nd Ethan Allen had taken possession of the fortress with
its guns and materials for war, some poet had described his ride, as
Longfellow portrayed Paul Revere's, the school children would still
recall Brown of Pittsfield; but, my friends, 'tis of little moment
that we are soon forgotten, if it be certain that, while we live, we
live with moral courage in the life of every day.

I do not intend to put much emphasis upon military glory. I am trying
to show that Brown's life by reason of its entire sincerity, although
at times unsuccessful, was led, so far as we can know, by "_a man
every inch a man_," holding fast to his ideals, fearless in the
assertion of truth as he saw it, and directed by high principle; that,
having all these noble attributes, his part in public affairs should
now and then be rehearsed to show the value of goodness even amid the
horrors of war.

On December 10, 1772, a few months after graduation from Yale College,
he was admitted to practise law in New York in the courts of Tryon
County, a part of which is now Montgomery County, bearing the name of
one of our noblest American generals, who led the attack on Quebec in
December, three years later, where Brown served under him as a major
of a Berkshire County regiment. Some writers call Brown king's
attorney at Caughnawaga, whether rightly I know not, nor do I know why
he came to the Mohawk Valley from Berkshire, for Pittsfield was a
growing frontier town. Perhaps Sir William Johnson's influence and his
busy settlement offered some inducement to the young attorney, but it
did not long have weight with him, for we find him in 1773 at
Pittsfield, where another attorney of Loyalist tendencies had left
town under coercion.

Before I attempt to describe the civil and military career of John
Brown from 1773 to his thirty-sixth birthday, when he was killed at
Stone Arabia, I wish to call your attention to the peculiarities of
the political situation in Berkshire County and its vicinity. On the
north the New Hampshire Grants (now Vermont) had recently been
disputed territory where local partisans, Ethan Allen and others, used
coercion to maintain the claims of settlers against New York men
claiming title. New York Colony on the west, though directed largely
by men of high character like Philip Schuyler, was torn by bitter
political differences, the Loyalist element being strong in social and
political affairs. Then, although the Berkshire towns were active