John Brown

He has been called a saint, a fanatic, and a cold-blooded murderer. The debate over his memory, his motives, about the true nature of the man continues to stir passionate debate. It is said that John Brown was the spark that started the Civil War. Truly, he marked the end of compromise over the issue of slavery, and it was not long after his death that John Brown's war became the nation's war.

John Brown was born into a deeply religious family in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800. Led by a father who was vehemently opposed to slavery, the family moved to northern Ohio when John was five. to a district that would be known for its antislavery views.

During his first fifty years, Brown moved around the country settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York, taking along his ever growing family (he would father twenty children.) Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculater, he was never financially succesful. He was stubborn, possessed a notoriously poor sense of buisness, and had more than his share of bad luck. In the Panic of 1837, Brown - like thousands of others - would loose everything. In 1842, he filed for bankruptcy.

Despite his financial setbacks, Brown always found a way to support the abolitionist cause. He participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an organization that helped to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

In 1847 Frederick Douglas met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting, Douglas stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and is deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been peirced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined to Douglas his plan to lead a war to free slaves.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. Gerrit Smith, a wealthy abolitionist, had donated 120,000 acres of his property in the Adirondacks to black families who were willing to clear the farm and the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own home there to teach his neighbors how to farm the rocky soil.

"He is socializing and associating with the Blacks in this community," comments historian, James Hornton. "This is something unheard of for a white man in the middle of the 19th century. Most abolitionists were lukewarm, at best, on the notion of racial equality. John Brown in this regard was, I think, remarkable."

To be continued...

* The American Experience: John Brown's Holy War