John Brown

John Brown is an address by Frederick Douglass at the fourteenth anniversary of Storer College. The introduction says the proceeds from the sale are to be used toward the endowment of a John Brown Professorship in Storer College. The address names as its object to give such recollections, impressions and facts as can be given of a grand, brave and good old man, and especially to promote a better understanding of the raid upon Harper's Ferry. The address says that on the night of the 16th of October, 1859, a party of nineteen men, fourteen white and five colored, appeared near the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers.

The address says that slavery was the idol of Virginia, and that pardon and life to Brown meant condemnation and death to slavery. The address honors the brave young Col. Hoyt who hastened from Massachusetts to defend his friend's life at the peril of his own. Several causes have been assigned for the disastrous termination of the invasion, among others that Capt. Brown found it necessary to strike before he was ready and that men had promised to join him from the North who failed to arrive.