John Brown

John Brown (1800-1859) has been revered for generations as a martyr to the American antislavery cause. His attack on Harpers Ferry, Va., just before the Civil War freed no slaves and resulted in his own trial and death.

John Brown was born at Torrington, Conn., on May 4, 1800, to Owen Brown, a tanner, and Ruth Mills Brown, whose family had a history of mental instability. He spent his childhood there and on the family farm at Hudson, Ohio. A devoutly religious youth, Brown studied briefly for the ministry but quit to learn the tanner's trade. He married Dianthe Lusk in 1820, who bore him 7 children (two mentally deficient) before her death in 1832; a year later he married Mary Ann Day, who bore 13 children in the next 21 years. Of Brown's 20 children, 12 survived.

He said later that he had realized the sin of slavery, "the sum of all villainies," at 12, and that seeing an African American boy mistreated had "led him to declare, or swear: eternal war with slavery." He also developed a great interest in military history, especially in the guerrilla warfare of the Napoleonic Wars and in the Haitian slave rebellion. According to family testimony, he finally concluded that slavery could be destroyed only by atonement in blood, deciding in 1839 that the South, "Africa itself," should be invaded and the slaves freed at gunpoint. If he actually made such a plan, he kept it to himself for another decade, meanwhile trying and failing at a number of business ventures, always in debt. He moved his family 10 times until in 1849 he settled on a farm at North Elba, N.Y., that was part of a project financed by philanthropist Gerrit Smith for the training of free African Americans.

Kansas Controversy

After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 the territory hung in the balance between slave-and free-state status while pro-and antislavery settlers contested for control. Five of Brown's sons went to Kansas, joined the free-staters, and appealed to their father for help. Brown traveled through the East, speaking on the Kansas question and gathering money for arms, for "without the shedding of blood," he said, there could be "no remission of sin" in Kansas. In September he went to Kansas, settling near Osawatomie. "I am here," he said grimly, "to promote the killing of slavery." In spring of 1856 he led a retaliatory raid on a proslavery settlement at Pottawatomie, killing five men in cold blood. John Junior spent 3 months in jail as an accomplice, but Brown himself escaped. The Pottawatomie affair made him nationally known, and while some antislavery sympathizers disowned him, to others he seemed a hero.

First Raid: Osawatomie

Brown spent the summer of 1856 collecting money for Kansas in New England, where prominent public figures, some not wholly aware of the details of his Kansas activities, were impressed by his dedication to the abolitionist cause. The Massachusetts Kansas Committee, whose directors included such civic leaders as Theodore Parker, Samuel Gridley Howe, and Thomas W. Higginson, helped him to gather recruits, guns, and money. In August he led a skirmish at Osawatomie in which his son Frederick was killed. "I will die fighting for this cause," Brown wrote. "There will be no peace in this land until slavery is done for."

He went East in early 1857 with plans for a Southern invasion apparently in hand, ordered a thousand 6-foot pikes from a Connecticut firm, and in late summer gathered a band of recruits at Tabor, lowa, for training. He held frequent conferences with Eastern abolitionists and in early 1858 sent John Junior to survey the country around Harpers Ferry, Va., the site of a Federal arsenal. In April he held a curious 10-day meeting of sympathizers in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, during which he explained his plan to invade the South, arm the slaves, and set up a free state under a new constitution; the meeting adopted his plan and then voted him commander in chief. He returned to Kansas under the name of Shubel Morgan to lead a raid into Missouri, killing one man and taking some slaves back to Canada.

Brown was now considered a criminal in the eyes of Missouri and the U.S. government, and both offered rewards for his capture; still he was hailed in parts of the North as a liberator, and donations poured in. In early 1859 he again toured the East to raise money, and in July he rented a farm 5 miles north of Harpers Ferry, where he recruited 21 men (16 white and 5 black) for final training. He intended to seize the arsenal, distribute arms to the slaves he thought would rally to him, and set up a free state for african Americans within the South. Though Harpers Ferry was an isolated mountain town, with few slaves in the vicinity, the irrationality of his plan seemed to occur to no one.

Raid on Harpers Ferry

On the night of Oct. 16, 1859, Brown set out for Harpers Ferry with 18 men and a wagonload of supplies, leaving 3 men behind to guard the farm. After cutting the telegraph wires, Brown's party slipped into the town and easily captured the armory watchmen. Inexplicably, Brown allowed the midnight train to go through; the conductor telegraphed an alarm the next morning. Shooting broke out early on the 17th between Brown's men and local residents, while militia soon arrived from Charles Town. By nightfall Brown's band lay trapped in the armory enginehouse, all but 5 wounded, Brown's sons Oliver and Watson fatally. That night Col. Robert E. Lee and Lt. J. E. B. Stuart, commanding 90 marines, arrived from Washington. The next morning the marines stormed the enginehouse, bayoneting 2 men and slashing Brown severely with sabers. Of Brown's original party 10 died and 7 were captured; on the other side the toll was a marine and 4 civilians, one of them, ironically, a free African American killed by mistake.

Brown was jailed at Charles Town and tried a week later, lying wounded on a stretcher, in a fair trial which some, however, felt to be unduly hasty. He put up no defense. "I believe that to have interfered as I have done," he said, "in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right…. I am ready for my fate." The jury indicted him on three counts—treason against Virginia, conspiracy with african Americans, and first-degree murder. The court imposed the death sentence on November 2, to be executed a month later.

Beginning of a Legend

News of Brown's deed—"so surprising, so mixed, so confounding," Bronson Alcott called it—shocked the nation. Was he martyr or murderer? Many praised him (Ralph Waldo Emerson called him "that new saint who will make the gallows like a cross"), and many condemned him. Seventeen of Brown's acquaintances sent affidavits to Governor Wise of Virginia raising, on good evidence, the issue of Brown's sanity, but Wise did not act on them. Brown was hanged at Charles Town on Dec. 2, 1859, with four of his men, after handing a prophetic note to his jailer on his way to the gallows: "I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood." Mass meetings of mourning were held throughout the North, and church bells tolled at the hour of his execution. He was buried at North Elba, N.Y., and the cause of abolition had its martyr. When a penny ballad about him, set to the music of an old revival hymn and named "John Brown's Body," appeared on the streets of Boston in early 1861, he was already a legend.

Further Reading

The best book on Brown, well written and soundly researched, is Joseph C. Furnas, The Road to Harper's Ferry (1959). James C. Malin, John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six (1942), is a study of the Kansas years. David Karsner, John Brown: Terrible Saint (1934), and Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown (1943), are good biographies. Allan Keller, Thunder at Harper's Ferry (1958), is an hour-by-hour account of the raid. One of the Massachusetts Kansas Committee leaders, Franklin B. Sanborn, published The Life and Letters of John Brown (1885; 4th ed. 1910), which is still interesting reading. □

BROWN, JOHN

John Brown was a charismatic, stubborn abolitionist who failed at numerous business and commercial enterprises, yet succeeded in convincing men to join him in a cause for which they were willing to die. His abolitionist beliefs translated into violent actions in Kansas and Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Convicted of murder and treason for his raid on military facilities at Harpers Ferry, Brown was hanged for his crimes. Nevertheless, he galvanized the abolitionist cause, becoming a martyr in the fight against slavery.

Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, on May 9, 1800, to Owen and Ruth Brown. His father, a strict Calvinist, despised slavery. When Brown was five years old, the family moved to Hudson, Ohio, a locale that was steeped in anti-slavery sentiment. Brown's fervor for the anti-slavery movement never waned and grew more vehement as he got older.

In 1820, Brown married Dianthe Lusk and six years later, they moved to Pennsylvania where he started a tannery. Lusk died in 1832, leaving Brown with five children. In 1833, he married 16-year-old Mary Ann Day who bore him seven more children. Brown and his growing family moved around the country while he tried his hand at a number of occupations, including tanner, farmer, cattle broker, and wool merchant.

In 1835, Brown's attempts to support his family and to repay money he had borrowed led to a disastrous "get rich quick" scheme. He convinced family members and friends to loan him money that he used to buy property where a canal was to be built. His timing proved unfortunate. In the wake of the Panic of 1837, plans for the proposed canal were changed and the properties bought up by Brown and his associates were rendered nearly worthless. Brown made numerous other attempts to reach financial solvency, but ultimately was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1842.

Throughout his life Brown remained committed to the anti-slavery cause. Brown met the great abolitionist leader frederick douglass in 1847 and impressed Douglass with his sympathy for African Americans—both slaves and freemen. In 1849, Brown moved his family to the black community of North Elba, New York. Brown proposed to show the residents of North Elba how to farm and to act as a mentor to them.

Brown was a participant in the Underground Railroad, an informal network of exslaves and sympathetic whites that helped slaves escape their masters and travel north to freedom. In 1851, he proposed the establishment of the League of Gileadites, an organization that would be used to protect escaped slaves.

In 1854, Congress passed the kansas-nebraska act, which called for the residents of the new territories to decide the issue of slavery by popular vote. The area became known as "bloody Kansas" as competing groups fought violent skirmishes aimed at securing the territories for their side. Many pro-slavery residents of Missouri moved across the border in hopes of securing a victory at the election.

"I believe to have interfered as I have done … in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice … I submit: so let it be done"
—John Brown

Five of Brown's sons had moved to Kansas and they entreated their father to join them. In 1855, Brown moved to Kansas and began to plan for the armed conflict he felt was inevitable. In 1856, in response to escalating incidents including the sacking of the anti-slavery town of Lawrence, Kansas, and the near-fatal beating of U.S. Senator charles sumner who was attacked on the Senate floor by a pro-slavery congressman, Brown led a small band of men to Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas, where they killed five pro-slavery settlers. This violent action by Brown was hailed by a number of anti-slavery groups and universally reviled by pro-slavery forces.

In December 1858, Brown and a small group of followers staged a raid on two pro-slavery homesteads in Missouri where they succeeded in confiscating property and freeing 11 slaves. Brown and his group then traveled more than a thousand miles to deliver the former slaves to a boat that would carry them to freedom in Canada.

Although many abolitionists were opposed to violence, others had begun to adopt Brown's view that armed conflict was necessary in order to achieve the abolition of slavery. Between 1857 and 1859, Brown crisscrossed New England, giving rousing speeches to anti-slavery groups and raising money for the abolitionist cause. Among those who gave money were the Secret Six, a group of wealthy benefactors from Boston who helped Brown by funding the army he sought to lead in order to further conduct his war against slavery.

On October 16, 1859, the 59-year-old Brown led his Provisional Army, consisting of five black men and 21 whites (three of them his sons) in a nighttime raid on the town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown and his men cut telephone wires, took several hostages and gained control of the federal armory and arsenal. Brown's plan was to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, thus enabling them to fight for their freedom. However, he and his group found themselves pinned down by a group of local citizens and nearby militia groups who killed a number of his men including two of his sons.

On the morning of October 18, a contingent of U.S. marines led by Colonel Robert E. Lee joined the battle. Brown refused a chance to surrender and 36 hours after the raid had started, Brown and his remaining companions were captured. Brown was taken to Charles Town, Virginia, (now West Virginia) to be tried. In a trial that lasted for nearly a month, Brown was charged with murder, conspiracy, and treason against the state. He was found guilty of all three charges. Before hearing his sentence, Brown gave a brief but passionate statement to the court:

… I believe to have interfered as I have done … in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life to the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done.

Brown was hanged in Charles Town on December 2, 1859. On the day of his execution, guns were fired and bells tolled in many northern cities. Brown was hailed as a martyr of the abolitionist movement, which concluded that a peaceful solution could not be found. In April 1861, Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, an action that marked the beginning of the Civil War. In 1865, Congress passed the thirteenth amendment, which abolished slavery throughout the United States.

further readings

DeVillers, David. 2000. The John Brown Slavery Revolt Trial: A Headline Court Case. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow Publishers.

"John Brown's Holy War." PBS: The American Experience. Available online at <www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/brown> (accessed June 18, 2003).

Lubet, Steven. 2001. "John Brown's Trial." Alabama Law Review 52 (winter): 425–466.

Oates, Stephen B. 1984. To Purge This Land With Blood. Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press.

Peterson, Merrill D. 2002. John Brown: The Legend Revisited. Charlottesville: Univ. of Virginia Press.

cross-references

Abolition.

John Brown 1800–1859, American abolitionist, b. Torrington, Conn. He spent his boyhood in Ohio. Before he became prominent in the 1850s, his life had been a succession of business failures in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. An ardent abolitionist (he once kept a station on the Underground Railroad at Richmond, Pa.) and a believer in the equality of the races, Brown settled (1855) with five of his sons in Kansas to help win the state for freedom. He became "captain" of the colony on the Osawatomie River. The success of the proslavery forces, particularly their sack of Lawrence , aroused Brown, and in order "to cause a restraining fear" in 1856 he, with four of his sons and two other men, savagely murdered five proslavery men living on the banks of the Pottawatomie Creek. In this he asserted he was an instrument in the hand of God. His exploits as a leader of an antislavery band received wide publicity, especially in abolitionist journals, and as "Old Brown of Osawatomie" he became nationally known.

Late in 1857 he began to enlist men for a project that he apparently had considered for some time and that took definite form at a convention of his followers held at Chatham, Ont., the next spring. He planned to liberate the slaves through armed intervention by establishing a stronghold in the Southern mountains to which the slaves and free blacks could flee and from which further insurrections could be stirred up. Early in 1859, Brown rented a farm near Harpers Ferry, Va. (now W.Va.), and there collected his followers and a cache of arms.

On the night of Oct. 16 he, two of his sons, and 19 other followers crossed the Potomac and without much resistance captured the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, made the inhabitants prisoners, and took general possession of the town. Strangely enough, he then merely settled down, while the aroused local militia blocked his escape. That night a company of U.S. marines, commanded by Col. Robert E. Lee, arrived, and in the morning they assaulted the engine house of the armory into which Brown's force had retired. In the resulting battle, 10 of Brown's men were killed, and Brown himself was wounded. News of the raid aroused wild fears in the South and came as a great shock to the North. On Dec. 2, 1859, Brown was hanged at Charles Town. His dignified conduct and the sincerity of his calm defense during the trial won him sympathy in the North and led him to be widely regarded as a martyr.

Bibliography: The standard contemporary account is contained in The Life, Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown (1859, repr. 1969). See also biographies by O. G. Villard (rev. ed. 1965), S. B. Oakes (1970), J. Abels (1971), and D. S. Reynolds (2005); A. Keller, Thunder at Harper's Ferry (1958); J. C. Malin, John Brown and the Legend of Fifty-Six (1942, repr. 1970); R. O. Boyer, The Legend of John Brown (1973); J. Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men (2002); F. Nudelman, John Brown's Body (2004); B. McGinty, John Brown's Trial (2009); R. E. McGlone, John Brown's War against Slavery (2009); T. Horwitz, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War (2011).

John Brown's Body, verse narrative of the Civil War by Stephen V. Benét, published in 1928 and awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

A prelude, “The Slaver,” sketches the background of intersectional antagonism with its account of an early slave ship, its harsh, pious master, Captain Ball, and the experiences of a conscience‐stricken mate. Then, with vivid impressionistic characterizations and rapid changes of scene, the poem tells of Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, and his execution; of the opening of the war, with episodes concerning Lincoln, Davis, Lee, Jackson, Grant, and other figures; and of the personal lives, now interrupted, of the fictional protagonists: Jack Ellyat, New England law student who joins the Union army; Clay Wingate, aristocratic Georgian who enlists in the Black Horse Troop, and his beautiful fiancée, Sally Dupré; Luke Breckinridge, ignorant mountaineer, who is not sure who the Yankees are, except that “they ain't Injuns neither”; Spade, renegade black; Jack Diefer, burly Pennsylvania farmer; Melora, a mountain girl with whom Ellyat has an idyllic interlude before his incarceration in a Southern prison; and others. The course of events until 1865 are thus described and interpreted, with a final passage concerned with the war's termination of the Southern dream of a patriarchal aristocratic nation, and the inauguration instead of an America of equalitarianism and industrial mechanization.

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).

Brown, John Revolutionary War army officer, born in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Brown assisted in campaigns with Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold and led a recapture of Fort Ticonderoga from Gen. John Burgoyne (1777). During the seige of Quebec (1775), Brown had a public dispute with Benedict Arnold, openly declaring that he did not trust Arnold, and resigned from the army (February 1777), refusing to serve any longer under Arnold. Recalled to help Gov. George Clinton fend off attacks by Sir John Johnson, Brown was killed, along with forty-five of his men, in an ambush in the Mohawk Valley.

John Brown 1810–82, Scottish essayist. He was a physician. His writing was collected in Horae Subsecivae (3 vol., 1858–82), which included his unique picture of a dog, Rab and His Friends (1859), and a memoir of that gifted child known to Walter Scott's circle as "Pet Marjorie,"Marjorie Fleming (1863).

Bibliography: See his letters (ed. by his son and D. W. Forrest, 1907).