Disunion Feed

"Altho vengeance is not mine, I confess, that I do feel gratified to hear that you ware stopt in your fiendish career at Harper's Ferry, with the loss of your two sons, you can now appreciate my distress, in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys and took them out of the yard and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing, you cant say you done it to free our slaves, we had none and never expected to own one [...] I do hope & trust that you will meet your just reward."

The widow of James Doyle, killed by Brown's men at Pottawatomie, Kansas, in 1856, writes to Brown in jail. Five days outside the Oct 16 – Nov 15 window; kept because the feed needs what it says about who Brown also was. The best available transcription is secondary rather than from the manuscript, and 'vengeance' vs. the manuscript's 'vengence' is uncertain.

Read it in the original — transcription; original ms. Gilder Lehrman GLC07590 ↗

"Although the hands of Slavery throw a barrier between you and me, and it may not be my privilege to see you in your prison-house, Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread to send you my sympathy. In the name of the young girl sold from the warm clasp of a mother's arms to the clutches of a libertine or a profligate, -- in the name of the slave mother, her heart rocked to and fro by the agony of her mournful separations, -- I thank you, that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race."

The poet later known as Frances E. W. Harper, writing to Brown in jail. Printed by Redpath under the heading 'From a Woman of the Race He Died For,' signed 'F. E. W.' only; attribution to Watkins is standard scholarship. Ten days outside the Oct 16-Nov 15 window, disclosed per the arc rule. OCR-reconciled from the 1860 imprint scan.

Read it in the original — Echoes of Harper's Ferry (1860), p. 418 ↗