Brown, John (1800–1859)

John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, to white parents who were fiercely Calvinist and opposed to slavery. He carried their legacy, developing a spiritual hatred for racism and raising his family to abhor oppression.

It was in North Elba, Ohio, around 1849, that Brown, after years of largely unsuccessful vocational ventures, began to turn the entirety of his attention toward the abolition of slavery. His house was a stop on the Underground Railroad. He corresponded regularly with ardent abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass. It was during this time that Brown began drafting plans for a mass slave rebellion—the plan that would eventuate in his attack on the U.S. military armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

In 1854, shortly after the passing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, several of Brown's sons traveled to the area to support the free-state cause. Brown soon joined them. It was there that he would assert his abolitionary leadership on a larger scale. Angered by the violent actions of the pro-slavery contingent in the territory and Preston Brooks's near-deadly caning of Senator Charles Sumner, Brown and his sons retaliated by killing five men. Later, he led a defense of free-state settlement Prarie City. But it was his short-handed defense of Osawatomie, Kansas—a failed defense—that gave Brown his initial celebrity among abolitionists.

Brown returned east in 1856, determined to acquire money and weapons for his war on slavery. Within 2 years, he had rededicated himself to the Harpers Ferry plan. For the next few years, he traveled, led raids freeing dozens of slaves, and continued seeking support, particularly from wealthy New England abolitionists.

By fall of 1859, Brown had gathered 21 men, including five African Americans, and begun preparations for the Harpers Ferry raid. Late at night on [Page 275]October 16, 18 of the men descended upon the town. They secured the armory without incident, but a lack of response from local slaves (Brown assumed they would quickly join his cause) and the fast-spreading word of their attack doomed the maneuver. On October 18, Marines stormed the engine house in which Brown and his men had taken refuge. Seven of the original raiders, including Brown, were captured.

Brown was tried and convicted of murder and treason and sentenced to hang. Despite attempts by supporters to organize a rescue, Brown insisted that he was worth more hanging than alive. He was executed on December 2, 1859. On his way to the gallows, he handed a guard a note stating that he was certain that the crimes of the guilty land would never be purged without bloodshed. Brown's prophecy proved true. He was eulogized in essays and speeches by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and other prominent voices of the time. Union Civil War soldiers marched into battle singing “John Brown's Body.”