John Brown

John Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800. He started to get interested in the abolitionist movement when he was around thirty-five. John Brown and his sons, Oliver and Owen, and Jeremiah Anderson became fugitives after killing five men in Kansas that was at the time divided on the issues of slavery. John Brown and sons killed those men because they supported slavery however didn’t own any. They escaped before persecution, and spent the next three years of their lives raising money from wealthy abolitionists to create a colony for runaway slaves to live. In order for this plan to succeed they needed weapons to defend themselves against slave-catchers. George Washington at that time had recently made Harper’s Ferry one of the new armory’s of the United States. John Brown chose that armory to take control of and possess. He assumed the false name of Isaac Smith and bought a farm outside of Harper’s Ferry with his sons and around twenty followers’ of his who also believed in his ideology.   John Brown trained his men at night to avoid suspicion by nosy neighbors. On Sunday October 16th John Brown and followers marched into Harper’s Ferry and captured several watchmen as hostages. The local militia discovered of Brown’s captures of the armory the following morning and proceeded to surround the stronghold, thus cutting off all possible escape routes. Brown realizes there is no easy escape and selects nine of his prisoners and puts them into the armory’s small engine house which comes to be known as “John Brown’s Fort”. Marines arrive that afternoon via train and storm into the firehouse Tuesday morning. John Brown is wounded by a sword and captured. Six of John Brown’s men were captured, ten killed, and the rest escaped without later capture. Eight days later he is put onto trial at the Jefferson County Courthouse, and five days after that John Brown is sentenced to death for treason. His last and most famous words were, "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the...