John Brown letterbook

Born in Torrington, Connecticut, abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) spent the majority of his childhood in Ohio learning the family trade of tanning animal skins. A chance encounter with a freedom seeker, who arrived at the family home in hopes of finding aid, made an indelible impression on Brown and significantly contributed to his investment in the anti-slavery movement. From 1846 to 1850, Brown lived in the ideologically progressive city of Springfield, Massachusetts and became involved in transforming the city into a major center of abolitionism. In May of 1856, Brown's exploits for the anti-slavery cause turned violent. After following five of his sons to the Kansas territory, he started a campaign to bring Kansas into the union as a slavery-free state. In retribution for the attack by pro-slavery forces on the town of Lawrence, Kansas, Brown and his guerilla band of abolitionists went to a town near Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas and killed five slavery-supporting settlers. For the rest of 1856, he continued to fight against pro-slavery proponents in the Kansas and Missouri territories.

By the summer of 1859, Brown's focus turned to initiating a nationwide armed revolt. Using the alias Isaac Smith, he rented the Kennedy Farm in Washington County, Maryland, which was approximately seven miles from the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Brown believed that a raid on the federal arsenal for weapons to arm enslaved persons would help rally the nation to action in support of his cause. The farmhouse served as the headquarters for Brown and his followers as they gathered weapons and studied local maps in preparation for the attack.

On October 16, 1859 Brown and twenty-one of his men seized the Harpers Ferry armory and took several hostages. On the following day, President James Buchanan ordered a company of U.S. Marines, under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, to retake the arsenal. By October 18th, Lee and his company of Marines cornered Brown and his fellow raiders in the armory's engine house, forcing them to surrender. Eighteen people died during the attack on Harpers Ferry, including ten of Brown's men and one Marine. Within a week, Brown was brought to trial in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) and charged with treason against the Commonweath of Virginia. The jury quickly found him guilty and the state executed Brown by hanging on December 2, 1859. Although the raid on Harpers Ferry did not proceed as Brown planned, his actions ultimately intensified the polarization between abolitionists and pro-slavery advocates and less than two years after his attack the United States erupted into Civil War.