John Brown

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) is an American abolitionist who uses violent actions to fight slavery.

During 1856 in Kansas, Brown commands forces at the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie.

Brown's followers also kill five pro-slavery supporters at Pottawatomie.

In 1859, Brown leads an unsuccessful raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry that ends with his capture.

Brown's trial results in his conviction and a sentence of death by hanging.

Brown's attempt in 1859 to start a liberation movement among enslaved African Americans in Harpers Ferry, Virginia electrifies the nation.

He is tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five pro-slavery Southerners and inciting a slave insurrection.

He is found guilty on all counts and is hanged.

Southerners allege that his rebellion is the tip of the abolitionist iceberg and represents the wishes of the Republican Party to end slavery.

Historians agree that the Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 escalated tensions that, a year later, led to secession and the American Civil War.

Brown first gains attention when he leads small groups of volunteers during the Bleeding Kansas crisis.

Unlike most other Northerners, who advocate peaceful resistance to the pro-slavery faction, Brown demands violent action in response to Southern aggression.

He believes he is the instrument of God's wrath in punishing men for the sin of owning slaves.

Dissatisfied with the pacifism encouraged by the organized abolitionist movement, he says, "These men are all talk.

What we need is action—action!"

During the Kansas campaign he and his supporters kill five pro-slavery southerners in what becomes known as the Pottawatomie Massacre in May 1856 in response to the raid of the "free soil" city of Lawrence.

In 1859, he leads a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry.

During the raid, he seizes the armory; seven people are killed, and ten or more are injured.

He intends to arm slaves with weapons from the arsenal, but the attack fails.

Within 36 hours, Brown's men have fled or been killed or captured by local pro slavery farmers, militiamen, and U.S. Marines led by Robert E. Lee.

Brown's subsequent capture by federal forces seizes the nation's attention, as Southerners fear it is just the first of many Northern plots to cause a slave rebellion that might endanger their lives, while Republicans dismiss the notion and say they will not interfere with slavery in the South.

Historians agree John Brown played a major role in the start of the Civil War.

Historian David Potter (1976) said the emotional effect of Brown's raid was greater than the philosophical effect of the Lincoln–Douglas debates, and that his raid revealed a deep division between North and South Brown's actions prior to the Civil War as an abolitionist, and the tactics he chose, still make him a controversial figure today.

He is sometimes memorialized as a heroic martyr and a visionary and sometimes vilified as a madman and a terrorist.

Historians debate whether he was "America's first domestic terrorist".

Some writers, such as Bruce Olds, describe him as a monomaniacal zealot, others, such as Stephen B. Oates, regard him as "one of the most perceptive human beings of his generation."

David S. Reynolds hails the man who "killed slavery, sparked the civil war, and seeded civil rights" and Richard Owen Boyer emphasizes that Brown was "an American who gave his life that millions of other Americans might be free."

The song "John Brown's Body" made him a heroic martyr and was a popular Union marching song during the Civil War.

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