Early Life
John Brown, the fourth of Owen and Ruth Brown's eight children, was born on May 9, 1800. Owen Brown had grown up poor. Struggling to survive, he had come under the influence of a Calvinist pastor who preached that people were sinners who must strive to earn God's mercy and that slavery was a sin against God. After marrying the pious daughter of a preacher, the couple's children were raised in strict accordance with Calvinist beliefs, and constantly exhorted to fear God. The family moved to Ohio in 1805, and Owen Brown soon became a prominent man in his new community. After both a newborn daughter and his wife died in 1808, Brown's father remarried. However, he was often away on business, and the need to look after his own children and the children he would have with his new wife meant that there was little time for Brown, who developed an arrogant nature and sought out the company of older men.

A love of religion drove Brown to study the Bible in earnest but a lack of funds forced him to abandon his dream of becoming a minister. Despite a passion for reading, he was an indifferent student and never finished school, choosing to work at his father's tannery. Although influenced by his father, the young Brown later claimed that his own hatred of slavery first developed when he witnessed the beating of a slave roughly his own age during a trip to sell beef to soldiers at Detroit during the War of 1812. After founding a tannery with his adopted brother, Brown developed an inflexible nature, as well as a distaste for any form of leisure or entertainment. As he prospered, he gained a high opinion of himself and had no tolerance for debate.

Marriage to Dianthe Lusk, his housekeeper's daughter, whose piety exceeded his own, drove Brown to become more active in his church. The workers in his tannery were forced to attend services, while his family was expected to share his inflexible religious beliefs. Brown's strict demands were too much for his wife, and friends began to worry about her sanity. Rather than change himself, Brown chose to move the family and business to Pennsylvania in May 1826.

An industrious man, Brown prospered and fifteen men were working in his tannery by the fall. Once his business was on solid ground, he threw himself into improving the newly settled community, although he still had no tolerance for other people's opinions about politics or religion. If he felt that his neighbours lacked sufficient morals, he would labor to persuade them to follow his lead. Brown's childhood dream of becoming a preacher was fulfilled when he helped found a church, and he would often preach sermons based on the Old Testament.

A recurring illness in 1831 made it difficult to properly supervise the business, which led to money troubles. One of his sons died, and then his wife passed away in 1832, shortly after giving birth to another child. Unable to care for the children on his own, Brown hired a housekeeper, and promptly fell in love with her sixteen-year-old sister, Mary-Ann Day. Since she was a physically strong woman who believed in submitting to her husband, they were a good match.

1831 would prove to be a pivotal year that made the debate on slavery a national issue. William Lloyd Garrison had started his uncompromisingly abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, and Nat Turner led a slave revolt that failed, but sent waves of fear throughout the South. The idea of abolitionism spread and a National Antislavery Society was formed in December 1833. Until then, the dominant thought among people opposed to slavery was colonization, which campaigned to free slaves and send them back to Africa. The advocates of colonization believed that while blacks did not deserve to be enslaved, they also did not belong in the United States, which reflected a deep racism. Fierce arguments broke out between pro-colonization supporters and the small but growing numbers of abolitionists.

Financial Troubles
Brown's financial troubles had increased in intensity, and he returned to Ohio to start over. A huge land boom was underway and Brown made large investments in property, relying on borrowed money. The national financial system had not recovered from President Andrew Jackson's destruction of the United States Bank, so the unchecked land boom led to the Panic of 1837. Numerous friends and relatives had lost money, but Brown had been especially rash and demonstrated poor business sense, running up huge debts.

Although Brown found partners to back him in two cattle drives in 1838 and 1839, the drives were not successful. Instead of repaying the debts, he ended up juggling loans and investments from different parties in a desperate attempt to keep the creditors at bay, which simply worsened the situation. Both the number of lawsuits and his family grew, so Brown often found it difficult to put food on the table. In September 1842, he gave up and declared bankruptcy. The overwhelming weight of the debts was gone, but so was much of his pride. The following year, dysentery killed four of his youngest children.

A partnership where Brown managed a wealthy businessman's flock of sheep restored his finances. Brown even became an agent for wool growers and although the United States government had greatly lowered tariffs on foreign wool, his agency became the preferred representative of many wool growers. While he was a diligent worker, he was a bad businessman, who refused to change prices to adapt to market fluctuations, since that would mean admitting that he was wrong. As the business began to fail, Brown fell into debt once again. Disregarding the advice of everyone in the wool business, he even went to England to find buyers for his wool even though English wool was selling in the United States despite a tariff.

Growing Involvement in Abolitionism
Meanwhile, the abolitionists had won over many of the colonizers, and Brown joined the struggle to gain full rights for blacks in Ohio. Blacks were not permitted to sit in the front at his church but Brown defied the congregation and invited several to sit in his family's pew. On November 7, 1837, while attending an abolitionist meeting with his father, Brown had stood up and sworn to devote his life to the cause of abolitionism. Fueled by a desire to help end slavery, Brown became a member of the Underground Railroad in Ohio, frequently hiding escaped slaves at his farm. Unlike Garrison, who preached non-violence, Brown was beginning to think that violent action would be required to end slavery. In 1847, he even told Frederick Douglass of his plan to conceal small groups of men in the Allegheny Mountains, who would periodically raid plantations and offer shelter to escaped slaves, thus destroying slavery by stealing the slaves.

The wool business had failed but Brown persuaded a wealthy philanthropist to give him a free farm on a huge piece of land at North Elba, New York, near the Adirondacks, that had been donated to a small colony of escaped slaves, where he would help them run their farms.

The introduction in 1850 of a fugitive slave law where escaped slaves in the free states had to be returned to their owners stirred up the abolitionists and filled Brown with fury. Although no slave catchers came to the area where Brown lived, he still took it upon himself to rally blacks and sympathetic whites in his community to prepare to resist slave catchers by force. Observing the freed blacks' fear of slave catchers strengthened his belief that violence would be needed to liberate the slaves. By this time, the fight for abolitionism had replaced his desire to succeed in business.

This willingness to embrace the struggle for abolitionism may have reflected the fact that his personal life was not going well. Brown spent the early 1850s striving to settle another wave of lawsuits, while his wife had given birth to his nineteenth child, who soon died, the ninth to do so. Worse, his older children were rejecting his blind faith in the will of God.

Bleeding Kansas
Slavery was an extremely divisive issue in the United States, therefore the Missouri Compromise had been adopted in 1820 to prevent conflict. New states above the southern boundary of Missouri (excluding Missouri) would join the Union as a free state, while states located below Missouri automatically became slave states. However, the compromise was broken when Kansas Territory was opened to settlement in 1854. Since the residents of Kansas would vote whether to enter the Union as a slave or free state, this threatened the delicate balance between the two sides. The territory soon became a national issue as abolitionist and pro-slavery groups competed to send more settlers to Kansas in order to tilt the balance in their favor, and the violence on both sides would reach such a level that it would be called Bleeding Kansas.

Drawn by the offer of free land, five of Brown's sons decided to go to Kansas, where they could start over while helping to resist the spread of slavery. Although Brown had moved the rest of his family to the settlement in North Elba, New York, he visited his sons in Kansas in the summer of 1855. News that pro-slavery people based in Missouri had threatened abolitionists confirmed his decision. Responding to his sons' request that he bring weapons so that they could defend themselves, Brown appeared at their camp with a wagon load of supplies, including rifles and swords.

Intending to intimidate the abolitionist settlers into leaving Kansas, pro-slavery leaders led 2,500 of their fellow Missourians over the border to vote in the election for the territorial legislature on March 30, 1855. Greatly outnumbering the actual residents, the Missourians elected a territorial legislature that was not simply pro-slavery but actively discriminated against abolitionists. Even settlers who did not share the abolitionists' zeal to free slaves were offended by the challenge to democracy. Believing that the interference had invalidated the convention, Kansas residents held a convention in September 1855 where they voted to make Kansas a free state but to also forbid free blacks from emigrating to the territory. Although vocal supporters of the free-soilers, as the abolitionist settlers were called, Brown and his sons were preoccupied with the struggle to survive the constant storms. As the Browns slowly built more solid shelter and gathered their first crop, they became more involved in the free soiler movement.

Angered that the free soilers had refused to abandon Kansas, a small army of 1,500 Missourians marched towards Lawrence, the center of the abolitionists, in October. Determined to resist the pro-slavery men, Brown and several of his sons traveled to Lawrence to aid in its defence. Although it soon became clear that Brown had little interest in peace, leaders of the free soilers managed to negotiate a peace with the pro-slavery men to prevent a bloodbath.

As friction and fighting continued between free soilers and pro-slavery supporters, men on both sides lived with a constant threat of violence. Brown's eldest son John Jr. was elected captain of a local militia unit organized by free soilers in preparation for the coming conflict. The arrival of a pro-slavery judge in their district naturally increased tensions, especially since he only sentenced free soilers for crimes, even though pro-slavery settlers in the area had also committed crimes.

The wounding of a pro-slavery sheriff on April 23, 1856 by an unknown assailant near Lawrence brought tensions to a fever pitch and a mob of pro-slavery men killed two free soilers in revenge. The pro-slavery press fanned the fires until a federal marshal called for volunteers to impose order in Lawrence. Realizing that they finally had an opportunity to eradicate the center of the detested free soilers, large groups of Missouri men armed with rifles and whiskey mobilized, as did the free soiler militia companies. Hearing that the pro-slavery men were marching on Lawrence, Brown accompanied the militia unit commanded by his son to Lawrence. However, the Missouri men had also brought cannon, so the free soilers had surrendered, and much of the town was torched.

Pottawatomie Massacre
The members of the company were debating their next move when news arrived of the savage beating of Senator Charles Sumner, a vocal abolitionist, by Congressman Preston Brooks in revenge for a speech where Sumner had called slavery a harlot. Although John Jr. was more concerned by the pro-slavery army that remained at Lawrence and refused to participate, Brown led his four unmarried sons, Frederick, Owen, Salmon and Oliver, as well as Thomas Weiner, Henry Thompson, Theodore Winer and James Townsley, on a mission of revenge. During the course of the night of May 24/25, a total of five known pro-slavery supporters, including a man and his two adult sons, were dragged out of their homes and hacked to death with swords. Two other men found in one of the homes were allowed to go free after they had satisfied the vigilantes that they had not threatened Free State settlers.

This massacre has produced a great deal of debate as historians have tried to determine what drove Brown to instigate murder. Having arrived too late to defend Lawrence, he may have felt that a gesture was necessary. Several of the slain men were members of a local pro-slavery dominated court that was viewed as repressing the rights of free soil men. There is some evidence that the dead men had threatened free-state supporters, including Brown's family, which would have made it a preventative strike, especially given the tense situation that existed at the time. Furthermore, the free-state men felt outnumbered by the pro-slavery settlers, who were supported by mobs from Missouri, and may have intended the slaughter to be a warning, where terror was used to balance their small numbers.

Knowledge that his father was dying may have caused Brown to consider whether he was fulfilling his vow to fight slavery. It seems likely that Brown wanted to send a message to pro-slavery men that God's retribution could not be denied. His fascination with the Old Testament and its emphasis on the slaughter of anyone who opposed the chosen of God was undeniably a key factor, and the massacre does sound like a passage from the Old Testament.

The exact nature of the role played by Brown in the execution is still unknown. Brown's sons and son-in-law, who actually committed the killings, did not blindly follow their father. They had rejected his deep faith, to his great disappointment, so they probably committed the murders because they had been convinced that the pro-slavery men were dangerous and deserved to die. However, all of the witnesses agree that Brown was the leader of the party, since he questioned the suspects and decided who would be taken into the woods and who would be spared. Therefore, it seems likely that Brown manipulated tense, violently inclined young men to carry out the slaughter that he wanted. Whether his older sons could have prevented the killing is an interesting question. Whether he viewed this slaughter as an opportunity to impose his will on his younger sons, now that his eldest son was more recognized in the community than him is another good question.

Brown's sons John Jr. and Jason were stunned when they learned what their father had done. When questioned by his son, Brown replied that he had not committed the killings, but had approved of them. Although a couple of men joined Brown's small band hiding in the woods, most of the free soilers had rejected his actions and were trying to defuse tensions. Having gathered enough evidence to determine that Brown was the main suspect, pro-slavery men searched for him and his accomplices, and posses ransacked the houses of free soilers who were believed to be sheltering Brown. Many people on both sides feared that the massacre would spark a violent conflagration. Both John Jr. and Jason were arrested, while the houses built by the Brown clan were burnt to the ground.

Not all of the free soilers wanted to avoid conflict. One free state militia captain persuaded Brown to join his militia company and oppose the pro-slavery men that were burning and looting. Their first confrontation with the Missouri militia at Black Jack quickly descended into confused shooting but the Missouri militia captain eventually surrendered, mistakenly believing that the free state men had received reinforcements. The encounter was a victory for Brown but his campaign came to a swift end when fifty cavalrymen found his camp and forced him to release his prisoners. Although the federal forces focused on finding and breaking up bands of armed men on both sides, none of them arrested Brown, even though there were warrants for his arrest. However, Brown had succeeded in stirring up people's emotions and groups of partisans on both sides raided opposing sympathizers, burning cabins and stealing property.

Hoping to strangle the free state movement, Missouri militia blocked the border crossings and refused to let anyone suspected of abolitionist sympathies from entering the territory. This approach simply strengthened the will of the northern backers who raised money and organized armed emigrant wagon trains that took routes that avoided Missouri. Osawatomie Meanwhile, Brown confined himself to sending his side of the story to newspapers. Instead of taking part in raids on pro-slavery settlements by free state forces in mid-August, he was organizing a company of "Kansas Regulars" as a disciplined force to fight for a free Kansas. On August 22, he led his small band to Osawatomie, where several free state militia companies were gathering to resist a Missouri force that was expected to take revenge for recent free soiler raids on pro-slavery settlements. However, the Missouri force was ambushed and defeated by other free state militia before it reached the settlement. Instead, Brown and several other bands of free state militia raided the homes of a number of pro-slavery men, liberating cattle and horses.

Unknown to Brown and the other free state captains, the governor had been replaced by John Geary, an appointee with the backbone needed to deal with the situation. Since Geary was en route, the lieutenant governor proclaimed that the free state leaders had commenced an insurrection, which gave Missouri militia leaders an excuse to lead 250 men to Osawatomie. Brown's son Frederick was killed in cold blood, and messengers warned Brown to come back to the settlement. Finding himself in charge of roughly 30 men, Brown refused to back down even though he was completely outnumbered. When the Missouri men's cannon opened fire, Brown's men knew it was time to retreat, even if he did not. Brown managed to escape, and as he watched the Missouri men burn the settlement, he vowed to take the war to the slaveowners. Afterwards, he refused to take part in retaliatory raids launched by the free staters or help defend Lawrence, but focused on recruiting more men for his regular company. The massacre had made him a celebrity, and the stand at Osawatomie enhanced his image, earning him the nickname Osawatomie Brown.

Post-Kansas
Governor Geary reached Kansas on September 9 and announced that he would not permit partisan warfare between settlers. Although free state men were initially reluctant to place much faith in Geary's words, they took him more seriously when the governor sent federal cavalry to stop a Missouri army of 2,700 men from threatening Lawrence on September 14. At the same time, free state militia leaders who continued to raid and loot were arrested. A quiet, peaceful Kansas held little interest for Brown, especially since there were warrants for his arrest. Leaving Kansas with his family, he returned to Ohio, where he relied on his fame to gain introduction to powerful abolitionists such as governor Salmon Chase.

Armed with letters of introduction, he traveled to Boston in January 1857 to seek financing from abolitionist committees for his plan to outfit a regular company that would defend the free state communities in Kansas. While William Lloyd Garrison's firm belief in non-violence meant that the two men naturally clashed, other abolitionists were impressed by Osawatomie Brown. The Massachusetts Abolitionist Committee quickly agreed to pay for the purchase of rifles and revolvers. It helped that Brown was known as a defender of free state settlers, not a murderer of men with pro-slavery sympathies.

The new governor of Kansas received nothing but contempt from Brown, who unfairly called Geary a tool of pro-slavery elements in the federal government. The fact that the new governor had actually brought peace to Kansas was conveniently ignored by Brown, who would allow nothing to interfere with his crusade. While he continuously criticized the federal government for supporting pro-slavery men who burned homesteads and killed innocent men, he never mentioned the Pottawatomie Massacre.

Brown traveled throughout New England and New York, making speeches in front of anti-slavery groups. He proved to be a natural propagandist, who drummed up support for his cause by writing to pro-abolitionist newspapers, while befriending people who shared his beliefs and were also correspondents for those newspapers. Realizing the importance of his image, he also played the role of a firebrand by carrying an intimidating collection of pistols and knives, which he would let sheltered rich people see. Unfortunately, many people signed subscriptions promising to give money, but very few actually gave cash because the country was clearly heading for another financial panic.

Preparation for Insurrection
At the same time, there were signs that Brown had plans much larger than raising a company to defend free soilers in Kansas. In March 1857, he signed a contract with a Connecticut forge-master to produce a thousand pikes. He had also met several times with Hugh Forbes, an English adventurer who had fought in the Italian Revolution of 1848. After offering Forbes the position of military instructor, Brown revealed that instead of simply protecting white settlers in Kansas, he intended to wage guerrilla warfare in the South.

The two men soon began arguing over strategy. Forbes essentially wanted to swoop down into Virginia and Maryland, free as many slaves as possible, and transport them to Canada before the slave-owners could organize a proper pursuit. The strategy was to push the slave frontier further and further south until the slave-owners would find it impossible to continue. Believing that this approach would take too long, Brown wanted to spark a slave insurrection in Virginia where his small company would be the core around which the slaves would flock. Once they had been joined by hundreds of slaves, they would seize the weapons stored at the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and then retreat to the mountains where the rebellion would attract even more slaves. Inspired by the act of resistance, abolitionist supporters in the North would hold a Northern Convention that would replace the current pro-slavery administration.

Unsurprisingly, Forbes thought that the plan was doomed to failure. Although Forbes had been hired for his supposed military experience, Brown had also been studying guerrilla campaigns, such as Haiti in the late 1790s and Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, and thought that his plan was sound. Although he did not tell anyone, he had already been mapping out federal arsenals throughout the South, as if he was intending to launch a campaign that would cover all of the Southern states.

Aside from Forbes' opposition, Brown's plans were complicated by the stabilization of the situation in Kansas. Governor Geary had surprised everyone by actually remaining impartial, giving free staters the opportunity to achieve victory at the polls, so several of Brown's followers had returned to peaceful farming. Since Brown had refused to explain his plans to his financial backers, they were naturally frustrated that he had not returned to Kansas to actually raise a company as planned. Furthermore, there no longer seemed any point since the free staters had won a decisive victory in the October 5 elections, so several of Brown's backers refused to allow their money to be used for violence. Brown still managed to attract a few recruits, basically young, restless men seeking an adventure and a few idealists driven by a hatred of slavery. Although a constant lack of funds made it difficult to properly train the men, they proved to be dedicated.

Brown spent most of February hiding at Frederick Douglass' home and although the former slave naturally approved of striking a blow against slave owners, he saw numerous flaws in Brown's plan. Even though Brown refused to listen to any criticism of the plan, Douglass did try to raise support among the black communities in the north. While Brown was reluctant to admit the possibility of failure, he did believe that even a failed insurrection would provoke a crisis that would lead to war, a war which would end in the slaves' freedom.

In the end, Brown's unshakeable belief that he was the instrument of God's will kept him going throughout every setback. However, his perseverance was starting to pay off. Six of his backers had accepted the view that slavery would never be destroyed peacefully, and they formed a secret Committee of Six to raise funds. Although unaware of his specific destination, they did know that he intended to attack Virginia.

Brown had never considered that while northerners hated slavery, the majority were also opposed to equality for blacks, so all of the northern states aside from New England had laws that limited the rights of blacks. Many people believed that slavery was a southern problem and would have to be solved by southerners.

Chatham
While his little band trained at Springdale, Iowa, Brown continued to travel to solicit support. On May 8, 1858, he visited Chatham, Canada, home to a sizeable community of escaped slaves, where he explained his plan to found a new nation in the south, a state populated by freed blacks. Delegates from other black communities had gathered to vote on the constitution for the new state, although none of the more famous leaders, such as Harriet Tubman or Frederick Douglas, attended the meeting. The constitution was approved and Brown was elected commander-in-chief. However, he failed to persuade any to risk their lives by returning to the south, which says much about how they viewed his plan, especially after they had worked so hard to carve out their new lives in Canada.

Return to Kansas
After parting company with Brown, an angry Forbes had written many letters demanding payment. When the money had not appeared, he had warned Washington politicians that Brown was planning to do something. Fearing the consequences if their conspiracy was discovered, Brown's backers told him to postpone his grand plan, and carry out a diversion in Kansas to divert attention from suspicion of formenting insurrection in the US. Faced with reduced funds, Brown had the little band disperse in late June, although he pledged to contact them when he was ready.

Returning to Kansas in early July, Brown built a fort near the Missouri border, while he prepared to protect free staters against raids by pro-slavery men in rough cooperation with James Montgomery, whose company of free-soil guerrillas had tried to drive pro-slavery settlers out of the territory. However, the free state settlers did not need protection since aside from a few minor confrontations with pro-slavery supporters, it was a calm period. After encountering an escaped slave whose family was about to be sold, Brown felt that he had an ideal opportunity to strike a blow against slavery. Since the slaves were held on a farm near the Kansas-Missouri border, Brown led his followers into Missouri and freed eleven slaves from two planters, one of whom was killed while trying to resist.

Slave-owners detested the abolitionists who helped fugitive slaves escape to Canada but an armed raid below the Mason-Dixon Line to liberate slaves was unacceptable. The pro-slavery press naturally howled for Brown's arrest but even many Kansans opposed his actions, since the raid might re-start the conflict that had finally burned out. Peacemakers on both sides of the border were able to ensure that violence did not break out.

In late January, Brown led his followers and the escaped slaves out of Kansas, after first forcing a much larger federal force to flee when it tried to block his path. Abolitionist supporters, including Allan Pinkerton, helped them make their way to Detroit, where the fugitives took a ferry to Canada. Despite a reward offered by the president for his arrest, Brown was able to walk around in public without fear of arrest, although he had grown a long beard to conceal his identity.

Instead of realizing that fewer northerners supported him than he had thought, news that some Missouri planters had fled their homes reinforced his belief that striking a great blow at Harper's Ferry would bring down the slave-owning system.

Harper's Ferry
Brown and his little band settled in at a farm about seven miles away from Harper's Ferry. To avoid suspicion, his daughter and daughter-in-law kept house for the men, who had to spend most of the daytime hiding in the attic in order to avoid awkward questions about why so many single men were staying in a house doing nothing. Most of the men thought that they would be taking part in a large-scale raid to liberate slaves, not the capture of a federal arsenal, which would be held while slaves and sympathetic whites arrived. The fact that the plantations with large numbers of slaves and a few white overseers were located much further south in Virginia did not bother Brown. The recruits would then be sent in small parties to spread liberation through the south, while seizing other arsenals to arm the slaves. News of his army would spark uprisings throughout the south.

Having little respect for the United States army, Brown did not fear interference. He had hoped that black leaders in Canada and the northeast would work with him to rally the slaves in the area to join Brown's band but they declined to provide any support, other than encouragement. The refusal of his old friend Frederick Douglass must have been a harsh blow and would have made anyone else realize the futility of the plan.

Brown found recruiting men more difficult than expected. Most of his followers in Kansas chose not to join this venture. His sons Salmon and Jason simply refused, one man got cold feet and never appeared, only one recruit from the Chatham Convention actually arrived, and Brown's own daughter Ruth defied her father by forbidding her husband Henry Thompson to join the expedition, although Henry's brothers Dauphin and William did agree to follow Brown. In the end, Brown only had twenty-one recruits, including three of his sons: Owen, Watson and Oliver. Five of the men were black, including Dangerfield Newby, a freed slave who had joined Brown after failing to buy his wife and children out of slavery. Most of the men were in their early to mid-twenties.

Bored and tense after being cooped up, the recruits did not embrace Brown's plan but they were so strongly influenced by his personality that his offer to resign as commander was refused. The fact that young, inexperienced men were concerned about the plan explains why Brown had failed to attract anyone with real military training. Although he maintained his hold on the recruits, Brown was worried that both his financial support and the flow of recruits had dried up.

The mission may have seemed doomed to failure, but it took place near the end of the age of filibusters, when small bands of American adventurers tried to take over foreign countries. The most famous was William Walker, who had seized control of Nicaragua with an army not much larger than Brown's. The failure of the federal government to arrest Brown in Kansas or afterwards reinforced his belief in the ineffectiveness of federal forces, ignoring the idea that the failure to arrest him simply reflected a lack of will to enforce what was probably viewed as an unjust warrant. Also, he completely underestimated the overriding fear of slave uprisings in the south, therefore he was unaware that every community had its own unit of militia.

Since Brown was unable to keep a secret, roughly 80 people had a general idea of the planned invasion, while a number of government officials knew that he was up to something. However, no one either took it seriously or put together enough of the pieces to send troops to stop him.

Despite being in the region for a considerable period of time, Brown made no effort to forge contacts among the local slaves or gather any information about the area other than the general layout of the buildings and streets. Nor did he prepare an escape plan if the slaves did not join his uprising.

Brown's resolve had been slipping but when a new recruit made a sizeable financial donation, he felt that it was the final sign that he had been waiting for. The revolution would commence on the evening of Sunday, October 16. Harper's Ferry was a small town on a narrow piece of land where the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers met. The town had a population of roughly 3,000 people, including more than 1,200 free blacks, while there were more than 18,000 slaves in the area around the town. The streets were almost deserted and the arsenal was lightly guarded, so the initial stage of the operation proceeded smoothly. Owen Brown and two other raiders were left behind as a rear guard with the wagon load of pikes that would be distributed the slaves once they had been freed. Once the bridges that crossed the two rivers had been captured, a small raiding party was sent out to seize several prominent residents, including Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew of the first president, as hostages, while ten slaves were also liberated.

Although the raiders gained control of the arsenal, a relief night watchman was wounded in a failed attempt to take him prisoner. The watchman then warned the conductor of an express train that had just arrived. The conductor came to investigate, which led to shooting and the death of the station baggage master, a free black man. The shooting alerted the townspeople that they had been attacked. While Brown was waiting patiently for the hordes of slaves to flock to the armory, the residents were terrified that it was another slave insurrection, like Nat Turner's in 1831. Church bells were rung to warn nearby towns, who then alerted their neighbors. Soon, militiamen and local farmers were coming to Harper's Ferry.

No slaves appeared that night but by late next morning, the dozen men with Brown in the arsenal were surrounded and under fire. Early in the morning it had been clear that the insurrection had not succeeded. Although there was still time to escape Brown just waited inside the armory, as if he simply could not conceive that the plan would fail. In fact, he was so confident that the hostages would ensure the raiders' safety that he ordered breakfast for his men, the liberated slaves, and the hostages, including recently arrived workers. While he waited, a militia company pushed through his rear guard and seized control of the bridge, blocking an escape into Maryland. Brown made two attempts to negotiate the band's freedom in exchange for the hostages' release but the raiders sent to parley were either taken prisoner or simply shot despite carrying white flags. By late afternoon, so many militia companies had arrived that the town was bursting with armed mobs in various stages of intoxication. The three raiders guarding another building were forced to flee but two were killed and one was taken prisoner. Several of the raiders captured by the mob were killed in cold blood.

Fearing that it was a serious insurrection, President Buchanan sent three companies of artillery and ninety Marines, under the command of Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, assisted by Lieutenant Jeb Stuart. People learned that the insurrection was led by Osawatomie Brown because Stuart recognized him from Kansas. Brown spent the night listening to two of his sons bleed to death. By morning, only five of the raiders were still able to fight. Brown refused to surrender unless he and the remaining raiders would be set free, so the marines stormed the building. The lieutenant in charge of the storming party stabbed Brown, who survived only because the officer had been summoned from the parade ground and still had his dress sword.

Ten of the raiders died at Harper's Ferry, five escaped, and the rest were captured and executed. Seven other people had died: two liberated slaves, three townsmen, one slaveholder and one Marine.

Afterwards, militia found the farmhouse that had been the raiders' base and seized all of Brown's papers, which he had inexplicably left there instead of sending them to one of his supporters where they would be safe. Even if the operation had been successful, the base might have been found during the search, so his plans and the names of his supporters would have been known. The only logical explanation is that he wanted the papers to be found to make the conspiracy seem larger than it was, which seems more than a bit unkind to his backers.

The insurrection had lasted thirty-six hours and not one slave had volunteered to join them. At least, no slaves were captured among Brown's party or were executed along with the raiders, but this may be due to the Virginia government's desire to maintain the image that their slaves were loyal. Some slaves may have supported Brown's party but sensibly disappeared when it became clear that the raid would fail. Although witnesses did see several slaves patrolling with pikes, they were slaves brought in with their masters who had been taken hostage. No slaves came in from surrounding estates, but some of the slaves brought in with hostages did manage to escape before Brown was captured.

One explanation why he remained when it was clear that there would be no uprising may be that he wanted to attract national attention, so the longer that he stayed in the federal armory, instead of fleeing to the hills, the better. He may also have hoped that abolitionists would arrive to help him. Although he never said so, it seems likely that Brown's real goal was to spread fear in the south, while stirring up passions on both sides to lead to a war. Basically, his political goals outweighed his military objectives.

Trial and Execution
Following his capture, Brown was interrogated for three hours by Lee, the governor, a senator, several congressmen, officers and reporters. Seizing the opportunity get his message out, Brown explained in detail that the purpose of the raid was to free the slaves. His final words during the interrogation would be prophetic. He warned the people of the south that the slavery question would be settled sooner than they wished and that the question would not be disposed of as easily as he was.

Although Brown had attacked a federal arsenal, the governor of Virginia ordered that he be tried in the state. Reporters were permitted to interview him, so his words were printed in newspapers throughout the northeast, which increased sympathy for him. Bleeding Kansas had shown Brown the power of the press to fuel anti-slavery sentiment. Brown had believed that even if the insurrection failed, it would spark a crisis that would lead to the destruction of the slavery system. The public trial, which gave him a forum to explain his motivations and attack slavery, enabled his wishes to come true.

The fact that the conflict had taken place a few miles from Washington, not on the distant frontier in Kansas, naturally attracted everyone's attention. Democrats, both northern and southern, claimed that Brown's plot was evidence of a conspiracy organized by the Republican party. Although Republican leaders denied any connection to Brown, his courage and willingness to die for his ideals won support. Many northerners believed that his methods were undeniably wrong, but his motivations were praiseworthy. Aware of the effect that Brown was having in the north, a number of pro-slavery editors and leading citizens worried that the trial was turning him into a martyr, but they were drowned out by the howls for blood.

Since Brown's personal papers had been seized, the Virginia governor had learned the names of his supporters. Many of the people incriminated in Brown's letters rightly denied that they had known anything of his plans, since the majority of his supporters had thought that they were backing him in Kansas, and knew nothing of the uprising in Virginia. However, the principal backers were filled with panic. After burning any related documents, several of them fled to Canada. Realizing that a rope, not prison, was waiting for him, Frederick Douglass made his way across the Canadian border.

Although most abolitionist leaders disapproved of Brown's methods, they naturally saw his value as a symbol, so people such as Garrison, Henry Ward Beecher, and Henry David Thoreau worked to make him into a martyr. Not all abolitionists supported Brown. Republican presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln stated openly that John Brown was not a Republican. These efforts simply confirmed to the South that the Northerners would never tolerate the southern way of life. Alarmed by the prospect of a slave rebellion, militia units throughout the south tightened controls over the slave population, while owners punished their slaves for the slightest offence to prevent the idea of rebellion from spreading.

When Brown's appointed defense counsel attempted to prove that the accused was insane, Brown refused to cooperate and the judge quickly dismissed the plea since it would prolong the trial. In fact, Brown worked hard to prove that he was sane because he could not be a martyr if he was insane. There is no clear evidence that he was insane, especially since most of the modern definitions of psychological problems did not exist in 1859. While he may not have been insane, his actions were definitely not sane. However, his actions were not that strange for the time, just his willingness to die for his beliefs. A number of people argued at the time that insanity was hereditary in Brown's family, and it is easy to dismiss his actions as those of a madman. Only two of his many children were accepted as being mad, and one of them, John Jr. had probably simply been overwhelmed by the treatment that he received after the Pottawatomie Massacre. Brown certainly was not sane by the standards of the time, where a racist society viewed blacks as cattle or at best, deserving of freedom, as long as they lived somewhere else. He also took the idea of hearing the word of God seriously, but then, so did many people, presumably most preachers.

Brown did cooperate with the efforts to make him a martyr by steadfastly denying that he had never intended to start a rebellion, simply to liberate slaves and take them to Canada. Brown was found guilty on November 2 and sentenced to hang a month later. All of the captured raiders, black and white, were also sentenced to hang. Some of Brown's friends and supporters schemed to break him out of prison but could not raise the necessary funds. Determined to become a martyr, Brown refused to be rescued and was hanged on December 2, 1859.

Many people believe that Brown's raid was a complete failure that accidentally stirred up passions on both sides, thus playing a key role in starting the Civil War. This belief ignores the idea that Brown deliberately provoked a reaction by the slave owners that he knew would lead to war, and he had often said that only war would free the slaves.

Related Movies:
Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940)
Directed by John Cromwell, starring Raymond Massey and Gene Lockhart
The story of Abe Lincoln's life from his early beginnings as a lawyer, through his debates with Stephen Douglas to his election as president of the United States.

Santa Fe Trail (1940)
Directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan
J.E.B. Stuart and George Custer are romantic rivals for the same woman, while trying to stop John Brown from starting a slave uprising at Harper's Ferry that would tear apart the United States. (please click here to read the review)

Seven Angry Men (1955)
Directed by Charles Marquis Warren, starring Raymond Massey and Dennis Weaver
Driven by a fanatical desire to free the slaves, John Brown participates in the fight between pro and anti-slavery advocates to settle Kansas, and then plans the raid on Harper's Ferry to spark a slave uprising in the South.

Skin Game (1971)
Directed by Paul Bogart, starring James Garner, Louis Gossett, Jr., and Susan Clark
A white man and a free black man travel from town to town in Missouri and Kansas pulling the same scam. Slave owners think they are buying a slave, but he runs away and the two men move on to the next town.

Further Reading:
To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown-Stephen B. Oates, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984.

The author acknowledges that the majority of previous works on Brown were passionately for or against the man, therefore he strived to present Brown as a complex individual who defied simple characterization as either a revolutionary dedicated to freeing the slaves or a psychopath who used abolition as a justification for his murderous impulses. Most important, Oates believes that Brown can not be understood without accepting the primary, overriding role of his Calvinist beliefs in his life.

John Brown's War Against Slavery-Robert E. McGlone, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

McGlone performs an in-depth analysis of whether insanity ran in Brown's family and whether Brown suffered from any psychological disorders. It is a good book, but instead of a straightforward biography, it examines the many debates about Brown, such as was he insane, why did he stay when the uprising had clearly failed, and why did a deeply religious man embrace violence? A chapter is devoted to each question, and McGlone provides well-thought-out answers, although the lack of testimony from Brown and his habit of never discussing his motives with confidants means that these questions can never really be answered. The book is not suitable for the general reader seeking an introduction to John Brown, but would be very useful for the student of Brown and the tumultuous period leading up to the Civil War. McGlone is a little too fixated on proving Oates wrong.

The Hanging of Old Brown: A story of slaves, statesmen and redemption-Gregory Toledo, Westport, Conneticut: Praeger, 2002.

It is a good summary of the growth of the slavery institution in the South and the slave revolts that led to the introduction of strict regulations that gave little opportunity for further revolts, so slaves reacting by burning down their owners' homes, killing themselves or running away. Toledo also explains the growing divide between the free north and slaveholding south, which would dominate almost every major political issue.


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