Brown, John

John (1800-1859), a noted abolitionist. Born at Torrington, Connecticut of Puritan ancestors. His sixth ancestor, Peter Brown, came over in the Mayflower. In 1805 the Browns moved to Ohio and settled in a wild country, where John grew up fond of a rifle and the woods. During the War of 1812 John's father had a contract to supply the government with beef; and John, then a lad of a dozen years, took a drove of cattle a hundred miles through the wilderness alone.

He came up barefooted and bareheaded, with a liking for Indian ways, wood lore, and cattle, but with a distaste for school. He scarce mastered the four operations in arithmetic, and had no knowledge whatever of grammar; but he was fond of reading history, and had an intimate acquaintance with the Scriptures. Passing by the idea of preaching he took, like Lincoln, to the practice of surveying. In his expeditions around the head waters of the Ohio he became acquainted with the Harper's Ferry region and developed a quickness of eye and ear and knowledge of woodcraft that made him an expert border fighter later on.

In business matters John Brown seemed unable to stick to any calling long enough to make money. From surveying he tried his hand as a lumber dealer, postmaster, wool grower, farmer, wool merchant, fruit grower, stock fancier, and land speculator, but failed in all. His mind was evidently on something else.

During his business experience he visited England with a disastrous shipment of wool; but his losses on wool, amounting to financial ruin, seemed to have made little impression. He spent his time studying military affairs and plans of fortifications, even crossing over to Germany and France for that purpose. He visited prominent English abolitionists and solicited financial aid, saying that he held himself destined to take up arms against slavery. About this time Mr. Gerrit Smith, a wealthy landowner, offered a large tract of land in the Adirondack region of New York to make free homes for runaway slaves. Brown removed his family to North Elba in this new country and undertook to receive the colored people, to settle them in cabins, and to teach them the rudiments of northern farming. North Elba thus became a well known terminal of the so-called "underground railway."

In 1854 Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska act leaving it to the settlers of Kansas to decide whether that territory should come into the Union as a free or a slave state. The citizens of Missouri and adjacent slave-holding states took steps to control elections and secure Kansas soil for slavery. The Abolitionists of the North, at that time extending from Maine to the Mississippi, organized colonization societies, and hurried in settlers to hold the territory for freedom. A bitter border war sprang up between the incoming "intruding, hymn-singing Yankees," with their dogs, cattle, rifles, and Bibles, and the determined resident men of Missouri. Midnight murders, harrying of stock, burning cabins, settlements in ruins, violence at the ballot-box, and even pitched battles were features of that unhappy time. John Brown and his six sons hastened to Kansas to engage in the "holy crusade for freedom." Captain Brown, also known as "Ossawattomie Brown," from his place of settlement, was in the thickest of the fray.

Towards the close of the struggle, Brown went East. Under cover of collecting money and gathering arms to carry on border warfare in Kansas, he embarked upon a long cherished plan--a vast project for freeing the country from slavery by exciting the slaves to revolt. In the spring of 1859 he established a depot of clothes, blankets, food, pistols, rifles, and ammunition at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Among other warlike supplies were a thousand nine-inch dirks to be fastened to poles, with which he purposed to arm the slaves. In June he rented an abandoned farm with several buildings, in the mountains, five miles from Harper's Ferry, and concealed a force of men in the barn lofts. During the daytime Brown and a friend or two were in sight, apparently interested in sheep-raising. At night Brown drilled his men or sent them to bring supplies to their hiding-place.

Sunday night, October 16, 1859, Brown and his associates, sixteen white men and five blacks, set out with a wagon load of extra weapons for Harper's Ferry. They cut telegraph wires, stationed guards on the bridges, seized the United States arsenal and a rifle factory, and took possession of the town. A midnight passenger train for Washington city was detained, with some resistance on the part of passengers who supposed train robbers were holding them up. A negro porter was shot dead. The train was finally allowed to proceed. Passengers threw notes from the windows; as they traveled, and gave a general alarm. As morning came on the citizens were arrested as fast as they appeared on the streets until over sixty were shut up in the arsenal. In the meantime Brown sent messengers to arrest prominent country gentlemen in the vicinity, and to summon the slave population to rise in arms. But the effort was a flat failure. The slaves were worse scared than the white people, and the day passed with nothing accomplished. By nightfall Virginia militia men had closed in on the town. Brown's sentinels were shot down or driven into the armory where they made a stubborn defense. By Tuesday morning a company of United States marines under command of Col. Robert E. Lee, afterward Gen. Lee, arrived at Harper's Ferry, battered in the armory door with a long ladder, and over-powered the survivors. Of Brown's force, ten were shot during the siege, five escaped to the mountains, the rest were put in prison and brought to speedy trial at Charleston, the county seat. Brown was found guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel, and murder in the first degree." December 2, 1859, he was hanged in the public square. His remains were delivered to Mrs. Brown who conveyed them to North Elba, their Adirondack home. Wendell Phillips spoke at the funeral.

Although the Civil War has well nigh obliterated the traces of Brown's raid, it is still too early to speak judicially of his faults or his merits. No other execution in this country has caused so much excitement. Mrs. Brown freely stated that her husband had planned the raid for twenty years. He had thought the slaves would flock to his standard prepared to fight. He designed to follow the Allegheny Mountains clear to South Carolina, keeping in touch with the North by a long line of forest fortifications held by Northern volunteers and escaped slaves. He underestimated the ability of the Virginians, and over-estimated the intelligence and courage of their bondmen. His plan never had a chance of success and yet the alarm created by the attempt was one of the immediate causes of the withdrawal of the Southern States from the Union. Few who carelessly sing,

John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on,

Can now realize the intense detestation and equally intense enthusiasm once awakened by these words.

No doubt Brown had secret support, yet few openly approved his methods. In the South he was execrated, yet Southern men were not wanting who did him full justice. Governor Wise of Virginia said to the people of Richmond. "They are themselves mistaken who take him to be a madman. He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw cut and thrust and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is cool and collected. He was humane to his prisoners. He inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. He is fanatic, vain, and garrulous, but firm, truthful, and intelligent." Col. Washington, one of the gentlemen held by Brown as a prisoner, said, "Brown was the coolest and firmest man I ever saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead at his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand, and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure."

Congressman Vallandingham of Ohio, a strong upholder of slavery, who visited Brown and questioned him in prison with a view to political capital, reported, "It is vain to underrate either the man or the conspiracy. Captain John Brown is as brave and resolute a man as ever headed an insurrection. In a good cause and with a sufficient force, he would have been a consummate partisan commander. He is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic, or madman." See Slavery; Kansas