Note 11 — Chapter X

Eleven years afterward, when the question of prohibiting the carrying on the slave trade from American ports came up, one John Brown of Rhode Island said in Congress, "Our distilleries and manufactories were all lying idle for want of an extended commerce. He had been well informed that on those coasts [African] New England rum was much preferred to the best Jamaica spirits, and would fetch a better price. Why should it not be sent there, and a profitable return be made? Why should a heavy fine and imprisonment [of slave traders] be made the penalty for carrying on a trade so advantageous?" Sixty years later still, there was another Brown in Providence, Rhode Island, who was a member of the Committee of the Kansas Aid Society of New England. He was about to withdraw from it for want of time to attend to its duties,—had, indeed, actually sent in his resignation,—when news came of the doings of another John Brown at Harper's Ferry. The resignation was instantly recalled, with the remark that it was not a time for Browns to seem to be backward on the question of slavery. Such is the irony of coincidence in names.