In fact, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, whose refrain, “his truth keeps marching on,” didn’t originally refer to Lincoln but to Brown, whose body was then freshly “a mouldering in the grave.” Enigmatic and dynamic, he had a mesmerizing effect on people and the power of his personality inspired the conflagration of the Civil War.
Aided Fugitive Slaves as a Young Man
Born in Torrington, Connecticut in 1800, to a pious and patriotic farmer, he grew to hate slavery as a boy. Like his father, he became an abolitionist and was already aiding fugitive slaves as a young man in Hudson, Ohio.
Brown, a devout Christian who often quoted the Bible, lived in a number of locations over the course of his nearly 60 years. Among his residences were those in Richmond, Pennsylvania, Kent and Richfield, Ohio, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, Springfield, Massachusetts, and North Elba, New York. He engaged in a number of businesses, including wool production and animal husbandry, without much success, and was constantly in debt.
As early as 1837, following the murder of abolitionist journalist, Elijah Lovejoy, Brown vowed to devote his life to the end of slavery. By 1847, he had devised a plan to lead a guerilla army into the South to entice slaves to fight for their freedom. He described it that year to Frederick Douglass.
Moves to North Elba to Help Black Farmers
In April, 1848 he visited Gerrit Smith, the wealthy radical abolitionist, for the first time at his home in Peterboro, New York. Smith shared Brown’s obsession with ending slavery, and they formed a close association. Following their meeting, Brown moved his family to North Elba, New York, in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, to help blacks whom Smith had given land to farm in that area.
Farming in the Adirondacks was difficult because of the rocky soil and harsh climate, and with the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Brown became more pro-active in his abolitionist militancy. However, it wasn’t until the Kansas War that Brown, the military leader, made his appearance.
Fights for a Free Kansas
On May 30, 1854, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act nullified the Missouri Compromise and allowed territories north of Missouri to choose whether or not to allow slavery. It led to a conflict between antislavery and proslavery groups in the territory of Kansas. The five eldest sons of Brown, who fathered 20 children with two wives, decided to move there and join the antislavery forces. In August, 1854, John Jr. wrote and asked his father to join them. Brown was reluctant at first, but after hearing of his sons’ difficulties, agreed to join them and to bring guns as requested.
At the end of the summer of 1855, Brown brought another son, Oliver, and son-in-law, Henry Thompson, with him. On October 7, 1855, they arrived and within two months, they were fighting with the antislavery army. Brown quickly emerged as a leader, becoming known to all as Captain Brown.
In May, 1856, Brown initiated the killing of five proslavery settlers at Pottawatomie, in retaliation against the murders of antislavery settlers. He followed it by leading a victory at the Battle of Black Jack over a much larger force of proslavery forces. Later, he overcame even greater odds when he defended the settlement of Osawatomie where he lived at that time with 30 men against an army of 250.
Following the Pottawatomie killings, however, a warrant charging Brown with murder was served, and thereafter he became a fugitive from justice, devoting all his time to organizing his guerrilla army, while constantly moving from Boston to Kansas, and spending periods in Iowa, Canada, and North Elba. Funding his mission were the Secret Six: Gerrit Smith, and five New Englanders: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin Sanborn, Samuel Gridley Howe, Theodore Parker, and George Stearns.
When rumors leaked in 1858 of his intentions to invade the South, Brown undertook a mission to Kansas during which rescued 12 slaves from Missouri and escorted them to Canada by way of the Underground Railroad through Iowa, Chicago, and Detroit.
Assault on Harpers Ferry
The following year he prepared his assault on slavery, targeting the armory at Harpers Ferry in northern Virginia, in order to gather guns to arm the slaves. He rented a farm about five miles from the armory. Here his 21 men, including three of his sons, prepared for the attack.
During the wee hours of October 17, 1859, Brown and 18 of his men (three had been left behind to guard their supplies) took control of the armory guarded only by two watchmen. They also took 30 local residents as hostages. Brown could easily have left with a supply of weapons to arm a band of slaves who had left the local plantations, but for some reason he stalled. Before long armed locals set up in the surrounding hills and continued to increase in number, shooting some of Brown’s men, and trapping Brown and the rest in a small engine house. Finally, federal troops arrived. After Brown refused to surrender, they captured Brown and his remaining men alive.
Though the raid was a failure, Brown turned it into a great victory with eloquent speeches at his trial. After being sentenced to hang, Brown was barraged by visitors and interviewers, and continued to use this platform to attack slavery.
At his execution, 3,000 soldiers were stationed to prevent his rescue. At the hour of his death, church bells tolled and cannons saluted him throughout the North. His body was brought to North Elba, and on December 8, he began to moulder in his grave.
References
Stephen B. Oates, To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
Louis A. DeCaro, Fire from the Midst of You": A Religious Life of John Brown (New York: NYU Press, 2002).
Tom Calarco - Tom Calarco is the author and editor of five books on the Underground Railroad, the latest, Places of the Underground Railroad, to be ...
