John Brown

John Brown (1800-1859) was an American abolitionist in the period before the War of Secession. A militant opponent of slavery who made even Frederick Douglass look tepid by comparison in his dedication to the cause, Brown raised a militia during the conflict in Kansas known as Bleeding Kansas in the 1850s. In 1859 he led a raid on the US armory in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, hoping to capture enough weapons to arm a slave army which could wage a guerrilla war against the US. His band of raiders were defeated and captured or killed by a US army detachment commanded by Robert E. Lee. Brown was tried, found guilty, sentenced to death, and hanged on December 2, 1859. He did not deliver any last words from the gallows, but he did hand his executioner a note reading:

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away with blood. I had, as I now think, quite vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."

This foreshadowed the War of Secession.

Brown's Legacy
During his life, Brown's respect among even hardened radical abolitionists had been at best tepid, and most in the North opposed his violent campaigns. During the War of Scession, however, Brown came to be comsidered something of a folk hero and even a prophet who was ahead of his time in his identification of the South as a threat. Union soldiers sung a song, "John Brown's Body," in his honor.

After the war, Brown was revered by the Remembrance philosophy of the Democratic Party, a party which he had in life opposed. Theodore Roosevelt was an admirer of Brown's.