istently refused to perform the required
military drill until he had passed the age for service. Not quite in
harmony with these facts is the statement that he was a great admirer of
Oliver Cromwell, and Rhodes says of him that he admired Nat Turner, the
leader of the servile insurrection in Virginia, as much as he did George
Washington. There seems to be no reason to doubt the testimony of the
members of his family that John Brown always cherished a lively interest
in the African race and a deep sympathy with them. As a youth he had
chosen for a companion a slave boy of his own age, to whom he became
greatly attached. This slave, badly clad and poorly fed, beaten with
iron shovel or anything that came first to hand, young Brown grew to
regard as his equal if not his superior. And it was the contrast between
their respective conditions that first led Brown to "swear eternal war
with slavery." In later years John Brown, Junior, tells us that, on
seeing a negro for the first time, he felt so great a sympathy for
him that he wanted to take the negro home with him. This sympathy, he
assures us, was a result of his father's teaching. Upon the testimony of
two of John Brown's sons rests the oft-repeated story that he declared
eternal war against slavery and also induced the members of his family
to unite with him in formal consecration to his mission. The time given
for this incident is previous to the year 1840; the idea that he was
a divinely chosen agent for the deliverance of the slaves was of later
development.

As early as 1834 Brown had shown some active interest in the education
of negro children, first in Pennsylvania and later in Ohio. In 1848 the
Brown family became associated with an enterprise of Gerrit Smith in
northern New York, where a hundred thousand acres of land were offered
to negro families for settlement. During the excitement over the
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Brown organized among the colored people of
Springfield, Massachusetts, "The United States League of Gileadites."
As an organization this undertaking proved a failure, but Brown's formal
written instructions to the "Gileadites" are interesting on account
of their relation to what subsequently happened. In this document,
by referring to the multitudes who had suffered in their behalf, he
encouraged the negroes to stand for their liberties. He instructed them
to be armed and ready to rush to the rescue of any of their number who
might be attacked: