James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

[57] wrong in several points of strategy, particularly in his choice of ground for a strong position; which Captain Brown maintained should be a ravine rather than a hill top. In riding with him in an adjoining county, he pointed out several such ravines, which, he said, could be held by a few men against a large force, adding that he had acted on this principle in Kansas, and never suffered from it. He ascribed his winning the battle of Black Jack to his choice of ground.¹ He thought no American could visit Europe without coming home more in love with our own country, for which he had a most ardent affection, while he so cordially hated its greatest curse — Slavery.

He was noted for his skill in testing and recognizing different qualities of wool. Give him two samples of wool, one grown in Ohio and the other in Vermont, and he would distinguish each of them in the dark. I have heard this story told of him while in England, where he went to consult wool-merchants and wool-growers. One evening, in company with several of these persons, each of whom had brought samples of wool in his pocket, Captain Brown was giving his opinion as to the best use to be made of certain varieties of wool, when one of the party, wishing to play a trick on the Yankee farmer, handed him a sample, and asked him what he would do with such wool as that? His eyes and fingers were then so good, that he had only to touch it to know that it had not the minute hooks by which the fibres of wool are attached to each other. “ Gentlemen,” said he, “if you have any machinery that will work up dog's hair, I would advise you to put this into it.” The jocose Briton had sheared a poodle and brought the hair in his pocket, but the laugh went against him; and Captain Brown, in spite of some peculiarities of dress and manner, soon won the respect of all whom he met.

When in England at this time, John Brown divulged his plan of liberation to several prominent anti-slavery men ; but there, as elsewhere, while they felt and professed an unbounded sympathy for the slave, they neither countenanced nor approved of the very earnest scheme of this dreadfully-in-earnest abolitionist. The Peters had but little sympathy with the Richards — the Heralds of Freedom, although an earnest people, looked with suspicion and distrust on the equally earnest Crusaders. Singular that the