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Person1800 – 1859

John Brown

Abolitionist who advocated armed struggle; he fought in Kansas and in 1859 raided the Harpers Ferry armory, for which he was hanged

Raised in a devout Calvinist family, he failed in a string of businesses and lived in poverty, but held all his life that slavery was a sin and helped fugitive slaves. In 1855 he went to Kansas with his sons to fight pro-slavery settlers, and in 1856 killed five of them at Pottawatomie. In 1859 he raided the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, to spark a slave rising, and was captured and hanged. His composure in court and on the scaffold made him a martyr in the North and a terrorist in the South, and Union soldiers marched to the song “John Brown’s Body”.

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2 related events

  1. 1
    1854 – 1856Kansas–Nebraska Actrelated figure

    By leaving slavery in the Kansas and Nebraska territories to their settlers, the act erased the Missouri Compromise line; bloodshed followed in Kansas and the Republican Party was born to oppose the spread of slavery.

  2. 2
    1859John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferrykey figure

    The abolitionist John Brown seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry to start a slave uprising, but was overpowered by Marines, captured and hanged that December.

People who appear alongside

  • Stephen A. Douglas1813 – 1861

    Democratic senator from Illinois who championed popular sovereignty, wrote the Kansas–Nebraska Act and lost the 1860 election to Lincoln

  • Robert E. Lee1807 – 1870

    Confederate general who led the Army of Northern Virginia to many victories, lost at Gettysburg and surrendered at Appomattox in 1865

  • Frederick Douglass1818 – 1895

    Born enslaved in Maryland, he escaped to become the leading abolitionist orator and writer, and recruited Black soldiers for the Union

Themes this person appears in

  • The American Civil War1850 – 1865

    From the Compromise of 1850 to Lincoln’s assassination — a nation divided over slavery fought four years of civil war, preserving the Union and ending slavery