Volume 3, No. 3 (Winter 2000) -- Black History Month Issue

Vol. 3, no. 3 (Winter 2000): | John Brown: Madman or Martyr? | John Brown: Hero and Martyr | John Brown: Prelude to War | Using the Internet | Book Nook | Teachers Talk | Did You Know? Interesting Facts about John Brown in Lawrence and Douglas County: 1855-1859 |

No Kansan in history was better known or more controversial than the militant abolitionist John Brown. Neither his contemporaries nor modern historians agree on what sort of man John Brown was. To the pro-slavery forces and some modern historians, he was a madman and a cowardly murderer. To the abolitionists of his time and other modern historians, he was a visionary who willingly gave his life in an attempt to end slavery.

Frederick Douglass said of him, "His zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him." Although there is disagreement on what sort of person he was, no one disputes that he was completely committed to the end of slavery in the United States.

One cannot begin to understand John Brown without understanding his time. The Kansas John Brown found was in turmoil. It became the battleground between the pro-slavery and abolitionist forces. Pro-slavery forces were very strong in the United States Government. They had succeeded in 1850 in getting the Fugitive Slave Act through Congress. The Fugitive Slave Act made it a Federal Crime to harbor people escaping slavery even in the free states. The fine for harboring an escaped slave was $1,000 and up to six months in jail. While $1,000 seems like a lot of money even by today's standards, it was a tremendous amount of money at a time when a typical day's wages were $1.50.

In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas and Nebraska Act. This act repealed a previous law, which had said that slavery would not be permitted in new territories. The Kansas and Nebraska Act provided that the Kansas and Nebraska territories could be admitted as either free states or slave states, depending on a vote of the residents.

Abolitionist societies from the free states encouraged abolitionists to move to Kansas and settle so that they could vote for Kansas to be a free state. Five of John Brown's sons moved there to make homes for themselves. There was free land for the taking. The pro-slavery forces became concerned that Kansas would become a free state.

Men from all over the South, but particularly from Missouri, a slave state, went into the Kansas Territory on every Election Day and voted "at the point of the Bowie Knife and Revolver." These gangs of armed men would go to polling places and vote even though they were not residents of the Kansas Territory. They would also intimidate free state men (women did not have the right to vote until 1920), and many would-be voters were beaten and some were killed.

The pro-slavery forces also suppressed the free state press. Newspaper offices were often their targets. The result of this election fraud was what Free-Staters called the bogus constitution. Under this document only pro-slavery men could hold office or serve on juries.

Some have called the revolutionary war an "incomplete revolution," because it did not deal with the issue of slavery. For these scho-lars, it was the civil war that completed the American Revolution. It is indeed ironic that a country based on the principle that "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," could have tolerated slavery. Certainly slaves were human and should have had the same rights as others. For them, the civil war was the war that completed the revolution. John Brown was a key player in this Second American Revolution. He was born May 9, 1800. His family were deeply religious and believed that slavery was a sin. While John Brown himself was an ardent abolitionist all of his life, active in both the underground railway and other abolitionist activities, he didn't become well known nationally until he moved to Kansas in 1855.

During the first 50 years of his life, he had worked as a tanner, a sheep farmer, a land speculator, and a wool broker. That he was not successful in these business ventures was not for want of hard work. He was extremely diligent and hardworking, but he was also stubborn, and refused to take advice from those who could have helped him become successful.

John Brown's was married twice. His first wife, Dianthe, died after bearing him seven children. Shortly after her death, he married Mary, who bore him an additional 13 children. By all accounts John was a stern, but loving father. He believed in corporal punishment and was not shy about using a switch to enforce his rules. At the same time he could be loving, and on more than one occasion stayed up all night comforting a sick child.

In 1854 five of Brown's sons, Owen, Fredrick, Salmon, Jason, and John Jr. moved to Kansas to settle and support the free state cause. At the time, John Brown was living in North Elba, New York, where he had established a farm with the hopes of training escaped slaves in citizenship and farming methods. However when he heard of the troubles in Kansas, the enactment of the "bogus laws" and his sons' ill health, he collected arms with his son Oliver and son-in-law Henry Thompson and moved to Kansas.

When he got there his sons were all sick, and he began immediately clearing land for them and helping them build houses. However, violence against Free-Staters interfered with these efforts and Brown and his men were often called out to defend Lawrence from invasion. In May of 1856, a gang of men from Missouri, Georgia and Alabama stormed into Lawrence and destroyed two free-state newspapers and the Free State Hotel.

They also killed two men, bringing to five the number of free state men who had been killed. On hearing of the planned attack, John Brown started out from near Osawatomie for Lawrence with a group of free state fightersto help defend the city. Before they could get there, however, they received word that they were too late, and that the city had not resisted.

Historians, as well as Brown's contemporaries, disagree about the details of what happened next, and why. Certain facts are not disputed. On the night of May 24, 1856, John Brown together with a small group of armed men, made up mostly of his sons and son-in-law, took five pro-slavery men from their houses and killed them in what is known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. Brown's defenders hold that the men killed had threatened the lives of every abolitionist on Pottawatomie Creek and had aided and abetted the raiders of Lawrence.

One contemporary wrote that Brown and his men saved the homes and lives of free-staters living in the community. Detractors, of course, saw it as a cowardly act of murder. John Brown himself had very little to say about it. He claimed to have killed no one, but acknowledged responsibility for the killings. In a letter written shortly after the massacre, Brown wrote, "We feel assured that He, who does not see as men see, will not lay the guilt of innocent blood to our charge . . ."

Brown left Kansas in late 1856 and spent most of 1857 and 1858 in the East raising money and plotting ways to end slavery. He returned to Kansas briefly in 1858 and there carried out his famous raid into Missouri where he freed 11 enslaved people and conducted them to Canada.

In 1859 he plotted and trained for the raid on Harpers Ferry. On October 16, he set out with a force of 19 men, including himself, and captured Harpers Ferry. Again historians disagree as to what "went wrong," but Brown and his men were delayed in their escape from Harpers Ferry and were captured by a group of Marines led by Robert E. Lee.

Brown was tried, and convicted of murder, treason, and conspiring with slaves to rebel. He was hanged on December 2, 1859. His hanging was widely seen as an act of martyrdom, and he himself said, "I can trust God with both the time and the manner of my death, believing as I now do that for me at this time to seal my testimony for God and humanity with my blood will do vastly more toward advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavored to promote than all I have done in my life before." Both his supporters and detractors acknowledge that his death hastened the beginning of the Civil War and the end of slavery.

Image 3: Drawing of the John Brown Raid, showing militia volunteers attacking Brown's men at the fire engine house near the Armory gate in 1859. Courtesy of the Harper's Ferry National Historic Site.

Executive Director: Cheryl Brown Henderson

Program Associate: Linda Brown Thompson

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