Brown had now (1850) ten children, seven of whom were sons. He had lost, to his deep and evident sorrow, seven children, all of whom had died in infancy or early childhood. Two more were yet to be born. His older sons he had educated simply; the eldest, John Jr., with some care at good schools. His faithful wife taught the little ones at the cabin at North Elba. Brown for a time went out to Ohio and engaged in farming, where he could get more money for his labor than in the Adirondack hills.
But before he left Springfield, in 1851, he wrote a letter of instruction to the "branch of the United States League of Gileadite," there,—a band of his colored fellow-conspirators against slavery,—which proves definitely enough that he had taken up with a thoroughly revolutionary doctrine. Mason's Fugitive Slave Act had been passed, and the hunting down of negro fugitives had begun in Massachusetts. Brown was now
