Remembering John Brown Militant Abolitionist

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John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut to Calvinist parents Ruth Mills and Owen Brown. One of the most controversial figures in United States antebellum history, Brown was, and still is, a polarizing figure. Some see him as a social justice visionary, prepared to do whatever was needed to end the scourge of slavery; others, as an unstable, obsessive zealot who ruthlessly killed others in pursuit of a misguided vision of revolution.

The fourth of eight children, Brown left Torrington at the age of five when his family moved to the Western Reserve of Ohio. As a young man, Brown returned to Connecticut to attend the Morris Academy in Litchfield in hopes of becoming a minister, but had to drop out because of illness and financial John, like his father before him, spent most of his adult life wrestling with financial insolvency and moving from place to place in search of steady work.

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 eventually lead him to infamy in the annals of American history.

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 financially 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 that ran through western Massachusetts, which convinced Brown that the national stain of slavery could be destroyed only through violent means.

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 manoeuvers. 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. 

On December 2, 1859,  John Brown was hanged in Charles Town Virginia (now West Virginia) for treason and while his raid had failed, 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 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 whose “truth goes marching on”; reviled by others 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.

The original Brown family homestead burned down in 1918, but the foundation is still visible in Torrington — a visual reminder of the humble beginnings of one of America’s most controversial figures in the years leading up to the Civil War. The site is actively maintained by the Torrington Historical Society and became a stop on the Connecticut African-American Freedom Trail in 1997.

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.”

What is undeniable for me, is that John Brown talked the talk and walked the walk. Brown popularized the idea of militant insurrections and drove a wedge between Americans who called for abolition and those who called for appeasement with slaveholders. Even after his death, Brown's legend lives on. John Brown's  dedication to a cause, was, and is, immortalized in the following 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

 Further  Reading

“John Brown Birthplace Site,” Torrington Historical Society

Peter Vermilyea, “Hidden Nearby: John Brown’s Torrington Birthplace,” connecticuthistory.org