The Adventures of Spencer Kellogg Brown (25 SEP 1863)
In 1854, staunch abolitionist Orville Brown moved his family from New York to found the town of Osawatomie, Kansas. Two years later, he watched his house burn during a raid by pro-slavery bandits aimed at punishing the radical abolitionist John Brown, who had also moved to the town. Although the two Brown families were unrelated, Orville’s 14-year-old son Spencer—Spense to his family—was mistaken for John Brown’s son, captured, and held prisoner for many weeks.
Because the name Brown was hated in the region for years afterwards, in January 1861, Spencer fled to Kentucky to enlist in the U.S. Army as Spencer Kellogg. Transferred to St. Louis to guard the Union armory, in mid-June, Spencer found himself in command of a group of mounted scouts patrolling throughout Missouri and peppered his brother (still in Kansas) with questions about the numbers and whereabouts of Southern sympathizers. An impressed Maj. Gen. John Frémont, then commander of the Western Department, discharged the enlisted Spencer and appointed him a first lieutenant to recruit and form the “Lyon Legion” scout unit of the 12th Regiment, Missouri Volunteers. Sadly, when Frémont was removed from command, Spencer’s commission was voided, so he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and was assigned to the U.S.S. Essex gunboat under the command of Capt. (later Commodore) William D. Porter on the Mississippi River.
Having enjoyed his previous scouting experiences, in January 1862, Spencer devised a plan to reconnoiter the Confederate batteries along the river. Approved by Captain Porter, Spencer and a fellow sailor, known to history only as Trussel, “deserted” for what was to be a ten-day “secret expedition.” Over the next two months, Spencer traveled the length of the river as a Union “deserter” attached to Confederate forces. As he helped their engineers with survey work, he made notes and maps of Confederate fortifications, breastworks, guns, and troop strengths.
In Tennessee in early April, Spencer managed to escape when the Battle of Shiloh began. He arrived at the headquarters of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Pittsburg Landing on the second morning of the bloody battle. Spencer allegedly gave the Union commander the information he had collected on Confederate fortifications particularly at Island Number Ten, Tiptonville, and Fort Pillow, Tennessee, all of which he also wrapped up in a report to Captain Porter dated April 8. He then penned a letter to his sister Kitty, reassuring her he was not a deserter and that he had spent the last two months “constantly in the most difficult and dangerous service.”
In July, the Essex steamed downriver for Vicksburg where it took part in the initial damaging broadsides with the Confederate iron-clad Arkansas. Shortly thereafter, Spencer led forty men on a successful mission to sink a ferryboat resupplying Port Hudson, Louisiana. Unfortunately, on Aug. 15, 1862, just two days before his twentieth birthday, Spencer was captured by enemy guerrillas who accused him of deserting the Confederate army.
For the next year, as he was moved from Vicksburg to the notorious Castle Thunder in Richmond, Spencer maintained he had never mustered into a Confederate unit so was not a deserter. As for the spying charge, he allowed that he had been “employed by my Government to do what I did.” Unfortunately, exchange efforts by officials as high as the Secretary of the Navy came to naught. On Sept. 23, 1863, he was indicted as a spy and sentenced to hang two days later. At the time, Spencer reportedly told his chaplain, “The risk I knew; the responsibility I took; I will not shirk from the result.” At the gallows, in front of a large crowd, he helped his executioners adjust the noose around his neck. Then, the 21-year-old of light complexion and deep blue eyes met his fate with fortitude and the words “I mean to die as becomes a man.”
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Article by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian. New issues of This Week in MI History are published each week. To report story errors, ask questions, request previous articles, or be added to our distribution list, please contact: TR-ICoE-Command-Historian@army.mil.
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