#bleedingkansas

John Brown: The Flame that Ignited Civil War

John Brown (1800-1859) was a militant abolitionist best known for the part he played in the violence of Bleeding Kansas (1854-1859) and his raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia) in October 1859. Brown developed an intense hatred for slavery as a child, and this, coupled with his evangelical Christian upbringing, convinced him that God had called him to end slavery in the United States.

Although there were many factors leading to the American Civil War (1861-1865), Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a significant catalyst in the secession of the Southern states, and many abolitionists of the time and historians afterward have claimed John Brown started the Civil War that ended slavery, just as he claimed he was called to do.

Controversy over whether Brown was a hero fighting for human rights or an outlaw and terrorist began while he was waging war against pro-slavery factions in Kansas and escalated after Harpers Ferry and his subsequent execution by hanging on 2 December 1859. This debate continues today but, generally speaking, scholarly and popular opinion has sided with Brown as hero, and he has been celebrated through statuary and place names throughout the USA as well as through books, documentaries, and films, including The Good Lord Bird (2020), starring Ethan Hawke as Brown, and based on the 2013 novel by James McBride.

Early Life & Anti-Slavery Conviction

John Brown was born on 9 May 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut, the fourth child of Owen Brown and his wife Ruth (neé Mills), both staunch abolitionists and participants in the Underground Railroad. In 1805, Owen moved the family to Hudson, Ohio, opened a tannery, and also opened his home as a safe house ('station') on the Underground Railroad, providing fugitive slaves (freedom seekers) with food and supplies before sending them north to the free states or Canada.

In 1808, Ruth Brown died after giving birth to a daughter, and this loss greatly impacted her 8-year-old son. Brown's father was away on business much of the time, and so the loss of his mother left him to find his own path, which would be directed by an incident he witnessed when he was twelve. Scholar Stephen B. Oates explains:

As it happened, John had just completed one of his cattle drives and took lodging with a landlord who owned a slave about John's age. Observing that the Negro was "badly clothed" and "poorly fed," John felt sorry for him. But contrition turned to horror when the master, right in front of John, beat the Negro boy with an iron fire shovel. John returned to Hudson with an unrelenting anguish for the "wretched, hopeless condition" of that "Fatherless and Motherless" slave boy. He insisted later – and there seems no reason to dispute him – that the beating he witnessed made him "a most determined" foe of slavery from then on.

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Brown was initially a poor student and preferred work in his father's tannery to studies at the school run by the abolitionist Elizur Wright. He balked at authority, maintaining he knew best how to live his life, and, as Oates writes, "he was arrogant and contentious, told lies, and acquired other 'bad habits' he would never talk about" (12). At the age of 16, however, Brown changed his ways, made a formal profession of faith, became a member of the Congregational Church of Hudson, Ohio, and enrolled at Moses Hallock's school in Plainfield, Massachusetts, in preparation for seminary and a career as a minister.

He devoted himself to serious study but left Hallock's school for unknown reasons after only a few months, enrolling at the Morris Academy in Litchfield, Connecticut. Difficulties with his eyes (some sort of inflammation) and lack of money caused him to drop out, and he returned to Hudson, Ohio, in 1817.

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Bleeding Kansas: Dress Rehearsal for the American Civil War

'Bleeding Kansas' was a term coined by the New York Tribune in 1856, referring to the escalating hostilities in the Kansas Territory between pro-slavery activists and anti-slavery 'free staters' following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. Violent confrontations between these two factions went on from 1854 to 1859, though hostilities would continue through 1861, when Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, and continue through the American Civil War.

Bleeding Kansas is understood as an overture to the American Civil War (1861-1865), as the factional violence clearly showed that the issue of slavery could only finally be dealt with through military action. It also highlighted how divided the United States had become over slavery as neighbor killed neighbor in disputes over whether Kansas should be a free state or a slave state.

These disputes were encouraged by the provision in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowing for popular sovereignty in deciding the matter. The people in the Kansas Territory would vote on which they wanted their state to be. The problem with this, as became clear quite quickly, is that it drew people from both sides of the issue to fill the region with as many supporters of their respective causes as possible and also encouraged pro-slavery 'border ruffians' from Missouri to cross into the territory to vote illegally.

The tensions in the region were never resolved, and hostilities between free staters, pro-slavery advocates, and their allies, the border ruffians, continued throughout the Civil War. At least 60 people died between 1854 and 1859, though that number is most likely low. Although Bleeding Kansas is usually understood in reference to the years 1854-1859, hostilities were only finally ended by the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, abolishing slavery.

Background

In 1787, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, prohibiting the spread of chattel slavery into the Northwest Territory, and, in 1807, it abolished the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Slavery was restricted to those states in which it had already been established, and each state could decide for itself whether to maintain the 'peculiar institution' or vote for abolition.

Northern states, generally, were less dependent on slave labor than those in the South and so slavery was gradually abandoned there, but in the South, with its large plantations of cotton and tobacco, slavery continued to flourish, especially after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, which sped up the process of cultivating cotton but required more labor in picking and transporting the crop.

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 nearly doubled the size of the United States but created controversy over whether that region, once it was divided into states, would be admitted to the Union as free or slave. This problem was addressed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri (part of the Louisiana Purchase) as a slave state and Maine as a free state in 1820, thereby maintaining the balance of power between slave and free states. The Missouri Compromise also outlawed slavery north of the 36°30´ parallel and west of the Mississippi River except for Missouri.

After the Mexican American War (1846-1848) and the acquisition of more land in the so-called Mexican Cession, the question arose again and was answered by the Compromise of 1850, which included the provision that slavery in the states of New Mexico and Utah would be decided by popular sovereignty. The compromise also included the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, compelling authorities, law enforcement, and private citizens in free states to help capture and return fugitive slaves to their masters; a law which was extremely unpopular and increased tensions between free and slave states.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was drafted by the same man who had submitted the final version of the Compromise of 1850, Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813-1861) of Illinois. Since Kansas and Nebraska were both north of the 36°30´ parallel, Douglas' act abolished the Missouri Compromise of 1820 in leaving it up to the people themselves to choose slavery or reject it. As Nebraska was further north, it was assumed the people would reject slavery, but Kansas, bordered by the slave state of Missouri, and with wide open plains for cultivation of crops, was expected to enter the Union as a slave state.

Problems began with the provision of popular sovereignty in the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, as each side of the issue saw an opportunity to increase their power in representational government by filling the region with supporters as quickly as possible. Consequently, immigrants from free and slave states hurried to Kansas to establish the residency required to vote on the issue. Since Kansas was so close to Missouri, pro-slavery activists arrived first, establishing the towns of Atchison and Leavenworth. Anti-slavery free staters also arrived in 1854, setting up communities in what would become Lawrence and Topeka. The vote was set for November 1854, and all the players were in place for the hostilities to begin, which would, within two years, be referred to as Bleeding Kansas.

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