Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800 and reared in an anti-slavery home, so that it can be said that his hatred of slavery began early in his life.  However, by the 1830s he was considering ways to involve himself as an ally to the slave.  Although his first ideas involved passive measures like adoption and education, by the late 1830s he had made a solemn vow to oppose slavery and began to consider a scheme to liberate enslaved people.  Yet he never became interested in joining the abolitionist movement and remained a loner in his plans until he began to share them with black leaders like Frederick Douglass in the 1840s.  

In 1855, Brown answered a call for assistance from several of his sons, who had moved to the newly opened Kansas territory, a region deeply divided over the slavery issue. His sons, like most free state settlers, were not prepared to face the onslaught of pro-slavery terror that was intended to force Kansas into the union as a slave state.  Throughout early 1856, the violence and terrorism of the pro-slavery faction placed the Brown family in danger.  Rather than allow themselves to be attacked, Brown and others made a preemptive counter strike against certain pro-slavery neighbors known to be plotting against them.  On the night of May 24, 1856, Brown directed his sons, a son-in-law, and a free state neighbor in hacking five pro-slavery neighbors to death along the Pottawatomie Creek.  Although none of the victims were slave owners, they had been implicated as conspirators by local free state leaders and Brown himself conducted surveillance to verify their collaboration with terrorists was real and that his own family was literally in danger.  The gruesome killings made Brown a controversial figure in Kansas overnight.

After the Kansas episode, Brown continued to solicit aid for the free state cause back east in 1857-58, but as it became clear that the territory would likely become a free state, he turned his attention back to his old idea about liberating enslaved people in the South.  After careful consideration, he targeted Virginia’s gateway to the South, Harpers Ferry.

In 1794, President George Washington had selected Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and Springfield, Massachusetts (where Brown had lived in the 1840s) as the sites of the young nation’s armories. In choosing Harpers Ferry, he noted the benefit of great water power provided by both the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers. In 1817, the federal government contracted with John H. Hall to manufacture his patented rifles at Harpers Ferry. The armory continued producing weapons until its destruction at the outbreak of the Civil War.

However, in the summer of 1859, John Brown, using the pseudonym Isaac Smith, took up residence near Harpers Ferry at a farm in Maryland. His small army included his sons Oliver, Owen, and Watson, in military maneuvers. On the night of Sunday, Oct. 16, Brown and his raiders marched into Harpers Ferry, captured the town and armory, and began to take captives.  Sadly the first victim of the raid was an African-American railroad baggage handler named Hayward Shepherd, who was shot and killed after resisting the raiders. During the night, Brown directed the capture of several other prisoners, including Lewis Washington, the great-grand-nephew of George Washington.

There were two keys necessary for the success of the raid. First, Brown needed to move quickly once he entered the town and seized the armory.  Second, after seizing weapons, he needed to collect black volunteers and retreat into the mountains before southern forces could gather.  Unfortunately for Brown and his men, a number of strategic errors were made.  Although the raiders cut the telegraph lines, Brown mistakenly allowed a Baltimore and Ohio train to pass through Harpers Ferry after detaining it for five hours. When the train reached Baltimore the next day at noon, the conductor contacted authorities in Washington. Worse, Brown allowed himself to be bogged down in the armory by paying too much attention to his captives.  In doing so, Brown failed to connect with local slaves who remained on the periphery of the struggle, waiting to join him in escaping to the mountains.  Although southerners long conveyed the notion that Brown had failed to attract blacks, in reality enslaved people were extremely cautious about the risks involved and were not willing to expose themselves to further danger as townspeople, then local militia, began shooting at the raiders until they were bogged down completely.  On the other hand, a small but proportionately significant number of black men actually did join Brown’s men in fighting at Harper’s Ferry.  Contrary to conventional narratives of the raid, it can be said that Brown was strongly supported by local blacks

When Brown’s narrow window of opportunity began to close in the morning of Oct. 17, he and his men were quickly surrounded and cut off from escape.  A number of white citizens were killed by Brown’s men during the battle, including Mayor Fontaine Beckham.  However, the tide turned against Brown, who was forced to take some of his captives and holed up in the armory’s fire engine building.  Although he sought to negotiate an escape with his enemies, it quickly became clear that he and his men would be taken either dead or alive..

With their plans falling apart, the raiders panicked.  Those who were not with Brown in the engine house became desperate to escape. William H. Leeman, one of the youngest of the raiders, tried to escape by swimming across the Potomac River but was shot and killed. The townspeople, many of whom had been drinking all day on this unofficial holiday, used Leeman's body for target practice. At 3:30 p.m. on Monday, authorities in Washington ordered Colonel Robert E. Lee to Harpers Ferry with a force of Marines to capture Brown. Lee's first action was to close the town's saloons in order to curb the random violence. At 6:30 on the morning of Tuesday, Oct. 18, Lee ordered Lieutenant Israel Green and a group of men to storm the engine house. At a signal from Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, the engine house door was rammed and the marines broke through and attacked Brown and his men with lethal force.  While two of the raiders were bayoneted to death, Brown escaped death although being bludgeoned and pierced by Green and another marine.  After the raid was quashed, Brown and his surviving men were moved to the Jefferson County seat of Charles Town to face indictment and trial.

Of Brown's original 21 men, John H. Kagi, Jeremiah G. Anderson, William Thompson, Dauphin Thompson, Brown's sons Oliver and Watson, Stewart Taylor, Leeman, and free African Americans Lewis S. Leary and Dangerfield Newby had been killed during the raid. John E. Cook and Albert Hazlett escaped into Pennsylvania, but were captured and brought back to Charles Town. Brown, Aaron D. Stevens, Edwin Coppoc, and free African Americans John A. Copeland and Shields Green were all captured and imprisoned. Five raiders escaped and were never captured: Brown's son Owen, Charles P. Tidd, Barclay Coppoc, Francis J. Merriam, and free African American Osborne P. Anderson. One Marine, Luke Quinn, was killed during the storming of the engine house. Conventional narratives of the raid  mention two slaves, belonging to Brown's prisoners Colonel Lewis Washington and John Allstadt, also losing their lives.  However research by Jean Libby and Hannah Geffert suggests that others fought and died as black allies. To cover the extent of black involvement, southerners claimed that “their people” had joined Brown by force, having been taken prisoner by him.  They also failed to report the retaliatory murder of some blacks because of their support of Brown, such as one man who is alleged to have drowned, and other who died after being arrested and held in jail.. 

Brown, still recovering from a bayonet and sword wounds, stood trial at the Jefferson County Courthouse on Oct. 26. Five days later, a jury found him guilty of treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. Judge Richard Parker sentenced Brown to death and he was hanged in Charles Town on Dec. 2. Before mounting the scaffold, he dashed off a note that many have taken to be a prophesy of the coming Civil War: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood." Following additional trials, Shields Green, John A. Copeland, John E. Cook, and Edwin Coppoc were executed on Dec. 16, and Aaron D. Stevens and Albert Hazlett were hanged on March 16, 1860.

Although northern abolitionists largely did not favor the use of force, Brown became a celebrated hero because he had drawn the focus of the nation upon slavery and had effectively transformed himself from defeated soldier to willing martyr.   In fact, despite his attack of a federal armory, the government did nothing to wrest the case from the vengeful State of Virginia, which condemned Brown to death on the untenable charge of treason, also finding him guilty of murder and insurrection. It is clear that Brown was rushed to trial and the gallows—their strategy further winning sympathy for Brown in the North.   When the Civil War exploded less than two years after Brown’s death, his name became associated with the Union and anti-slavery causes.   After the Civil War, Storer College, a school for African Americans, was established at Harpers Ferry. Storer’s leadership always emphasized the courage and beliefs of Brown for inspiration. In 1881, African-American leader Frederick Douglass delivered a classic speech at the school honoring Brown. Twenty-five years later, W.E.B. DuBois and Martinsburg newspaper editor J.R. Clifford recognized Harpers Ferry's importance to African Americans and chose Storer College as the site for a meeting of the Second Niagara Movement, which later became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Those in attendance walked at daybreak to John Brown's Fort. In 1892, the fort had been sent to the Chicago World's Fair and then brought back to a farm near Harpers Ferry. Today, the restored fort has been rebuilt at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park near its original location.


"An American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free." --Richard Owen Boyer