Abolitionist John Brown, in 1856, led the mob that massacred five suspected pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas.
Martyr or Murderer?
History often depicts abolitionist John Brown in a number of ways. The Northerners came to view this man as a martyr to the cause of seeing the enslaved African Americans released from slavery.
Many Southerners, in the mid-to-late 1800s, might describe Brown as an insane criminal. Historically, John Brown was just a man, one who was obsessed with abolishing slavery and chose a lawless path in his attempt to see an end to Black bondage. John Brown, it is said, believed himself to be an instrument of God.
Following in His Father's Footsteps
John Brown was born on May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut. He was one of the 16 children his father Owen Brown fathered by three wives. In 1805, the Brown family moved to Ohio where young John, in spite of his love of animals, learned his father's trade as a tanner.
Wandering Brown Fathers Twenty Children
As an adult, John Brown was restless and tended to drift about. Besides entering the tanning business, he sold wool, and tried surveying. None of his efforts proved very successful. At the age of 20, he married Dianthe Lusk. Together they produced seven children. Attempting to support his own growing family, he moved about in Ohio, then to Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. In 1833, Dianthe died. One year later, Brown married Mary Anne Day. They had 13 children.
The Underground Railroad
Brown's father was a staunch abolitionist and John grew up convinced that enslaving Blacks was a sin. His convictions were so strong on this that in Pennsylvania his home was a station on the Underground Railroad, a secret network that aided runaway slaves.
In New York, Brown settled his family in a Black community that had been founded on land donated by an anti-slavery philanthropist. Now in his 50s, he believed that force was the only way left to banish slavery.
Bloody Kansas
After Kansas was created as a territory, due to the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, several of Brown's sons settled at Pottawatomie, in Kansas Territory. Like their father, these sons of John Brown were also anti-slavery.
The Browns weren't the only people moving into Kansas Territory after the Kansas-Nebraska Act created the doctrine of popular sovereignty, meaning that folks moving into Kansas had the choice of either having slaves or not having them. By the hundreds so-called settlers began flocking into Kansas just to stuff the ballot boxes to ensure that Kansas would be pro-slavery.
So now, in Kansas you had folks with slaves living next door to other folks that were absolutely against slavery. It was a simmering pot that was bound to boil over, and it did.
Soon Kansas was known as Bleeding Kansas or Bloody Kansas. It was a battleground for advocates of both sides of the slavery issue. It was a situation that led to extremists murdering their opponents on the issue. Slaveholders from Missouri and abolitionist groups from as far away as New England fought vigorously for control of the territory and even organized opposition governments.
Lawrence, Kansas and Pottawatomie Creek
Then in May of 1856, a pro-slavery mob sacked Lawrence, Kansas. In revenge for this bloody destruction John Brown, who had by now joined his sons in Kansas, and his followers, brutally massacred five men suspected of pro-slavery beliefs, along Pottawatomie Creek near Lane, Kansas.
Sources:
Brewer, Paul. The Civil War: State by State. Thunder Bay Press, San Diego, California, 2004.
Faragher, John Mack, General Editor. American Heritage Encyclopedia of American History. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1998.
