In a time where the rights of men were in question, John Brown stood up for an unlikely group of people. As a radical and revolutionary abolitionist, Brown didn't only advocate, but acted with force. His goal was to abolish slavery and allow the black man to go free. Being a white man, this was not only uncommon, but completely unheard of. John Brown led his forces through Bleeding Kansas, otherwise known as the Pottawatomie Massacre, and then held his way down to Virginia where the infamous raid at Harpers Ferry took its toll in 1859. Although Brown was tried and executed for his "crimes", his legend will forever live on as "the most controversial of all 19th-century Americans."
abolitionist: a reformer who favors abolishing slavery.
The Pottawatomie Massacre occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence (Kansas) by pro-slavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers (some of them members of the Pottawatomie Rifles) killed five settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas. This was one of the many bloody episodes in Kansas preceding the American Civil War, which came to be known collectively as Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas was due to the Missouri Compromise and Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Learn more about the Pottawatomie Massacre here.
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry (also known as John Brown's raid or The raid on Harpers Ferry; in many books the town is called "Harper's Ferry" with an apostrophe-s.) was an attempt by white abolitionist John Brown to start an armed slave revolt by seizing a United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia in 1859. Brown's raid was defeated by a detachment of U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass to join him when he attacked the armory, but illness prevented Tubman from joining him and Douglass believed his plan would fail and did not join him for that reason.
Learn more about Harpers Ferry here.
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