisional government and was next in command to John Brown; he was also the adjutant. His name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” from a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. When in Chambersburg as agent for the raiders, he boarded with Mrs. Mary Rittner. “In a very few days we shall commence,” he wrote on the eve of the raid, “things could not be more cheerful and more certain of success than they are. We have worked hard and suffered much, but the hardest is down now, and a glorious success is in sight.... Be cheerful. Don’t imagine dangers. All will be well.” At Harpers Ferry he was trapped along with John Anderson Copeland, Jr. and Lewis Sheridan Leary in the armory called Hall’s Rifle Works. When the 3 made a run for it, heading down to the Shenandoah River, they got caught in crossfire and Kagi was the first killed, shot in the head, his body being left to float in the river.

Amos Lawrence No White

Amos Lawrence and his son Amos Adams Lawrence provided the large bulk of the investment capital needed by Eli Thayer’s New England Emigrant Aid Company for the purchase land in the new territory then well known as “Bleeding Kansas,” needed in order to encourage the right sort of black-despising poor white Americans to settle there as “decent antislavery” homesteaders. The idea was to send entire communities in one fell swoop, increasing the value of the properties owned by this company. If political control over this territory could be achieved, they would be able to set up a real Aryan Nation, from which slaves would of course be excluded because they were enslaved, and from which free blacks Americans would of course be excluded because as human material they were indelibly inferior.

Lewis Sheridan Leary Yes Yes Private 25 of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Lewis Sheridan “Shad” Leary was a mulatto citizen of Oberlin, Ohio, a saddler and harness maker whose father had been a freeborn black harness maker as well. He was descended from an Irishman, Jeremiah O’Leary, who had fought in the Revolution under General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, who had married a woman of mixed blood, partly African, partly of that Croatan Indian stock of North Carolina, which is believed by some to be lineally descended from the “lost colonists” left by John White on Roanoke Island in 1587. Leary was born at Fayetteville, North Carolina on March 17th, 1835, and was therefore in his 25th year when killed during the raid upon the federal arsenal. In 1857 he had gone to Oberlin to live, marrying there and making the acquaintance of John Brown in Cleveland. To go to Harpers Ferry he left his wife with a 6-month-old child at Oberlin, his wife being in ignorance of the purpose of his trip. He was given funds to go from Oberlin to Chambersburg in the company of his nephew John Anderson Copeland, Jr. “Tell no man where I have gone,” he commented, “you’ll see me again, but I’ll be marching at the top of the drum.... Men must suffer for a good cause.” He was isolated along with his nephew and John Henry Kagi in the armory called Hall’s Rifle Works. When the men made a run for it, heading down to the Shenandoah River, they got themselves caught in a crossfire, and after Kagi had been killed and Leary shot several times, he was taken, his wounds so severe that he would die the following morning. He was able to dictate messages to his family and is reported as having said “I am ready to die.” The Leary child would subsequently be educated by James Redpath and Wendell Phillips. The corpse was dumped into the common pit beside the Shenandoah River, not to be exhumed until 1899. A monument was erected by the citizens of Oberlin in honor of their fallen free men of color, Leary, Copeland, and Shields Green (this 8-foot marble monument would be relocated to Vine Street Park in 1971).

William H. Leeman Yes Yes Captain < 21 white

William H. Leeman was of a wild disposition. Educated in the public schools of Saco and Hallowell, Maine, by the age of 14 he was working in a shoe factory in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He went to “Bleeding Kansas” with the 2d batch of recruits from Massachusetts, and on September 9, 1856 became a member of Captain John Brown’s “Volunteer Regulars.” He fought well at Osawatomie when but 17 years of age. At Springdale, Iowa, Owen Brown found him full of swagger and bluster and difficult to control George B. Gill said of him that he had “a good intellect with great ingenuity.” He signed “W.H. Leeman” to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when the raiders were subdued at Harpers Ferry. By the raid upon Harpers Ferry he had reached the age of 20, the youngest of the raiders. He wrote his mother, “I shall be in danger, but it is natural to me. I shall not get killed. I am in a good cause, and I am not afraid.” He made a mad dash out of the relative safety of the armory to attempt to escape by swimming down the Potomac River, where two militiamen caught up with him and shot him down on an islet. For hours his corpse would be used for target practice by drunken citizens, until their hail of bullets pushed the riddled remains into a current that drew it along until only his black hair could be glimpsed in the ripples on the surface. Mrs. Annie Brown Adams would write of him: “He was only a boy. He smoked a good deal and drank sometimes; but perhaps people would not think that so very wicked now. He was very handsome and very attractive.”

Francis Jackson Merriam Yes No No Private < 30 white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Francis Jackson Meriam, grandson and namesake of the Garrisonian abolitionist and Boston historian Francis Jackson, was a young manic-depressive with one good eye. He helped James Redpath collect materials in Haiti and across the American South for use in a book dedicated to John Brown and Redpath arranged for him to join the Harpers Ferry guerrillas. He was not captured or killed because he had been left during the raid in one of his fits of despair at the Kennedy farmhouse. After escaping through Shippensburg, Philadelphia, Boston, Concord, and the area of St. Catharines, Canada he served as a captain in the 3d South Carolina Colored Infantry. Erratic and unbalanced, he urged wild schemes upon his superiors and sometimes attempted them. In an engagement under General Ulysses S. Grant he received a serious leg wound. He died suddenly on November 28, 1865 in New-York.

Charles W. Moffett Yes white

We believe that the name of Charles W. Moffett of Iowa was among the signatories to Chatham, Ontario’s “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” as “C.W. Moffit,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. Perhaps this “W” stood for “Wesley,” if we can rely upon a tombstone in the Maple Hill cemetery in Montour, Iowa (“Charles Wesley Moffett / Jun. 20, 1827-Aug. 19, 1904”). We wonder if perhaps he did not attend the raid on the federal arsenal because he got cold feet, or perhaps because he was one of a number of people suspected by the others of having written to alert Secretary of War John Buchanan Floyd to the plan for a raid on a federal arsenal (the Cabinet member received these warnings while at Red Sweet Springs in Virginia and neglected to alert anyone to be on the lookout for such an attack — he would remind people later that as War Secretary he had been getting a whole lot of spurious warnings).

Edwin Morton No White

The very tall Franklin Benjamin Sanborn’s intimate college friend Edwin Morton of Plymouth, a descendant of one of the prominent Founding Fathers, and from a long line of violinists, was about as deeply involved in the Harpers Ferry raid as any member of the Secret “Six.” He was Gerrit Smith’s private secretary and resided with that family, tutoring the son. After the raid, with the heat on while Jefferson Davis was conducting a congressional investigation, he fled overseas as did Frederick Douglass, and for the duration chummed around at Shrewsbury and Hodnet with Henry Thoreau’s very tall friend Thomas Cholmondeley before settling for health reasons in Switzerland.

Dangerfield Newby Yes Yes bridge sentinel 39 light mulatto HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Dangerfield Newby, a free light mulatto, son of a Scotsman, very tall and with a splendid physique, was written by his wife begged him to obtain funds to purchase her and their baby who that had just “commenced to crawl ... as soon as possible, for if you do not get me somebody else will.” She pleaded “Oh Dear Dangerfield, come this fall without fail, money or no money I want to see you so much; that is the one bright hope I have before me.” He was serving as a sentinel at the Harpers Ferry bridge and was shot to death as he and the two white men with him retreated before the charge of the Jefferson Guards of Charles Town, Virginia, coming across the Potomac from the Maryland side. He was not brought down by ball or bullet but by a 6-inch spike being used as a musket projectile, which caught him in the throat and ripped him severely. Since neither of the white men were shot, it appears that as a mulatto he was targeted. The body was beaten savagely, and its ears snipped off as trophies, and then a herd of hogs was driven up to root on it. His corpse was dumped into the shallow group pit beside the Shenandoah River, to be exhumed in 1899.

Reverend Theodore Parker No White

The Reverend Theodore Parker, a stone racist, declared from his pulpit that while he ordinarily spent $1,500 a year on books, the equivalent of 4 or 5 men’s annual wages, for the time being he was going to restrict himself to spending less than one man’s annual wage on books per year, and devote the remaining moneys to the purchase of guns and ammunition for the white people going to the Kansas Territory. Sharps rifles, the very latest in deadliness, cost $25 apiece when had in sufficient quantity:

“I make all my pecuniary arrangements with the expectation of civil war.”

He would take to marking the boxes of new Sharps rifles he shipped illegally to “Bleeding Kansas” with the word BOOKS, and he would take to referring to these firearms as so many copies of RIGHTS OF THE PEOPLE as in “The right of the people to keep and to bear arms shall not be infringed.” He, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns of the Secret “Six”, fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war, of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of the black forces of servile insurrection. These 5 of the white conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their allies among the Northern and Southern black Americans slave and free, in order to foment a rectification of the Southern white Americans.

Luke F. Parsons White

Luke Fisher Parsons was a free-state fighter seasoned in “Bleeding Kansas.” He took part in the battle of Black Jack near Baldwin City on June 2d, 1856, the battle of Osawatomie on August 30th, 1856, and the raid on Iowa during Winter 1857/1858. His name “L.F. Parsons” was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in John Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when the raiders were subdued at Harpers Ferry. He had gone off toward a supposed Colorado gold rush and, summoned by letters from Brown and Kagi, did not manage to make it back to take part in the raid on the federal arsenal, or to attempt to rescue the prisoners once they were waiting to be hanged, at the jail in Charlestown, Virginia. He started a family and lived out a long life as a farmer in Salina, Kansas. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Friend John Hunt Painter White

John Hunt Painter, a birthright Quaker who owned a farm near Springdale, Iowa, a farm that was used as a waystation on the Underground Railroad, forwarded stored firearms to Captain John Brown at his hideout near Harpers Ferry. After disownment by the Religious Society of Friends he would relocate his farm family to downtown Pasadena, California to there construct and be the proprietor of the toney La Pintoresca hotel.

Richard Realf White

Richard Realf was a 23-year-old Englishman, the son of a blacksmith who had become a rural constable. In 1852 he had put out a collection of poetry, GUESSES AT THE BEAUTIFUL, and in 1854, after giving up being the lover of Lady Noell Byron, widow of George Gordon, Lord Byron, he was led to the United States of America by “instincts” which he characterized as “democratic and republican, or, at least, anti-monarchical.” He had been introduced by John Edwin Cook, whom he had met in Lawrence in “Bleeding Kansas” while working as a correspondent for the Illinois State Gazette, to John Brown in Mount Tabor, Iowa at the end of November or beginning of December 1857. He traveled through Chicago and Detroit to Chatham, Ontario West, Canada, and his name was among the signatories to “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,” per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. He returned to England to lecture, and visited France, before traveling from Havre on March 2, 1859 to New Orleans, arriving April 17, 1959 with the objective of becoming a Jesuit priest. He would testify before the US Senate Committee.

James Redpath

James Redpath, crusading journalist out to make a buck in the best way.

George J. Reynolds of color

George J. Reynolds, a light mulatto blacksmith or coppersmith of Sandusky, Ohio, from Virginia although saying he was from Vermont, with native American as well as black African heritage, age 35 at the time of the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, and active in the Underground Railroad. He had attended the Convention of Colored Men in 1858, and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario West, Canada per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859, as “J.G. Reynolds” (3 weeks after this convention, he would disclose some of John Brown’s agenda to a black secret paramilitary group in Sandusky, Ohio).

Richard Richardson No of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Richard Richardson, a fugitive slave from Lexington, Missouri who had joined John Brown in southern Iowa, was going through that unfortunate but now-well-understood initial period of reaction to freedom in which a former slave, accustomed to servitude and unaccustomed to self-origination, attaches himself to some authoritative white man who is able with courtesy to make use of him. He was a member of the African Mysteries, a secret defense group in Michigan in 1858, and signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859, but evidently did not get from Ontario to Virginia due to lack of travel money. He became a private in Company E of the 113th US Colored Infantry that was formed from the 13th US Colored Infantry that was recruited in and spent its entire service in Arkansas.

Judge Thomas Russell No White

Mary Ellen Russell visited John Brown in jail a few weeks before his execution. She said that although she had never approved of his violent methods, she admired him as a man of vision and idealism. Brown had been friends with the Russells for years, and had stayed at their home on several occasions despite the fact that Thomas Russell was a prominent member of the Massachusetts judiciary. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret “Six” would allege long after the raid on Harpers Ferry that “Brown’s general purpose of attacking slavery by force, in Missouri or elsewhere, was known in 1857-8-9” to Judge Russell.

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn No White

Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of Concord descended from the founder and 1st minister of the old New Hampshire plantation of Hampton. Another ancestor, the Reverend Stephen Bachiler, was the 1st minister of Lynn, and probably had among his parishioners there, in 1635-1636, Thomas Parker, the 1st American ancestor of Theodore Parker. He, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Gerrit Smith, and George Luther Stearns, fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war, of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of their black forces. These 5 of the white Secret “Six” conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies for servile insurrection in order to foment sectional civil war between Northern and Southern white Americans. (John Brown, who had himself buried a wife and promptly recruited another one, once commented to Sanborn, in regard to the young man’s grief over the prompt death of his young bride Ariana Walker, that he was too young to be married to a gravestone.)

Gerrit Smith No White HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

The immensely wealthy “H. Ross Perot” political figure of that era was a former Millerite millennialist: Gerrit Smith. In this American’s mansion outside Syracuse, New York, standing in the center of his study, was an ornate mahogany desk. Rumor had it that this had once been the desk of the emperor Napoleon Bonaparte himself. The millennium of William Miller not having arrived on schedule, Smith had become determined to, as he put it, “make himself a colored man” –he desired to explore his inner blackness– and thus he befriended Frederick Douglass (Smith would be Douglass’s friend, that is, up to the point at which he would discover that black Americans were inherently racially inferior to white Americans and thus unworthy of consideration). He, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, and George Luther Stearns of the Secret “Six” fully grasped from the earliest moment that the probable result of their attempt to incite a servile insurrection of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of the black forces. These 5 of the white conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies, in order to disrupt relations between Northern and Southern white Americans, toward the generation of a sectional civil war.

Stephen Smith

Stephen Smith, lumber dealer of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Lysander Spooner

The anarchist Boston attorney Lysander Spooner, who was well aware of John Brown’s plans for the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, wrote to Gerrit Smith in January 1859 warning that Brown had neither the men nor the resources to succeed. After the raid he would plot the kidnapping of Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia, the idea being to take him at pistol point aboard a tug and hold him off the Atlantic coast, at threat of execution should Brown be executed.

George Luther Stearns

George Luther Stearns, a Boston manufacturer of lead pipe and the secretary of the Boston Emancipation League, as well as Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Reverend Theodore Parker, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, and Gerrit Smith of the Secret “Six,” fully grasped from the earliest moment the fact that the probable result of their attempt to incite a race war, of black Americans against white Americans, would be, at least initially, a defeat of their black forces. These 5 of the white conspirators clearly had been willing to sacrifice the lives of their black allies in servile insurrection in order to forestall a sectional civil war between Northern and Southern white Americans.

Aaron Dwight Stevens Yes Badly Yes Captain 28 white wounded HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Aaron Dwight Stevens, John Brown’s drillmaster, born in Lisbon, Connecticut on March 15th, 1831, was of old Puritan stock, his great-grandfather having served as a captain during the Revolutionary. He had run away from home in 1847 at the age of 16 to serve with a Massachusetts volunteer regiment during the Mexican War. Well over 6 feet tall, he made himself proficient with the sword. Enlisting in Company F of the 1st US Dragoons, at Taos during May 1855 he received a sentence of death for “mutiny, engaging in a drunken riot, and assaulting Major George A.H. Blake.” This was commuted by President Franklin Pierce to 3 years hard labor but he escaped from Fort Leavenworth in 1856, 1st finding refuge with the Delaware tribe and then joining the Kansas Free State militia of James Lane under the name “Whipple.” He became Colonel of the 2d Kansas Militia and met Brown on August 7th, 1856 at the Nebraska line when Lane’s Army of the North marched into “Bleeding Kansas”. He became a devoted follower. He was a spiritualist. At Harpers Ferry, when Brown sent this middleaged man out along with his son Watson Brown to negotiate under a flag of truce, he received 4 bullets but was taken alive. The never- married Stevens had a relationship with Rebecca B. Spring of the Eagleswood social experiment near Perth Amboy, New Jersey, and after his execution on March 16th would be buried there alongside Albert Hazlett. According to George B. Gill, writing after his death, “Stevens — how gloriously he sang! His was the noblest soul I ever knew. Though owing to his rash, hasty way, I often found occasion to quarrel with him more so than with any of the others, and though I liked [John Henry Kagi] better than any man I ever knew, our temperaments being adapted to each other, yet I can truly say that Stevens was the most noble man that I ever knew.” He was hanged on March 16th, 1860.

Stewart Taylor Yes Yes Private 23 white

Stewart Taylor was born on October 29th, 1836 at Uxbridge in Canada. He became a wagonmaker and in 1853 went to Iowa, where in 1858 he became acquainted with Captain Brown through George B. Gill. He was a very good phonographer [stenographer], rapid and accurate. A spiritualist, he confidently predicted his own death. He signed the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Ontario, Canada West per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18, 1859. A relative, Jacob L. Taylor of Pine Orchard, Canada West, wrote to Richard J. Hinton on April 23d, 1860 that he had been “heart and soul in the anti-slavery cause.” An excellent debater and very fond of studying history, he stayed at home in Canada during Winter 1858/1859 and then went to Chicago, thence to Bloomington, Illinois and thence to Harper’s [sic] Ferry.” While out of touch with the John Brown movement, the 23-year-old had feared being left behind: “I felt as though I was deprived of my chief object in life.... I believe that fate has decreed me for this undertaking.... It is my chief desire to add fuel to the fire.” When mortally wounded in the engine house, begging to be put out of his misery, Brown instructed him “Die like a man.” What remained of his corpse would be recovered in 1899 from a soggy group pit near the Shenandoah River above Harpers Ferry.

Eli Thayer No HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Eli Thayer, an entrepreneur who believed in “doing well by doing good,” formed the New England Emigrant Aid Company, to purchase land in the new territory then well known as “Bleeding Kansas” and encourage the right sort of black-despising poor white Americans to settle there by providing information, cheapening transportation, and setting up saw mills and flour mills to give work and incomes to such “decent antislavery” homesteaders. The idea was to send entire communities in one fell swoop, increasing the value of the properties owned by this company. If political control over this territory could be achieved, they would be able to set up a real Aryan Nation, from which slaves would of course be excluded because they were enslaved, and from which free blacks Americans would of course be excluded because as human material they were indelibly inferior. Thayer would comment in retrospect, about the antebellum abolitionists with whom he had been affiliated, that they had constituted “a mutual admiration society possessed by an unusual malignity towards those who did not belong to it.” He would instance that there was never “any diffidence or modesty in sounding their own praises.”

Dauphin Adolphus Thompson Yes Yes Lieutenant < 30 white

Dauphin Adolphus Thompson, brother of William Thompson and a North Elba neighbor of the family of John Brown, was born April 17, 1838. He was “very quiet, with fair, thoughtful face, curly blonde hair, and baby-blue eyes,” a “pippin-cheeked country boy.” His sister Isabella M. Thompson got married with Watson Brown and his elder brother Henry Thompson got married with Captain Brown’s daughter Ruth. “I suppose the folk think we are a set of fools,” he wrote from someplace he described as “Parts Unknown,” “but they will find out we know what we are about.” The two brothers died at Harpers Ferry, Dauphin cowering beneath a fire engine until skewered by a Marine bayonet. Their bodies were placed in the common pit beside the Shenandoah River above town, and exhumed in 1899.

William Thompson Yes Yes Captain? < 30 white

William Thompson was born in New Hampshire in August 1833, the son of Roswell Thompson. During Fall 1858 he married a Mary Brown who was not related to the family of John Brown. His sister Isabella M. Thompson married Watson Brown; his elder brother Henry Thompson married Captain Brown’s daughter Ruth. He “would have made a successful comic actor ... he was very lively and full of funny stories and jokes.” He had started for “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856 but upon meeting the Brown sons returned with them to North Elba. Along with his brother Dauphin Adolphus Thompson, he took part in the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, and the two of them were shot dead. When Captain Brown sent him out from the engine house to negotiate under flag of truce, the mob of citizens placed him under arrest, took him to the local hotel barroom, discussed what to do, dragged him into the street, executed him by shooting him in the head, and dumped his body onto the rocks of the Potomac River. The corpse “could be seen lying at the bottom of the river, with his ghastly face still showing what a fearful death agony he had experienced.” One of his captors commented that for such “villainous Abolitionists,” he “felt justified in shooting any that I could find. I felt it my duty, and I have no regrets.” The corpse was dumped into a common pit on the bank of the Shenandoah River above town, and buried about a foot deep.

Henry David Thoreau No white HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

When, in 1844, Waldo Emerson, acting as an agent provocateur, recommended to Frederick Douglass’s face that, modeling himself upon the leader of the successful Haitian revolution of the turn of the century, Toussaint Louverture, he fashion himself into the liberator of his people and initiate on the North American continent a servile insurrection or race war, it was Henry Thoreau who after the lecture rushed this information right down to Boston, and had a pamphlet printed up, after which there was no way to dissimulate about the provocation that had been made — and so all Emerson was able to do was pretend that Douglass hadn’t been present. (We, of course, have credited Emerson’s cover story, not because there is any corroboration for it but because ... well, he’s Mr. Emerson and wouldn’t lie to us.)

Charles Plummer Tidd Yes No No Captain 25 white

Charles Plummer Tidd was born in Palermo, Maine on January 1st, 1834 and had emigrated to “Bleeding Kansas” in 1856 with the party of Dr. Calvin Cutter of Worcester in search of excitement. After joining John Brown’s party at Mount Tabor, Iowa in 1857 he became one of the followers of “Shubel Morgan” who returned in 1858 to raid into Missouri. During the Winter 1857/1858 encampment of the Brown forces in Springdale, Iowa, he “ruined” a Quaker girl and the other members of the team had to sneak him away during the night. Nevertheless, the group obtained some recruits not overly impressed with the Peace Testimony of George Fox from among the residents of this town, such as the brothers Barclay Coppoc and Edwin Coppoc. He and John E. Cook were particularly warm friends. He signed, as “Charles P. Tidd,” the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” in Chatham, Canada per a document in Brown’s handwriting that would be captured when he and his men were subdued at Harpers Ferry on October 18th, 1859. He opposed the attack on Harpers Ferry but nevertheless took part both in the raid on the planter Washington’s home and on the federal arsenal itself, escaped, and made his way on foot toward the northwestern part of Pennsylvania. He and John Brown’s son Owen Brown would find work and safety, under assumed names, on an oil well in the vicinity of Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He visited Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Canada and took part in the planning for the rescue of Aaron D. Stevens and Albert Hazlett while the Mason Commission of the Congress was presuming that he had been killed in the fighting at Harpers Ferry. According to Mrs. Annie Brown Adams, “Tidd had not much education, but good common sense. After the raid he began to study, and tried to repair his deficiencies. He was by no means handsome. He had a quick temper, but was kind-hearted. His rages soon passed and then he tried all he could to repair damages. He was a fine singer and of strong family affections.” On July 19th, 1861 he was able to enlist under the name “Charles Plummer” and would become a 1st Sergeant of the 21st Massachusetts Volunteers. On February 8th, 1862 he died of fever aboard the transport Northerner during the battle of Roanoke Island. (This was a battle he had particularly wished to take part in because ex-Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia, the nemesis of the Harpers Ferry raiders, was in command of the Confederates.) Tidd’s, or Charles Plummer’s, grave is #40 in the National Cemetery in New Berne, North Carolina. THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

Harriet Tubman No of color HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Person’s Name On Raid? Shot Dead? Hanged? His Function Age Race

Harriet Tubman was negotiated with by John Brown for participation in the raid on the federal arsenal. She mistrusted these men and had persistent dreams in which Brown and his sons appeared as serpents. The attack had been scheduled to occur on the 4th of July, symbolic of national birth. At the last moment she alleged she was ill, and for this reason as well as delays in the deliveries of supplies, the attack needed to be postponed for months. On the day of the actual attack at Harpers Ferry she had a premonition that it would fail.

Henry Watson No of color

Henry Watson, barber of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania involved both with John Brown and with Frederick Douglass.

etc. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1832

March 19, Monday: Clara Wieck gave the 1st of two concerts at Stopel’s Music School in Paris, on a piano lent by Erard (she was one of several performers).

Luke Parsons, Jr. (1798-1847) got married with Tyrphena Harrington Fisher of Westborough, Massachusetts (1810-1893) (the 1st product of this union would be the gunslinger Luke Fisher Parsons). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1833

June 28, Friday: Luke Fisher Parsons was born in Brookfield, Massachusetts to Luke Parsons, Jr. and Tryphena Harrington Fisher Parsons. He would have the brothers and sisters Nahum Fisher Parsons (1834- 1906), Adelaide Marion Parsons Stevens (1840-1888), and Samuel Ely Parsons (1842-1917). There would also be a half-sibling (when his mother remarried to a man named Read after the father’s death), Lydia Ann Read Artz (1849-1929).

The French legislature ordained primary education for every community in France. Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot would, as head of the department of public instruction, implement this law with extraordinary vigor).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day [sic] 28th of 9 M 1833 / Much time has passed away since I have made an entry in my Diary. Since that time there has many events occur’d which have been greatly interesting to me some of them have been of a comfortable kind & many of an afflictive nature, which has caused me to Mourn & even tremble for my own state as well as the State of society both in Europe & America. — Altho’ in some places in some instances, there is some encouragement to hope that the true seed of Quakerism is not extinct, but Yet retains a greenness which would induce the hope, & strengthen the desire that it may yet live, be known in Judah & great in Israel but what of Infidelity on the One hand, formality & outward profession on the other, together with on an intemperate Zeal, and in some instances a total want of zeal & in others a disposition to return to the beggarly elements, placing the letter above the spirit &c - I confess I do not see where our poor society will land at last. — This evening by the Newport Mercury I learn the decease of our Ancient & beloved Friend RICHARD MITCHELL of Middletown Aged 79 years died the 26 inst. I have known him from a child - he was one of those worthy Elders in society who was an ornament to the Station, & ever on the Alert for the good & prosperity of the Society at large, having been under all the appointments which is usual in Rhode Island Moy [Monthly] Meeting - he was for many years a zealous, judicious & well concerned Overseer - for many years a faithful Trustee of the Property of that Moy [Monthly] Meeting & labour’d carefully for its outward Interests as well as a more spiritual interest — I have been associated with him in many appointments & always prefered his judgement & experience to my own, but ever found in him a disposition to listen to & weigh well the feelings & views of those younger & of less experience — tho’ having attained to a good old Age & to a period of life when much more Service activity had ceased for a year or two, yet his place in the Church will be vacant & HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

his former services remembered. — he had been mostly confined to his house for the last Year & from a complication of affliction which had awaited him, his natural powers of mind were much abated. — his bodily suffering for years had also been great having been afflicted with a gravelly complaint which at time occasioned much pain. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1839

From this year into 1842, the 1st Afghan War with the British; in this year a British army was annihilated.

The Shawnee Methodist Mission that had been established by missionaries in Turner in the Kansas Territory in 1830, to minister to the Shawnee tribe that had been removed there, was relocated to Fairway, where they would erect a brick building. The US Army sent Lieutenant John Charles Frémont with the French explorer Jean-Nicolas Nicollet to map the rivers of the midwest. The parsons family relocated in a couple of covered wagons from Brookfield, Massachusetts to Byron, Illinois (their gunslinger firstborn, Luke Fisher Parsons, would grow up to help Kansas to bleed). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1847

14-year-old Luke Fisher Parsons’s father Luke Parsons, Jr. died. Luke would receive only limited schooling before being put out as an apprentice. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1848

Tryphena Harrington Fisher Parsons, mother of Luke Fisher Parsons, having recently been widowed, remarried with Lucius Read. This union would in the following year produce Lydia Ann Read (Artz). HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1851

Luke Fisher Parsons was apprenticed to a wagon-maker in Mount Morris, Illinois. Completing his apprenticeship, he took journeymen jobs in Chicago, at Peoria, and at Tremont, Illinois. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1855

Young Luke Fisher Parsons returned, as an accomplished wagon-maker, to his mother and siblings in Byron, Illinois.

During this year the Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson sailed with his wife to the Portuguese island of Fayal and back, for her health. There is in existence a letter by the Reverend, in which he describes a trip to Mt. Ktaadn taken in this year by himself, Theophilus Brown, and eight others from Worcester. The five women of this party were wearing bloomers and sensible shoes, and the native guide reportedly commented “There’s

no better grit to be scared up anywhere than them women have.” The Reverend Higginson, and Dr. Seth Rogers,1 also led groups of armed men during this year from Worcester to the Kansas Territory. I don’t know whether the trip to Ktaadn was before or after the Kansas trip. Wendell Phillips contributed $100.00 to purchase carbines for anti-slavery white people emigrating to the Great Plains. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

1. Any relation to the Nathaniel Peabody Rogers of Concord, New Hampshire, who put out the Herald of Freedom prior to his death in 1846, and about whom Henry Thoreau wrote in the last issue of THE DIAL, or to the Elizabeth Rogers Mason Cabot who so appreciated WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS? This Dr. Seth Rogers was a walking and canoeing companion of Thoreau’s. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

The Reverend Adin Ballou’s Hopedale Community of Christian non-violenters near Worcester sent a party to

establish a colony for peace, about 40 miles north of St. Paul, in a location called “Union Grove” near Monticello, Minnesota; however, weather, and difficulties of travel and transport and funding along the way, forced that peace party to sell its wagons and livestock and possessions and return to their origin with but the clothing on their backs. (Or, perhaps, God forced them to turn back because of the unrighteousness of their temperance.) Because the congregation of the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher funded the award of one Bible and one Sharps carbine to each member of an anti-slavery group emigrating to the Kansas Territory, these deadly 10-rounds-per-minute assault weapons would become known in succeeding years as HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

“Beecher’s Bibles”: The most warlike demonstration, and one which excited the greatest attention, was at New Haven. Charles B. Lines, a deacon of a New Haven congregation, had enlisted a company of 79 emigrants. A meeting was held in the church shortly before their departure, for the purpose of raising funds. Many clergymen and many of the Yale College faculty were present. The leader of the party said that Sharps rifles were lacking, and they were needed for self-defense. After an earnest address from Henry Ward Beecher, the subscription began. Professor Silliman started it with one Sharps rifle; the pastor of the church gave the second; other gentlemen and some ladies followed the example. As fifty was the number wanted, Beecher said that if twenty-five were pledged on the spot, Plymouth Church would furnish the rest. Previous to this meeting, he had declared that for the slave- holders of Kansas the Sharps rifle was a greater moral agency than the Bible; and from that time the favorite arms of the Northern emigrants became known as “Beecher’s Bibles.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

John Brown reads his Bible: HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

According to this textbook, the Southern white “Christians” were organizing in a similar manner: Yet one notable company was raised through the energy and sacrifice of Colonel Buford, of Alabama. He issued an appeal for 300 industrious and sober men, capable of bearing arms and willing to fight for the cause of the South. He would himself contribute $20,000, and he agreed to give each man who enlisted 40 acres of good Kansas land and support him for a year. He sold his slaves to provide the money he had promised. Owing to the fervent appeals of the press, contributions from many quarters were obtained, and the enthusiasm was not confined to the men. A daughter of South Carolina sent to the editor of a newspaper a gold chain which would realize enough to furnish one man, and she begged him to let the ladies of her neighborhood know when more money was needed, for then, she wrote, “we will give up our personal embellishments and expose them for sale.” Buford raised 280 men from South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. Many of them were the poor relations and dependents of the wealthy slave-holders; others were poor whites. Some were intelligent, and afterwards proved worthy citizens; but the majority were ignorant and brutal, and made fit companions for the Missouri border ruffians, by whom they were received with open arms. The day that Buford’s battalion started from Montgomery, they marched to the Baptist church. The Methodist minister solemnly invoked the divine blessing on their enterprise; the Baptist pastor gave Buford a finely bound Bible, and said that a subscription had been raised to present each emigrant with a copy of the Holy Scriptures. Three or four thousand citizens gathered on the river bank to bid them farewell, and there were not lacking “the bright smiles and happy faces” of the ladies to cheer them on. A distinguished citizen made them an address, saying that “on them rested the future welfare of the South; they were armed with the Bible, a weapon more potent than Sharpe’s rifles; and, in the language of Lord Nelson, ‘every man was expected to do his duty.’" The South Carolina contingent had not, on leaving home, been provided with Bibles; it had there been proclaimed that all the equipment needed was a good common country rifle. Further along in this text from which I am quoting, there are presumptive assertions, such as one on page 279 attesting that Sharps rifles were shipped West inside crates stamped BIBLES. One may cast doubt upon such tall textbook tales without contesting the existence of the Sharps repeating rifle, or contending that no churchly congregations contributed money toward their purchase, or impugning the fact that these weapons of remote rapid death were in the period humorously (!) being referred to, among the people humorously referred to as “Christians,” as “Beecher’s Bibles.” It has never to my knowledge been corroborated, that actual boxes of these rifles actually were shipped west, actually stenciled with the word BIBLES on the outside — it has not to my awareness been substantiated, that this was something more than merely a humorous (!) manner of talking HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

about this righteous dealing of death.

After they would take Captain John Brown’s Sharps rifle away from him at Harpers Ferry, they would allow this little boy to pose with it. Grow up, son, and be a Christian like us: kill people, own slaves.

This is the Minié .58-inch bullet that was being pioneered during this year at the Harpers Ferry Arsenal by armorer James H. Burton: HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

A nice “unintended feature” of this bullet being introduced was that since it was hollow behind, the shooter could prepare for battle by rubbing it in feces. That would ensure that any limb struck by the bullet would need to be amputated, because of the probability of sepsis from even a flesh wound that did not shatter bone. (In other words, bacteriological warfare, but initiated from the bottom up rather than from the top down.) For Righteousness’ Sake, by Friend John Greenleaf Whittier THE age is dull and mean. Men creep, Not walk; with blood too pale and tame To pay the debt they owe to shame; Buy cheap, sell dear; eat, drink, and sleep Down-pillowed, deaf to moaning want; Pay tithes for soul-insurance; keep Six days to Mammon, one to Cant. In such a time, give thanks to God, That somewhat of the holy rage With which the prophets in their age On all its decent seemings trod, Has set your feet upon the lie, That man and ox and soul and clod Are market stock to sell and buy! The hot words from your lips, my own, To caution trained, might not repeat; But if some tares among the wheat Of generous thought and deed were sown, No common wrong provoked your zeal; The silken gauntlet that is thrown In such a quarrel rings like steel. The brave old strife the fathers saw For freedom calls for men again Like those who battled not in vain For England’s Charter, Alfred’s law; And right of speech and trial just Wage in your name their ancient war With venal courts and perjured trust. God’s ways seem dark, but, soon or late, They touch the shining hills of day; The evil cannot brook delay, The good can well afford to wait. Give ermined knaves their hour of crime; Ye have the future grand and great, The safe appeal of Truth to Time! HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1856

Slavery advocates were swarming into Kansas in an effort to stack the territorial legislature with men who would vote to make Kansas a slave state; a move made possible by the “popular sovereignty” principle of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Olathe was founded. Wide-spread violence was breaking out between pro- slavery and abolitionists groups. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

That spring, after a mass meeting in Illinois calling for recruits to aid “Bleeding Kansas,” Luke Fisher Parsons would be one of 6 local men who accepted the bounty of $25 and pledged to remain in the Kansas Territory until it was made a free state. At the age of 22, Luke would head toward to the Kansas Territory and his destiny as a gunslinger.

The Worcester Unitarian reverend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, was appointed as agent for the Massachusetts Kansas Aid Committee that was helping recruit and arm people who would emigrate to Kansas and would there vote against the territory becoming a new slave state (the Kansas/Nebraska Act repealing the Missouri Compromise). During this year the Reverend authored “A Ride Through Kanzas” [sic]. In the “Pottawatomie Massacre,” John Brown and his followers murdered five supposedly pro-slavery men. While the “Chevalier” Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe was away, heroically leading anti-slavery settlers to the territory, back home the undutiful wife and mother Julia Ward Howe was publishing poetry and plays. There are references in their correspondence not only to love turning into alienation, but also to familial violence.

In support of freedom voters moving into the Kansas Territory, Friend John Greenleaf Whittier wrote:

The Kansas EmiGRANTS. WE cross the prairie as of old The pilgrims crossed the sea, To make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free! We go to rear a wall of men On Freedom’s southern line, And plant beside the cotton-tree The rugged Northern pine! We’re flowing from our native hills As our free rivers flow; The blessing of our Mother-land Is on us as we go. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

We go to plant her common schools, On distant prairie swells, And give the Sabbaths of the wild The music of her bells. Upbearing, like the Ark of old, The Bible in our van, We go to test the truth of God Against the fraud of man. No pause, nor rest, save where the streams That feed the Kansas run, Save where our Pilgrim gonfalon Shall flout the setting sun! We’ll tread the prairie as of old Our fathers sailed the sea, And make the West, as they the East, The homestead of the free!

May 1, Thursday: John Wilbur died in Hopkinton, Rhode Island.

Luke Fisher Parsons and the 5 other men from Byron, Illinois arrived in the Kansas Territory. He would take a job as clerk in the Eldridge Hotel or Free State Hotel in Lawrence (which would be destroyed by Quantrell’s band by order of Federal Court on May 21st, so that job wouldn’t last long — after the destruction of the hotel, he would take a claim 4 miles west of Lawrence. The 5 men who had come with him returned to Byron, Illinois.)

May 1. 6 P.M. — To Hill. I judge that the larch blossomed when the anthers began to be loose and dry and yellow on their edges. Say then the 28th. The water on the meadows is rapidly going down. I am now confined to the river for the most part. The water begins to feel as warm or warmer than the air when cool. The scrolls of the ferns clothed in wool at Sassafras Shore, five or six inches high. Thalictrum anemonoides well out, probably a day or two, same shore, by the apple trees. Viola ovata (Edith Emerson, Apr. 29th.) on southwest side of hill, high up near pines. How pleasing that early purple grass in smooth water! Half a dozen long, straight purple blades of different lengths but about equal width, close together and exactly parallel, resting flat on the surface of the water. There is something agreeable in their parallelism and flatness. From the hilltop I look over Wheeler's maple swamp. The maple-tops are now, I should say, a bright brick red. It is the red maple's reign now, as the peach and the apple will have theirs. Looking over the swamps a quarter of a mile distant, you see dimly defined crescents of bright brick red above and amid a maze of ash-colored branches. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

June 2, Monday: An antislavery splinter faction of the Know-Nothing party met in New-York and nominated John Charles Frémont and Pennsylvania’s W.F. Johnston. They advocated a free Kansas Territory, that is, a land in which only white people would be allowed.

According to a roadside marker on US 56 east of Baldwin in Douglas County, Kansas, the “battle of Black Jack” on this day had amounted to:

part of the struggle to make Kansas a free state. In May 1856, proslavery men destroyed buildings and newspaper presses in Lawrence, Free-State headquarters. John Brown’s company then killed five proslavery men on Pottawatomie creek not far from this spot. In retaliation Henry C. Pate raided near-by Palmyra and took three prisoners. Early on the morning of June 2 Brown attacked Pate’s camp in a grove of black jack oaks about 1/4 mile south of this sign. Both sides had several wounded and numerous desertions before Pate and 28 men surrendered, Brown claiming he had only 15 men left. As evidence of civil war this fight received much publicity and excited both North and South.

Erected by the Kansas State Historical Society and State Highway Commission.

Luke Fisher Parsons 1st met John Brown at the Battle of Black Jack. Three Jews who had a store together in Lawrence, Kansas were also in Captain Brown’s group at this engagement: • Jacob Benjamin, originally from Bohemia, died 1866 • Theodore Wiener, immigrant from Poland, died 1906. Although Wiener would be described by Bondi as “a rank pro-slavery man” he needed John Brown’s help to oust a squatter on his claim. • August Bondi, who as a lad in Vienna had taken part in the 1848 revolution, and who would enlist in the Kansas cavalry and serve as a 1st sergeant

Bondi would later write that the 3 of them were “Free-State men,” which he would explain meant that they were hostile to any “increase in the colored population.” They were taking part in this fighting, he wrote, out of “antipathy at the degradation of labor” (of course, what they meant was white labor) — certainly not out of any “sympathy with the negro slave.” According to this record Bondi was alongside Captain Brown and ahead of the other men, going up a hill while under fire:2 We walked with bent backs, nearly crawled, that the tall dead grass of the year before might somehow by courtesy hide us from the Border Ruffian marksmen, yet the bullets kept whistling.... Weiner puffed like a steamboat, hurrying behind me. I called out to him “Nu, was meinen Sie jetzt?” (“Now what do you think of American this?”). His answer, “Sof odom muves” (a Hebrew phrase meaning “the end of man is death” or, in modern Jewish phraseology, “I guess we are up against it”).

2. Bernard Postal and Lionel Koppman. GUESS WHO’S JEWISH IN AMERICAN HISTORY. Shapolsky Publishers, 1988, pages 34-5 HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

John E. Cook 1st met Captain John Brown after this battle of Black Jack. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION Jason Brown took part, but clearly he would have trepidations, for he would refuse to join his father at the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

June 2, Monday: Per Waldo Emerson this was “the finest day, high noon of the year.” He and Henry Thoreau rode in a wagon to Perez Blood’s auction and found his telescope sold for $55.00 which had “cost ninety-five plus ten.”3

Thoreau noted that according to Professor Louis Agassiz, the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat.4

He also noted that according Sir David Brewster’s biography of Sir Isaac Newton, with one of the early telescopes it had been possible to read from Philosophical Transactions at a distance of five hundred feet. BREWSTER’S NEWTON ASTRONOMY

June 2. Carum, i.e. caraway, in garden. Saw most hummingbirds when cherries were in bloom, — on them. P. M. — With R.W. E. to Perez Blood’s auction. Telescope sold for fifty-five dollars; cost ninety-five plus ten. See Camilla on rye, undulating light and shade; not 19th of April.5 Returned by bridle-road. Myrica cerifera, possibly yesterday. Very few buds shed pollen yet; more, probably, to-day. Leaves nearly an inch long, and shoot and all no more. English hawthorn will open apparently in two days. Agassiz tells his class that the intestinal worms in the mouse are not developed except in the stomach of the cat.

3. A couple of years earlier, Henry’s telescope had cost him $8, more than a week’s wages, the equivalent of perhaps $800 today. Blood’s telescope would in today’s money have been a device costing in the range of $10,000, a number of months’ salary. 4. When a carnivore ingests an infected prey animal, the larvae of the Toxascaris leonina roundworms mature within the walls and lumen of the predator’s small intestine. When the female worm becomes an adult, it lays eggs which pass with the feces. The eggs become infective some 3-6 days after defecation, and rodents such as mice and squirrels become infected when they consume something that has been in contact with these feces. The the eggs hatch within the rodent’s digestive system and the larvae migrate through its tissues. When the rodent is consumed, larvae are released in the digestive system of the carnivore and the cycle repeats.

5. Thoreau here alludes to the Concord memory that on the memorable day of April 19th, 1775, the spring having been exceptionally early, grass and grain were already high enough to be bending with the breeze. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

5 P.M. — To Azalea nudiflora, which is in prime. Ranunculus recurvatus the same; how long? White maple keys conspicuous. In the first volume of Brewster’s “Life of Newton” I read that with one of the early telescopes they could read the “Philosophical Transactions” at five hundred feet distance.

June 5, Thursday: Luke Fisher Parsons fought under James Henry Lane at the Battle of Franklin in the Kansas Territory.

June 5. Thursday. P.M. — To Indian Ditch. Achillea Millefolium. Black cherry, apparently yesterday. The Muscicapa Cooperi sings pe pe pé, sitting on the top of a pine, and shows white rump (?), etc., unlike kingbird. Return by J. Hosmer Desert. Everywhere now in dry pitch pine woods stand the red lady’s-slippers over the red pine leaves on the forest floor, rejoicing in June, with their two broad curving green leaves, — some even in swamps. Uphold their rich, striped red, drooping sack. This while rye begins to wave richly in the fields. A brown thrasher’s nest with four eggs considerably developed, under a small white pine on the old north edge of the desert, lined with root-fibres. The bird utters its peculiar tchuck near by. Pitch pine out, the first noticed on low land, maybe a day or two. Froth on pitch pine. A blue jay’s nest on a white pine, eight feet from ground, next to the stem, of twigs lined with root-fibres; three fresh eggs, dark dull greenish, with dusky spots equally distributed all over, in Hosmer (?) pines twenty-seven paces east of wall and fifty-seven from factory road by wall. Jay screams as usual. Sat till I got within ten feet at first. A cuckoo’s nest (Vide 10th) with three light bluish-green eggs partly developed, short with rounded ends, nearly of a size; in the thicket up railroad this side high wood, in a black cherry that had been lopped three feet from ground, amid the thick sprouts; a nest of nearly average depth (?), of twigs lined with green leaves, pine-needles, etc., and edged with some dry, branchy weeds. The bird stole off silently at first. Five rods south of railroad. I must call that cerastium of May 22d C. nutans (??), at least for the present, though I do not see grooves in stern. Oakes, in his catalogue in Thompson’s “History of Vermont,” says it is not found in northeast out of that State. The pods of the common one also turn upward. It is about four flowered; no petals; pods, which have formed in tumbler, more than twice but not thrice as long as calyx, bent down nearly at right angles with peduncles and then curving upward. The common cerastium is in tufts, spreading, a darker green and much larger, hairy but not glutinous, pods but little longer than calyx (as yet) and upright. (I afterward see these curving upward like the former!)

August 16, Saturday: The series of poems by Louisa May Alcott, entitled “Beach Bubbles,” continued in Boston’s Saturday Evening Gazette.

Luke Fisher Parsons was wounded while fighting under Captain Samuel Walker at Fort Titus in the Kansas Territory. There was one fatality. The fort was captured by the Free-Staters. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

Aug. 16. 8 A.M. — To Cassia Field. Chenopodium hybridism, a tall rank weed, five feet at least, dark-green, with a heavy (poisonous?) odor compared to that of stramonium; great maple(?)-shaped leaves. How deadly this peculiar heavy odor! Diplopappus linariifolius, apparently several days. Ambrosia pollen now begins to yellow my clothes. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Cynoglossum officinale, a long time, mostly gone to seed, at Bull's Path and north roadside below Leppleman’s. Its great radical leaves made me think of smooth mullein. The flower has a very peculiar, rather sickening odor; Sophia thought like a warm apple pie just from the oven (I did not perceive this). A pretty flower, however. I thoughtlessly put a handful of the nutlets into my pocket with my handkerchief. But it took me a long time to pick them out [of] my handkerchief when I got home, and I pulled out many threads in the process. At roadside opposite Leighton’s, just this side his learn, Monarda fistulosa, wild bergamot, nearly done, with terminal whorls and fragrance mixed of balm and summer savory. (Apparently the same kind in Loring’s yard.) The petioles are not dilated like those on Strawberry Hill road. Am surprised to find the cassia so obvious and abundant. Can see it yellowing the field twenty-five rods off, from top of hill. It is perhaps the prevailing shrub over several acres of moist rocky meadow pasture on the brook; grows in bunches, three to five feet high (from the ground this year), in the neighborhood of alders, hardhack, elecampane, etc. The lower flowers are turning white and going to seed, — polls already three inches long, — a few upper not yet opened. It resounds with the hum of bumblebees. It is branched above, some of the half-naked (of leaves) racemes twenty inches long by five or six wide. Leaves alternate, of six or eight pairs of leafets and often an odd one at base, locust-like. Looked as if they had shut up in the night. Mrs. Pratt says they do. (I observe it myself.) E. Hoar says she has known it here since she was a child. The cynoglossum by roadside opposite, and, by side of tan-yard, the apparently true Mentha viridis, or spearmint, growing very rankly in a dense bed, some four feet high, spikes rather dense, one to one and a half inches long, stem often reddish, leaves nearly sessile. Say August 1st at least. Some elecampane with the cassia is six feet high, and blades of lower leases twenty inches by seven or nine. What a variety of old garden herbs — mints, etc. — are naturalized along an old settled road, like this to Boston which the British travelled! And then there is the site, apparently, of an old garden by the tanyard, where the spearmint grows so rankly. I am intoxicated with the fragrance. Though I find only one new plant (the cassia), yet old acquaintances grow so rankly, and the spearmint intoxicates me so, that I am bewildered, as it were by a variety of new things. An infinite novelty. All the roadside is the site of an old garden where fragrant herbs have become naturalized, — hounds-tongue, bergamot, spearmint, elecampane, etc. I see even the tiger lily, with its bulbs, growing by the roadside far from houses (near Leighton’s graveyard). I think I have found many new plants, and am surprised when I can reckon but one. A little distance from my ordinary wall: and a little variety in the growth or luxuriance will produce this illusion. By the discovery of one new plant all bounds seem to be infinitely removed. Amphicarpæa some time; pods seven eighths of an inch long. Mimulus ringens four feet high, and chelone six feet high! Am frequently surprised to find how imperfectly water-plants are known. Even good shore botanists are out of their element oil the water. I would suggest to young botanists to get not only a botany-box but a boat, and know the water-plants not so much from the shore as from the water side. White morning-glory up the Assabet. I find the dog’s-bane (Apocynum androsæmifellium) bark not nearly so strong as that of the A. cannabinum. Amaranthus hypochondriacus, how long? Minott says that the meadow-grass will be good for nothing after the late overflow, when it goes down. Th water has steamed the grass. I see the rue all turned yellow by it prematurely. Bathing at Merrick’s old place, am surprised to find how swift the current. Raise the river two feet above summer level and let it be running off, and you can hardly swim against it. It has fallen about fifteen inches from the height. My plants in press are in a sad condition; mildew has invaded them during the late damp weather, even those that were nearly dry. I find more and other plants than I counted on. Very bad weather of late for pressing plants. Give me the dry heat of July. Even growing leaves out of doors are spotted with fungi now, much more than mine in press. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

August 30, Saturday/31, Sunday: Frederick Brown (2) was gunned down by Border Ruffians guided by the Reverend Martin White, on the doorstep of his sister Florilla Brown Adair and the Reverend Samuel L. Adair, at Osawatomie in the Kansas Territory (the Reverend would boast that it had been he himself who had fired the fatal shot, and explain that this had been warranted because Brown was not only a known abolitionist, but also HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

a horse thief).

THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Luke Fisher Parsons participated in this battle of Osawatomie. Jason Brown and Salmon Brown also participated, but clearly they developed trepidations for they would refuse to join their father John Brown at the raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry (Parsons also would fail to show up, although after the fact he would always offer plausible-sounding excuses).

On August 19, 1856 the Reverend Richard B. Foster of Osborne county in the Kansas Territory had written from Lawrence to his brother, the Reverend Daniel Foster in Lowell, Massachusetts, and on this day the contents of that letter were presented in the town’s Journal and Courier: RICHARD B. FOSTER’S STATEMENT. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

I was a participant in three glorious affairs which took place in this Territory last week, to wit: At Franklin on the 12th, at Washington on the 15th, and at Titus’s camp, near Lecompton, on the 16th. First, let me say that war is a terrible thing. I have before heard of it: I have now seen it. I have heard the balls whistling about my ears. I have stood where men were shot down as you would shoot wild beasts. I have heard the groans of the wounded and dying. I have seen the bloody corpses of the dead, and truly war is a terribly cruel thing. Still, war is preferable to slavery. But to the facts: Since the cessation of hostilities in June, Buford’s gang, who came to “see Kansas through,” have been busy fortifying themselves at different points in block- houses, in squads of from twenty-five to fifty in a place. These gentry are above working for a living. They depend upon the contributions of Southern aid societies — they have eked out their means of subsistence by depredations upon the Free-State men. Their most common mode is stealing horses, which they run off to the border counties of Missouri and sell. Any kind of plunder, however, when the odds are ten to one in their favor, is in their line. The most outrageous and reckless of these bands was collected in a camp and log fort near Lecompton, under Col. Titus, of the Territorial militia, who is, with good reason, suspected of having been formerly a pirate on the coast of Florida. The Free-State boys had for some time brooded over a plan for breaking up these dens of thieves. Last Tuesday, the 12th of August, Maj. Hoyt, one of the most highly esteemed and honorable citizens of Lawrence, went into one of the camps on Washington creek, which was under the command of Capt. Saunders. He went without any arms, as a Free-Mason, upon the invitation of Saunders, a brother Mason. He was received with apparent kindness, and on leaving was accompanied by two men, who shot him in a piece of woods. They lodged two balls in his body, and then shot him after he had fallen, through the head. They put some corrosive substance upon his face to disfigure him, and returned with his horse and effects. This act set the train on fire. The Lawrence boys determined to disperse these scoundrels, and recover some of their stolen property. That evening we started from Lawrence, i.e., 25 horsemen and 56 footmen. On arriving at Franklin, the first point of attack, we found the enemy had been apprised of our expedition, and were prepared to give us a warm reception. Their log fort was flanked on the one side by another log building, in which was kept the post office, and on the other by a large hotel. We could make no impression upon HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

them with our rifles, and they refused to surrender. We were determined, however, to recover our cannon, which we wanted for routing these nests of land pirates. We accordingly surrounded the fort, and commenced a brisk firing with Sharp’s rifles, which they vigorously returned. This continued about three hours. One of our men was killed, and several wounded. We then loaded a wagon with hay, backed it against the post office, and set it on fire. When the flames burst forth, the poltroons cried lustily for quarter. We then extinguished the fire, the enemy in the meantime making good their escape. They left in our hands the cannon, and upwards of fifty muskets. We took our own arms again, and emptied upon the ground several barrels of whisky, and went on our way. The citizens of Franklin took no part in this attack. The night had passed in this engagement at Franklin. We had now to prepare balls for the cannon, and we were not ready to proceed to Saunders’s till Friday. We marched upon his fort to the number of nearly 400. When about three miles distant, they could see us on a hill, and they at once fled. We found their flag in the bushes, with the motto, “Enforce the laws.” Some arms, ammunition and tents fell into our hands here. We reduced the fort to ashes. That night Col. Titus was out with his desperadoes, engaged in his favorite pastime of stealing horses, and intending, as it is supposed, to attack Judge Wakefield’s house, which, however, he found too strongly guarded. They stole three or four horses and went back to their fort, little dreaming how hard retribution was treading on their heels. In the morning his fort was surrounded, and the firing commenced. One of our best men, Capt. Shombre, was mortally wounded before our cannon arrived. That was soon brought up, and planted forty rods from the fort. It was loaded with balls run from the type metal of the Herald of Freedom press, which Col. Titus had destroyed last May. When the first shot was fired the Lawrence boys shouted, “The Herald of Freedom is issued again!” The cannon was fired six times. At the sixth fire they surrendered. One of their men was killed, and Col. Titus badly wounded. We took nineteen prisoners and a quantity of arms and ammunition. Some of the tents were identified as belonging to the Chicago company. I had the good fortune to receive the sword of Col. Titus, a very nice article which I mean to transmit to my children. The United States troops were within a mile of us, in camp, but they did not interfere. The fort was destroyed, and Titus and his gang were marched to Lawrence. The following day (Sunday) Gov. Shannon and Major HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Sedgwick came to Lawrence, and held a consultation with the Committee of Safety. It was agreed that the five Free-State prisoners arrested by the troops should be released, and the property taken at the sacking of Lawrence returned, and that then our prisoners should be set free. The men of Kansas have struck a noble blow. In the moment of victory they have shown great moderation. They are no longer to be trodden in the dust. Money contributed to help them will no longer benefit the Border-Ruffians. Kansas needs men and money. Kansas can never be made a slave State if the friends of freedom are true to their duty at this time. The men and women now here will sutler great privations, be stripped of everything, and many of them slain, unless immediate aid in men and money is furnished. They may be overborne, but they cannot be driven away. Could you have seen the spirit of the men, and of the women, too, as the last few days have called it forth, you would agree with me, that these pioneers for American freedom will stand firm to the last, be the odds against them what they may. I have seen the State prisoners — most noble men are they. They are in prison because they are the best men in Kansas. Yours, fraternally, for freedom and justice, R.B.F.

Aug. 30. Rain again in the night, as well as most of yesterday, raising the river a second time. They say there has not been such a year as this for more than half a century, —for winter cold, summer heat, and rain.

P.M. — To Vaccinium Oxycoccus Swamp. Fair weather, clear and rather cool. Pratt shows me at his shop a bottle filled with alcohol and camphor. The alcohol is clear and the camphor beautifully crystallized at the bottom for nearly an inch in depth, in the form of small feathers, like a boar frost. He has read that this is as good a barometer as any. It stands quite still, and has not been unstoppled for a year; yet some days the alcohol will be quite clear, and even no camphor will be seen, and again it will be quite full of fine feathery particles, or it will be partly clear, as to-day. Bidens connata abundant at Moore’s Swamp, how long? The aspect of some of what I have called the swamp Solidago stricta there at present makes me doubt if it be not more than a variety, the leaves are so broad, smooth (i.e. uncurled or wrinkled), and thick, and some cauline ones so large, almost speciosa-like, to say nothing of size of rays. The Aster puniceus is hardly yet in prime; its Great umbel-shaped tops not yet fully out. Its leaves are pretty generally whitened with mildew and unsightly. Even the chelone, where prostrate, has put forth roots from its stem, near the top. The sarothra is now apparently in prime on the Great Fields, and comes near being open now, at 3 P.M. Bruised, it has the fragrance of sorrel and lemon, rather pungent or stinging, like a bee. Hypericum corymbosum lingers still, with perforatum. I have come out this afternoon a-cranberrying, chiefly to gather some of the small cranberry, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, which Emerson says is the common cranberry of the north of Europe. This was a small object, yet not to be postponed, on account of imminent frosts, i.e., if I would know this year the flavor of the European cranberry as compared with our larger kind. I thought I should like to have a dish of this sauce on the table at Thanksgiving of my own gathering. I could hardly make up my mind to come this way, it seemed so poor an object to spend the afternoon on. I kept foreseeing a lame conclusion, — how I should cross the Great Fields, look into Beck Stowe’s, and then retrace my steps no richer than before. In fact, I expected little of this walk, HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

yet it did pass through the side of my mind that somehow, on this very account (my small expectation), it would turn out well, as also the advantage of having some purpose, however small, to be accomplished — of letting your deliberate wisdom and foresight in the house to some extent direct and control your steps. If you would really, take a position outside the street and daily life of men, you must have deliberately planned your course, you must have business which is not your neighbors’ business, which they cannot understand. For only absorbing employment prevails, succeeds, tallies all space, occupies territory, determines the future of individuals and states, drives Kansas out of your head, and actually and permanently occupies the only desirable and free Kansas against all border ruffians. The attitude of resistance is one of weakness, inasmuch as it only faces an enemy; it has its back to all that is truly attractive. You shall have your affairs, I will have mine. You will spend this afternoon in setting up your neighbor’s stove, and be paid for it; I will spend it in gathering the few berries of the Vaccinium Oxycoccus which Nature produces here, before it is too late, and be paid for it also after another fashion. I have always reaped unexpected and incalculable advantages from carrying out at last, however tardily, any little enterprise which my genius suggested to me long ago as a thing to be done. some step to be taken, however slight, out of the usual course. How many schools I have thought of which I might go to but did not go to! expecting foolishly that some greater advantage or schooling would come to me! It is these comparatively cheap and private expeditions that substantiate our existence and batten our lives, as, where a vine touches the earth in its undulating course, it puts forth roots and thickens its stock. Our employment generally is tinkering, mending the old worn-out teapot of society. Our stock in trade is solder. Better for me, says my genius, to go cranberrying this afternoon for the Vaccinium Oxycoccus in Gowing’s Swamp, to get but a pocketful and learn its peculiar flavor, aye, and the flavor of Gowing’s Swamp and of life in New England, than to go consul to Liverpool and get I don’t know how many thousand dollars for it, with no such flavor. Many of our days should be spent, not in vain expectations and lying on our oars, but in carrying out deliberately and faithfully the hundred little purposes which every man’s genius must have suggested to him. Let not your life be wholly without an object, though it be only to ascertain the flavor of a cranberry, for it will not be only the quality of an insignificant berry that you will have tasted, but the flavor of your life to that extent, and it will be such a sauce as no wealth can buy. Both a conscious and an unconscious life are good. Neither is good exclusively, for both have the same source. The wisely conscious life springs out of an unconscious suggestion. I have found my account in travelling in having prepared beforehand a list of questions which I would get answered, not trusting to my interest at the moment, and can then travel with the most profit. Indeed, it is by obeying the suggestions of a higher light within you that you escape from yourself and, in the transit, as it were see with the unworn sides of your eye, travel totally new paths. What is that pretended life that does not take up a claim, that does not occupy ground, that cannot build a causeway to its objects, that sits on a bank looking over a bog, singing its desires? However, it was not with such blasting expectations as these that I entered the swamp. I saw bags of cranberries, just gathered and tied up, on the banks of Beck Stow’s Swamp. They must have been raked out of the water, now so high, before they should rot. I left my shoes send stockings on the bank far off and waded barelegged through rigid andromeda and other bushes a long way, to the soft open sphagnous centre of the swamp. I found these cunning little cranberries lying high and dry on the firm uneven tops of the sphagnum, — their weak vine considerably on one side, — sparsely scattered about the drier edges of the swamp, or sometimes more thickly occupying some little valley a foot or two over, between two mountains of sphagnum. They were of two varieties, judging from the fruit. The one, apparently the ripest, colored most like the common cranberry but more scarlet, i.e. yellowish-green, blotched or checked with dark scarlet-red, commonly pear-shaped; the other, also pear-shaped, or more bulged out in the middle, thickly and finely dark-spotted, or peppered oil yellowish-green or straw-colored or pearly ground, — almost exactly like the smilacina and convallaria berries now, except that they are a little larger and not so spherical, — and with a tinge of purple. A singular difference. They both lay very snug in the moss, often the whole of the long (an inch and a half or more) peduncle buried, their vines very inobvious, projecting only one to three inches, so that it was not easy to tell what vine they belonged to, and you were obliged to open the moss carefully with your fingers to ascertain it, while the common large cranberry there, with its stiff erect vine, was commonly lifted above the sphagnum. The grayish speckled variety was particularly novel and pretty, though not easy to detect. It lay here and there snugly sunk in the sphagnum, whose drier parts it exactly resembled in color, just like some kind of swamp sparrows, eggs in their nest. I was obliged with my finger carefully to trace the slender pedicel through the moss to its vine, when I would pluck the whole together. Like jewels worn on, or set in, these sphagnous breasts of the swamp, — swamp pearls, call them. One or two to a vine and, on an average, three eighths of an inch in diameter. They are so remote from their vines, on their long thread-like peduncles, that they remind you the more forcibly of eggs, and in May I might mistake them for such. These plants are almost parasitic, resting wholly on the sphagnum, in water instead of air. The sphagnum is a living soil for it. It rests on and amid this, on an acre of HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sponges. They are evidently earlier than the common. A few are quite soft and red-purple. I waded quite round the swamp for an hour, my bare feet in the cold water beneath, and it was a relief to place them on the warmer surface of the sphagnum. I filled one pocket with each variety, but sometimes, being confused, crossed hands and put them into the wrong pocket. I enjoyed this cranberrying very much, notwithstanding the wet and cold, and the swamp seemed to be yielding its crop to me alone, for there are none else to pluck it or to value it. I told the proprietor once that they grew here, but he, learning that they were not abundant enough to be gathered for the market, has probably never thought of them since. I am the only person in the township who regards them or knows of them, and I do not regard them in the light of their pecuniary value. I have no doubt I felt richer wading there with my two pockets full, treading on wonders at every step, than any farmer going to market with a hundred bushels which he has raked, or hired to be raked. I got further and further away from the town every moment, and my good genius seemed [to] have smiled on me, leading me hither, and then the sun suddenly came out clear and bright, but it did not warm my feet. I would gladly share my gains, take one, or twenty, into partnership and get this swamp with them, but I do not know an individual whom this berry cheers and nourishes as it does me. When I exhibit it to them I perceive that they take but a momentary interest in it and commonly dismiss it from their thoughts with the consideration that it cannot be profitably cultivated. You could not get a pint at one haul of a rake, and Slocum would not give you much for them. But I love it the better partly for that reason even. I fill a basket with them and keep it several days by my side. If anybody else — any farmer, at least — should spend an hour thus wading about here in this secluded swamp, barelegged, intent on the sphagnum, filling his pocket only, with no rake in his hand and no bag or bushel on the bank, he would be pronounced insane and have a guardian put over him; but if he’ll spend his tune skimming and watering his milk and selling his small potatoes for large ones, or generally in skinning flints, he will probably be made guardian of somebody else. I have not garnered any rye or oats, but I gathered the wild vine of the Assabet. As I waded there I came across an ant-like heap, and, breaking it open with my hand, found it to my surprise to be an ant-hill in the sphagnum, full of ants with their young or ova. It consisted of particles of sphagnum like sawdust, was a foot and a half in diameter, and my feet sunk to water all around it! The ants were small and of a uniform pale sorrel-color. I noticed also a few small peculiar-looking huckleberries hanging on bushes amid the sphagnum, and, tasting, perceived that they were hispid, a new kind to me. Gaylussacia dumosa var. hirtella (perhaps just after resinosa), though Gray refers it to a “sandy low soil” and says nothing of the hispid fruit. It grows from one to two feet high, the leaves minutely resinous-dotted — are not others? — and mucronate, the racemes long, with leaf-like bracts now turned conspicuously red. Has a small black hairy or hispid berry, shining; but insipid and inedible, with a tough, hairy skin left in the mouth; has very prominent calyx-lobes. I seemed to have reached a new world, so wild a place that the very huckleberries grew hairy and were inedible. I feel as if I were in Rupert’s Land, and a slight cool but agreeable shudder comes over me, as if equally far away from human society. What’s the need of visiting far-off mountains and bogs, if a half hour’s walk will carry me into such wildness and novelty? But why should not as wild plants grow here as in Berkshire, as in Labrador? Is Nature so easily tamed? Is she not as primitive and vigorous here as anywhere? How does this particular acre of secluded, unfrequented, useless (?) quaking bog differ from an acre in Labrador? Has any white man ever settled on it? Does any now frequent it? Not even the Indian comes here now. I see that there are some square rods within twenty miles of Boston just as wild and primitive and unfrequented as a square rod in Labrador, as unaltered by man. Here grows the hairy huckleberry as it did in Squaw Sachem’s day and a thousand years before, and concerns me perchance more than it did her. I have no doubt that for a moment I experience exactly the same sensations as if I were alone in a bog in Rupert’s land, and it saves me the trouble of going there; for what in any case makes the difference between being here and being there but many such little differences of flavor and roughness put together? Rupert’s Land is recognized as much by one sense as another. 1 felt a shock, a thrill, an agreeable surprise in one instant, for, no doubt, all the possible inferences were at once drawn, with a rush, in my mind, — I could be in Rupert’s Land and supping at home within the hour! This beat the railroad. I recovered from my surprise without danger to my sanity, and permanently annexed Rupert’s Land. That wild hairy huckleberry, inedible as it was, was equal to a domain secured to me and reaching to the South Sea. That was an unexpected harvest. I hope you have gathered as much, neighbor, from your corn and potato fields. I have got in my huckleberries. I shall be ready for Thanksgiving. It is in vain to dreams of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is the bog in our brain and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess in Concord, i.e. than I import into it. A little more manhood or virtue will make the surface of the globe anywhere thrillingly novel and wild. That alone will provide and pay the fiddler; it will convert the district road into an untrodden cranberry bog, for it restores all things to their original primitive HDT WHAT? INDEX

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flourishing and promising state. A cold white horizon sky in the north, forerunner of the fall of the year. I go to bed and dream of cranberry- pickers far in the cold north. With windows partly closed, with continent concentrated thoughts, I dream. I get JENNY LIND my new experiences still, not at the opera listening to the Swedish Nightingale, but at Beck Stow’s Swamp listening to the native wood thrush [Wood Thrush Catharus mustelina]. Wading in the cold swamp braces me. I was invigorated, though I tasted not a berry. The frost will soon come and smite them on the surface of the sphagnum. Consider how remote and novel that swamp. Beneath it is a quaking bed of sphagnum, and in it grow Andromeda Polifolia, Kalmia glauca, menyanthes (or buck-bean), Gaylussacia dumosa, Vaccinium Oxycoccus, — plants which scarcely a citizen of Concord ever sees. It would be as novel to them to stand there as in a conservatory, or in Greenland. Better it is to go a-cranberrying than to go a-huckleberrying. For that is cold and bracing, leading your thoughts beyond the earth, and you do not surfeit on crude or terrene berries. It feeds your spirit, now in the season of white twilights, when frosts are apprehended, when edible berries are mostly gone. Those small gray sparrow-egg cranberries lay so prettily in the recesses of the sphagnum, I could wade for hours in the cold water gazing at them, with a swarm of mosquitoes hovering about my bare legs, — but at each step the friendly sphagnum in which I sank protected my legs like a buckler, — not a crevice by which my foes could enter. I see that all is not garden and cultivated field and crops, that there are square rods in Middlesex County as purely primitive and wild as they were a thousand years ago, which have escaped the plow and the axe and the scythe and the cranberry-rake, little oases of wildness in the desert of our civilization, wild as a square rod on the moon, supposing it to be uninhabited. I believe almost in the personality of such planetary matter, feel something akin to reverence for it, can even worship it as terrene, titanic matter extant in my day. We are so different we admire each other, we healthily attract one another. I love it as a maiden. These spots are meteoric, acrolitic, and such matter has in all ages been worshipped. Aye, when we are lifted out of the slime and film of our habitual life, we see the whole globe to be an aerolite, and reverence it as such, and make pilgrimages to it, far off as it is. How happens it that we reverence the stones which fall from another planet, and not the stones which belong to this, — another globe, not this, — heaven, and not earth? Are not the stones in Hodge’s wall as good as the aerolite at Mecca? Is not our broad back-door-stone as good as any corner-stone in heaven? It would imply the regeneration of mankind, if they were to become elevated enough to truly worship sticks and stones. It is the sentiment of fear and slavery and habit which makes a heathenish idolatry. Such idolaters abound in all countries, and heathen cross the seas to reform heathen, dead to bury the dead, and all go down to the pit together. If I could, I would worship the parings of my nails. If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor, he who discovers two gods where there was only known the one (and such a one!) before is a still greater benefactor. I would fain improve every opportunity to wonder and worship, as a sunflower welcomes the light. The more thrilling, wonderful, divine objects I behold in a day, the more expanded and immortal I become. If a stone appeals to me and elevates me, tells me how many miles I have come, how many remain to travel, — and to the more, the better, — reveals the future to me in some measure, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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it is a matter of private rejoicing. If it did the same service to all, it might well be a matter of public rejoicing.

FALL OF STONES THE BLACK STONE OF MECCA

Fall: George William Curtis, who had made of himself a popular abolitionist lecturer, campaigned for Republican presidential candidate John Charles Frémont.

Luke Fisher Parsons returned from the Kansas Territory to Byron, Illinois. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1857

Spring: The settlers of Hyatt in the Kansas Territory erected a sawmill, to which in the next fall a grist mill would be attached.

With the opening of a US land office in Lecompton, it became possible to file land claims in the Kansas Territory. Luke Fisher Parsons returned from Byron, Illinois to work his land claim 4 miles west of Lawrence in the Kansas Territory.

Ellery Channing vacationed in Concord for at least a dozen days.

Fall: Luke Fisher Parsons went with John Brown to Springdale, Iowa.

The new Republican Party took firm control of the Massachusetts state government.

George William Curtis initiated a column in Harper’s entitled “The Lounger.”

November: There was an Underground Railroad line, the “stations” of which were Salem in Southeastern Iowa, Tabor, Lewis, Des Moines, Grinnel, Iowa City, West Liberty, Springdale (a Quaker community outside Iowa City), Tipton, Dewitt, and Clinton. During the early winter John Brown hiked crosscountry from Tabor to Springdale with his group (Brown’s son Owen Brown, John Edwin Cook, John Henry Kagi, William H. Leeman, Charles Moffett, Luke F. Parsons, Richard Realf, Richard Richardson, Aaron D. Stevens, and Charles Plummer Tidd, plus some runaway slaves). The trip required 25 days. A Quaker elder is reported to have said to Brown, “Thou art welcome to tarry among us but we have no use for thy guns.” Friend John Hunt Painter, later the founder of Pasadena, California, was the only local Quaker we now know to have had knowledge of the violence of Brown’s plan. He said, “Friend, I can’t give thee money to buy powder and lead but here’s $20 toward thy expenses.” THE QUAKER PEACE TESTIMONY

William and Delilah Maxson of North Liberty, a community about 3 miles to the northeast of Springdale, who were not Quakers, agreed to provide board for the group in their substantial home at the rate of $1.50 per week per person, not including laundry or extra candles, and to take payment not in cash but in the wagons and teams the group had been using to transport rifles and pikes. William Maxson was aware of the violence of Brown’s plan, but not being a Quaker, he had no objection. The Maxsons and the escaped slaves slept in the large cellar, and John Brown had a room on the main floor for the short intervals during which he was in town that winter, and the white men with him slept in the garret. Maria Todd, who would become the wife of Elza Maxson, also slept in that cellar during that winter. The Maxsons and Aaron D. Stevens were spiritualists. A mock legislature was staged on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the big west room of the Maxson home until so many neighbors HDT WHAT? INDEX

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attended that they needed to convene at the community’s brick schoolhouse. Parliamentary rules were enforced and the topics engaged with included war, partisan politics, human enslavement, political and civil rights for American blacks, college education and civil rights for women, banking laws, prohibitory liquor laws, mechanics, theology, natural philosophy, and, of course, spiritualism. During the winter the forenoons were spent in military studies and Stevens, known as Colonel Whipple, led drills in which the men carried wooden swords and pikes and maneuvered on the front lawn. The evenings were given over to reading in books such as PLUTARCH’S LIVES, writing letters, and debating. John Henry Kagi offered instruction in shorthand. That winter, Stevens was a frequent visitor at the home of Moses Varney. His daughter Anna Varney Phelps would tell of sitting on Stephens’ knee while, with tears rolling down his cheeks, he would sing in his beautiful tenor “Will they miss me at home, Mother? Will they miss me?

Winter: Professor Henry Youle Hind taught at Trinity College, served as curator of the Canadian Institute, and wrote up a report on that summer’s expedition.

Luke Fisher Parsons spent the winter with John Brown and a band of 10 men whom Brown selected at Springdale, Iowa, training in military drill and tactics. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1858

Spring: Edwin Coppoc migrated to the Kansas Territory as a settler, but, since he had been raised as an adopted child in a nonresistant-abolitionist Quaker farm family, would take no part in the fighting there.

Luke Fisher Parsons went with John Brown to Chatham, Canada (after creating what they termed a “Provincial Constitution,” they would cross Lake Erie to Cleveland, Ohio where Brown trusted he would get financial help to carry on his plans to put down slavery; he would be disappointed in this and the project would be abandoned for a time. Parsons would visit his family home in Byron, Illinois and spend several months working in Gorton’s Carriage Shop at Kinsman, Ohio; then he would go gold adventuring during a Pikes Peak rush).

“Colonel” Hugh Forbes, who after receiving $600 as his initial 6-month salary had cooled his heels in Mount Tabor, Iowa for 3 months for the arrival of troops to train for Captain John Brown, had begun writing letters to various influential people such as Franklin Benjamin Sanborn and Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe and members of the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee (whom he was referring to sarcastically as “humanitarians”), demanding to know why they were starving his wife and son and daughter in France. This loose cannon had definitely rolled from the asset category into the liability category. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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(It would be during a visit to Springdale, Iowa in Fall 1858 that he would meet John Brown. He would surrender with Captain Brown in the engine house at Harpers Ferry, and would be tried by a jury of his white male peers immediately after the conclusion of the trial of Captain Brown while his brother Barclay Coppoc was eluding capture. He would be sentenced to death on November 2, 1859. From prison before his hanging, he would write to his adoptive mother that he was

“sorry to say that I was ever induced to raise a gun.”

He would be hung with John E. Cook on December 16, 1859. The body would be buried in Winona after a funeral attended by the entire town. Later the body would be reburied in Salem, Ohio.)

December 20, Monday: The John Brown group raided into Missouri Territory and plundered the homes of a couple of slavemasters there. Luke Fisher Parsons was one of those who participated in this. Executing one of these property holders, they liberated 11 slaves. In addition the expedition confiscated several wagons, horses and mules, 5 firearms, and almost $100.00 toward the expense of their antislavery crusade. THE 2D GREAT AMERICAN DISUNION

December 20: Walden is frozen over, except two small spots, less than half an acre in all, in middle. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1859

January 1, Friday: Henry Thoreau began extracting material from his journal for the lecture “AUTUMNAL TINTS”.

January 1, 1859: [L]ive at home like a traveler. It should not be in vain that these things are shown us from day to day. Is not each withered leaf that I see in my walks something which I have traveled to find? – traveled, who can tell how far? What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives!

Henry Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake:

CONCORD, January 1, 1859. MR. B——:— It may interest you to hear that C—— has been this way again, via Montreal and Lake Huron, go- ing to the West Indies, or rather to Weiss-nicht- wo, whither he urges me to accompany him. He is rather more demonstrative than before, and, on the whole, what would be called “a good fellow,” —is a man of principle, and quite reliable, but HDT WHAT? INDEX

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very peculiar. I have been to New Bedford with him, to show him a whaling town and R——. I was glad to hear that you had called on R——. How did you like him? I suspect that you did not see one another fairly. I have lately got back to that glorious society, called Solitude, where we meet our Friends con- tinually, and can imagine the outside world also to be peopled. Yet some of my acquaintance would fain hustle me into the almshouse for the sake of society, as if I were pining for that diet, when I seem to myself a most befriended man, and find constant employment. However, they do not be- lieve a word I say. They have got a club, the handle of which is in the Parker House at Boston, and with this they beat me from time to time, ex- pecting to make me tender or minced meat so, fit for a club to dine off. “Hercules with his club The Dragon did drub; But More of More Hall, With nothing at all, He slew the Dragon of Wantley.” Ah! that More of More Hall knew what fair play was. C——, who wrote to me about it once, brandishing the club vigorously, being set on by another, probably, says now, seriously, that he is sorry to find by my letters that I am “absorbed in politics,” and adds, begging my pardon for his plainness, “Beware of an extraneous life!” and so he does his duty, and washes his hands of me. I tell him that it is as if he should say to the sloth, that fellow that creeps so slowly along a tree, and cries out from time to time, “Beware of dancing!” The doctors are all agreed that I am suffering for want of society. Was never a case like it? First, I did not know that I was suffering at all. Secondly, as an Irishman might say, I had thought it was indigestion of the society I got. As for the Parker House, I went there once when the Club was away, but I found it hard to see through the cigar smoke, and men were deposited about in chairs over the marble floor, as thick as HDT WHAT? INDEX

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legs of bacon in a smoke-house. It was all smoke, and no salt, attic or other. The only room in Boston which I visit with alacrity, is the Gentle- men’s Room at the Fitchburg Dep’t, where I wait for the cars, sometimes for two hours, in order to get out of town. It is a paradise to the Parker House, for no smoking is allowed, and there is far more retirement. A large and respectable club of us hire it (Town and Country Club), and I am pretty sure to find some one there whose face is set the same way as my own. My last essay, on which I am still engaged, is called Autumnal Tints. I do not know how read- able (i.e. by me to others) it will be. I met Mr. J—— the other night at Emerson’s, at an Alcottian conversation, at which, however, A—— did not talk much, being disturbed by J——’s opposition. The latter is a hearty man enough, with whom you can differ very satisfac- torily, on account of both his doctrines and his good temper. He utters quasi philanthropic dog- mas in a metaphysic dress; but they are for all practical purposes very crude. He charges society with all the crime committed, and praises the criminal for committing it. But I think that all the remedies he suggests out of his head, — for he goes no farther, hearty as he is, — would leave us about where we are now. For, of course, it is not by a gift of turkeys on Thanksgiving Day that he proposes to convert the criminal, but by a true sympathy with each one, — with him, among the rest, who lyingly tells the world from the gallows that he has never been treated kindly by a single mortal since he was born. But it is not so easy a thing to sympathize with another, though you may have the best disposition to do it. There is Dob- son over the hill. Have not you and I and all the world been trying, ever since he was born, to sympathize with him? (as doubtless he with us,) and yet we have got no further than to send him to the House of Correction once at least; and he, on the other hand, as I hear, has sent us to an- other place several times. This is the real state HDT WHAT? INDEX

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of things, as I understand it, as least so far as J——’s remedies go. We are now, alas! exer- cising what charity we actually have, and new laws would not give us any more. But, per- chance, we might make some improvements in the House of Correction. You and I are Dobson; what will J—— do for us? Have you found at last in your wanderings a place where the solitude is sweet? What mountain are you camping on now-a- days? Though I had a good time at the moun- tains, I confess that the journey did not bear any fruit that I know of. I did not expect it would. The mode of it was not simple and adventurous enough. You must first have made an infinite de- mand, and not unreasonably, but after a corre- sponding outlay, have an all-absorbing purpose, and at the same time that your feet bear you hither and thither, travel much more in imagina- tion. To let the mountains slide, — live at home like a traveller. It should not be in vain that these things are shown us from day to day. Is [not] each withered leaf that I see in my walks some- thing which I have travelled to find? — travelled, who can tell how far? What a fool he must be who thinks that his El Dorado is anywhere but where he lives! We are always, methinks, in some kind of ra- vine, though our bodies may walk the smooth streets of Worcester. Our souls (I use this word for want of a better) are ever perched on its rocky sides, overlooking that lowland. (What a more than Tuckerman’s Ravine is the body itself, in which the “soul” is encamped, when you come to look into it! However, eagles always have chosen such places for their eyries.) Thus is it ever with your fair cities of the plain. Their streets may be paved with silver and gold, and six carriages roll abreast in them, but the real homes of the citizens are in the Tuck- erman’s Ravines which ray out from that centre into the mountains round about, one for each man, HDT WHAT? INDEX

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woman, and child. The masters of life have so ordered it. That is their beau-ideal of a country seat. There is no danger of being “tuckered” out before you get to it. So we live in Worcester and in Concord, each man taking his exercise regularly in his ravine, like a lion in his cage, and sometimes spraining his ancle there. We have very few clear days, and a great many small plagues which keep us busy. Sometimes, I suppose, you hear a neighbor halloo (B——, may be) and think it is a bear. Never- theless, on the whole, we think it very grand and exhilarating, this ravine life. It is a capital ad- vantage withal, living so high, the excellent drain- age of that city of God. Routine is but a shal- low and insignificant sort of ravine, such as the ruts are, the conduits of puddles. But these ra- vines are the source of mighty streams, — precipi- tous, icy, savage, as they are, haunted by bears and loup-cerviers, there are born not only Sacos and Amazons, but prophets who will redeem the world. The at last smooth and fertilizing water at which nations drink and navies supply them- selves, begins with melted glaciers, and burst thunder-spouts. Let us pray, that, if we are not flowing through some Mississippi valley which we fertilize, — and it is not likely we are, — we may know ourselves shut in between grim and mighty mountain walls amid the clouds, falling a thousand feet in a mile, through dwarfed fir and spruce, over the rocky insteps of slides, being exercised in our minds, and so developed. H.D.T.

In Kinsman, Ohio and then on his adventure after gold in Colorado, winding up back in Kansas, Luke Fisher Parsons would be keeping a diary (we notice immediately that it is a diary, not a journal; he would also be keeping a diary, a most incomplete one, during Union service in the Civil War, although its fragments have not been considered to be worth transcribing). January 4, 1859: After running all over town after horse and buggy to go to a Donation, I concluded to enjoy myself by staying at home. January 5, 1859: Tried to get a horse and buggy to go to Wayne to a dancing school, but no go as usual. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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January 6, 1859: I went up to the academy and put my name on the roll to form a writing class. January 13, 1859: I went to writing school this evening. I had to roll up my “sleeves” and wade through a perfect sea of mud. Only a few out. No ladies. January 15, 1859: Peter (my brother is crossed out) went to writing school and I stayed at home to read Tribune. Read that Kagi (John Brown man) was wounded at Ft. Scott. January 27, 1859: Had a violent headache all afternoon. C. Case went to Samson’s Donation in the rain. The den is as dirty as ever. A pint bottle to hold candle. January 28, 1859: Went to Captain Jones’ to a dance. There were but few there. Had a good time considering. I took Jennie Dunbar. She would not dance. Reed of Orangeville wore short breeches and stockings. February 2, 1859: Tried very had to go to Wayne. Got a buggy, but could not get a horse. February 5, 1859: A candy pull over to Petten’s. A great many over from Gustavas. Good sleighing. Peter went to Warren with Potter. February 6, 1859: This evening Sarah Christie came here with a horse and sleigh. Mrs. Knapp, Dette and I took a short ride. Then Sid, Charlie Moffit, Jennie Dunbar and Sarah took a ride. February 13, 1859: Charlie and Jennie went home to Christie’s and Sarah went with them. I stayed in the den and told Kansas stories to the boys. February 16, 1859: I got Gorton’s horse and Potter’s buggy and went up to Wayne to a dance. Denton lectured on Geology until eight o’clock and we danced until twelve. I stayed at A.E. Foabs until morning. February 23, 1859: We tapped seventy trees, and went to the dancing school. Very muddy and rainy. February 25, 1859: Gathered sap for maple sugar; boiled down at night; sugared off. March 4, 1859: A.E. Foabs and I gathered about sixteen barrels of sap. Charlie boiled all down in one day. March 7, 1859: Helped Foabs gather sap and boiled it in the evening. Charlie and I went up to John Brown, Jr.’s. Saw Theodore King, inventor of saw files. March 8, 1859: Came home from John’s. Saw Miss Jennie Dunbar and heard her play on melodeon. She came five miles on horseback through rain and mud. Good spunk, I think. March 10, 1859: Started for Byron, Illinois (my home town) today. Arrived in Jefferson at six. Arrived in Cleveland at eleven and stayed at Sturtivants. (Charlie Moffit’s married HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sister’s). Charlie told me his secret in the bus. March 11, 1859: Left Cleveland at eleven forty for Chicago by way of Toledo, and Charles got off at South Bend to spend Saturday with Martha R. Traded some in Cleveland. Byron, Illinois March 12, 1859: Arrived at Chicago at 4:30. Stopped at Eagle House. Left at 8:40 and arrived at Rockford at 12:00. Went on to Winnebago where I found A.H. Vanwhirden and rode home (Byron, Illinois) with him. March 13, 1859: Sunday. Went to Meeting. Evening went down to Wm. Dunning’s. At night girls and boys asked me to join their Bible Class. I told them I would if they would play Euchre. March 14, 1859: Rain and snow. Dr. Stevens and I stayed at Dr. Helms’ all night. Played chess with my brother Nahum. I gained two. Professor Hall of Mt. Morris was here. (Dr. Stevens afterward married my sister Addie). March 15, 1859: Went to an exhibition given by the Black Walnut Association for the benefit of the Brass Band. Took Helen (my step sister). A very large crowd. March 16, 1859: Professor Hale lectured on the “Harmony of the Bible with Geology and Science.” He twisted the Bible into many different shapes. March 17, 1859: Sent to Rockford for my baggage, but Satterly had my checks, so the boys did not get it. Went up to see Moses Fisk and his wife, Abby. She had company. Talked some of putting in a bid to carry the mail from here to Fullerton. Several persons at our house this evening and we wrote “Machine Poetry.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Spring: Luke Fisher Parsons and his party of gold adventurers were waiting in Council Bluffs, Iowa for grass to grow on the plains, to nourish their horses, when he received letters from John Brown and from John Henry Kagi saying “You must turn back. Sure go this time. We depend on you; come, do come.” He disregarded these letters and continued west. Then, while crossing Nebraska, the party learned that the Pikes Peak Gold Rush was a bust, and Parsons headed south and back to Lawrence, Kansas. He sold his stake in the gold-seeking venture to another participant and went to Osawatomie and worked in a mill.

Brownson’s Quarterly Review, No. 13

I. Usury Laws II. Catholicity and Civilization CATHOLICISM III. The Humanists IV. Primitive Elements of Thought V. Conversations on Theocracy VI. Popular Amusements VII. Literary Notices and Criticisms

MAGAZINES ORESTES AUGUSTUS BROWNSON Parsons continued in his diary: March 21, 1859: I made a bargain with the boys to go to Pikes Peak. Joseph Irvine got my trunk and baggage from Rockford. Since coming to Byron, I have been working in Moses Fisk’s carriage shop. March 23, 1859: Made four camp chairs and two boxes for side of wagon to be used for Pikes Peak trip. Father go me $9.00 worth of clothing in Rockford at a good bargain. March 24, 1859: Stayed at my uncle Charles Fisher’s tonight. Mother and the girls are at work on my shirts. Showed Moses a diagram for making a stick seat for a buggy. March 25, 1859: Sister Addie, Sister Helen, friend Carried, Frank Biglow, Dr. Stevens and I spent the evening at Louvie Hall’s very pleasantly. March 26, 1859: Went out to David Whittaker’s. Stayed all night. I bought a pair of boots at Mix’s for #3.50 and bought a pair of gloves at George Aims’ for $1.00. Several teams went through here enroute for Pikes Peak. Got money of George Swan. March 27, 1859: Sunday. Did not go to Meeting. Wrote to John Brown, Jr. Saw my brother-in-law Joseph Irwin and uncle Charles Fisher in town. Bid them good-bye. In the evening, went down to see Louvie Hall. March 28, 1859: We did not start west for it rained all night HDT WHAT? INDEX

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and all day and is snowing tonight. Mr. Harris and Frank Biglow bought another cow for our trip. March 31, 1859: A raft went down the river with dry goods. Two wagons arrived here from Rockford bound for Pikes Peak. April 2, 1859: Father, Dr. Stevens and Biglow went to hear Miss Isabelle Schongle lecture on “Spiritualism”. Father like it very much. April 3, 1859: Sunday. I went to hear Miss Schongle twice. In the evening, we got together at Jerald’s (a groceryman) and gave him the money to buy provisions at St. Louise for our trip to Pikes Peak. April 5, 1859: We left Byron this afternoon for Pikes Peak with covered wagon drawn by a yoke of steers and yoke of cows, and are now four miles out. I officiate as cook. The road is good. Have about twenty-eight or thirty hundred pound load. Town meeting today. April 6, 1859: Fourteen and one-half miles from Byron. Pretty hard going today. We did not camp until long after dark. April 7, 1859: Camped on a hill between Fullerton and Cherry Grove. Stopped late at night. No wood, water, or hay. We traveled about nine miles and had to back our load out of mud twice. April 8, 1859: We backed our load twice today. We talked with several who reported discouraging news from the mines at Pikes Peak. Several teams came back after going part way through Iowa. April 9, 1859: On ferry boat crossing from Savannah, Iowa. I cooked the prairie chickens and wild pigeons for breakfast and made some biscuits. Savannah is a dirty little hole. April 12, 1859: Sitting in wagon while the boys go back with teams to help others through Deep Creek. This is the worst place I ever saw. We had on six yoke of oxen and then liked to have stuck. April 14, 1859: Slept in barn. Snowed last night. We wait for better roads. Nearly every one in Iowa seems to be going to the Peak as soon as grass starts. Charles is generally constitutionally tired. He is writing home now. April 18, 1859: At noon we got hay. Came through some bad places today. Had on nine yoke of oxen. Once they pulled four times before the wagon started. April 19, 1859: Doubled teams twice. Made fifteen miles. Difficult getting hay. Passed through Fair View, Iowa. Yesterday and today one of our black oxen troubled us by lying down in the road. April 20, 1859: We have come through a good many hard places today. Had to double teams four times. We are making an effort to lighten our load. Six horse teams passed us today. We passed through Marion, Iowa which is in Linn County. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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April 21, 1859: Camped late, twelve miles west of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which we passed through today. Have traveled fifteen miles. We went into a lodge of Musqualla Indians. I bought some maple sugar of them. April 25, 1859: Camped two miles west of West Field. Made twenty- one miles. Passed through Brooklyn in sight of Grinnell and through West Field, Iowa. I passed over this road about sixteen months ago with old John Brown of Kansas Territory. We had to double teams once. April 26, 1859: Roads muddy, but got through without doubling teams. Camped three miles west of Newton in Jasper County. Made twelve miles. Saw any amount of teams. Some have turned back. The road is lined with old camping places. April 29, 1859: Noon in Ft. Des Moines. We came through Rising Sun this morning. Crossed the Des Moines River on toll bridge and camped five miles south of Ft. Des Moines at noon today. Nine hundred and forty Pikes Peak teams had crossed the bridge in Des Moines. April 30, 1859: Camped twenty-five miles west of Winterset. Made nineteen miles. Some have turned their cows on grass and intend to wait until there is enough for them to travel on. Passed through northwest corner of Warren County. May 8, 1859: Made seventeen miles. Camped on bottom between Council Bluffs, Iowa and Omaha, Nebraska. I think there are two hundred and fifty teams in sight. The Bluffs are a very pretty sight. Only one principal street. May 11, 1859: Came over into Nebraska. Camped three miles north of Omaha. May 15, 1859: Went over to Council Bluffs to see how the pulse beat with the “Peakers,” and we got very wet. I am now in the River House, situated on the river bottom three miles from the Bluffs. May 17, 1859: Left Omaha about ten o’clock. Made ten miles. Found water, grass, and willow for wood. Net about twenty-five teams returning. May 22, 1859: Am sitting on the north bank of the Platte River at Shinn’s Ferry. Three teams here before us. Wind too high to cross. May 23, 1859: Still at the ferry and wind too high to go to the other side with a load, but they have been coming to this side all day. May 24, 1859: Now on the opposite side of the Platte River. We crossed on two ferries. One on each side of an island three- fourths of a mile wide. I never saw the wind blow harder in my life than it did then. May 27, 1859: Gave up going to Pikes Peak, concluded to go to HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Kansas instead. Maybe I can get job of breaking prairie with oxen. May 29, 1859: Made fifteen miles to Weeping Water. Passed thirty-seven Mormon teams. May 31, 1859: Camped in the suburbs of Nebraska City. Saw a man who is going to drive to Salt Lake City, Utah. June 1, 1859: Frank Biglow bought out Charles and we left him to go home. Made about seventeen miles. Camped in Peru on the bank of the Missouri River. Here are some people from Wooster, Mass. June 3, 1859: Camped on Big Muddy. Made about eighteen miles. This is a good country. Fine land and plenty of timber. The Mulley cow got so tender footed that we shod her with leather. June 6, 1859: Rode all day. My head is swelled so with ivy poisoning that I can only see with one eye. Very sick last night. Last night one of the Indian boys prescribed for me in a spiritual trance. June 7, 1859: Rode all day. Face some better. We took a high divide and traveled without any road. Camped on military road forty miles out from Leavenworth, Kansas. June 8, 1859: Walked (north is crossed out) all day. Saw a train of Mexicans on their way to Kansas City by way of Santa Fe Trail. We passed in sight of Atchison, Kansas. June 10, 1859: Two miles out of Leavenworth. I should not have known the place after an absence of eighteen months. It is quite a large city. I got a Tribune — the first paper I have seen since I left home. June 11, 1859: Had our dinner at Tonganoxie Creek. Made twenty- five miles and camped in Lawrence, Kansas. Saw a good many old acquaintances, but didn’t make myself known. June 13, 1859: Looked for work, but found none. T.L. Whitney handed me a letter from E. R. Chamberland, inquiring for me. June 14, 1859: Have not found work yet. Saw more of my old friends. June 17, 1859: Rained like “fun” last night. Left Lawrence in forenoon and went down to Palmer’s. Camped near Santa Fe road, seven miles from Lawrence. June 19, 1859: Packed my things and got ready to travel to look for work. June 21, 1859: Left Prairie City for Osawatomie, a distance of twenty-eight miles. Carried a very heavy carpet sack. I was overtaken by a rain. In Stanton, a woman asked me to stop in their house out of the rain, which I did for two hours. Osawatomie, Kansas HDT WHAT? INDEX

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June 23, 1859: Osawatomie. Went to work this morning for Tator. Helped to put up the machinery and finish off a flour mill. Pretty hard work. Saw a good deal of gambling here yesterday. June 26, 1859: Sunday. Went to temperance lecture in afternoon. June 27, 1859: A good deal of excitement in town. Many drunken Indians. Had another temperance meeting. June 30, 1859: Have been working a week for Tator. July 1, 1859: I subscribed for the Lawrence Republican for six months. July 4, 1859: Had interesting time. Had a sham battle, and imitation of battle of August 30th, 1856. (Battle John Brown and men fought with Missourians at Osawatomie). In the evening had fireworks. July 7, 1859: Finished second week of work for Tator. July 11, 1859: My trunk came. When I opened it, I found that everything had been wet and was very moldy and mildewed. July 17, 1859: Took a walk this morning to see Fred Brown’s grave. (He was one of John Brown’s sons who was killed in the battle of Osawatomie). Had on a white shirt and collar for the first time since I left home – April 5th. July 18, 1859: Word came from Lecompton today that Sears lost his claim. Preempted a year ago, but did not file within thirty days so lost claim. July 19, 1859: I heard today that Anthony whipped his wife last night. July 21, 1859: Commenced to board at Tator’s at noon. Have been working for him four weeks today. July 26, 1859: The Saloon Keeper took Mrs. Lapsky to court for spilling his liquor. She gave bail for appearance in court. July 27, 1859: Heard from stage driver that Dr. Doy had been liberated by some Lawrence boys. August 4, 1859: Attended a lecture on Phrenology. Had my head examined. Paid fifty cents for a chart. August 15, 1859: A report came that the Missourians had hung a free state man. September 4, 1859: Had a hard shake of ague. Got forty grains of quinine. September 5, 1859: Took twenty grains of quinine. Am very weak. September 7, 1859: Worked all day, but not very smart. Started the flour burrs today, and the first flour ever ground in Osawatomie was ground today. September 13, 1859: Run the mill all day. A great many waiting for grists. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 14, 1859: Sibert had the ague today. September 16, 1859: Some Osage Indians are here on their way to Washington. Had a pow-wow in the evening. September 17, 1859: Run the mill all day and half the night. September 19, 1859: Senator J.H. Lane spoke here today, but I was too busy to get to go to hear him. September 20, 1859: Worked all day and all night. September 21, 1859: Slept all forenoon. Mrs. Nichols lectured here this evening on “Women’s Rights.” I liked her speech very much. September 24, 1859: Did not work. My face is swollen very badly from a toothache. September 29, 1859: Gov. Medary (Kansas was a Territory) stayed in town last night. October 4, 1859: I voted today for the Wyandotte Constitution for the “Homestead Act.” There were only two votes cast against it. October 7, 1859: The Republican paper of tonight says, “The Constitution will carry by five thousand.” Leavenworth gave a majority. Douglas County gave 900 majority. October 21, 1859: The news came by the Republican that John Brown and son were killed while crossing the river at Harper’s Ferry, which they had taken. October 22, 1859: Gen. Lane, Judge Conway, and Col. W.A. Phillips were advertised to speak here, but did not come. (W.A. Phillips of Lawrence who helped lay out the city of Salina, later a resident here. Phillips school and street being named after him). October 24, 1859: Went up to Adair’s (John Brown’s brother-in- law) to see St. Louis papers. Found that nearly all of the boys were killed. John Brown was wounded in nine places, but not dead yet. October 27, 1859: Did not work. The boilers at the mill leak again. November 1, 1859: Read today about trial of Harper’s Ferry prisoners. November 2, 1859: Borrowed a New York Herald in which was part of one of my letters found among John Brown’s papers. November 3, 1859: Can get no money from Tator. I would as soon be in prison with Brown as to stay here and wait for money earned with a promise of having it every day and every day be disappointed. November 5, 1859: J.H. Kagi (John Brown man and reporter for National Erie, published in Washington, D.C.) had my gun at HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Harper’s Ferry. No money yet. November 8, 1859: Considerable excitement over election. I controlled my feelings. Fisher called me a liar and I thumped him.

November 14, Monday: The New-York Times reported that on account of the flight of the original proprietor, “Fred. Douglass’ Paper in New Hands,” to wit, the hands of son Lawrs. H. Douglass.

Although Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret “Six” conspiracy was believed to be hard at work on a plan to rescue John Brown from his Virginia prison, a letter to his co-conspirator, the Reverend Theodore Parker, in exile in Rome, indicates otherwise: “The feeling of sympathy with Brown is spreading fast over all the North, and will grow stronger if he is hanged…. The failure is a success; it has done more for Freedom than years of talk could…. It grieves me sadly to think that Brown must die, but he is ready for it; and if we cannot avert it, we must think it best. It will undoubtedly add millions to the righteous side.” Someone writing in this manner while otherwise purporting to be taking action to save a life, very clearly, is sponsoring a delusion, and is doing so not in order to save that life himself but in order to ensure that no-one else has a chance to originate an effort to save that life. Sanborn was pretending, quite cold-bloodedly, in order to ensure that no last-minute event would cheat the conspirators of Brown’s hanging and martyrdom. In my own personal opinion, in addition, it would have occurred to Sanborn that dead men are no longer capable of telling tales, and that it was not altogether a bad thing that while Captain Brown’s lips were still sealed by his agenda of silent martyrdom they were going to become forever sealed by the glue of death.

At some point Richard Josiah Hinton had come to Luke Fisher Parsons at the mill where he was working in Osawatomie, Kansas to persuade him to take part in a scheme in which James Montgomery would lead a party that would free the Harpers Ferry prisoners from the jail at Charlestown, Virginia. Parsons enlisted in this scheme and was given $15 and told to join up with James Montgomery in Leavenworth, Kansas. However, when he arrived in Leavenworth he could find no trace of Montgomery, and so he went to Lawrence, where he learned that since 18 inches of snow had fallen in the Charlestown, Virginia region, the rescue attempt had been called off.

Parsons continued in his diary: November 15, 1859: Read about Harper’s Ferry. Read of proceedings of convention held May 8, 1858 in Chatam, Canada in which my name was mentioned several times. November 16, 1859: Heard that John E. Cook had made a confession, implicating several, but was sentenced to be hung on the sixteenth of December. Greene and Copeland are also to be hung. November 25, 1859: Went over to widow Martin’s to see a free “niger” and to try to find who the six men are that have been hunting him. Could not find them. November 29, 1859: Got a letter, in mourning, from Lizzie Leeman, telling of the death of her brother who was shot at Harper’s Ferry. December 2, 1859: This is the day that John Brown is to be hanged. He died a friend of freedom. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 8, 1859: I went and gave three “niger catchers hell.” I started for Lawrence about three in the morning with a negro slave. December 9, 1859: Arrived at seven in Lawrence. Sent slave to Rev. Stewart’s, who was on underground railway by which the salves escaped to Canada. Slave traded off his horse for pony and revolver. December 10, 1859: Now at W.A. Phillip’s house. Talked over old affairs and of Salina and Harper’s Ferry. December 11, 1859: Left Lawrence on 11th of December Am now at Ottawa Jones’ (Now Ottawa, Kansas named after this half-breed Indian).

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR NOVEMBER 14th] HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December: Late in this year Secretary of War John Buchanan Floyd dispatched more than 115,000 muskets and rifles to southern states.

An edict from the Emperor of San Francisco: “DISAPPROVING of the act of Gov. Wise of Virginia in hanging Gen. Brown at Charlestown, Va., on 2nd December; AND CONSIDERING that the said Brown was insane and that he ought to have been sent to the Insane Asylum for capturing the State of Virginia with seventeen men; NOW KNOW ALL MEN that I do hereby discharge him, Henry A. Wise, from said office, and appoint John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, to said office of Governor of our province of Virginia.”

Luke Fisher Parsons wrote from Osawatomie, Kansas to James Redpath and Richard Josiah Hinton in regard HDT WHAT? INDEX

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to their “notice in the Republican in regard to publishing the life of John Brown & associates at Harpers Ferry & your request for information.” Osawotomie K.T. Dec 1859 Dear Friends Redpath & Hinton Seeing your notice in Republican in regard to publishing the life of John Brown & associates at Harpers Ferry & your request for information, I endeavour to comply. My acquaintance with Brown commences with the Black-Jack fight I was also with him at the fight in this place, but the account of these, you must already have. I became acquainted with Cook, & Realf, in Lawrence with Whipple (A.D. Stephens) while in Topeka on the 4th of July 1856 But you your selves know all about these men untill after this time. Leeman came in the territory in the same [trane] of emigrants & at the same time that R.J. Hinton did, & I think with Dr. Cutter at least he had been a working in Mass. at shoe making immediately previous. On Nov 24th of 1857. Realf Cook & myself left Lawrence to Join Brown & Co. in Tabor Iowa. We went by stage via Leavenworth Weston & St. Joe. Brown a short time previously had left Topeka for Tabor taking with him Col. Whipple, [Chas] Moffatt, (Whose name appeares on the Provisional Constitution with the rest) & a runaway negro from Lexington Mo. (also signed constitution) when we arrived in Tabor we found Brown with the above named persons & also Kagi (who went from Topeka) C.P. Tidd (who had lived in tabor a year or more) also Owen Brown who fought with the old man, & was one of the 9 who recieved the arms of 27 of H.C. Pates men at Blackjack. Whill in Tabore & before leaving for Springdale, Brown made the Tabor people an offer to this effect, that if they would defray the actual expenses of his company (10 in all) to Nebraska City & back, he would place safe in their hands a slave that had runaway from Mo. & had his arm broken & amputated from the effects of a shot recieved in captureing him. The slave was then in jail in that place. They declined doing so for fear that it would involve them in a difficulty. We traveled with 2 covered wagons loaded so that we all walked, camped out, part of the time the weather was very colde, & snow was on the [ground]. We did not travel sundays. Evenings when the work was done & we were seated arround a large log fire once a week we had a Lyceums or discussions of some question usually proposed by B. & he always presiding. Other evenings were frequently spent in singing, by Browns request, who always joined with a harty good will He used to name the peices that he wanted sung & very frequently “The Slave has seen the northern stars” “From Greenlands Icy mountains” &c. &c, We stoped near the town of Springdale Cedar Co. Iowa all winter. A good olde Quaker by the name of Maxon boarded us for $1.50 a week. During that winter we went thro a pretty thorough military course of instruction from under Col. Whipple as Drillmaster Studying “High Forbes Manual for the Patriotic Voluntar.” We were drilled in open day light 3 hrs each day. While here Realf & Cook frequently lectured in the different school districts. During this winter Brown was HDT WHAT? INDEX

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in the east endeavouring to prepare for events in the comeing spring (of ’58) we frequently heard from B. during winter. A few weeks before we started for L.C. Kagi went home with me & spent a few weeks. (in Byron Ogle Co. Ill) he lectured in Byron & was liked very much. He was dressed rather poorly & looked pretty rough. The people made the remark that “Kagi was like a singed cat better than he looks.” When B. returned for us, he received so favourable a report from those peace loving Quakers, that he said “He should not have been better pleased if they had presented him with one thousand dollars.” We went to the town of Chatham in L.C. & there we formed the [Provincional] Constitution signed by every one in the house by his own hand (mostly colored) The intention was then to go immediately to work. We faild I think partly owing to the hard times but mostly by the efforts put forth by Hugh Forbs, about that time At going rate the money that was should have been forth comeing was not furnished nor couldnt be got. We passed from Chatham to Cleveland & then scattered about to work to support our selvs during B’s absence of 2 mo. to try to stir up some monied friends, he returned postponed for 1 year took Kagi & Tidd with him & went to Kansas. R. Realf went to N.Y. & thence to England. Cook to Harpers Ferry. Whipple & G. B. Gill (Gill joined in Iowa) went to Iowa Stewart Tailor (joined in Iowa) went to Mich. Owen Brown went to his brother Jason in Acron Summit Co. O. Leeman Moffatt & my-self went to work in Lindenville Ashtabula Co. O. What they did in Kansas I know only by papers & hearsay for we did not hear from them. But while here Anderson & Haslit joined him. Our Justice Cook is here & intimately acquainted with them who promised me to write you about them. On his way to Canada in the spring of ’59 in Springdale Edwin Coppic & Barkly Cappic joined with him. The reason that Gill & Moffatt donte appear to be with the rest I cannot tell unless it be that he did not want so many, so many & I presume that that is the reason that I was not there. too For early in the spring not having hearde anything from Brown & the times continuing harde Moffatt & myself started, he for Iowa & I for Ill. but I immediately started for Pikes P. but turned back during the [prairie] & stoped here I immediately wrote to John Brown Jr (not knowing where B. was And signified my willingness to continue with him if there was a prospect of doing something some time. Jason Brown fought here with the Olde man. There is an [acdote] reported by those that were at Ft. Scot at the release of Rice, of Kagi. To this effect While in town there was firing from Littles store on the boys Kagi had only a pistol but seeing a man down there he went down while getting walking along not thinking himself near enough to shoote with pistol the man on steps raised his gun but K. kept right on the man held his gun for a moment & then fired, but K. kept right on, he then raised his gun to fire the other barel, but K. thinking himself near enough to fire raised his pistol & the man took down his gun & HDT WHAT? INDEX

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immediately dodged in behinde the door, thinking that K. was invulnerable. In the Kansas City Metropoloton of about Nov 25th the Editor in speaking of the affairs at H’s Ferry says that it is a democratic movement began in Kansas, & in proof, quotes from a memorandum found on one of the prisoners, reading thus, “Democrats Kagi, Moffatt, Parsons, Cook, & Leeman. Republicans, Realf, Whipple, Tidd, Robertson” (who is the Lexington slave) & (O) “Brown.” I wish to correct this mistake to you least the ideas may in someway get out that some of them are really Democrats While in Iowa we had saturday nights for our diversion so we formed work Ledislature called it the state of Topeka Those Democrats named were Democratic representatives of different districts, the Republicans Republican representatives &c. A few A day or so after the fight at Osawatomie Brown with his handful of men moved up the river 2 or 3 miles in the timber & finding that the Ruffians were a scouring the country in companies of from 10 to 50 & supposing that they were in search of him & co as they did not succeed in killing them, Brown proposed that if he could get 20 men to stand by him he would fortify & stand them another fight, he spent some time to get signatures but so many were sick & discouraged that he only got 12 or 14. Then B. said if he could get 15 men he would stand his ground, every one that was on consented to the new arrangement & he succeeded in getting enough to get work, 15 when we commenced to work on fortifycation, but the weather being very warm others were taken sick so that we were compelled to abandon the project. What I have written is in a [jumbled] up mess, & written as it came into my head, I have said a great deal that has no bearing atall on the life of Brown & not much that does, or not mutch that you may think interesting, But if you can cull anything from this or use any part of it you are welcome to do so. You may use my name at any time, & in any place, where you think it comes in connection with your work, for I donte do anything that I am asshamed of, or affraid to have the people know about. In your notice in the paper, You donte mention the name of Owen Brown. I hope you wont overlook him. He was at Harpers Ferry, is (I think) the youngest of B’s sons, of his first wife, own bro to John, Jason & Fred. Wishing you speedy success in your enterprise, I remain yours for Freedom & Reform L.F. Parsons P.S. Leeman is from Hallowell Ne. & the youngest of B’s company. ’Tis said that Realf died on his return voyage. The Coppic’s live in Sprindale Iowa. L.F.P.

Luke Fisher Parsons continued in his diary: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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December 12, 1859: Left Jones’ and arrived at Osawatomie soon after noon. December 15, 1859: Heard that the Governor of Missouri had made a requisition on Gov. Sam Medary for all persons who helped slaves get away. December 19, 1859: Got a letter from step-father writing me to come home. December 22, 1859: Heard that there were warrants issued for all that were engaged in sending the slave hunters home quicker than they came. December 24, 1859: No money yet, nor prospect of any. Am almost naked. December 25, 1859: Christmas they tell me, but I have not seen anything of the good eating arrangements. December 28, 1859: Heard that there was an indictment found against me by the Grand Jury at Ft. Scott and a warrant issued on the indictment. December 29, 1859: Heard that the Marshal is coming with a Posse to arrest me and others. We slept with our firearms. December 30, 1859: Dance at Fisher’s. Could not go because I didn’t have any clothes. December 31, 1859: Very cold and did not work. Marshal and Posse did not show up. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1860

January 1, Sunday,: Charles Brace, a New York social worker, came to Concord carrying a copy of Charles Darwin’s just-published ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, which he had obtained from Professor Asa Gray of Harvard

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

College, his botanist brother-in-law, a correspondent of Darwin’s. He, Bronson Alcott, and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn had dinner with Henry Thoreau and discussed the new theory. Thoreau had long been interested in the geographical distribution of plants and animals around Concord. Well read in the general subject, he had become skeptical of Professor Louis Agassiz’s certitudes about special creation and immutable species. Three days after the dinner, Thoreau would acknowledge the impact of Darwin’s new theory on him by making an observation about an actual working mechanism of influence: A man receives only what he is ready to receive, whether physically or intellectually or morally ... We hear and apprehend only what we already half know ... Every man thus tracks himself through life, in all his hearing and reading and observation and travelling. His observations make a chain. The phenomenon or fact that cannot in any wise be linked with the rest which he has observed, he does not observe. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau’s “The Dispersion of Seeds” may profitably be read not only as a contribution to science, but also as a fable of dissemination. Behind the details of the presentation, we note Thoreau’s insistent focus on natural fecundity. Starting, as Darwin started, from Thomas Robert Malthus’s astonished observation that “the germs of existence contained in this earth, if they could freely develop themselves, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years,” Thoreau mentions Darwin’s experiments. “I took in February, three table- spoonsful of mud,” Darwin says, “from three different points, beneath water, on the edge of a little pond; this mud when dried, weighed only 63 ounces. I kept it covered up in my study for six months, pulling up and counting each plant as it grew; the plants were of many kinds and were altogether 537 in number; and yet the viscid mud was all contained in a breakfast cup!” THE SCIENCE OF 1860

The seed had been a favorite metaphor of Friend George Fox. Thoreau had inherited a copy of Friend William Sewell’s account of the founding of the Religious Society of Friends from his Quaker grandmother on his mother’s side, Friend Sarah Orrok Burns. Emerson had made a note about this: “George Fox’s chosen expression for the God manifest in the mind is the Seed. He means the seed of which the Beauty of the world is the flower and Goodness the fruit.” Thoreau’s project was neither the same as Darwin’s, nor as Malthus’s — it was neither about speciation nor about population control, but about seed as apparent death, and as actual rebirth. In “The Dispersion of Seeds” Thoreau expands this. A plant is born again in every seed that sprouts. Every day is a day of creation because it is a day of rebirth. “The very earth itself is a granary and a seminary,” offered Thoreau, “so that to some minds, its surface is regarded as the cuticle of one living creature.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Thoreau studied ORIGIN OF SPECIES as soon as it arrived in America. Charles Darwin commented near the end of the book “Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.” This was an entirely new, non-Idealist reading of the Book of Nature, amounting in effect to the decision that nature was not a text at all. That finding has served ever since as a litmus-test to detect “essentialists,” that is, thinkers who regard the different species as immutable, distinct Ideas in the Mind of God. In the early days of 1860 Waldo Emerson and Louis Agassiz also would read this book, but both would flunk Darwin’s litmus-test for in the field of theoretical population ecology: neither were scientists at all, they were a metaphysician and a theologian.

Louis Agassiz standing on his head and stacking BBs (Don’t try this at home)

In particular Louis Agassiz needed to dispute Charles Darwin in order to retain his belief in the immutable HDT WHAT? INDEX

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inferiority of the Negro. EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS

“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 There is no question but that Professor Agassiz of Harvard was one of the leading lights among American biologists. As such he was quite familiar with all the factual evidences concerning environmental change, variability, and hereditary modification upon which Darwin had been building his insights, but he held in addition that the organic world represented repeated interventions by a Supreme Being. These ordinary physical events upon which Darwin was relying, such as climatic and geologic change, and even glaciers, might indeed bring about extinctions, but nothing of this order could create a new species. Agassiz was ready to grant that the sequence in the fossil record from simple animals and plants in the ancient, deeper strata to the more complex, recent forms found near the surface represented a progressive development, but these different animals and plants did not arise as Darwin was supposing out of interactions between populations and external environmental changes. Agassiz maintained that organisms arose by a series of independent and special creations, there with no hereditary continuity whatever between the different types of organisms. Each species of plant and animal was a separate “thought of God” and what we saw as homologies or anatomical similarities were nothing more than “associations of ideas in the Divine Mind.” Thoreau, on the other hand, easily passed Darwin’s test; what was said in ORIGIN was not only convincing but obvious. Rationality did not produce, but was the product of, nature. The subject did not originate the text. Here is a general analysis of the situation, from Adam Kuper’s THE INVENTION OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETY: TRANSFORMATIONS OF AN ILLUSION (NY: Routledge, 1988), pages 44-6 (shown on a following page): HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Whittier-Holmes-Emerson-Motley-Alcott-Hawthorne-Lowell-Agassiz-Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The northern Presbyterians in fact welcomed Darwin’s witness with respect to one very sensitive political issue. This was the question of the unity of origin of the human species. They were up in arms against their southern Presbyterian brethren, who justified slavery on the grounds that God had created several distinct species of man, each with a particular destiny. During the Civil War an ‘American school of anthropology’ developed in the South which propagated this view. It drew the support even of Agassiz, the eccentric Lamarckian biologist of Harvard. According to the northern Presbyterians, this ‘polygenist’ thesis was a denial of the truth, to which both the Bible and the Declaration of Independence bore witness, that all men were created equal. Darwin unequivocably supported the view that all the races were simply varieties of one species, with a common origin. This aspect of Darwinian theory was particularly stressed by Asa Gray, Agassiz’s rival at Harvard, and the leader of the American Darwinians. On one vital matter, however, Darwin’s views were unacceptable to many, indeed most, Christians. He posited the mutability of species and –despite his initial caution– it became evident that he believed man had evolved from non-human primate forbears. This theory of the transmutation of species was clearly irreconcilable with the Book of Genesis, but there were many respectable scholars who believed that it was also at odds with biological facts. A great number of mainstream biologists in the 1860s believed that the species were fixed. Agassiz’s version of Cuvier’s typology even allowed for the separate creation of each individual species. Morgan, a competent amateur biologist, sided with Agassiz on this issue. He wrote a naturalist’s study of the American beaver (which won Agassiz’s admiration) in which he strongly affirmed his faith in Cuvier and in the separate creation of the human species. One could, however, believe that the species were fixed without having to believe that they were changeless. Agassiz and many of his colleagues might rule out ‘transmutation’, the change of one species into another; but they still believed that a species could develop along appropriate lines. Each species might realize an inner potential, which gradually unfolded. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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After Louis Agassiz had retraced the steps of Humboldt by visiting Brazil, he confided to Waldo Emerson, according to Emerson’s son’s account, that the whole population of that country was “wretchedly immoral, the colours and features of the people showing the entire intermixing of all the races.” Scientistic racism recapitulates typology. We can learn from the same source that Professor Agassiz believed that, were he able to obtain enough live subjects to perform the requisite dissections, “hundreds, that is, of live subjects,” he would be able to demonstrate that a baby elephant while in utero was a mastodon, and a baby tapir in utero a megatheron.6

Thoreau once killed a cistudo for Professor Louis Agassiz, and upon reflection was ashamed.

Scientistic embryology recapitulates theology. While we might prefer not to entertain questions such as whether Thoreau should instead have killed Louis Agassiz for the cistudo: was the placing of such a man in a chair at Harvard College, an institution at that time primarily useful for the habilitation of the younger sons of businessmen, under conditions of primogeniture, as reverend divines, precisely the placing of such a mentality where it didn’t belong, or was it precisely the placing of such a mentality where it did belong?

Thoreau was able to borrow this copy or another and immediately verify that he had always already been Darwinian at least in approach and in his thinking processes. Thoreau had, after all, in June 1858, already curtly dismissed Agassiz’s notion of special creationism, which Agassiz was utilizing as his ideological support for slavery, insisting instead upon a naturalistic explanation for origins. Although it is in Emerson’s journal for 1860 that we find the record of a conversation he had had with Thoreau about Agassiz’s scorn for Darwin, there is no reason why the conversation Emerson there described had to have been a recent one. Such an exchange might well have occurred prior to 1860 and Thoreau’s exposure to the ORIGIN OF SPECIES, or prior even to the remarks recorded in June 1858 for that matter. We simply do not know at what early point Thoreau had first seen through Professor Agassiz and his scientistic social ploys.

Thoreau studied ORIGIN OF SPECIES as soon as it arrived in America because although a publisher had urged Darwin to write the book as a book about pigeons, promising the author that if he did so the book would find a place on every coffee-table in England, Darwin had declined to do so:

“Whenever a worthy subject receives a better or more complete presentation than has hitherto been accorded it, our civilized life is advanced a little.”

Darwin commented near the end of the book

“Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor.”

This was an entirely new, non-Idealist reading of the Book of Nature, amounting in effect to the decision that

6. Have you heard that the initial script for the movie Jurassic Park had it as “Park Agassiz”? HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Those who thought in this way commonly conceived of the development of species on the analogy of the evolution of the embryo. The tadpole might become a frog, but that did not amount to a change of species. Indeed, ontogeny, the development of an individual, might recapitulate phylogeny, the history of a species. The term ‘evolution’ itself was generally used in this embryological sense until about 1880, and neither Darwin in THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859) nor Morgan in SYSTEMS (1871) or ANCIENT SOCIETY (1877), used the word ‘evolution’ at all. Agassiz’s version of evolution assumed that the world had been designed by God. Particular species had been created in order to fit into particular ecological relations. They were, moreover, programmed to develop as the whole cosmological order itself progressed. Adaptation was a sign of planning rather than of selection. Agassiz was quite explicit that evolution was comprehensible only as the gradual unfolding of a divine plan. Species were incarnations of a divine idea. ‘Natural history must, in good time, become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, as manifested in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.’ Agassiz’s theory of development was the biological equivalent of a common New England Calvinist belief that human history, since Christ, was a record of progress and moral improvement inspired by God, in which every group had its preordained rôle. This idealistic view was in stark contrast to the scepticism of Darwin or the pessimism of Malthus. ‘I believe in no fixed law of development’, Darwin had written in ORIGIN, and when Christian intellectuals attacked his ‘materialist’ theory they meant in particular his view that history is contingent, unplanned, without a goal, the product simply of random mutation and natural selection.

(See especially William Stanton, THE LEOPARD’S SPOTS: SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDES TOWARD RACE IN AMERICA 1815-1859, 1960. See Morgan, THE AMERICAN BEAVER AND HIS WORKS, 1868. See Mayr, AGASSIZ, DARWIN AND EVOLUTION, 1959. The passage from Louis Agassiz is cited on page 171.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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nature was not a text at all. That finding has served ever since as a litmus-test to detect “essentialists,” that is, thinkers who regard the different species as immutable, distinct Ideas in the Mind of God. In the early days of 1860 Emerson and Agassiz also read this book, but both flunked Darwin’s litmus-test for in the field of theoretical population ecology: neither were scientists at all, they were a metaphysician and a theologian.

Louis Agassiz standing on his head and stacking BBs (Don’t try this at home)

In particular Agassiz needed to dispute Darwin in order to retain his belief in the immutable inferiority of the Negro. Thoreau, on the other hand, easily passed Darwin’s test; what was said in ORIGIN OF SPECIES was not only convincing but obvious. Rationality did not produce, but was the product of, nature. The subject did not originate the text. Here is a general analysis of the situation, from Adam Kuper’s THE INVENTION OF PRIMITIVE HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Whittier-Holmes-Emerson-Motley-Alcott-Hawthorne-Lowell-Agassiz-Longfellow HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

SOCIETY: TRANSFORMATIONS OF AN ILLUSION (New York: Routledge, 1988), pages 44-6: HDT WHAT? INDEX

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The northern Presbyterians in fact welcomed Darwin’s witness with respect to one very sensitive political issue. This was the question of the unity of origin of the human species. They were up in arms against their southern Presbyterian brethren, who justified slavery on the grounds that God had created several distinct species of man, each with a particular destiny. During the Civil War an ‘American school of anthropology’ developed in the South which propagated this view. It drew the support even of Agassiz, the eccentric Lamarckian biologist of Harvard.1 According to the northern Presbyterians, this ‘polygenist’ thesis was a denial of the truth, to which both the Bible and the Declaration of Independence bore witness, that all men were created equal. Darwin unequivocably supported the view that all the races were simply varieties of one species, with a common origin. This aspect of Darwinian theory was particularly stressed by Asa Gray, Agassiz’s rival at Harvard, and the leader of the American Darwinians. On one vital matter, however, Darwin’s views were unacceptable to many, indeed most, Christians. He posited the mutability of species and –despite his initial caution– it became evident that he believed man had evolved from non- human primate forbears. This theory of the transmutation of species was clearly irreconcilable with the Book of Genesis, but there were many respectable scholars who believed that it was also at odds with biological facts. A great number of mainstream biologists in the 1860s believed that the species were fixed. Agassiz’s version of Cuvier’s typology even allowed for the separate creation of each individual species. Morgan, a competent amateur biologist, sided with Agassiz on this issue. He wrote a naturalist’s study of the American beaver (which won Agassiz’s admiration) in which he strongly affirmed his faith in Cuvier and in the separate creation of the human species.2 One could, however, believe that the species were fixed without having to believe that they were changeless. Agassiz and many of his colleagues might rule out ‘transmutation’, the change of one species into another; but they still believed that a species could develop along appropriate lines. Each species might realize an inner potential, which gradually unfolded.

1. See especially William Stanton (1960), THE LEOPARD’S SPOTS: SCIENTIFIC ATTITUDES TOWARD RACE IN AMERICA 1815-1859. 2. Morgan (1868), THE AMERICAN BEAVER AND HIS WORKS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

Those who thought in this way commonly conceived of the development of species on the analogy of the evolution of the embryo. The tadpole might become a frog, but that did not amount to a change of species. Indeed, ontogeny, the development of an individual, might recapitulate phylogeny, the history of a species. The term ‘evolution’ itself was generally used in this embryological sense until about 1880, and neither Darwin in THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES (1859) nor Morgan in SYSTEMS (1871) or ANCIENT SOCIETY (1877), used the word ‘evolution’ at all. Agassiz’s version of evolution assumed that the world had been designed by God. Particular species had been created in order to fit into particular ecological relations. They were, moreover, programmed to develop as the whole cosmological order itself progressed. Adaptation was a sign of planning rather than of selection. Agassiz was quite explicit that evolution was comprehensible only as the gradual unfolding of a divine plan. Species were incarnations of a divine idea. ‘Natural history must, in good time, become the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, as manifested in the animal and vegetable kingdoms.’1 Agassiz’s theory of development was the biological equivalent of a common New England Calvinist belief that human history, since Christ, was a record of progress and moral improvement inspired by God, in which every group had its preordained rôle. This idealistic view was in stark contrast to the scepticism of Darwin or the pessimism of Malthus. ‘I believe in no fixed law of development’, Darwin had written in ORIGIN, and when Christian intellectuals attacked his ‘materialist’ theory they meant in particular his view that history is contingent, unplanned, without a goal, the product simply of random mutation and natural selection. 1. See Mayr (1959), ‘Agassiz, Darwin and evolution.’ The passage from Agassiz is cited on page 171.

In Osawatomie, Kansas, Luke Fisher Parsons continued in his diary: January 1, 1860: Put bitting harness on my pony for the first time. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

I have at last succeeded in keeping a diary for one year. January 4, 1860: Got my new boots from the Dutchman. The soles are three fourths of an inch thick. Proposed to Snyder to go to Salina. January 7, 1860: Got a little money. January 8, 1860: Sunday. Trained my pony. January 14, 1860: R.W. Wood commenced to run a saw mill today. Tator went to Lawrence. I am going to work for Wood at $3.50 a week and board. Money every week. January 16, 1860: We sawed nearly four hundred feet of logs.

[THOREAU MADE NO ENTRY IN HIS JOURNAL FOR JANUARY 1st]

January 17, Tuesday: Anton Chekhov was born (January 29th, New Style).

At the encouragement of William Addison Phillips in Lawrence, Kansas, Luke Fisher Parsons had set out for a new town called Salina 180 miles west of the Missouri River. He arrived in that general locale on this day. He would become the initial sheriff of Saline County and all the unorganized territory to its west (until 1861, when his successor was Sheriff John W. McReynolds, until 1864). He would then become a 1st Lieutenant in the 3d Indian Home Guards, Kansas Infantry, under Colonel William Addison Phillips (as it would turn out, most Cherokee warriors would elect to serve the Confederacy).

In Salina, Parsons continued in his diary: January 20, 1860: Got a photograph of John Brown. January 22, 1860: Sunday. A lovely day for this time of the year. Rebecca Smith and I went horseback riding. Mrs. Olney and son were drowned in the Pottawatomie. I helped to get them out. January 23, 1860: William Ruble and Rebecca had a quarrel. He was mad because she went riding with me yesterday. January 30, 1860: Got a frame for my picture of John Brown. February 5, 1860: Packed my trunk and went up to Snyder’s with Rebecca. February 6, 1860: Sold my pony to Crane for $24.00 February 7, 1860: Left Osawatomie at daylight. Going to Salina. Took dinner at Prairie City. Arrived in Lawrence at five o’clock. Put up at Whitney House. February 8, 1860: Went to see W.A. Phillips who lives at Lawrence. February 9, 1860: W.A. Phillips asked me to stop at his house while in town. I shall go there tonight. February 11, 1860: I settled up with Tator and took his note for HDT WHAT? INDEX

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$125.85 with interest at ten per cent. February 12, 1860: Sunday. Went to Meeting with Mrs. Phillips. This is the first time I have been to Meeting for nearly a year. In the evening, I was provided with a Bible to read. February 13, 1860: Left Lawrence on foot at 9:00 o’clock in the morning on my way to Salina. When I arrived at Big Springs my heels and toes were blistered. I am now in Tecumseh, twenty-five miles from Lawrence, waiting for the stage. Took stage to Indianola, and between drunken drivers and balky horses they contrived to tip over the stage. February 14, 1860: Left Indianola in stage at six o’clock. Paid $6.50 to ride to Junction City. Took dinner twenty miles east of Manhattan at Mr. View’s. The Big Blue was so low that the Ferry did not run. Manhattan is a small place, but is spread over a good deal of ground. February 15, 1860: Left Manhattan at six. Arrived at Junction City at twelve. Ft. Riley is a pretty place. Junction City is most entirely new. Walked from Junction to Chapman’s Creek. Stayed with a fellow who was keeping batch. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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Henry Thoreau was being written to by Samuel Ripley Bartlett, son of the Concord physician residing in Boston, who was requesting a letter of introduction to Ticknor & Fields so that he could submit his poem “The Concord Fight” for publication.

Here still in Concord sleeps the ancient force; Here rebels wild, fanatics fierce, we find, Who war against a tyranny more dread Than that of old, the thraldom of the mind. What the old spirit dead? No, No! — it lives.

BARTLETT’S CONCORD FIGHT

Boston Jan 17th 59 H. D. Thoreau. Dear Sir, Will you be so very kind as to send me a letter of introduction to Mess Ticknor & Fields. I want to get them to publish Concord Fight, the poem I read at Con- cord, & yr introduction would be of great use to me S Ripley Bartlett

Care HDT WHAT? INDEX

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John C. Morse 99 Devonshire St

Carl Schurz wrote from New-York to Charles Wesley Slack, to make arrangements for a lecture tour.7

Jan. 17. Another mild day.

P.M.—To Goose Pond and Walden. Sky overcast, but a crescent of clearer in the northwest. I see on the snow in Hubbard’s Close one of those rather large flattish black bugs some five-eighths of an inch long, with feelers and a sort of shield at the forward part with an orange mark on each side of it.

In the spring-hole ditches of the Close I see many little water-bugs (Gyrinus) gyrating, and some under water. It must be a common phenomenon there in mild weather in the winter. I look again at that place of squirrels (of the 13th). As I approach, I have a glimpse of one or two red squirrels

7. Stimpert, James. A GUIDE TO THE CORRESPONDENCE IN THE CHARLES WESLEY SLACK MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION: 1848-1885. Kent State University, Library, Special Collections HDT WHAT? INDEX

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gliding off silently along the branches of the pines, etc. They are gone so quickly and noiselessly, perhaps keeping the trunk of the tree between you and them, that [YOU] would not commonly suspect their presence if you were not looking for them. But one that was on the snow ascended a pine and sat on a bough with its back to the trunk as if there was nothing to pay. Yet when I moved again he scud up the tree, and glided across on some very slender twigs into a neighboring tree, and so I lost him. Here is, apparently, a settlement of these red squirrels. There are many holes through the snow into the ground, and many more w here they have probed and dug up a white pine cone, now pretty black and, for aught I can see, with abortive or empty seeds; yet they patiently strip them on the spot, or at the base of the trees, or at the entrance of their holes, and evidently find some good seed. The snow, however, is strewn with the empty and rejected seeds. They seem to select for their own abode a hillside where there are half a dozen rather large and thick white pines near enough together for their aerial travelling, and then they burrow numerous holes and depend on finding (apparently) the pine cones which they cast down in the summer, before they have opened. In the fall they construct a nest of grass and bark- fibres, moss, etc., in one of the trees for winter use, and so apparently have two resources. I walk about Ripple Lake and Goose Pond. I see the old tracks of some foxes and rabbits about the edge of these ponds (over the ice) within a few feet of the shore. I think that I have noticed that animals thus commonly go round by the shore of a pond, whether for fear of the ice, or for the shelter of the shore, i. e. not to be seen, or DOG because their food and game is found there. But a dog will oftener bolt straight across. When I reached the open railroad causeway returning, there was a splendid sunset. The northwest sky at first was what you may call a lattice sky, the fair weather establishing itself first on that side in the form of a long and narrow crescent, in which the clouds, which were uninterrupted overhead, were broken into long bars parallel to the horizon, thus:—

Alcott said well the other day that this was his definition of heaven, “A place where you can have a little conversation.”

February 16, Thursday: Franklin Benjamin Sanborn of the Secret “Six” conspiracy was reported to Senator James Mason’s special investigatory committee of the US Senate as a contumacious witness, and his arrest was voted.8

This is the day on which Luke Fisher Parsons would later choose to establish his claim, of being one of the earlier settlers at Salina, Kansas. Parsons continued in his diary: February 16, 1860: Left Chapman’s Creek and did not get any dinner. Crossed the Solomon at the mouth. Arrived at the mouth of the Saline just after dark. Mrs. Link’s cabin was in sight. Called, but could make no one hear. So I asked myself to stay all night. Stood up against a big cottonwood tree in the rain all night. I had a wet, cold and hungry time. February 17, 1860: When it got daylight, I went up the Saline and found a fallen tree and crossed over on it until I reached the branches which were near the bank. Saw that I would have to make a jump for the bank. Did not jump far enough so landed in

8. Hearing of this, Sanborn would escape to safety in Canada by way of North Elba (also known as Timbukto, no longer in existence but was near Lake Placid), where he would remain until assured by Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar that the flap was over and that he was no longer in danger of arrest (Hoar would prove to be quite mistaken, of course). HDT WHAT? INDEX

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the water up to my waist. My boots were full and I had to take them off and pour the water out. I then walked on to Salina. Mrs. Campbell gave me the first I had to eat since yesterday morning. February 18, 1860: Feet so sore and swollen that I could not get my boots on. Bought a pair of Indian moccasins. Went up south to raise log house for Alverson. Had pork and beans and corn bread and honey for dinner. February 19, 1860: Sunday. Had a Prayer Meeting here today. Attendance consisted of one woman and eleven men. Mr. H.L. Jones of Topeka arrived today. February 20, 1860: Stuck my stake on the prettiest prairie claim that I ever saw lying just north of town. Two of the boys went on a wolf hunt. H.H. Morrison shot two prairie chickens. February 21, 1860: Sim Garlitz and Morrison went up the Smoky about ten miles to make rails. Jones’s other two men came. Helped them across the ferry. (Where Iron Avenue bridge is now). February 22, 1860: Wind blew very hard last night. Snowing today, turning cold. The boys that are hunting and making rails will have a hard time. February 23, 1860: Put a foundation on my claim. Jim Muir and Joe Crowthers came home last night. Some talk about sheriff. Asked me if I would serve, if elected. February 24, 1860: I arrived here in Salina one week ago today. Jones shot a wild turkey. I saw a large white wolf and started after him, but he got away from me. Jones took a claim above here. There is only one woman on the town sight. (Mrs. Campbell). February 25, 1860: James Muir and I rode up the Smoky eight or ten miles to see the boys who are making rails up there. They had just killed a turkey. February 26, 1860: There are several buffalo carcasses lying in town – two Indian graves. They strangled a pony over the grave of one. (this was an Indian custom). (These graves were located between Ash and Iron on Fifth Street.) February 27, 1860: Worked all day for David Phillips at carpentering. Jones laid foundation on claim for his father. February 28, 1860: My hands are very sore from hewing logs for two days. Jones and two of his men started for Topeka, expecting to be back in fourteen days. I subscribed for the “State Record” published in Topeka. February 29, 1860: This is the most western settlement on the Smoky. Talked of running a raft down to Kansas Falls. Can hear the wolves howl continually every night. March 1, 1860: Only on chisel in town. Saw some sand hill cranes. March 2, 1860: Thompson came for his cattle. This morning an old HDT WHAT? INDEX

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man crossed the Smoky, having spent most of the night on the other side. March 3, 1860: Gave Bob Crawford $1.00 to buy Osage Orange seed at Kansas City. James Muir is to raise them for half. March 5, 1860: A.C. Spillman and Joe Crowthers went up the Smoky after shingle blocks. March 7, 1860: Finished putting up studding and commenced making window frames for David Phillips. March 9, 1860: Got a tree to make a canoe. Had to stop to work for A.M. Campbell. March 10, 1860: Shaved shingles. David sowed some wheat. Thompson from the upper Saline was here and said they had killed over a hundred wolves. March 11, 1860: Sunday. Warm and pleasant. I am sitting on the bank of Dry Creek, looking at three large cranes or pelicans in a slough. March 12, 1860: David and Hugh Morrison went up on the Mulberry after house lumber. Alverson started upon an expedition west to be gone three weeks. Holtsman and Ed Johnson put foundation on lots. Mrs. Sharp was here on a visit. March 13, 1860: Finished shingling. Simeon Garlitz and I talk of building a carpenter shop in company. March 14, 1860: Hugh and David got home from Mulberry. Our principal diet is cornbread and buffalo meat. Mush and molasses for a change. March 15, 1860: Worked on carpenter shop. I offered James my watch for the bay mare. March 16, 1860: I went with two yoke of wild oxen up the Smoky after house timbers. The oxen ran away with me. Jones arrived here with his wife. Campbell moved into his new house. March 18, 1860: Spillman and I went over to the stone mound and saw the Indian graves. (Location of mound is now Fifth Street between Iron Avenue and Ash Street). March 20, 1860: Stuck the corner of the adz in my knee. I am afraid it will make it stiff. March 21, 1860: Did not work. My knee is very sore. March 22, 1860: Simeon and I went up the Smoky above Holtsman’s after board timber. On our way home we forded below town. Simeon had to get into the water to drive the oxen. March 23, 1860: Bob Crawford came home. Brought letters and papers. My trunk and tools came. March 24, 1860: Raised Sim’s house. March 25, 1860: Sunday. My knee does not feel as well as HDT WHAT? INDEX

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yesterday. Jones asked two of us boys to dinner. Jones says I have the prettiest claim in this valley. March 28, 1860: W.W. Morrison and son Andrew came. They have an ox that has the mad itch. Jones horse ran away with him and broke his wagon. March 29, 1860: I went up the river after shingles,and Morrison’s ox died. Mrs. Colonel Phillips and brother Maxwell came tonight. April 2, 1860: Raised Israel Markery’s house. All the boys have gone down the Saline to fish. David and Maxwell have gone upon the Mulberry. April 3, 1860: The boys returned from Mulberry and they had killed three geese and got some black walnut and shingle timber. Two Delaware Indians passed here on their way down the river. Have been trapping. April 4, 1860: We found two large wolves. I skinned them. Campbell caught a catfish. April 5, 1860: Finished Sim’s shop. Israel is very anxious that we should go to work for him. We set some shavings afire near the shop and came near burning it up. April 6, 1860: Started out on a buffalo hunt. Simeon and I from Holtsman’s. Saw some buffalo soon after we crossed the Mulberry, but did not stop. Found some about five miles east of Elkhorn. April 7, 1860: We camped on the Elkhorn. Buffalo in sight. I shot an antelope. April 8, 1860: Sunday. Left Elkhorn about sunrise for home. Saw several droves of buffalo, but could not get a shot. April 9, 1860: Working for Jones. He boards me. Mended the broken wagon. My knee is very sore. Got Topeka papers. April 11, 1860: People from several families from Georgia passed through here for Pikes Peak. We sold them some corn at thirty- five cents a bushel. Three families arrived here. They have some pretty good stock. April 13, 1860: Worked for David Phillips. Put on black walnut siding on his house. Some men came here hunting. They patronized the bachelor’s shack. (Where corner of 5th Street and Iron Ave. is now). April 14, 1860: Worked for Campbell. Robert and James had brothers come this evening. April 16, 1860: Jones’ uncle came from Council Grove. April 17, 1860: A. Ally came up. The boys started out on a buffalo hunt. April 18, 1860: Ed Johnston and Tom White went up the river after board timber. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

April 19, 1860: Some of the boys went to fix Gypsum Creek ford. April 21, 1860: Markery sold his house to Jones for $200.00. Today witnesses the advent of a young lady in our town – Miss Abby Wilcox. Jefferson, his father, mother and brother came and they report more families on the way. April 22, 1860: Sunday. Had a talk with Miss Abby. The boys have a fit of singing on tonight. April 23, 1860: I worked for Jones. The two Joneses started for Junction City. W.A. Phillips came tonight. I got a letter from Lizzie Lehman containing her brother’s miniature. It looks very much like him. Jones returned from Junction. A.A. Morrison arrived with his family. April 25, 1860: Worked for W.A. Phillips. Went with him about nine miles up Gypsum Creek to get studding. Camped there all night. Ph8illips hired Jim Muir at $18.00 a month. April 26, 1860: Afternoon Phillips took a load of studding home and is to come back and bring me some provisions. I am now sitting by a camp fire tired and hungry, waiting for my supper. April 27, 1860: David Phillips came and brought me some grub. April 28, 1860: Came home a little before night. Jones has begun digging a well. April 29, 1860: Sunday. Put on my best clothes as most of the boys have some new ones. Went to Meeting. Went to Jones’ in the evening. April 30, 1860: Working for Phillips. Phillips got corner posts. The boys planted corn. I loaned Abby “The Life of John Brown.” Jones hauled some stone to wall up his well. The women went with him. May 1, 1860: Two preachers from Lawrence came today to organize a church – to create discord and trouble. After this one sect will be quarreling with the other.

Feb. 16. 2 P.M. — To Walden. A snow-storm, which began in the night,—and is now three or four inches deep. The ground, which was more than half bare before, is thus suddenly concealed, and the snow lodges on the trees and fences and sides of houses, and we have a perfect wintry scene again. We hear that it stormed at Philadelphia yesterday morning. As I [look] toward the woods beyond the poorhouse, I see how the trees, especially apple trees, are suddenly brought out relieved against the snow, black on white, every twig as distinct as if it were a pen-and-ink drawing the size of nature. The snow being spread for a background, while the storm still raging confines your view to near objects, each apple tree is distinctly outlined against it. Suddenly, too, where of late all was tawny-brown in pastures I see a soft snowy field with the pale-brown lecheas just peeping out of it. It is a moist and starry snow, lodging on trees,— leaf, bough, and trunk. The pines are well laden with it. How handsome, though wintry, the side of a high pine wood, well grayed with the snow that has lodged on it, and the HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

smaller pitch pines converted into marble or alabaster with their lowered plumes like rams’ heads!

The character of the wood-paths is wholly changed by the new-fallen snow. Not only all tracks are concealed, but, the pines drooping over it and half concealing or filling it, it is merely a long chink or winding open space between the trees. This snow, as I have often noticed before, is composed of stars and other crystals with a very fine cotton intermixed. It lodges and rests softly on the horizontal limbs of oaks and pines. On the fruit and dry leafets (?) of the alders that slant over the pond it is in the form of little cones two inches high, making them snowball plants. So many little crystalline wheels packed in cotton. When we descend on to Goose Pond we find that the snow rests more thickly on the numerous zigzag and horizontal branches of the high blueberries that bend over it than on any deciduous shrub or tree, producing a very handsome snowy maze, and can thus distinguish this shrub, by the manner in which the snow lies on it, quite across the pond. It is remarkable also how very distinct and white every plane surface, as the rocks which lie here and there amid the blueberries or higher on the bank,—a place where no twig or weed rises to interrupt the pure white impression. In fact, this crystalline snow lies up so light and downy that it evidently admits more light than usual, and the surface is more white and glowing for it. It is semitransparent. This is especially the case with the snow lying upon rocks or musquash-houses, which is elevated and brought between you and the light. It is partially transparent, like alabaster. Also all the birds’ nests in the blueberry bushes are revealed, by the great snow-balls they hold.

May 2, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau was being written to again by L. Johnson & Company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Thoreau instanced for the 23d time (Dr. Bradley P. Dean has noticed) a cloud form category of Luke Howard: “There was considerable wind on the surface, from the northeast, and the above clouds were moving west and southwest, — a generally distributed cumulus. What added to the remarkableness of the sight was a very fine, fleecy cirrhus, like smoke, narrow but of indefinite length, driving swiftly eastward beneath the former, proving that there were three currents of air, one above the other. (The same form of cloud prevailed to some extent the next day.)”

The Reverend Hook and the Reverend Helm organized a First Methodist Church, in the carpenter shop of Luke Fisher Parsons at Salina, Kansas. Parsons continued in his diary: May 2, 1860: Very warm. The boys shaved and went in swimming and are now at Meeting in Sim’s shop. (The first church meeting ever held in Salina). May 3, 1860: Two families came from Leavenworth to settle. The preachers went around making calls. Bishop took two claims for people whoa re to be here soon. May 5, 1860: Raised house. The largest in town. The buffalo hunters did not come home. May 6, 1860: Sunday. Went to Meeting twice. Fifty persons present. Seventeen women. Some talk of going after the buffalo hunters (the Morrisons). May 7, 1860: Phillips started down to Lawrence today. The “Dutch” talk of building a Methodist Meeting House. The buffalo HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

hunters came home last night. May 9, 1860: Went buffalo hunting with Campbell and preachers, Bishop and Rankin up Spring Creek. I killed one and wounded another. Camped on the head of Mulberry. May 10, 1860: Got home from buffalo hunt. May 11, 1860: I staked my buffalo hide and cleaned my gun. Wm. Muir took claim north of mine. May 12, 1860: Broke about an acre on my claim. The preachers formed a church. Officers were elected, etc. May 13, 1860: Sunday. The first Eucharist was administered to the Presbyterian Church today. Took dinner at Jones. Downy came with family. May 14, 1860: The boys commenced to break ground on Joe’s claim. May 16, 1860: Russy and two other men were here from below. (Down toward the mouth of Smoky). They were looking up the road toward the Smoky Hill. Say that soldiers and wagons are coming. May 17, 1860: Three hundred fifty or four hundred U.S. Cavalry passed through here on their way to Pawnee Fork. Thirty-five government wagons and two hundred fifty beef cattle and six Delaware Indians went for guides. They have orders to exterminate the Kiowas. May 20, 1860: Sunday. Henry Barker came after another wagon, his having broken down. Borrowed “Crayon Sketches” of Mrs. Jones. May 23, 1860: John Jones talks of making himself Postmaster. May 25, 1860: Mrs. Campbell bought an antelope of a stranger for a dollar. I skinned it for her. May 27, 1860: Sunday. Abby and Henry took a walk which made the rest of us fellows feel very badly. Morrison’s family slept in the shop last night. Have rented it. The river has commenced to rise. May 30, 1860: Went buffalo hunting with David, Jones and Henry on the south ranch of Mulberry, twenty-five miles from home. Saw about five hundred buffalo. May 31, 1860: Shot at several buffalo, but could not kill them. Discovered cave in sandstone rocks. Named it Cachywa from the wild tribe of Indians. The walls are all covered with hieroglyphics and figures of Indians on horses, elks, etc., made by Indians. There is an excellent spring here. It rained on the way home.

May 2. River three and five sixteenths below summer level. I observed on the 29th that the clams had not only been moving much, furrowing the sandy bottom near the shore, but generally, or almost invariably, had moved toward the middle of the river. Perhaps it had something to do with the low stage of the water. I saw one making his way — or perhaps it had rested since morning — over that sawdust bar just below Turtle Bar, toward the river, the surface of the bar being an inch or two higher HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

than the water. Probably the water, falling, left it thus on dry (moist) land. I notice this forenoon (11.30 A.M.) remarkably round-topped white clouds just like round-topped hills, on all sides of the sky,

often a range of such, such as I do not remember to have seen before.

There was considerable wind on the surface, from the northeast, and the above clouds were moving west and southwest, — a generally distributed cumulus. What added to the remarkableness of the sight was a very fine, fleecy cirrhus, like smoke, narrow but of indefinite length, driving swiftly eastward beneath the former, proving that there were three currents of air, one above the other. (The same form of cloud prevailed to some extent the next day.) Salix alba apparently yesterday. The early potentillas are now quite abundant.

P.M.— To stone-heaps and stone bridge. Since (perhaps) the middle of April we have had much easterly (northeast chiefly) wind, and yet no rain, though this wind rarely fails to bring rain in March. (The same is true till 9th of May at least; i. e., in spite of east winds there is no rain.) I find no stone-heaps made yet, the water being very low. (But since — May 8th — I notice them, and perhaps I overlooked them before.) I notice on the east bank by the stone-heaps, amid the bushes, what I supposed to be two woodchucks’ holes, with a well-worn path from one to the other, and the young trees close about them, aspen and black cherry, had been gnawed for a foot or more upward for a year or two. There were some fresh wounds, and also old and extensive scars of last year partially healed. The naked viburnum is leafing. The sedge apparently Carex Pennsylvanica has now been out on low ground a day or two. A crowd of men seem to generate vermin even of the human kind. In great towns there is degradation undreamed of elsewhere, — gamblers, dog-killers, rag-pickers. Some live by robbery or by luck. There was the Concord muster (of last September). I see still a well-dressed man carefully and methodically searching for money on the muster-fields, far off across the river. I turn my glass upon him and notice how he proceeds. (I saw them searching there in the fall till the snow came.) He walks regularly and slowly back and forth over the ground where the soldiers had their tents, — still marked by the straw, — with his head prone, and poking in the straw with a stick, now and then turning back or aside to examine something more closely. He is dressed, methinks, better than an average man whom you meet in the streets. How can he pay for his board thus? He dreams of finding a few coppers, or perchance a half-dime, which have fallen from the soldiers’ pockets, and no doubt he will find something of the kind, having dreamed of it, — having knocked, this door will be opened to him. Walking over the russet interval, I see the first red-winged grasshoppers. They rise from the still brown sod before me, and I see the redness of their wings as they fly. They are quite shy and hardly let me come within ten feet before they rise again, — often before I have seen them fairly on the ground. It was 63° at 2 P.M., and yet a good deal of coolness in the wind, so that I can scarcely find a comfortable seat. (Yet a week later, with thermometer at 60 and but little wind, it seems much warmer.) We have had cool nights of late. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

June 1, Friday: The federal Census listed 107,204 people in Kansas, primarily Westerners.

Assistant Marshall Samuel H. Rhoades of the US Census of 1860 reported that the Thoreau household consisted of Henry D[avid] Thoreau, 42, M[ale]; C[ynthia] D[unbar Thoreau], 73, F[emale]; Louisa Dunbar, 75, F[emale]; Sophia Dunbar, 79, F[emale]; Sophia E. Thoreau, 40, F[emale]. Cynthia was listed as born in New Hampshire, the rest in Massachusetts. Henry D. Thoreau was listed as surveyor and no occupations were given for the others. The real estate of the household was valued at $4,000.00, personal property at $1,500.00.

Henry Thoreau was being written to by Chauncey Smith in Boston:

Boston June 1st 1860 Mr Henry D Thoreau Dear Sir I enclose to you my brothers note with my endorsement, at his request. Please acknowledge to him its reception Yours truly Chauncey Smith

While on a buffalo hunt, Luke Fisher Parsons had found a cave near Salina, Kansas. On this day, with Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of South Hampton, Massachusetts and his wife visiting, Mrs. Pomeroy insisted on keeping the Sabbath day holy, and so the cave he had found was dedicated. She had brought along some old sermons, one of which her husband was required to read aloud. Then they ate fried, baked, and boiled elk and for desert had figs, currant jelly, and lemonade. Parsons continued in his diary: June 1, 1860: Senator Pomeroy of Atchison and his wife and Hyatt of New York came here on a buffalo hunt. On invitation, I promised to go with them. Henry Barker went towards Topeka to look for his cattle. I loaned him my revolver. June 2, 1860: At cave, Cachywa with Pomeroy and wife, Mrs. Jones and Hyatt. I shot an elk through the heart and had some for supper. Some buffalo came through the ravine this morning and scared the horses so that they got away, and at daylight I had to ride two or three miles after them. June 3, 1860: Sunday. Spent a pleasant day in the cave. Had elk fried and baked, figs, currant jelly and lemonade for dessert. Gathered cactus for the ladies. Mrs. Phillips made us keep the Sabbeth day. She had the Senator read some old sermons. June 4, 1860: Started early for Smoky Hill Crossing of Military Road to hunt buffalo. June 5, 1860: Arrived home at six o’clock. Had a ratification meeting. Pomeroy spoke. More settlers came while we were gone. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

June 6, 1860: Pomeroy started home. June 7, 1860: Bishop’s brother came. June 8, 1860: Thirty or forty more U.S. Wagons passed through here on their way to Pawnee. Ten or twelve Sac Indians were here. June 9, 1860: In the evening went to see seven hundred Sac braves with their families. They have over fifteen hundred ponies. June 10, 1860: Got up at three o’clock and started without breakfast with Joe and Jim after a horse and mule that Holtsman told us about. After a long chase, we got them. They were very wild, branded on the left shoulder “J.I.” June 12, 1860: Phillips came and brought all of his family. Did not bring me any more tools. Brought my pants – a good fit. June 13, 1860: Got thrown off the scaffold on my face. Hurt pretty bad, but didn’t stop work. Phillips and Muir went after studding. June 16, 1860: Fixed the ford on the Smoky. June 17, 1860: Sunday. Went out on the Buttes. Stopped to see the Kaw Indians when we came home. Went to Joneses in the evening. Jones told Abby to go to bed. She went when I went away. June 19, 1860: Jim Muir traded ponies with an Indian. Several of the boys went on a hunt after stray horses. June 21, 1860: Bob Crawford and Spillman went to Lawrence. June 22, 1860: Commenced my house. Phillips and Muir went down the Saline after timber. June 23, 1860: We had a nomination caucus. I received nomination for County Sheriff. June 24, 1860: Sunday. I went up Dry Creek with Hyatt to ask Indians for his pony, but could not find Indians. Bible Class instituted. Jim went hunting with a stranger from Kansas City. June 25, 1860: Some men came from Topeka to go buffalo hunting. June 26, 1860: Jim came home last night and found his mare gone. June 27, 1860: I spent most of the day working on my house. June 28, 1860: This is my birthday. I am twenty-seven years old. June 29, 1860: Worked for W. A. Phillips. A Pikes Peak construction train arrived today. June 30, 1860: Joseph and Jim got home. Caught the thief and got horse on Santa Fe road near Cottonwood. July 1, 1860: Sunday. Heard Morrison preach. Many sleeping members did not recommend the capacity of the preacher. July 2- I was elected County Sheriff over J. Jones, forty to twelve. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

July 3, 1860: Raised a Liberty pole. commenced to board at Joneses at noon. July 4, 1860: Had a good picnic celebration. Short speeches by Phillips and Jones. I tried to officiate as “Marshall of the day.” The rest of the road men came and partook of the dinner with us. July 5, 1860: We need rain. Everything is dried up. July 6, 1860: Spillman, Jones and Flagg have gone on a buffalo hunt. July 7, 1860: Made a bargain with the boys to break prairie for me and I work for them. July 8, 1860: Sunday. I went out beyond Elm Creek and got flower seed for Mrs. Phillips and Mrs. Jones. July 9, 1860: Don’t thin I ever felt such a hot wind as blows today. Sanderson’s teams arrived. They put out a fire that burned up a good deal of timber and fence for John Shipple. July 11, 1860: Finished putting on cornice. Morrison commenced shingling. July 13, 1860: James went up to Thompson’s after a load of pickled buffalo tongues and tallow. July 15, 1860: Sim and I went up the river and helped Beach raise a large log house. Went up the Smoky about ten miles to find a place to get studding. Got dinner with the Kaw Indians on my way home. Henry and Abby took a ride in Jones’s wagon. July 16, 1860: Jim Muir came back from Thompsons. Campbell began digging a well in the street. (Now corner of Iron and Santa Fe Avenues). July 17, 1860: Went up the Smoky after studding with oxen and wagon and brought home forty studs. Packard and Morrison boys went hunting. If Crowthers agrees to it, I am to have the bay horse as my share of strays. July 18, 1860: Pealed my studding and made a very few shingles. July 19, 1860: Worked hard making shingles. July 20, 1860: Got Morrison’s oxen and went after rafters and sleepers for my house. Very hot. Had to wedge tire all the way home. July 22, 1860: Sunday. Went to Meeting. Sanderson came back. The wild Indians stampeded their horses and they lost them. July 23, 1860: Made shingles. Muir and Barker have been logging all day, and have now gone up the Saline after two of Jones’ horses, one of Muir’s and one of Hasket’s. We suspect they were stolen last night. I loaned them my horse. July 24, 1860: Rained last night. Had a high wind. Blew out the lower half of our window and struck Flagg and cut him badly. No HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

tidings of the stolen horses yet. The boys have gone up the Republican. W.W. Morrison traded wagon for cow and calf. Spillman traded yoke of young steers for cow. July 26, 1860: A man passed through here enroute for Leavenworth with four horses that the Indians had stolen a week ago. Muir and Barker returned, saying that Pawnees had stolen our horses. July 27, 1860: Hugh Morrison raised his house today. July 28 - James and Abby rode down to Israel’s. July 29, 1860: Phillips came and brought my commission as sheriff of Saline County. July 31, 1860: Worked for Morrison. Made window frames. Hugh and Andrew went up the Mulberry after timber. August 2, 1860: Worked for Morrison. Boys commenced batching. (Now corner of 5th and Iron). Spillman raised his house, 12 x 15. August 3, 1860: Worked for myself. Made one hundred and forty- three shingles. August 4, 1860: Worked up all the shingle blocks I had. August 5, 1860: David came back from Junction and brought my certificate of filing claim. August 6, 1860: Town company commenced to survey the town. August 10, 1860: Made a camp bedstead and bought a blanket and sheets for bed. Commenced to batch with boys in den today. August 11, 1860: Helped clean up den. Packard caught a fine fish. August 12, 1860: Went up to trade with the Indians. Nearly all were out hunting. August 13, 1860: Spillman took Abby out to see buffalo. James drove. Saw about thirty dead ones, but no live ones. August 14, 1860: Did nothing but lay around with sty on my eye. Tried to trade my horse to the Indian, John Socokay, for his mule, but he thought him too wild. August 15, 1860: A large train of soldiers mostly infantry (700) passed through today. They recognized Campbell’s mule and paid him ten dollars and took it off. August 18, 1860: The “Era of Paint” has arrived. Phillips and Campbell commenced painting their houses. August 20, 1860: Made Mead and James deputy sheriffs. The goys drink enough coffee to kill a horse and smoke before they go to bed and frequently take a chew before they get up. August 21, 1860: Jim Muir, A.C. Spillman and Henry Barker started by daylight this morning with Miss Abby Wilcox for Junction City. I think Muir and Abby are to be married. August 22, 1860: Jim Muir and Abby Wilcox were married last night HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

by the Mayor of Junction City. August 23, 1860: The boys came home from Junction last night. August 26, 1860: Two buffalo crossed Dry Creek and came into town. I killed one and followed the other over to the slough. I shot him, but he ran and fifteen or twenty Indians attacked him and shot him full of arrows. They thought he belonged to them and I didn’t argue the question. August 27, 1860: Pat Dunn’s dead body was taken through here this evening. He was trampled to death by a buffalo. August 28, 1860: Spillman went out on the Creek and brought in the man who was shot wile buffalo hunting. August 29, 1860: Mr. Woodward came from Junction to see the wounded man. Says he cannot live unless his leg is amputated immediately. August 30, 1860: Sim and Barker sit up with the wounded man. September 5, 1860: Went down on Spring Creek and got three bag full of buffalo hair from dead buffalo. September 6, 1860: Went with Spillman and Flagg to hunt turkey. September 8, 1860: Shot a buffalo this morning before breakfast from my door. September 9, 1860: Sunday. Went to Methodist Meeting. Went turkey hunting in the afternoon and got none. September 10, 1860: Bishop was chosen preacher instead of Morrison. September 11, 1860: Paxson and Baxter went buffalo hunting. Baxter came home and said Paxson got lost. September 12, 1860: Paxson came home. Had been lost. September 16, 1860: Took buffalo hair to Mrs. Sharp to make mattress for me. September 17, 1860: Phillips and Maxwell went on a buffalo hunt. I killed a buffalo just after work tonight in Bob Crawford’s field. September 18, 1860: Bob came with Joseph and wife, Mrs. Muir and Bean. September 24, 1860: Jones and Baxter returned this evening. Killed sixteen buffalo. Frank Robinson killed a buffalo on my claim today. September 27, 1860: About twelve or fifteen returned Pikes Peakers came today. September 28, 1860: Bishop came with a load of goods. A drove of about fifty buffalo passed across my claim today. They crossed the Smoky east of David Phillip’s field. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

October 2, 1860: Worked for myself. Phillips is about out of lumber. He went west after lath timber. October 4, 1860: Went out on fork of Gypsum Creek to hunt buffalo. Found David’s oxen and drove them to Iron Mound where I met him. October 6, 1860: Put out wolf bait. October 7, 1860: Went out to see what haven I had made. Found only two little fellows. Put out more bait. October 9, 1860: Got four wolves last night. October 11, 1860: Hugh, Andrew and Bean went hunting and took two of the Morrison girls with them. October 15, 1860: Camping tonight with Reed and two others at the old Delaware camp on Turkey Fork. October 16, 1860: Mead killed three buffalo and a buffalo cow. I killed one. Put out bait for wolves. This is the smokiest day I ever saw. October 17, 1860: Killed six wolves last night. Camped on a creek about ten miles east of Spillman Creek. October 18, 1860: Got home at sundown. Found six or eight teams of hunters here. October 20, 1860: Started out on a wolf hunt. Got Baxter to draw my traps. Camped at the springs on the head of Spring Creek. October 21, 1860: Came home. October 23, 1860: Worked on my house (House in town where Lamar Hotel is now). I gave Mrs. Campbell a pumpkin I got from Baxter and she gave me a pumpkin pie and a mince pie. October 26, 1860: Got a big gray wolf this morning. Kaw Indians in town. Some of them have some money. October 28, 1860: Got a skunk. Got over a quart of oil from him. October 29, 1860: This morning at daylight a prairie fire came from the south, ran around west of town, humped Dry Creek, Mulberry and the Saline. October 30, 1860: Very cold. Morrison promised to haul my stove for me, but put it off until tomorrow. October 31, 1860: Drew two loads of stone from east of Casses. November 2, 1860: Went to board at Jones again. Am to let him have my wolf skins. November 5, 1860: Started on a buffalo hunt with Sanford Leonard and took my new gun. I made a long shot at a cow, but only broke her hind leg. Camped on the Sharps Creek near Prater’s ranch. November 7, 1860: Rained all day. We did not shoot any buffalo, but went after the meat of the one I killed yesterday. Killed HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

one wolf. November 8, 1860: Killed two wolves, three skunks, two bulls and Leonard shot a turkey. November 10, 1860: We got four large wolves, then started home. November 13, 1860: Morrison brought news of Lincoln’s election and Topeka papers. November 14, 1860: I made a powder horn. November 18, 1860: Helped Morrison raise his house, 15 x 22. County Surveyor Whitley from Solomon was in town today. November 19, 1860: Sharp brought my mattress today. I paid him $8.60. November 20, 1860: Mrs. Cass came home without Cass. She buried him in Topeka. A barrel of tallow fell out of the wagon and fell on him and killed him. November 21, 1860: A good many Kaws in town. Name of one is Shingawa. Alonzo Gates came through here today. November 22, 1860: Had a good Lyceum last night. A good many women were out. I attempted a speech. November 23, 1860: Paxton went to Solomon. Sold Jones my mare for fifteen weeks board and the wintering of colt. November 27, 1860: Had an invitation to Phillips’ for dinner on Thanksgiving. November 28, 1860: Mead came from trading with the Indians. Got about thirty buffalo robes. Jones bought a pony for forty little wolf skins. November 29, 1860: Thanksgiving. Phillips’ had a good many at his house for dinner. December 1, 1860: Andrew and Bean got home and brought me a letter from Springdale. December 5, 1860: Shot two prairie chickens at one shot. Tanned some skins. December 6 - Bean and Miss Morrison were married this evening. December 7, 1860: Bishop raised his log house on his claim on Dry Creek. December 8, 1860: Sanford Leonard Came. Put tanning preparation on my hides. December 11, 1860: Worked for Israel Markery. (Israel Markery married Mrs. Link’s oldest daughter). December 12, 1860: Finished my job for Israel. He is to pay me sixty-two feet of oak lumber. December 13, 1860: Leonard started for Lawrence. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

December 14, 1860: Went up to Robinson’s to play cards. December 17, 1860: Muir and Crawford went to Leavenworth. Crawford to Illinois. I staked out the ground for my house on claim. (Log home on claim north of town). December 21, 1860: Mrs. Crowthers and Muir spent the evening here. December 23, 1860: Mead says he killed one hundred and seventy wolves since he was here last. December 25, 1860: Shot a turkey. We had it baked for dinner. December 26, 1860: Campbell went up to trade with the Kaws. December 27, 1860: I found a human skull near Casses.

June 1. 2 P.M.— River 1 3/8 above summer level.

6 P.M. 1 6/8 " " " Farmer has heard the quail a fortnight. Channing yesterday. The barberry flower is now in prime, and it is very handsome with its wreaths of flowers. Many low blackberry flowers at Lee’s Cliff. June-grass there well out. Krigia, how long? Breams’ nests begun at Hubbard’s Grove shore. They have carefully cleaned the bottom, removing the conferva, small weeds, etc., leaving the naked stems of some coarse ones, as the bayonet rush, bare and red. Young Stewart tells me that when he visited again that gray squirrel’s nest which I described about one month ago up the Assabet, the squirrels were gone, and he thought that the old ones had moved them, for he saw the old about another nest. He found another, similar nest with three dead blind gray squirrels in it, the old one probably having been killed. This makes three gray squirrels’ nests that I have seen and heard of (seen two of them) this year, made thus of leaves and sticks open in the trees, and I hear of some more similar ones found in former years, so that I think this mode of nesting their young may be the rule with them here. Add to this one red squirrel’s nest of the same kind. HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

1861

January 2, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal.

King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia died in Potsdam and was succeeded by his brother Wilhelm I, who indeed had since 1858 been serving as regent.

In Salina, Kansas, Luke Fisher Parsons continued in his diary: January 2, 1861: Leonard came back from Lawrence. Israel finished drawing my logs. January 3, 1861: Jones had an oyster supper this evening. January 8, 1861: Worked for myself making window and door frames. Pretty cold. January 16, 1861: Bishop, Campbell and W.W. Morrison were chosen as a Relief Committee. January 17, 1861: Two feet of snow. January 18, 1861: Word comes that there is danger of another invasion from Missouri. January 28, 1861: Rev. Bishop came in this evening while we were playing whist. January 29, 1861: Baxter and I went over the river and got a hundred and thirty posts. January 30, 1861: Mended old clothes all day. A man came from Boston to ascertain facts in regard to famine here. Phillips finished putting up ice. January 31, 1861: Helped Jones cut out ice. Two Indians stayed here all night. At Lyceum we discussed the subject “Secession Should Be Resisted By Force If Need Be.” Affirmative Jones, Spillman and Rev. Morrison. Negative myself, W.A. Phillips and Reverend Bishop. Decision was in favor of the Negative. February 2, 1861: Worked for W.A. Phillips. General Fisher and Simons came here from Atchison, and left the teams at Manhattan. Came for fresh teams. February 5, 1861: There were a hundred buffalo in sight today. The snow is a foot deep. February 7, 1861: Hugh and Ermina Morrison spent the evening here. Lucas and Hasket started after charity goods. February 8, 1861: The charity goods were distributed hurly- burly. February 9, 1861: I bought a Spanish bridle from a Kaw. February 11, 1861: Hugh and the Beans got home from buffalo hunt HDT WHAT? INDEX

RACE WAR, NOT CIVIL WAR

on Gypsum where they went yesterday, but got lost last night and had to lie out in the rain. The river is very high. February 12, 1861: Ferry boat is lodged below in the ice. February 13, 1861: Sanford and Thompson and the two Woodwards came from hunt and left their ponies and oxen on the other side of Dry Creek on account of high water. February 15, 1861: Jennings went to Solomon after the mail. Could not get it. Solomon was too high to get across. February 16, 1861: I helped to chop the ice out and get the ferry boat back up here (Where Iron Avenue bridge is now). Thompson went after the mail, determined to get it at all hazards. Took an extra set of clothes – thinking he might have to swim. February 17, 1861: Thompson did not come. Some fears for his safety. February 18, 1861: Thompson arrived this morning. February 20, 1861: Several drunken Indians here tonight. February 23, 1861: Near head of Spring Creek on a buffalo hunt with Baxter. Wounded a cow, but could not get her. February 25, 1861: Started home. Saw a herd, but wind was wrong for us. Could not get a shot. March 4, 1861: Raised my house in town. Thorne helped me. March 6, 1861: Worked on both of my houses. March 14, 1861: Worked on my house. Doctor from Junction City came last night to see Mrs. Bean who is considered very ill. March 16, 1861: Finished boarding my house. Had only two boards left. Have got the best house of the kind in the town. No Leonard yet. Jones thinks he has met with foul play. March 21, 1861: James Muir came with another brother, Robert. Says Crawford and William will be in tomorrow. March 22, 1861: William Bean went for the mail. Sanford Leonard and a Pottawatomie Indian came with Jones’ load of goods – flour, coffee, sugar, pork, dried apples, pickles, oysters, wine, etc. March 24, 1861: This is the windiest day I have seen on this claim. Spillman’s log house burned down. Caught from a spark from Joneses chimney. Had to fight prairie fire. Elder Morrison’s chimney was blown down. March 25, 1861: Robert Muir and Haskett started down after the mill fixtures. I worked on my house. William Bishop and wife were here this evening. March 27, 1861: Reverend Bishop wants to buy my house as soon as I get the roof on. April 2, 1861: I had another streak of luck today. I cut off my big toe except for a little skin on the under side, and also cut HDT WHAT? INDEX

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two others to the bone. It will at least damage me $25.00. April 3, 1861: James Muir moved into his house. April 4, 1861: My foot feels easy. I have it tied to a shingle so as not to move the toes. April 9, 1861: We raised Jones’ blacksmith shop. Thorne helped. With my lame foot, I could only give instructions. Bean came up from Junction and says Lane and Pomeroy are Senators. Says corn meal, beans, potatoes and old clothes elected Pomeroy. Brought a man to set up the mill. April 11, 1861: Phillips’ team arrived with the mill fixtures. April 14, 1861: Galoway got Simons to walk down to Junction with him. April 16, 1861: My foot pained me all day. Probably because of too severe exercise yesterday. Thomas White came in with another wagon of mill fixtures. (Fixtures for Col. Phillips old sawmill). April 18, 1861: William Bean came from Manhattan with fifteen bushels of charity wheat. April 19, 1861: Bishop brings report that the North and South are concentrating their forces near Charleston, North Carolina. April 20, 1861: Wish I knew as much as Mrs. Jones thinks her yellow tomcat knows. April 23, 1861: Worked for Phillips on the mill. James Muir started log house on his claim. April 24, 1861: Robert Crawford came from Lawrence. Heard that North and South had actually had a fight at Ft. Sumpter. April 25, 1861: Campbell went down for the mail. Heard that the Cherokees and Osage Indians had committed depredation on the south border and that Kansas forts and frontiers must be defended by Kansas volunteers. April 28, 1861: They say that Bean’s horses were stolen at Lecompton. May 1, 1861: The two Calkins families came today to settle. May 3, 1861: Spillman and Lizzie Alverson, Packard and Ermina Morrison went a Maying out to the Buttes with a mule team. May 5, 1861: Spillman was so venturesome as to take a walk with Lizzie. I am afraid Cupid has pierced his innocent heart. May 7, 1861: We formed a Company of Volunteers this evening of forty-one. I was elected Captain. May 11, 1861: Started to Junction with Spillman, Flagg and Robertson. Stayed all night at Solomon. May 12, 1861: Left Solomon in the rain. Took dinner with Henry. He is Captain of an independent company. Got to Junction at HDT WHAT? INDEX

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sundown. Stopped at McFarlane’s. May 13, 1861: Today elected regiment officers. I did some good “buttonholing” for Phillips for Colonel and exceeded my expectations. He was made Lieutenant Colonel. May 14, 1861: Left Junction and got home at eight o’clock. May 17, 1861: At the convention W.A. Phillips was elected our delegate to State Convention at Topeka. May 18, 1861: We electd Peter Girsch Third Lieutenant in place of Thorne, who resigned. May 20, 1861: Mr. Fletcher of Junction came to see me to get twenty of my men to go and garrison Ft. Riley with McClure’s Company. All thought more need of staying at home than to enlist for three years. May 22, 1861: Spillman went down to Gypsum on the Saline to get more men on our roll. May 26, 1861: Sunday. Wrote to Governor Robinson and Colonel McClure. Went to Meeting in the evening. May 27, 1861: Could not work. Have no nails. May 28, 1861: Some of the boys and girls were to have a spree today, but Miss Tyron did not want to be “talked about.” So that stopped the whole thing. May 29, 1861: Started the engine and blew the whistle for the first time in Salina. May 30, 1861: Heard that Colonel Ellsworth had been killed in Virginia. May 31, 1861: Other boys from town and I went to help plant Coburn’s corn. June 1, 1861: We drilled in two squads. Rev. Bishop was mad because I didn’t put him in the Senior squad. Phillips got home. Says they are fighting in Virginia. June 4, 1861: Helped survey the town. June 6, 1861: Thomas Anderson went out hunting. July 1, 1861: Thorne came home and reports people scared on the account of the Missourians coming into Kansas. Secession flag waving at Ft. Scott. July 4, 1861: Had a young folks party at our house in the evening. We fed twenty-seven Kaws at the third table. July 12, 1861: Mrs. Phillips bought a pony. July 15, 1861: Put roof on one side of my log cabin. July 14, 1861: Have a mind to join the United States Army. Four others said they would go with me. July 15, 1861: Commenced bedstead for Sharp. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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July 16, 1861: Finished Sharp’s bedstead. July 19, 1861: Mrs. Phillips is sick. July 25 - Threshed wheat with flail and got eight bushel, I think. July 26, 1861: Made counter for Jones’ store. July 27, 1861: An Indian and Harper exchanged shots at twenty yards. No on hurt. Had singing, dancing and a good time generally this evening. August 1, 1861: Spillman threw a hatchet at Elder Morrison’s steer and cut his hip, so he traded his steer for it. This is the first beef to be butchered here. August 15, 1861: Worked for Robert Crawford. August 16, 1861: Finished the roof of my house. No mail this week. August 21, 1861: Nearly all the town went down on Gypsum Creek plumming. Rained and turned cold. Got only few plums. August 24, 1861: Gathered five or six bushel of plums on the Mulberry. August 25, 1861: Heard General Lyon was killed. September 1, 1861: Started down to Junction with five others to attend court. Camped at Mear’s Spring. September 2, 1861: Started at daylight and arrived at Junction at sundown. September 3, 1861: Thorne tried to indict Markery for selling liquor to Indians. Trial went against Thorne. September 4, 1861: Came as far as Saline. Camped all night. Thorne was sick with ague. September 5, 1861: Came home before breakfast. September 6, 1861: Jones’ oxen went off this morning yoked and chained together. Have not been found yet. September 7, 1861: Jones found oxen near Iron Mound. He had to swim river to get them. September 8, 1861: Moved onto my claim. Calkins stayed all night with me.

September 9, Monday: In his tent in Ireland, the Prince of Wales had a 2d sexual encounter with Nellie Clifden.

Dr. Robert Montgomery Smith Jackson reported for duty as a surgeon with the 11th Pennsylvania Infantry Volunteers.

According to a preserved fragment of a letter from Jason P. Rathbone, a Northern civil war soldier somewhere in the American South, to his friend Benjamin W. Pendleton of Hopkinton, Rhode Island, “the slaves out here what I have seen I think they are better off than [illegible] the white folks they appear to take comfort and there masters talk with them more freer than they do with the white people I don’t know as I can say that I think they would be any better off if they was free that I think the most of the soldiers would say.” (Clearly, this Union HDT WHAT? INDEX

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soldier would have been eager to leave off the killing and being killed, and just let the Southern whites and the Southern blacks take care of their little problem entirely on their own.) US CIVIL WAR READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT

At the Metropolitan Grounds at Hackney Wick, just outside London, a racetrack owned and sponsored by the White Lion Pub and but 260 yards in circumference, the race was on between “the Indian” and an English pedestrian named Edward Mills, 5 feet 4 inches and 112 pounds. The runners exchanged positions at several points during the 6 miles because Louis “Deerfoot” or “Red Jacket” Bennett was running in his characteristic spurts, but Mills was ahead of the Indian, attired in his brief red skirt, by 20 yards at the finish line in 32 minutes 31 1/2 seconds.

The first wood-burning steam locomotive came to St. Paul, Minnesota. Due to the absence of railroad tracks, it had to come the same way Henry Thoreau had come, by wood-burning steamboat up the Mississippi River. The William Crooks had four drive wheels, and four pilot wheels to hold it on rough Western tracks. The diamond smokestack was to reduce sparks.9

Luke Fisher Parsons had enlisted in the 6th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment that had been organized at Fort Scott, Kansas and would serve for a total of 3 years and 9 months during the Civil War. A cavalry company having been added to the 8 infantry companies of this regiment, on this day the men elected their officers and the reorganized regiment was mustered in for 3 years of service under Colonel William R. Judson.

Parsons continued in his Kansas diary: September 9, 1861: Started to go to Junction. Found Saline up – boat gone. Came back. September 11, 1861: Went to Junction. Found officers gone. Have to wait for them. September 12, 1861: Saw Sam Strickler in regard to furnishing horses for my company of volunteers. September 13, 1861: S.D. Houston, Land Officer, is in country. Still have to wait. September 14, 1861: Long days waiting for Houston. September 15, 1861: Read in the paper that John Brown, Jr. was on his way to join Kansas regiment. September 16, 1861: Strickler promised to furnish horses. Houston came about noon. We did our business in a few moments. I am now owner of one hundred and sixty acres of land. September 17, 1861: Left Hersy’s at sunrise. Arrived home at ten o’clock. Forded Smoky at Parker’s. The water came within three inches of top of our wagon bed. September 18, 1861: Settled up with Jones and Phillips. September 19, 1861: Left Salina with Spillman and Adams. Lay out on the prairie between Holland and Turkey Creeks in the rain. It was a cold bath.

9. It still has this — but now “William Crooks” is in retirement, at the Lake Superior Museum of Transportation in Duluth. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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September 20, 1861: Heard that Beauregard and Jeff Davis and Colonel Jaskin were killed and that the North had taken sixty thousand prisoners. Too good to be true. September 21, 1861: Slept in a mud house in Junction. Bought a mare for $130.00. She kicked me over before I had her ten minutes. Arrived at Ft. Riley about four o’clock. September 27, 1861: Left Ft. Riley. Camped at Manhattan. I am Sergeant of Guards. The Manhattan ladies gave the boys supper. Sent a basket full of refreshments to the guard. Corn was furnished free for horses. September 30, 1861: Arrived in Topeka at night. Captain Clark, Hunt, Newel and myself came over to see the Governor to get to get commissions. Stopped in Chase House. Left Topeka at four o’clock. October 3, 1861: Arrived at ferry crossing to Weston. Camped all night. Colonel Mitchell and others came to see us. October 7, 1861: This morning I enlisted in the services of the United States Army for three years or duration of war. Enlistment dates ten days back. Enlisted in cavalry. [At this point, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, this 3-year continuous diary comes to an end. The notes from the Civil War period are fragmentary and have not been transcribed.]

IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS, WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.) HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1862

July 11, Friday: The Stevenson family arrived in the capital of Hesse-Homburg, Germany, Bad Homburg vor der Höhe (then Homburg), where Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson’s father Thomas Stevenson would be entering a health cure program.

Bavard et Bavarde (later called Les Bavards), an opéra-comique by Jacques Offenbach to words of Nuitter after Cervantes, was performed for the initial time, at Bad Ems.

In Washington DC, “An Act to carry into Effect the Treaty between the United States and her Britannic Majesty for the Suppression of the African Slave-Trade” (STATUTES AT LARGE, XII. 531; SENATE JOURNAL and HOUSE JOURNAL, 37th Congress, 2d session, Senate Bill No. 352). INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE

HTTP://WWW.YALE.EDU/LAWWEB/AVALON/DIPLOMACY/BRITAIN/BR1862.HTM

Major-General Henry Halleck was named general-in-chief of the Union army.

Pope Pius IX visited Franz Liszt at the monastery of the Madonna del Rosario near Rome. He asked Liszt to play and Liszt obliged with St. Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds, followed by Casta Diva from Bellini’s Norma. The Pope sang the aria spontaneously from memory.

Il Signor Fagotto, an opéra-comique by Jacques Offenbach to words of Nuitter and Tréfeu, was performed for the initial time, at Bad Ems.

In the 6th Kansas Cavalry, Luke Fisher Parsons was promoted to 1st Lieutenant. Eventually he would be promoted to be the Army of the Frontier’s inspector for the 3d Brigade of the 7th Army Corps.

Draft riots began in New-York and would continue for the following 4 days. Approximately 1,000 people would be killed or wounded, including many blacks lynched for being the cause of the war. Rioters, many Irish immigrants, were protesting money payments in lieu of military service. US CIVIL WAR HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1863

July 5, Sunday: To deal with the wartime threat from the Cherokee nation, which was primarily under the military leadership of Stand Waite, there were 3 US Union regiments manned primarily by Seminole and Creek refugees but officered by white men. At Fort Blunt, Major John A. Foreman of the 3rd Indian Home Guards filed his report to his superior officer, Colonel William A. Phillips, of the engagement with the Cherokee forces of Stand Waite that had taken place at Cabin Creek in the Indian Territory on the 1st and 2nd of the month: SIR: In compliance with your instructions, I joined your supply train from Fort Scott, at Baxter Springs, on the 24th of June, instant [ultimo]. On the 25th, began the march with the train for this place. arrived at Hudson’s Ford, on the Neosho River, the 26th instant [ultimo], where we were obliged to remain until the 29th by high water, when we succeeded in crossing the train. On the 30th, we discovered a trail. I immediately detached Lieutenant Parsons [Luke F. Parsons], of the Third Indian Regiment, with 20 Cherokees, to ascertain what had made the trail, as it was fresh. Parsons followed the trail about 4 miles, when he found 30 of the enemy, who proved to be Stand Watie’s advanced picket. He gallantly attacked and defeated them, taking 3 prisoners and killing 4. On the 1st of July we arrived at Cabin Creek, where we found the enemy in force, concealed in a thicket on the south bank of the creek. I immediately deployed my command on the right and left of the ford. Lieutenants [David A.] Painter, of the Second, and Parsons, of the Third Indian Regiments, on the right; Lieutenant [Fred.] Crafts, of the First Indian, and Lieutenant [Benjamin H.] Whitlow, of the Third, on the left, Captain Armstrong, with one section of his battery, and Lieutenant [Jule C.] Cayot, of the Third Indian Regiment, with a mountain howitzer, coming promptly into position in the center. We opened a brisk fire upon the enemy in the thicket on the opposite bank, which we continued for half an hour. By this time the enemy’s fire had nearly ceased so we moved forward into the stream, which proved too deep to ford, and we were obliged to fall back. On the morning of the 2d, one section of Blair’s battery took position on an eminence about 900 yards to the left of the ford; one section of Armstrong’s battery obtained a commanding position on the right; the main column, consisting of the Indians and five companies of the First Negro Regiment, were stationed in the center. After obtaining this position, we opened fire. The firing was continued about twenty minutes, when I received notice from the lookouts that the enemy were in disorder (not being able to see their movements from the creek, I had stationed a lookout or picket in some trees near Armstrong’s battery). I ordered the firing to cease, and the main column to move forward. When nearly across the creek, I was wounded, and obliged to go to the rear. The column pushed on, under Colonel Williams, of the First Colored Regiment, and drove the enemy from their position. They were hotly pursued by Captain Stewart and his company, of the Ninth Kansas Cavalry. Our loss is 3 killed and 30 wounded. The enemy’s loss is 9 prisoners. The number of their killed and wounded is unknown, but must be heavy. As discrimination is impossible where all are brave, I return HDT WHAT? INDEX

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my heartfelt thanks to the officers and men of that command for their gallantry, energy, and perseverance on that trying occasion. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, JOHN A. FOREMAN, Major Third Indian Regiment.

Col. WILLIAM A. PHILLIPS, Commanding Forces in the Field. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1865

May 31, Wednesday: A report from Walt Whitman: “Specimen Days”

SOME SAD CASES YET James H. Williams, aged 21, 3d Virginia cavalry. — About as mark’d a case of a strong man brought low by a complication of diseases, (laryngitis, fever, debility and diarrhoea,) as I have ever seen — his superb physique, remains swarthy yet, and flushed and red with fever — is altogether flighty — flesh of his great breast and arms tremulous, and pulse pounding away with treble quickness — lies a good deal of the time in a partial sleep, but with low muttering and groans — a sleep in which there is no rest. Powerful as he is, [Page 772] and so young, he will not be able to stand many more days of the strain and sapping heat of yesterday and to-day. His throat is in a bad way, tongue and lips parch’d. When I ask him how he feels, he is able just to articulate, “I feel pretty bad yet, old man,” and looks at me with his great bright eyes. Father, John Williams, Millensport, Ohio.

At the end of the war, after service of 3 years and 9 months, Luke Fisher Parsons was discharged from the 6th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. He would return to Salina, Kansas and go on a land claim. US CIVIL WAR

A convention was signed in Tangier between the United States, Austria, Belgium, Spain, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Sweden on the one part, and the Sultan of Morocco on the other, concerning the administration and upholding of the Cape Spartel Lighthouse. READ THE FULL TEXT

August 27, Sunday: Thomas Chandler Haliburton died.

The 6th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was mustered out of service at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. During the Civil War this regiment had lost 4 officers and 81 enlisted men in combat, such as in the Battle of Cane Hill of November 28th, 1862 and the Battle of Prairie Grove of December 7th, 1862, and 3 officers and 140 enlisted men due to illness. US CIVIL WAR

Between this Sunday and the 30th, Wednesday, Richard Wagner would be writing out a prose draft for a poem Parsifal. LISTEN TO IT NOW HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1867

April 18, Thursday: Luke Fisher Parsons got married with the schoolteacher Katherine Amanda Houston (1843-1924), one of the 1st students to attend a forerunner of Kansas State University, Bluemont Central College. Her father Samuel Dexter Houston was an early settler in Riley County, having established a claim on Wildcat Creek during December 1853. Their union would produce a child in 1868, Addie Parsons (Mitchell), and then a boy Houston Parsons, and then another girl Stella Parsons. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1909

February 22, Monday: Luke Fisher Parsons posted from Salina, Kansas, to his “Dear Comrade” S.J. Reader, “a poor photo of the Old Man.”

In the Fen Country for orchestra by Ralph Vaughan Williams is performed for the first time, in Queen’s Hall, London.

After a round-the-world voyage of 15 months to display American naval power, the Great White Fleet returns to Hampton Roads, Virginia, reviewed by President Roosevelt. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1911

March 26, Sunday: Luke Fisher Parsons wrote from his home to J.E. Boos, providing a physical description of John Brown, describing him as “never excited, always cool, calm, and thoughtful, but had the deliberate courage of a lyon,” and declaring that his disposition had always been to fight for what was right: “He said the Lord had created him to be the deliverer of the slaves from bondage, the same as he did Moses.” As proof of this he recounted an incident from their days together in Kansas. Brown killed people who opposed him exactly the way Jesus Christ would have, had He been confronted by supporters of human enslavement: To me, John Brown’s pictures all look like him, either with full beard, or smooth shaven. He was tall and slender, round shouldered, with light complexion, sharp grey eyes that saw everything about him. He had a prominent chin and aquiline nose. His head was high above the ears. His favorite posture was standing with his hands clasped behind him under his coat. He was a man of few words, but was a good listener. He said the Lord had created him to be the deliverer of the slave from bondage, the same as he did Moses to free the children of Israel. No John Brown was never excited, always cool, calm, and thoughtful, but had the deliberate courage of a lyon.... He said “I would rather have the small-pox, yellow fever, and cholera all together in my camp, than a man without principles. Bullies are not the best fighters, give me men of good principles; God fearing men, and with dozen of them I will oppose a hundred such men as these Boarder Ruffians.” On the morning of Aug 30th 1856 when Brown was told that the Boarder Ruffians were coming and that they had killed Fred Brown, and Garrison Brown [he] was not excited at all, he started right off, saying come on men, he and I walked together nearly a half mile before the other men overtook us, there was scarsely a word said, except he said to me Parsons were you ever under fire! I said no but tell me what you want me to do and I will do it. He said take more pains to end life well, than to live long. I guess I had better send you my speech that I made at Osawatomie, 54 years after the fight.... It not only tells about Brown, but discribes the battle and also tells where all the John Brown men are now.... HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1913

October 18, Saturday: Luke Fisher Parsons wrote from Salina, Kansas to Charles Wesley Tolles in Ottumwa, Iowa: Salina, Kas. Oct. 18th Friend C. W. Tooles [Tolles], Ottumwu, Iowa. My dear Sir: Your favour of the 13th inst. is before me in which you ask questions of so long ago that I fear I will not be able to answer all corectly, but will do the best I can. John Brown made two trips through Iowa from Tabor east by N. One in fall of 1857, the other in Feb. 1859. I was with him on the first trip but not on the second. The first trip we had only one slave, one team of mules and wagon. We crossed the Mo. River I think at some ferry below Neb. City. We left Tabor late in the day and camped after about ten miles. We were loaded heavy for the team and poor roads and most of the men walked. We all slept in camp. Made a fire of logs, poles, &c., had a large canvas that we put up on the side of the cold wind slanting from the ground up toward the fire, we all slept there side by side and were tolerably comfortable, barring the smoke. We had in our company Brown, Kagi, Stevens. Tidd, Cook, Leeman, Realpb, Owen Brown, Slave, Luke F. Parsons. I don't remember the exact route we took or where we camped. I think we passed through Des Moines. We went to Springdale in Cedar Co., Iowa, and spent the winter there, drilling and studying military tactics. On the Feb. trip, 1859, Brown had three ox teams and twelve slaves. On the 29rth of Jan. after Brown had left Topeka and before he reached the Nebraska line be came to Spring Creek. He found the creek too deep to ford, and while waiting for the creek to run down, he discovered across the creek a company from Atchison commanded by A.P. Wood, which barred the way to liberty, said to be 80 men. Brown with twenty-two men, black and white, crossed the stream above, slipped down along the timber, and burst a11 unexpectedly on the foe. They made off as fast as they could, with a loss of one killed, three prisoners, four horses, pistols, guns, &c., &c. Such was the terror of his name. This has been called the “Battle of the Spurs.” On Feb. 1st John Brown left Kas. never to return. He crossed the Mo. River at Neb. City. Besides the 12 slaves he had Kagi, Stevens, Tidd, and Gill and one or two others whom I did not know. I do not know the route they took but they passed through Cedar Co. Never heard of Brown before a meetin where a reward was offered for his scalp. Brown got those slaves in Mo. the night of Dec. 20, 1858. The men who went with him were Kagi, Stevens, Tidd, and Anderson, and probably some others. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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You ask where these men are or what became of them. John Henri Kagi was in the Armory at Harpers Ferry, swam out on the rocks in the Shenandoah River and was shot from the railroad bridge. John Edwin Cook escaped from Harpers Ferry, but was afterwards captured and hung. Richard Realph served in Union Army, but afterwards jumped off a ship in San Frisco bay and was drowned. Aaron D. Stevens was terribly wounded with Brown at Harpers Ferry but afterwards hung. Charles P. Tidd escapes from Harpers Ferry but died while fighting at the Island of Roanoke under Genl. Burnside. William Leeman was shot at Harpers Ferry from the railroad bridge. Owen Brown escaped from Harpers Ferry with Tidd, but later drifted to Pacific coast and died near Pasadena. Richard Richardson, a Negro slave, we left in Canada. Charles Moffat died at Montour, Iowa, about 10 years ago. Luke F. Parsons [is he] who has written this long letter to an old friend whom he has never seen. I am the last John Brown man in Kansas, the sole survivor of the Battle of Osawatomie. Now I hope you will take pleasure in reading this and not lose either as you did my other letter, for I am in my 82nd year and don’t like to write very well. Yours Truly Luke F. Parsons. HDT WHAT? INDEX

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1926

April 22, Thursday: After hanging up his guns and farming for 33 years in Salina, Kansas, Luke Fisher Parsons had moved his family into town and rented out its farm. On this day he died in Leavenworth, Kansas at the age of 93. The body would be placed in a Parsons/Houston family plot in the Gypsum Hill Cemetery of Salina beside that of his wife Katherine Amanda Houston Parsons who had died 2 years earlier, with Samuel D. Houston, Anna E. Houston, Helen A. Mitchell, and Amy A. Mitchell.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2016. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at .

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

Prepared: October 17, 2016 HDT WHAT? INDEX

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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a HDT WHAT? INDEX

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request for information we merely push a button.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with . Arrgh.