Your most cheering letter of the 27th of October is received;
and may the Lord reward you a thousandfold for the kind feeling
you express toward me; but more especially for your fidelity
to the "poor that cry, and those that have no help."
For this I am a prisoner in bonds. It is solely my own fault,
in a military point of view, that we met with our disaster.
I mean that I mingled with our prisoners and so far sympathized
with them and their families that I neglected my duty in other
respects. But God's will, not mine, be done.
You know that Christ once armed Peter. So also in my case I
think he put a sword into my hand, and there continued it so
long as he saw nest, and then kindly took it from me. I mean
when 1 first went to Kansas. I wish you could know with what
cheerfulness I am now wielding the "sword of the Spirit"
on the right hand and on the left. 1 bless God that it proves
"mighty to the pulling down of strongholds." I always
loved my Quaker friends, and I commend to their kind regard
my poor bereaved widowed wife and my daughters and daughters
in law, whose husbands fell at my side. One is a mother and
the other likely to become so soon. They, as well as my own
sorrow stricken daughters, are left very poor, and have much
greater need of sympathy than I, who, through Infinite Grace
and the kindness of strangers, am "jo fuy 1 in all my tribulations."
Dear
sister, write them at North Elba, Essex County, N.Y., to comfort
their sad hearts. Direct to Mary A. Brown, wife of John Brown.
There is also another a widow, wife of Thompson, who fell with
my poor boys in the affair at Harper's Ferry at the same place.
I
do not feel conscious of guilt in taking up arms; and had it
been in behalf of the rich and powerful, the intelligent, the
great (as men count greatness), or those who form enactments
to suit themselves and corrupt others, or some of their friends,
that I interfered, suffered, sacrificed, and fell, it would
have been doing very well. But enough of this. These light afflictions,
which endure for a moment, shall but work for me "a far
more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." I would be
very grateful for another letter from you. My wounds are healing.
Farewell. God will surely attend to his own cause in the best
possible way and time, and he will not forget the work of his
own hands.
