John Brown (
May 9,
1800 –
December 2,
1859) was the first white
American abolitionist to advocate and practice
insurrection as a means to the abolition of slavery. President
Abraham Lincoln said he was a "misguided fanatic" and Brown has been called "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans." His attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in
Harpers Ferry, Virginia electrified the nation, even though not a single slave answered his call. He was tried for treason against the state of Virginia and hanged, but his behavior at the trial seemed heroic to millions of Americans. Southerners alleged that his rebellion was the tip of an abolitionist iceberg and represented the wishes of the
Republican Party, but those charges were vehemently denied by the Republicans. Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that a year later led to secession and the
American Civil War. Brown first gained attention when he led small groups of volunteers during the
Bleeding Kansas crisis. Unlike most other Northerners, who still advocated peaceful resistance to the pro-slavery faction, Brown demanded violent action in response to Southern aggression. Dissatisfied with the pacifism encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, he was quoted to have said "These men are all talk. What we need is action - action!" His belief in confrontation led him to kill five pro-slavery southerners in what became known as the
Pottawatomie Massacre in May
1856, in response to the
raid of the "free soil" city of
Lawrence. Brown's most famous deed was the 1859 raid he led on the federal
armory at
Harpers Ferry,
Virginia (in modern-day
West Virginia). During the raid, he seized the federal arsenal, killing seven people (including a free black) and injuring ten or so more. He intended to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack failed. Within 36 hours, each of Brown's men had fled or been killed or captured by local farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by
Robert E. Lee. Brown's subsequent capture by federal forces, his trial for treason to the state of Virginia, and his execution by hanging were an important part of the
origins of the American Civil War, which followed sixteen months later. His role and actions prior to the Civil War, as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose still make him a controversial figure today. Depending on one's point of view, he is sometimes heralded as a heroic martyr and a visionary or vilified as a madman and a terrorist.
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