Abstract
"My business is now dwindling to nothing. I cannot lose sight of the fact, but for this odious war I would now have plenty of employment at increased prices. Aside from any personal or selfish feeling in the matter, I regard this war as most unholy. I think it madness to attempt to settle our troubles by the sword."
As his comments of August 31, 1861, make clear, Philadelphian John Henry Brown was among those Pennsylvanians who did not approve of the Civil War. The forty-three-year-old Brown was a painter of watercoloron-ivory portrait miniatures, a financially precarious business in the era of photography. A year earlier, in August 1860, Brown had actually received a commission to travel to Springfield, Illinois, and paint the Republican presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln. He noted in his journal at the time that "I hardly know how to express the strength of my personal regard for Mr. Lincoln. I have never seen a man for whom I so soon formed an attachment. I like him much & agree with him in all things but his politics."