Tell me more about John Brown

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A.� Which one Queen Victoria's confidant or the abolitionist < xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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Q.� The anti-slave campaigner.

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Q.� Family

A.� In 1820 he married Dianthe Lusk, who bore him seven children. Five years later they moved to Pennsylvania to run their own a tannery. Dianthe died 10 years later and within a year, Brown wed 16-year-old Mary Anne Day, by whom he fathered 13 more children. During the next 24 years Brown built and sold several tanneries, speculated in land sales and raised sheep.

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Q.� So, something of a businessman

A.� No - most were financial failures. Brown was a visionary, not an entrepreneur. As his financial problems increased, he began to brood over the plight of the weak and oppressed. He frequently sought the company of black people and soon became a militant abolitionist, a 'conductor' on the Underground Railroad for fugitive slaves.

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Q.� This became his calling

A.� By the time he was 50, Brown came to regard himself as commissioned by God to stop slavery. In August, 1855, he followed five of his sons to Kansas to help make the state a haven for anti-slavery settlers. After clashes with the pro-slavers, he formed his own militia unit and plotted revenge. On the night of 23 May, 1856, he and six followers, including four of his sons, went the homes of pro-slavery men along Pottawatomie Creek, dragged their unarmed inhabitants into the night, and hacked them to death with swords.

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Q.� The taste of blood

A.� So it seems. That autumn, Brown returned to Ohio and developed a grandiose plan to free slaves throughout the South. He began by raiding plantations in Missouri, then Western Virginia, where he collected an army of 21 men, including five blacks. On the night of 16 October they raided the government armoury at Harper's Ferry planned to arm the thousands of slaves who, learning of his crusade, would flock to his side. Instead, troops of militia and a company of US Marines under Col Robert E Lee were alerted and trapped the raiders inside the fire-engine house. The fighting ended with 10 of Brown's people killed and seven - including Brown - captured.

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Q.� He went on trial

A.� He was tried for treason against Virginia and after a hearing that took nearly a month, was convicted condemned to death. Maj T J ('Stonewall') Jackson [click here for a feature upon him] witnessed the execution of Brown at Charlestown at midday on 2 December, 1859. In a letter to his wife he wrote of Brown: 'He behaved with unflinching firmness', and of the execution: 'It was an imposing but very solemn scene. I was much impressed with the thought that before me stood a man, in the full vigor of health, who must in a few moments enter eternity. I sent up the petition that he might be saved. Awful was the thought that he might in a few minutes receive the sentence, "Depart, ye wicked, into everlasting fire!" I hope that he was prepared to die, but I am doubtful.'

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Q.� So he died a martyr

A.� Yes - and a murderer. Church services and public meetings were held in the North to glorify his deeds and sanctify the cause he represented. Eventually his name became the slogan under which, as a battle hymn, the Northern troops invaded and overran the South:

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He captured Harper's Ferry with his nineteen men so true

He frightened old Virginia till she trembled through and through

They hung him for a traitor, themselves the traitor crew

His soul is marching on

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John Brown's body lies a mold'ring in the grave

His soul goes marching on.

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Steve Cunningham