Whaling With Captain Penniman - Log of Thomas Knowles #245853

However, there were serious undertones to this seemingly idyllic collegiate atmosphere. In December 1859 John Brown was hanged and Knowles and several others went into Boston to the John Brown Meeting in Freemont Temple where, as Knowles writes, Gar rison and others spoke. There are other hints throughout his journal that events outside Cambridge, particularly questions of slavery and secession, were having an impact. Reading his journal it is not possible to conclude that these events, or others, led him to leave Harvard in May 1860 without taking his examinations.