Be firm, determined, and cool; but let it be understood that you are not to be driven to desperation without making it an awful dear job to others as well as to you....
A lasso might possibly be applied to a slave-catcher for once with good effect. Hold on to your weapons, and never be persuaded to leave them, part with them, or have them far away from you. _Stand by one another and by your friends, while a drop of blood remains; and be hanged, if you must, but tell no tales out of school. Make no confession._
In a letter to his wife, January 17, 1851, relating to the same subject, he said:[55]
DEAR WIFE ... Since the sending off to slavery of Long from New York, I have improved my leisure hours quite busily with colored people here, in advising them how to act, and in giving them all the encouragement in my power. They very much need encouragement and advice; and some of them are so alarmed that they tell me they cannot sleep on account of either themselves or their wives and children. I can only say I think I have been enabled to do something to revive their broken spirits. I want all my family to imagine themselves in the same dreadful condition. My only spare time being taken up (often until late hours at night) in the way I speak of, have prevented me from the gloomy homesick feelings which had before so much oppressed me: not that I forget my family at all.
The assumption that Brown, "The peaceful tanner and shepherd," had at this time been transformed "into a man burning to use arms upon an institution which refused to yield to peaceful agitation,"[56] is not justified by anything that he had theretofore said or done relating to slavery; neither is it justified by what he wrote to the "Gileadites," nor by the letter which he wrote to his wife concerning the condition of the free negroes. These papers contain no hint, to say nothing of evidence, that the action taken therein by him was the result of any preconceived intention to attack slavery; or that it was related to any general plan or purpose to oppose slavery; or that it foreshadowed any disposition on his part, burning or otherwise, to engage in the matter any further than by counsel and advice. The letter to his wife reflects the general sense of compassion that was felt for the negroes, by all humane people throughout the North, because of the distressful condition in which they were placed by the terms of the Fugitive Slave Law.