John Brown - Abolitionist Part III

 

Influences

The connection between John Brown's life and many of the slave uprisings in the Caribbean was clear from the outset. Brown was born during the period of the Haitian Revolution, which saw Haitian slaves revolting against the French. The role the revolution played in helping to formulate Brown's abolitionist views directly is not clear; however, the revolution had an obvious effect on the general view towards slavery in the northern United States, and in the Southern states it was a warning of horror (as they viewed it) possibly to come. As W. E. B. Du Bois notes, the involvement of slaves in the American Revolutions, as well as the "upheaval in Hayti, and the new enthusiasm for human rights, led to a wave of emancipation which started in Vermont during the Revolution and swept through New England and Pennsylvania, ending finally in New York and New Jersey".

The 1839 slave insurrection aboard the Spanish ship La Amistad, off the coast of Cuba, provides a poignant example of John Brown's support and appeal towards Caribbean slave revolts. On La Amistad, Joseph Cinqué and approximately 50 other slaves captured the ship, slated to transport them from Havana to Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, in July 1839, and attempted to return to Africa. However, through trickery, the ship ended up in the United States, where Cinque and his men stood trial. Ultimately, the courts acquitted the men because at the time the international slave trade was illegal in the United States.  According to Brown's daughter, "Turner and Cinque stood first in esteem" among Brown's black heroes. Furthermore, she noted Brown's "admiration of Cinques' character and management in carrying his points with so little bloodshed!"  In 1850, Brown would refer affectionately to the revolt, in saying "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. Witness the case of Cinques, of everlasting memory, on board the Amistad."

The specific knowledge John Brown gained from the tactics employed in the Haitian Revolution, and other Caribbean revolts, was of paramount importance when Brown turned his sights to the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. As Brown's cohort Richard Realf explained to a committee of the 36th Congress, "he had posted himself in relation to the wars of Toussaint L'Ouverture; he had become thoroughly acquainted with the wars in Hayti and the islands round about."  By studying the slave revolts of the Caribbean region, Brown learned a great deal about how to properly conduct guerrilla warfare. A key element to the prolonged success of this warfare was the establishment of maroon communities, which are essentially colonies of runaway slaves. As a contemporary article notes, Brown would use these establishments to "retreat from and evade attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain and prolong a guerrilla war, of which ... Haiti afforded" an example.

The idea of creating maroon communities was the impetus for the creation of John Brown's "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States", which helped to detail how such communities would be governed. However, the idea of maroon colonies of slaves is not an idea exclusive to the Caribbean region. In fact, maroon communities riddled the southern United States between the mid-1600s and 1864, especially in the Great Dismal Swamp region of Virginia and North Carolina. Similar to the Haitian Revolution, the Seminole Wars, fought in modern-day Florida, saw the involvement of maroon communities, which although outnumbered by native allies were more effective fighters.

Although the maroon colonies of North America undoubtedly had an effect on John Brown's plan, their impact paled in comparison to that of the maroon communities in places like Haiti, Jamaica, and Surinam. Accounts by Brown's friends and cohorts prove this idea. Richard Realf, a cohort of Brown in Kansas, noted that Brown not only studied the slave revolts in the Caribbean, but focused more specifically on the maroons of Jamaica and those involved in Haiti's liberation. Brown's friend Richard Hinton similarly noted that Brown knew "by heart" the occurrences in Jamaica and Haiti.  Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a cohort of Brown's and a member of the Secret Six, stated that Brown's plan involved getting "together bands and families of fugitive slaves" and "establish them permanently in those [mountain] fastnesses, like the Maroons of Jamaica and Surinam".

Legacy

Of the major figures associated with the American Civil War, except for Abraham Lincoln, Brown is the most studied and pondered. Already in 1899 a bibliography filled 10 pages, and that without including any newspaper articles.

At the same time he is among the most studied, Brown is among the least commemorated. No state, federal, or local government in the United States honors Brown, beyond maintaining small museums, and Vermont has designated a John Brown Day. For example, there is no monument to Brown in Harpers Ferry, where his raid is not fondly remembered by inhabitants. There used to be a national monument, but it is now a historical park. There is, instead, a monument to the faithful slave that allegedly refused to join him.

In 1878, Ward Burlingame, newspaper editor and confidential secretary of several Kansas politicians, stated that in Kansas, "the memory of John Brown is cherished with peculiar veneration", and proposed that Brown should be one of Kansas's two statues in the new National Statuary Hall of the U.S. Capitol. This suggestion was endorsed by the Historical Society of Kansas. Seventeen years later, the Kansas Legislature selected Brown for one of the two statues, a response to Virginia having chosen Robert E. Lee. However, Kansans had mixed views on Brown. The statue was never funded, no sculptor was ever chosen (although the name of Daniel Chester French was suggested, and in 1914 Brown was "replaced" by a statue of Kansas Governor George Washington Glick (in 2003 replaced by Dwight David Eisenhower).

Kate Field raised money to give to the State of New York for what was to be, in her words, "John Brown's Grave and Farm". The New York State government turned it into the John Brown Farm State Historic Site.

At the centenary of the raid in 1959, the only thing celebrated in Harpers Ferry was the capture of Brown, after his raid. A "sanitized" play about him was put on.  "My grand pappy was a Confederate and we're not going to talk about John Brown", said Edwin (Mac) Dale, at the time the Superintendent of the national park.  He was so anti-Brown that an NPS historian came to Harpers Ferry "to help override the objections of...Dale to John Brown". This was unsuccessful. Dale refused to accept the attention the Raid would receive, and transferred to Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park.

John Brown Day

May 1: In 1999, John Brown Day was celebrated on May 1.

May 7: In 2016, John Brown Lives! Friends of Freedom celebrated May 7 as John Brown Day. In 2018, it was May 5. Spirit of John Brown Freedom Awards were given to environmentalist Jen Kretser, poet Martin Espada, and to Soffiyah Elijah, attorney and executive director of the Alliance of Families for Justice, which advocates for prison reform. In 2022, the day chosen was May 14.

May 9: The John Brown Farm, Tannery & Museum, in Guys Mills, Pennsylvania, holds community celebrations on John Brown's birthday, May 9.

August 17: In 1906, the Niagara Movement, predecessor of the NAACP, celebrated John Brown Day on August 17.

October 16: In 2017, the Vermont Legislature designated October 16, the date of the raid, as John Brown Day.

Meetings in honor of John Brown

In 1946, the John Brown Memorial Association held its 24th annual pilgrimage to the grave in North Elba, where there were memorial services.

At the 150th anniversary of the raid In 2009, a two-day symposium, "John Brown Comes Home", was held, on the influence of Brown's raid, using facilities in adjacent Lake Placid. Speakers included Bernadine Dohrn and a great-great-great-granddaughter of Brown.

John Brown Memorials

Museums

John Brown Museum, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

John Brown Farm State Historic Site, North Elba, New York

John Brown Farm, Tannery & Museum, Guys Mills, Pennsylvania

John Brown House (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania)

John Brown Museum, Osawatomie, Kansas

John Brown Raid Headquarters (Kennedy Farm), Samples Manor, Maryland

All of the museums above except the one in Harpers Ferry are places Brown lived or stayed.

Barnum's American Museum in New York, destroyed by fire in 1868, contained according to a November 7, 1859, advertisement "a full-length Wax Figure of OSAWATOMIE BROWN, taken from life, and a KNIFE found on the body of his son, at Harper's Ferry". An agent of Barnum traveled to Harpers Ferry in November, saw Brown, and offered him $100 (equivalent to $3,016 in 2021) for "his clothes and pike, and his certificate of their genuineness." By December 7 the exhibits included "his autograph Commission to a Lieutenancy as well as TWO PIKES or spears taken at Harper's Ferry". Also exhibited were the Augustus Washington 1847 daguerreotype of Brown (see above) and the now-lost painting by Louis Ransom of the famous, apocryphal incident of Brown kissing a black baby on his way to the gallows, reproduced in an Currier & Ives print (see Paintings). The latter was only exhibited for two months in 1863; Barnum withdrew it to save the building from destruction during the anti-Negro riot that broke out shortly.

Statues

As discussed above (#Legacy), nothing came of the proposal that Kansas send a statue of Brown as one of its two representatives honored in the U.S. Capitol.

The first statue of Brown, and the only one not at one of his residences, is that located on the (new) John Brown Memorial Plaza, on the former campus of the closed Black Western University, site of a freedmen's school founded in 1865, the first Black school west of the Mississippi River. The statue is the one surviving structure of the entire Quindaro Townsite, a ghost town today part of Kansas City, Kansas (27th Street and Sewell Avenue), a major Underground Railroad station, a key port on the Missouri River for fugitive slaves and contrabands escaping from the slave state of Missouri. The pillar and the life-sized statue of Brown were erected by descendants of slaves in 1911, at a cost of $2,000 (equivalent to $58,164 in 2021). Lettering reads: "Erected to the Memory of John Brown by a Grateful People". There is a bronze plaque. In March 2018, the statue was defaced with swastikas and "Hail Satan".

At the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, near Lake Placid, New York, there is a 1935 statue of Brown escorting a black child to freedom. The artist was Joseph Pollia. The cost of the statue and pedestal "was contributed in small sums by Negroes of the United States".

There is also a statue (1933) at the John Brown Museum, Brown's home in Osawatomie, Kansas. It was sponsored by the Women's Relief Corps, Department of Kansas.

Aside from these, the only sculpture of Brown is a bust by Black sculptor Edmonia Lewis, which she presented to Henry Highland Garnet.

Streets

There is only one major street anywhere in the world honoring Brown, the Avenue John Brown in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where there is also an avenue honoring abolitionist Senator Charles Sumner.

There is a rural John Brown Road near Torrington, Connecticut, his birthplace. Small roads near museums in North Elba, New York, and Guys Mills, Pennsylvania, are named for Brown. There is a Harpers Ferry Street in Davie, Florida, and in Ellwood City and Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, in Northwest Pennsylvania near the Ohio border, near the route Owen Brown took seeking refuge after the raid in his brother John Jr.'s house in Ashtabula County, Ohio, there is a Harpers Ferry Road, and intersecting with it, a smaller John Brown Road. In Osawatomie, Kansas, there is a John Brown Highway.

Storer College

Storer College began as the first graded school for Blacks in West Virginia. Its location in Harpers Ferry was because of the importance of Brown and his raid. The Arsenal engine house, renamed John Brown's Fort, was moved to the Storer campus in 1909. It was used as the college museum.

A Plaque honoring Brown was attached to the Fort in 1918, while it was on the Storer campus.

Plaque on John Brown's Fort

In 1931, after years of controversy, a tablet was erected in Harpers Ferry by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, honoring the key "Lost Cause" belief that their slaves were happy and neither wanted freedom nor supported John Brown. (See Heyward Shepherd monument.) The president of Storer participated in the dedication. In response, W. E. B. DuBois, co-founder of the NAACP, wrote text for a new plaque in 1932. The Storer College administration would not allow it to be put it up, nor did the National Park Service after becoming owner of the Fort. In 2006, it was placed at the site on the former Storer campus where the Fort had been located.

Other John Brown sites

John Brown's Fort, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

John Brown House (Akron, Ohio), where he lived from 1844 to 1854, is (2020) not open to the public but is being renovated by the Summit County Historical Society of Akron, Ohio. There is a John Brown Memorial near the House. They are in the Perkins Park area of the Akron Zoo. The memorial was not erected within the zoo; the zoo incorporated the land where it is. It is not well marked and is not normally open to the public, nor is the house, though this is expected to change. The monument was erected in 1910, 8,000 people attended, and Jason Brown, at the time John Brown's oldest living child, spoke.

The wagon that carried Brown from jail to his execution is preserved by the Jefferson County, West Virginia, Museum in Charles Town.

A wagon used by Brown when transporting freed slaves from Missouri across Iowa is preserved at the Iowa Historical Society.

An approximate replica of the firehouse was built in 2012 at the Discovery Park of America museum park in Union City, Tennessee. There is a marker explaining the link with John Brown's raid.

Iowa has set up the John Brown Freedom Trail, marking his journey across Iowa leaving Kansas, en route to Chatham, Ontario.

Lewis, Iowa: "Fighting Slavery – Aiding Runaways. John Brown Freedom Trail – December 20, 1858 – March 12, 1859."

"Because of the impossibility of colored boys entering work shops where useful trades are taught," a John Brown Industrial College was planned at Bonner Springs, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, and 80 acres (32 ha) purchased. While the organizers stated that "the college is intended as a monument in honor of John Brown, of Osawatomie", in Missouri there was no support; Brown was "the murderer of Osawatomie". "Has it come to this?," a Missouri newspaper asked.

Media

Two notable screen portrayals of Brown were given by actor Raymond Massey. The 1940 film Santa Fe Trail, starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, depicted Brown completely unsympathetically as an out-and-out villainous madman; Massey plays him with a constant, wild-eyed stare. The film gave the impression that he did not oppose slavery, even to the point of having a Black "mammy" character say, after an especially fierce battle, "Mr. Brown done promised us freedom, but ... if this is freedom, I don't want no part of it". Massey portrayed Brown again in the little-known, low-budget Seven Angry Men, in which he was not only the main character, but depicted in a much more restrained, sympathetic way. Massey, along with Tyrone Power and Judith Anderson, starred in the acclaimed 1953 dramatic reading of Stephen Vincent Benet's epic Pulitzer Prize-winning poem John Brown's Body (1928).

Numerous American poets have written poems about him, including John Greenleaf Whittier, Louisa May Alcott, and Walt Whitman. The Polish poet Cyprian Kamil Norwid wrote two poems praising Brown: "John Brown" and the better known "Do obywatela Johna Brown" ("To Citizen John Brown"). Marching Song (1932) is an unpublished play about the legend of John Brown by Orson Welles.  Russell Banks's 1998 biographical novel about Brown, Cloudsplitter, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. It is narrated by Brown's surviving son Owen. James McBride's 2013 novel The Good Lord Bird tells Brown's story through the eyes of a young slave, Henry Shackleford, who accompanies Brown to Harpers Ferry. The novel won the 2013 National Book Award for Fiction. A limited episode series based on the book was released starring Ethan Hawke as John Brown.

Paintings

A well-known image of Brown in the later 19th century is a Currier and Ives print, based on a lost painting by Louis Ransom. It portrays Brown as a Christ-like figure. The "Virgin and Child" typically depicted with Christ are here a black mother and mulatto child. Legend says that Brown kissed the mythical baby but virtually all scholars agree that this did not in fact happen.  Above Brown's head, like a halo, is the flag of Virginia and its motto, Sic semper tyrannis ("Thus always to tyrants"). According to Brown's supporters, the government of Virginia was tyrannical and according to fugitive slaves, it "is as well the black man's, as the white man's motto".

In 1938, Kansas painter John Steuart Curry was commissioned to prepare murals for the Kansas State Capitol in Topeka, Kansas. He chose as his subject the Kansan John Brown, seen by many as the most important man in Kansas history. In the resulting mural, Tragic Prelude, Brown holds a Bible in one hand and a "Beecher's Bible" (rifle) in the other. Behind him are Union and Confederate troops, with dead soldiers; a reference to the Bleeding Kansas period, which Brown was at the center of, and which was commonly seen to have been a dress rehearsal, a "tragic prelude", to the increasingly inevitable Civil War.

In 1941, Jacob Lawrence illustrated Brown's life in The Legend of John Brown, a series of 22 gouache paintings. By 1977, these were in such fragile condition that they could not be displayed, and the Detroit Institute of Arts had to commission Lawrence to recreate the series as silkscreen prints. The result was a limited-edition portfolio of 22 hand-screened prints, published with a poem, John Brown, by Robert Hayden, commissioned specifically for the project. Though Brown had been a popular topic for many painters, The Legend of John Brown was the first series to explore his legacy from an African-American perspective.

Paintings such as Thomas Hovenden's The Last Moments of John Brown immortalize an apocryphal story in which a Black woman offers the condemned Brown her baby to kiss on his way to the gallows. It was probably a tale invented by journalist James Redpath.

Historical markers

According to the Historical Marker Database, Brown is mentioned on the following historical markers:

At his birthplace in Torrington, Connecticut, on John Brown Road.

Baldwin City, Kansas: "Battle of Black Jack"

Franklin County, Kansas: At the site of the Pottawatomie massacre.

Lawrence, Kansas: "John Brown and the Siege of Lawrence, September 14–15, 1856"

Near Netawaka, Kansas: Battle of the Spurs

Osawatomie, Kansas:

At the site of the Battle of Osawatomie, in John Brown Memorial Park.

"Soldiers' Monument". Commemorating the 5 persons killed, including one of Brown's sons. "This inscription is also in commemoration of the heroism of Capt. John Brown who commanded at the Battle of Osawatomie August 30, 1856; who died and conquered American slavery on the scaffold at Charlestown Va. Dec. 2, 1859."

1935 plaque by The Woman's Relief Corps, Department of Kansas

Old Stone Church Marker. "Built by Rev. Samuel Adair brother-in-law of John Brown" (1861).

Topeka, Kansas: "Capital of Kansas" ("In the late 1850s Negroes bound north on the 'underground railway' were hidden here by John Brown.")

Near Trading Post, Kansas:

"Marais des Cygnes Massacre" – site of a "fort" built by Brown after the massacre

"Murder on the Marais des Cygnes"

Hagerstown, Maryland: at the site of the Washington House Hotel, where Brown stayed on his way to Harpers Ferry.

Hyattsville, Maryland: Osborne Perry Anderson, who fought with Brown.

Sharpsburg, Maryland: at the site of the Kennedy Farm.

Marlborough, Massachusetts: at the John Brown Bell, once in Harpers Ferry, since 1892 on display in Marlborough. The second-most-famous American bell, after the Liberty Bell.

Detroit, Michigan: at the house of William Webb, site of the "Frederick Douglass – John Brown meeting".

Hudson, Ohio:

At his boyhood home.

First Congregational Church in Hudson: "At a November 1837 prayer meeting, church member and anti-slavery leader John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery." Another marker mentions Brown at the former site of the church.

Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: "Abolitionist John Brown Boards in Chambersburg"

In rural Crawford County, Pennsylvania, there is a John Brown Road, and on it two historical markers at the site of Brown's house and tannery.

Indiana, Pennsylvania: marker for Absalom (Albert) Hazlett, a member of Brown's party who was also hanged at Charles Town (in 1860)

King of Prussia, Pennsylvania (Valley Forge National Historic Park): "Knox's Quarters – John Brown Farm".

Kent, Ohio: marker for Underground Railroad stops mentions John Brown's residence in Kent (then called Franklin Mills) during the 1830s.

Mont Alto, Pennsylvania: "John Brown Raid", where John Cooke, one of Brown's followers, was captured. (Two markers.)

Near Amissville, Virginia: Dangerfield Newby marker.

Winchester, Virginia: "A 'Malicious Design' – Burning the Winchester Medical College". The body of John Brown's son Watson was brought there for dissection by medical students.

Charles Town, West Virginia:

"Jefferson County Courthouse – Where John Brown Was Tried"

"Two Treason Trials". (The other had nothing to do with Brown.)

"Hanging Site of John Brown. Creation of a Martyr. Prelude to War."

"Site of the execution of John Brown"

"Edge Hill Cemetery – John Brown Raid Victims"

Beallair, home of Colonel Lewis Washington, held hostage by Brown.

Focus of Action – Jefferson County in the Civil War

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia:

"Pilgrimage." Marks the site of an 1896 visit by the National League of Colored Women.

"Holy Ground". Marks 1906 visit by members of the Niagara Movement, predecessor of the NAACP, on what they called John Brown Day, August 17.

"John Brown", plaque erected in 1918 by the alumni of Storer College.

"John Brown", plaque erected in 1932 by the NAACP.

"John Brown Fort."

"A Nation's Armory"

"Arsenal Square"

"'for the deposit of arms'"

"John Brown Monument", on the site of the original location of "John Brown's Fort"

"John Brown's Last Stand", at the same location.

"Allstadt House – John Brown's Hostages – Prelude to War"

"The John Brown Raiders", all those who participated in the raid.

"In Honor of Private Luke Quinn" – killed during the capture of John Brown

"The Murphy Farm", location of John Brown's Fort between 1895 and 1910.

"Hayward Shepard – Another Perspective"

"Heyward Shepherd"

Chatham, Ontario: "John Brown's Convention 1858".

Archival material

Court material and related documents

Of the court material regarding the trial itself, only the order book was preserved. The order book, which had the minutes of John Brown's trial, was evidently possessed by Brown's judge Richard Parker in 1888. Two separate collections of relevant letters were published. The first is the messages, mostly telegrams, sent and received by Governor Wise.

The rest of the documents, writs, the indictment, and charges disappeared. Among the missing material used at his trial as evidence of sedition were bundles of printed copies of his Provisional Constitution, prepared for the "state" Brown intended to set up in the Appalachian Mountains. Even less known is Brown's "Declaration of Liberty", imitating the Declaration of Independence.

According to Prosecutor Andrew Hunter,

John Brown had with him when captured at Harpers Ferry a carpet-bag in which were his constitution for a provisional government and other papers. He had placed it in one corner of the engine house, and there it was found when the marines charged and captured the survivors. Mr. Hunter took possession of the carpet-bag and carried it to Charlestown. He kept it and its contents. He added to the papers the letters which were forwarded to the prisoners and not delivered to them. Ordinary letters were allowed to pass to the prisoners after Mr. Hunter had examined them. But those letters which seemed to contain information bearing upon the organization in the North, Mr. Hunter confiscated and kept. He had between seventy and eighty of these letters, and he placed them in John Brown's carpet-bag. Other important documents bearing upon the secret history of the case went into the same receptacle, and much of the matter nobody but Mr. Hunter saw.

There was correspondence from Frederick Douglass and Gerrit Smith, among many others. Hugh Forbes said that the carpet-bag may have contained "an abundant supply of my correspondence" (After Brown's arrest, Smith, Douglass, and future biographer and friend Franklin Sanborn began destroying correspondence and other documents because they feared criminal charges for aiding Brown.)

The carpet-bag also contained maps of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia that showed the locations of State arsenals with proposed routes for attacks and retreats.

Hunter personally took the carpet-bag to Richmond, because he thought it would be safer there. He was at the time a member of the Virginia State Senate. In 1865, when Lee advised that he could no longer defend Richmond, Hunter did not want the "Yankees" to find the carpet-bag. He thought that the Capitol was as safe a place as any in Richmond, and he asked Commonwealth Secretary George Wythe Munford if he could hide it in the Capitol. "Munford told me that he has taken the carpet-bag up to the cock-loft of the Capitol and had let down the bag between the wall and the plastering, and I believe those papers are there yet."

Wise sent attorney Henry Hudnall to Charles Town to put in order Hunter's documents. In a letter to Wise of November 17, he refers to "a large quantity of matter", including "newly a half bushel of letters" just of Tidd alone.

In 1907–08 there appeared in print a varied collection of letters and other documents a Union soldier from Massachusetts took from Hunter's office in the Charles Town courthouse in 1862, when it was being used as a Union barracks. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad published its many internal telegrams.

Correspondence and other archival material

The West Virginia Archives and History owns the largest single collection on Brown, the Boyd B. Stutler Collection. A negative microfilm of the material is held by the Ohio Historical Society.

The Hudson Library and Historical Society of Hudson, Ohio, Brown's home town, prepared annotated listings of Brown's many ancestors, siblings, and children. Since John Brown moved around a lot, had a large family, and had a lot to say, he carried on a voluminous correspondence, including letters to editors, and was repeatedly interviewed by reporters, as he made himself available. Archival material on him and his circle is therefore abundant, and widely scattered. There has never been a complete edition of his extant correspondence; the one scholarly attempt, from 1885, produced a book of 645 pages. Editor F. B. Sanborn stated that he had enough letters for another book. A 2015 book was published just of the letters Brown wrote in the last month of his life, from jail. Additional letters were found and published in the 20th century. Archival material concerning John Brown's time in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, including his tannery, is held by the Pelletier Library, Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania. Clark Atlanta University holds a small collection.

Brown biographer Oswald Garrison Villard surveys the manuscript collections in his 1910 biography. The archive of Villard is in the Columbia University Library. Kansas Memory has a collection of materials regarding Brown's activities in Kansas. A project of the Kansas Historical Society, it holds the collection of Brown biographer Richard J. Hinton.