John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist, who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to end all slavery. He led the Pottawatomie Massacre in1856 inbleedingKansasand made his name in the unsuccessful raid atHarpers Ferryin 1859. President Abraha...
This year marks the bicentennial of John Brown, born in 1800, and he was executed by the state of Virginia 141 years ago, on December 2, 1859. This year a PBS documentary film continued an effort that began even before […]
John BrownAbolitionist John Brown, engraving from a daguerreotype, c. 1856. Brooding over the sack of the town ofLawrenceby a mob of slavery sympathizers (May 21, 1856), Brown concluded that he had a divine mission to takevengeance. Three days later he led a nighttime retaliatory raid on ...
John Brown was an ardent abolitionist who lived in the United States immediately prior to the Civil War. In 1859 he was hung for his unsuccessful raid on the US arsenal at Harper's Ferry, which he carried out to begin a slave uprising....
Brown began as an apprentice to a cutlery firm. In 1848 he invented the conical steel spring buffer for railway cars. In 1856 he established the Atlas ironworks in Sheffield, which produced ordnance forgings, railway bars, steel springs, and axles. Besides supplying iron to the Sheffield steel...
In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the pro-slavery forces in the contest over that territory. After pro-slavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence on May 21, 1856, Brown personally sought revenge. Several days later, he and his sons at...
John Brown in Kansas 1856 In the course of Brown entering the Ferry, there was gun fire which awakened the townspeople and a general alarm was soon given by ringing the church bells. By early morning, eight companies of Virginia and Maryland militia had John Brown and several of his men tr...
In 1855 Brown and five of his sons moved toKansas Territoryto help anti-slavery forces obtain control of this region. His home in Osawatomie was burned in 1856 and one of his sons was killed. With the support ofGerrit Smith,Samuel G. Howe, and other prominent Abolitionists, Brown moved ...
In May 1856, pro-slavery raiders sacked Lawrence, Kansas, in an orgy of burning and looting. Almost simultaneously, Brown learned that Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, the most outspoken abolitionist in the U.S. Senate, had been beaten senseless on the floor of the chamber by a cane-wielding...
Brown, driving a wagonload of guns, later joined his sons in Kansas. Proclaiming himself the servant of the Lord, Brown led an attack in the spring of 1856, that resulted in the murders of five proslavery settlers. The incident became known as the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre. This event ...