In 1848, while a resident of Springfield, Massachusetts, Brown wrote some articles reflecting upon the negro character; criticising negroes because of their vanity and shiftlessness. They were written under the caption: "Sambo's Mistakes," and were published in the _Ram's Horn_, a newspaper conducted by negroes, in New York. They do not relate to slavery.[52] In 1850 he made the first, and, it may be said, the only noticeable effort in behalf of the anti-slavery cause, that is recorded of him prior to 1854. The Fugitive Slave Law, enacted by the Thirty-first Congress, provided for the use of all the forces of the Department of Justice, to effect the arrest of fugitives from slavery, and the restoration of them to their masters. Brown conceived the idea of uniting the free negroes and fugitive slaves in an organization to resist the enforcement of the provisions of this law. The society was to be called "The United States League of Gileadites." The plan failed; the enrollment so far as known was confined to the Springfield, Massachusetts, branch, which numbered fifty-three members.[53] But the activities therein undertaken were strictly defensive in their character; they were not directed against slavery, but for the personal protection of fugitive slaves and free negroes living in the Northern States. His letter of advice to the Gileadites is, in part, as follows:[54] WORDS OF ADVICE "Union is Strength" Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. Witness the case of Cinques, of everlasting memory, on board the "Amistad." The trial for life of one bold and to some extent successful man, for defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and sufferings of more than three millions of our submissive colored population. We need not mention the Greeks struggling against the oppressive Turks, the Poles against Russia, nor the Hungarians against Austria and Russia combined, to prove this. _No jury can be found in the Northern States that would convict a man for defending his rights to the last extremity. This is well understood by Southern Congressmen, who insisted that the right of trial by jury should not be granted to the fugitive._ Colored people have ten times the number of fast friends among the whites than they suppose, and would have ten times the number they now have were they but half as much in earnest to secure their dearest rights as they are to ape the follies and extravagances of their luxury. Just think of the money expended by individuals in your behalf in the past twenty years! Think of the number who have been mobbed and imprisoned on your account! Have any of you seen the Branded Hand? Do you remember the names of Lovejoy and Torrey?