Richard Realf

Richard Realf was born in England in 1832 and raised in a working family that recognized his gift for poetry. They thought him a prodigy, and in some ways he was. Words came to him with ease. They lifted him out of ordinary labor, and brought him attention he was not always wise enough to bear.^⁠[1]

As a young man, he went to work at the same manor house where his sister had taken employment as a domestic. His talent with poetry caught the notice of his employer, who invited him into the main house and helped introduce him into literary circles. Through such patronage, Realf received education, encouragement, and opportunity. His first book of poems titled Guesses of the Beautiful was published before he was twenty.

His sister would say that he was overindulged, and his early life gives reason to think so. Invited into another genteel household, Realf became romantically involved with the proprietor’s fourteen-year-old niece. When the girl’s brother learned of the liaison, he beat Realf severely, and the proprietor cast him out. After a long search, Realf’s father found him wandering barefoot, reciting poems for coins, and brought him home to recover. Hoping to spare the family further scandal, Richard was sent across the Atlantic.

Realf arrived in America in 1854 and found work in Five Points, the crowded New York neighborhood remembered as one of the country’s most notorious slums. There he taught and served as assistant superintendent at the Five Points House of Industry, an orphanage and workhouse that also functioned as a moral-reform institution.

He spent about two and a half years at the House of Industry. There he embraced the cause of abolition, formed a self-improvement association, and began offering affordable lectures for working-class audiences. His sympathy for the poor, his hunger for reform, and his belief in education as a force to lift people out of poverty took root in Five Points.

When the Kansas-Nebraska Act left the fate of slavery in the new territories to the settlers themselves, Kansas became a battleground. Antislavery men and women poured west, determined that Kansas should enter the Union free. Proslavery forces were no less determined to claim the territory, and the conflict that followed would be remembered as Bleeding Kansas.

In the summer of 1856, Realf turned toward the contested territory as a man eager to prove himself in the radical Free-State cause. Kansas was not simply a destination; it was his testing ground. He made his way west to Iowa where modern transportation gave way to emigrant roads and where a large company of like-minded settlers gathered for the overland journey into Kansas.

“I shall never forget my first meeting with Richard Realf. It was during those stormy and eventful days when the question of slavery or freedom for a continent was being fought out on the plains of Kansas. The Missouri river was blockaded for the free-state settlers by the pro-slavery population along its banks. I had gathered a large party of young men to march overland through Iowa, to aid the free-state cause by votes, and if need be, with strong arms.

“It was in September, 1856, and our party had reached Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, by rail, and from thence were making ready for their long march of over 600 miles. Senator Harlan and Gov. Grimes came and gave us addresses of welcome, and words of cheer. Teams had been procured to carry the baggage of the men, and a supply of arms and ammunition to reenforce the little Spartan band which held the decisive point in the struggle for free soil. The train was about to start, when a young man, breathless, and with face flushed with heat, came running from the cars. He inquired for me, and presented a very kind letter from Mr. Pease, of the House of Industry, in New York, where the bearer had been a teacher. The endorsement was all that could be desired, but Realf hardly needed it. Suspicious as all were of spies and traitors in our camp, his soulful earnestness and noble devotion would have won all hearts to him. His splendid face was radiant with a grand enthusiasm, and he was made welcome. He joined in the march, and walked with his comrades. He was in my own mess, and his especial pet was young Lagrange, of Wisconsin, since a famous soldier and public man, possessing a soul of the same chivalrous type, but more fortunately balanced in intellect. Realf was always ready to do his share of every disagreeable job. If the wagons stuck in the mud, or fuel was to be gathered for the camp, or a sick comrade needed care, he was always among the first to offer his help.

“He was brimful of a certain fiery energy, which seemed never to flag for a moment. He never showed nervousness or vexation. He was singularly tender and affectionate. At night, before we lay down, he always embraced Lagrange and myself. Poetry bubbled up from his heart like a perennial spring, as we lay looking up into the heavens of a clear night. He improvised, or recalled choice stanzas of his own, or of other poets.^⁠[2] . . .”

At Plymouth, Nebraska, they were met by six hundred troops. Their wagons were searched, their arms confiscated, and the men placed under guard. Realf’s name appears second on the list of those who signed a complaint that soon appeared in newspapers across the Midwest and East, creating a public embarrassment for Territorial Governor John W. Geary and the army. In time, the emigrants were released, their property returned, and they crossed into Kansas.

Whatever Realf’s standing was when he joined the emigrant train at Mount Pleasant, by the time its wagons rolled into Lawrence, Richard Realf was already being counted among its leaders.

Among the conductors of companies, we noticed and gladly welcomed to Lawrence, Col. Eldredge, Gen. Pomeroy, Col. Perry, Prof. E. Daniels, A. Searl, and Richard Realf from New York. On their arrival in front of the Hotel ruins, the men were drawn into line, and three cheers were given for the “Free State citizens of Lawrence,” three for “Our next President, Col. John C. Fremont,” and three more for “The Ladies of Kansas.” They camped for the night on the north side of Fort Lane, and we could not help being struck with the rapidity and order (and this fact speaks volumes for those gentlemen who have had charge of the train) with which a kraal was formed, and all arrangements made for camping.^⁠[3]

Realf entered that troubled world as a Free-State man of Lawrence, Kansas. Within a week of his arrival, Kansas newspapers were publishing his poems.

How long, O God, how long

Must fettered Freedom writhe beneath her chains,

And send the wailing of the captive’s song

Across the purple plains?

How long, O God, how long

Shall Slavery’s blood-hounds hold her by the throat,

And her life reel beneath the dripping thong

Of Hell’s Iscariot?

How long, O God, how long

Shall she be haunted, homeless, thro’ the Earth;

Nor thou — Just One — against the crimson wrong,

Launch Thy broad lightnings forth?^⁠[4]

Richard Realf wrote, spoke, organized, and soon moved in the orbit of John Brown, whose antislavery purpose was fiercer than politics and closer to prophecy. Richard J. Hinton, another English-born abolitionist and journalist, had reached Kansas before him, in the same violent year that made “Bleeding Kansas” a national phrase. In that struggle — Brown, Hinton and Realf came to know one another, their talents, politics, and ambitions all belonging to the same fierce antislavery world.

John Brown’s vision extended beyond the immediate fight for Kansas. He imagined communities where formerly enslaved people could reunite their families, build free lives, and defend their liberty. His plans also included military preparation, guerrilla warfare, and a future assault upon slavery itself.

In Kansas, where the struggle had already made John Brown a legend, conviction and danger met; for Realf, so did poetry and action. He hated injustice, loved the poor, adored his comrades, and poured feeling into verse as naturally as breath. His lines were extravagant, fierce, and unmistakably his own. Realf could turn political outrage into music. That gift made the young poet both powerful and beloved.

And then our daughters and our wives,

And men whose heads were white,

Rose sudden into kingly lives

And walked forth to the fight;

And we drew aim along our guns

And calmed our quickening breath,

Then, as is meet for Freedom’s sons,

Shook loving hands with Death.

Beneath the everlasting stars

We bended child-like knees,

And thanked God for the shining scars

Of His large victories.

And some, who lingered, said they heard

Such wondrous music pass

As though a seraph’s voice had stirred

The pulses of the grass.^⁠[5]

At a conservative convention, his name was placed in nomination for president after the first nominee declined because he was proslavery. Realf declined for precisely the opposite reason: he was, he explained, an “ultra abolitionist.”^⁠[6] The symmetry was almost comic, but his refusal was entirely sincere. The problem was solved when Realf would go on to offer a resolution that the conservatives lead with a committee of nine, and it was accepted. He may have been young, but he was influential.

By late 1857, Realf’s writings reveal a pattern that would recur throughout his life: soaring enthusiasm followed by periods of profound depression. As his hopes for Kansas soured and the Free-State movement settled into cautious politics, John Brown offered a more absolute struggle—one that promised purpose, comradeship, and perhaps a way out of the darkness.

Stanzas for the Times

For the Lawrence Republican.

By Heaven, I half believe the TimeIs linked

and leagued with lowest Hell—

The leprous soul of Wrong and Crime

Performs its work so well!

By Heaven, in bitter brooding dreams

I think Life such a hollow lie

That unto my hot heart it seems

A wishful boon—to die!

We smite, and sting, and howl, and hiss,

Each hand a-grip on other’s soul;

Each bartering each with Judas’ kiss

For Judas’ traitor-dole:

Our breath—a breathed hypocrisy—

Makes homeless Love weep piteous tears;

While even the damned come forth to see

Our slime upon the spheres.

A golden passport unto Hell

Seems the full stretch of our desire—

To cheat, and hoard, and buy, and sell,

And make high Heaven a liar.

Aye! for the mockery of creeds

Hath lain upon our life like rust,

Till wailing Faith wears widow’s weeds,

And there is no more trust.

No Faith—no Hope—no Charity—

No melting Love that yearns to bless—

Nought but the leering blasphemy

Of foul-eyed Selfishness;

No grand resolves for Sacrifice,

From men whose aims are with the stars!

No! only lust, and shame, and vice,

And Mammon’s savage wars.

Great God! is this our Life? Must all

Our high thoughts that once burned within

Be crushed in this vast carnival

Of pomp and painted sin?

Is this the Canaan we have won—

Is this the food our souls must take?

Lies no oasis further on—

O friends! shall we not wake?

Richard Realf. Lawrence, Kansas.^⁠[7]

Realf would later relate this period of his life saying:^⁠[8]

It was at this period that I became personally acquainted with John Brown, one of nature’s noblemen, and formed an attachment for him that lasted until his death.

John Brown who for several years before had felt himself called up to become a leader in the work of freeing the slaves and, feeling that he is raised up for that especial purpose, gathered around him a band of intrepid trusty men for the purpose of organizing a conspiracy by which the blacks were to be armed in the South and assisted to escape to Canada. It was the intention our party to become fully instructed in the art of mountainous warfare, and for that purpose arrangements were made with a man by the name of Hugh Forbes, an ex-officer of the British army who was at this time teaching school in the city of New York. Colonel Forbes was also an author of two volumes on mountainous warfare, having at one time served under Garibaldi in the Italian campaign, in 1848-9, where he was engaged in fighting for Italia’s independence in the mountainous regions of that country. From this fact he was supposed to be heartily enlisted in the cause of freedom.

In the year 1857 our party left Kansas and went to the neighborhood of Springdale, Cedar county, Iowa, and remained there until the spring of 1858, studying military tactics under the instruction of one of our number, who had been in the United States army. It will be remembered that in this year there was a severe financial crisis all over the country, causing much distress and a great depreciation in property of all kinds, and as we were much in need of money we sold what property we had in our possession—two teams and six mules—and started eastward for Ohio, undergoing the hardships and fatigues incident to such journey. Akron, Ohio, was made our headquarters, and here it was that Colonel Forbes was to meet us and give us our instructions in the art of war.

A FINANCIAL CRISIS.

Contrary to our expectations, we found ourselves without money and any way of getting it. Brown had gone east to raise funds for the purpose of finishing preparations before our starting for Virginia, but failed in his object, and being unable to keep his contract with Colonel Forbes,^⁠[9] who was now clamoring for money and would not be put off, the project had to be given up for a season. To make matter worse, he began to correspond with Brown’s friends, who had been furnishing most of the money, and told them that Brown was using the money received by him for his own personal use. We did not remain at Akron long, but shortly after the trouble between Brown and Forbes our party started for Chatham, Canada, where we held that famous convention when a provisional constitution was adopted. A president and secretary were elected—Brown was made president and I secretary of state—having a bureau without a portfolio.

This was no mere gathering of Brown’s followers. At Chatham, John Brown drew Black abolitionists and antislavery men willing to consider, debate, and—if John Brown had his way—organize a revolutionary movement. The delegates adopted a provisional constitution intended to govern the antislavery stronghold that Brown hoped to establish should his uprising succeed. Richard Realf was chosen Secretary of State.^⁠[10]

The Chatham records do not show that Brown named Harper’s Ferry as his intended point of attack. Martin Delany^⁠[11] would later insist that no such place was mentioned, nor even hinted at. By then, caution was more than prudence. What Realf understood, however, was serious enough: Brown contemplated an armed movement into Virginia, where enslaved people would be encouraged to join him in the mountains, plantations would be struck, resistant slaveholders taken hostage, and the militant movement would then press southward into the mountains, choosing guerrilla tactics over conventional means of warfare.

In later years Realf would elaborate:^⁠[12]

While the convention was still in session word was received from Washington, D.C., that our plans had been disclosed by Colonel Forbes to the Government officials. He done this for the purpose of raising money to take him back to Europe, so he said. Letters were received from Messrs. Sumner, Wilson, Giddings and others, telling us we had better indefinitely postpone our intended raid in the South. The convention accordingly adjourned, but with the intention of making greater preparations, and were, in the course of two or three years to put into execution that which had been temporarily frustrated.

I was instructed to go to New York and get an introduction to Forbes, and, if possible, to get from him, by fair or foul means, the damaging letters Mr. Brown had written him when he was supposed to be loyal to our cause, and which would criminate him and others. Some of the party were sent South to teach school, study negro character, and, if possible, if the negroes were willing, to fight for their freedom provided they got assistance. When I arrived in New York I found that Forbes had not yet returned from Washington, and having been invited by a friend to take a trip to England I accepted, for advantage of seeing my parents, whom I had not seen for several years.

And so,  Realf went to England. Whether Brown actually sent him, or merely approved a journey that Realf already intended to make, would later become a matter of dispute. John Cook^⁠[13] would say that Realf went to raise money for Brown;  Realf would later deny it, saying that he was homesick, wished to see his parents, and supported himself by lecturing on temperance. Yet at the same time he would admit that he had often told Cook that England was the proper place to raise money for abolition. British newspapers establish that Realf reached England in the autumn of 1858 and entered its temperance lecture circuit.^⁠[14] Whether temperance was his sole purpose, or also provided respectable cover for Brown’s business, remains unanswered.

Meanwhile, rifles, revolvers, ammunition, blankets, boots, were gradually brought east from Iowa and a thousand pikes^⁠[15] were added to the arsenal. Brown eventually rented a Maryland farmhouse near Harpers Ferry, where the men and material assembled.

Brown’s plan was to seize the federal armory, distribute its weapons among those who would rise up to join him, and establish a force capable of moving southward through the mountains. But Brown waited for men, money, and circumstances to align. The delay tested everyone around him. Some doubted the plan; others lost patience; and the longer the weapons lay hidden, the more impossible it became to tell whether Brown was preparing history or postponing disaster.

Realf is in England for about six months, leaving Europe from Havre, France on March 2, 1859, aboard the ship Logan arriving in New Orleans in April.^⁠[16] And it was here that Realf’s life takes a strange and bewildering turn. Richard Realf would write of his entering New Orleans:^⁠[17]

On my arrival in New Orleans I began looking around to see how I could best advance the cause of the negro as well as get employment for myself. When I separated from Mr. Brown I was advised to go South and teach a colored school; but this I found was not so easy of accomplishment, as any proposition in that line was looked upon with suspicion, and it was almost worth a person’s life to make the attempt. Failing to find any opening such as I desired, and being almost without funds, after paying my passage from France, I was compelled to take the first opening that presented itself, which was a position as a reporter on the True Delta. In this capacity I was so successful that inquiry began to be made as to who this man Realf was, etc. To make you understand the situation more fully, I must go back to affairs in the North.

About this time the elections in Kansas having taken place, and resulting in a victory for freedom, many of the roughs^⁠[18] had returned to their homes, their services being no longer needed. In the course of time [while in New Orleans] I was recognized by some of them as being one of Jim Lane’s men, Jim Lane at that time being the recognized leader in Kansas; so of course, when this was known it became too hot for me and I was compelled to leave the city. I scarcely know why it was that I did not at once strike for the North, but instead of doing that I went further South, in the State of Texas. This was early in the fall of 1859.

But those who knew Realf in the South at the time would say that he had became a Catholic convert, adding the name John to his name. He was published in the Catholic Journal of New Orleans, and had theological discussions with Catholic fathers^⁠[19] — something that he would omit when later he told the story. When he left New Orleans he boarded a steamer on October 7th. A man that shared a state-room with Realf would recount the journey:^⁠[20]

I took the steamer Orizaba for Indianola, Texas. Upon this steamer, and in the state-room with me, was Richard Realf, who I found to be a sprightly and very clever compagnon du voyage. He told me he had been connected with the Five Points Mission in New York, and was subsequently the Kansas correspondent of the New York Tribune.

He professed, however, to have repented of abolitionism, and to have become a strong pro-slavery advocate. He said he was an Englishman of liberal education, and came to this country indoctrinated with the false philanthropy and philosophy of Exeter Hall, which adhered to him until he went to the South, where his views of slavery were changed. We traveled together to Indianola, and from there by stage to San Antonio, Texas. He was well supplied with money, but seemed to be looking for a business engagement. He was the life of our crowd on the Gulf steamer and in the coach, entertaining us by turns with wit and song. He had a strange, wild glare about his eyes, which we set down to genius and partial insanity, but we all voted him a good fellow. He remained at San Antonio but a day or two, and then departed—whither, I know not.

Realf is a man of small stature, rather muscular and round-shouldered. He has a high forehead, long black hair, and when I saw him he wore a heavy moustache. Withal, he is quite a poet, and somewhat of a theologian. He showed me several pieces of his poetry, and numerous editorials and letters in defense of the Catholic religion, published in the Catholic journal at New Orleans, with which paper he professed to be at that time connected.

Realf’s story continues:^⁠[21]

At San Antonio I was unable to obtain employment, so I had to leave. The Legislature then being in session, I went to the capital at Austin. This was the Legislature that elected Wigfall to the Senate, and was intensely disloyal; but as I was unknown to any of them, and wishing to replenish my depleted purse, I proposed giving three lectures on “Poetry.” There being no hall of sufficient capacity, I went to some of the leading members of the Legislature belonging to the lower house and got them interested in my behalf, and through them procured their hall free. This was mainly done by my showing some letters received from Lady Byron^⁠[22] and which was afterward the means of getting me into trouble, as the sequel will show.

While Realf is building another chapter of his life in Texas, John Brown and his small company waited in concealment at the Kennedy farm in Maryland, in a rented house a few miles from the federal armory, men who had once stood near Brown, including Richard Realf, were absent, scattered, or believed dead — others had fallen away. When Brown stepped out into the dark on October 16th, he was not beginning a sudden adventure, but attempting to enact a revolutionary design years in the making.

Their first move succeeded tactically, Brown and his men seized the armory, but what failed was the larger plan. The expected uprising did not materialize, local resistance organized faster than Brown thought capable, and Brown, along with some of his men, lingered until escape became impossible. Some of his men escaped, some were captured along with John Brown.

The raid broke open a political panic. Across the South, and in Democratic newspapers elsewhere, Harper’s Ferry was treated not merely as Brown’s crime but as evidence of a wider Republican and abolitionist conspiracy. Men demanded to know who had funded Brown, who had armed him, who had attended his councils, and what Northern politicians knew. Every name connected to Brown became valuable, and every rumor could be made useful. The object was not only to punish the men who had entered Virginia, but to expose the machinery behind them and fasten the crime, if possible, upon the whole antislavery movement. In that frenzy, Richard Realf was no obscure poet. He was Brown’s former Secretary of State, a Chatham officer, an English lecturer, and a man who might be made to explain how far Brown’s designs had reached. He was not among the dead, not one that had been captured.

Realf would continue his account:^[23]

My first lecture was a financial success, having cleared about $300, and I was very much elated over it, and began making calculations that I would receive about $1,000 in the three nights.

But the very next morning the semi-weekly mail from New Orleans arrived, containing an account of Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry, his capture along with his men, copies of his important papers, the provisional constitution, with the names of the signers, etc. My name being among the rest and described as an intimate friend of Lady Byron, I was at once recognized, as my letters showed to different members of the Legislature established my identity.

John Brown was tried November 2nd and condemned to die. He had lost two sons at Harper’s Ferry: Oliver, who died of wounds on October 18th, and Watson, who was mortally wounded, captured, and died the next day. A third son, Owen, escaped.

Early November, John Cook, who had been captured and hoping for leniency penned a long confession. Cook’s confession was not merely a plea for mercy. It was a map. It named men, offices, plans, meetings, money, and missions. For Richard Realf, it was especially dangerous. Cook identified him not only as one of Brown’s original company, but as Secretary of State in the Chatham organization and as the man sent to England to raise money through lectures for Brown’s cause. In the political panic after Harper’s Ferry, that made Realf more than a missing associate. It made him a witness who might explain how far Brown’s design had reached.

In Washington, Democrats still held the presidency and controlled the Senate, though Republicans had become the largest party in the House. The result was not Republican control, but sectional deadlock — and after Harper’s Ferry, proslavery Democrats used that deadlock to argue that Brown’s raid exposed the danger of the entire Republican movement.

Cook would go on to say of Richard Reaf:

He is a man of rare talents and a powerful and fluent speaker. He is about 28 years of age. Mr. Kagi,^⁠[24] I believe, got a letter from some one in England few months ago stating that Realf had sailed for this country, and that he had quite a sum of money with him, but farther than that we have been unable to find any trace of him. Capt. Brown and the rest of our company, who knew him, think that he is dead.”

Realf’s name was soon published widely as drawn from Cook’s confession and from papers seized at the rented Maryland farmhouse. But rumors that Realf was dead were soon dispelled. Charles Yeaton, a friend of Realf’s in New York wrote the editor of the Daily Delta of New Orleans trying to discover his whereabouts. By that time, many wanted to know of Realf’s whereabouts as well. The paper promptly published the letter with a forward:

INFORMATION WANTED.

Yesterday we received a letter from New York, which we publish below, asking for information concerning a certain Richard Realf, who arrived in this city sometime last April, but has since disappeared. From inquiries we have made we are led to the belief that he resided in this city some months, and that he is the same person who figures in the proceedings of the Harper’s Ferry conspirators as their Secretary of State. An article in the Mobile Tribune, which came to hand yesterday, gives further particulars concerning Realf, which will be interesting to those who knew him here, and which we republish as a simple act of justice, in order that he may have the benefit of the Tribune’s conviction of his conversion from Abolitionism. The suggestion of the Tribune that he was the author of the anonymous letter to Mr. Floyd^⁠[25] is not without plausibility:

NEW YORK, Nov. 19, 1859.

Dear Sir—Can you give me any information regarding a young man hailing from England, by the name of Richard Realf? He sailed from Havre in the “Logan,” March 2d, and arrived in your city, the 13th day of April, since which time nothing has been heard of or from him, until last week, I learned by accident, he had been connected, in some way, with the Press in New Orleans, but the name of the paper I do not know.

Realf has long been an intimate friend of mine, and his family write me from England, with feelings of deep anxiety, hoping to gain some tidings of his whereabouts. Wishing the favor of an early reply,

I remain, very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

CHARLES C. YEATON,

Care of Horace H. Day, 23 Courtlandt street, New York.

By the time Yeaton’s inquiry reached New Orleans, Realf’s name had already been carried through the newspapers as one of Brown’s men. That timing makes the letter difficult to read simply as an old friend’s innocent search. Yeaton may well have been sincere—Realf’s English family may indeed have been anxious for news—but the public danger attached to Realf’s name gives the inquiry another edge. Was Yeaton trying to find him, warn him, distance himself from Realf, or flush him into view? The letter does not answer. It only shows that, by late November 1859, even Realf’s friends were searching for him through the newspapers.

Following publication of the letter, people in Mobile came forward to claim that “John Richard Realf” was a Catholic lecturer and writer, and had made no secret of his former association with John Brown, but adamant that he was no longer an abolitionist.^⁠[26]

On December 2nd, John Brown was hanged.

Two days later, Richard Realf, who had already presented himself to the authorities in Austin, and invited to stay at a slave holder’s plantation house for his safety, penned a letter to President Buchanan:

Austin, Texas, Dec. 4, 1859.

To his Excellency the President of the United States:

Sir—Having recently observed, from the papers which have reached this distant region, that the discovery of the correspondence of John Brown has disclosed my former connection with him as Secretary of State, under the “Provisional constitution” adopted at Chatham, C. W., May 10, 1858, I have thought it my duty to state to you that, while I have had no connection either with Brown or any of his party since the beginning of June, 1858, and no knowledge of the resuscitation of the organization, which died out at the period of and in consequence of my defection therefrom, and although I have, since my return from Europe in April last, resided wholly in the southern States, acquitting myself as a law-abiding citizen, I yet am perfectly willing (by reason of my conviction that the organization and the insurrection were alike cruel and wicked) to surrender myself to the authorities of the United States or of the State of Virginia, in order, if it be necessary, to suffer the penalty of my egregious folly.

I have, since the date of the insurrection, been once or twice dissuaded from offering myself as a witness, on the ground that the violated majesty of the law was being amply and fully vindicated.

By reason, however, of the recently disclosed fact that the insurrection occurred under the auspices of the “Provisional government,” I have determined, on account of the possibility that my connection with the dissolved organization of May, 1858, may entail responsibilities on me in December, 1859, to express my willingness to expiate to the last degree the consequences of my atrocious blunder. For this reason: that whereas, when an abolitionist, I would have died in defence of my convictions, so, now that I am a southerner, I am also willing to die in proof of the sincerity of my present principles. If, therefore, the error of the past involves me in the present punishment, I am content to redeem such error by suffering such punishment.

I reside in this city, from which I shall not absent myself until you have communicated your desires or decision in this matter.

I have the honor to remain, sir,

Your Excellency’s most obedient servant,

RICHARD REALF.

A verbatim copy of the above has also been mailed to Governor Wise, of Virginia.^⁠[27]

On the same day that John Brown was hanged, a man impersonating Richard Realf in order to get funds that would get him to Canada was arrested in Maryland. He escaped and was recaptured in Alexandria. News that Realf had been arrested spread through the country. It would be a week before the Virginia court realized he wasn’t the real Richard Realf, but the newspapers from Oregon to Maine, to the South continued reporting his capture.

By the 10th of December, the Austin State Gazette wrote:

We have been shown a letter by one of our best citizens, and a slaveholder, addressed by Mr. Realf to President Buchanan, offering to surrender himself to the authorities of the United States or of Virginia. Mr. Realf will remain with Dr. Alexander until an official communication may be received. From the statements of that gentleman and others we apprehend no danger from the temporary presence of Mr. Realf. He confesses to having been an Abolitionist and a party to the formation of the Convention in Canada which adopted John Brown’s Provisional Government, but he denies all participation in his schemes against Virginia, and avows a radical change of opinion in favor of our slave institutions.”^⁠[28]

Newspapers throughout the country began publishing the letter that Richard wrote to the President.The Southern papers mocked him, the Northern papers mocked him, and James Redpath, a close friend, fellow abolitionist and publisher in Kansas called him a traitor.

Almost overnight, Richard Realf became less a man than a legend of contradiction. Newspapers repeated Cook’s confession, called him Brown’s “Secretary of State,” reported him dead, arrested, escaped, lost, converted, repentant, or missing, handsome and highly educated, until the living Realf was nearly buried beneath the mythical man the newspaper copy had invented.

On December 14th the Senate formed a committee to inquire into the facts attending the late invasion and seizure of the armory and arsenal of the United States at Harper’s Ferry. On the 23rd C. S. Jones, door-keeper of the Senate, was sent to Texas for Richard Realf.

In the interim he was fodder for papers in the North and South.

☞ Richard Realf, Secretary of State under Brown’s provisional government, went to New Orleans, turned pro-slavery, then Catholic, and is now preaching in the Methodist Church South, near Austin, Texas. A versatile fellow, truly.^⁠[29]

☞ Richard Realf, well known in Kansas, and who was said to have gone to Europe to avoid arrest for complicity in the Harper’s Ferry affair, now turns up in Texas, where he is spoken of by the Austin Intelligencer as “a circuit preacher of the Methodist Church South,” “intensely pro-slavery,” etc. Realf is either “playing off” on the Texans, or making a fool of himself—or both, it does not make much difference which.^⁠[30]

Richard Realf, would remember his own version of those days saying:^⁠[31]

The excitement ran high, and murmurs were heard in all directions. Governor Sam Houston had me arrested and placed under guard — which was a very fortunate thing for me, as I would undoubtedly have been mobbed by the incensed inhabitants. The Governor notified the department at Washington, what he had done, and a reply was immediately received to have me sent to Washington under the charge of a United States Marshal by the name of Brendon, who soon afterward arrived for the purpose of performing this duty. I was given the privilege of being handcuffed or giving my parole of honor not to escape. The latter was gladly given and my journey northward began for the purpose of being tried for treason.

Railroads and telegraphs at this time were not so numerous as they are now, and the old-fashioned stage coach was the only means of conveyance between Austin and the nearest railroad station at Hempstead, so it was necessary for us to travel in this way at the start. The news of my capture had preceded me even to this place. On our arrival at the hotel we were shown to the parlor, and while the marshal had gone to register our names a gentleman looking man came in and entered into conversation with me. Among other things, he asked me “if I had heard of the capture of Realf?” He then asked me if I had ever seen him, to which I replied that I had. He then asked if I was finally compelled to tell him that my name was Realf, whereupon he drew a pistol and would have shot me had it not been for the interference of the marshal, who had by this time returned to the parlor. I can assure you that I put in a restless night, as visitors of mobs ever presented themselves before me.

Next morning, when we had taken our seats in the cars, if one man with a drawn bowie-knife came into the car there were one hundred and fifty, insulting and abusing me in the most outrageous manner, and the only thing that I could do was to bite my lips until the blood came to keep from replying back.

It was only the fact of my being in the charge of a United States Marshal that prevented it. We were met at Galveston by an immense mob, who took me away from the marshal, put a rope around my neck and hung me to the arms of a lamp post until I was in a comatose condition, after which I was cut down and taken to the steamer which was to take us to New Orleans. I afterward learned that I owed my life to a young Virginian who was in the city for the purpose of buying a plantation preparatory to his moving to Texas. He made a speech to the mob stating that he could not stand by and see a defenceless man hung up in that manner without offering his protest, stating at the same time the object of his business in the city. The leader of the mob, having been shamed by the remarks of this man, at once sided with him and used his influence with the others and had me cut down and taken to the boat in the condition I have described.

Nothing of particular importance transpired on our voyage, but, as we neared New Orleans, my fears were aroused lest I would not escape so easily as I had done at Galveston, as my recent sojourn would only add to their flaming passions. What I dreaded most was my having to remain in the city several hours, as the boat’s time was 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and the first train north from New Orleans was the next morning.

But the elements were in my favor, as a heavy fog rose when we neared the mouth of the Mississippi river, detaining us so long that we did not reach the city until 2 o’clock in the morning. The marshal took a hack to an obscure hotel and registered under a fictitious name; we were thus enabled by this means to get through the city without molestation. Early next morning we took the train unrecognized, but it was not long after our departure that it was discovered that we were aboard.

At Grand Junction and Oxford, Miss., demonstrations were made against us, especially at Oxford, where there was a college and where on account of an accident, we had to lay over twelve hours. The students took great pleasure in heaping insults upon me, and in a very cowardly manner. From this point the journey became more and more perilous. At every station the crowds increased, so after Chattanooga had been passed the marshal concluded he would stop over two or three days at Knoxville and wait until the excitement had subsided. The trunks and other baggage went forward in the same train—we stayed two days at Knoxville, after which we reached Washington in safety.

I was never tried for treason, as the provision of the Constitution itself saved me. My enemies had forgotten that I could not be tried for treason until the overt act had been committed, but my friends had not. Thus I was saved by the very means that my enemies had used to bring me to the scaffold.

Realf was explaining that he could be questioned, threatened, and dragged before authorities because of his connection to Brown, but he could not be lawfully tried for treason unless the government could prove he had actually taken part in the armed act. Since he had not been at Harper’s Ferry, the Constitution protected him.

He did have to be questioned by the Senate committee however, and by the time that Realf was brought before it, Southern newspapers had already helped shape the part he was expected to play. To men hunting for the financial and political machinery behind Harper’s Ferry, such a figure must have seemed invaluable: a former insider, perhaps chastened or converted, who might confirm that prominent Republicans, abolitionists, and Northern sympathizers had supplied Brown with money and encouragement. The committee did not summon Realf merely to hear the story of Chatham. They wanted the names behind the movement—the men who had paid, planned, or approved of John Brown’s plans from a safer distance.

Realf did not become the witness his pursuers had hoped for. He spoke artfully, and long, boring the Committee more than satifying them. He confirmed what Cook’s confession and Brown’s captured papers had already made plain: that he had known Brown, attended the Chatham convention, and held the title of Secretary of State in the provisional government. But when the committee pressed toward the wider question; who had supplied Brown, encouraged him, or stood behind him in the North — Realf gave them little. The names he acknowledged were largely names already dragged into public view. He did not expose a hidden Republican treasury, did not furnish a useful list of conspirators, and did not transform Brown’s raid into the vast political plot that Southern leaders and investigators hoped to prove. If he had been summoned as a converted abolitionist who might betray the movement, his testimony sorely disappointed them.^⁠[32]

Realf did not come out of the Senate investigation as a ruined man. For a brief, astonishing moment, he came out almost redeemed. The witness that Southern men had hoped would betray Brown’s supporters had given them little; the abolitionists who had first condemned him were forced to reconsider. James Redpath, who had called him a traitor, publicly withdrew the charge. Realf took the six hundred dollars paid for his travel expenses to his next destination and turned it over to John Brown’s son, Owen and other Harper’s Ferry fugitives.

He went back before the public in the only way he knew how—through poetry and speech. In Ohio, and among people drawn to reform, religion, and radical social experiment, he began lecturing once again, promising that proceeds would go to the aid of the Harper’s Ferry fugitives and John Brown’s widow, Mary.^⁠[33]

When the newspapers were critical and suspicious, he held a press conference after one of his first lectures.^⁠[34] The Cleveland Leader would report:

Mr. Realf claims that we have treated him with undue asperity. He says that he wrote that letter to the President, offering to testify, in order to get himself out of the clutches of the mob that was being formed to hang him in Austin, Texas. He surrendered himself to the U. S. District Judge in that locality, and thus had his protection. He knew all the time that he was doing this, that he could not testify to anything that would implicate any one in the Harper’s Ferry raid, excepting the actors in that affair. Hence he felt justified in resorting to the ruse he did to get away from Texas at Uncle Sam’s expense. By so doing he saved himself from the fury of a remorseless Southern mob, and disappointed Mr. Fugitive Law Mason^⁠[35] by giving testimony entirely exculpating the Republican party from any complicity in the Harper’s Ferry war.

For twenty-five cents, Cleveland audiences could see the man newspapers had made notorious: highly educated, handsome, eccentric, eloquent, and impossible to classify—Brown’s former Secretary of State, the supposed convert, the suspected traitor, the rescued witness, the enigma who had escaped Texas and returned to the lecture platform with secrets still in his keeping. Throughout that time in Ohio, Realf polished his tainted reputation.

His performances mingled revival, reform, poetry, and politics into one charged appeal. He vowed time and again to support the widowed Mary Brown. If he had been forced into the role of Brown’s missing Secretary of State, he now tried to inhabit it on his own terms. In March he bought the Mack-a-cheek Press of Liberty, Ohio. By April he had disappeared and was feared dead, until it was reported a few weeks later: He Is Not Dead but Danceth.

Richard Realf had turned up at Union Village, a community of “Believers,” or “Shakers,” as outsiders called them because their worship could include trembling, shaking, singing, marching, and ecstatic dance. For Realf, who had moved from Five Points reform to Brown’s prophetic abolitionism, Catholic discipline, and Methodist preaching, Union Village was not an odd detour so much as another threshold into a world where religion promised to remake the soul.

In later years, Ann Good would tell the story of this period of Realf’s life:

He wanted a comfortable place to rest, as he said he had just got out of the John Brown trouble with his life, and that was all.

So we took him in our home, and in a few weeks he took very ill, and it fell to my lot to take care of him, which I gladly did, as he was so young and had not a relative in this country at that time.

He continued ill for many weeks, it was three months before he recovered. After he was convalescent he took great pride in giving me a history of his life up to that time, which was very interesting to me.

During his illness, when he would feel better, he would say, “Sister, come fan me and I will read you a poem,” which he did with such a soft and tender voice, that it was very pleasant to hear him read.

The story he gave me of himself was from the time he was ten years old up to 25, which was indeed a wonderful experience for one so young.

In the beginning of the year ’60 a religious people calling themselves Believers engaged him to deliver one lecture a week for six months, which he accepted. It took him one week to prepare himself for the first of the course. The people advertised that such lectures would be delivered in behalf of their religious views, free to the public. The Hall was well filled at the first lecture.

It was not long until he became famous. The Press lauded him in high terms as a youthful orator or preacher. He continued to draw such crowds that hundreds of people could not gain admittance to the Hall. As he proceeded with his course, he grew more and more eloquent.

The people who employed him declared he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. The best of people attended the entire course of lectures, and pronounced them the best they ever heard. I never missed one during the six months, and the general remark by all of the learned and intelligent, that it was wonderful to hear him. Indeed his whole chain of thought was full of purity, eloquence, logic, and pathos.

During his stay in our village he made many very warm and true friends, and at the end of the year ’60 he concluded to leave us, as the War was near upon us, and he said he could be of use to this adopted country.^⁠[36]

His poems continued to travel through magazines and newspaper exchanges, but Realf himself was again in motion, so  were the armies of the North and South. He spent the winter of 1861–62 in England.^⁠[37] On his return he resumed lecturing, and by June was in Baraboo, Wisconsin, advertised for two public addresses. The first would take up the war generally, with reminiscences of Brown, Davis,^⁠[38] Mason, and others; the second was titled “English Views of the Rebellion.”

Emancipation had not yet been declared a Union war aim, though the war had already been fought for more than a year. Still, the question of slavery pressed harder upon the nation with every passing month. Enslaved people were fleeing to Union lines in numbers too great to ignore, making their own freedom a military fact before it became settled policy. Congress had answered in part with the Confiscation Acts, which struck at slaveholders who supported the rebellion and moved the government, step by reluctant step, toward emancipation. Those who escaped to Union camps were called “contraband of war,” a cold legal phrase for a human revolution already underway.

Realf left Wisconsin by late July and the lecturer walked into a Chicago recruiting office and presented himself to Captain Charles Rowland.

Captain Rowland would later remember Realf as a “bright, trim-built, intelligent-looking little gentleman,"and the two men spoke for half an hour on general matters, the war, and slavery. Realf did not enlist that day. He returned the next, however, and told Rowland "he was ready to be sworn in as a soldier.” Rowland administered the oath on August 9, 1862.

For the weeks that followed, while the regiment was still forming in Chicago, Realf boarded with Rowland, who saw at close hand the quick changes in his temper and spirits. Realf spoke to him of England, Kansas, John Brown, arrest, and imprisonment, as if his past were already a burden he carried into the war with him. Rowland later released him from his first enlistment so that he might accept a position as sergeant major of the 88th Illinois Infantry.^⁠[39]      

Realf’s acquaintance with Sophia Graves did not arise out of chance. The 88th Illinois had ties that reached into her own life. Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Chadbourne of the 88th, formerly of Maine, was a connection of Sophia Emery Graves, and many of the privates in the regiment were young men and boys she had taught or known as neighbors in the small western town where she then lived. Through her concern for those soldiers, Sophia later wrote, she became intimate with Realf.^⁠[40]

The poet of Kansas, the lecturer of Ohio had become a soldier. Or perhaps, more precisely, the poet had found another stage upon which to suffer, speak, impress, and be remembered — especially by a thirty-two year old school teacher in a small western town near Chicago.

NOTES

¹ This brief account of Richard Realf’s early life draws chiefly from Richard J. Hinton’s later writings on Realf, supplemented by contemporary newspaper accounts, military records, and Realf’s published poems.

² This recollection of Realf’s arrival among the Kansas emigrants was related to Richard J. Hinton by an unnamed friend, and published in Richard Realf, Poems by Richard Realf: Poet, Soldier, Workman, ed. Richard J. Hinton (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1898), p. xxxvi–xxxviii

³ Excerpt from an article entitled Mission of Kansas, published in the Kansas Cereal of Freedom, November 1, 1856

⁴ Three stanza’s of “How Long?,” in Poems by Richard Realf: Poet, Soldier, Workman, ed. Richard J. Hinton (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1898), 53–54; Kansas Herald of Freedom (Wakarusa, Kansas), November 8, 1856

⁵ Two stanza’s from“The Defense of Lawrence,” in Poems by Richard Realf: Poet, Soldier, Workman, ed. Richard J. Hinton (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1898), 88–91; though Richard had not been in Lawrence when the town was burned, he wrote a poem to commemorate the “sacking” that occurred on May 21, 1856

⁶ Western Home Journal, August 27, 1857

⁷ Ibid, November 12, 1857

⁸ Richard Realf, “One of John Brown’s Men: Autobiography of Col. Richard Realf, One of Brown’s Lieutenants,” reprinted from a Pittsburgh paper in the Brookville Republican (Brookville, Pennsylvania), January 8, 1879. The article states that the account had been “narrated by himself to an intimate friend in Philadelphia” and published through the Philadelphia Sunday Times.

⁹ Hugh Forbes was an English-born soldier of fortune who had served under Giuseppe Garibaldi in Italy before John Brown hired him in 1857 to help train his men in military tactics. Forbes later quarreled with Brown over pay and strategy, and his threats to expose Brown’s plans helped delay the projected raid. See Richard J. Hinton, “Memoir,” in Richard Realf, Poems by Richard Realf: Poet, Soldier, Workman (New York and London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1898), xxxix–xli; David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Knopf, 2005), 214–219.

¹⁰ The Chatham Convention met at Chatham, Canada West, on May 8–10, 1858. Its delegates adopted the “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States” and elected officers for Brown’s projected government. The surviving minutes do not mention Harper’s Ferry. Richard Realf was chosen Secretary of State on May 10.

¹¹ Martin R. Delany was one of the most prominent Black abolitionists and emigrationists of the antebellum period: physician, editor, author, political organizer, and later the first Black field officer commissioned in the United States Army. See Victor Ullman, Martin R. Delany: The Beginnings of Black Nationalism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).

¹² Richard Realf, “One of John Brown’s Men: Autobiography of Col. Richard Realf, One of Brown’s Lieutenants,” reprinted from a Pittsburgh paper in the Brookville Republican (Brookville, Pennsylvania), January 8, 1879.

¹³ John E. Cook was one of John Brown’s closest white associates in the period before Harpers Ferry. He went into Kansas as a Free-State man, later became connected with Brown’s plans, and was sent ahead into Virginia, where he lived for a time near Harpers Ferry and gathered information before the raid. After Brown’s attack failed, Cook escaped briefly but was captured, tried, and hanged at Charlestown, Virginia, on December 16, 1859. See Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), 393–396, 489–493; David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Knopf, 2005), 300–304, 340–342.

¹⁴ Manchester Weekly Times and Examiner, November 6, 1858

¹⁵ John Brown contracted with Charles Blair of Collinsville, Connecticut, in 1857 for a large number of pikes—spear-like weapons intended for enslaved people who might join his planned uprising but lack firearms. After the Harpers Ferry raid, the captured pikes were widely reported in the press and used as evidence of Brown’s intention to arm enslaved people.

¹⁶ The Era The Daily Delta (New Orleans, Louisiana, November 26, 1859

¹⁷ Richard Realf, “One of John Brown’s Men: Autobiography of Col. Richard Realf, One of Brown’s Lieutenants,” reprinted from a Pittsburgh paper in the Brookville Republican (Brookville, Pennsylvania), January 8, 1879.

¹⁸ “Roughs” here likely means proslavery Kansas men or Border Ruffians who had returned South after the Free-State victory. Realf says some of them recognized him in New Orleans as one of Jim Lane’s men neccestating his move to Texas.

¹⁹ John O’Malley to Thomas D. Suplee, February 10, 1883, St. Mary’s University, Galveston, Texas, Richard J. Hinton Papers, Kansas State Library. O’Malley recalled that he had been a student at Spring Hill College near Mobile, Alabama, when Richard Realf stayed there as “the guest of the Jesuit fathers” from about mid-July to the end of September 1859. O’Malley believed Realf may have been baptized or received into the Catholic Church during that period, though he could not speak positively; he remembered, however, Realf’s “rapt devotion” in receiving Holy Communion and stated that Realf had published letters and poems in the Catholic Standard and “was a great favorite with me & the fathers & the colleagues, and with the Philosophers of that year.”

²⁰ The Washington States (Washington D.C.) December 3, 1859. The letter appeared after Harper’s Ferry, when the whereabouts of Realf were much speculated upon after John Cook’s confession and the arrest of a man that had been impersonating Realf. He concluded the letter writing, “I have no doubt that this was the identical Realf mentioned by Cook as Old Brown’s Secretary of State.”

²¹ Richard Realf, “One of John Brown’s Men: Autobiography of Col. Richard Realf, One of Brown’s Lieutenants,” reprinted from a Pittsburgh paper in the Brookville Republican (Brookville, Pennsylvania), January 8, 1879.

²² When Realf went to England he called on Lady Byron who was his benefactor when he was a boy and received from her, some letters of introduction. Richard Realf, “One of John Brown’s Men: Autobiography of Col. Richard Realf, One of Brown’s Lieutenants,” reprinted from a Pittsburgh paper in the Brookville Republican (Brookville, Pennsylvania), January 8, 1879.

²³ Ibid; Realf recounts the story in 1879 saying that he left New Orleans for Texas because he had been recognized as one of Brown’s men. Yet the explanation sits uneasily beside accounts of Mobile, Alabama where he told all that he had been on of John Brown's men, not to mention the journey to Texas on the steamboat. If he feared recognition, why speak of Brown at all? Before Harper’s Ferry, the name may still have seemed to him a badge of antislavery courage rather than a death warrant. After the raid, the same boast became evidence. What Realf later called a ruse may have begun as performance — and only afterward became self-defense.

²⁴ John Henry Kagi was one of John Brown’s closest lieutenants in the years before Harper’s Ferry. Born in Pennsylvania, he became active in the Kansas Free-State struggle and later served as Brown’s secretary of war under the provisional government adopted at Chatham. Kagi acted as Brown’s principal agent in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, helping arrange supplies, correspondence, and logistics for the Virginia enterprise. He was killed during the raid at Harper’s Ferry on October 17, 1859. See Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1910), 329–331, 438–439; David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Knopf, 2005), 257–258, 309–310.

²⁵ Anonymous to John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, Cincinnati, Aug. 20, 1859, in U.S. Senate, Report of the Select Committee on the Harper’s Ferry Invasion, 36th Cong., 1st sess., Report No. 278 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1860). The warning letter named John Brown and Harper’s Ferry before the raid; Floyd later dismissed it as anonymous and partly erroneous. Later writers generally identify David J. Gue of Springdale, Iowa, as the author, although contemporary papers briefly speculated that Richard Realf may have been responsible.

²⁶ The New York Times, (Republished from the Mobile Daily Tribune), December 2, 1859

²⁷ While there is no actual copy of this letter in any official repositories, the letter appeared in the Austin Intelligencer, December 9, 1859 and was re-published widely; Louisville Courier, December 24, 1859; New York Times, December 27, 1859. Realf, when in Ohio explained he had written it as a "ruse" to protect him from angry mobs in Austin.

²⁸ Re-published by The New Orleans Courier, December 17, 1859

²⁹ The Daily Gate City (Keokuk, Iowa), December 29, 1859

³⁰ Weekly News-Democrat, (Emporia, Kansas), January 14, 1860

³¹ Richard Realf, “One of John Brown’s Men: Autobiography of Col. Richard Realf, One of Brown’s Lieutenants,” reprinted from a Pittsburgh paper in the Brookville Republican (Brookville, Pennsylvania), January 8, 1879.

³² Richard Realf’s testimony  before the Senate Committee investigating the attack on Harper’s Ferry, see:

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/testimony-senate-committee-investigating-attack-harpers-ferry

³³ The Cleveland Evening Post, February 9, 1860

³⁴ The Cleveland Evening Post, February 13, 1860

³⁵ James M. Mason of Virginia chaired the Senate Select Committee appointed to investigate John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry. Mason was also the author of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, one of the most hated proslavery measures of the antebellum period; hence the newspaper’s epithet, “Fugitive Law Mason.” See U.S. Senate, Report of the Select Committee on the Harper’s Ferry Invasion, 36th Cong., 1st sess., Report No. 278 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1860); “James Murray Mason: A Featured Biography,” United States Senate Historical Office.

³⁶ Excerpt of a letter that Ann Good wrote to Richard J. Hinton, December  29, 1878, Richard Hinton papers, Kansas State Library.

³⁷ Baraboo Republic, (Baraboo, Wisconsin), June 11, 1862

³⁸ Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, then a United States senator and later president of the Confederacy.

³⁹ Charles Rowland to Richard J. Hinton, Dec. 10, 1878, quoted in Richard J. Hinton, ed., Poems by Richard Realf: Poet, Soldier, Workman (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1898), liii–lv.

⁴⁰ Sophia E. Graves Realf to Richard J. Hinton, Mar. 8, 1879. Sophia wrote that “Colonel Chadbourne (of Maine formerly) of this regiment was a connection of mine,” and that many of the privates were boys who had been her pupils or neighbors in the western town where she lived; “It was through my interest in the welfare of these soldiers that I became intimate with Realf.” Alexander S. Chadbourne was lieutenant colonel of the 88th Illinois. Charles Rowland’s later recollection that Realf boarded with him while the regiment was forming in Chicago further places Realf within the military and social circle surrounding the 88th before it was ordered south. Sophia Graves may have been in such a social circle and met Realf while he was in Chicago.