On December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown was hanged in Charles Town
Virginia (now
West Virginia) for treason for his raid on the U.S. Armory at Harpers Ferry six weeks
earlier, in a plot to incite slave rebellion. While Brown’s raid had failed miserably, his capture and
hanging had a much greater impact on national events. Brown’s actions
set off shockwaves across the country. In the North, many hailed him as a hero. In the South, he was viewed as a villain and a true reflection of the North’s intended war on slavery.
Tensions mounted in the days leading up to Brown’s execution. Rumors of a
massive jailbreak circulated in both the North and South. The jail and
gallows were guarded by Virginia troops, including Major Thomas
Jackson—later to be known as “Stonewall.”
As Brown was brought to the gallows, he handed off a note that read, “I,
John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land
can never be purged away but with blood.” Perhaps more than any other
event, Brown’s death hastened a cascade of events that culminated with
the first shots of the Civil War 16 months later.
John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut to Calvinist parents Ruth Mills
and Owen Brown. His father, who worked as a tanner, taught Brown that
slavery was immoral from an early age and opened their home as a safe
stop on the Underground Railroad.
Brown witnessed the barbarity of slavery when he was 12 years old and
saw a Black child beaten in the streets while he was traveling through
Michigan. That experience and his father’s repulsion for the institution of slavery had a lasting affect on
young John that would lead him to infamy in the annals of American history.
“Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in
the United States, is none other than the most barbarous, unprovoked and
unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens against another
portion, the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and
hopeless servitude, or absolute extermination, in utter disregard and
violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our
Declaration of Independence.” — John Brown, Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States, 1858.
During
his first fifty years, Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, and taking along his
ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Unfortunately, his first
wife died, as did half of their children during infancy. Working at
various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator,
he never was finacially successful, he even filed for bankruptcy when
in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from
supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of
David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech.
He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black
youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground
Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an
organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.
John Brown’s life is indivisible from his religious beliefs. Puritan
religious devotion was intense on both sides of his family. The religion
of the Brown clan was not that modified by time, but rather the Orthodox Calvinism of Puritan times. Indeed, Brown modeled himself on the Puritan warrior, Oliver Cromwell.
Owen Brown had bequeathed to his son an intense hatred of slavery. Brown
took as his text those words of the Bible that admonished “You shall
not give up to his master a slave who has escaped…Rather he shall dwell
with you.” (Deuteronomy 23: 15-16)
Throughout his life, Brown turned to the Bible for solace and guidance.In his community, he demonstrated his anti-racist views by sharing
meals with Black people and addressing them as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” He also
vocally denounced segregated seating in church. Starting in 1834, Brown began educating Negroes, and for the next
twenty years he, and his family, worked actively within the abolitionist movement.
The abolitionist movement was a revolutionary struggle to end chattel slavery in the American republic. The Nat Turner Slave Rebellion of
1831 had influenced all that followed.https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/08/nat-turner-2101800-111131-his-legacy-of.html Among the major figures in the
movement: Angelina Grimke, a daughter of Southern slaveholders who
turned against the system that she initially saw as corrupting white
slaveholders. An intellectual, William Lloyd Garrison, impelled by both
the religious and secular spirit of the time to seek a more perfect
society, became the voice and the pen of the movement. A slave,
Frederick Douglass, came to fight back against the “slave breaker”
brought in to beat him into submission. And there was Elijah Lovejoy, an
abolitionist editor in Alton, Illinois. His murder in 1837 inspired
John Brown to dedicate his life to the destruction of slavery.What set Brown apart from his contemporaries was that he’d had enough of
trying to use peaceful discourse as a means to end slavery. He opted
instead for violence.
Brown’s Calvinist upbringing had convinced him that fighting against
slavery was his primary mission in life. He believed it was a sin so
thoroughly that Frederick Douglass, who he first met in 1847, said, “John
Brown was a man who though a white gentleman, is in sympathy, a Black
man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had
been pierced with the iron of slavery.”
It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to
Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.
Brown
moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The
community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit
Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing
to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families
were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish
his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example
and to act as a "kind father to them."
Despite
his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a
figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his
sons to Kansas, a territory deeply divided over the slavery issue. There, he became the leader of antislavery guerillas and fought a proslavery attack against the antislavery town of Lawrence.
Perhaps more than any other American historical figure, the militant abolitionist John Brown embodies the idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Brown’s zeal at the Pottawatomie Massacre, on the night of May 24, 1856, where Brown and his sons
murdered five men who supported slavery, although none actually owned
slaves. Brown and his sons escaped. Brown spent the next three years
collecting money from wealthy abolitionists in order to establish a
colony for runaway slaves.Their republic hoped to form a guerrilla army to fight slaveholders and
ignite uprisings, and its population would grow exponentially with the
influx of liberated and fugitive enslaved people. To accomplish this, Brown needed weapons and
decided to capture the arsenal at Harpers Ferry.
In 1794, President George Washington had selected Harpers Ferry,
Virginia, and Springfield, Massachusetts, as the sites of the new
national armories. In choosing Harpers Ferry, he noted the benefit of
great waterpower provided by both the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. In
1817, the federal government contracted with John H. Hall to manufacture
his patented rifles at Harpers Ferry. The armory and arsenal continued
producing weapons until its destruction at the outbreak of the Civil
War.
In the summer of 1859, John Brown, using the pseudonym Isaac Smith, took
up residence near Harpers Ferry at a farm in Maryland. He trained a
group of twenty-two men, including his sons Oliver, Owen, and Watson, in
military maneuvers. On the night of Sunday, October 16, Brown and all
but three of the men marched into Harpers Ferry, capturing several
watchmen. The first victim of the raid was an African-American railroad
baggage handler named Hayward Shepherd, who was shot and killed after
confronting the raiders. During the night, Brown captured several other
prisoners, including Lewis Washington, the great-grand-nephew of George
Washington.
There were two keys to the success of the raid. First, the men needed
to capture the weapons and escape before word reached Washington, D. C.
The raiders cut the telegraph lines but allowed a Baltimore and Ohio
train to pass through Harpers Ferry after detaining it for five hours.
When the train reached Baltimore the next day at noon, the conductor
contacted authorities in Washington. Second, Brown expected local slaves
to rise up against their owners and join the raid. Not only did this
fail to happen, but townspeople began shooting at the raiders.
Armory workers discovered Brown’s men in control of the building on
Monday morning, October 17. Local militia companies surrounded the
armory, cutting off Brown’s escape routes. Shortly after seven o’clock, a
Harpers Ferry townsperson, Thomas Boerly, was shot and killed near the
corner of High and Shenandoah streets. During the day, two other
citizens were killed, George W. Turner and Harpers Ferry Mayor Fontaine
Beckham. When Brown realized he had no way to escape, he selected nine
prisoners and moved them to the armory’s small fire engine house, which
later became known as John Brown’s Fort.
With their plans falling apart, the raiders panicked. William H.
Leeman tried to escape by swimming across the Potomac River, but was
shot and killed. The townspeople, many of whom had been drinking all day
on this unofficial holiday, used Leeman’s body for target practice. At
3:30 on Monday afternoon, authorities in Washington ordered Colonel
Robert E. Lee to Harpers Ferry with a force of Marines to capture Brown.
Lee’s first action was to close the town’s saloons in order to curb the
random violence. At 6:30 on the morning of Tuesday, October 18, Lee
ordered Lieutenant Israel Green and a group of men to storm the engine
house. At a signal from Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, the engine house door
was knocked down and the Marines began taking prisoners. Green seriously
wounded Brown with his sword. Brown was taken to the Jefferson County
seat of Charles Town for trial.
Of Brown’s original twenty-two men, John H. Kagi, Jeremiah G. Anderson,
William Thompson, Dauphin Thompson, Brown’s sons Oliver and Watson,
Stewart Taylor, Leeman, and free African Americans Lewis S. Leary and
Dangerfield Newby had been killed during the raid. John E. Cook and
Albert Hazlett escaped into Pennsylvania but were captured and brought
back to Charles Town. Brown, Aaron D. Stevens, Edwin Coppoc, and free
African Americans John A. Copeland and Shields Green were all captured
and imprisoned. Five raiders escaped and were never captured: Brown’s
son Owen, Charles P. Tidd, Barclay Coppoc, Francis J. Merriam, and free
African American Osborne P. Anderson. One Marine, Luke Quinn, was killed
during the storming of the engine house. Two slaves, belonging to
Brown’s prisoners Colonel Lewis Washington and John Allstadt, also lost
their lives. It is unknown whether or not they voluntarily took up arms
with Brown. One drowned while trying to escape and the other died in the
Charles Town prison following the raid. Local residents at the time
believed the two took part in the raid. To discredit Brown, residents
later claimed that these two slaves had been taken prisoner and that no
slaves actually participated in the raid.
Northern abolitionists immediately used Brown's executions as an example of
the government’s support of slavery. John Brown became their martyr, a
hero murdered for his belief that slavery should be abolished. In
reality, Brown and his men were prosecuted and executed for taking over a
government facility. But in non-slave states, his execution on December 2, 1859, was marked by the tolling of church bells and martyrdom within the abolitionist movement and as time went on, Brown’s name became a
symbol of pro-Union, anti-slavery beliefs.
"He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was
bid. . . .," said Henry David Thoreau in an address to the citizens of
Concord, Massachusetts. "No man in America has ever stood up so
persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature. . . ."
After the Civil War, a school
was established at Harpers Ferry for African Americans. The leaders of
Storer College always emphasized the courage and beliefs of John Brown
for inspiration. In 1881, African-American leader Frederick Douglass
delivered a classic speech at the school honoring Brown. Twenty-five
years later, W.E.B. DuBois and Martinsburg newspaper editor J.R.
Clifford recognized Harpers Ferry’s importance to African Americans and
chose Storer College as the site for a meeting of the Second Niagara
Movement, which later became the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Those in attendance walked at
daybreak to John Brown’s Fort. In 1892, the fort had been sent to the
Chicago World’s Fair and then brought back to a farm near Harpers Ferry.
Today, the restored fort has been rebuilt at Harpers Ferry National
Historical Park near its original location.
In his biography of Brown, Du Bois said the following about Brown’s legacy:
“Was John Brown simply an episode, or was he an eternal truth? And if
a truth, how speaks that truth today? John Brown loved his neighbor as
himself. He could not endure therefore to see his neighbor, poor,
unfortunate, or oppressed. This natural sympathy was strengthened by a
saturation in Hebrew religion which stressed the personal responsibility
of every human soul to a just God. To this religion of equality and
sympathy with misfortune, was added the strong influence of the social
doctrines of the French Revolution with its emphasis on freedom and
power in political life. And on all this was built John Brown’s own
inchoate but growing belief in a more just and a more equal distribution
of property. From this he concluded – and acted on that conclusion –
that all men are created free and equal, and that the cost of liberty is
less than the price of repression.”
John Brown's dedication to a cause, was, and is,
immortalized in the song, "John Brown’s body"
John Brown's Body- Pete Seeger
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
But his soul goes marching on
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
His soul goes marching on
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew
But his soul goes marching on
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
His soul goes marching on
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave
But his soul goes marching on
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
The stars above in Heaven are looking kindly down
On the grave of old John Brown
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
His soul goes marching on
He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true
He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through
They hung him for a traitor, they themselves the traitor crew
But his soul goes marching on
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
Glory, Glory, Hallelujah
His soul goes marching on
