Anevangelical Christian of strong religious convictions, Brown was profoundly influenced by thePuritan faith of his upbringing.[1][2] He believed that he was "an instrument of God",[3] raised to strike the "death blow" toslavery in the United States, a "sacred obligation".[4] Brown was the leading exponent of violence in theAmerican abolitionist movement,[5] believing it was necessary to end slavery after decades of peaceful efforts had failed.[6][7] Brown said that in working to free the enslaved, he was followingChristian ethics, including theGolden Rule,[8] and theDeclaration of Independence, which states that "all men are created equal".[9] He stated that in his view, these two principles "meant the same thing".[10]
Brown first gained national attention when he ledanti-slavery volunteers and his sons during theBleeding Kansas crisis of the late 1850s, a state-level civil war over whether Kansas would enter the Union as aslave state or a free state. He was dissatisfied with abolitionist pacifism, saying of pacifists, "These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!" In May 1856, Brown and his sons killed five supporters of slavery in thePottawatomie massacre, a response to thesacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces. Brown then commanded anti-slavery forces at theBattle of Black Jack and theBattle of Osawatomie.
In October 1859, Brownled a raid on thefederal armory atHarpers Ferry, Virginia (which later became part ofWest Virginia), intending to start a slave liberation movement that would spread south; he had prepared aProvisional Constitution for the revised, slavery-free United States that he hoped to bring about. He seized the armory, but seven people were killed and ten or more were injured. Brown intended to arm slaves with weapons from the armory, but only a few slaves joined his revolt. Those of Brown's men who had not fled were killed or captured by localmilitia andU.S. Marines, the latter led byRobert E. Lee. Brown was tried fortreason against theCommonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men, and inciting a slave insurrection. He was found guilty of all charges and was hanged on December 2, 1859, the first person executed fortreason in the history of the United States.[11][12]
The Harpers Ferry raid andBrown's trial, both covered extensively in national newspapers, escalated tensions that in the next year led to theSouth's long-threatened secession from the United States and theAmerican Civil War. Southerners feared that others would soon follow in Brown's footsteps, encouraging and arming slave rebellions. He was widely viewed as a hero and icon in the North.Union soldiers marched to the new song "John Brown's Body" that portrayed him as a heroicmartyr. Brown has been variously described as a heroic martyr and visionary, and as a madman andterrorist.[13][14][15]
John Brown was born May 9, 1800, inTorrington, Connecticut,[19] the son ofOwen Brown (1771–1856)[a] and Ruth Mills (1772–1808).[22] Owen Brown's father was Capt. John Brown, of English descent, who died in theRevolutionary War in New York on September 3, 1776.[23]His mother, of Dutch andWelsh descent,[24] was the daughter of Gideon Mills, an officer in the Revolutionary Army.[23]
Although Brown described his parents as "poor but respectable" at some point,[22] Owen Brown became a leading and wealthy citizen of Hudson, Ohio.[23][25] He operated a tannery and employedJesse Grant, father of PresidentUlysses S. Grant. Jesse lived with the Brown family for some years.[25] The founder of Hudson,David Hudson, with whom John's father had frequent contact, was an abolitionist and an advocate of "forcible resistance by the slaves."[26]
The fourth child of Owen and Ruth,[22][b] Brown's other siblings included Anna Ruth (born in 1798), Salmon (born 1802), and Oliver Owen (born in 1804).[27][28] Frederick, identified by Owen as his sixth son, was born in 1807.[29] Frederick visited Brown when he was in jail, awaiting execution.[30] He had an adopted brother, Levi Blakeslee (born some time before 1805).[31] Salmon became a lawyer, politician, and newspaper editor.[29]
While Brown was very young, his father moved the family briefly to his hometown,West Simsbury, Connecticut.[23] In 1805, the family moved, again, toHudson, Ohio, in theWestern Reserve, which at the time was mostly wilderness;[32] it became the most anti-slavery region of the country.[33] Owen hated slavery[34] and participated in Hudson's anti-slavery activity and debate, offering asafe house toUnderground Railroadfugitives.[35] Owen became a supporter ofOberlin College afterWestern Reserve College would not allow a Black man to enroll.[36] Owen was an Oberlin trustee from 1835 to 1844.[36] Other Brown family members were abolitionists, but John and his eccentric brother Oliver were the most active and forceful.[37]
John's mother Ruth died a few hours after the death of a newborn girl in December 1808.[38] In his memoir, Brown wrote that he mourned his mother for years.[39][40] While he respected his father's new wife,[39][40] Sallie Root,[29] he never felt an emotional bond with her.[39][40] Owen married a third time to Lucy Hinsdale, a formerly married woman.[29] Owen had a total of 6 daughters and 10 sons.[29]
With no school beyond the elementary level in Hudson at that time, Brown studied at the school of theabolitionist Elizur Wright, father of the famousElizur Wright, in nearbyTallmadge.[41] In a story he told to his family, when he was 12 years old and away from home moving cattle, Brown worked for a man with a colored boy, who was beaten before him with an iron shovel. He asked the man why he was treated thus, and the answer was that he was a slave. According to Brown's son-in-law Henry Thompson, it was that moment when John Brown decided to dedicate his life to improving African Americans' condition.[42][43] As a child in Hudson, John got to know local Native Americans and learned some of their language.[22] He accompanied them on hunting excursions and invited them to eat in his home.[44][45]
Young adulthood
At 16, Brown left his family for New England to acquire a liberal education and become a Gospel minister.[46] He consulted and conferred with Jeremiah Hallock, then clergyman atCanton, Connecticut, whose wife was a relative of Brown's, and as advised proceeded toPlainfield, Massachusetts, where, under the instruction of Moses Hallock, he prepared for college. He would have continued atAmherst College,[41][47] but he suffered from inflammation of the eyes which ultimately became chronic and precluded further studies. He returned to Ohio.[23]
Back in Hudson, Brown taught himself surveying from a book.[48][c] He worked briefly at his father's tannery before opening a successful tannery outside of town with his adopted brother Levi Blakeslee.[41] The two kept bachelor's quarters, and Brown was a good cook.[41] He had his bread baked by a widow, Mrs. Amos Lusk. As the tanning business had grown to include journeymen and apprentices, Brown persuaded her to take charge of his housekeeping. She and her daughter Dianthe moved into his log cabin. Brown married Dianthe in 1820.[49] There is no known picture of her,[50] but he described Dianthe as "a remarkably plain, but neat, industrious and economical girl, of excellent character, earnest piety, and practical common sense".[51] Their first child,John Jr., was born 13 months later. During 12 years of married life Dianthe gave birth to seven children, among themOwen, and died from complications of childbirth in 1832.[52]
Brown knew the Bible thoroughly and could catch even small errors in Bible recitation. He never used tobacco nor drank tea, coffee, or alcohol. After the Bible, his favorite books were the series ofPlutarch'sParallel Lives. He enjoyed reading aboutNapoleon andOliver Cromwell.[53] He felt that "truly successful men" were those with their own libraries.[54]
Brown leftHudson, Ohio, where he had a successful tannery, to be better situated to operate a safe and productiveUnderground Railroad station.[55][56] He moved toRichmond Township inCrawford County, Pennsylvania, in 1825[55][56][d] and lived there until 1835,[57] longer than he did anywhere else.[58] He bought 200 acres (81 hectares) of land, cleared an eighth of it, and quickly built a cabin, a two-story tannery with 18 vats, and a barn; in the latter was a secret, well-ventilated room to hide escaping slaves.[55][56] He transported refugees across the state border into New York and to an important Underground Railroad connection inJamestown,[57] about 55 miles (89 km) from Richmond Township.[59] The escapees were hidden in the wagon he used to move the mail, hides for his tannery, and survey equipment.[57] For ten years, his farm was an important stop on the Underground Railroad,[60] during which, it is estimated to have helped 2,500 enslaved people on their journey to Canada, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.[60] Brown recruited other Underground Railroad stationmasters to strengthen the network.[57]
Brown made money surveying new roads. He was involved in erecting a school, which first met in his home—he was its first teacher[61]—, and attracting a preacher[62][63] for aCongregational Society in Richmond. Their first meetings were held at the farm and tannery compound.[64] He also helped to establish a post office, and in 1828 PresidentJohn Quincy Adams named him the firstpostmaster ofRandolph Township, Pennsylvania; he was reappointed by PresidentAndrew Jackson, serving until he left Pennsylvania in 1835.[62][65] He carried the mail for some years fromMeadville, Pennsylvania, through Randolph toRiceville, some 20 miles (32 km).[66] He paid a fine at Meadville for declining to serve in the militia. During this period, Brown operated an interstate cattle and leather business along with a kinsman, Seth Thompson, from eastern Ohio.[66] In 1829, some white families asked Brown to help them drive off Native Americans who hunted annually in the area. Calling it a mean act, Brown declined, even saying "I would sooner take my gun and help drive you out of the country."[67][68]
Mary Ann Brown (née Day), wife of John Brown, married in 1833, with Annie (left) and Sarah (right) in 1851
In 1831, Brown's son Frederick (I) died, at the age of 4. Brown fell ill, and his businesses began to suffer, leaving him in severe debt. In mid-1832, shortly after the death of a newborn son, his wife Dianthe also died, either in childbirth or as an immediate consequence of it.[69] He was left with the childrenJohn Jr., Jason,Owen, Ruth and Frederick (II).[70][e] On July 14, 1833, Brown married 17-year-oldMary Ann Day (1817–1884), originally fromWashington County, New York;[72] she was the younger sister of Brown's housekeeper at the time.[73] They eventually had 13 children,[74][75] seven of whom were sons who worked with their father in the fight to abolish slavery.[76]
Back to Ohio
In 1836, Brown moved his family from Pennsylvania toFranklin Mills, Ohio, where he taughtSunday school.[77] He borrowed heavily to buy land in the area, including property along canals being built, and entered into a partnership withZenas Kent to construct a tannery along theCuyahoga River, though Brown left the partnership before the tannery was completed.[78][79] Brown continued to work on the Underground Railroad.[57]
Brown became a bank director and was estimated to be worthUS$20,000 (equivalent to about $609,613 in 2024).[80] Like many businessmen in Ohio, he invested too heavily in credit and state bonds and suffered great financial losses in thePanic of 1837. In one episode of property loss, Brown was jailed when he attempted to retain ownership of a farm by occupying it against the claims of the new owner.[81]
In November 1837,Elijah Parish Lovejoy was murdered inAlton, Illinois, for printing an abolitionist newspaper. Brown, deeply upset about the incident, became more militant in his behavior, comparable with ReverendHenry Highland Garnet.[57] Brown publicly vowed after the incident: "Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery!"[82] Brown objected to Black congregants being relegated to the balcony at his church[57] in Franklin Mills. According to daughter Ruth Brown's husband Henry Thompson, whose brother was killed at Harpers Ferry:
[H]e and his three sons, John, Jason, and Owen, were expelled from the Congregational church at Kent, then called Franklin, Ohio, for taking a colored man into their own pew; and the deacons of the church tried to persuade him to concede his error. My wife and various members of the family afterward joined the Wesley Methodists, but John Brown never connected himself with any church again.[42]
For three or four years he seemed to flounder hopelessly, moving from one activity to another without plan. He tried many different business efforts attempting to get out of debt. He bred horses briefly, but gave it up when he learned that buyers were using them as race horses.[83] He did some surveying, farming, andtanning.[84] Brown declaredbankruptcy in federal court on September 28, 1842.[43] In 1843, three of his children—Charles, Peter, Austin—died ofdysentery.[70]
From the mid-1840s, Brown had built a reputation as an expert in fine sheep and wool. For about one year, he ran Captain Oviatt's farm,[83] and he then entered into a partnership with Colonel Simon Perkins ofAkron, Ohio, whose flocks and farms were managed by Brown and his sons.[85][f] Brown eventually moved into a home with his family across the street from thePerkins Stone Mansion.[86]
In 1846, Brown moved toSpringfield, Massachusetts, as an agent for Ohiowool growers in their relations with New England manufacturers of woolen goods, but "also as a means of developing his scheme of emancipation".[88] The white leadership there, including "the publisher ofThe Republican, one of the nation's most influential newspapers, were deeply involved and emotionally invested in theanti-slavery movement".[89]
Brown made connections in Springfield that later yielded financial support he received from New England's great merchants, allowed him to hear and meet nationally famous abolitionists likeFrederick Douglass andSojourner Truth, and included, after passage of theFugitive Slave Act of 1850, the foundation of theLeague of Gileadites.[88][89] Brown's personal attitudes evolved in Springfield, as he observed the success of the city's Underground Railroad and made his first venture into militant, anti-slavery community organizing. In speeches, he pointed to the martyrsElijah Lovejoy andCharles Turner Torrey as white people "ready to help blacks challenge slave-catchers".[90] In Springfield, Brown found a city that shared his own anti-slavery passions, and each seemed to educate the other. Certainly, with both successes and failures, Brown's Springfield years were a transformative period of his life that catalyzed many of his later actions.[89]
Two years before Brown's arrival in Springfield, in 1844, the city's African-American abolitionists had founded the Sanford Street Free Church, now known asSt. John's Congregational Church, which became one of the most prominent abolitionist platforms in the United States. From 1846 until he left Springfield in 1850, Brown was a member of the Free Church, where he witnessed abolitionist lectures by the likes ofFrederick Douglass andSojourner Truth.[91] In 1847, after speaking at the Free Church, Douglass spent a night speaking with Brown, after which Douglass wrote, "From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass. [in] 1847, while I continued to write and speak against slavery, I became all the same less hopeful for its peaceful abolition."[89]
During Brown's time in Springfield, he became deeply involved in transforming the city into a major center of abolitionism, and one of the safest and most significant stops on the Underground Railroad.[92] Brown contributed to the 1848 republication, by his friendHenry Highland Garnet, ofDavid Walker'sAn Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829),[93] which he helped publicize.[94]
Before Brown left Springfield in 1850, the United States passed theFugitive Slave Act, a law mandating that authorities in free states aid in the return of escaped slaves and imposing penalties on those who aid in their escape. In response, Brown founded a militant group to prevent the recapture of fugitives, theLeague of Gileadites,[93][g] operated by free Blacks—like the "strong-minded, brave, and dedicated" Eli Baptist, William Montague, and Thomas Thomas[89][h]—who risked being caught by slave catchers and sold into slavery.[57] Upon leaving Springfield in 1850, he instructed the League to act "quickly, quietly, and efficiently" to protect slaves that escaped to Springfield – words that would foreshadow Brown's later actions preceding Harpers Ferry.[95] From Brown's founding of theLeague of Gileadites onward, not one person was ever taken back into slavery from Springfield.[89]
His daughter Amelia died in 1846, followed by Emma in 1849.[85]
In 1848, bankrupt and having lost the family's house, Brown heard ofGerrit Smith'sAdirondack land grants to poor black men, in so remote a location that Brown later called itTimbuctoo, and decided to move his family there to establish a farm where he could provide guidance and assistance to the blacks who were attempting to establish farms in the area.[96] He bought from Smith land in the town ofNorth Elba, New York (nearLake Placid), for $1 an acre ($2/ha).[97] It has a magnificent view[14] and has been called "the highest arable spot of land in the State."[98] After living with his family about two years in a small rented house, and returning for several years to Ohio, he had the current house – now a monument preserved by New York State – built for his family, viewing it as a place of refuge for them while he was away. According to youngest son Salmon, "frugality was observed from a moral standpoint, but one and all we were a well-fed, well-clad lot."[99]
After he was executed on December 2, 1859, his widow tookhis body there for burial; the trip took five days, and he was buried on December 8. Watson's body was located and buried there in 1882. In 1899 the remains of 12 of Brown's other collaborators, including his son Oliver, were located and brought to North Elba. They could not be identified well enough for separate burials, so they are buried together in a single casket donated by the town of North Elba; there is a collective plaque there now. Since 1895, theJohn Brown Farm State Historic Site has been owned by New York State and is now aNational Historic Landmark.[96]
Actions in Kansas
Kansas Territory was in the midst of a state-level civil war from 1854 to 1860, referred to as theBleeding Kansas period, between pro- and anti-slavery forces.[100] From 1854 to 1856, there had been eight killings in Kansas Territory attributable to slavery politics. There had been no organized action by abolitionists against pro-slavery forces by 1856.[101] The issue was to be decided by the voters of Kansas, but who these voters were was not clear; there was widespread voting fraud in favor of the pro-slavery forces, as a Congressional investigation confirmed.[100]
Move to Kansas
Five of Brown's sons—John Jr., Jason, Owen, Frederick, and Salmon—moved toKansas Territory in the spring of 1855. Brown, his son Oliver, and his son-in-law Henry Thompson followed later that year[102] with a wagon loaded with weapons and ammunition.[103][i] Brown stayed with Florella (Brown) Adair and the Reverend Samuel Adair, his half-sister and her husband, who lived nearOsawatomie. During that time, he rallied support to fight proslavery forces,[102] and became the leader of the antislavery forces in Kansas.[103][105]
Brown and the free-state settlers intended to bringKansas into the union as a slavery-free state.[106] After the winter snows thawed in 1856, the pro-slavery activists began a campaign to seize Kansas on their own terms. Brown was particularly affected by thesacking of Lawrence, the center of anti-slavery activity in Kansas, on May 21, 1856. Asheriff-led posse from Lecompton, the center of pro-slavery activity in Kansas, destroyed twoabolitionist newspapers and theFree State Hotel. Only one man, aborder ruffian, was killed.[107]
Preston Brooks's May 22caning of anti-slavery SenatorCharles Sumner in theUnited States Senate, news of which arrived by newswire (telegraph), also fueled Brown's anger. A pro-slavery writer,Benjamin Franklin Stringfellow, of theSquatter Sovereign, wrote that "[pro-slavery forces] are determined to repel this Northern invasion, and make Kansas aslave state; though our rivers should be covered with the blood of their victims, and the carcasses of the abolitionists should be so numerous in the territory as to breed disease and sickness, we will not be deterred from our purpose".[107] Brown was outraged by both the violence of the pro-slavery forces and what he saw as a weak and cowardly response by the antislavery partisans and the Free State settlers, whom he described as "cowards, or worse".[108]
ThePottawatomie massacre occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. Under Brown's supervision, his sons and other abolitionist settlers took from their residences and killed five "professional slave hunters and militant pro-slavery" settlers.[109] The massacre was the match in the powderkeg that precipitated the bloodiest period in "Bleeding Kansas" history, a three-month period of retaliatory raids and battles in which 29 people died.[101]
Henry Clay Pate, who was part of the sacking of Lawrence, was, either during or shortly before, commissioned as a Deputy United States Marshal.[110] On hearing news of John Brown's actions at thePottawatomie Massacre, Pate set out with a band of thirty men to hunt Brown down.[111] During the hunt for Brown, two of his sons (Jason andJohn Junior) were captured (either by Pate or another marshal), charged with murder, and thrown in irons.[110][111] Brown and free-state militia gathered to confront Pate. Two of Pate's men were captured, which led to the conflict on June 2.[112]
Palmyra and Osawatomie
In theBattle of Black Jack of June 2, 1856, John Brown, nine of his followers, and 20 local men successfully defended a Free State settlement atPalmyra, Kansas, against an attack byHenry Clay Pate. Pate and 22 of his men were taken prisoner.[113]
In August, a company of over 300 Missourians under the command of GeneralJohn W. Reid crossed into Kansas and headed towardOsawatomie, intending to destroy the Free State settlements there and then march onTopeka andLawrence.[114] On the morning of August 30, 1856, they shot and killed Brown's son Frederick and his neighbor David Garrison on the outskirts of Osawatomie. Brown, outnumbered more than seven to one, arranged his 38 men behind natural defenses along the road. Firing from cover, they managed to kill at least 20 of Reid's men and wounded 40 more.[115] Reid regrouped, ordering his men to dismount and charge into the woods. Brown's small group scattered and fled across theMarais des Cygnes River. One of Brown's men was killed during the retreat and four were captured. While Brown and his surviving men hid in the woods nearby, the Missourians plundered and burned Osawatomie. Though defeated, Brown's bravery and military shrewdness in the face of overwhelming odds brought him national attention and made him a hero to many Northern abolitionists.[116]
On September 7, Brown entered Lawrence to meet with Free State leaders and help fortify against a feared assault. At least 2,700 pro-slavery Missourians were once again invading Kansas. On September 14, they skirmished near Lawrence. Brown prepared for battle, but serious violence was averted when the new governor of Kansas,John W. Geary, ordered the warring parties to disarm and disband, and offered clemency to former fighters on both sides.[117]
Brown had become infamous and federal warrants were issued for his arrest due to his actions in Kansas. He became careful of how he travelled and whom he stayed with across the country.[118]
Three-quarter-length portrait of John Brown, salt print, reproduction of daguerreotype attributed toMartin M. Lawrence, May 1859
Brown's plans for a major attack on American slavery began long before the raid. According to his wife Mary, interviewed while her husband was awaiting his execution, Brown had been planning the attack for 20 years.[119] Frederick Douglass noted that he made the plans before he fought in Kansas.[120] For instance, he spent the years between 1842 and 1849 settling his business affairs, moving his family to the Negro community atTimbuctoo, New York, and organizing in his own mind an anti-slavery raid that would strike a significant blow against the entire slave system, running slaves off Southern plantations.[121]
According to his first biographerJames Redpath, "for thirty years, he secretly cherished the idea of being the leader of a servile insurrection: the American Moses, predestined by Omnipotence to lead the servile nations in our Southern States to freedom."[122] An acquaintance said: "As Moses was raised up and chosen of God to deliver the Children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage, ...he was...fully convinced in his own mind that he was to be the instrument in the hands of God to effect the emancipation of the slaves."[123]
Brown said that,
A few men in the right, and knowing that they are right, can overturn a mighty king. Fifty men, twenty men, in the Alleghenies would break slavery to pieces in two years.[124]
Brown kept his plans a secret, including the care he took not to share the plans with his men, according to Jeremiah Anderson, one of the participants in the raid.[125] His sonOwen, the only one who survived of Brown's three participating sons, said in 1873 that he did not think his father wrote down the entire plan.[126] He did discuss his plans at length, for over a day, with Frederick Douglass, trying unsuccessfully to persuade Douglass to accompany him to Harpers Ferry (which Douglass thought a suicidal mission).[127]
Preparations
Financial and political backing
To attain financial backing and political support for the raid on Harpers Ferry, Brown spent most of 1857 meeting with abolitionists in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut.[128] Initially Brown returned to Springfield, where he received contributions, and also a letter of recommendation from a prominent and wealthy merchant, George Walker. Walker was the brother-in-law ofFranklin Benjamin Sanborn, the secretary for theMassachusetts State Kansas Committee, who introduced Brown to several influential abolitionists in the Boston area in January 1857.[88][129]Amos Adams Lawrence, a prominent Boston merchant, secretly gave Brown a large amount of cash.[130]William Lloyd Garrison,Thomas Wentworth Higginson,Theodore Parker andGeorge Luther Stearns, andSamuel Gridley Howe also supported Brown,[130] although Garrison, a pacifist, disagreed about the need to use violence to end slavery.[131]
In Boston, he metHenry David Thoreau andRalph Waldo Emerson.[131] Even with the Secret Six and other contributors, Brown had not collected all money needed to fund the raid. He wrote an appeal,Old Browns Farewell, to abolitionists in the east with some success.[131]
In December 1857, an anti-slavery Mock Legislature, organized by Brown, met inSpringdale, Iowa.[134] On several of Brown's trips across Iowa he preached atHitchcock House, an Underground Railroad stop inLewis, Iowa.[135]
"Virginia scheme"
William Maxon's house, nearSpringdale, Iowa, where John Brown's associates lived and trained, 1857–1859. Brown lived at the home ofJohn Hunt Painter, less than a mile away.
With a free-state victory in the October elections, Kansas was quiet. Brown made his men return to Iowa, where he told them tidbits of his Virginia scheme.[136] In January 1858, Brown left his men inSpringdale, Iowa, and set off to visitFrederick Douglass inRochester, New York. There he discussed his plans with Douglass, and reconsidered Forbes' criticisms.[137] Brown wrote aProvisional Constitution that would create a government for a new state in the region of his invasion. He then traveled toPeterboro, New York, and Boston to discuss matters with the Secret Six. In letters to them, he indicated that, along with recruits, he would go into the South equipped with weapons to do "Kansas work".[138] While in Boston making secret preparations for his operation on Harper's Ferry, he was raising money for weapons that were manufactured in Connecticut. Abolitionist ChaplainPhotius Fisk gave him a sizable donation and obtained his autograph which he later gave to theKansas Historical Society.[139]
Brown started to wear a beard, "to change his usual appearance".[140]
Weapons
The Massachusetts Committee pledged to provide 200Sharps Rifles and ammunition, which were being stored atTabor, Iowa. The rifles were originally intended for use by free-staters in Kansas. After negotiation between the officers of the Massachusetts Kansas Committee and the National Committee, the rifles were transferred to the Massachusetts Committee for use in the Harpers Ferry raid.[141] Horatio N. Rust, a friend of Brown's, helped acquire for 1,000pikes for the intended slave rebellion.[142]
Weapons were purchased and sent toKennedy Farmhouse inSharpsburg, Maryland, where they were stored.[143] Brown's plan was to make use of weapons, ammunition, and other military equipment stored at the armory, arsenal, and the rifle factory in Harpers Ferry.[144] There were an estimated 100,000 muskets and rifles at the armory and arsenal complex at the time.[145]
The more sophisticated weapons, like Sharps rifles and pistols, were to be used by Black and White officers. The remaining fighters would use spear-like pikes,shotguns, andmuskets.[146]
Constitutional convention in Ontario
First Baptist Church in Chatham, Ontario, where John Brown's 1858 convention took place.
Brown and 12 of his followers, including his sonOwen, traveled toChatham, Ontario, where he convened on May 10 aConstitutional Convention.[147][148] The convention, with several dozen delegates including his friendJames Madison Bell, was put together with the help of Dr.Martin Delany.[149] One-third of Chatham's 6,000 residents were fugitive slaves, and it was here that Brown was introduced toHarriet Tubman, who helped him recruit.[150] The convention's 34 blacks and 12 whites adopted Brown'sProvisional Constitution. Brown had long used the terminology of the Subterranean Pass Way from the late 1840s, so it is possible that Delany conflated Brown's statements over the years. Regardless, Brown was elected commander-in-chief and namedJohn Henrie Kagi his "Secretary of War".Richard Realf was named "Secretary of State". Elder Monroe, a black minister, was to act as president until another was chosen. A. M. Chapman was the acting vice president; Delany, the corresponding secretary. In 1859, "A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America" was written.[151][152]
Crisis
While in New York City, Brown was introduced to Hugh Forbes, an English mercenary, who had experience as a military tactician fighting withGiuseppe Garibaldi. Concerned about Brown's strategy, Forbes undermined and delayed the plans for the raid.[153]
Although nearly all of the delegates signed the constitution, few volunteered to join Brown's forces, although it will never be clear how many Canadian expatriates actually intended to join Brown because of a subsequent "security leak" that threw off plans for the raid, creating a hiatus in which Brown lost contact with many of the Canadian leaders. This crisis occurred when Hugh Forbes, Brown's mercenary, tried to expose the plans to Massachusetts SenatorHenry Wilson and others. The Secret Six feared their names would be made public. Howe and Higginson wanted no delays in Brown's progress, while Parker, Stearns, Smith and Sanborn insisted on postponement. Stearns and Smith were the major sources of funds, and their words carried more weight. To throw Forbes off the trail and invalidate his assertions, Brown returned to Kansas in June, and remained in that vicinity for six months. There he joined forces withJames Montgomery, who was leading raids into Missouri.
On December 20, Brownled his own raid, in which he liberated 11 slaves, took captive two white men, and looted horses and wagons. The Governor of Missouri announced a reward of $3,000 (equivalent to $104,989 in 2024) for his capture. On January 20, 1859, he embarked on a lengthy journey to take the liberated slaves to Detroit and then on a ferry to Canada. While passing through Chicago, Brown met with abolitionistsAllan Pinkerton,John Jones, andHenry O. Wagoner who arranged and raised the fare for the passage to Detroit[154] and purchased supplies for Brown. Jones's wife and fellow abolitionist,Mary Jane Richardson Jones, provided new clothes for Brown and his men, including the garb Brownwas hanged in six months later.[155][156] On March 12, 1859, Brown met withFrederick Douglass and Detroit abolitionistsGeorge DeBaptiste, William Lambert, and others at William Webb's house in Detroit to discuss emancipation.[157] DeBaptiste proposed that conspirators blow up some of the South's largest churches. The suggestion was opposed by Brown, who felt humanity precluded such unnecessary bloodshed.[158]
Over the course of the next few months, he traveled again through Ohio, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to drum up more support for the cause. On May 9, he delivered a lecture inConcord, Massachusetts, thatAmos Bronson Alcott, Emerson, and Thoreau attended. Brown reconnoitered with the Secret Six.[159]
Leslie's illustration of U.S. Marines attacking John Brown's "Fort"
As he began recruiting supporters for an attack on slaveholders, Brown was joined byHarriet Tubman, "General Tubman", as he called her.[160] Her knowledge of support networks and resources in the border states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware was invaluable to Brown and his planners.[161] She also raised funds for Brown.[162]
Some abolitionists, includingFrederick Douglass andWilliam Lloyd Garrison, opposed his tactics, but Brown dreamed of fighting to create a new state for freed slaves and made preparations for military action. After he began the first battle, he believed, slaves would rise up and carry out a rebellion across the South.[161]
The men that fought with Brown in Kansas gathered atSpringdale, Iowa, a Quaker settlement, about January 1858, to prepare to execute Brown's Virginia scheme.[163]
In June, Brown paid his last visit to his family in North Elba before departing for Harpers Ferry. He stayed one night en route inHagerstown, Maryland, at the Washington House, on West Washington Street. On June 30, 1859, the hotel had at least 25 guests, including I. Smith and Sons, Oliver Smith and Owen Smith, and Jeremiah Anderson, all from New York. From papers found in the Kennedy Farmhouse after the raid, it is known that Brown wrote to Kagi that he would sign into a hotel as I. Smith and Sons.[159]
The men who prepared for the raid at Kennedy Farmhouse and participated in the raid with Brown included two groups of men:
A group that fought with him in Kansas and gathered at Springdale, Iowa, to prepare and drill for the raid,[164]
Oliver Brown, 20, John Brown's son, served in Kansas. He was mortally wounded during the raid.[166]
Owen Brown, about 35, John Brown's son, fought in Kansas. He escaped the raid.[167]
John E. Cook, 29, reformer and former soldier, attendedOberlin College, he initially escaped capture, but was found and hanged.[167]
Albert Hazlett, 23, fought in Kansas, escaped following the raid, but was captured and hanged.[168]
John Henry Kagi, about 24, a teacher, became Brown's second in command. Before the raid he printed copies of Brown's constitution in a printing shop he established inHamilton, Ontario. He was mortally wounded during the raid.[169]
William H. Leeman, 20, fought with the free-staters in Kansas for three years, beginning at the age of 17. He died during the raid.[170]
Aaron Dwight Stevens, about 28, was a former soldier and fighter in Kansas, who gave the men military training and drills. He was wounded during the raid, after which he was executed.[171]
Charles Plummer Tidd, 25, fought in Kansas. He escaped the raid and later served during the Civil War.[171]
Men he met when rounding up recruits for the raid:[164]
Watson Brown, son of John Brown, mortally wounded during the raid.[172]
John Anthony Copeland Jr. was a free black man who joined John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. He was captured during the raid and was executed.[173]
Barclay Coppoc, 19, escaped capture following the raid. He fought in the Civil War.[174]
Lewis Sheridan Leary, a harness maker freed by his white father, mortally wounded during the raid.[176]
Francis Jackson Meriam, 22, grandson ofFrancis Jackson who was a leader of Antislavery Societies. Meriam was an aristocrat. He escaped during the raid. Meriam led an African American infantry group during the Civil War.[168]
Dangerfield Newby, 44, born a slave, escaped slavery, returned to Virginia to fight in the raid, where he was killed.[177]
Stewart Taylor, 23, a wagonmaker from Canada, mortally wounded during the raid.[178]
Dauphin Thompson, 21, married to Ruth Brown, John Brown's daughter, mortally wounded during the raid.[178]
William Thompson, 26, mortally wounded during the raid.[178]
Kennedy Farmhouse, depicting Brown in his favorite spot in the yard, made posthumously in 1902
They were atKennedy Farmhouse, four to five miles away from Harpers Ferry. Brown's daughterAnnie Brown or Anne in some writings, and daughter-in-law Martha, Oliver's wife. The two prepared food and kept the house for the men from August and throughout the month of September.[143] Annie also acted as a lookout for her father and sometimes intercepted curious neighbors.
Brown led his forces for Harper Ferry on the night of October 16, 1859.[179] The objective was to take the armory, the arsenal, the town, and then the rifle factory. Then, they wanted to free all the slaves in Harpers Ferry.[180] After that, they would move south with those newly freed people who wanted to join the fight to free other enslaved people.[181] Brown told his men to take prisoners who disobeyed them and to fight only in self-defense.[182]
Initially, they met no resistance entering the town.John Brown's raiders cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory, which was being defended by a single watchman. They next rounded up hostages from nearby farms, includingColonel Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew ofGeorge Washington. They also spread the news to the local slaves that their liberation was at hand.[183]
When an eastboundBaltimore and Ohio Railroad train approached the town, Brown held it and then inexplicably allowed it to continue on its way. At the next station where the telegraph still worked, the conductor sent a telegram to B&O headquarters inBaltimore. The railroad sent telegrams to President Buchanan and Virginia GovernorHenry A. Wise.[184]
Illustration of the interior of the Fort immediately before the door is broken down. Note hostages on the left.
By the morning of October 18 the engine house, later known asJohn Brown's Fort, was surrounded by a company ofU.S. Marines under the command of First LieutenantIsrael Greene, USMC, with ColonelRobert E. Lee of the United States Army in overall command.[185]
Army First LieutenantJ. E. B. Stuart approached the engine-house to apprehend Brown and told the raiders their lives would be spared if they surrendered. Brown refused, saying, "No, I prefer to die here." Stuart then gave a signal and the Marines used sledgehammers and a makeshift battering ram to break down the engine room door. Lieutenant Israel Greene cornered Brown and struck him several times, wounding his head. In three minutes, Brown and the survivors were captives.[186]
Altogether, Brown's men killed four townspeople and one Marine. Ten people were wounded, one of whom was a Marine.[187] Four of Brown's men were not captured, the rest died during the raid or were captured and executed.[164] Among the raiders killed wereJohn Henry Kagi,Lewis Sheridan Leary, andDangerfield Newby; those hanged besides Brown includedJohn Copeland,Edwin Coppock,Aaron Stevens, andShields Green.[188][189] Most of the enslaved people were returned to their slaveholders, while some were able to escape capture. A man named Phil was captured with Brown, and a man named Jim drowned in the Shenandoah.[190]
Brown and the others captured were held in the office of the armory. On October 18, 1859, Virginia GovernorHenry A. Wise, Virginia SenatorJames M. Mason, and RepresentativeClement Vallandigham of Ohio arrived in Harpers Ferry. Brown conceded that he did not receive the support he expected from White and Black people. The questioning lasted several hours.[191]
Brown has just been captured and is interrogated by Virginia Gov.Henry A. Wise and others, October 18, 1859."Treason" Broadside, 1859 November 4. Somersworth.The old Court House at Charles Town, Jefferson County, Virginia, where John Brown was tried; it stands diagonally across the street from the jail (c. 1906).Two houses in Charles Town. The one on the right was the Jefferson County Jail, where John Brown was imprisoned during and after his trial. It has been torn down and is now the site of the Charles Town post office.
Brown was charged with treason and tried in a Virginia state court at Governor Wise's request. Accordingly, the charge was treason against Virginia.[192] President Buchanan did not object.[193]
The answer provided in 1859 was more political ~ than legal. The president of the United States and the governor of Virginia decided that Brown would be tried in Virginia for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, and that is where he was tried. This decision thrust Virginia rather than the United States into the role of the offended sovereign and contributed incalculably to the widening abyss between North and South. John Brown was condemned not as an enemy of the American people but as an enemy of Virginia and, by logical extension, of Southern slaveholders.
Brown was tried with his men who had lived through the raid and had not escaped—Copeland, Coppoc, Green, and Stevens—on charges of murder, "conspiracy to foment a slave insurrection", and treason, as of October 26.[195]
On November 2, after a week-long trial in Charles Town, the county seat of Jefferson County,[196][197] and 45 minutes of deliberation, the jury found Brown guilty on all three counts.[197] He was sentenced to be hanged in public on December 2.[197]He was the first person executed for treason in the history of the United States.[11][12]
The trial attracted reporters who were able to send their articles via the newtelegraph. They were reprinted in numerous papers. It was the first trial in the U.S. to be nationally reported.[198]
November 2 to December 2, 1859
Before his conviction, reporters were not allowed access to Brown, as the judge and Andrew Hunter feared that his statements, if quickly published, would exacerbate tensions, especially among the enslaved. This was much to Brown's frustration, as he stated that he wanted to make a full statement of his motives and intentions through the press.[199] Once he had been convicted, the restriction was lifted, and, glad for the publicity, he talked with reporters and anyone else who wanted to see him, except pro-slavery clergy.[71] Brown received more letters than he ever had in his life. He wrote replies constantly, hundreds of eloquent letters, often published in newspapers.[200]
Rescue and Victor Hugo's pardon plans
There were well-documented and specific plans to rescue Brown, as Virginia GovernorHenry A. Wise wrote toPresident Buchanan. Throughout the weeks Brown and six of his collaborators were in the Jefferson County Jail in Charles Town, the town was filled with various types of troops and militia, hundreds and sometimes thousands of them. Brown's trips from the jail to the courthouse and back, and especially the short trip from the jail to the gallows, were heavily guarded. Wise halted all non-military transportation on theWinchester and Potomac Railroad (from Maryland south through Harpers Ferry to Charles Town and Winchester), from the day before through the day after the execution. Jefferson County was undermartial law,[201] and the military orders in Charles Town for the execution day had 14 points.[202]
However, Brown said several times that he did not want to be rescued. He refused the assistance ofSilas Soule, a friend from Kansas who infiltrated the Jefferson County Jail one day by getting himself arrested for drunken brawling and offered to break him out during the night and flee northward to New York State and possibly Canada. Brown told Silas that, aged 59, he was too old to live a life on the run from the federal authorities as a fugitive and wanted to accept his execution as a martyr for the abolitionist cause. As Brown wrote his wife and children from jail, he believed that his "blood will do vastly more towards advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavoured to promote, than all I have done in my life before."[203] "I am worth inconceivably more to hang than for any other purpose."[204]
Victor Hugo, from exile onGuernsey, tried to obtain apardon for John Brown: he sent anopen letter that was published by the press on both sides of the Atlantic. This text warned of a possible civil war:
Politically speaking, the murder of John Brown would be an uncorrectable sin. It would create in the Union a latent fissure that would in the long run dislocate it. Brown's agony might perhaps consolidate slavery in Virginia, but it would certainly shake the whole American democracy. You save your shame, but you kill your glory. Morally speaking, it seems a part of the human light would put itself out, that the very notion of justice and injustice would hide itself in darkness, on that day where one would see the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty itself.
The letter was initially published in theLondon News[dubious –discuss] and was widely reprinted. After Brown's execution, Hugo wrote a number of additional letters about Brown and the abolitionist cause.[205]
Abolitionists in the United States saw Hugo's writings as evidence of international support for the anti-slavery cause. The most widely publicized commentary on Brown to reach America from Europe was an 1861 pamphlet,John Brown par Victor Hugo, that included a brief biography and reprinted two letters by Hugo, including that of December 9, 1859. The pamphlet's frontispiece was an engraving of a hanged man by Hugo that became widely associated with the execution.[206]
Last words, death and aftermath
On December 1, 1859, Mary Ann Brown, who had stayed away from the prison due to Brown's concern for her safety, visited her husband for several hours with permission from Governor Wise.[207]
On the day of his execution, December 2,[208] Brown read his Bible and wrote a final letter to his wife, which included the will he had written the previous day,[209][207][210] aslarge meetings were held in many cities in the Northeast. In many of the cases, "Negroes were the chief actors in creating excitement".[208]
John Brown's last words, passed to a jailer on his way to the gallows. From analbumen print; location of the original is unknown.
Brown was well read and knew that the last words of prominent people are valued. That morning, Brown wrote and gave to his jailor Avis the words he wanted to be remembered by:
I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.[211]
Brown sits on his coffin on his way to the gallows. Soldiers line up on both sides, to avoid a rescue.
At 11:00 a.m. Brown rode, sitting on his coffin in a furniture wagon, from the county jail through a crowd of 2,000 soldiers to a small field a few blocks away, where the gallows were.[209] The military, prepared for an attack, lined the square where Brown was to be hanged, with "the greatest array of disciplined forces ever seen in Virginia", according to Major Preston.[207] Among the soldiers in the crowd were Robert E Lee (cite source), future Confederate generalStonewall Jackson, andJohn Wilkes Booth (the latter borrowing a militia uniform to gain admission to the execution).[209] Also present was the pro-slavery activistEdmund Ruffin, who later purchased some of the blades from John Brown's pikes and sent one to the governor of each slave state, as a reminder of Northern enmity against their cause.[212] Ruffin was also credited for firing one of the first cannons againstFort Sumter, which initiated theCivil War in 1861.
Brown, who did not want to have a minister with him, displayed "the most complete fearlessness of & insensibility to danger & death" as he walked to the gallows.[207] Brown was hanged at 11:15 a.m. and was pronounced dead 35 minutes later.[213]
The poetWalt Whitman, inYear of Meteors, described viewing the execution.[214]
Brown's grave, 1896Brown's tombstone, North Elba, New York
Due to people's certainty of Brown's execution, there was debate over what to do with his body even whilst his trial was still ongoing. Professor of anatomy Arthur E. Peticolas petitioned prosecutor Andrew Hunter and Virginia governorHenry Wise for possession of Brown's body for anatomical dissection. However, national attention towards the case resulted in Brown's body being given to his wife.[215]
Brown's desire, as told to the jailor in Charles Town, was that his body be burned, "the ashes urned", and his dead sons disinterred and treated likewise.[216][217] According to the sheriff of Jefferson County, Virginia law did not allow the burning of bodies. Brown's body was therefore placed in a wooden coffin with the noose still around his neck, which was then put on a train tohis family homestead inNorth Elba, New York for burial.[218]
His body needed to be prepared for burial; this was supposed to take place in Philadelphia. There were many Southern pro-slavery medical students and faculty in Philadelphia, and as a direct result, they left the cityen masse on December 21, 1859, for Southern medical schools, never to return. When Mary and her husband's body arrived on December 3, Philadelphia MayorAlexander Henry met the train, with many policemen, and said public order could not be maintained if the casket remained in Philadelphia. In fact he "made a fake casket, covered with flowers and flags[,] which was carefully lifted from the coach"; the crowd followed the sham casket. The genuine casket was immediately sent onwards.[219][220] It was transported through places special to Brown during his life. His corpse was transported viaTroy, New York,Rutland, Vermont, and acrossLake Champlain by boat. His corpse arrived at the Brown farm at North Elba, New York.[221] Brown's body was washed, dressed, and placed, with difficulty, in a 5-foot-10-inch (1.78 m) walnut coffin, in New York.[222] He was buried on December 8, 1859.[223] Abolitionist Rev.Joshua Young gave a prayer, andJames Miller McKim andWendell Phillips spoke.[221][223]
In the North, large memorial meetings took place, church bells rang, minute guns were fired, and famous writers such asEmerson andThoreau joined many Northerners in praising Brown.[224]
On July 4, 1860, family and admirers of Brown gatheredat his farm for a memorial. This was the last time that the surviving members of Brown's family gathered together. The farm was sold, except for the burial plot. By 1882,John Jr.,Owen, Jason, and Ruth, widow of Henry Thompson, lived in Ohio; his wife and their two unmarried daughters in California.[225] By 1886, Owen, Jason, and Ruth were living nearPasadena, California, where they were honored in a parade.[226]
Senate investigation
On December 14, 1859, theU.S. Senate appointed a bipartisan committee to investigate the Harpers Ferry raid and to determine whether any citizens contributed arms, ammunition or money to John Brown's men. The Democrats attempted to implicate the Republicans in the raid; the Republicans tried to disassociate themselves from Brown and his acts.[227][228]
The Senate committee heard testimony from 32 witnesses, including Liam Dodson, one of the surviving abolitionists. The report, authored by chairmanJames Murray Mason, a pro-slavery Democrat from Virginia, was published in June 1860. It found no direct evidence of a conspiracy, but implied that the raid was a result of Republican doctrines.[228] The two committee Republicans published aminority report, but were apparently more concerned about denying Northern culpability than clarifying the nature of Brown's efforts. Republicans such asAbraham Lincoln rejected any connection with the raid, calling Brown "insane".[229]
The investigation was performed in a tense environment in both houses of Congress. One senator wrote to his wife that "The members on both sides are mostly armed with deadly weapons and it is said that the friends of each are armed in the galleries." After a heated exchange of insults, a Mississippian attackedThaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania with aBowie knife in the House of Representatives. Stevens' friends prevented a fight.[230]
The Senate committee was very cautious in its questions of two of Brown's backers,Samuel Howe andGeorge Stearns, out of fear of stoking violence. Howe and Stearns later said that the questions were asked in a manner that permitted them to give honest answers without implicating themselves.[230] Civil War historianJames M. McPherson stated that "A historian reading their testimony, however, will be convinced that they told several falsehoods."[231]
Aftermath of the raid
Old John Brown's Career, 1860 poster
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was among the last in a series of events that led to theAmerican Civil War.[232] Southern slaveowners, hearing initial reports that hundreds of abolitionists were involved, were relieved the effort was so small, but feared other abolitionists would emulate Brown and attempt to lead slave rebellions.[233] Future Confederate PresidentJefferson Davis feared "thousands of John Browns".[234] Therefore, the South reorganized the decrepit militia system. These militias, well-established by 1861, became a ready-madeConfederate army, making the South better prepared for war.[235]
Southern Democrats charged that Brown's raid was an inevitable consequence of the political platform of what they invariably called "the Black Republican Party". In light of the upcoming elections in November 1860, the Republicans tried to distance themselves as much as possible from Brown, condemning the raid and dismissing its leader as an insane fanatic. As one historian explains, "Brown's raid succeeded brilliantly. It drove a wedge through the already tentative and fragile Opposition–Republican coalition and helped to intensify the sectional polarization that soon tore the Democratic party and the Union apart."[235]
Many abolitionists in the North viewed Brown as a martyr, sacrificed for the sins of the nation. Immediately after the raid,William Lloyd Garrison published a column inThe Liberator, judging Brown's raid "well-intended but sadly misguided" and "wild and futile".[236] However, he defended Brown's character from detractors in the Northern and Southern press and argued that those who supported the principles of theAmerican Revolution could not consistently oppose Brown's raid. On the day Brown was hanged, Garrison reiterated the point in Boston: "whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave insurrections".[237]
Frederick Douglass believed that Brown's "zeal in the cause of my race was far greater than mine – it was as the burning sun to my taper light – mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the boundless shores of eternity. I could live for the slave, but he could die for him."[238]
Between 1859 andLincoln's assassination in 1865, Brown was the most famous American:emblem to the North, asWendell Phillips put it,[239] and traitor to the South. According toFrederick Douglass, "He was with the troops during that war, he was seen in every camp fire, and our boys pressed onward to victory and freedom, timing their feet to thestately stepping of Old John Brown as his soul went marching on."[240] Douglass called him "a brave and glorious old man. ...History has no better illustration of pure, disinterested benevolence."[241]
Other black leaders of the time—Martin Delany,Henry Highland Garnet,Harriet Tubman—also knew and respected Brown. "Tubman thought Brown was the greatest white man who ever lived",[242] and she said later he did more for American blacks than Lincoln did.[243]
Black businesses across the North closed on the day of his execution.[244] Church bells tolled across the North.[12] In response to the death sentence,Ralph Waldo Emerson remarked that "[John Brown] will make the gallows glorious like the Cross."[245] In 1863,Julia Ward Howe wrote the popular hymn theBattle Hymn of the Republic to the tune ofJohn Brown's body, which included a line "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free", comparing Brown's sacrifice to that of Jesus Christ.[12]
Lincoln thought Brown had "shown great courage, rare unselfishness"; but said that he could not support Brown's use of violence.[246]
According toW. E. B. Du Bois in his 1909 biography,John Brown, Brown's raid stood as "a great white light – an unwavering, unflickering brightness, blinding by its all-seeing brilliance, making the whole world simply a light and a darkness – a right and a wrong."[247]
According to his friend and financier, the rich abolitionistGerrit Smith, "If I were asked to point out the man in all this world I think most truly a Christian, I would point to John Brown."[248][249]
Historians and other writers
Writers continue to vigorously debate Brown's personality, sanity, motivations, morality, and relation to abolitionism.[15] Once theReconstruction era had ended, with the country distancing itself from the anti-slavery cause, andmartial law imposed in the South, the historical view of Brown changed. HistorianJames Loewen surveyed American history textbooks prior to 1995 and noted that until about 1890, historians considered Brown perfectly sane, but from about 1890 until 1970, he was generally portrayed as insane.[250]Oswald Garrison Villard, the grandson of abolitionistWilliam Lloyd Garrison, wrote a favorable 1910 biography of Brown, though it also added fuel to the anti-Brown fire by criticizing him as a muddled, pugnacious, bumbling, and homicidal madman.[15][251] Villard himself was a pacifist and admired Brown in many respects, but his interpretation of the facts provided a paradigm for later anti-Brown writers. Similarly, a 1923 textbook stated, "The farther we getaway from the excitement of 1859 the more we are disposed to consider this extraordinary man the victim of mental delusions."[252] In 1978, NYU historian Albert Fried concluded that historians who portrayed Brown as a dysfunctional figure are "really informing me of their predilections, their judgment of the historical event, their identification with the moderates and opposition to the 'extremists.'"[253] This view of Brown has come to prevail in academic writing and in journalism. Biographer Louis DeCaro Jr. wrote in 2007, "there is no consensus of fairness with respect to Brown in either the academy or the media."[254] BiographerStephen B. Oates has described Brown as "maligned as a demented dreamer ... (but) in fact one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation".[255]
In 1931, theUnited Daughters of the Confederacy andSons of Confederate Veterans erected a counter-monument, toHeyward Shepherd, a free black man who was the first fatality of the Harpers Ferry raid, claiming without evidence that he was a "representative of Negroes of the neighborhood, who would not take part".[256] By the mid-20th century, some scholars were fairly convinced that Brown was a fanatic and killer, while some African Americans sustained a positive view of him.[257] According toStephen Oates, "unlike most Americans at his time, he had no racism. He treated blacks equally. ...He was a success, a tremendous success because he was a catalyst of the Civil War. He didn't cause it but he set fire to the fuse that led to the blow up."[258] JournalistRichard Owen Boyer considered Brown "an American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free", and others held similarly positive views.[259][260][261]
Some historians, such asPaul Finkelman, compare Brown to contemporary terrorists such asOsama bin Laden andTimothy McVeigh,[15][262][263] Finkelman calling him "simply part of a very violent world" and further stating that Brown "is a bad tactician, a bad strategist, he's a bad planner, he's not a very good general – but he's not crazy".[15] Historian James Gilbert labels Brown a terrorist by 21st-century criteria.[264] Gilbert writes: "Brown's deeds conform to contemporary definitions of terrorism, and his psychological predispositions are consistent with the terrorist model."[265] In contrast, biographerDavid S. Reynolds gives Brown credit for starting the Civil War or "killing slavery", and cautions others against identifying Brown with terrorism.[266] Reynolds saw Brown as inspiring theCivil Rights Movement a century later, adding "it is misleading to identify Brown with modern terrorists."[266][267]Malcolm X said that white people could not join hisblack nationalistOrganization of Afro-American Unity, but "if John Brown were still alive, we might accept him".[268]
In his posthumousThe Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (1976),David Potter argued that the emotional effect of Brown's raid exceeded the philosophical effect of theLincoln–Douglas debates, and reaffirmed a deep division between North and South.[268] Biographer Louis A. DeCaro Jr., who has debunked many historical allegations about Brown's early life and public career, concludes that although he "was hardly the only abolitionist to equate slavery with sin, his struggle against slavery was far more personal and religious than it was for many abolitionists, just as his respect and affection for black people was far more personal and religious than it was for most enemies of slavery".[269] Historian and Brown documentary scholar Louis Ruchames wrote: "Brown's action was one of great idealism and placed him in the company of the great liberators of mankind."[270]
Several 21st-century works about Brown are notable for the absence of hostility that characterized similar works a century earlier (when Lincoln's anti-slavery views were de-emphasized).[271] Journalist and documentary writer Ken Chowder considers Brown "stubborn ... egoistical, self-righteous, and sometimes deceitful; yet ... at certain times, a great man" and argues that Brown has been adopted by both the left and right, and his actions "spun" to fit the world view of the spinner at various times in American history.[15] The shift to an appreciative perspective moves many white historians toward the view long held by black scholars such asW. E. B. Du Bois,Benjamin Quarles, andLerone Bennett, Jr.[272]
Influences
Brown was born during the period of theHaitian Revolution, which saw Haitian slaves revolting against the French. The role the revolution played in helping formulate Brown's abolitionist views directly is not clear; however, the revolution had an obvious effect on the general view toward slavery in the northern United States, and in the Southern states, it was a warning of horror (as they viewed it) possibly to come. AsW. E. B. Du Bois notes, the involvement of slaves in the American Revolutions, and the "upheaval in Hayti, and the new enthusiasm for human rights, led to a wave of emancipation which started in Vermont during the Revolution and swept through New England and Pennsylvania, ending finally in New York and New Jersey".[273]
The 1839 slave insurrection aboard the Spanish shipLa Amistad, off the coast of Cuba, provides a poignant example of John Brown's support and appeal toward Caribbean slave revolts. OnLa Amistad,Joseph Cinqué and approximately 50 other slaves captured the ship, slated to transport them fromHavana toPuerto Príncipe, Cuba, in July 1839, and attempted to return to Africa. However, through trickery, the ship ended up in the United States, where Cinque and his men stood trial. Ultimately, the courts acquitted the men because at the time, the international slave trade was illegal in the United States.[274] In 1850, Brown would refer affectionately to the revolt, in saying "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. Witness the case of Cinques, of everlasting memory, on board theAmistad."[275]
The specific knowledge John Brown gained from the tactics employed in the Haitian Revolution, and other Caribbean revolts, was of paramount importance when Brown turned his sights to the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. As Brown's cohortRichard Realf explained to a committee of the 36th Congress, "he had posted himself in relation to the wars of Toussaint L'Ouverture;[276] he had become thoroughly acquainted with the wars in Hayti and the islands round about."[277] By studying the slave revolts of the Caribbean region, Brown learned a great deal about how to properly conduct guerilla warfare. A key element to the prolonged success of this warfare was the establishment ofmaroon communities, which are essentially colonies of runaway slaves. As a contemporary article notes, Brown would use these establishments to "retreat from and evade attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain and prolong a guerilla war, of which ... Haiti afforded" an example.[278]
The idea of creating maroon communities was the impetus for the creation of John Brown's "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States", which helped to detail how such communities would be governed. However, the idea of maroon colonies of slaves is not an idea exclusive to the Caribbean region. In fact, maroon communities riddled the southern United States between the mid-1600s and 1864, especially in theGreat Dismal Swamp region of Virginia and North Carolina. Similar to the Haitian Revolution, theSeminole Wars, fought in modern-day Florida, saw the involvement of maroon communities, which although outnumbered by native allies were more effective fighters.[278]
Although the maroon colonies of North America undoubtedly had an effect on John Brown's plan, their impact paled in comparison to that of the maroon communities in places like Haiti, Jamaica, and Surinam. Accounts by Brown's friends and cohorts prove this idea. Richard Realf, a cohort of Brown in Kansas, noted that Brown not only studied the slave revolts in the Caribbean, but focused more specifically on the maroons of Jamaica and those involved in Haiti's liberation.[279] Brown's friend Richard Hinton similarly noted that Brown knew "by heart" the occurrences in Jamaica and Haiti.[280]Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a cohort of Brown's and a member of theSecret Six, stated that Brown's plan involved getting "together bands and families of fugitive slaves" and "establish them permanently in those [mountain] fastnesses, like the Maroons of Jamaica and Surinam".[281]
Of all the major figures associated with theAmerican Civil War, Brown is one of the most studied and pondered.[282][283] "As a nation, we are unable to get over John Brown."[284]: 89 Kate Field raised money to give to the State of New York for what was to be, in her words, "John Brown's Grave and Farm" (nowJohn Brown Farm State Historic Site).[285] At the centenary of the raid in 1959, a "sanitized" play about him was produced at Harper's Ferry.[286]
May 1: In 1999, John Brown Day was celebrated onMay 1.[287]
May 7: In 2016, John Brown Lives! Friends of Freedom celebrated May 7 as John Brown Day.[288] In 2018, it was May 5. Spirit of John Brown Freedom Awards were given to environmentalist Jen Kretser, poetMartín Espada, and toSoffiyah Elijah, attorney and executive director of the Alliance of Families for Justice, which advocates for prison reform.[289] In 2022, the day chosen was May 14.[290]
August 17: In 1906, theNiagara Movement, predecessor of theNAACP, celebrated John Brown Day on August 17.
October 16: In 2017, the Vermont Legislature designated October 16, the date of the raid, as John Brown Day.[292][293]
Meetings in honor of John Brown
In 1946, the John Brown Memorial Association held its 24th annual pilgrimage to the grave in North Elba, where there were memorial services.[294]
At the 150th anniversary of the raid In 2009, a two-day symposium, "John Brown Comes Home", was held, on the influence of Brown's raid. Speakers includedBernadine Dohrn and a great-great-great-granddaughter of Brown.[295][296]
All of these museums except the one in Harpers Ferry are places Brown lived or stayed.
Barnum's American Museum in New York, destroyed by fire in 1868, contained according to a November 7, 1859, advertisement "a full-length Wax Figure of OSAWATOMIE BROWN, taken from life, and a KNIFE found on the body of his son, at Harper's Ferry".[299] An agent of Barnum traveled to Harpers Ferry in November, saw Brown, and offered him $100 (equivalent to $3,500 in 2024) for "his clothes and pike, and his certificate of their genuineness."[300] By December 7 the exhibits included "hisautograph Commission to a Lieutenancy as well as TWO PIKES or spears taken at Harper's Ferry".[301] On December 16 the Museum added, with document vouching for its authenticity, "the link of the shackles that Cook and Coppock cut in two...that consequently permitted them to escape."[302] Also exhibited were theAugustus Washington 1847daguerrotype of Brown (seeabove) and the now-lost painting by Louis Ransom of the famous, apocryphal incident of Brown kissing a black baby on his way to the gallows, reproduced in anCurrier & Ives print (seePaintings). The latter was only exhibited for two months in 1863; Barnum withdrew it to save the building from destruction during the anti-Negro riot that broke out shortly.[208]
Statues
Nothing came of the proposal that Kansas send a statue of Brown as one of its two representatives honored in the U.S. Capitol.
The first statue of Brown, and the only one not at one of his residences, is that located on the (new) John Brown Memorial Plaza, on the former campus of the closed blackWestern University, site of afreedmen's school founded in 1865, the first black school west of the Mississippi River. The statue is the one surviving structure of the entireQuindaro Townsite, a ghost town today part ofKansas City, Kansas (27th Street and Sewell Avenue), a major Underground Railroad station, a key port on theMissouri River forfugitive slaves andcontrabands escaping from theslave state of Missouri. The pillar and the life-sized statue of Brown were erected by descendants of slaves in 1911, at a cost of $2,000 (equivalent to $67,493 in 2024).[303] Lettering reads: "Erected to the Memory of John Brown by a Grateful People". There is a bronze plaque. In March 2018, the statue was defaced withswastikas and "Hail Satan".[304]
Only one major street in the world honors Brown, the Avenue John Brown inPort-au-Prince, Haiti, near an avenue honoring abolitionist SenatorCharles Sumner.
Storer College began as the first graded school for blacks in West Virginia. Its location in Harpers Ferry was because of the importance of Brown and his raid. The Arsenal engine house, renamedJohn Brown's Fort, was moved to the Storercampus in 1909.[309] It was used as the college museum.
A plaque honoring Brown was attached to the Fort in 1918, while it was on the Storer campus.
A plaque is on John Brown's Fort which says "That this nation might have; new birth of freedom that slavery should be removed forever from American soil John Brown and his 21 men gave their lives to commemorate their heroism this tablet is placed on this building which has since been known as John Brown's fort by the alumni of storer college 1918".
In 1931, after years of controversy,a tablet was erected in Harpers Ferry by theSons of Confederate Veterans and theUnited Daughters of the Confederacy, honoring the key "Lost Cause" belief that their slaves were happy and neither wanted freedom nor supported John Brown. (SeeHeyward Shepherd monument.) The president of Storer participated in the dedication. In response,W. E. B. DuBois, co-founder of theNAACP, wrote text for a new plaque in 1932. The Storer College administration would not allow it to be put it up, nor did the National Park Service after becoming owner of the Fort. In 2006, it was placed at the site on the former Storer campus where the Fort had been located.
The John Brown House, where he lived from 1844 to 1854, and John Brown Memorial,[310] the latter of which is located in the Perkins Park area of theAkron Zoo. The memorial was not erected within the zoo; the zoo incorporated the land where it is. It is not well marked and is not normally open to the public.[311][312][313] When the monument was erected in 1910, 8,000 people attended[310] and Jason Brown, at the time John Brown's oldest living child, spoke.[314]
"Because of the impossibility of colored boys entering work shops where useful trades are taught", a John Brown Industrial College was planned atBonner Springs, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City, and 80 acres (32 ha) purchased.[321][322][323]
Media
Two notable screen portrayals of Brown were given by actorRaymond Massey. The 1940 filmSanta Fe Trail, starringErrol Flynn andOlivia de Havilland, depicted Brown completely unsympathetically as a villainous madman and Massey plays him with a constant, wild-eyed stare. The film gave the impression that he did not oppose slavery, even to the point of having a black "mammy" character say, after an especially fierce battle, "Mr. Brown done promised us freedom, but ... if this is freedom, I don't want no part of it". Massey portrayed Brown again in the little-known, low-budgetSeven Angry Men, in which he was not only the main character, but depicted in a much more restrained, sympathetic way.[324] Massey, along withTyrone Power andJudith Anderson, starred in the acclaimed 1953 dramatic reading ofStephen Vincent Benét's epicPulitzer Prize-winning poemJohn Brown's Body (1928).[325]
The playGallows Glorious, byRonald Gow, was produced on stage in 1933. Published in 1933, it was the first three-act play to be presented on television, theBBC, in 1938. It was released as a film the same year, according toIMDb.[326] Reprinted in 1937, it was published by Penguin in 1958 and this edition is available in theInternet Archive.[327]
In aCurrier and Ives print from 1863, John Brown is depicted as Christ-like, en route to his execution, with a black mother andher mulatto child. Above his head is the flag of Virginia, and its motto,Sic semper tyrannis.
A well-known image of Brown in the later 19th century is aCurrier and Ives print, based on a lost painting by Louis Ransom.[334][335] It portrays Brown as a Christ-like figure. The "Virgin and Child" typically depicted with Christ are here a black mother andmulatto child. Legend says that Brown kissed the mythical baby but virtually all scholars agree that this did not in fact happen.[336] Above Brown's head, like a halo, is the flag of Virginia and its motto,Sic semper tyrannis ("Thus always totyrants").According to Brown's supporters, the government of Virginia was tyrannical and according to fugitive slaves, it "is as well the black man's, as the white man's motto".[337]
Brown is inTragic Prelude, a mural in theKansas State Capitol. He carries in one hand a Bible and in the other aBeecher's Bible rifle. Union and Confederate forces are fighting, with casualties. A tornado approaches in the background, as does aprairie fire, both common in Kansas.
In 1938, Kansas painterJohn Steuart Curry was commissioned to prepare murals for theKansas State Capitol inTopeka, Kansas. He chose as his subject the Kansan John Brown, seen by many as the most important man in Kansas history. In the resulting mural,Tragic Prelude, Brown holds a Bible in one hand and aBeecher's Bible rifle in the other. Behind him areUnion and Confederate troops, with dead soldiers, a reference to theBleeding Kansas period.[338]
Frederick Douglass argued against John Brown's plan to attack the arsenal at Harpers Ferry is a painting byJacob Lawrence.
In 1941,Jacob Lawrence illustrated Brown's life inThe Legend of John Brown, a series of 22gouache paintings. By 1977, these were in such fragile condition that they could not be displayed, and theDetroit Institute of Arts had to commission Lawrence to recreate the series assilkscreen prints. The result was a limited-edition portfolio of 22 hand-screened prints, published with a poem,John Brown, byRobert Hayden, commissioned specifically for the project.The Legend of John Brown was the first series to explore his legacy from an African-American perspective.[339]
Paintings such asThomas Hovenden'sThe Last Moments of John Brown immortalize an apocryphal story in which a black woman offers the condemned Brown her baby to kiss on his way to the gallows. The tale was probably invented by journalistJames Redpath.[340]
"Soldiers' Monument". Commemorating the 5 persons killed, including one of Brown's sons. "This inscription is also in commemoration of the heroism of Capt. John Brown who commanded at the Battle of Osawatomie August 30, 1856; who died and conquered American slavery on the scaffold at Charlestown Va. Dec. 2, 1859."
1935 plaque by The Woman's Relief Corps, Department of Kansas
Old Stone Church Marker. "Built by Rev. Samuel Adair brother-in-law of John Brown" (1861).
Topeka, Kansas: "Capital of Kansas" ("In the late 1850s negroes bound north on the 'underground railway' were hidden here by John Brown.")
First Congregational Church in Hudson: "At a November 1837 prayer meeting, church member and anti-slavery leader John Brown made his first public vow to destroy slavery." Another marker mentions Brown at the former site of the church.
Winchester, Virginia: "A 'Malicious Design' – Burning the Winchester Medical College". The body of John Brown's son Watson was brought there for dissection by medical students.
The indictments, summons, sentences, bills of exception, and similar documents for Brown and his raiders are held by the Jefferson County Circuit Clerk, and have been digitized by West Virginia Archives and History.[343] Two separate collections of relevant letters were published. The first is the messages, mostly telegrams, sent and received by Governor Wise.[344] The Senate of Maryland published the many internal telegrams of theBaltimore and Ohio Railroad.[184]
Much material is missing. The order book, which had the minutes of John Brown's trial,[345] was evidently possessed by Brown's judgeRichard Parker in 1888.[346] As of 2022[update], its location is unknown. Among the missing material used at his trial as evidence of sedition were bundles of printed copies of hisProvisional Constitution, prepared for the "state" Brown intended to set up in theAppalachian Mountains. Even less known is Brown's "Declaration of Liberty", imitating theDeclaration of Independence.[347]
John Brown had with him when captured at Harpers Ferry a carpet-bag in which were his constitution for a provisional government and other papers. He had placed it in one corner of the engine house, and there it was found when the marines charged and captured the survivors. Mr. Hunter took possession of the carpet-bag and carried it to Charlestown. He kept it and its contents. He added to the papers the letters which were forwarded to the prisoners and not delivered to them. Ordinary letters were allowed to pass to the prisoners after Mr. Hunter had examined them. But those letters which seemed to contain information bearing upon the organization in the North, Mr. Hunter confiscated and kept. He had between seventy and eighty of these letters, and he placed them in John Brown's carpet-bag. Other important documents bearing upon the secret history of the case went into the same receptacle, and much of the matter nobody but Mr. Hunter saw.[348]
There was correspondence fromFrederick Douglass andGerrit Smith, among many others. Hugh Forbes said that the carpet-bag may have contained "an abundant supply of my correspondence".[349][350] (After Brown's arrest, Smith, Douglass, and future biographer and friendFranklin Sanborn began destroying correspondence and other documents because they feared criminal charges for aiding Brown.[351][352])
The carpet-bag also contained maps of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Virginia that showed the locations of State arsenals with proposed routes for attacks and retreats.[8][348][353]
Hunter personally took the carpet-bag to Richmond, because he thought it would be safer there. In 1865, when Lee advised that he could no longer defend Richmond, Hunter did not want the "Yankees" to find the carpetbag. He thought that the Capitol was as safe a place as any in Richmond, and he asked Commonwealth SecretaryGeorge Wythe Munford if he could hide it in the Capitol. "Munford told me that he has taken the carpet-bag up to the cock-loft of the Capitol and had let down the bag between the wall and the plastering, and I believe those papers are there yet."[348]
Wise sent attorney Henry Hudnall to Charles Town to put in order Hunter's documents. In a letter to Wise of November 17, he refers to "a large quantity of matter", including "nearly a halfbushel of letters" just of Tidd alone.[354]
In 1907–1908, there appeared in print a varied collection of letters and other documents a Union soldier from Massachusetts took from Hunter's office in the Charles Town courthouse in 1862, when it was being used as a Union barracks.[346][355][356][357]
Correspondence and other archival material
The West Virginia Archives and History owns the largest single collection on Brown, the Boyd B. Stutler Collection. A negative microfilm of the material is held by theOhio Historical Society.[358][359]
The Hudson Library and Historical Society ofHudson, Ohio, Brown's home town, prepared annotated listings of Brown's many ancestors, siblings, and children.[360] Since John Brown moved around a lot, had a large family, and had a lot to say, he carried on a voluminous correspondence, including letters to editors,[361] and was repeatedly interviewed by reporters, as he made himself available. Archival material on him and his circle is therefore abundant, and widely scattered. There has never been a complete edition of his extant correspondence; the one scholarly attempt, from 1885, produced a book of 645 pages. EditorF. B. Sanborn stated that he had enough letters for another book.[362] A 2015 book was published just of the letters Brown wrote in the last month of his life, from jail.[363] Additional letters were found and published in the 20th century.[364][365][366] Archival material concerning John Brown's time inCrawford County, Pennsylvania, including his tannery, is held by the Pelletier Library,Allegheny College,Meadville, Pennsylvania.[367]Clark Atlanta University holds a small collection.[368]
Brown biographerOswald Garrison Villard surveys the manuscript collections in his 1910 biography.[369] The archive of Villard is in theColumbia University Library. Kansas Memory has a collection of materials regarding Brown's activities in Kansas.[370]
^Brown was said by Sanbord to have been the fourth of eight children, but it's not clear who the other children of Owen and Ruth were and if the eight children included their adopted son, Levi.[22]
^Brown eventually listed surveyor's implements in his will.[41]
^According to a Pennsylvania friend who visited him in jail inCharles Town just before his execution, he mentioned thatCrawford County, Pennsylvania, was important to him because two of his children and his wife were buried there.[71]
^Later, in 1852, Brown received five first prizes for his sheep and cattle at the Ohio State Fair.[83]
^In the Bible,Mount Gilead was the place where only the bravest ofIsraelites gathered to face an invading enemy. Brown founded the League with the words, "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. [Blacks] would have ten times the number [of white friends than] they now have were they but half as much in earnest to secure their dearest rights as they are to ape the follies and extravagances of their white neighbors, and to indulge in idle show, in ease, and in luxury."[95]
^Brown gave his rocking chair to the mother of his beloved black porter, Thomas Thomas, as a gesture of affection when he moved away from Springfield.[89]
^Brown's wife Mary refused to relocate to Kansas.[104]
^ab"John Brown Farm, Tannery & Museum". visitPA.com (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development).Archived from the original on December 19, 2018. RetrievedDecember 18, 2018.
^Stewart, Anne W. (Fall 2002). "John Brown: From the Record. The Crawford County Years:1827–1835. The Young Family Man".Journal of Erie Studies.31 (2): 52.
^Caccamo, James F. (2007)."John Brown: A Brief Chronology".Historical Archives. Hudson Library & Historical Society. Archived fromthe original on October 20, 2007. RetrievedJune 21, 2015.
^Di Paol, Roger (March 30, 2008). "Portage Pathways: No love lost: Zenas Kent turned his back on Ravenna to build rival town".Record-Courier.
^Barnes, Diane L.; DeCaro, Louis (Fall 2016). "John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestown (review)".Ohio History.123:83–84.doi:10.1353/ohh.2016.0024.S2CID151736182.
^"Hitchcock House",www.thehistorylist.com,archived from the original on January 25, 2021, retrievedMay 25, 2021
^Jones, Louis Thomas (1914).The Quakers of Iowa. Iowa City: The State Historical Society of Iowa. p. 193: "A little over a year after his first visit to the Springdale neighborhood, Brown reappeared late in December, 1857 – this time with some ten companions and for purposes which he seemed not anxious to have known. The men were lodged with a Quaker, William Maxon, about three miles northeast of the village of Springdale, Brown agreeing to give in exchange for their keep such of his teams or wagons as might seem just and fair. Brown was taken into the home of John H. Painter, about a half-mile away; and all were welcomed with that unfeigned hospitality for which the Friends have always been known."
^Hodge, Lyman F. (1891).Photius Fisk A Biography. Boston, Mass: Lyman F. Hodge. pp. 116–117.Archived from the original on July 21, 2021. RetrievedJune 6, 2021.
^The History of Johnson County, Iowa, 1883, pp. 475–77
^Junger, Richard, "Thinking Men and Women who Desire to Improve our Condition": Henry O. Wagoner,Civil Rights, and Black Economic Opportunity in Frontier Chicago and Denver, 1846–1887. in Alexander, William H., Cassandra L. Newby-Alexander, and Charles H. Ford, eds.Voices from within the Veil: African Americans and the Experience of Democracy. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009. p. 154
^Crothers, A. Glenn (Fall 2011). "'To Bear our Righteous Testimonies against All Evil': Virginia Quakers' Response to John Brown".Quaker History.100 (2):1–16.doi:10.1353/qkh.2011.0011.JSTOR41947713.S2CID161273093.
^Blue, Frederick J. (April 2006). "No Taint of Compromise: Crusaders in Antislavery Politics".The American Historical Review.111 (2). Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press:482–483.doi:10.1086/ahr.111.2.482.
^DeCaro, Louis A. Jr. (2005b). "Black People's Ally, White People's Bogeyman: A John Brown Story". In Taylor, Andrew; Herrington, Eldrid (eds.).The Afterlife of John Brown. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 11–26.doi:10.1007/978-1-4039-7846-2_2 (inactive July 1, 2025).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
^For historiography see Merrill D. Peterson,John Brown: The Legend Revisited (2002) and review by Aimee Lee Cheek,Journal of Southern History 70:2 (2004) pp. 435–436.
^Realf, Richard (1860).Report of the Select Committee of the Senate Appointed to Inquire in the Late Invasion and Seizure of the Public Property at Harper's Ferry. Washington D.C.: Select Committee of the Senate. p. 96.
^Meyer, Howard N. (2000).The Magnificent Activist: The Writings of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823–1911). New York: Da Capo Press. p. 119.
^Featherstonhaugh, Thomas (1897)."A Bibliography of John Brown".Publications of the Southern History Association.1:196–202.Archived from the original on July 21, 2021. RetrievedJuly 21, 2021.
^Featherstonhaugh, Thomas (1899)."Bibliography of John Brown Part II".Publications of the Southern History Association.3:302–306.Archived from the original on July 21, 2021. RetrievedOctober 2, 2020.
^Meyer, Eugene L. (2018).Five for Freedom. The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books (Chicago Review Press). p. 200.ISBN978-1613735725.
^Coughlin, Bill (2011)."Historical Markers Database".Focus of Action – Jefferson County in the Civil War.Archived from the original on November 21, 2018. RetrievedNovember 20, 2018.
^Iowa Department of Historical Affairs and State Historical Society of Iowa."Iowa and the Underground Railroad"(PDF).Archived(PDF) from the original on November 19, 2018. RetrievedNovember 15, 2018.
^Fletcher, Robert S. (November 1940)."Ransom's John Brown Painting".Kansas History.9 (4):343–346.Archived from the original on May 25, 2021. RetrievedApril 3, 2021.
^abQuincy, Josiah P. (1908)."The Execution of John Brown".Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 3rd.1:326–331.JSTOR25079946.Archived from the original on October 13, 2020. RetrievedAugust 24, 2021.
^"Kansas Memory".www.kansasmemory.org.Archived from the original on February 25, 2021. RetrievedFebruary 5, 2021. Kansas Memory, Kansas State Historical Society, holds John Brown letters and photos.
DeCaro, Louis A. Jr. (2005a).Fire From the Midst of You: A Religious Life of John Brown.New York University Press.ISBN978-0814719220.Introduction: As an evangelical Christian, he not only read the Bible as God's word, he read the Bible as God's word to John Brown. He believed that the scriptures continued to speak to life situations, radiating fresh truth and directives without obscuring its original and primary meaning. For him, God was speaking afresh on the enslavement of the African, and this was the ongoing theme of his devotional life. It guided his actions, guided his values, and gave him strength. His piety was inseparable from his deeply felt call to destroy slavery.
Miller, Ernest C. (1952).John Brown Pennsylvania Citizen. The story of John Brown's ten years in northwestern Pennsylvania.Warren, Pennsylvania: The Penn State Press.
Smith, Narcissa Macy (September 1895)."Reminiscences of John Brown".The Midland Monthly.4 (3): 323,231–236.Archived from the original on July 21, 2021. RetrievedOctober 22, 2020.
Smith, Eric Ledell (2006). "A list of the contents of the John Brown scrapbook in the Dreer Collection,Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1300Locust Street,Philadelphia".John Brown's family in California. A journey by funeral train, covered wagon, through archives, to the Valley of Heart's Delight, including the years 1833–1926, and honoring descendants of the Woman Abolitionists of Santa Clara County, now known as Silicon Valley. Allies for Freedom. pp. 28–31.
Lawler, John M. (2006).John Brown's family in California. A journey by funeral train, covered wagon, through archives, to the Valley of Heart's Delight, including the years 1833–1926, and honoring descendants of the Woman Abolitionists of Santa Clara County, now known as Silicon Valley. Allies for Freedom. pp. 32–33.ISBN0-9773638-2-1.
Andrew Johnson (1859).What John Brown Did in Kansas (December 12, 1859): a speech to theUnited States House of Representatives, December 12, 1859. Originally published inThe Congressional Globe, The Official Proceedings of Congress, Published by John C. Rives, Washington, D.C. Thirty-Sixth Congress, 1st Session, New Series ... No. 7, Tuesday, December 13, 1859, pp. 105–106.
Laughlin-Schultz, Bonnie.The Tie that Bound Us: The Women of John Brown's Family and the Legacy of Radical Abolitionism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013.
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