Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/240

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232
JOHN BROWN

until Monday, March 8th, when he departed for Philadelphia."

On the 6th of March he wrote to his son John from Boston: "My call here has met with a hearty response, so that I feel assured of at least tolerable success. I ought to be thankful for this. All has been effected by quiet meeting of a few choice friends, it being scarcely known that I have been in the city."[1]

Leaving the money-raising to Sanborn and Smith, Brown turned to his Negro friends, saying to his eldest son, meantime: "I have been thinking that I would like to have you make a trip to Bedford, Chambersburg, Gettysburg, and Uniontown in Pennsylvania, traveling slowly along, and inquiring of every man on the way, or every family of the right stripe, and getting acquainted with them as much as you could. When you look at the location of those places, you will readily perceive the advantage of getting some acquaintance in those parts."[2]

And then he wrote two touching letters; one to his eldest daughter and one to his staunch friend, Sanborn.

To Ruth Brown he wrote: "The anxiety I feel to see my wife and children once more I am unable to describe. I want exceedingly to see my big baby Ruth's baby, and to see how that little company of sheep look about this time. The cries of my poor

  1. Sanborn, pp. 438–440.
  2. Letter to John Brown, Jr., 1858, in Sanborn, pp. 450–451