George Brown

“ Here he paid tribute to British freedom, contrasted it with the domination of the slave holders, and instanced the fact that in Connecticut a woman had been mobbed and imprisoned for teaching coloured girls to read. Further light is thrown upon the American experience of the Browns by an article in the Banner, their first Canadian venture in journalism. ”

“ I have no patience with a wheen sumphs of men! Them do the work o' the world! They may wear the breeks, but the women wear the brains, I trow. I'll have it out with the black brute myself," screamed the hardy dame, "if you're feared of his glower. If you havena the pluck for it, I have. Write, indeed! In you go to the meeting that oald ass of a Provost has convened, and don't show your face in Templandmuir till you have had it out with Gourlay!" ”

“ Religious equality was to be established, a great endowment of land converted from sectarian [Pg 9] to public purposes, and a non-sectarian system of education created. In this work Brown played a leading part, but before it could be undertaken it was necessary to vindicate the right of the people to self-government.
In November, 1843, the resignation of Metcalfe's ministers created a crisis which soon absorbed the energy of the Browns and eventually led to the establishment of the Globe. ”

“ If Sir George Brown had his way, Rowland, Oldridge, and the whole race of bears'-grease manufacturers and pomade merchants would have scant grace and no profit. His hatred of hair amounted to almost a mania. "Where there is hair there is dirt, and where there is dirt there will be disease." That was an axiom on which was founded a vigorous war against all capillary adornments. Stocks were ordered to be kept up, stiff as ever. The General would not allow the little black pouches hitherto worn on the belt by officers. They are supposed to carry no pockets, and are not to open their shell jackets ”

“ You want to shield him.—You have been playing the truant, have 'ee? Am I to throw away gude money on you for this to be the end o't?"
"Dinna be hard on him, John," pleaded the baker. "A boy's but a boy. Dinna thrash him."
"Me thrash him!" cried Gourlay. "I pay the High School of Skeighan to thrash him, and I'll take damned good care I get my money's worth. I don't mean to hire dowgs and bark for mysell."
He grabbed his son by the coat collar and swung him out the room. Down High Street he marched, carrying his cub by the scruff of the neck as you might carry a dirty puppy to an outhouse. ”

“ Never a man went forth, bowed down with a recent shame, wounded and wincing from the public gaze, but that old rogue hirpled up to him, and lisped with false smoothness: "Thirce me, neebour, I'm thorry for ye! Thith ith a terrible affair! It'th on everybody'th tongue. But ye have my thympathy, neebour, ye have tha-at—my warmetht thympathy." And all the while the shifty eyes above the lying mouth would peer and probe, to see if the soul within the other was writhing at his words.
Now, though everybody was spying at Gourlay in the market, all were giving him a wide berth ”

“ As a journalist he touched life at many points. He was a man of varied interests—railways, municipal affairs, prison reform, education, agriculture, all came within the range of his duty as a journalist and his interest and sympathy as a man. Those stout-hearted men who amid all the wrangling and intrigue of the politicians were turning the wilderness of Canada into a garden, gave to Brown in large measure their confidence and affection. ”

“ Quick lightning stabbed the world in vicious and repeated hate. A blue-black moistness lay heavy on the cowering earth. The rain came—a few drops at first, sullen, as if loath to come, that splashed on the pavement wide as a crown piece ”

“ The Toronto Globe, which was for a short time the principal exponent of ministerial views, declared that many of the doctrines enunciated by the Clear Grits "embody the whole difference between a republican form of government and the limited monarchy of Great Britain." The Globe was edited by George Brown, a Scotsman by birth, who came with his father in his youth to the western province and entered into journalism, in which he attained eventually signal success by his great intellectual force and tenacity of purpose. ”

“ John Brown, who was executed for raising a (p. 22) negro insurrection in Virginia, in which men were wounded and killed, was reverenced by many at the North as a hero, a martyr and a saint. It had long been a fixed fact that no fugitive slave could by process of law be returned from the North into slavery. With the advent to power of the Republican party—a party based on opposition to slavery—another breach in the outworks of the Constitution, as interpreted by the Supreme Court, had been made. ”

“ We must get a man that there is nothing against. I told Thompson that he'd better not try it and that we would take care of him in some other way. Of course we want Springer present."
"All right, you notify Thompson and Springer, and I will see Hennesy. What time shall we meet?"
"Nine o'clock. We want to keep this meeting secret. There are a lot of people who resent slate fixing, but there must always be leaders."
"Sure, there must be leaders," replied McBryan, as he left the room.
That night McBryan, Hennesy, Springer, Thompson and Stover met in the bank office. "Let's see, are we all here? ”

“ The governor-general, Sir Edmund Bond Head, sent for Mr. Brown as the leader of the Opposition to form a government. It was contended by Liberals that he ought not to have taken this step unless he intended to give Mr. Brown and his colleagues his full confidence and support. If he believed that the defeat of the government was a mere accident, and that on general grounds it commanded a working majority in the legislature, he ought not to have accepted the resignation, unless he intended to sanction a fresh appeal to the country. ”

“ And, John dear," she [Pg 273] pleaded, "if there's nothing left for us, you'll try to work for Janet and me, will ye no? You've a grand education, and you'll surely get a place as a teacher or something; I'm sure you would make a grand teacher. Ye wouldna like to think of your mother trailing every week to the like of Wilson for an awmous, streeking out her auld hand for charity. The folk would stand in their doors to look at me, man—they would that—they would cry ben to each other to come oot and see Gourlay's wife gaun slinkin' doon the brae. ”

“ Valandingham, at that time a member of Congress from Ohio, and who examined him in court, said in a speech afterward.
"It is in vain to underrate either the man or the conspiracy. Captain John Brown is as brave and resolute a man as ever headed an insurrection, and, in a good cause, and with a sufficient force, would have been a consummate partisan commander. He has coolness, daring, persistency, stoic faith and patience, and a firmness of will and purpose unconquerable! He is the farthest possible remove from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic, or madman." ”

“ John Brown is rapidly settling down to his proper place in history, and "the madman" has been transformed into a "saint." When Brown struck his first blow for freedom, at the head of his little band of liberators, it was almost the universal judgment of both Americans and foreigners that he was a "fanatic." ”

“ He was the slave of Horatio Green, and had been a servant in his master's dwelling. He, too, could boast that his father was an American statesman. His name was George. His mother had been employed as a servant in one of the principal hotels in Washington, where members of Congress usually put up. After George's birth his mother was sold to a slave trader, and he to an agent of Mr. Green, the father of Horatio. George was as white as most white persons. No one would suppose that any African blood coursed through his veins. His hair was straight, soft, fine, and light ”

“ John Brown said to a personal friend during his stay in Kansas: "Young men must learn to wait. Patience is the hardest lesson to learn. I have waited for twenty years to accomplish my purpose." These are not the words of a mere visionary idealist, but the mature language of a practical and judicious leader, a leader than whom the world has never seen a greater. ”

“ I'se done stopped payin' and I reckons the Reverend is gwine to miss my thuty cents what I'se been takin' evah Sunday."
"You better watch out," warned the cashier. "The Ku Kluxers may visit you."
"Ain't nobody gwine to scah me with no Ku Klux talk. If I'se some if these niggahs what's a shootin' craps and liftin' othah people's chickens of' de roosts I might be scahed, but I'se a Christian, I is, and I jest like to know why the Kluxer would botheh me." ”

“ The white race has aims and ideals that are different from the other races, as we believe, superior; and when the Klan declares for white supremacy it declares for the preservation of those ideals and institutions that have been found the most helpful in the development of life. ”

“ However, he obtained a situation as porter in a large house in Manchester, where he worked during the day, and took private lessons at night. In this way he laboured for three years, and was then raised to the situation of a clerk. George was so white as easily to pass for a white man, and being somewhat ashamed of his African descent, he never once mentioned the fact of his having been a slave. He soon became a partner in the firm that employed him, and was now on the road to wealth. ”

“ Stearns's Personal Recollection of John Brown.—Kansas infested by Border Ruffians.—The Battle of Harper's Ferry.—The Defeat and Capture of Captain John Brown.—His Last Letter written to Mrs. Stearns.—His Trial and Execution.—His Influence upon the Slavery Question at the North.—His Place in History.
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ON the 9th of May, 1800, at Torrington, Connecticut, was born a man who lived for two generations, but accomplished the work of two centuries. That man was John Brown, who ranks among the world's greatest heroes. ”

“ I recently read a good article on 'The Necessity of Keeping the White Race Supreme in the Affairs of the World.' Anyone of average intelligence who would read that article would certainly believe that there is need of the white race presenting a solid front against the rising tide of the dark skinned races. ”

“ John Brown, the protomartyr of freedom, by his heroism, daring, intrepid perseverance, inspired,—swallowed with one great idea, had stirred all Kansas and Missouri to fear, and carried off eleven slaves to Canada and set them free. He had established his headquarters at Chatham, Canada West, and begun the work of organization preparatory to striking the blow at Harper's Ferry. Brown held his first convention at Chatham—only a few hours' ride from Detroit—on May 8, 1858, at 10 o'clock A.M. The convention was composed of some very able men. ”

“ The slaveholders, finding that they could not prevail on the Friend to allow them to get the slave, determined to go in search of an officer. One was left to see that the slave did not escape from the barn, while the other went off at full speed to Mount Pleasant, the nearest town. George was not the slave of either of these men, nor were they in pursuit of him, but they had lost a woman who had been seen in that vicinity, and when they saw poor George in the disguise of a female, and attempting to elude pursuit, they felt sure they were close upon their victim. ”

“ He worries so much because he can't remember the man who stole his money. Ever since he had that dream he really believes that some man in whom he had confidence and to whom he had shown the combination of the safe really robbed him. ”

“ He seems to me now to have been the greatest all-round editor I have yet had the pleasure of witnessing at work, and in the political department superior to any of the old or of the new time in North America, except only Horace Greeley." But Mr. Thomson thinks that like most of the old-timers he took his politics a little too hard. Mr. Gordon Brown died in June, 1896.
Mr. Brown regarded his defeat in South Ontario in 1867, as an opportunity to retire from parliamentary life. ”

“ Green to sell her out of the State, and she had been sold to a Negro trader and taken to the New Orleans market. As all hope of getting the girl was now gone, George resolved to quit the American continent for ever. He immediately took passage in a vessel laden with timber, bound for Liverpool, and in five weeks from that time he was standing on the quay of the great English seaport. With little or no education, he found many difficulties in the way of getting a respectable living. ”

“ John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. ”

“ He states that white men should rule in democracies because they have shown the greater capacity to govern themselves and establish democratic institutions. The American home is a home that is based on the love of one man for one woman and requires a freedom of choice in marriage which is seldom found among the dark races.
"Christianity was born of the white race and promoted by them, and while it is destined to become universal, yet if the institutions which support it should be controlled by pagan people the source of the supply of missionaries and Christian teachings would be destroyed. ”