John “Brown started right off, saying: 'Come on, men.' I picked up my Sharpe's rifle and started with him” Eyewitness Account Battle of Osawatomie by Participant

This small archive of three documents and four photographs includes the fascinating reminiscences of Luke Fisher Parsons, one of the Free State settlers who participated with John Brown in the Battle of Osawatomie against pro-slavery Border Ruffians in August 1856. Though recruited for the Harpers Ferry raid, when it was postponed, Parsons went to Colorado in search of gold.

JOHN BROWN, Archive of Reminiscences by Luke Fisher Parsons. 17 pp. + 4 photographs. Typescripts held together with brass fasteners, with expected folds.

Contents
- L. F. Parsons, Typescript of Speech Delivered at Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Osawatomie, with handwritten corrections, September 7, 1909. 11 pp., 8.5" x 14".
"While we were getting breakfast, and before sunrise, a messenger came in saying: 'The Border Ruffians are coming. They have just killed Fred Brown and Garrison.' Brown started right off, saying: 'Come on, men.' I picked up my Sharpe's rifle and started with him.... Brown and I walked silently for a time, when he said to me: 'Parsons, were you ever under fire?' I did not catch his meaning at first, & replied: 'No, but tell me what you want me to do and I will do it.' He said: 'Take more pains to end life well than to live long.'" (p6)
- L. F. Parsons, "John Brown's Military Company—Who Are They?" Typescript, with handwritten corrections, [ca. 1911]. 4 pp., 8.5" x 11".
"In the fall of 1857 Brown selected ten men in Kansas who had been tried by fire and took them to a quiet Quaker settlement at Springdale in Cedar County, Iowa. These ten men might properly be called John Brown's Military Company, for he had paid all their expenses, board, clothes, and even tobacco, without any contract or pledge whatever by either party. After spending all winter at Springdale, drilling in military tactics, reading books on guerilla and insurrectionary warfare, we were taken to Chatham, Canada, where we held a convention which was largely attended by ex-slaves from Virginia." (p1)
- L. F. Parsons, Manuscript Document, Remarks on "John Brown's Character" as a preface to speech on Battle of Osawatomie. 2 pp., 8" x 10".
"John Brown's character was exemplary, he was a devout Christian, he sought the comfort and pleasure of others first, he tried to be good, and do good, and in furtherance of this idear he worked from his youth to his grave, his heart went out in sympathy for the slave, he was a conductor on the underground Rail Road before coming to Kansas."
- Photographs
     Carte-de-visite image of an engraving of John Brown. 2.375" x 4".
     Cabinet Card of William H. Leeman, "killed at Harpers Ferry under Brown, Dec. 17, 1859"; photograph by O. Holcomb of Salina, Kansas. 4.25" x 6.5".
William H. Leeman (1839-1859) was born in Maine and worked at a shoe factory in Massachusetts before moving to Kansas in 1856. He joined Brown and fought at Osawatomie.
Olaf O. Holcomb (1847-1930) was born in Sweden and immigrated to the United States after the Civil War. He initially settled in Ohio but moved to Salina, Kansas in the late 1870s. He likely made this photograph from an existing daguerreotype or ambrotype.
     Salmon Brown (1836-1919), son of John Brown, ca. 1895. 4.5" x 6.5"
     John Brown's gravestone, North Elba, New York, ca. 1900. 2.375" x 4".

John Brown (1800-1859) was born in Connecticut but grew up in Ohio. At age 16, he studied in Connecticut to be a Congregationalist minister, but he ran out of money and had trouble with his eyes. He pursued various businesses in Pennsylvania and Ohio. After the death of Elijah P. Lovejoy at the hands of anti-abolitionists in 1837, Brown publicly vowed to "consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!" Brown moved to Kansas in 1855, to help anti-slavery settlers protect themselves. That May, Brown and other abolitionist settlers killed five pro-slavery settlers. In November, Brown returned to the East and spent two years raising funds in New England and developing a plan for a direct strike against slavery. In October 1859, he led a group of 21 men to Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where they briefly seized the federal armory before local citizens trapped Brown and his men in a fire engine house before the arrival of U.S. Marines. Four of Brown's men were killed, and he was wounded and captured along with the rest of his men. The Commonwealth of Virginia tried and convicted Brown of murder, slave insurrection, and treason. He was executed on December 2. Six of his fellow raiders were executed later. The 1859 raid made him a martyr to the antislavery cause and was instrumental in heightening sectional animosities that led to the American Civil War.

Luke Fisher Parsons (1833-1926) was born in Massachusetts and arrived in Kansas in May 1856. He witnessed the destruction of the Free State Hotel in Lawrence (where he worked as a clerk) and then joined John Brown and participated in the Battle of Osawatomie. Brown recruited him for the Harpers Ferry raid, but its postponement led Parsons to settle in Salina, Kansas. He served in the Third Indian Brigade in the Civil War and returned to Salina, where he lived for the rest of his life.

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