Document A Video Clip: America: The Story of Us Chapter 7: Bleeding Kansas and John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry (9 min 21 sec) Document B Source: Letter from Edward Bridgman. May, 1856 Note: John Brown is closely associated with the proslavery and free-state struggle of the Kansas Territorial period, 1854-1861. John Brown followed five of his sons to Kansas in 1855 where he saw an opportunity to help make Kansas a free state-bringing a wagon load of weapons along with him. In May of 1856, a small party consisting mainly of Brown and his sons raided the cabins of proslavery men killing five of them. Up to that time there had been little bloodshed between proslavery and free-state groups. Brown's raid brought retaliation. On August 30, 1856 Brown and his followers where attacked by a large force of border ruffians. In the "Battle of Osawatomie" five of Brown's men, including one of his sons, were killed and the town burned. Since I wrote the above the Osawatomie company has returned to O. as news came that we could do nothing immediately, so we returned back. On our way back we heard that 5 men had been killed by Free State men. the men were butchered -- ears cut off and the bodies thrown into the river[.] the murdered men (Proslavery) had thrown out threats and insults, yet the act was barbarous and inhuman whoever committed by[.] We met the men going when we were going up and knew that they were on a secret expedition, yet didn't know what it was. Tomorrow something will be done to arrest them. there were 8 concerned in the act. perhaps they had good motives, some think they had, how that is I dont know. The affairs took place 8 miles from Osawatomie. The War seems to have commenced in real earnest. horses are stolen on all sides whenerver they can be taken... Since yesterday I have learned that those men who committed those murders were a party of Browns. one of them was formerly in the wool business in Springfield, John Brown[.] his son, has been taken today, tho he had no hand in the act, but was knowing to it...
Document C Source: Letter from Mahala Doyle to John Brown while he was in jail. 1859 Note: The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), determined that the issue of slavery in the Kansas Territory was to be decided by popular sovereignty. Thus began the race between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces into the territory in order to win upcoming elections and establish a government based on their respective views. The competition led to violence that became known as Bleeding Kansas. In response to the sacking of the freestate town of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces, Brown led a force of anti-slavery men (including his abolitionist sons) on an expedition of vengeance in May 1856. This resulted in the deaths of five pro-slavery men. The victims were not slave-holders and were unarmed. They were hacked to death by a broadsword and the incident became known as one of the most famous events of Bleeding Kansas. One of the victims was James P. Doyle. The following is a testimony of his widow, Mahala Doyle: Although vengeance is not mine, I confess that I do feel grateful to hear that you were stopped in your fiendish career at Harper's Ferry. With the loss of your two sons you can now appreciate my distress in Kansas when you entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys, and took them out of the yard and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing. You can't say you did it to free our slaves. We had none and never expected to own one. It has only made me a poor disconsolate widow, with helpless children. While I feel for your folly, I do hope and trust that you will meet your just reward. Oh! how it pained my heart to hear the dying groans of my husband and children My son, John Doyle, whose life I begged of you, is now grown up, and is very desirous to be in Charlestown on the day of your execution, and would certainly be there if his means would permit it. Document D Source: The following is from the Petersburg (Virginia) Express and is dated October 25, 1859. Note: Southerners were outraged by the increasing activities of radical abolitionists in general and the Raid on Harpers Ferry in particular. Southern newspapers were full of criticism of John Brown and northern abolitionists. This Harpers Ferry Affair is but a small eruption on the surface of a diseased body. Brown and his desperados are but a sign of the cancerous disease with which a great part of northern society is polluted by the traitorous views of men who have been raised to honor, and surrounded by applause, and maintained in power, by whole communities, and even whole States.... The Harpers Ferry Affair was but premature fruit. A whole harvest of sterner rebellion and bloodier collusion is growing up and ripening from the seed these men have sown. Disguise it as we may, large portions of the North are our enemies more bitter, more deadly hostile than though hereditary enmity had pitched their opposing hosts on a hundred battlefields.
Document E Source: A Plea for Capt. John Brown by Henry David Thoreau October 30, 1859 Note: A Plea for Captain John Brown is an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It is based on a speech Thoreau first delivered to an audience at Concord, Massachusetts on October 30, 1859, two weeks after John Brown s raid on Harper s Ferry, and repeated several times before Brown s execution on December 2, 1859. It was later published as a part of Echoes of Harper's Ferry in 1860. I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character, - his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; his is an angel of light. Document F Source: John Brown s speech in court during his trial November 2, 1859 Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of their friends and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference every man in this court would have deemed it worthy of reward rather than punishment...i believe to have interfered as I have done, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done." Document G Source: Editorial printed in The Richmond Enquirer, November 15, 1859. With all due reverence to the memory of our forefathers, I think the time has arrived in our history for a separation from the North. The Constitution has been violated. If the Union stands we have no security for either life or property. Emissaries are in our midst, sent here by a party which claims to have the good of the country at heart, but in fact are assassins. There are papers in the South supported by Abolition money. We must separate, unless we are willing to see our daughters and wives become the victims of a barbarous passion and worse insult The day of compromise is passed. We should not listen to the words of the Northern men who are continually telling us we are safe, while they attempt to ridicule this Harper s Ferry business. Watch those fellows. Gentlemen may cry peace, but there is no peace. Every gale that sweeps from the North brings new instruments of death in our midst. We publish to the world the causes that impel us to a separation The hour has now come. The curtain falls, and the Republic framed by the hands of Washington and Jefferson fades from view. Better civil war than injustice and oppression.
Document H Source: Richmond "Whig" newspaper editorial quoted in the Liberator, November 18, 1859 Though it convert the whole Northern people, without an exception, into furious, armed abolition invaders, yet old Brown will be hung! That is the stern and irreversible decree, not only of the authorities of Virginia, but of the PEOPLE of Virginia, without a dissenting voice. And, therefore, Virginia, and the people of Virginia, will treat with the contempt they deserve, all the craven appeals of Northern men in behalf of old Brown's pardon. The miserable old traitor and murderer belongs to the gallows, and the gallows will have its own. Document I Source: A letter from Frances Watkins, a free black living in Indiana. November 25, 1859 Dear Friend: Although the hands of Slavery throw a barrier between you and me, and it may not be my privilege to see you in the prison house, Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread to send you my sympathy...i thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race. You have rocked the bloody Bastille; and I hope from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom... Document J Source: Springfield Republican Newspaper editorial, December 1859. We can conceive of no event that could so deepen the moral hostility of the people of the free states to slavery as this execution. This is not because the acts of Brown are generally approved, for they are not. It is because the nature and spirit of the man are seen to be great and noble... His death will be the result of his own folly, to be sure, but that will not prevent his being considered a martyr of oppression, and all who sympathize with him in that sentiment will find their hatred grow stronger. Document K Source: John Brown s last words handwritten on a note before he was hung, December 1859. I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done. Document L Source: Abraham Lincoln speech in Kansas, December 1859. Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against the state. We cannot object even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right.
Document M Source: John Brown s Body song, William W. Patton, 1862. Note: John Brown s Body was a song that became popular in the North during the Civil War. The song was started as a humorous tribute by a group of Union soldiers to comrade, whom happened to also have the name of John Brown. Soon lyrics were added to honor the famous abolitionist. Julia Ward Howe re-wrote the lyrics and created the song The Battle Hymn of the Republic, a spiritual song that promoted the Union. The following version of John Brown s Body was written by William W. Patton in 1862. John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave, While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save, But though he lost his life in struggling for the slave, His soul is marching on. Chorus: Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! Glory, Glory, Hallelujah! His soul is marching on. John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true and brave, And Kansas knew his valor, when he fought her rights to save: And now though the grass grows green above his grave, His soul is marching on. {Chorus} John Brown was John the Baptist, of Christ we are to see, Christ who of the bondman shall the Liberator be, And soon throughout the sunny South, the slaves shall all be free, For his soul is marching on. {Chorus} The conflict that he heralded, he looks from heaven to view, On the army of the Union, with his flag Red, White, and Blue; And heaven shall ring with anthems, o'er the deed they mean to do For his soul is marching on. {Chorus} Ye soldiers of freedom, then strike, while strike you may, The death-blow of oppression in a better time and way; For the dawn of old John Brown, has brightened into day, And his soul is marching on. {Chorus} He captured Harpers Ferry with his nineteen men so few, And he frighten d Old Virginny till she trembled through and through: They hung him for a traitor; themselves a traitor crew, But his soul is marching on. {Chorus} Document N Source: Frederick Douglass autobiography The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. 1881 Note: In this passage, Frederick Douglass describes his last meeting with John Brown, about three weeks before the raid on Harper s Ferry: About three weeks before the raid on Harper's Ferry, John Brown wrote to me, informing me that before going forward he wanted to see me...we sat down and talked over his plan to take over Harper s Ferry. I at once opposed the measure with all the arguments at my command. To me such a measure would be fatal to the work of the helping slaves escape [Underground Railroad]. It would be an attack upon the Federal government, and would turn the whole country against us. Captain John Brown did not at all object to upsetting the nation; it seemed to him that something shocking was just what the nation needed. He thought that the capture of Harper's Ferry would serve as notice to the slaves that their friends had come, and as a trumpet to rally them.
Document O Source: Frederick Douglass autobiography The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. 1881 Note: Black abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass was an early critic of President Lincoln. Douglass became an admirer of President Lincoln after the Emancipation Proclamation and helped the Union Army recruit black troops. In August of 1863, Douglass went to President Lincoln to urge equal pay for black soldiers. Nearly a year later on August 19, 1864, Douglass returned to the White House at the President s request. The increasing opposition to the war, in the North, and the mad cry against it, because it was being made an abolition war, alarmed Mr. Lincoln, and made him apprehensive that a peace might be forced upon him which would leave still in slavery all who had not come within our lines. What he wanted was to make his Proclamation as effective as possible in the event of such a peace. He said in a regretful tone, The slaves are not coming so rapidly and so numerously to us as I had hoped. I replied that the slaveholders knew how to keep such things from their slaves, and probably very few knew of his Proclamation I listened with the deepest interest and profoundest satisfaction, and, at his suggestion, agreed to undertake the organizing of a band of scouts, composed of colored men, whose business should be somewhat after the original plan of John Brown, to go into the rebel states, beyond the lines of our armies, and carry the news of emancipation, and urge the slaves to come within our boundaries. Document P Source: Langston Hughes tribute poem to John Brown. 1931 Note: One of those who joined John Brown on his quest to strike a blow for the freedom of slaves was Lewis Leary, a free black harnessmaker from Oberlin, Ohio. He was married to Mary Patterson, a mixed-race woman who was an Oberlin College graduate. Leary had become involved with abolitionists in Oberlin, which had an active community and from which John Brown recruited him to join the raid. Leary died from wounds suffered in the conflict at Harpers Ferry. His widow Mary later remarried an ardent Brown supporter, Charles Langston. In her old age, Mary raised her grandson, wrapping him in a bullet-riddled shawl that Lewis had worn at Harpers Ferry. That boy was Langston Hughes, who in 1931 wrote this poem addressed to black Americans who are now free, reminding them to remember abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859), his raid on Harpers Ferry, his trial and execution: Perhaps You will remember John Brown John Brown Who took his gun, Took twenty-one companions, White and black, Went to shoot your way to freedom Where two rivers meet And the hills of the North And the hills of the South Look slow at one another And died For your sake. Now that you are Many years free, And the echo of the Civil War Has passed away, And Brown himself Has long been tried at law, Hanged by the neck, And buried in the ground Since Harpers Ferry Is alive with ghosts today, Immortal raiders Come again to town Perhaps, You will recall John Brown.
Document Q Source: The 9/11 of 1859 by historian Tony Horwitz. Dec. 1, 2009. Few if any Americans today would question the justness of John Brown s cause: the abolition of human bondage. But as the nation prepares to try Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who calls himself the architect of the 9/11 attacks, it may be worth pondering the parallels between John Brown s raid in 1859 and Al Qaeda s assault in 2001. Brown was a bearded fundamentalist who believed himself chosen by God to destroy the institution of slavery. He hoped to launch his holy war by seizing the United States armory at Harpers Ferry, Va., and arming blacks for a campaign of liberation. Brown also chose his target for shock value and symbolic impact. The only federal armory in the South, Harpers Ferry was just 60 miles from the capital. Brown s strike force was similar in size and make-up to that of the 9/11 hijackers. He led 21 men, all but two in their 20s, and many of them radicalized by guerrilla fighting in Bleeding Kansas, the abolitionists Afghanistan. Brown also relied on covert backers not oil-rich Saudis, but prominent Yankees known as the Secret Six. Brown used aliases and coded language and gathered his men at a mountain hideout. But, like the 9/11 bombers, Brown s men were indiscreet, disclosing their plan to family and sweethearts. A letter warning of the plot even reached the secretary of war. It arrived in August, the scheme seemed outlandish, and the warning was ignored. Brown and his men were prepared to die, and most did, in what quickly became a suicide mission. Trapped in Harpers Ferry, the raiders fought for 24 hours until Robert E. Lee ordered marines to storm the building where the survivors had holed up. Ten raiders were killed, including two of Brown s sons, and seven more hanged. No slaves won their freedom. The first civilian casualty was a free black railroad worker, shot in the back while fleeing the raiders. Document R Source: Freedom s Martyr by David S. Reynolds. Dec. 1, 2009. Today is the 150th anniversary of Brown s hanging. It s a date we should hold in reverence. Yes, I know the response: Why remember a misguided fanatic and his absurd plan for destroying slavery? There are compelling reasons. First, the plan was not absurd. Brown reasonably saw the Appalachians, which stretch deep into the South, as an ideal base for a guerrilla war Second, he was held in high esteem by many great men of his day. Ralph Waldo Emerson compared him to Jesus, declaring that Brown would make the gallows as glorious as the cross. Henry David Thoreau placed Brown above the freedom fighters of the American Revolution. Frederick Douglass said that while he had lived for black people, John Brown had died for them. A later black reformer, W. E. B. Du Bois, called Brown the white American who had come nearest to touching the real souls of black folk. Du Bois was right. Unlike nearly all other Americans of his era, John Brown did not have a shred of racism. He had long lived among African-Americans, trying to help them make a living, and he wanted blacks to be quickly integrated into American society. When Brown was told he could have a clergyman to accompany him to the gallows, he refused, saying he would be more honored to go with a slave woman and her children. By the time of his hanging, John Brown was so respected in the North that bells tolled in many cities and towns in his honor. Within two years, the Union troops marched southward singing, John Brown s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, but his soul keeps marching on. Brown remained a hero to the North right up through Reconstruction.
Document S Source: John Wilkes Booth and the Higher Law: Was Abraham Lincoln's assassin inspired by the militant abolitionist John Brown? by David S. Reynolds. April 12, 2015. When John Wilkes Booth killed President Abraham Lincoln at Ford s Theater in Washington on April 14, 1865, was he inspired by John Brown, the militant abolitionist whose public execution Booth had witnessed in Virginia six years earlier? Booth and Brown and, surprisingly enough, Lincoln himself were conjoined on a deep level by what in that era was called the higher law. They were inclined to follow the dictates of the higher law moral or religious principle rather than human law. Reconsidering Booth s murder of Lincoln in light of John Brown and the higher law leads to troubling questions. When is violence in the name of a higher cause justified, and when is it not? Can we distinguish between bad terrorism and good terrorism? Brown, Booth, and Lincoln all appealed to a higher cause to justify taking up arms against what they viewed as a great social evil. Brown, a devout Calvinist, considered himself God s chosen instrument for eradicating slavery. As Brown mounted the scaffold, he was calm and unruffled. He believed he was a divinely-appointed martyr for the antislavery cause. In a letter of December 1864, shortly after Lincoln was elected to a second term, Booth wrote bitterly of the president: He is standing in the footprints of old John Brown, but no more fit to stand with that rugged old hero Great God! No. John Brown was a man inspired, the grandest character of this century! Document T Video Clip: The Civil War: The Cause Chapter 5: The Meteor: John Brown Raids Harper's Ferry (4 min 59 sec)