John BrownThe Abolitionist

Mark Eddy

Period 5

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In The Beginning

• He was born on May 9,1800 in Torrington, Connecticut

• His father was strictly against slavery so they moved to an anti-slavery community

First Fifty Years

• He was never successful • Farmer, wool merchant, tanner and land

speculator• He housed runaway slaves • Helped on the Underground Railroad in

1851. • Him and his wife also raised a black

child

Meeting with Douglas

• Met with Frederick Douglas in 1847 in Springfield, Massachusetts.

• He was described as, “in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery.” Fredrick Douglas

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Kansas

• Became a leader of a group of antislavery guerillas

• Fought in the pro-slavery town of Lawrence.

• He brutally killed five citizens of a pro-slave town

Raid of The Arsenal

• October 16, 1859 Brown led 21 men on a raid of the federal arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

• 5 blacks and 16 whites

• He planned to arm slaves

• Within 36 hours of the start of the attack, the plot was thwarted.

Raid of the Arsenal

• Area farmers, militia men, and Marines killed or captured the attackers.

• Brown was wounded, captured and moved to Charlestown, Virginia.

The Last Days• Brown was convicted of treason• In his last address to the court he said, “I

believe to have interfered as I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done.” John Brown

Death

• John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859.

• Henry David Thoreau described him: “No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature.”

Bibliography

• http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1550.html. PBS. April 29, 2010.

• http://www.civilwarhome.com/johnbrownbio.htm