BROWN,
John, of Osawatomie, abolitionist, born in
Torrington, Connecticut, 9 May, 1800; executed in Charlestown, Virginia, 2
Dec., 1859. His ancestor, Peter Brown, came over with the historic party in
the "Mayflower" in 1620. Peter was unmarried, by trade a
carpenter, and drew his house lot in Plymouth with the rest; but he removed
soon afterward, with Bradford, Standish, and Winslow, to the neighboring
settlement of Duxbury.
He was twice married, and died early. One of his
descendants in the main line was a Captain John Brown, of the Connecticut
militia, who died of disease in the revolutionary service in 1776. This
revolutionary captain married Hannah Owen, of Welsh origin ; and their son,
Owen Brown, married Ruth Mills, who was of Dutch descent ; so that John
Brown of Osawatomie, their son, had a mingling of the blood of three races
in his veins, resulting in a corresponding mixture of strong qualities. Owen
Brown left a brief autobiography, which begins by saying: "My life
has been of little worth, mostly filled up with vanity." Then he
goes on to describe, with some fullness, this career of frivolity, which
will seem to most readers grave and decorous to the last degree. The most
interesting entry is the following: "In 1800, May 9, [my son] John
was born, one hundred years after his great-grandfather; nothing else very
uncommon"; and he adds, in tranquil ignorance of the future: "We
lived in peace with all mankind, so far as I know." How far the
parent would have approved the stormy career of the son is now matter of
inference only; but we have it in Owen Brown's own declaration that he was
one of that early school of abolitionists whom Hopkins and Edwards
enlightened ; and he apparently took part in the forcible rescue of some
slaves claimed by a Virginia clergyman in Connecticut in 1798, soon
after that state had abolished slavery. The continuous antislavery devotion
of the whole family, for three generations, was a thing almost
unexampled.
Mr. Sanborn has preserved verbatim a most quaint and
graphic fragment of autobiography, written by John Brown, of Osawatomie, in
1859. In this he records with the utmost frankness his boyish pursuits and
transgressions; how at the age of four he stole three brass pins, and at the
age of five removed with his parents to Ohio, where he grew familiar with
the Indians, who were then dwelling all around them. He says of himself: "John
was never quarrelsome ;. but was exceedingly fond of the harshest and
roughest kind of plays; and could never get enough [of] them. Indeed, when
for a short time he was sometimes sent to school, the opportunity it offered
to wrestle and snowball and run and jump and knock off old seedy wool hats,
offered to him almost the only compensation for the confinement and
restraint of school." I
n this boyish combativeness, without personal
quarrelsomeness, we see the quality of the future man. He further records
that in boyhood his great delight was in going on responsible
expeditions, and by the age of twelve he was often
sent a hundred miles into the wilderness with cattle. This adventurous
spirit took no military direction; he was disgusted with what he heard of
the war of 1812, and for many years used to be fined for refusing to do
militia duty. He was very fond of reading, and familiar with every portion
of the Bible; but he never danced, and never knew one card from another.
Staying in a house where there was a slave-boy almost his own age. and
seeing this boy ill-treated even beaten, as he declares, with an iron fire shovel he
became, in his own words, "a most determined abolitionist,"
and was led "to declare, or swear, eternal war with slavery."
From the fifteenth to the twentieth years of his age he
worked as a farmer and currier, chiefly for his father, and for most of the
time as foreman. He then learned surveying, and followed that for a while,
afterward gratifying his early love for animals by becoming a shepherd.
Meanwhile he married, as he says, "a remarkably plain, but neat,
industrious, and economical girl, of excellent character, earnest piety, and
good practical common sense," who had, he asserts, a most powerful
and good influence over him. This was Dianthe Lusk, a widow, and they had
seven children. His second wife was Mary Anne Day, by whom he had thirteen
children, and who survived him twenty-five years, dying in San Francisco in
1884. She also was a woman of strong and decided character; and though among
the twenty children of the two marriages eight died in early childhood, the
survivors all shared the strong moral convictions of their father, and the
whole family habitually lived a life of great self-denial in order that his
purposes might be carried out.
The contest for Kansas in 1855'6 between the friends of
freedom and those of slavery was undoubtedly, as it has since been called,
the skirmish-line of the civil war. It was there made evident what an
antislavery leader so conspicuous as Joshua R. Giddings had utterly refused
to believe that the matter was coming to blows. The condition of affairs was
never better stated than in the Charleston "Mercury" by a
young man named Warren Wilkes, who had commanded for a time a. band of so-called
southern "settlers" in Kansas. He wrote in the spring of 1856 : "If
the south secures Kansas, she will extend slavery into all territories south
of the fortieth parallel of north latitude to the Rio Grande; and this, of
course, will secure for her pent-up
institution of slavery an ample outlet, and restore her power in congress.
If the north secures Kansas, the power of the south in congress will be
gradually diminished, and the slave property will become valueless. All
depends upon the action of the present moment."
Here was a point on which young Wilkes on the one side,
and John Brown on the other, were absolutely agreed; and each went to work
in his own way to save Kansas to his side by encouraging immigration from
their respective regions. We can, at this distance of time, admit that this
was within the right of each; but the free state men went almost wholly as
bonafide settlers, while numbers of those who went from Missouri,
Virginia, and South Carolina viewed the enterprise simply as a military
foray, without intending to remain. It was also true that the latter class,
coming from communities then more lawless, went generally armed; while the free state
men went at first unarmed, afterward arming themselves reluctantly and by
degrees. The condition of lawlessness that ensued was undoubtedly
demoralizing to both sides; it was to a great extent a period of violence
and plunder civil war on a petty scale; but the original distinction never
wholly passed away, and the ultimate character of the community was
fortunately shaped and controlled by the free state settlers. However it
might be with others, for John Brown the Kansas contest was deliberately
undertaken as a part of the great war against slavery. He went there with
more cautious and far reaching purposes than most others, and he carried out
those purposes with the strength of a natural leader.
As early as 1834, by a letter still in existence, he had
communicated to his brother Frederick his purpose to make active war upon
slavery, the plan being then to bring together some "first-rate
abolitionist families" and undertake the education of colored
youth. "If once the Christians of the free states would set to work
in earnest teaching the blacks, the people of the slaveholding states would
find themselves constitutionally driven to set about the work of
emancipation immediately." This letter was written when he was
postmaster under President Jackson, at Randolph, Pennsylvania, and was
officially franked by Brown, as was then the practice. When we consider what
were Jackson's views as to antislavery agitation, especially through the
mails, it is curious to consider what a firebrand he was harboring in one of
his own post offices. It appears from this letter and other testimony that
Brown at one time solemnly called his older sons together and pledged them,
kneeling in prayer, to give their lives to antislavery work. It must be
remembered that Prudence Crandall had been arrested and sent to jail in
Connecticut, only the year before, for doing, in a small way, what Brown now
proposed to do systematically.
For some time he held to his project in this form,
removing from Pennsylvania to Ohio in 1835'6, and from Ohio to Massachusetts
in 1846, engaging in different enterprises, usually in the wool business,
but always keeping the main end in view. For instance, in 1840 he visited
western Virginia to survey land belonging to Oberlin college, and seems to
have had some plan for colonizing colored people there. At last, in 1846, on
the anniversary of West India emancipation, Oerrit Smith, a great landowner
in New York state, offered to give a hundred thousand acres of wild land in
northern New York to such colored families, fugitive slaves, or others as
would take them in small farms and clear them. It was terribly hard region
into which to invite those children of the south; six
months of winter and no possibility of raising either wheat or Indian corn.
Brown convinced himself, nevertheless, that he could be of much use to the
colored settlers, and in 1848'9 purchased a farm from Mr. Smith and removed
the younger part of his family to North Elba, which was their home until his
death. His wife and young children lived there in the greatest frugality,
voluntarily practiced by them all for the sake of helping others. He,
meanwhile, often absented himself on antislavery enterprises, forming, for
instance, at Springfield, Massachusetts, his former home, a "League
of Gileadites," pledged to the rescue of fugitive slaves. In one of
his manuscript addresses to this body he lays down the rule, "Stand
by one another and by your friends while a drop of blood remains; and be
hanged if you must, but tell no tales out of school." This was
nearly nine years before his own death on the scaffold.
In 1854 five of Brown's sons, then resident in Ohio, made
their arrangements to remove to Kansas, regarding it as a desirable home,
where they could exert an influence for freedom; but they were so little
prepared for an armed struggle that they had among them only two small
shotguns and a revolver. They selected claims eight or ten miles from
Osawatomie, and their father, contrary to his previous intention, joined
them there in October, 1855. In March of that year the first election for a
territorial constitution had taken place. Thousands of Missourians, armed
with rifles, and even with cannon, had poured over the border, and, although
less than a thousand legal votes were thrown in the territory, more than six
thousand went through the form of voting. This state of things continued
through that year and the next, and the present writer saw an election
precisely similar in the town of Leavenworth, in the autumn of 1856.
Hostilities were soon brought on by the murder and unlawful arrest of men
known to be opposed to slavery. The Brown family were mustered in as Kansas
militia by the free state party, and turned out to defend the town of
Lawrence from a Missourian invasion, which was compromised without
bloodshed.
A few months later Lawrence was attacked and pillaged.
Other murders took place, and a so-called grand jury indicted many free state
men, including in the indictment the "Free State Hotel" in
Lawrence. Two of Brown's sons were arrested by United States cavalry, which,
at this time, Pierce being president, acted wholly with the proslavery
party. John Brown, Jr., the oldest, was driven on foot at the head of a
cavalry company, at a trot, for nine miles to Osawatomie, his arms being
tied behind him. This state of things must be fully remembered in connection
with the so-called " Pottawatomie massacre," which
furnishes, in the opinion of both friends and foes, the most questionable
incident in Brown's career.
This occurrence took place on 25 May, 1856, and consisted
in the deliberate assassination of five representatives of the proslavery
party at night, they being called from their beds for the purpose. It was
done in avowed retribution for the assassination of five free state men, and
was intended to echo far beyond Kansas, as it did, and to announce to the
slaveholding community that blood for blood would henceforth be exacted in
ease of any further invasion of rights. It undoubtedly had that effect, and
though some even in Kansas regarded it with disapproval, it is certain that
leading citizens of the territory, such as Governor Robinson, themselves
justified it at the time. Robinson wrote, as late as February, 1878
: " I never had much doubt that Capt. Brown was the author of the
blow at Pottawatomie, for the reason that he was the only man who
comprehended the situation, and saw the absolute necessity of some such
blow, and had the nerve to strike it." Brown himself said, a few
years later: "I knew all good men who loved freedom, when they
became better acquainted with the circumstances of the case, would approve
of it."
It is, nevertheless, probable that the public mind will be
permanently divided in judgment upon this act; just as there is still room,
after centuries have passed, for two opinions as to the execution of Charles
I or the banishment of Roger Williams. Much, of course, turns upon the
actual character of the five men put to death men whom the student will find
painted in the darkest colors in Mr. Sanborn's life of John Brown, and in
much milder hues in Mr. Spring's "History of Kansas." The
successive phases of sentiment on the whole subject may be partly attributed
to the fact that the more pacific Kansas leaders, such as Robinson and
Pomeroy, have happened to outlive the fighting men, such as Brown, Lane, and
Montgomery; so that there is a little disposition just now to underrate the
services of the combatants and overrate those of the noncombatants. As a
matter of fact, there was in the territory at the time no noticeable
difference of opinion between those two classes; and it is quite certain
that slavery would have triumphed over all legal and legislative skill had
not the sword been thrown into the balance, even in a small way. The largest
affairs in which Brown and his sons took part, "Black Jack"
and " Osawatomie," for instance, seem trifling amid
the vast encounters of the civil war; but these petty skirmishes,
nevertheless, began that great conflict.
The purpose that finally took John Brown to Virginia had
doubtless been many years in his mind, dating back, indeed, to the time when
he was a surveyor in the mountains of that state, in early life. Bishop
Meade says, in his "Old Churches and Ministers of Virginia,"
that he wrote the book in view of a range of mountains which Washington had
selected as the final stronghold of his revolutionary army, should he be
defeated in the contest with England; and it was these same mountains which
John Brown regarded as having been designed by the Almighty, from all
eternity, as a refuge for fugitive slaves. His plan for his enterprise
varied greatly in successive years, and no doubt bore marks of the
overexcited condition of his mind; but as he ordinarily told it to the few
with whom he had consulted outside of his own band, there was nothing
incoherent or impracticable about it; it was simply the establishment on
slave soil of a defensible station for fugitive slaves, within the reach of
the Pennsylvania border, so that bodies of slaves could hold their own for a
time against a superior force, and could be transferred, if necessary,
through the free states to Canada.
Those who furnished him with arms and money at the north
did so from personal faith in him, and from a common zeal for his objects,
without asking to know details. He had stated his general plan to Douglass
and others in 1847, and in 1857 had established at Tabor, in Iowa, a town
peculiarly friendly to the free state men during the Kansas troubles, a sort
of school of military drill under the direction of a Scottish adventurer,
Hugh Forbes, who attempted to betray him. He afterward had a similar school
at Springfield, Iowa, and meanwhile negotiated with his eastern friends for
funds. He had already in his hands two hundred rifles from the national
Kansas committee : and although these were really the
property of George L. Stearns, of Medford, Massachusetts, representing a
small part of the $10,000 which that gentleman had given to make Kansas
free, yet this was enough to hamper in some degree the action of his Boston
allies.
Their position was also embarrassed by many curious,
rambling letters from his drillmaster, Forbes, written to members of
congress and others, and disclosing what little he knew of the plans. This
led the eastern allies to insist quite unnecessarily, as it seemed to one or
two of thereon a postponement for a year of the whole enterprise. On 3 June,
1858, Brown left Boston, with $500 in gold and with liberty to keep the
Kansas rifles. Most of his friends in the eastern states knew nothing more
of his movements until it was announced that he had taken possession of the
U. S. arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia A few, however, were aware that he
was about to enter on the execution of his plans somewhere, though they did
not know precisely where.
Late in June, 1859, Brown and several of his men appeared
in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, and soon afterward hired a small farm,
which they occupied. Then his daughter Anne, a girl of fifteen, together
with his daughter-in-law, wife of Oliver Brown, appeared upon the scene and
kept house for them. There they lived for many weeks, unsuspected by their
neighbors, and gradually receiving from Ohio their boxes of rifles and
pistols, besides a thousand pikes from Connecticut. In August he was visited
by Frederick Douglass, to whom he disclosed his plan of an attack on
Harper's Ferry, which Douglass opposed, thinking it would not really be
favorable to his ultimate object of reaching the slaves. But he persevered,
and finally began his operations with twenty-two men, besides himself. Six
of these were colored; and it may be added that only six of the whole party
escaped Mire, and only one of these is now (September, 1886) living Owen
Brown.
On Sunday evening, 16 Oct., 1859, Brown mustered eighteen
of his men the rest having been assigned to other duties saying: "Men,
get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry." It was a cold,
dark night, ending in rain. At half past ten They reached the armory gate
and broke it in with a crowbar, easily overpowering the few watchmen on
duty. Before midnight the village was quietly patrolled by Brown's men,
without firing a gun, and six men had been sent to bring in certain
neighboring planters, with their slaves. He had taken several leading
citizens prisoners, as hostages, but had allowed a railway train to go
through northward, which of course carried the news. The citizens of the
town gradually armed themselves, and some shots were exchanged, killing
several men; and before night Brown, who might easily have escaped, was
hopelessly hemmed in.
Col. Robert E. Lee, afterward well known in history,
arrived from Washington at evening with a company of U. S. marines, and all
was practically over. Brown and his men, now reduced to six, were barricaded
in a little building called the engine house, and were shot down one by one,
thousands of bullets, according to a Virginia witness, having been imbedded
in the walls. Brown constantly returned the fire, refusing to surrender; but
when some of his men aimed at passersby who had taken no part in the matter,
he would stop them, according to the same Virginia witness, Capt.
Dangerfield, saying : "Don't shoot ! that man is unarmed." Col.
Washington, another Virginia witness, has testified to the extraordinary
coolness with which Brown felt the pulse of his dying son, while
holding his own rifle with the other hand, and encouraging his men to be
firm. All this time he was not recognized, until Lieut. J. E. B. Stuart, who
had known him in Kansas, called him by his name. When he was finally
captured, his two sons were dead, and he himself was supposed to be dying.
No one will ever be able exactly to understand that mood
of John Brown's mind which induced him to remain in Harper's Ferry to
certain death. His reason for taking possession of the town and arsenal was
undoubtedly a desire to alarm the country at large, and not merely secure
arms, but attract recruits to his side, after he should have withdrawn. Why
did he remain? Those who escaped from the terrible disaster could not
answer. Brown himself is reported as saying that it was preordained ; theft
if he had once escaped, he knew the Virginia mountains too well to be
captured; but that he for the first time lost command of himself and was
punished for it. Gov. Wise, of Virginia, with several hundred men, reached
Harper's Ferry by the noon train of 18 Oct., and Brown held conversations,
which have been fully reported, with him and others. Gov. Wise said of him: "
They are mistaken who take Brown 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,
collected, indomitable ; and it is but just to him to say that he was humane
to his prisoners, and he inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a
man of truth." This opinion, coming from the man whose immediate
duty it was to see him tried and executed as a felon, may be regarded as a
final and trustworthy estimate.
John Brown was tried before a Virginia court, legal
counsel going to him from Massachusetts. All thought of a rescue was
precluded by strong messages of prohibition sent by him. The proposal to
send his wife to him, this being planned partly in the hope that she might
shake his determination, was also refused, and she did not see him until
after his trial. He was sentenced to death by hanging, and this sentence was
executed 2 Dec., 1859. On the day of his death he handed to one of his
guards a paper on which he had written this sentence: "Charlestown,
Virginia, Dec. 2, 1859. I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes
of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I
now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might
be done." Within eighteen months this prophecy was fulfilled, and
many a northern regiment, as it marched to the seat of war, sang that which
will always remain, more than any other, the war song of the great conflict:
"John Brown's body lies
amouldering in the grave, But his soul is marching on."
His bearing on the scaffold, under exceptionally trying
circumstances, evinced wonderful fortitude. After the sheriff had told him
that all was ready, and had adjusted the rope and the cap, ten or fifteen
minutes passed, while the military escort formed a hollow square. During
this painfully long interval, John Brown, blindfolded, stood alone erect,
like a statue unsupported. An eyewitness who was very near him could not
detect a tremor. A further delay occurred while the sheriff descended the
steps of the scaffold, but Brown never wavered, and died apparently with
muscles and nerves still subject to his iron will. His career is remarkable
for its dramatic quality, for the important part he
played in events preliminary to the great civil war, and for the strong and
heroic traits shown in his life and death. He belonged to a class of men
whose permanent fame is out of all proportion to their official importance
or contemporary following; and indeed he represents a type more akin to that
seen among the Scottish covenanters of two centuries ago than to anything
familiar in our own days. With John Brown were executed Copeland, Green,
Cook, and Coppoc, of his company. Stephens and Hazlett were put to death in
the same way later. An effort for their rescue, organized in Boston, with
men brought mainly from Kansas, under Capt. Montgomery as leader, proved
abortive.
In regard to the bearing of John Brown's enterprise upon
subsequent history, it is enough if we recall the fact that a select
committee of the U. S. Senate investigated the whole affair, and the
majority, consisting of John M. Mason, Jefferson Davis, and Graham N. Fitch,
submitted a report in which occurs the following passage: "The
invasion (to call it so) by Brown and his followers at Harper's Ferry was in
no sense of that character. It was simply the act of lawless ruffians, under
the sanction of no public or political authority distinguishable only from
ordinary companies by the ulterior ends in contemplation by them, and by the
fact that the money to maintain the expedition, and the large armament they
brought with them, had been contributed and furnished by the citizens of
other states of the union, under circumstances that must continue to jeopardy
the safety and peace of the southern states, and against which congress has
no power to legislate. If the several states, whether from motives of policy
or a desire to preserve the peace of the union, if not from fraternal
feeling, do not hold it incumbent on them, after the experience of the
country, to guard in future by appropriate legislation against occurrences
similar to the one here inquired into, the committee can find no guarantee
elsewhere for the security of peace between the states of the union."
It is a sufficient commentary on the implied threat with which this report
concludes, to point out that two of its three signers, within the year
following, became leaders of the movement for a forcible division of the
union. In view of this fact, it is impossible to doubt that the enterprise
of John Brown was an important link in the chain of historical events. The
life of Capt. Brown has been at least three times written by James Redpath,
by Richard D. Webb, of Dublin, and by Frank B. Sanborn. The last named is
the fullest work, and has the approval of John Brown's family; it is the
result of much personal research, and is, with some defects of arrangement,
a mine of information in regard to one of the most remarkable men of his
time. -- Edited Appleton's
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