admiring John Brown, that will be just what he would have
ardently wished who desired always that God should be magnified
in his body, whether in the fighting which he never loved and
never shirked, or the hanging which he often foresaw and never
feared.



CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD AND THE VOW

The birth of John Brown is recorded in the following laconic
style by his father in a little autobiography he wrote for his
children in the closing days of his life. 'In 1800, May 8, John
was born one hundred years after his great-grandfather; nothing
else very uncommon.' In the year mentioned the family were
living at Torrington, Connecticut, whence they shortly removed to
Ohio, then the haunt of the Red Indian. They were of the pioneer
farming class, which has supplied so many of the shapers of
American history. The one great honour in their pedigree was
that they descended from a man of the MAYFLOWER--Peter Brown, a
working carpenter who belonged to that famous ship's company. We
might say, indeed, that the story of John Brown flows from the
events of 1620, the year of the MAYFLOWER. Two landings on the
American coast that year were destined to be memorable. In
August a Dutch vessel disembarked the first cargo of imported
slaves--twenty of them; and that day Slavery struck deep root in
the new land. And in November of that same year the MAYFLOWER,
with her very different cargo of brave freemen, dropped anchor in