Writing home to North Elba

Lot 246
26.05.2022 10:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Vendu
$ 10 710
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Lieu de l'événementEtats-Unis, New York
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ID 752913
Lot 246 | Writing home to North Elba
Valeur estimée
$ 2 000 – 3 000
Writing home to North ElbaJohn Brown, Jr. & Wealthy C. Brown, 16 September 1855JOHN BROWN – [BROWN, Jr., John (1821-1895)] and BROWN, Wealthy C. (1829-1911). Autograph letter signed ("Wealthy C. Brown" and "WCB") to [Mary Ann Brown,] Osawatomie, K[ansas] T[erritory], 16 September 1855. Four pages, bifolium, 205 x 197mm. The second two pages in the hand of John Brown Jr. (some toning to mailing folds on fourth page). Prelude to Bleeding Kansas: hard living on the open prairie awaiting John Brown’s arrival. A detailed description of life in eastern Kansas written as the elder John Brown was en route from the east to bring arms and supplies to the young settlement. Wealthy opens the letter to her husband's mother-in-law observing that "the wind blows so hard that it is almost impossible to keep my paper on the table…" Still living in a tent, she is resigned to "pioneer life," but hopes "it will not be too long before we get some kind of house," but the inconvenience was offset by a bumper crop of "Corn, Potatoes, Pumpkins, Squashes, Melons, Beans, &c." And while she was enjoying "better health in my life than I have since I came here," she suspects her time will come, noting sickness among other members of the camp. She also reports that despite their fears of being violently killed, the local Native Americans "are the least of my troubles—there is scarcely a day but they go along in sight of us in droves of from 30 to 40… They have always treated us perfectly civil and I believe if we treat them the same they will do us no harm…" Far more ominous was the pro-slavery majority in the territorial legislature at Lecompton, to which she alludes by writing "perhaps we will all get shot for disobeying their beautiful laws but you might as well die here in a good cause as freeze to death." On the third page, John Brown, Jr. continues the letter reporting that only one family has managed to construct a house and noting that the "Preemption law requires of the settler to actually reside on his claim in order to hold it until he pays for it! ... Very few settlers have taken their claims on the high prairie, where they would be less exposed." Brown writes that he had "a hundred times wished while burning up with fever … I could get a good drink of the clear, soft Ausable water, or plunge into Lake Placid. I am sure you don't thoroughly appreciate the many good things North Elba affords. I never saw a country where people can so easily get rich in as this, but I cannot recommend it as a healthy country, at least the Eastern portion of it." Brown closes with his hopes of seeing "Father and Henry … shall be most rejoiced to see them." John Brown arrived in October and the following year the growing violence would culminate in the Pottawatomie Massacre in May 1856 in which Brown and his supporters killed five pro-slavery settlers. That incident set of a wave of reprisal attacks that became known as "Bleeding Kansas."
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