John Brown Essay, Research Paper
Born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800, John Brown was the
son of a wandering New Englander. Brown spent much of his youth in
Ohio, where he was taught in local schools to resent compulsory
education and by his parents to revere the Bible and hate slavery. As a
boy he herded cattle for General William Hull s army during the war of
1812; later he served as foreman of his family s tannery. In 1820 he
married Dianthe Lusk, who bore him seven children; five years later they
moved to Pennsylvania to operate a tannery of their own. Within a year
after Dianthe s death in 1831, Brown wed sixteen year old Mary Anne
Day, by whom he fathered thirteen more children.
During the next twenty-four years Brown built and sold several
tanneries, speculated in land sales, raised sheep, and established a
brokerage for wool growers. Every venture failed, for he was too much
a visionary, not enough a businessman. As his financial burdens
multiplied, his thinking became increasingly metaphysical and he began
to brook over the plight of the weak and oppressed. He frequently sought
the company of blacks, for two years living in a freedmen s community
in North Elba, New York. In time he became a militant abolitionist, a
conductor on the Underground Railroad, and the organizer of a
self-protection league for free blacks and fugitive slaves.
By the time he was fifty, Brown was entranced by visions of slave
uprisings, during which racists paid horribly for their sins, and he came
to regard himself as commissioned by God to make that vision a reality.
In August 1885 he followed five of his sons to Kansas to help make the
state a haven for anti-slavery settlers. The following year, his hostility
toward slave-staters exploded after they burned and pillaged the
free-state community of Lawrence. Having organized a militia unit
within his Osawatomie River colony, Brown led it on a mission of
revenge. On the evening of May twenty-third, 1856, he and six
followers, including four of his sons, visited the homes of pro-slavery
men along Pottawatomie Creek, dragged their unarmed inhabitants into
the night, and hacked them to death with long-edged swords. At once,
Old Brown of Osawatomie became a feared and hated target of
slave-staters.
In autumn 1856, temporarily defeated but still committed to his
vision of a slave insurrection, Brown returned to Ohio. There and during
two subsequent trips to Kansas, he developed a grandiose plan to free
slaves throughout the South. Provided with moral and financial support
from prominent New England abolitionists, Brown began by raiding
plantations in Missouri but accomplished little. IN the summer of 1859
he transferred his operations to western Virginia, collected and army of
twenty-one men, planned to arm the thousands of chattels who, learning
of his crusade, would flock to his side. Instead, numerous bands of
militia and a company of United States Marines under Bvt. Colonel
Robert E. Lee hastened to the river village, where they trapped the
raiders inside the fire-engine house and on the eighteenth stormed the
building. The fighting ended with ten of Brown s people killed and
seven captured, Brown among them.
During his trial, Brown s last speech attempting to justify himself
infront of the Commonwealth of Virginia in Charlestown goes as
follows:
I have, may it please the court, a few words to say. In the first
pl
on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean
thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and
there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved
them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to
have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended.
I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to
excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make the insurrection.
I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer
such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which
I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor
of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case)-
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,
brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class- and suffered and
sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right;
and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of
reward rather than punishment.
This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of
God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least
the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would
that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me,
further, to remember them that are in bonds, as bound within them. I
endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to
understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have
interfered as I have done- as I have always freely admitted I have done-
in behalf of His despised poor was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is
deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the
ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my
children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose
rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments- I submit;
so let it be done!
Let me say one word further.
I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my
trial. Considering all the circumstances it has been more generous than I
expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated that from the
first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design
against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or
excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never
encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that
kind.
Let me say also a word in regard to the statements made by some
of those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them
that I have induced them to join me. but the contrary is true. I do not say
this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of
them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at
their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word
of conversation with till the day they came to me; and that was for the
purpose I have stated.
Now I have done.
Brown was, of course, executed for seizing the federal arsenal at
Harper s ferry in October, 1859, for the purpose of arming slaves for an
insurrection.