John
Brown was
born at Torrington, Connecticut, on 9th May, 1800. The family moved
to Ohio in 1805 where his father worked as a tanner. John's father
was staunchly anti-slavery and was a
voluntary agent for the Underground
Railroad.
Brown studied for the Congregational ministry in Connecticut but changed
his mind and returned to work with his father in Hudson, Ohio. He
had a variety of different jobs including work as a tanner, wool merchant,
land surveyor and farmer. Married twice, he
was the father of twenty children. In 1849 Brown and his family settled
in a black community founded in North Elba on land donated by the
Anti-Slavery campaigner, Gerrit
Smith.
While at North Elba, Brown developed strong opinions about the evils
of slavery and gradually became convinced that it would be necessary
to use force to overthrow this system. After
the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law
in 1850, Brown recruited forty-four men into the United States League
of Gileadites, an organization founded to resist slave-catchers.
In 1855 Brown and five of his sons moved to Kansas
Territory to help anti-slavery forces obtain control of this region.
His home in Osawatomie was burned in 1856 and one of his sons was
killed. With the support of Gerrit
Smith, Samuel G. Howe, and
other prominent Abolitionists, Brown moved to Virginia where he established
a refuge for runaway slaves.
In 1859 he led a party of 21 men in a successful attack on the federal
armory at Harper's Ferry. Brown hoped
that his action would encourage slaves to join his rebellion, enabling
him to form an emancipation army. Two days later the armory was stormed
by Robert
E. Lee and
a company of marines. Brown and six men barricaded themselves in an
engine-house, and continued to fight until Brown was seriously wounded
and two of his sons had been killed.
John Brown was
tried and convicted of insurrection, treason and murder. He was executed
on 2nd December, 1859. Six other men involved in the raid were also
hanged. The song,
John
Brown's Body,
commemorating the Harper's Ferry raid, was a highly popular marching
song with Republican soldiers during the American
Civil War.
John Brown on his way to his execution
(1)
In
his book, Life and Times,
Frederick Douglass described meeting
John
Brown for the first time.
Brown cautiously approached
the subject which he wished to bring to my attention; for he seemed
to apprehend opposition to his views. He denounced slavery in look
and language fierce and bitter, thought that slaveholders had forfeited
their right to live, that the slaves had the right to gain their liberty
in any way they could, did not believe that moral suasion would ever
liberate the slave, or that political action would abolish the system.
He said that he had long had a plan which could accomplish this end,
and he had invited me to his house to lay that plan before me. He
said he had been for some time looking for colored men to whom he
could safely reveal his secret, and at times he had almost despaired
of finding such men, but that now he was encouraged, for he saw heads
of such rising up in all directions. He had observed my course at
home and abroad, and he wanted my co-operation.
His plan as it then lay in his mind, had much to commend it. It did
not, as some suppose, contemplate a general rising among the slaves,
and a general slaughter of the slave masters. An insurrection he thought
would only defeat the object, but his plan did contemplate the creating
of an armed force which should act in the very heart of the south.
He was not averse to the shedding of blood, and thought the practice
of carrying arms would be a good one for the colored people to adopt,
as it would give them a sense of their manhood. No people he said
could have self respect, or be respected, who would not fight for
their freedom.
(2) John
Brown's son, John Brown Jr, gave an interview to Oswald
Garrison Villard, about how the family decided to join the campaign
against slavery.
After spending considerable
time in setting forth, in impressive language, the hopeless condition
of the slave, he asked who of us were willing to make common cause
with him in doing all in our power to "break the jaws of the
wicked and pluck the spoil out of his teeth". Receiving an affirmative
answer from each, he kneeled in prayer, and all did the same. After
prayer he asked us to raise our right hands, and he then administered
an oath bound us to secrecy and devotion to the purpose of fighting
slavery by force and arms to the extent of our ability.
(3)
New
York Herald (21st October, 1859)
Brown
is fifty-five years of age, rather
small-sized, with keen and restless gray eyes, and a grizzly beard
and hair. He is a wiry, active man, and should the slightest chance
for an escape be afforded, there is no doubt that he will yet give
his captors much trouble. His hair is matted and tangled, and his
face, hands, and clothes are smutched and smeared with blood.
Colonel Lee stated that
he would exclude
all visitors from the room if the wounded
men were annoyed or pained by them,
but Brown said he was by no means
annoyed; on the contrary, he was glad
to be able to make himself and his motives
clearly understood. He converses freely,
fluently, and cheerfully, without the slightest
manifestation of fear or uneasiness,
evidently weighing well his words, and
possessing a good command of language.
His manner is courteous and affable,
while he appears to be making a favorable
impression upon his auditory, which,
during most of the day yesterday averaged
about ten or a dozen men.
When I arrived in the
armory, shortly after two o'clock in the afternoon, Brown was answering
questions put to him by Senator Mason, who had just arrived
from his residence at Winchester,
thirty miles distant. Colonel Faulkner, member of Congress who lives
but a few miles off, Mr. Vallandigham, member of Congress of Ohio,
and several other distinguished gentlemen. The following is a verbatim
report of the conversation:
Mr. Mason: Can you tell
us, at least, who furnished the money for your expedition?
Mr. Brown: I furnished
most of it myself. I cannot implicate others. It is by my own folly
that I have been taken. I could easily have saved myself from it had
I exercised my own better judgment rather than yield to my feelings.
I should have
gone away, but I had thirty-odd prisoners, whose wives and daughters
were in tears for their safety, and I felt for them. Besides, I wanted
to allay the fears of those who believed we came here to burn and
kill. For this reason I allowed the train to cross the bridge and
gave them full liberty to pass on. I did it only to spare the feelings
of these passengers and their families and to allay the apprehensions
that you had got here in your vicinity a band of men who had no regard
for life and property, nor any feeling of humanity.
Mr. Mason: But you killed
some people passing
along the streets quietly.
Mr. Brown: Well, sir,
if there was anything of that kind done, it was without my knowledge.
Your own citizens, who were my prisoners, will tell you that every
possible means were taken to prevent it. I did not allow my men to
fire, nor even to return a fire, when there was danger of killing
those we regarded as innocent persons, if I could help it. They will
tell you that we allowed ourselves to be fired at repeatedly and did
not return it.
A Bystander: That is not
so. You killed an unarmed man at the comer of the house over there
(at the water tank) and another besides.
Mr. Brown: See here, my
friend, it is useless
to dispute or contradict the report of your own neighbors who were
my prisoners.
Mr. Mason: If you would
tell us who sent you here - who provided the means - that would be
information of some value.
Mr. Brown: I will answer
freely and faithfully about what concerns myself - I will answer anything
I can with honor,
but not about others.
Mr. Vallandigham (member
of Congress from Ohio, who had just entered): Mr. Brown, who sent
you here?
Mr. Brown: No man sent
me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker, or that of
the devil, whichever you
please to ascribe it to. I acknowledge no man (master) in human form.
Mr. Vallandigham: Did you
get up the expedition yourself?
Mr. Brown: I did.
Mr. Mason: What was your
object in coming?
Mr. Brown: We came to
free the slaves, and only that.
A Young Man (in the uniform
of a volunteer company): How many men in all had you?
Mr. Brown: I came to Virginia
with eighteen men only, besides myself.
Volunteer: What in the
world did you suppose you could do here in Virginia with that amount
of men?
Mr. Brown: Young man,
I don't wish to discuss
that question here.
Volunteer: You could not
do anything.
Mr. Brown: Well, perhaps
your ideas and mine
on military subjects would differ
materially.
Mr. Mason: How do you
justify your acts?
Mr. Brown: I think, my
friend, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity.
I say it without wishing to be offensive - and it would be perfectly
right for anyone to interfere with you so far as to
free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I do not say
this insultingly. I think I did right and that others will do right
who interfere with you at any time and all times. I hold that the
golden rule, "Do unto others as you would that others
should do unto you," applies to all who would help others to
gain their liberty.
(4)
While
waiting for his trial to take place, John Brown was interviewed by
William A. Phillips, of the New York
Tribune (1859)
One of the most interesting
things in his conversation that night, and one that marked him as
a theorist, was his treatment of our forms of social and political
life. He thought society ought to be organized on a less selfish basis;
for while material interests gained something by the deification of
pure selfishness, men and women lost much of it. He said that all
great reforms, like the Christian religion, were based on broad, generous,
self-sacrificing principles.
(5)
John
Brown, speech in court after being sentenced to death (December, 1859)
Had I interceded in the
manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved, had
I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent,
the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either
father, mother, sister, wife or children, or any of that class, and
suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would
have been right. Every man in the court would have deemed it an act
worthy of reward rather than punishment.
(6)
Henry
David Thoreau, A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
I read all the newspapers I could get within a week after this event,
and I do not remember in them a single expression of sympathy for
these men. I have since seen one noble statement, in a Boston paper,
not editorial. Some voluminous sheets decided not to print the full
report of Brown's words to the exclusion of other matter.
But I object not so much to what they have
omitted as to what they have inserted. Even the Liberator called
it "a misguided, wild, and apparently insane-effort." As
for the herd of newspapers and magazines, I do not chance to know
an editor in the country who will deliberately print anything which
he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the number of his
subscribers.
A man does a brave and humane deed, and at once, on all sides, we
hear people and parties declaring, "I didn't do it, nor countenance
him to do it, in any conceivable way. It can't be fairly inferred
from my past career." I, for one, am not interested to hear you
define your position. I don't know that I ever was or ever shall be.
I think it is mere egotism, or impertinent at this time. Ye needn't
take so much pains to wash your skirts of him. No intelligent man
will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours. He went
and came, as he himself informs us, "under the auspices of John
Brown and nobody else."
Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians,
men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance, that he
acted "on the principle of revenge." They do not know the
man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him. I have no doubt
that the time will come when they will begin to see him as he was.
They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle,
and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till
he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business
before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed.
I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North.
He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison
with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted
them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness
and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man
in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the
dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal
of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American
of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend
him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters,
or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have
been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist.
(7)
Thomas Stonewall Jackson
watched the execution of John Brown on 2nd December, 1859. That night
he wrote a letter to his wife about what he had witnessed.
John Brown was hung today.
He behaved with unflinching firmness. The gibbet was erected in a
large field, south-east of the town. Brown rode on the head of his
coffin from the prison to the place of execution. He was dressed in
a black frock-coat, black pantaloons, black waistcoat, black slouch
hat, white socks, and slippers of predominating red. The open wagon
in which he rode was strongly guarded on all sides. Brown had his
arms tied behind him, and ascended the scaffold with apparent cheerfulness.
After reaching the top of the platform, he shook hands with several
who were standing around him. The sheriff placed the rope round his
neck, then threw a white cap over his head. In this condition he stood
for about ten minutes on the trap-door. Colonel Smith then announced
to the sheriff "already", which apparently was not comprehended
by him, and the colonel had to repeat the order. Then the rope was
cut by a single blow, and Brown dropped several inches, his knees
falling to the level occupied by his feet before the rope was cut.
With the fall, his arms below the elbows flew up horizontally, his
hands clenched; but soon his arms gradually fell by spasmodic motions.
There was very little motion for several moments; then the wind started
to blow his lifeless body too and fro.
(8)
Lucius
Bierce,
the uncle of Ambrose
Bierce, made a speech when John Brown was executed that was reported
in the Summit Beacon in Ohio (7th December, 1859)
The tragedy
of Brown's is freighted with awful lessons and consequences. It is
like the clock striking the fatal hour that begins a new era in the
conflict with slavery. Men like Brown may die, but their acts and
principles will live forever. Call it fanaticism, folly, madness,
wickedness, but until virtue becomes fanaticism, divine wisdom folly,
obedience to God madness, and piety wickedness, John Brown, inspired
with these high and holy teachings, will rise up before the world
with his calm, marble features, most terrible in death and defeat,
than in life and victory. It is one of those acts of madness which
history cherished and poetry loves forever to adorn with her choicest
wreaths of laurel.
(9)
Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown
(1910)
He had in mind no well-defined
purpose in attacking Harper's Ferry, save to begin his revolution
in a spectacular way, capture a few slaveholders and release a few
slaves. So far as he had thought anything out, he expected to alarm
the town and then, with the slaves that had rallied to him, to march
back to the school-house near the Kennedy Farm, arm his recruits and
to take to the hills.
(10) Frederick Douglass, speech on
John Brown, (May 30, 1881)
The true question is, Did John Brown draw his sword against slavery
and thereby lose his life in vain? And to this I answer ten thousand
times, No! No man fails, or can fail, who so grandly gives himself
and all he has to a righteous cause. No man, who in his hour of extremest
need, when on his way to meet an ignominious death, could so forget
himself as to stop and kiss a little child, one of the hated race
for whom he was about to die, could by any possibility fail.
"Did John Brown fail? Ask Henry A. Wise in
whose house less than two years after, a school for the emancipated
slaves was taught.
"Did John Brown fail? Ask James M. Mason,
the author of the inhuman fugitive slave bill, who was cooped up in
Fort Warren, as a traitor less than two years from the time that he
stood over the prostrate body of John Brown.
"Did John Brown fail? Ask Clement C. Vallandingham,
one other of the inquisitorial party; for he too went down in the
tremendous whirlpool created by the powerful hand of this bold invader.
If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least
begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places
and men for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina,
but Virginia, not Fort Sumter, but Harpers Ferry, and the arsenal,
not Col. Anderson, but John Brown, began the war that ended American
slavery and made this a free Republic. Until this blow was struck,
the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible
conflict was one of words, votes and compromises.
"When John Brown stretched forth his arm
the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone – the
armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken
Union – and the clash of arms was at hand. The South staked all
upon getting possession of the Federal Government, and failing to
do that, drew the sword of rebellion and thus made her own, and not
Brown's, the lost cause of the century.
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