The following are highlights from John Brown:
The Abolitionist and His Legacy, an exhibition of
documents and artifacts from the Gilder Lehrman Collection
on display at the New-York Historical Society from September
15, 2009 to March 25, 2010. Bonus material will be made
available online on a monthly basis. Click
here to be notified of updates.
On October 16, 1859, John Brown and a band of followers, black and white, attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The raid was part of a larger plan to destroy the slave system by freeing and arming slaves. The raiders were captured, and John Brown was executed on December 2, 1859, 150 years ago.
"Did John Brown draw his sword
against slavery and thereby lose his life in vain?
And to this I answer ten thousand times, No! No man fails,
or can fail,
who so grandly gives himself and all he has to a righteous
cause."
from a speech by Frederick Douglass, 1881
This exhibition examines John Brown’s beliefs and actions in the context of growing national divisions over slavery in the 1850s. Frederick Douglass, like most African Americans and abolitionists, saw John Brown as a martyr and a hero. Others saw him as a terrorist who attacked legal institutions and was willing to kill to achieve his goals. The exhibition concludes with documents and images highlighting the gradual acceptance by Americans of John Brown’s vision of racial equality for the America of today.
Developed by the Gilder Lehrman Institute in collaboration with the New-York Historical Society; curated by James G. Basker, Justine Ahlstrom, Susan Saidenberg, and Sandra Trenholm.
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I. Compromise Ends: The Turbulent 1850s
After the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788,
Americans had avoided facing the issue of slavery through
compromise. In the 1850s, new territories in the West
became testing grounds for competing visions of America’s
future—slave or free. The passage of the Fugitive
Slave Law in 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act four years
later, and the Dred Scott decision of 1857 precipitated
a firestorm between slave-holding Southerners and free-labor
Northerners. Sporadic political violence erupted from
small towns to the Senate. These events convinced John
Brown, an ardent abolitionist, that only violent action
would draw national attention to his cause and inspire
an uprising of slaves and supporters.
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Owen Brown was John Brown's father. Known as "Squire Brown" he was an abolitionist and a powerful force in John Brown's life. In this letter, John Brown discusses the free state struggle, and reports there are rumors of a free state man being murdered, and that it may lead to more violence. He says, "We feel more, & more certain that Kansas will be a Free State." |
II. The Road to Harpers Ferry, 1858-59
John Brown’s attack on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia was the culmination of his decades-long fight to end slavery. He expected that such an attack by a company of both white and black liberators would incite slaves to escape from plantations across the South. According to his plan, the freed slaves would join him in safe havens in the mountains, where he would arm and train them for guerrilla warfare. The loss of slaves and the fear of insurrection would destabilize the South and build political support in the North.
On Sunday, October 16, 1859, Brown led a group of twenty-one men (sixteen white and five black) to Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Although they captured the armory, arsenal, and rifle factory, the plan soon fell apart. A local mob and militia surrounded the town, preventing the raiders’ escape, while federal troops led by Robert E. Lee rushed to the scene. On Tuesday, soldiers successfully stormed the stronghold, seriously wounding Brown. He was tried and convicted of inciting slave insurrection, treason against Virginia, and murder. Before his hanging on December 2, 1859, Brown penned a prophetic forewarning of the Civil War: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”
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John Brown, 1859
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This photograph, inscribed to his children and taken seven months before his execution, shows the bearded Brown we are most familiar with today. He had grown the beard as a disguise and also used several aliases to elude official attention because news of his plans for a raid in Virginia had already been leaked. |
Additional Documents:
John Brown Appoints Trustees
for His Funds, April 14, 1857
Fearing capture by a Federal Marshall, John Brown appointed
George L. Stearns, Samuel Cabot Jr. and William H. Russell
as "trustees to hold all funds and other personal
property now in my hands... in my behalf for the aid of
the free state cause in Kansas" in April of 1857.
Brown had just received $7,000 from George L. Stearns
to continue the fight for a free Kansas. It was most likely
this gift that encouraged him to write this document.
Click
here to read the document.
Anne Brown Adams to Garibaldi
Ross, December 15, 1887
Click
here to read a letter from John Brown's daughter to
Garibaldi Ross, the son of Alexander Ross, one of John
Brown's strongest supporters. In it, she recalls her memories
leading up to the raid on Harpers Ferry, including a discussion
of her job keeping house for the men as they prepared.
Address of John Brown to the Virginia Court, December, 1859
Click
here to read a transcript of the five-minute speech
that Brown was allowed to make at the end of his trial,
helping to convince many Northerners that this grizzled
man of fifty-nine was a martyr to the cause of freedom.
III. Political Violence Leads to Civil War, 1860-65
John Brown's attack convinced Southerners that their
political and economic survival was threatened, while
his execution rallied and unified Northern abolitionists.
The debate became increasingly violent, and when Lincoln
was elected president in 1860, Southern states seceded
from the Union before he was even inaugurated. War finally
broke out when Southerners attacked a federal installation
at Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor on April 12, 1861.
Both sides initially claimed the war was over the preservation
of the Union and the U.S. Constitution. However, most
Americans recognized that slavery was the central issue.
In 1863, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation redefined
the war’s purpose: only the abolition of slavery
could preserve the Union established by the U.S. Constitution.
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Brown’s relentless fight against slavery was
carried into battle by Northern soldiers marching
to “John Brown’s Body.” The words,
sung to the melody of a Methodist hymn, originated
with the Massachusetts 12th Regiment in 1861, as much
to poke fun at a fellow soldier named John Brown as
to honor the abolitionist. Other regiments quickly
picked up the song, and it became one of the Union’s
most popular marches, with many verses added to commemorate
John Brown’s legacy.
Julia Ward Howe, John Brown’s friend and supporter
(her husband was one of the Secret Six), heard “John
Brown’s Body” sung in 1861. A poet and
playwright, she was inspired to compose a poem to
be sung to the same melody—“The Battle
Hymn of the Republic.” Click on the transcript
button to see the lyrics to this popular marching
song. |
IV. The Legacy of John Brown, 1865 to the Present
John Brown’s legacy has been debated from 1859 to today. Following the war, three Constitutional amendments set the nation on the road toward realizing John Brown’s ideals. The Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments ended slavery, granted African Americans citizenship, and gave black men the vote. The failure of Reconstruction and the emergence of Jim Crow laws set back civil rights for more than 75 years, but hope persisted. By the l950s and ’60s, men and women across the nation marched and campaigned to achieve full political, economic, and civil equality for African Americans. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other federal legislation ratified John Brown’s vision of racial equality set forth in his provisional constitution of 1858.
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“I
AM A MAN” placard,
April 4, 1968
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This placard was carried by striking sanitation workers
in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968—Martin
Luther King Jr. marched with them that day and was
murdered that night.
The strike in Memphis in 1968 exemplified the grassroots
civil rights movement that emerged across the country
as black and white Americans joined to realize the
vision of a nation based on equality for all citizens—a
goal for which John Brown had fought and died.
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