John Brown

  The abolitionist John Brown was hanged on this day in 1859 for treason and murder. He died doing his life’s work which was to end slavery in the United States. The dozen murders that can be attributed to him were a tiny preview of the hundreds and thousands who would die in the coming holocaust. 

   John Brown was born in Connecticut and grew up in the early settlements of Ohio when that territory was a wilderness. His parents were abolitionists who helped fugitive slaves get to Canada. Brown started college to become a minister, but an eye infection sent him home.

  The Southern economy depended on slavery. As new states came into the Union, the South worried that the free states would outvote them and liberate their slaves. The US government said the people of Kansas Territory could decide whether Kansas would be free or slave. Both the South and the North began sending well armed “settlers” to Kansas to pack the vote.  

  Brown, his sons, and other recruits moved to Kansas and at one point Brown murdered five Southerners in cold blood in retaliation for the burning of a town sympathetic to a free Kansas. Brown’s actions in Kansas made him a hero in the North and money began to pour in to finance his dream: a slave insurrection that would lead to the end of slavery. 

  Many abolitionists hated slavery, but had no use for the slaves themselves. They wanted to ship freed slaves to Africa. Brown seemed to truly like and respect African-Americans. He liked Indians too. 

  After Kansas he came up with a crazy idea to take over the armory at Harpers Ferry and arm the slaves on the local plantations. As his army moved south, it would liberate the slaves on plantations along the way. They would only use violence if they were resisted. 

   Pop-up revolutions like this almost never succeed. At first Brown and his little army did well in Harpers Ferry. The 100,000 rifles in the armory were guarded by a single night watchman. Brown stopped the Baltimore train when it arrived in town then, strangely, let it go on its way to spread the word. As Union and Confederate Armies would learn in the coming war, Harpers Ferry is an easy place to take and a hard place to hold. 

  Soon the US Marines were on the scene, led by Robert E. Lee. How appropriate.  After considerable bloodshed, Brown and the other survivors were captured. Brown was the first person convicted and executed for treason in U.S. history. 

  This incident made the South very nervous. The secession Fire-Eaters had their way and just a year later South Carolina seceded from the Union. It took all of Mr. Lincoln’s men to put the country together again. 

Reap the whirlwind