CONVERSATION John Brown: Patriot or Terrorist?

Conversation
John Brown: Patriot or Terrorist?

John Brown (1800–1859) was born into a deeply religious family in Connecticut and moved to Ohio when he was five. He made his living variously as a farmer, tanner, and land speculator; he fathered six children with his first wife, who died in childbirth, and thirteen with his second. He was always a committed abolitionist who, despite significant financial difficulties, contributed to antislavery causes, gave land to fugitive slaves, and participated in the Underground Railroad. In his fifties, he and five of his sons went to Kansas to fight pro-slavery forces. During what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre and the Battle of Osawatomie, Brown assumed the role of abolitionist leader and led violent attacks against proponents of slavery. When he returned from Kansas, he began raising money to support his plan to free slaves in Virginia. On October 16, 1859, at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, Brown led a raid on the federal arsenal, motivated by his belief that the system of slavery could only be overthrown by arming the slaves themselves. Many of the twenty-one men with him were captured or killed, including two of his sons, and Brown was imprisoned, tried, and hanged within a few months.

Whether the raid at Harpers Ferry can be said to have caused the Civil War is a matter of continuing debate, but there is strong agreement that it was a catalyst. John Brown’s often-quoted last words predicted the brutal conflict that followed: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood.” From the beginning, responses to Brown have been polarized, from Southern denunciations of him as a deranged zealot to Northern endorsements of him as a heroic prophet. African American leaders, including Frederick Douglass, eulogized him; poets, such as Langston Hughes and Robert Hayden, memorialized him; and W. E. B. DuBois wrote a laudatory biography. Nonetheless, the violence of his methods—despite an indisputably noble cause—has been called into question, and the accusations, particularly after September 11, 2001, that he was a “terrorist” have intensified the controversy surrounding his reputation and legacy more than 150 years after his death.

Sources

John Brown, Last Speech (1859)

John Brown, Last Letter to His Family (1859)

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Letter to John Brown (1859)

Henry David Thoreau, from A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown (c. 1882)

Ken Chowder, The Father of American Terrorism (2000)

Robert E. McGlone, The “Madness” of John Brown (2009)

David Reynolds, Freedom’s Martyr (2009)

Tony Horowitz, The 9/11 of 1859 (2009)