He gave his life to end slavery

John Brown (1800-1859) was an American abolitionist and a religious fanatic who thought God spoke directly to him; that he was God’s own instrument destined to end American slavery, even if it meant he and his family had to die for the cause. He felt that violence was the only way to end slavery in America as all peaceful means in the past had failed.

John Brown

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act ruled that people in the Kansas Territory could decide for themselves whether the territory would become a slave state.  It quickly became a battleground as adherents from both sides flocked to the territory to cast their votes in the upcoming election.  Violence was advocated and used by both sides, and it turned into an undeclared territorial war that continued through the end of the Civil War.

Arriving from Ohio in Kansas in May 1856, Brown and his followers killed five pro-slavery men with broad swords in the Pottawatomie massacre, which only served to trigger more violence and bloodshed.   One of Brown’s sons was killed in the fighting.  He then commanded anti-slavery forces at the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie.

Brown authored a Provisional Constitution for what he hoped would be a slavery-free United States and on October 16, 1859, attacked the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia with an “army” of 22 men, including five black men and three of his own sons.   He hoped the attack would spawn a slave revolt that would spread south and destroy the institution of slavery.   

Rifles were manufactured in Harpers Ferry for the U.S. Army and they were stored in 22 buildings which made up the armory complex.  Brown intended to arm local slaves with weapons from the armory, but very few slaves joined his revolt; so great was their fear of challenging the “natural order” of slavery in Virginia. John Brown had asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he knew, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was ill and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan was suicidal.

Brown wanted to capture the weapons and escape before word could be sent to Washington, so his men cut the telegraph lines to prevent communication in either direction: first on the Maryland side of the bridge; then on the Virginia side.  Heyward Shepherd, a black baggage handler at the Harpers Ferry train station was the first person to die. He was shot from behind when he was confronted by the raiders. Ironic and tragic that a black man was the first casualty of an insurrection whose purpose was to aid blacks.  A local physician heard the shot, and after checking on Shepherd, had the bell on a local church sound an alarm, then went to Charles Town to summon help. In the morning, a number of employees arrived for work and were quickly captured to be used as hostages by Brown’s men.

A poorly trained local militia responded and during the day four locals were killed in the confusion, including the town’s mayor., but this caused Brown and his men to retreat to the engine house of the Armory, which would later be known as John Brown’s Fort.

Reinforcements in the form of a company of U.S. Marines, led by Robert E. Lee arrived and quickly overran the engine house The assault lasted three minutes and the hostages were freed. Brown and his remaining men were captured.  Many of Brown’s men had been killed in the battle, including two of his sons. Dangerfield Newby, a free black man, and one of five black raiders, was the first raider killed, when he was shot in the neck with a 6” spike fired from an attacker’s musket.   The others were captured and most were later executed.   

Osbourne Perry Anderson was a free black who escaped to Canada and wrote a memoir of the raid. He later served in the Union Army.  Owen Brown was the only one of Brown’s sons to survive the raid.  He later moved to California.  Two or three others lived to tell the tale.

Brown was hurriedly tried for treason and murder and inciting a slave insurrection. He was found guilty of all counts and was hanged just six weeks after the raid on December 2, 1859. Brown was the first person ever executed for treason in the history of the United States.  Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart, both of whom would go on to become traitors and Confederate Generals, were part of the federal troops guarding Brown.

Brown repeatedly quoted the most famous sentence in the Declaration of Independence “all men are created equal”.  As he was about to be hanged, he gave his guard a piece of paper on which he had written “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

His words were prophetic because although his armed insurrection had failed, it was covered extensively by the national press, and affected the 1860 Presidential election that saw Abraham Lincoln elected.    John Brown’s death led directly to the Civil War he seemed to prophesize would be needed to cleanse the nation and defeat slavery.

According to the Richmond Enquirer, "The Harper's Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of Disunion, more than any other event that has happened since the formation of the Government; it has rallied to that standard men who formerly looked upon it with horror; it has revived, with ten-fold strength[,] the desire of a Southern Confederacy."

John Brown is buried on his farm near Lake Placid, New York. It is maintained as the New York John Brown Farm State Historic Site.  His son Watson is also buried there, and the bones of his son Oliver and nine other raiders are buried in a single coffin.

John Brown was an American hero, a fierce advocate for slaves, a martyr, and ultimately a harbinger of the Civil War and the end of American slavery.   He and his sons gave their lives so slaves could live free. John Brown and his sons gave their lives in the fight against slavery, but history has not been kind to their memory.  John Brown, his family and the raiders are, with one exception, not the subject of a single monument, memorial, statue, postage stamp, or major street name in the United States.

Hopefully, John Brown’s final words are no longer true; that we will someday learn our lesson so that the past and present crimes perpetrated on black Americans will not need to be further purged with more blood.

A good start might be an official United States government apology for the injustice of not only slavery, but for the pain, suffering and systemic racism that still endures to this day. We as a nation cannot “get over it” until we admit our wrongs. Step two is to consider how we make reparations to all those who suffered and those still suffering today.

 Next post: The American massacre you never heard about.