John brown biography civil war reenactments

John Brown ()

John Brown was a controversial figure who played a major role in leading the United States to civil war. He was a devout Christian and lifelong abolitionist who tried to eradicate slavery from the United States through increasingly radical means. Unlike most abolitionists, Brown was not a pacifist, and he came to believe that violence was necessary to dislodge slavery. He engaged in violent battles with pro-slavery citizens in Kansas and Missouri and led a raid on the federal munitions depot at Harper’s Ferry. Although the raid failed spectacularly, it helped precipitate the Civil War and turned Brown into a martyr for the abolitionist cause.

John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, on May 9, , into a deeply religious family. The family was led by a staunchly anti-slavery father, Owen Brown, who was an agent for the Underground Railroad. Brown grew up in a frontier Ohio town in which whites were the minority and where his father taught him that all people should be treated equally. When Brown was 12, he witnessed the beating of a slave boy. This violence had a profound impact on him and helped lead him to his fanatical opposition to slavery.

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The Abolitionist&#;s John Brown

When the abolitionist John Brown seized the largest Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in October of , he forced the citizens of the United States to reconsider the immorality of the institution of slavery and the injustices enforced by the government. The raid on Harpers Ferry and the resulting execution of Brown was a major turning point in the American abolitionist movement, causing many peaceful abolitionists to accept more militant measures to push for the end of slavery. The legitimization of slavery by the state and societal violence, such as the “Bleeding Kansas” conflict, plagued a nation rapidly approaching civil war, and during the s, the U.S. faced extreme sectional tension as slave-holding and free states struggled to maintain a balance of power in a divided government. Brown’s actions were a reflection of the violence of his time and a reaction to what he viewed as the legalized criminality of slavery upheld by the state under which he lived. Brown’s actions in Virginia and at the battle of Osawatomie, Kansas, were applauded by the antislavery populace, and New England abolitionists and intellectuals, such as Henry David Th

John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut on May 9th,   However, in his family moved to Hudson, Ohio, where his father, Owen Brown, opened a tannery for tanning hides.  John Brown’s mother, Ruth Mills, worked raising eight children.  In fact, John Brown was the fourth of the family’s eight children.  While in Hudson, Ohio, John Brown was exposed to anti-slavery views.  For instance, his parents provided safety to travelers of the Underground Railroad.  In general, the Underground Railroad was a system under which slaves from the Southern United States could escape into the Northern United States and Canada, and is considered to have occurred from the late s until the events of the American Civil War in   The Underground Railroad involved a series of routes, networks, and safe houses that escaped slaves could use as they travelled from the plantations in the south, to their freedom in the north.
As a teenager, John Brown pursued an education to become a church minister.  However, he returned home soon after leaving for school, and opened his own tannery just outside of Hudson, Ohio.  Just a few years later, when

John Brown

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   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 , 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,    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

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