Brown, John

Brown, John (1800–1859), Abolitionist leader, in 1855 moved with his five sons from Ohio to Osawatomie, Kan., following the passage of the Kansas‐Nebraska Bill. Believing himself to be the special instrument of God intended to destroy proslavery settlers, he deliberately murdered five of his Southern‐minded neighbors, and this, and similar acts, together with his previous reputation as an operator of the Underground Railroad, made him nationally celebrated as “Brown of Osawatomie.” In 1859 he and his followers moved to Harpers Ferry, Va., where, on the night of October 16, he and 21 others captured the U.S. armory, with the intention of establishing a base from which they might free slaves by armed intervention. A force of U.S. marines under R.E. Lee attacked the armory, killed ten of Brown's men, and wounded and captured Brown. With the insurrection quelled, Brown was hanged (Dec. 2, 1859). His sincerity and dignity when on trial led many liberals to treat him as a martyr, e.g. Thoreau's The Last Days of John Brown. He is also lauded in Benét's John Brown's Body, the title too of a Civil War song, in Whittier's John Brown of Osawatomie, Stedman's How Old Brown Took Harpers Ferry, and Leonard Ehrlich's novel God's Angry Man (1932).