One of the familiar attacks on John Brown (and by extension his anti-slavery legacy) involves his failed business ventures and accusations that he was a swindler and a drifter, roaming from place to place – only briefly and uneventfully staying in North Elba, Essex County, NY.
“Over the years before his Kansas escapade Brown had been a drifter, horse thief and swindler,” Columbia University historian John Garraty once wrote. Garraty served as the president of the Society of American Historians and was co-author of the high school history textbook The American Nation (he died in 2007).
A closer look at Brown and the his family, however, reveals an experience typical of many Americans, then and today, and the importance of North Elba in Brown’s plans for a raid into Virginia. [Read more…] about The Last Days of John Brown: North Elba
John Brown has often come down to us as a lone nut, bent on an suicidal mission, but this is far from the truth.
The 2020 Peterboro Emancipation Day planned for August 1st, 2020 has been rescheduled for Saturday, August 7th, 2021 at the Gerrit Smith Estate National Historic Landmark.
The Nineteenth Amendment (the right of citizens of the United State to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation) was passed by the House of Representatives on May 21, 1919 after its initial introduction in 1878. The Senate passed the Amendment on June 4, 1919. The 36th state needed for ratification did so on August 18, 2020, and the amendment was officially ratified on August 26, 2020. In 1973 Congress designated August 26 as Women’s Equality Day.