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- After settling in Camden he made frequent journeys over the state, and in 1855 he accompanied his son to Frankfort, Kentucky, where the boy was placed in Colonel Morgan's Academy. Brown's previous training and experience made him a good representative of the articulate Arkansan of the period; therefore his comments and observations acquire special significance.
If the sensational events of 1856, which bulk so large in some histories, failed to acquire sufficient importance to be noted in Brown's diary, then it is reasonable to assume they made even less impression on the consciousness of the average Arkansan.
The year opened in the midst of an extended fight in the House of Representatives to select a speaker. The contest was so heated that one famous historian stated it "fixed the attention of the country and excited intense interest (1)." Throughout the struggle, however, Brown was "snowed under" in Arkansas. The state experienced "the most extraordinary spell of weather" from Christmas to the middle of February that Brown had ever known. Camden was whitened by the "deepest covering of snow" on record for that part of the country.
- February 2 was a historic day in Congressional annals. Banks was elected
speaker of the House. Yet as far as Brown was concerned the day was memorable
for quite a different reason than the termination of the bitter controversy
and consequent discomfiture of Slavocracy. On the very day the crumbling
edifice of slavery slipped dangerously, one of Brown' two chimneys fell
down. This disaster occurred just before the severest freeze of the winter,
rendering the Brown domicile "unsuitable for such weather. Courageously
the family passed the ensuing days as pleasantly as the cold weather would
permit." Eventually a south wind brought a rise in temperature, and
the balls of snow, rolled up three weeks previously, began melting. Unfortunately
milder weather heralded a siege of colds among the Browns.
- ________________________
- 1. James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States, (New York, 1920), II, 68.
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