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A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

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Mindwarp
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« on: March 22, 2009, 04:42:44 pm »

He did not go to the college called Harvard, good old Alma Mater
as she is. He was not fed on the pap that is there furnished. As he
phrased it, "I know no more of grammar than one of your calves." But
he went to the great university of the West, where he sedulously
pursued the study of Liberty, for which he had early betrayed a
fondness, and having taken many degrees, he finally commenced the
public practice of Humanity in Kansas, as you all know. Such were
his humanities, and not any study of grammar. He would have left a
Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.

  He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for
the most part, see nothing at all- the Puritans. It would be in vain
to kill him. He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared
here. Why should he not? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have
come over and settled in New England. They were a class that did
something else than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat
parched corn in remembrance of that time. They were neither
Democrats nor Republicans, but men of simple habits, straightforward,
prayerful; not thinking much of rulers who did not fear God, not
making many compromises, nor seeking after available candidates.

  "In his camp," as one has recently written, and as I have myself
heard him state, "he permitted no profanity; no man of loose morals
was suffered to remain there, unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. 'I
would rather,' said he, 'have the small-pox, yellow fever, and
cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without principle....
It is a mistake, sir, that our people make, when they think that
bullies are the best fighters, or that they are the fit men to
oppose these Southerners. Give me men of good principles-
God-fearing men- men who respect themselves, and with a dozen of
them I will oppose any hundred such men as these Buford ruffians.'" He
said that if one offered himself to be a soldier under him, who was
forward to tell what he could or would do if he could only get sight
of the enemy, he had but little confidence in him.

  He was never able to find more than a score or so of recruits whom
he would accept, and only about a dozen, among them his sons, in
whom he had perfect faith. When he was here, some years ago, he showed
to a few a little manuscript book- his "orderly book" I think he
called it- containing the names of his company in Kansas, and the
rules by which they bound themselves; and he stated that several of
them had already sealed the contract with their blood. When some one
remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a
perfect Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to
add a chaplain to the list, if he could have found one who could
fill that office worthily. It is easy enough to find one for the
United States Army. I believe that he had prayers in his camp
morning and evening, nevertheless.

  He was a man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about
his diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat
sparingly and fare hard, as became a soldier, or one who was fitting
himself for difficult enterprises, a life of exposure.
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