words of Wendell Phillips, that he had “letters of marque from God”; that he had a divine commission to destroy slavery by violent means. He scouted the “milk and water principles” of the milder abolitionists, advocated vigorous resistance to the slave power, and expressed his ideas by actions rather than by words. It now seems that this policy aided very little in making Kansas a free state, and that the attack on Harper’s Ferry, while creating much feeling at the moment, had very little effect on the subsequent course of events. It is safe to assume that secession and civil war would have followed the election of Lincoln if there had been no such raid into Virginia.
Brown was twice married and was the father of twenty children, eight of whom died in early childhood. His sons aided him in all his undertakings, two of them being killed at Harper’s Ferry; and Owen Brown, who died in 1889, was long the only survivor of the attack.
See the life (1910) by O. G. Villard, and F. B. Sanborn’s Life and Letters of John Brown (Boston, 1885); R. J. Hinton’s John Brown and His Men (New York, 1894); James Redpath’s Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston, 1860); Von Holst’s essay, John Brown (Boston, 1889); and J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York, 1890–1906).
BROWN, JOHN (1810–1882), Scottish physician and author, son of John Brown (1784–1858), was born at Biggar, Scotland, on the 22nd of September 1810. He graduated as M.D. at the university of Edinburgh in 1833, and practised as a physician in that city. His reputation, however, is based on the two volumes of essays, Horae Subsecivae (i.e. “leisure hours”) (1858, 1861), John Leech and other Papers (1882), Rab and His Friends (1859), and Marjorie Fleming: a Sketch (1863). The first volume of Horae Subsecivae deals chiefly with the equipment and duties of a physician, the second with subjects outside his profession. He was emphatic in his belief that an author should publish nothing “unless he has something to say, and has done his best to say it aright.” Acting on this principle, he published little himself, and only after subjecting it to the severest criticism. His work is invariably characterized by humour and tenderness. He suffered during the latter years of his life from pronounced attacks of melancholy, and died on the 11th of May 1882.
See also E. T. M‘Laren, Dr John Brown and his Sister Isabella (4th ed., 1890); and Letters of Dr John Brown, edited by his son and D. W. Forrest, with biography by E. T. M‘Laren (1907).
BROWN, SIR JOHN (1816–1896), English armour plate manufacturer, was born at Sheffield on the 6th of December 1816, the son of a slater. He was apprenticed when fourteen years old to a Sheffield firm who manufactured files and table cutlery. Impressed with Brown’s ability, the senior partner offered him the control of the business (Earl Horton and Co.) and advanced some of the necessary capital. Brown invented in 1848 the conical steel spring buffer for railway wagons, and in 1860, after seeing the French ship “La Gloire” armoured with hammered plate, he determined to attempt the production of armour for the British navy by a rolling process. The experiment was successful, and led to admiralty orders for armour plate sufficient to protect about three-quarters of the navy. In 1856 Brown had started the Atlas Works in Sheffield, which soon produced, beside armour plates and railway buffers, ordnance forgings, steel rails, railway carriage axles and tires. The works covered thirty acres and employed eventually more than four thousand workmen. Besides supplying iron to the Sheffield steel trade, Brown himself successfully developed the Bessemer process. In 1864, after his business had been converted into a limited company, he retired. He died at Bromley, Kent, on the 27th of December 1896. Among the honours conferred upon him was a knighthood in 1867, the office of mayor of Sheffield in 1862 and 1863, and that of Master Cutler in 1865 and 1866.
BROWN, JOHN GEORGE (1831–), American painter, was born in Durham, England, on the 11th of November 1831. He studied at Newcastle-on-Tyne, in the Edinburgh Academy, and after removing to New York City in 1853, at the schools of the National Academy of Design of which he afterwards became a member. In 1866 he became one of the charter members of the Water-Colour Society, of which he was president from 1887 to 1904. He generally confined himself to representations of street child life, bootblacks, newsboys, &c.; his “Passing Show” (Paris, Salon, 1877) and “Street Boys at Play” (Paris Exhibition, 1900) are good examples of his popular talent.
BROWN, ROBERT (1773–1858), British botanist, was born on the 21st of December 1773 at Montrose, and was educated at the grammar school of his native town, where he had as contemporaries Joseph Hume and James Mill. In 1787 he entered Marischal College, Aberdeen, but two years afterwards removed to Edinburgh University, where his taste for botany attracted the attention of John Walker (1731–1803), then professor of natural history in the university. In 1795 he obtained a commission in the Forfarshire regiment of Fencible Infantry as “ensign and assistant surgeon,” and served in the north of Ireland. In 1798 he made the acquaintance of Sir Joseph Banks, by whom in 1801 he was offered the post of naturalist to the expedition fitted out under Captain Matthew Flinders for the survey of the then almost unknown coasts of Australia. Ferdinand Bauer, afterwards familiarly associated with Brown in his botanical discoveries, was draughtsman; William Westall was landscape painter; and among the midshipmen was one afterwards destined to rise into fame as Sir John Franklin. In 1805 the expedition returned to England, having obtained, among other acquisitions, nearly 4000 species of plants, many of which were new. Brown was almost immediately appointed librarian of the Linnean Society. In this position, though one of no great emolument, he had abundant opportunities of pursuing his studies; but it was not until 1810 that he published the first volume of his great work, in Latin, the Prodromus Florae Novae Hollandiae et Insulae Van Diemen, which did much to further the general adoption of A. L. de Jussieu’s natural system of plant classification. Its merits were immediately recognized, and it gave its author an international reputation among botanists. It is rare in its original edition, the author having suppressed it, hurt at the Edinburgh Review having fallen foul of its Latinity. With the exception of a supplement published in 1830, no more of the work appeared. In 1810 Brown became librarian to Sir Joseph Banks, who on his death in 1820 bequeathed to him the use and enjoyment of his library and collections for life. In 1827 an arrangement was made by which these were transferred to the British Museum, with Brown’s consent and in accordance with Sir Joseph’s will. Brown then became keeper of this new botanical department, an office which he held until his death. Soon after Banks’s decease he resigned the librarianship of the Linnean Society, and from 1849 to 1853 he served as its president. He received many honours. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1811, he received its Copley medal in 1839, for his “discoveries on the subject of vegetable impregnation,” and in 1833 he was elected one of the five foreign associates of the Institute of France. Among his other distinctions was membership of the order “pour le Mérite” of Prussia. In the Academia Caesarea Naturae Curiosorum he sat under the cognomen of Ray. He died on the 10th of June 1858, in the house in Soho Square, London, bequeathed to him by Sir Joseph Banks. His works, which embrace not only systematic botany, but also plant anatomy and physiology, are distinguished by their thoroughness and conscientious accuracy, and display powers at once of minute detail and of broad generalization. The continual movements observed by the microscope among minute particles suspended in a liquid were noticed by him in 1827, and hence are known as “Brownian movements.”
In 1825–1834 his works up to that date were collected and published in four divisions by Nees von Esenbeck, in German, under the title of Vermischte botanische Schriften (Leipzig and Nuremberg). In 1866 the Ray Society reprinted, under the editorship of his friend and successor in the keepership of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, J. J. Bennet, his complete writings, the Prodromus alone excepted. In these Miscellaneous Works (2 vols., with atlas of plates) the history of his discoveries can be best followed.
BROWN, SAMUEL MORISON (1817–1856), Scottish chemist, poet and essayist, born at Haddington on the 23rd of February 1817, was the fourth son of Samuel Brown, the founder of
