John Brown

John Brown became a legend of his time. He was a God fearing, yet violent man and slaveholders saw him as evil, fanatic, a murderer, lunatic, liar, and horse thief. To abolitionists, he was noble and courageous. John Brown was born in 1800 and grew up in the wilderness of Ohio. At seventeen, he left home and soon mastered the arts of farming, tanning, and home building. Along with all the rural arts Brown was skilled at, one of his most conspicuous talents was profuse and painful failure. He made many attempts at work and every one turned into a disappointment. In 1837, Brown made his first public statement on human bondage and from then on continued to speak out against slavery. For three years, he traveled East beseeching abolitionists for guns and money. While doing that, Brown created a plan that one night, a small group would capture the federal armory and arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. There, the group would seize all the guns and escape. Slaves would then join the group, creating an army, and diminish slavery in the South. On October 16, 1859, John Brown led a procession into Harpers Ferry and the raid went perfectly as planned. By noon, however, the Virginia militia entered Harpers Ferry and closed the only escape route. At the end of the day, Brown only had five of the twenty-two men he began with available to continue fighting. On October 18, the Marines, headed by Colonel Robert E. Lee, requested the surrender of Brown. He refused. The Marines attacked and captured John Brown. Brown's trial took place in one week and on November 2, 1859, John Brown was charged with murder, treason, and leading a slave revolt. He was sentenced to death. Brown lived in a Charleston jail cell for one month until he was killed on December 2. Church bells tolled and cannons boomed in honor of John Brown. Experts began to question Brown's sanity. Some say he was obsessed, monomaniacal, and psychologically unbalanced. Others reply saying that he was a bad tactician, planner, and in general, bad, but he was not crazy. After his death, Brown was never forgotten. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "Some 1,800 years ago, Christ was crucified. This morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. . . He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light." Although John Brown encountered many failures, he will always be remembered in the history of the Civil War and the United States.