John Brown’s Writing Case: Lost, Found, then Lost
to History
Students of the Old Man are acquainted with his
famous liberation effort that began in December 1858, when he and his men
rescued eleven enslaved people from Missouri. After evading marshals for weeks, Brown left the Kansas
Territory with the liberated people, passing through Nebraska, Iowa, and
finally reaching Chicago by March 11, 1859. Brown escorted the liberated people to Detroit the following
day by rail, and saw them off to Canadian freedom. He remained in Detroit for a couple of days, and then spent
a week in Cleveland and the Western Reserve in northeast Ohio, which was his
home area.
Brown returned to
Cleveland at the end of the month (Mar. 28), and spent a couple of more weeks
moving about Ohio before heading farther east, finally reaching New York State
by mid-April. At some point during
this itinerary, Brown lost his writing case—a point of no small concern, since
it was not only a valuable piece of property, but because it may also have
contained correspondence he did not wish to have exposed.
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| John Brown traveled with a "writing case" similar to this one |
Before chasing down this rabbit hole any
farther, we might pause to inquire of the term, “writing case.” This is how Brown referred to the item,
which would have been a familiar thing in his time. I did not make any extensive effort to research “writing
cases,” but it is apparent that they were prominent among literate people in
Europe and North America in the 18th and 19th
centuries. One English website I located online refers to them as “writing boxes,” and I’ve also seen them referred to as “writing slopes,” which speaks of the fold-out writing
plane that was part of the typical writing case. Evidently, they varied in size and quality, but were all
essentially an extension of the home writing desk—perhaps in way parallel to
how the desktop computer relates to the development of so-called laptop and
then notebook computers, not to mention tablets and iPads. Like our computers, the writing case
could be used to store correspondence while the writer was traveling, and and
they also had compartments for storing pen and ink. I have no idea what kind of writing case that Brown
owned, as it seems not to have survived.
Given that it accompanied him on a fairly rigorous and even daring trek,
perhaps it was truly more of a case than a box. It is significant, though, that Brown carried a writing
case, as he undoubtedly needed a facility for drafting and storing communiqués
in this most critical period leading up to the Harper’s Ferry raid in the fall
of 1859.
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| From John Brown's Memorandum Book, noting he had written to his sons to inquire of his lost writing case |
On April 5, 1859, writing in the environs of
northeast Ohio, Brown dashed off a letter to his son Owen, whom he had left
behind in Akron with his other son, Jason. The Old Man’s letter to Owen is not extant, although it is
referenced in Brown’s 1859 memorandum book in which Brown listed his
correspondence. In this
brief memorandum entry, Brown jots: “about writing case.”1 His letter must have had an urgent tone, although it
seems to have taken Owen a frustratingly long time to get back to his
father. Evidently, Brown
was generally annoyed with Owen for being so slack in his correspondence, so it
must have galled him a bit more that his son took so long to get back to him
about his writing case.
On May 2, nearly a month after Brown had written,
Owen finally answered: “Dear Father Yours dated April 5th was recd several
weeks since. . . . We have not
seen your writing case, which you say was lost, either at Chicago, or somewhere
this side.” Owen’s belated
response at least reveals that Brown initially was unsure about where he had
lost his writing case, thinking that he might have left it behind during his
last stopover in Chicago (Mar. 11), or as Owen put it, “somewhere this side”—meaning
between Chicago and Ohio.
Evidence of the Old Man’s annoyance is preserved perhaps in the brief
notation dashed on the corner of the verso side, which contains an accompanying
letter from son Jason. Brown thus
wrote curtly: “ Jason & Owen Brown Requires no reply.”2
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| Excerpt from Brown's letter to John H. Kagi, 16 April 1859, with directions about the return of his writing case |
Not
having heard from Owen, Brown wrote to his more reliable lieutenant, John H.
Kagi, on April 16, from Westport, New York. Westport was the landing for those crossing Lake Champlain from Vergennes, Vermont--suggesting that Brown probably returned to his
family in North Elba, New York, by way of Boston, then proceeded northward to
Vermont. Writing from Westport,
Brown wrote to Kagi, stating that he was awaiting his “conveyance,” a wagon or
carriage, to bring him up the mountain to his family in North Elba. In his letter to Kagi, he writes: “If
you have found my writing case, & papers; please forward them without
delay, by Express, to Henry Thompson,
North Elba, Essex Co, care of Jas A
Allen, Westport New York.”4
 |
| Another entry from John Brown's Memorandum Book, noting his letter to John H. Kagi on 16 April 1859 |
By
the time that Owen’s belated letter reached Brown in New York State, the Old
Man had likely gone back down to Boston, where he remained for a couple of
weeks. In the meantime, we know
that Kagi had located and recovered Brown’s writing case and a “package of
papers” in Cleveland, Ohio. As it
turns out, the Old Man had left them at the City Hotel. Following his directives, Kagi sent the
writing case and papers by express to the attention of Brown’s faithful
son-in-law, Henry Thompson, at North Elba on April 21, to the attention of James Allen, agent of
the U.S. Express Company, in Westport. On the same day, Kagi wrote a letter to Thompson, informing
him that the writing case and papers were en route, and included the shipping
receipt.5
It
took John Brown about one month to acknowledge Kagi’s good work in the recovery
of the case, mainly because the Old Man was moving among Boston friends, where
he had remained for a number of weeks in preparing for the Harper’s Ferry
raid. Furthermore, Brown was not well,
having relapsed with another bout of “the Ague.” He had suffered periodically over the years with this prairie
infirmity, but I suspect he had other ailments—the theme of which merits a
study in itself. Brown had ongoing
difficulties with inflammation in his eyes, as well as problems in his
ears. It is hard to determine whether
these issues were simply the result of the malarial “Ague,” or if other health issues were nagging him at the time. But on
May 16, he wrote back to Kagi stating that he had been “badly down with the
ague” to the point that he could get nothing accomplished, and was still quite
weak. He was pleased, however, to
learn from Henry Thompson that the writing case and papers were “all safe, so
far as I now see.”6
Thus
the history of John Brown’s lost and found writing case. Unfortunately, it appears that it was finally lost
again—since he probably brought it with him to Maryland, and may even have had
it with him when he rode into Harper’s Ferry in October 1859. Whether he carried it with him in
anticipation of starting his grand expedition of freedom in the South or
left it behind in his Maryland farmhouse is not known. Either way, it would have fallen into the
hands of some groping Virginian, this time lost to history forever.--LD
1 Second memorandum
book, approx. page 53. Brown’s
memorandum books are held in the collection of the Boston Public Library.
2 Owen Brown, Akron, Ohio, to John Brown,
2 May 1859, and undated letter from Jason Brown, verso side with John Brown's note. This document was sold by Heritage
Auctions (Dallas, TX) in the 2009 March Grand Format Rare Manuscripts Auction
#6019. Document was sold under “Autograph
Docket 1859,” Lot 35061. A
somewhat unreliable transcript of Owen’s letter is No. 11, in Documents relative to the Harpers Ferry
Invasion appended to Governor Wise's Message (Richmond: William F. Ritchie,
1859). The same letter is
transcribed in the so-called Mason Report, the Senate Select Committee on the
Harper’s Ferry Raid (Washington, D.C.: June 1859), 70-71.
3 John Brown, 16 April
1859, to John H. Kagi, in Dreer Collection, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania. See transcription in
Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown,
522.
4 John H. Kagi to Henry Thompson, 21 April 1859, GLC 7235, Gilder Lehrman
Collection.
5 John Brown, Boston, to John H. Kagi, 16 May
1859, in Dreer Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. See transcription in Sanborn, Life and Letters of John Brown, 522-23.
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