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 said, "We have all agreed to submit to considerable privation to buy one." In this letter he wrote, "If the young blacks of our country could once become enlightened, it would most assuredly operate on slavery like firing powder confined in a rock." All this was very peaceful. Brown was evidently reflecting on Nat Turner's poor insurrection in 1831, and the numerous other attempts up to that time, all of which had failed for the want of adherence on the part of the blacks themselves to the movements stirred up in their behalf. Very evidently, he saw that the time had not yet come to attack slavery by force,—that the negroes themselves must be prepared for it.

After Brown returned to Ohio to live, he was a member of the Congregational church at Franklin. He had a respectable negro man and woman working for him. They sat at his table, and on Sunday he took the pair into his pew.