With Sabre and Scalpel; The Autobiography of a Soldier and Surgeon (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 edition. Excerpt: ... SOME FACTS ABOUT JOHN BROWN NOT GENERALLY KNOWN Having failed at every one of a half-dozen different vocations to make a living for his family and himself, a rolling stone so mossless that at the age of fifty-five he was absolutely bankrupt in fortune, and no less so in honorable reputation, John Brown turned up in Kansas in October, 1855, in the r61e of a professional Free-soil agitator in the employ of Mr. Amos A. Lawrence, Secretary and Treasurer of the New England Emigrant Aid Society, of which Mr. Eli Thayer, of Massachusetts, was the president. It is safe to say that had his antecedents been known to these honorable gentlemen, they would not have given him employment or furnished him the money to pay his traveling-expenses to the territory (without which he could not have made the trip), for as soon as his misconduct there revealed his true character--and this was soon in evidence--they repudiated him and publicly denounced him as unworthy of confidence and respect and an injury to the free-state cause. Disappointed and embittered at the age of fifty-five, "fit for treason," looking for "spoils," and ready with whatever "stratagem" was required to secure them, he, with scant regard for the laws of God and man, began the mad career of crime which in the course of four years of robbery, bloodshed, and murder, carried into untimely graves three of his sons and one son-in-law and ended on December 2, 1859, in his legal execution at Charlestown, Virginia. Born in 1800 of poor and respectable New England parents, who moved in 1805 to Hudson, Ohio, where there were scant opportunities for schooling, John Brown learned to read and write, and later in life acquired a working knowledge of surveying. Here he worked at tanning and surveying, ...