History 269 The Civil War and Reconstruction Osawatomie Brown

© 2007 David C. Hanson, Virginia Western Community College

John Brown is a fascinating historical figure of incalculable importance.  Though clearly a product of his time, he is nonetheless sui generis.  Unfortunately, for our pursuit of a greater understanding of the causes of the Civil War and the role of Brown’s infamous actions, motives, and the consequences, he has been reduced to a caricature and marginalized to the footnotes of history.  Brown is commonly described as a religious fanatic who failed at everything in life, became pathologically embittered by his own misery, and identified with the suffering slaves of the wicked South.  This characterization of Brown as an unstable, dark and mysterious ruffian, a homicidal lunatic on the fringe of society, is more legendary than historical.  The real John Brown was not only sane but lucid, thoughtful, articulate, and rational.  Moreover, he was well known, popular and respected throughout the abolitionist movement.  Six months after Brown was hanged for treason, Frederick Douglass wrote, “To have been acquainted with John Brown, shared his counsels, enjoyed his confidence, sympathized with the great objects of his life and death, I esteem as among the highest privileges of my life.”[1]

Brown’s goal was the destruction of slavery, which he saw as his patriotic duty and Christian mission. He began with service as a “conductor” in the Underground Railroad, helping escaped slaves reach Canada, where they were beyond the reach of the federal Fugitive Slave Law.  Gradually he came to the realization that more direct, aggressive action was necessary.  Next came his participation in the guerilla war that had begun in Kansas,  This was followed by his ambitious plan, fairly described as a farfetched scheme, to spark, arm and lead a wave of slave insurrections starting at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown believed that blacks needed to fight for their freedom, and that given encouragement and the opportunity, they would.  (He expected them to defend themselves but not to slaughter their former masters and white families.)  In the context of his life, what he tried to accomplish at Harpers Ferry was the natural next step in an escalating war on slavery.  An insight into the mind of Brown, his raid on Harpers Ferry, and the war that followed, can be found in an examination of Kansas during the guerilla war there.[2]

Congress set up the territory for trouble when it decided that the people of Kansas would decide by popular sovereignty to enter the Union as either a free soil state or a slaveholding state.  This might have worked if government leaders had been inclined to do their duty in service to the nation and served as impartial, forceful referees.  That was not the case.  The majority of legitimate settlers there were antislavery.  Governor Andrew Reeder, a proslavery Democrat appointed by President Franklin Pierce, conducted a territorial census that set the number of eligible Kansas voters at 2,905.  Antislavery Kansans were a clear majority, yet proslavery ruffians, estimated to number over 1,700, flooded in from Missouri and various slave states, terrorized the populace, and stole the election for a delegate to Congress.  The proslavery candidate received 2,258 votes, ten times the number of his nearest competitor.  Despite the blatant fraud and intimidation, Governor Reeder certified the November election result.[3]

The March election of Kansas territorial legislators was a repeat of the November one.  Many election officials received visits at their homes from posses of drunken “border ruffians,” as the proslavery vigilantes had come to be known, warning them that they would be lynched if they reported to the polls.  In the end, the winning candidates, many of whom actually lived in Missouri, received a total of 5,427 votes, with 791 votes cast for the antislavery nominees.  (A subsequent federal investigation would conclude that only 1,310 votes had been legal out of more than six thousand cast.)  Despite protests from antislavery partisans, Governor Reeder certified the results.  The Kansas legislature then proceeded to enact a law that made it a felony punishable by five years in prison for any person to speak, write, or act in such as manner as to undermine slavery in the territory.  Any form of written or spoken support for slave rebellion or escape was punishable by death.[4]

Next, the fraudulently elected legislature submitted a petition to Washington for admission as a slaveholding state. President Pierce endorsed this, going so far as to denounce antislavery settlers in Kansas as traitors. Congress blocked admission of Kansas and the civil war in the territory raged on. Antislavery settlers were routinely threatened with having their throats slit, their wives raped, their homes burned, and occasionally these threats were carried out by "militia" authorized by the proslavery governor of the territory, without impunity.[5]

It was because the government turned a blind eye to what became known as "Bleeding Kansas" that Brown and his sons settled in Osawatomie, along the Pottawatomie Creek, in Kansas.  There on the night of May 24, 1856, Brown and his men went to the homes of the local leaders of the proslavery "militia," took prisoners into the night, and killed them with broadswords.  It was not a random act of violence. Brown intended to send a message: antislavery settlers in Kansas were not going to be passive victims anymore. They were going to fight back.  From this incident, and others that followed, Brown became a larger than life character: Osawatomie Brown.  The name spread fear throughout proslavery settlements in Kansas and anger throughout the slaveholding South.  It was exactly what Brown intended.[6]

The textbook currently used here at Virginia Western for History 121 states that the Browns "dragged five suspected proslavery agitators from their cabins and butchered them with broadswords...” (Maier, Inventing America).  The number five is correct, and broadswords were used. Describing them as "suspected proslavery agitators" is at best misleading.  An agitator could be merely a person who uses his words as weapons.  Brown and most people in the area knew these men were ruthless leaders of organized terrorism against antislavery settlers. They were not merely “suspected agitators.”  A textbook we have used in the past (Tindall and Shi, America) states that Brown and the others “dragged five men from their houses and hacked them to death in front of their screaming families.”  This is incorrect.  They were marched outside at gunpoint, taken into the night, and executed (away from their cabins, out of sight).[7]

The men singled out by Brown for execution were considered enemy soldiers in a guerrilla war. James Doyle, Allen Wilkinson, and the Sherman brothers, Henry and William, were the leading proslavery terrorists at Osawatomie.  Residents who spoke out against them or tried to seek protection from the law were themselves arrested and prosecuted for violating the law banning antislavery speech. Acting as court officials in the "trials" held at Dutch Henry's tavern, were Wilkinson (district attorney), James Doyle (juror), William Doyle (bailiff). The proslavery terrorists were not only shielded by the law, they were the law in Kansas. Meanwhile, with the blessing of the president, secretary of war Jeff Davis ordered the territorial governor to stamp out the free state movement in Kansas, which he referred to as "insurrectionaries" and "invasive aggressors." Proslavery gangs (authorized vigilantes), such as those led by the Shermans and Doyles, routinely robbed, assaulted, and sometimes killed free soil settlers in an effort to drive them out of Kansas. They stole livestock, burned homes, and sacked the town of Lawrence (a free soil community). There was a civil war in Kansas, a guerrilla war with no line of distinction between soldiers and civilians.  Brown saw this, and worse, as evidence that a cruel, repressive tyranny of slavery had hijacked America and it was time for a new generation of patriots. (He referred to his antislavery guerrillas as "Minutemen.")  He was convinced that the civil institutions of government and law were too corrupted by slavery interests, too far rotten. In his mind, the time for a war of weapons, not merely a war of words, had come.[8]

James Doyle and his sons William and Drury were the first ones to die that night. (The youngest Doyle son was spared.)  Then Brown took his sons to the home of Wilkinson, and he was taken outside and killed. Finally they went to Dutch Henry's tavern. They were seeking Henry and William Sherman. "Dutch Henry" happened to be out on the plains that night, searching for stray cattle, and the Browns took his brother, "Dutch William," and three other men outside. After an interrogation, they led all but Sherman back to the tavern unharmed. Sherman was then coldly, methodically hacked to death by broadswords, like the Doyles and Wilkinson.  Brown's message was clear: the law is on the side of the enemy, corrupted by slave interests, so my sons and I will take matters into our own hands.[9]

After the Osawatomie massacres, followed by the battle at Black Jack (where Brown's little band of men captured an entire militia company), the mere mention of his name had a chilling effect on proslavery vigilantes. Brown was everywhere and nowhere, a ghostly figure. Once a proslavery party from Missouri, about 30 men led by a Georgian named Charles Hamilton, crossed the border into Kansas, attacked a town of free-soilers, and abducted eleven leading citizens from their businesses, homes and farms (including the local minister). The captives were marched to a ravine and shot by firing squad. The Kansas governor and Buchanan administration declined to pursue or prosecute the killers. Then word spread that Osawatomie Brown was in the area, and Hamilton's border ruffians fled back to Missouri.[10]

The example of John Brown raises a provocative rhetorical question. What should a person do about injustice?  Passively ignore it?  Rationalize it as an unfortunate part of an imperfect world?  Use written and spoken words to nonviolently oppose it?  Organize for a political solution?  Challenge it through the courts?  What if all these things have been tried, and the problem continues unabated?  Brown decided to be a soldier in the war against slavery.  At the time of the Mexican War, Ralph Waldo Emerson had refused to pay taxes to protest the extension of slavery by military conquest. Similar acts of nonviolent civil disobedience were made by abolitionists and opponents of Fugitive Slave Law. When a slaveholder from Virginia tracked down an escaped slave living in Boston and had him arrested, local antislavery activists organized a jail break, but at the critical moment their leaders backed away from such an overt act of lawlessness, and the poor fellow ended up being taken back to slavery in chains. This sort of moral "cowardice" disgusted Brown.[11]

What if government authorities had exhibited more enlightened and creative leadership on the side of human rights instead of coldly upholding slaveholders' property rights? Brown was a product of his times. The nation lost its moral compass, and this led to a violent collision between proslavery and antislavery forces. We might consider the reasoning of Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision: blacks are inferior beings with no rights; the Declaration of Independence does not apply to blacks. They should never be free men with civil rights; they can never be legitimate citizens in America. This attitude was not shocking in the context of the time. It was shared by most whites in the South (and many whites in the North), but it was still a perversion of the ideals of the Founding Fathers.  When such an onerous contention was the supreme law of the land, we can understand and perhaps even respect Brown's motives even while we question his methods.  Perhaps, we might contend, nonviolent civil disobedience, combined with patient and persistent pressure within the political and legal systems, should be the extent of radical activism. Resorting to violent terrorism can be understood but not justified, in a democratic society governed by the rule of law.  However, sometimes violent insurgency against repressive tyranny might be justifiable, and John Brown believed it had come to that.[12]

Brown rescued slaves, assisted fugitive slaves, killed proslavery terrorists in Kansas, and tried to spark a wave of slave rebellions with arms he intended to acquire from the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. He had no love for slaveholders, but neither punishment nor revenge were motives of John Brown. When proslavery militants murdered one of his sons, who was unarmed, and one of the brothers wanted to return to Kansas to kill the man who boasted of the crime, Old John Brown told him no, that is not our business, just the destruction of slavery.  Brown had a single-mindedness of purpose and a remarkable capacity for keeping his emotions in check. Those who knew him never doubted his faith or his will.[13]

It is an interesting notion: employing violence to accomplish a moral goal. Brown had countless discussions about this with abolitionists throughout the North, while seeking financial support.  He was well acquainted with most of the leading black and white antislavery activists of his lifetime; a personal friend of Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth.  Due to the way many historians have tried to marginalize him to the edge of history, as a violent lunatic, students generally think of Brown as a wild-eyed, wild-haired, bearded, ranting maniac out on the prairie, bushwacking proslavery settlers in Kansas, and finally apprehended in Virginia during his raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry. This is the mythical Osawatomie Brown, a madman.  In fact, Brown was welcomed into the homes of some of the nation's leading intellectuals and social activists, dining with their families, playing with the children, and retiring to the parlor for a serious discussion about the stain of slavery and how to remove it.  He found few people besides his sons who were willing to wage war with weapons, but he found many people who were eager to provide money with the understanding that it would be put to such use.  To be blunt, Brown was considered "useful" (and expendable) by others who shared his goals but shied away from his methods.[14]

As Brown moved toward the dramatic finale of his war on slavery, his financial support began to dry up and his abolitionist contacts with knowledge of the plan grew skittish.  Much of the momentum had faded with the emergence of the Republican Party in 1858 and the possibility that peaceful politics might render Brown’s tactics unnecessary.  Brown was skeptical, fearing that a Republican victory in 1860 would weaken the abolitionist cause and result in immoral concessions with little if any relief for the present generation of slaves.[15]

In the summer of 1859, John Brown and eighteen men quietly prepared for the fateful assault on slavery in Virginia.  Brown had rented a rundown farmhouse on high ground about five miles northeast of Harpers Ferry.  Interestingly, an Iowa Quaker named David Gue had learned of Brown’s plan.  Perceiving it as noble folly, he wrote a letter to Secretary of War John B. Floyd outlining the plot in great detail.  His hope was that Floyd would deploy a large detachment of federal troops to protect the armory, thus compelling Brown to abort the mission and spare the futile bloodshed.  Floyd dismissed the letter as a hoax.[16]

On the eve of the assault on Harpers Ferry, Brown urged the men to minimize violence.  “Consider that the lives of others are as dear to them as yours are to you.  Do not, therefore, take the life of anyone if you can possibly avoid it.”  He also instructed them to treat prisoners with respect and kindness.  Knowing that his plan might be unsuccessful and expecting to be killed in that event, Brown left incriminating letters from leading abolitionists who had supported him, prominent citizens of the North, among his papers, so that one way or another, as many people as possible would be irrevocably committed to the cause of black liberation.[17]

For all the meticulous planning and careful execution, the plan was a failure. Ten of the men were mortally wounded, two escaped, and seven (including Brown) were captured, tried and hanged.  Brown had naively expected that blacks and antislavery whites would rush to join him; instead local citizens and militia from surrounding communities swarmed to the town like angry bees and trapped Brown and several others in the engine house.  A drunken mob wildly fired into the armory grounds, endangering Brown’s hostages.  A carnival atmosphere engulfed the town as corpses were riddled with bullets, kicked, and mutilated.[18]

At dawn the next day, Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived by train with a company of marines from Washington.  At the time of his capture, Brown was calmly prepared to fight to the death rather than surrender. Through the cracked door he spoke: "I have sought neither vengeance nor gain. I came to this place in response to the cry of the distressed, with the single purpose of liberating my fellow human beings who are in bondage in Virginia." Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart demanded his surrender, and Brown calmly answered: "My men and I are prepared to sell our lives dearly." The door was broken down, the first marine through the door was killed, and then several of Brown's band were killed and the rest were captured. The arresting officer who apprehended Brown, Lt. Israel Green, attempted to run him through with his sword, and it bent. Green then repeatedly struck him on the head with the sword until Old John Brown was unconscious and appeared dead.[19]

Brown recovered from his wounds, and his written and spoken words for the next six weeks until his execution for treason, calmly, rationally and articulately explained that in his mind he did what he thought was merely his duty as a Christian and a patriotic American.  Northern abolitionists haled him as a martyr; Northern moderates softly tried to distance themselves from him; white Southerners were relieved by his death but continued to fear what he represented.  Brown attained immortality.[20]

f Documentation of sources available from the author upon request.

[History 269 Exhibits]