John Brown's raid & the armed struggle to end
slavery
By Pat
Chin
White abolitionist John Brown was born in 1800, the year
that African slave Gabriel Prosser planned a rebellion in
Virginia that shook the Southern slave system.
Brown was a deeply religious man who hated injustice. His
crusade against slavery was in part inspired by the belief that
he had been chosen by god to uproot the system of Black
bondage. Compassionate, fair minded, tender and affectionate,
Brown was nevertheless stern and ferocious in the fight against
slavery.
At first he planned to establish a school for Black youths
in the North. But he reached a turning point in 1839 after
hearing stories about the brutality of the slave system, which
he condemned as "the sum of all villanies."
Calling his family together, Brown declared his intention to
make war on slavery, "drifting," according to Black historian
W.E.B. DuBois, "from non-resistance to the red path of active
warfare." ("John Brown")
For several years, Brown ran a business to raise funds for
his cause. In 1851 he formed the League of Gileadites, his
first step toward armed struggle against slavery.
Three years later, Brown and six of his sons joined the
anti-slavery struggle in Kansas. Regular troops from Missouri
and armed bands from other Southern states like Georgia had
invaded Kansas to turn it into a slave state.
Capt. John Brown commanded a group fighting against the
murderous attacks of the pro-slavery invaders and their Kansas
allies. As such, he played a pivotal role in keeping Kansas
free from slavery.
In one encounter, at the Swamp of the Swan, Brown and his
men took pre-emptive action--controversial in some sectors--by
rounding up and executing five of the most brutal invaders who
had been terrorizing families and threatening his
encampment.
After leaving Kansas in September 1856, Brown headed east
for meetings and fundraising. Then he turned west to Iowa,
where he set up a military school in December 1857.
One year later, John Brown made a daring foray into Missouri
to liberate some slaves. A price was put on his head. A U.S.
marshal was told to "capture John Brown dead or alive."
The marshal responded: "If I try to capture John Brown it'll
be dead, and I'll be the one that'll be dead." Three months
later, John Brown landed the runaway slaves in Canada.
His long-term strategy of armed struggle against slavery
took shape as a bold plan to seize Harper's Ferry, Va. The town
was strategically located with an arsenal and a retreat to the
mountains. But it was also the gateway to the "Great Black
Way," with thousands of slaves who could be armed to fight.
"This then was the great plan which John Brown had been
slowly elaborating and formulating for 20 years--since the day
when kneeling beside a Negro minister he had sworn to blood
feud with slavery," DuBois wrote.
Security had been tightened in the South after Nat Turner's
explosive uprising of 1831 in Virginia. To prepare himself,
Brown studied guerrilla warfare. He read the plans of Gabriel
Prosser, Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, who had all led slave
revolts. He also studied the Haitian Revolution and others.
Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass admired John Brown's
ferocious courage and determination to end slavery. Brown had
first discussed his plans for a slave raid with Douglass in
1847. But Douglass feared that the raid on Harper's Ferry would
fail and he tried to talk Brown out of it, without success.
Only illness prevented Harriet Tubman from being at Harper's
Ferry. Brown had met Tubman for the first time in the spring of
1858 through his work with the Underground Railroad.
Brown and his men struck Harper's Ferry on Oct. 15, 1859.
The revolutionaries consisted of whites, including Brown's
sons, and Blacks, some of whom were Virginia slaves who had
accepted guns from Brown. They successfully captured the town
and the armory. But because of delays in the transportation of
weapons, they were surrounded by the local militia and by U.S.
troops led by Robert E. Lee.
Osborne P. Anderson, a Black revolutionary who was part of
Brown's band, escaped and wrote "A Voice from Harper's Ferry,"
the only narrative by a participant.
Many of Brown's fighters were killed or captured, but he
refused to surrender. He was taken prisoner after being
wounded.
Lying on the ground in his blood, the old freedom fighter
was interrogated by the governor of Virginia.
"You had better--all you people at the South--prepare
yourselves for a settlement of this question," Brown said
defiantly. "You may dispose of me very easily--I am nearly
disposed of now, but this question is still to be settled--this
Negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet."
For the unthinkable crime of fighting to liberate the
slaves, John Brown was hanged in Charleston, Va., on Dec. 2,
1859, with the full complicity of the federal government.
Brown was neither a fanatic nor a madman. He was in fact an
anti-racist revolutionary hero so repulsed by the barbarity of
the system that he gave his life in the struggle to end chattel
slavery.
The attack on Harper's Ferry was a military failure, but it
forced the issue of slavery into national consciousness. In
fact, after the offensive more Northern abolitionists started
to understand the necessity of armed struggle.
Said Frederick Douglass in 1881: "If John Brown did not end
the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that
ended slavery."
The stalwart's last statement, written in prison as he faced
the gallows, said: "I, John Brown, am quite certain that the
crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with
blood."
A year and a half later, the Civil War that led to the
emancipation of the slaves broke out.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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