In 1857, after Brown had ceased to be a non-resistant, and was in the East professionally advocating war in Kansas; he wrote that during the late war with England an incident "occurred that made him a most determined Abolitionist: & led him to declare or _Swear_: _Eternal war_ with Slavery." But Mr. Villard, having the infant Pardigles prodigy in mind, makes the point that "the oaths of a lad of such tender years do not often become the guiding force of maturity." A Mr. Blakesley, with whom Brown, before his marriage, kept bachelor's hall, relates that one evening a runaway slave came to their door, and asked for food, which was given him freely. John Brown, Jr., relates the same, or a similar, incident as occurring eight years later. The dramatic settings in each case are practically similar: Night! Sound of horses' feet approaching! Flight of fugitive, or fugitives, into the adjacent timber! False alarm! Subsequent search for, and locating of the fugitive "by the sound of the beating of his heart!" Finale: "Brown swears eternal enmity to slavery!"[47] Both of the tales are of the legendary type common to Brown literature. Mr. Blakesley's story is probably in part true, but whether either of them, or both of them, be true is without significance. It would indeed have been difficult to find a person living in the North at that time, who would have refused a poor fugitive slave the measure of assistance asked for in this case.
On another occasion Brown is represented as taking the members of his family into his confidence, and enlisting them for life in the "eternal war" which he is said to have been personally waging; taking the precaution to swear them to secrecy. Jason Brown states that they were "merely sworn to do all in their power to abolish slavery," and does not use the word "force."[48] But as related by John Brown, Jr., the occasion was much more dramatic and far reaching. He says:[49]
It is, of course, impossible for me to say when such idea and plan first entered his (John Brown's) mind and became a purpose; but I can say with certainty that he first informed his family that he entertained such purpose while we were yet living in Franklin, O. (now called Kent), and before he went to Virginia, in 1840, to survey the lands which had been donated by Arthur Tappan to Oberlin College; and this was certainly as early as 1839. The place and the circumstances where he first informed us of that purpose are as perfectly in my memory as any other event in my life. Father, mother, Jason, Owen and I were, late in the evening, seated around the fire in the open fire-place of the kitchen, in the old Haymaker house where we then lived; and there he first informed us of his determination to make war on slavery--not such war as Mr. Garrison informs us "was equally the purpose of the non-resistant abolitionists," but war by force and arms. He said that he had long entertained such a purpose--that he believed it his duty to devote his life, if need be, to this object, which he made us fully to understand. After spending considerable time in setting forth in most impressive language the hopeless condition of the slave, he asked who of us were willing to make common cause with him in doing all in our power to "break the jaws of the wicked and pluck the spoil out of his teeth," naming each of us in succession. Are you, Mary, John, Jason, and Owen? Receiving an affirmative answer from each, he kneeled in prayer, and all did the same. This posture in prayer impressed me greatly as it was the first time I had ever known him to assume it. After prayer he asked us to raise our right hands, and he then administered to us an oath, the exact terms of which I cannot recall, but in substance it bound us to secrecy and devotion to the purpose of fighting slavery by force and arms to the extent of our ability.