John Brown (abolitionist)

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist who played a major part in the history of slavery in the United States leading up to the American Civil War. Brown took part in the violence during the Bleeding Kansas crisis, but his most famous action was his leadership of the raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (in modern-day West Virginia). The killings that followed, Brown's subsequent capture by Robert E. Lee, his trial, and execution by hanging are generally considered an important part of the origins of the Civil War.

Active role as an abolitionist

Brown moved his family back to North Elba in June 1855, but he considered leaving his family there and following his oldest sons John Jr., Owen, Salmon and Frederick to Kansas. Their motives were to start a new life in farming and to join the free-state settlers in the contentious, developing territory. The Kansas-Nebraska Act provided that the people of the Kansas territory would vote on the question of slavery there. Sympathizers from both sides of the question packed the territory with settlers (often using unscrupulous methods, such as bribery and coercion).

Related Topics:
1855 - Kansas - Kansas-Nebraska Act - Slavery

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The sons asked their father to join them in Kansas. Brown was torn between settling in North Elba with his wife and moving to Kansas with his older sons. Through his deliberations, he consulted through correspondence with Gerrit Smith and Frederick Douglass. Brown had first met Douglass in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1847. Douglass wrote about Brown, "Though a white gentleman, he is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." At their first meeting Brown outlined to Douglass his plan to lead a war to free slaves, including the establishment of a "Subterranean Pass Way" in the Allegheny Mountains. Douglass often referred to him as Captain Brown.

Related Topics:
Frederick Douglass - 1847 - Allegheny Mountains

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Brown eventually decided to move to Kansas. He took with him guns and ammunition, which he had collected from sympathetic free-state committees.

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