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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BRI-BUN |
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BROWN, JOHN (1800-1859) , American abolitionist, leader of the famous attack upon Harper's Ferry, in 1859, was born on the 9th of May 1800, at Torrington, Connecticut. He is said to have been descended from Peter Brown, who went to America in the Mayflower, and he was the grandson of Captain John Brown, who served i?1 the War of Independence. He was taken by his father, Owen Brown, to Hudson, Ohio, in 18o5. At the age of eighteen he began to prepare himself for the Congregational ministry, but soon changed his mind and turned his attentionto land surveying. He engaged successively in the tanning business, in sheep-raising, and in the wool trade, but met with little success and in 1842, at Akron, Ohio, became bankrupt. In .1849, after having lived in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, he removed to North Elba, N.Y., where he engaged in farming on part of the land which was being given in small tracts, by its owner Gerrit Smith, to negro settlers. Long before this he had conceived a strong hatred for the institution of slavery, and had determined to do what he could to bring about its destruction. In 1854 five of his sons removed to Kansas, where the violent conflict was beginning between the "free-state " and the pro-slavery settlers, and in the following year Brown, leaving the rest of his family at North Elba, joined them, settling near. Osawatomie and immediately becoming a conspicuous figure in the border warfare. His name became particularly well known in connexion with the so-called " Pottawatomie massacre," the killing in cold blood, on the 25th of May 1856, by men under his orders, of five pro-slavery settlers in retaliation for the murder a short time previously of five " free-state " settlers. He also on the 2nd of June, at the head of about thirty-men, captured Captain H. C. Pate and twenty-two pro-slavery men at Black Jack, and on the 3oth of August 1856, with a small body of supporters, vigorously resisted an attack of a superior pro-slavery force upon Osawatomie. Brown then visited the Eastern states for the purpose of raising money to be used in the Kansas struggle and of arousing the people against slavery. After spending a short time in Kansas, in 1858-1859 he proceeded to carry out a long-cherished scheme for facilitating the escape of fugitive slaves by establishing in the mountains of Virginia a stronghold in which such fugitives could take refuge
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John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on. Intensely religious in his nature, Brown possessed something of the gloomy fanaticism of his Puritan ancestors. The secret of his whole career lies, in his emphatic conviction, to use thewords of Wendell Phillips, that he had "letters of marque from God"; that he had a divine commission to destroy slavery by violent means. He scouted the "milk and water principles" of the milder abolitionists, advocated vigorous resistance to the slave power, and expressed his ideas by actions rather than by words. It now seems that this policy aided very little in making Kansas a free state, and that the attack on Harper's Ferry, while creating much feeling at the moment, had very little effect on the subsequent course of events. It is safe to assume that secession and civil war would have followed the election of Lincoln if there had been no such raid into Virginia. Brown was twice married and was the father of twenty children, eight of whom died in early childhood. His sons aided him in all his undertakings, two of them being killed at Harper's Ferry; and Owen Brown, who died in 1889, was long the only survivor of the attack. See the life (191o) by O. G. Villard, and F. B. Sanborn's Life and Letters of John Brown (Boston, 1885) ; R. J. Hinton's John Brown and His Men (New York, 1894) ; James Redpath's Public Life of Captain John Brown (Boston, 186o) ; Von Holst's essay, John Brown (Boston, 1889); and J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850 (New York, 1890-1906). End of Article: BROWN, JOHN (1800-1859) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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