With Tubman, whom he called “General Tubman,” Brown began planning an attack on slaveholders, as well as a United States military armory, at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), using armed freed enslaved people. At this time, he also met Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, activists and abolitionists both, and they became important people in Brown’s life, reinforcing much of his ideology.
#F95 false hero free#
Harpers Ferryīy early 1859, Brown was leading raids to free enslaved people in areas where forced labor was still in practice, primarily in the present-day Midwest. In the meantime, Kansas held elections and voted to be a free state in 1858. The abolitionist was undaunted, however, and Brown still advocated for the movement, traveling all over the country to raise money and obtain weapons for the cause.
Over the next several years, Brown’s efforts in Kansas continued, and two of his sons were captured - and a third was killed - by pro-slavery settlers. But John Brown’s legend as a militant abolitionist was just beginning. These and other events surrounding Kansas' difficult transition to statehood, made even more complicated by the issue of slavery, became known as Bleeding Kansas. What became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre occurred on May 25, 1856, and resulted in the deaths of five pro-slavery settlers. They targeted a group of pro-slavery settlers called the Pottawatomie Rifles. Confident he and his family could bring Kansas into the Union as a “free" state for Black people, Brown went west to join his sons.Īfter pro-slavery activists attacked at Lawrence, Kansas, in 1856, Brown and other abolitionists mounted a counterattack. His sons were involved in the abolitionist movement in the territory, and they summoned their father, fearing attack from pro-slavery settlers. By then, two of his sons had started families of their own, in the western territory that eventually became the state of Kansas. Bleeding Kansasīrown’s first militant actions as part of the abolitionist movement didn’t occur until 1855. Abolitionist leader Gerrit Smith was providing land in the area to Black farmers-at that time, owning land or a house enabled Black men to vote.īrown bought a farm there himself, near Lake Placid, New York, where he not only worked the land but could advise and assist members of the Black communities in the region. Timbuctooīy 1850, he had relocated his family again, this time to the Timbuctoo farming community in the Adirondack region of New York State. It is in Springfield that many historians believe Brown became a radical abolitionist. He also became more familiar with the so-called mercantile class of wealthy entrepreneurs and their often ruthless business practices. In addition to finding some business success, Brown quickly became immersed in the city’s influential abolitionist community. With a new business partner, Brown set up shop in Springfield, Massachusetts, hoping to reverse his fortunes. However, Brown’s financial losses continued to mount, although he did remarry in 1833. He relocated the family business and his four surviving children to present-day Kent, Ohio.
It didn’t help that he lost his wife and two of his children to illness at the time. Initially, Brown’s business ventures were very successful, but by the 1830s his finances took a turn for the worse. He also married and started a family during that time.ĭid you know? John Brown declared bankruptcy at age 42 and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him. By 1819, though, he had returned to Hudson and opened a tannery of his own, on the opposite side of town from his father. The younger Brown left his family at 16 for Massachusetts and then Connecticut, where he attended school and was ordained a Congregational minister. The family home soon became a safe house for fugitive enslaved people. The Brown family’s new home of Hudson, Ohio, happened to be a key stop on the Underground Railroad, and Owen Brown became active in the effort to bring former enslaved people to freedom. His father, who was in the tannery business, relocated the family to Ohio, where the abolitionist spent most of his childhood. Brown was born on May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, the son of Owen and Ruth Mills Brown.
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