... It had been my privilege to live in the best society all my life--namely that of abolitionists and fugitive slaves. I had seen the most eminent persons of the age: several on whose heads tens of thousands of dollars had been set; a black woman, who, after escaping from slavery herself, had gone back secretly eight times into the jaws of death to bring out persons whom she had never seen; and a white man, who after assisting away fugitives by the thousand, had twice been stripped of every dollar of his property in fines, and when taunted by the Court, had mildly said, "Friend if thee knows any poor fugitive in need of a breakfast, send him to Thomas Garrett's door." I had known these, and such as these; but I had not known the Browns.... This well informed man; this practical and intellectual leader of the anti-slavery movement had been Brown's neighbor for years. Why was it that he had never heard of him? There is but one answer: Brown had not been a worker in Mr. Higginson's vineyard. He had not done anything to attract the attention of any one seriously interested in the anti-slavery cause. He was neither an ardent nor a conspicuous laborer in behalf of the slave. However, what has been stated herein is the credit side of Brown's account with slavery; there is also a debit side in this history which exhibits strong presumptive evidence that his "horror" of slavery was neither so "passionate" nor so violent but that it could be controlled and modified to accommodate itself to the advantages of the system. When John Brown, the man of affairs, decided to become a resident of the State of Virginia, and engage in business there upon a one thousand acre estate, he knew that he would have to employ some slave labor. He knew also that the "good will" and the patronage of the people living in the section of the country in which he intended to locate, were necessary for the success of his undertaking; these he knew he could not secure unless he conformed to the commercial and social customs prevailing in Virginia, and to the sentiment of Virginians in relation to slavery. These conditions this aggressive speculator and sportsman, did consider and did accept. The letter which he wrote to his wife from Ripley, Virginia, suggests, as a matter of fact, that he had declared a truce in his opposition to slavery, whatever the degree of such opposition may have been; and that he had changed his attitude toward the system to meet the requirements of his prospective environment. The letter, abridged by Mr. Sanborn, is as follows:[58] Ripley, Va., April 27, 1840.