John brown brief biography examples

American abolitionist (1800–1859)

John Brown (May 9, 1800 – December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist in the decades preceding the Civil War. First reaching national prominence in the 1850s for his radical abolitionism and fighting in Bleeding Kansas, Brown was captured, tried, and executed by the Commonwealth of Virginia for a raid and incitement of a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859.

An evangelical Christian of strong religious convictions, Brown was profoundly influenced by the Puritan faith of his upbringing. He believed that he was "an instrument of God," raised to strike the "death blow" to slavery in the United States, a "sacred obligation." Brown was the leading exponent of violence in the Am

Born in Torrington, Connecticut, John Brown belonged to a devout family with extreme anti-slavery views.  He married twice and fathered twenty children. The expanding family moved with Brown throughout his travels, residing in Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York.

Brown failed at several business ventures before declaring bankruptcy in 1842.  Still, he was able to support the abolitionist cause by becoming a conductor on the Underground Railroad and by establishing the League of Gileadites, an organization established to help runaway slaves escape to Canada.  In 1849, Brown moved to the free black farming community of North Elba, New York. 

At the age of 55, Brown moved with his sons to Kansas Territory.  In response to the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas, John Brown led a small band of men to Pottawatomie Creek on May 24, 1856.   The men dragged five unarmed men and boys, believed to be slavery proponents, from their homes and brutally murdered them.  Afterwards, Brown raided Missouri – freeing eleven slaves and killing the slave owner. 

Following the events in Kansas, Brown spent two and a half years traveling throughout New England, raising money to bring his anti-slavery war to the South.  In 1859, John Brown, under the alias Isaac Smith, rented the Kennedy Farmhouse, four miles north of Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).  At the farm Brown trained his 21 man army and planned their capture of the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Part of the plan included providing slaves in the area with weapons of pikes and rifles.  Brown believed that these armed slaves would then join his army and free even more slaves as they fanned southward along the Appalachian Mountains.  If the plan worked it would strike terror in the hearts of slave owners. 

On October 16, 1859, John Brown and his men raided the Federal Arsenal.  Unfortunately for Brown, nothing went as plann

John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9, 1800 to a religious antislavery couple named Owen and Ruth Brown.  He had an early interest in abolition likely started by his father's own passion for the cause.  At the age of 5 John moved with his family to the Western Reserve which is now a part of Ohio.  He was an awkward and solitary child but was especially close to his mother.  She died when John was 8 years old after giving birth to a daughter that only survived a few hours.  This left him devastated.

          Owen Brown - John Brown's father

In 1816, he enrolled in school in Plainfield, Massachusetts to prepare for college.  He soon transferred to Morris Academy in Litchfield, Connecticut.  Long hours of reading by candlelight hurt his vision and he developed a severe inflammation of the eyes.  This combined with the poor quality of his previous education forced him to give up his schooling and he returned to Hudson, Ohio.

In 1820 Brown married Dianthe Lusk.  She was a year younger than John and just as religious and they were married at the Congregational Church in Hudson, Ohio.  The first of seven children John, Jr. was born in 1821, followed by Jason in 1823 and in 1824 by Owen.  Dianthe died in 1832 during childbirth.  With five children Brown married Mary Ann Day a year later in 1833.  They went on to have thirteen children.

Mary Ann (Day), Sarah and Annie Brown about 1851

Spring 2011, Vol. 43, No. 1

By Paul Finkelman

As we celebrate the beginning of the sesquicentennial of the American Civil War, it is worthwhile to remember, and contemplate, the most important figure in the struggle against slavery immediately before the war: John Brown.

When Brown was hanged in 1859 for his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, many saw him as the harbinger of the future. For Southerners, he was the embodiment of all their fears—a white man willing to die to end slavery—and the most potent symbol yet of aggressive Northern antislavery sentiment. For many Northerners, he was a prophet of righteousness, bringing down a terrible swift sword against the immorality of slavery and the haughtiness of the Southern master class.

In 2000, the United States marked the bicentennial of Brown's birth. At that time, domestic terrorism was a growing problem. Bombings, ambushes, and assassinations had been directed at women's clinics and physicians in a number of places; a bomb planted in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park during the 1996 summer Olympics had killed one person and wounded more than a hundred people; in 1995 a pair of right-wing extremists had planted a bomb at the Alfred A. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.

During that bicentennial year, a number of historians and others talked about whether John Brown was America's first terrorist. Was he a model for the cowards who planted bombs at clinics, in public parks, or in buildings? Significantly, at least one modern terrorist, Paul Hill, compared himself to John Brown after he was arrested for murdering two people who worked at a women's clinic in Florida.

A year after Brown's bicentennial, the United States was faced with multiple terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The meaning of terrorism had changed. It was no longer the result of random attacks by an individual or two. Now it was tied to a worldwide con