te to the First Provincial Congress. This Congress appointed him
to a very important Committee on Correspondence with Canada, and that
winter the committee sent him to Canada with full power to get
information, confer with Canadians, whether English or French, and
report back the condition of affairs and whether they would act with
the Colonies. This mission was peaceful in its aim. He conferred with
men from Montreal and Quebec, assuring all whom he met that the
Colonies desired peace with Great Britain, but, if war came, they
would surely respect the rights of all men to worship God in their own
way and would maintain a democratic form of government.

Mr. Brown showed himself to be diplomatic and faithful. He endured
much personal hardship and risk during the winter, and his report was
most valuable. The part of it best known is under date of March 29,
1775, wherein he recommended that, if war came, Ticonderoga should be
taken. "The people in the New Hampshire Grants," he wrote, "have
engaged to do the job." Recently it has been stated that in February,
1775, he was at Chesterfield, Mass., and that about that time he led a
party of Berkshire and Hampshire men to Deerfield and arrested a Tory
or some Tories who were suspected of being in direct communication
with General Gage at Boston. April 27, 1775, there appeared in the
Hartford _Courant_ a notice signed "John Brown" by order of the
Committee of Inspection in the towns of Pittsfield, Richmond, and
Lenox, in the following words: "Whereas Major Israel Stoddard and
Woodbridge Little Esq., both of Pittsfield in the County of Berkshire,
have fled from their respective homes and are justly esteemed the
common pests of society and incurable enemies of their country and are
supposed to be somewhere in New York Government moving sedition and
rebellion against their country, it is hereby recommended to all
friends of American liberty and to all who do not delight in the
innocent blood of their countrymen, to exert themselves that they may
be taken into custody and committed to some of his Majesty's jails
till the civil war which has broken out in this Province shall be
ended." Surely, Brown was an active partisan, though not at Lexington
in April, 1775. In May he was at Ticonderoga with Ethan Allen, not
holding any military rank. Allen commended him to the government as
fit for military command.

The oft-told tale of how Ethan Allen took the fortress, proclaiming
its captu