Abolitionist John Brown leads a small group on a raid against a federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), in an attempt to start an armed revolt of enslaved people and destroy the institution of slavery.
Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist and antislavery family. He spent much of his life failing at a variety of businesses—he declared bankruptcy at age 42 and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him. In 1837, his life changed irrevocably when he attended an abolition meeting in Cleveland, during which he was so moved that he publicly announced his dedication to destroying the institution of slavery. As early as 1848 he was formulating a plan to incite an insurrection.
In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the proslavery forces in the contest over that territory. On May 21, 1856, proslavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and Brown personally sought revenge. On May 25, Brown and his sons attacked three cabins along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men with broad swords and triggered a summer of guerrilla warfare in the troubled territory. One of Brown’s sons was killed in the fighting.
By 1857, Brown returned to the East and began raising money to carry out his vision of a mass uprising of enslaved people. He secured the backing of six prominent abolitionists, known as the “Secret Six,” and assembled an invasion force. His “army” grew to include 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown’s sons. The group rented a Maryland farm near Harpers Ferry and prepared for the assault.
On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the arsenal. Some of his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few enslaved people. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded. A company of U.S. marines arrived on October 17, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart. On the morning of October 19, the soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons.
The wounded Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and he was found guilty on November 2. The 59-year-old abolitionist went to the gallows on December 2, 1859. Before his execution, he handed his guard a slip of paper that read, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” It was a prophetic statement. Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the stakes for the 1860 presidential election. Brown’s raid helped make any further accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War.
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I was at john browns farm wednesday. It has been turned into a BLM memorial. Theres also a tenth of a mile long anti white “art gallery” along the walking trail. Once again, if it was easier to post photos, i would.
The last 40 acre and a mule property still exists up here. I know the white woman who owns it. The story goes that the black man it was given to arrived, looked at it, said it was too much work, sold it and moved to michigan. Her family has owned it ever since.
Insurrectionist faced Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart at his critical hour. Hahaha. It sounds like John Brown was embittered over his own life/financial failures and projected his disdain for himself on land owning slave holders. Everyone knows the Civil War was nothing more than yankee aggression and totalitarianism, and yet that myth that it was a war to free slaves still perpetuates. Stupid.
Well, it is History.com, so you can’t expect anything else from them. Brown was, by today’s definition, a terrorist. Hacking up people while they are sleeping is exactly what caused Quantrill to create the Bushwackers.
Yep, and he was regarded as a hero and a quasi saint when I was going to school. More like a sociopathic fucktard and a complete failure. If he’d a had Call of Duty and Twitter back then, he probably woulda never did what he did.
MC – Exactly. Retribution was inevitable, as the damnable Kansas redlegs continued their border raids and were responsible for the killing or maiming of many Missouri citizens. In the raid of Oceola, Missouri, women and children were slaughtered, along with the men.
When I pose the question as to why Lawrence, Kansas was razed and burnt to the ground, I usually get a blank stare. I then proceed to tell them, because the redlegged bastards had it coming.
The Missouri/Kansas border wars still exist, if only in the retelling of the happenings of those dark days in the past.
This was written from a Kansas point of view but it’s not totally one sided.
https://www.kansas.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/the-story-of-kansas/article1121021.html
Once of the best sources around for the Missouri point of view is The Missouri Partisan Ranger
http://www.rulen.com/partisan/lawrence.htm
When the judazied Protestants weren’t mass murdering Catholics, they were killing each other. Satan laughs at the brilliance of his successful overthrow of the Catholic church which saw usury ( i.e. debt slavery) permanently established and divided Christians into thousands of tribes/denominations that regularly killed each other for the slightest infractions.
Basically, John Brown was the white Black Lives Matters before it’s time.
There was no plan on what to do with the freed slaves after the war. Some blacks headed for Lawrence and the citizens said “Just keep on moving”. There was actually a sign outside of town that told them to do that. Some of them ended up settling in the entirely black community of Nicodemus, KS not far from where my dad was raised. I have links somewhere for that but I’m not going to look for them right now.
https://www.nicodemushistoricalsociety.org/nicodemus-kansas-settlers
The clause of LIBERTY, found in the Preamble, 5th and 14th Amendment as a Right of the [soverign] People, includes the Right to pursue a livelihood. Such Rights are not subject to infringement (taxation) by the government. If it were otherwise, the government could seize 100% of the earnings of the citizens and the status of 1860 would be reimposed.