Book Description

This biography is of double interest just now when the Louisiana Centenary Exhibition brings the early days of the occupation of Kansas before the public. Spencer Kellogg Brown was a neighbour of the famous John Brown whose “body lies mouldering in the grave.” He was hanged by the Confederates as a spy at the early age of twenty-one, having been taken prisoner a few days after his marriage. The simplicity of an innocent boy is oddly mingled with the grave dignity of a man tried as by fire, and the diary is so charming that few will lay it down until it is read to the end. —The Review of Reviews, Volume 29 S. K. Brown had the ill-fortune to be growing into manhood at the time when the slavery trouble in the States was coming to a head. It is a dismal story of lawlessness and cruelty that the biographer has to tell of these early days. In January, 1861, Spencer Kellogg—the name of Brown was dropped — enlisted in the Northern Army. Some nine months afterwards he transferred himself to the Navy, being one of the crew of the 'Essex,' a ferry-boat converted into a gunboat. Shortly afterwards he was sent to examine the fortifications of the Confederates on the Mississippi, his name being reported as a deserter, to the great distress of his friends. Prom this service he came back safely; but the following year, after destroying a hostile ferry-boat, ho was taken prisoner. After moro than thirteen months of captivity he was executed as a spy. The sentence would have been just had he been captured during his secret-service expedition. This severity is a matter of self-defence. The man who gains illicit knowledge cannot be allowed to escape. But this execution was a matter of vengeance. S. K. Brown knew nothing then but what everybody knew, and was a simple prisoner of war. But the Confederates strained military law more than once. The famous affair of the captured locomotive was another instance of this kind of conduct. The hanging of this youth—he was but a month or so over twenty-one—looks like a bit of savagery. —The Spectator, Volume 92 The supply of books about the American Civil War is already so large that we doubt the necessity of giving to the world extracts from the diary of a promising young spy who was handed by the Confederates in his twenty-second year. Spencer Kellogg Brown was not related to John Brown of Harper's Ferry (whose body lies mouldering in the grave), but was a neighbour of his in Kansas. The boy had pluck and talent, but his meditations on religion—of which the present book is largely composed—might well have been left in his diary. The book throws no new light on the war, arid the odd situation in Kansas for some years before its outbreak has been often before described. Mr. Smith is more interested in theology than in tactics, and in a needlessly long book—the outcome of friendship with Brown's family—makes no attempt to discuss the interesting point in military law raised by Brown's execution. The boy when captured was an honest belligerent, and was hanged for a much earlier piece of secret service. —The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science and Art, Volume 97