picture set of John Browns raid and trial
John brown's life
May: John Brown is born in Torrington, Connecticut. His
father, Owen, a strict Calvinist, hated slavery and believed that holding humans in bondage was a sin against God.
The War of
1812: A 12-year-old John Brown travels through the Michigan wilderness to deliver a herd of cattle. He lodged with a man who owned a boy slave. Brown was treated well, but the slave was beaten before his eyes with an iron shovel. The memory would forever haunt John Brown.
June 21: John Brown marries Dianthe Lusk. In 1826 they
left for the wilderness in Pennsylvania, where Brown built a tannery. She will die in 1832, shortly after the death of her
June 14: John Brown weds sixteen-year-old Mary Day. Mary takes cares of Brown's five children and will later bear him thirteen of her own. Economic hardships will escalate as he attempts to provide for his ever expanding family.
January: Land speculation reaches dizzying heights.
Brown moves his family to Franklin Mills, Ohio, and borrows money to buy land in the area, only to be crushed in the economic turmoil of 1837.
Elijah Lovejoy, publisher of an antislavery newspaper, is shot to death by a proslavery mob. During his memorial service, John Brown stood and made a vow to end slavery.
September 28, 1842: A federal court decides John
Brown's bankruptcy case. Creditors took all but the essentials on which Brown and his family needed to live. It is the culmination of years of poor business decisions made by Brown.
Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854: The Missouri Compromise,which restricted the expansion of slavery, is swept aside. With a nod to Southern power, the federal government placed the volatile issue of slavery into the hands of those settling the new territories. The people will decide, by popular vote, whether to be "free" or "slave."
June: John Brown follows his sons to Kansas.
May 24: Brown goes to nearby Pottawatomie Creek and directs his men in the murder of five proslavery settlers.
January: Franklin Sanborn, secretary for the Massachusetts State Kansas Committee, introduces Brown to influential aolitionists in the Boston area in effort to further antislavery fight in Kansas. These
acquaintances will later constitute the members of the "Secret Six."
January: John Brown rides into Missouri and attacks two
proslavery homesteads, confiscating property andliberating eleven of their slaves. Brown travels eighty-two days andcovers over a thousand miles to deliver the slaves to freedom in Canada.
July 3: A few miles outside of Harpers Ferry, John
Brown rents farmhouse under the name, "Isaac Smith."
August 16: John Brown and Frederick Douglass have
a clandestine meeting at a rock quarry at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Brown tried to convince Douglass to join him at Harpers Ferry.
October 16: John Brown attacks the armory at Harpers Ferry.
Novenber 2 :A virignia justy finds Brown
guilty of murder, treason, and inciting a slave insurrection after a week of trial and forty-five minutes of deliberation.
December 2: John Brown is hanged.
April 12: Confederate batteries
open fire on Fort Sumter; the first shots of the Civil War.
The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution abolishes
Who he was
John Brown was a man made famous through his Well documented hate of slavery. Many hisotrians believe that without his efforts towards slavery the civil war may have never happened. harpers farry was a wake up call to America.
Born to Owen Brown, John was raised to believe that slavery was a sin against god and to commit such atracocities were against human nature. While growing up John witnessed these events taking place everywhere he settled, includeing one incident where a slave boy was beaten by a shovel. This beating forever stuck with john and helped guide his actions during his future endevours with slavery.
During Johns life he settled in many area's of the United states includeing Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and massachusetts where he attempted to provide for his ever growing family. During his life he was never successfull financialy, however, that did not keep him from supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech. He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the
Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites,
an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.
John brown portraits during various stages in his life.
John brown family portait and tree.
Sons Oliver, John Jr., Watson, Owen Brown
The Brown family was closely related to the Thompson family as well. Daughter
Ruth married Henry Thompson, whose brothers William and Dauphin took part in the raid. Furthermore, their sister Isabel was married to Watson, cementing the familial alliances.
Brown devised a raid on harpers ferry in an attempt to start an armed slave revolt and destroy the institution of slavery. On October 16, 1859, he and 19 of his men set out for harper ferry, overrunning the arsenal of the town and taking a collection of hostages. Things did not go as planned for John and by morning he and his men where surrounded by a company of marines led by General Robert E. Lee, who quickly stormed the small engine house and killed or wounded most of the men inside including John Brown himslef who was taken prisoner and found guilty in virginia on November 2. John was executed the same day by the hanging.
thecivilwarproject.pbworks.com John Brown final moments, during which he slipped a note to a guard that stated "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."