The Last Night of His Life--

"Your Friend as Ever": Reflections on John Brown's Letter to James Foreman

John Brown wrote many letters and notes from his Virginia jail cell in the days and weeks prior to his execution on December 1, 1859.  I’ve managed to track down many if not most of them, although I will never be certain whether some have eluded me, either having been lost to history or “held captive” in someone’s personal collection.  Although a century-and-a-half has brought more letters to light than were available in 1911, for instance, the locations of some original manuscripts of Brown’s letters remain a mystery.  However, I live in hope that, here and there, one will turn up in some archive or collection, or may yet appear on an auction website--and every so often this is precisely what happens.

Considering that tomorrow is the 152^nd anniversary of Brown’s “public murder” in Virginia, I thought it would be interesting to bring to light one letter that we know about only through published transcriptions that happily have preserved the letter for posterity.  Furthermore, the letter is interesting because it points back to an early chapter of John Brown’s life in Pennsylvania, many years before he became a public figure in the antislavery cause.

On the last Thursday of his life, December 1, 1859, the Old Man undoubtedly attended to prayer and reading of the Bible in the early morning hours, after which he labored over his last will and testament, for which his jailer, John Avis, acted as witness.  Brown made an addendum to the will on the following morning, Friday, December 2nd, before going to his execution, including a note to his wife.1  

Apart from the will, Brown remained busy throughout much of the day, writing a total of six letters to family members and associates, including one to his future biographer the journalist Richard Hinton.   Among these letters, Brown found time to pen a short note after night had fallen, in answer to a letter that had been placed into his hands that same evening.  As an aside, it should be noted that Brown did not receive his mail directly.  The state’s prosecuting attorney, Andrew Hunter, screened all letters addressed to his prisoner, determining which ones would be received and those to be set aside.  In all fairness to Hunter, since Brown got letters from admirers and detractors, the attorney seems to have prevented only the most inflammatory and extreme expressions, whether in affront to Virginia or to John Brown.  (The rejected letters were subsequently filed, hidden, lost, and then recovered at the beginning of the 20^th century, and have long since been published.)  The only letters that Brown seems to have received and destroyed were letters requesting his autograph; there were many, and he had no time for such vanities, especially in the last days of life.

One such letter that Hunter forwarded to Brown came from James Foreman, once an apprentice and family friend from his days in Randolph Township, near Meadville, Pennsylvania (1826-35).  In some cases, the letters written to Brown have been preserved, but I am not aware if Foreman’s letter is extant.  I only know of it because of Brown’s December 1^st letter written in response.  The Foreman letter may be held by one of Brown’s descendants, but at this point it seems lost.  Based on Brown’s response, we know that Foreman had written on that previous Saturday, November 26.  The letter probably expressed no small measure of concern and sympathy on the part of Foreman and his wife since the two men had been close. 

After Brown’s death, James Redpath—Brown’s first biographer—probably by advice of the Brown family or as a result of Brown’s letter to Foreman—inquired of the latter regarding his past association with Brown.  Foreman stated that he had gone to live with the Browns as an apprentice, probably in 1826, early in Brown’s move to Pennsylvania.  Foreman’s details were slightly off, but his characterization of Brown as a “rigid” church member and man given to prayer, seems right on.  Foreman was probably not surprised that his old employer had gone to such great lengths to destroy slavery.  Even in the mundane affairs of business, Foreman recalled, Brown had shown “strict integrity for honesty and justice.”  Foreman recalled that once when Brown was on his way to get a doctor for his ailing wife (probably his first wife, Dianthe), the faithful husband nevertheless made a short detour to apprehend and rebuke some thieves caught in the act of pilfering from a neighbor’s apple tree.2 

The Brown-Foreman association not only spanned the near decade of Brown’s residence in Pennsylvania, but it was far more than a simple business arrangement.  First, as an apprentice, Foreman resided with the other employees of Brown’s burgeoning tannery on site, which meant that he enjoyed something of a communal experience with his employer and family.   Brown not only worked closely with Foreman and hosted him at his hearth, but also depended upon him in his own multifaceted career as a civic and community leader with his hands in everything from postal service to church matters, and from local improvements to education and antislavery concerns.  At some point, Foreman married and moved out of the Brown residence; but after Brown’s first wife Dianthe died in 1832, his mourning became overwhelming.  Despondent,  Brown moved himself and his young children into the Foreman household, where he seems to have depended on the Foreman’s practical and emotional support for a season before remarrying in 1833.3  In light of this personal history between Brown and the Foremans, it is no surprise that they would write to Brown in the final phase of his Southern captivity.

Whatever was specifically entailed in Foreman’s expressions of concern, the “good feelings” he expressed constrained Brown to respond, albeit briefly.  What follows is thus a reasonably authentic transcription:

Charlestown Prison, Jefferson County, Jefferson County, Va., Dec. 1, 1859.
 My Dear Friend
                         I have only time to say I got your kind letter of the 26^th November, this evening. Am very grateful for all the good feeling expressed by yourself and wife.  May God abundantly bless you.  I am very cheerful in the hopes of entering on a better state of existence in a few hours, through infinite grace in Christ Jesus my Lord.  Remember “the poor that cry and them that are in bonds, as bound with them.” 

                                               Your friend as ever,
                                                John Brown

The letter is quintessentially John Brown.  In most of his letters of incarceration, his heading would typically say, “Charlestown, Jefferson County, Virginia,” but a few were headed, as in this case, with “Charlestown prison.”  There is no apparent reason for these variations, although he may have included the reference to “prison” as the days drew near to his execution and the shadow of his death sentence increased.  Nevertheless, in correspondence and visitation, he repeatedly asserted his cheerfulness.  While it has recently become biographically fashionable to question Brown’s truthfulness, in this regard I prefer to take him as writing and speaking honestly in regard to the peace and cheerfulness he experienced in the face of death.  To deny it is to run roughshod over the man's spirituality and faith, and those of who have some knowledge and appreciation for Brown's faith are particularly suspicious of scholars who make external and often unstudied analyses of his Christian faith.  Furthermore, as a student and biographer of Brown, I deplore the notion that some narrators have put forth to the effect that the Old Man "reinvented himself" as a martyr and saint following the raid.  This is a false dichotomy, misrepresenting Brown the prisoner as much as it does Brown the freedom fighter in the field.4

While it is understandable that Brown’s dependency on faith in his last days would become more pronounced, there was nothing artificial or contrived about the man falling fully upon his religious confidence.  Furthermore, it is natural that his letters, written “on death row” would ring with the authentic tone of his own faith.   The authenticity, ease, and flow of his expressions of faith only verify how deeply imbedded were these spiritual and religious inclinations within him.  Of course, unlike most evangelicals, there was no tension between his belief in the Reformed doctrine of justification by grace through faith and belief in the quest for justice as an expression of the justified state of the believer.  As in so many of his letters, his few words contain an inevitable reference to the enslaved, which here echoes in the conflation of two biblical verses, Proverbs 21:13 (the cry of the poor) and Hebrews 13:3 (those in bonds).  Yet even this conflation is interesting because Brown weds a verse from the Old Testament with one from the New Testament, thus showing his belief of the full biblical veracity of the antislavery effort.  For John Brown, to claim Jesus Christ as “my Lord” bound him in life and death with the poor and oppressed—an apostolic sentiment that reigned neither in the North or the South.

As far as sources are concerned,  Brown's letter is preserved in a brief, undated, unattributed newspaper article, probably from the late 19^th or early 20^th century, that provides a transcription from the original.5  According to this clipping, the original letter seems to have been donated to some library, although I am still investigating that point.  The only other source for this letter is in F. B. Sanborn’s famous book, The Life and Letters of John Brown--a wonderful resource except for the fact that Sanborn often edited Brown’s letters to the point of obscuring their style and format.6

Here, in these few lines, then, we see John Brown, nearly at the point of execution, pausing to greet an old associate for the last time. The two men had little or no association for nearly thirty years, yet the martyr’s heart was full.  “Your friend as ever,” he wrote in closing--signing his name in his famously pinched handwriting. 

It was the last night of his life.

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Notes

      1 The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, holds the original manuscript of the will and addendum.

      2 The letter shows that Redpath had written to Foreman on December 21, 1859. Foreman’s letter to Redpath, dated December 28,1859, is held by the Kansas State Historical Society, although transcriptions are also found in the Stutler and Villard collections.  It was published by Rabbi Louis Ruchames in 1959, in his John Brown Reader—still the best reader available (The Warch and Fanton reader from the 1970s is out of print, and the one done a few years ago by Trodd and Stauffer is inaccurately and inadequately edited.)

      3 See chapters 6 and 7 of "Fire from the Midst of You."  Also see the valuable essay by Meadville historian, Anne W. Stewart, "John Brown: From the Record; The Crawford County Years: 1827-1835 The Young Family Man," Journal of Erie Studies (Fall 2002): 44-72.

      4  Only two testimonies have in various degrees downplayed Brown’s religiosity in the field, especially in Kansas.  In his later years, George Gill, a sometime follower of Brown, expressed great cynicism toward Brown and contempt for his religion.  But Gill had grown jaded in later years and certainly was hostile toward Brown's religious views and piety.  Brown's own son, Salmon, may have defended his father in later years, but his own personal bias against his father’s evangelical faith seeped into his testimony, particularly when he denied that his father carried a Bible and read it in Kansas, an untenable conclusion given all that we know, including eyewitness testimony.   There is no doubt that as an antislavery figure, Brown was known for his extreme devotion to orthodoxy as well as orthopraxy.
     5  See John Brown letterbook, Clarence Gee Collection, Hudson [Ohio] Library and Historical Society.
     6  See Sanborn, p. 615.