J

ohn Brown
America’s First Terrorist?
By Paul Finkelman

16 Prologue
A


s we celebrate the beginning of the sesquicentennial
of the American Civil War, it is worthwhile to remember,
and contemplate, the most important figure in the struggle
against slavery immediately before the war: John Brown.
When Brown was hanged in 1859 for his raid on Harpers
Ferry, Virginia, many saw him as the harbinger of the future.
For Southerners, he was the embodiment of all their fears—a
white man willing to die to end slavery—and the most potent
symbol yet of aggressive Northern antislavery sentiment. For
many Northerners, he was a prophet of righteousness, bringing
down a terrible swift sword against the immorality of slavery
and the haughtiness of the Southern master class.
In 2000, the United States marked the bicentennial
of Brown’s birth. At that time, domestic terrorism was a
growing problem. Bombings, ambushes, and assassinations
had been directed at women’s clinics and physicians in a
number of places; a bomb planted in Atlanta’s Centennial
Olympic Park during the 1996 summer Olympics had killed
one person and wounded more than a hundred people; in
1995 a pair of right-wing extremists had planted a bomb at
the Alfred A. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City,
killing 168 people and injuring more than 680 others.
During that bicentennial year, a number of historians
and others talked about whether John Brown was
America’s first terrorist. Was he a model for the cowards
who planted bombs at clinics, in public parks, or in
buildings? Significantly, at least one modern terrorist,
Paul Hill, compared himself to John Brown after he
was arrested for murdering two people who worked at a
women’s clinic in Florida.

On the morning of October 18, 1859, marines stormed the engine house of the
armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, capturing Brown and a few of his raiders and
killing the rest. By the end of the raid, of the 22 who had been involved in the plot,
10, including his sons Watson and Oliver, were dead or mortally wounded; five,
including Brown, had been captured.

Prologue 17
A mural titled The Tragic Prelude (1941) depicts John Brown’s antislavery battles in the Kansas Territory in 1856. At the end of the year, he was one of the most
renowned figures in “Bleeding Kansas.” The painting takes artistic license by portraying Brown with a beard; he was cleanshaven while in Kansas.
A year after Brown’s bicentennial, the
United States was faced with multiple
terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
The meaning of terrorism had changed. It
was no longer the result of random attacks
by an individual or two. Now it was tied to a
worldwide conspiracy, coordinated overseas
and meticulously planned. The American
response was a “war on terror.” In an age
of rising incidents of terrorism, numerous
scholars, and more important, much of the
general public, have again asked if John
Brown was America’s “first terrorist.”
Some Definitions of Terrorism
There are no complete or certain def-
initions of terrorism. Terrorists seek to
18 Prologue
“terrify” people and strike fear in the
minds of those at whom their terror is
directed. This, however, is not a complete
definition. After all, few would consider
soldiers in warfare terrorists, yet surely
they try to make their enemy “fearful” of
them. Starting with World War II, large-
scale bombing has been a fact of modern
warfare, but bombing of military targets is
surely not an act of terrorism, even though
the civilian population may be harmed or
terrorized.
This aspect of warfare is hardly new. Siege
warfare of the ancient and medieval world
surely terrorized those inside castles or
towns. Similarly, the long sieges of the Civil
War, as well as decisions by both sides to
strike at civilian targets that aided the war
effort, surely terrorized populations. The
trench warfare and artillery duels of World
War I terrorized millions of civilians, but
this was not essentially terrorism.
So, what beyond scaring or frightening
people constitutes terrorism? How do we
define the “terrorist?”
For terrorists, the “terror” itself, the act of
violence, is the goal rather than simply the
means to an end. Terrorists may hope for
political change, but what they often want
is to simply strike back at and harm those
they oppose. The act of terror becomes the
goal, with no expectation that anything else
will follow.
This makes terrorism different from
Spring 2011
other kinds of illegal activity or violence. A ongoing struggle there is. One common maim, or destroy property, they naturally
kidnapper wants a ransom; a hostage taker aspect of terrorists is that they avoid direct must be secretive. After their acts, however,
usually has “demands” that should be met; contact and confrontation with those who they are likely to openly (but anonymously)
a robber simply wants money or goods are armed, especially the military. Tied to brag about their crimes.
and might be willing to kill for them. But this, most terrorists plan their actions to Terrorism also has a political context.
the terrorist often has no demands and have the greatest impact and to kill the most This is particularly important to see when
no goals other than to terrorize. Timothy people. we try to make the distinction between
McVeigh and Terry Nichols made no Terrorists also act in secret and try to terrorism and revolution. In the Declaration
demands; they wanted nothing other than avoid anyone knowing who they are. They of Independence, Thomas Jefferson set
to kill and destroy. Those who out a series of principles that
attacked the World Trade Center justified violent overthrow of the
and the Pentagon only wanted government. One was a “long
to kill, destroy, and terrorize. train of abuses.”
They made no demands, asked Even more important for
for nothing, and by their own Jefferson and his colleagues
design would not have even been was the lack of access to the
alive to negotiate for whatever political process to change things
they might have wanted. peacefully. From the American
Another hallmark of terrorists perspective, in 1776, there was
is indiscriminate killing; it helps not a political solution to the
spread terror. Terrorists generally crisis because Americans had no
do not care who they kill—adults, voice in the British government.
children, old people, women, men— In addition, the American
although sometimes assassinations Revolution was a response to
are an exception to this. attacks initiated by the British.
Terrorists are not concerned Thus, where there are no political
about collateral damage. Planting a avenues for change, violence—such
bomb or shooting indiscriminately as the American troops firing at the
is a key indicator of terrorism. It British—becomes revolution. But
does not even matter if some of where the political processes are
those who die are sympathetic to open, violence becomes terrorism.
the terrorists or of their own ethnic This was even true for the 9-11
group. A number of American terrorists. Nothing prevented
Muslims died in the attack on them from politically organizing,
the World Trade Center because demonstrating, and educating the
that is where they worked, but American public about the changes
these collateral deaths were of John Brown in the 1850s. He had alternately tried to succeed as a they wanted. Their choice was to
no consequence to those who tanner, sheep rancher, suburban developer, and canal builder, but was short-circuit the political options in
undone by failing economic conditions and his inept business skills.
planned the attack. For terrorists, favor of violence and terrorism.
indiscriminate killing helps spread With these general under-
terror. Similarly, for terrorist killers there is often wear masks and in other ways try to standings, let us turn to John Brown, first to
no reason to spare lives or minimize death— hide their identity. The classic American understand what he did, and second to see if
every life is a legitimate target. terrorist is the sheeted Klansman, with his it fits in the context of terrorism.
Terrorists usually attack nonmilitary face covered, killing, beating, mutilating,
targets and those who are unable to defend burning, and raping, to terrorize those who What Brown Did
themselves. Often their victims are what supported racial equality and black suffrage. Brown is connected to terrorism for two events
might be called noncombatants in whatever Because they are violent and seek to kill, in his life: the Pottawatomie raid in the Kansas

John Brown Prologue 19

Territory in 1856 and his raid on Harpers
Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1859.
Both involved violence and killing. Both have
led some people to claim Brown was a terrorist.
On the night of May 24, 1856, Brown led
a raiding party of four of his sons, his son-
in-law, and two other men to Pottawatomie
Creek. For the most part, this raid was
unplanned and almost spontaneous. Brown
acted in retaliation for a raid on the free
state settlement at Lawrence, the killings of
free state settlers in Kansas, and persistent
threats by the proslavery settlers along
Pottawatomie Creek. Brown and his men
entered three cabins, interrogated a number
of men, and eventually killed five of them,
all with swords and knives. Some were killed
quickly, while others, who resisted, were cut
in many places. Brown and his men then
departed.
Significantly, although Brown and his
men killed five proslavery settlers, they
did not kill all the Southern settlers they
encountered. They spared the life of the
wife and teenage son of one of the men
they killed, even though these people could
have identified the raiders. At another cabin,
they interrogated two men and let them go,
Frederick Douglass hosted John Brown at his home in January and February 1858. Douglass was
convinced they had not threatened free state sympathetic but believed Brown’s plan for the Harpers Ferry attack was suicidal.
settlers or been involved in violent actions
against the free state settlers. At a third house
they also spared the wife of one man, even
while they killed him. got out, slaves from throughout the region point Brown stopped a passenger train, held
Three and a half years later, on the would appear at his side, as bees “swarm to it for a while, and then released it. The train
evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown the hive.” continued on to Washington, D.C., where
and 18 “soldiers” seized the U.S. arsenal During his raid, Brown and his men the crew dutifully reported to officials that
at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown’s plans had captured a number of slave owners in Brown had seized Harpers Ferry. The next
were fantastic—some would say insane. He the area, including Lewis Washington, the day, October 18, U.S. marines, under the
would use the arms in the arsenal—as well great-grand-nephew of President George command of Army Brevet Col. Robert E.
as old-fashioned pikes he had had specially Washington. Brown did not kill any of these Lee, captured Brown in the engine house on
manufactured—to begin a guerrilla war captured men, and he went out of his way to the armory grounds. By this time, most of
against slavery. The core of his army would protect them and make sure they were not the raiders were either dead or wounded.
be the mostly white band of raiders who harmed. Ten days later, Brown’s trial began in
seized the arsenal. But soon, he hoped—he While in Harpers Ferry, the raiders killed Charlestown, Virginia (now West Vir­ginia).
believed—he just knew—that hundreds or a railroad baggage handler, who ironically He was charged with treason, murder, and
even thousands of slaves would join him in was a free black, when he refused their conspiring with slaves to rebel. He was
the fight against the “peculiar institution.” orders to halt. In a firefight they killed a convicted on November 2 and sentenced to
He predicted that once word of his raid few townsmen, including the mayor. At one death. Before his sentencing, Brown told the

20 Prologue Spring 2011


While at Frederick Douglass’s home in1858, Brown wrote a constitution for the revolutionary state he
hoped to create.
court that his actions against slavery were
consistent with God’s commandments.
“I believe,” he said in a speech that
electrified many Northerners who later read
it, “that to have interfered as I have done in
John Brown
behalf of His despised poor, is no wrong,
but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that
I should forfeit my life for the furtherance
of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood
with the blood of millions in this slave
country whose rights are disregarded by
wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say
‘let it be done.’”
In the month between his sentencing on
November 2 and his execution on December
2, Brown wrote brilliant letters that helped
to create, in the minds of many Northerners,
his image as a Christ-like martyr who gave
his life so that the slaves might be free.
Indeed, Frederick Douglass would later say
that he lived for the slave, but John Brown
was willing to “die for the slave.” Brown
welcomed his end, declaring: “I am worth
inconceivably more to hang than for any
other purpose.”
For abolitionists and antislavery activists,
black and white, Brown emerged as a hero, a
martyr, and ultimately, a harbinger of the end
of slavery. Most Northern whites, especially
those not committed to abolition, were aghast
at the violence of his action. Yet there was also
widespread support for him in the region.
Northerners variously came to see Brown as an
antislavery saint, a brave but foolish extremist,
a lunatic, and a threat to the Union.
The future Republican governor of Mas­
sachusetts, John A. Andrew, summed up the
feelings of many Northerners when he refused
to endorse Brown’s tactics or the wisdom of the
raid, but declared that “John Brown himself is
right.” But most Republican politicians worried
that they would be tarred by his extremism and
lose the next election. Democrats and what
remained of the Whigs (who would become
Constitutional Unionists), by contrast, feared
that Brown’s raid would polarize the nation, put
the Republicans in power, and chase the South
out of the Union.
For white Southerners, Brown was the worst
possible nightmare: a fearless, committed
abolitionist, armed, accompanied by blacks,
and willing to die to end slavery. Indeed, in the
minds of Southerners, Brown was the greatest
threat to slavery the South had ever witnessed.
Most Southerners had at least a vague fear of
slave rebellions. But Southerners had con­
vinced themselves that most slaves were
content with their status and that, in any event,
Prologue 21
Brown’s stand in Harpers Ferry ended on the morning of October 18, 1859, when U.S. marines broke into the engine house of the federal armory. Brown and his
band of “soldiers” had arrived in town on the evening of October 16 and waited for slaves to join them, as bees “swarm to the hive,” but they never came.
blacks were incapable of anything worse than
sporadic vio­lence. Brown, however, raised the
ominous possibility of armed black slaves,
led by whites, who together would destroy
Southern white society.
Who was this lunatic, this mad man, this
abolitionist hero, this saint, this martyr to
freedom? Was he America’s first terrorist?
Who Was John Brown?
In many ways Brown was a typical 19th-
century American. He was born in Torrington,
Connecticut, into a family of deeply religious
Congregationalists who were Puritan in
their heritage and overtly antislavery in their
views. When he was five, the family moved
to what was then the “West.” They migrated
to Hudson, Ohio, which was in the Western
Reserve between Akron and Cleveland. The
region was full of New Englanders, especially
from Connecticut.
22 Prologue
Brown grew up in an atmosphere in which
everyone despised slavery. Both Brown and
his father were early supporters of the new
abolitionism that emerged in the 1830s.
Brown’s father, a prominent businessman
with a large tannery, was involved in trying
to make Western Reserve College into an
antislavery stronghold. When that failed,
the elder Brown supported the creation
of Oberlin College as a racially integrated
coeducational institution of higher learning
with an anti­slavery bent.
Despite his father’s association with
colleges, Brown had little formal education.
Early in his life he considered becoming a
clergyman, and he returned to Connecticut
to attend a preparatory school as a prelude
to going to a seminary. But that possibility
ended when he flunked out of the school.
By age 20 he was married and a foreman in
his father’s tannery. His bride, Dianthe Lusk,
gave birth to seven children before she died
in 1832. Five of those children lived until
adulthood. In 1833 he married Mary Ann
Day, an uneducated 16-year-old, half his
age. She would have 13 children, but only six
would survive to adulthood.
In 1825 Brown moved to western
Pennsylvania, where he was a successful
tanner and a postmaster (under President
John Quincy Adams). Despite his own poor
education and struggles with schooling, he
helped start a local school. A proper burgher
of the community, he became a church
leader and joined the Masons. In 1834 his
business went bad, and he moved back to
Ohio, starting a tannery in Kent. There
he speculated in land and won a contract
to build a canal from Kent (then called
Franklin Mills) to Akron. He formed the
Franklin Land Company with 700 acres for
building houses.
Spring 2011
 As we recall Brown’s future activities, it is
fascinating to also contemplate the image of
John Brown as a suburban developer. But
the panic of 1837 changed everything. By
the end of the year, Brown was bankrupt.
For the next five years he dodged creditors
before finally declaring bankruptcy in 1842
and losing almost everything he owned.
Up to this point in his life, Brown had
done nothing to indicate he was particularly
political or unusually antislavery. He was, in
fact, a fairly conventional Jacksonian, trying
to increase his status and wealth and always
looking for the next opportunity: tanner,
canal builder, suburban developer, and in
the wake of the panic, bankrupt.
By 1844, Brown was back in the business
world, raising sheep with a wealthy business
partner in Akron. But his inept business
skills did him in again, especially an attempt
Brown’s trial in Charlestown, Virginia, began in October 1859. He was charged with and convicted of
to sell 200,000 pounds of wool in England, treason, murder, and conspiring with slaves to rebel.
which was an exporter of wool. Oddly, while
his creditors sued him, no one accused him
of dishonesty or lacking integrity. Even The execution of John Brown on December 2, 1859. In the month before, he wrote brilliant letters that
helped create, in the minds of many Northerners, his image as a Christ-like martyr who gave his life so
people whose finances were almost ruined that slaves might be free.
by his behavior liked him.
In 1854—at age 54—Brown was a failed
businessman, an impoverished farmer with
a few head of cattle in Ohio and some land
in Upstate New York—at North Elba—that
he had not yet paid for. That year five of his
sons and his son-in-law moved to Kansas. In
part they went to improve their economic
status and find new, virgin soil for farming.
But they also went to spread freedom in the
West.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 had
organized the new Kansas Territory without
banning slavery. Under that law, the settlers
themselves would decide the issue of slavery
by popular sovereignty. Thus, when the
Browns moved to Kansas, they were making
a political statement to help ensure that
Kansas would be a free state.
During this period, Brown had gradually
emerged as an unyielding opponent of
slavery. He participated in the underground
railroad and in 1851 helped found the

John Brown
Brown’s grave at his family farm in North Elba, New York, became a pilgrimage site. Brown cannot be seen as a terrorist, but is viewed perhaps more accurately as a
violent revolutionary striking a blow for freedom, against slavery.
League of Gileadites, an organization of
whites, free blacks, and runaway slaves
dedicated to protecting fugitive slaves from
slave catchers.
In the 1840s Brown was in contact with
such antislavery leaders as Gerrit Smith and
Frederick Douglass. Yet as late as 1855 Brown
remained a marginal figure in the antislavery
movement and in all other ways histor­ically
insignificant. In 1855 Brown joined his sons
and son-in-law in Kansas, settling along
the Osawatomie River. In December 1855
he helped defend Lawrence, the center of
antislavery settlers, from an armed attack by
proslavery forces.
On May 21, 1856, though, when Brown
was elsewhere, proslavery men sacked and
burned the free-soil town, destroying the
24 Prologue
printing press there, burning buildings,
and terrorizing the residents. Three days
later, Brown and his band of free-state
guerrillas killed five Southern settlers along
the Pottawatomie River, decapitating some
of them with swords. Later that summer, a
proslavery minister, working as a scout for
the U.S. Army, murdered Brown’s unarmed
son Frederick, shooting him in the heart at
close range. His body, when discovered, was
riddled with bullets.
Throughout the rest of 1856, Brown and
his remaining sons fought in Kansas and
Missouri. Some of these encounters were
pitched battles between Brown’s small army
and proslavery forces, which were sometimes
abetted by the U.S. Army.
By the end of 1856, Brown was one of the
most re­nowned (and either hated or adored)
figures in “bleeding Kansas,” and in the East
he became known as “Osawatomie Brown”
or “Old Osawatomie.” For some New
England abolitionists he was approaching
the status of a cult figure. Taciturn, blunt,
gruff—and armed—Brown had become
a symbol of the emerging holy crusade
against slavery. Those in the East knew he
fought against slavery, but few were aware
of the exact nature of his role in the gory
events at Pottawatomie.
Within two weeks after the incident, the play
Osawatomie Brown appeared on Broadway. The
play accused Brown’s en­emies of the massacre
at Pottawatomie and suggested that the real
killers had blamed Brown in order to discredit
him. Moreover, ever since the mas­sacre, James
Spring 2011
Redpath, an English journalist who later
wrote Brown’s biography, had been assuring
readers that Brown was not responsible for the
murders. Thus, when Brown went on a fund-
raising trip to Massachusetts and Connecticut
in 1857, no one saw him as a killer. At the
time, he denied any role in the Pottawatomie
murders, and his abolitionist supporters in
the East gladly accepted his disavowal at face
value. Brown’s eastern con­tacts thought their
donations to him would go to support the war
against slavery in Kansas. Actually, Brown was
already planning a raid on Harpers Ferry.
As early as 1854, Brown had been
thinking, and talking, about an orga­
nized war against slavery in Virginia. His
focus, from the beginning, seems to have
been on Harpers Ferry, the site of a federal
arsenal and armory. By 1857 his plans were
beginning to take shape. In March 1857 he
hired a Connecticut forgemaster to make a
thousand pikes, allegedly for use in Kansas
but actually to be given to slaves who he
believed would flock to his guerrilla army
once he invaded the South.
In January and February 1858 he spent a
month at the home of Frederick Douglass,
planning his raid and writing a provisional
constitution for the revolutionary state
Brown hoped to create. Brown begged
Douglass to join him. Douglass was
sympathetic to Brown’s goals but believed
the plan was suicidal: “You’re walking into
a perfect steel-trap and you will never get
out alive,” he told Brown. Nevertheless,
Douglass introduced Brown to Shields
Green, a fugi­tive slave from South Carolina
who joined Brown—and whom Virginia
authorities hanged after the raid.
In the early spring of 1858, Brown began
raising large amounts of money for his raid,
writing potential backers that he was planning
some “[underground] Rail Road business
on a somewhat extended scale.” However, in
person he made it clear that he intended to
do more than merely help large numbers
of slaves to escape. On February 22, 1858,
Brown revealed his general plans—and his
John Brown
provisional constitution—to Gerrit Smith and
Franklin Sanborn. Brown also contacted black
leaders to help recruit free blacks. In March
1858 Brown met in Boston with the Reverend
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Theodore
Parker, George Stearns, Samuel Gridley Howe,
and Franklin Sanborn. These five, along with
Smith, made up the “Secret Six,” Brown’s
primary financial backers. In June 1858,
traveling as “Shubel Morgan,” Brown headed
west, raising more money and recruiting more
raiders in Cleveland. While Brown continued
on to Kansas, John E. Cook, one of his raiders,
moved to Harpers Ferry, where he found
work and learned what he could about the
community, the armory, and the lay of the
land. He also fathered a child and married a
local woman.
In December 1858 Brown once again
made headlines for his exploits in the West.
He invaded Missouri, where he killed a slave
owner, liberated 11 slaves, and brilliantly
evaded law enforcement officers as he led the
freed blacks to Canada. There Brown met a
black printer, Osborne Perry Anderson, who
would later take part in the Harpers Ferry
raid. Although a wanted man with a price
of $250 on his head, Brown returned to
the United States, traveling and speaking in
Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Con­
necticut. Brown also contacted the “Secret
Six” who were financing him.
In June 1859 Brown visited his home in
North Elba, New York, for the last time,
where he said good-bye to his wife and
daughters. Brown proba­bly knew that he
was unlikely to see his family again, some-
thing he sto­ically accepted as a cost of his
crusade against slavery. He was less accept-
ing of his son Salmon, however, who decid-
ed he would not join his father on an appar-
ently suicidal mission into Virginia.
Brown and his sons Oliver and Owen
arrived in Harpers Ferry on July 3, 1859, and
Brown rented a farm in Maryland, about seven
miles from Har­pers Ferry. He expected large
numbers of men to enlist in his “army,” but
by September only 18 had arrived, including
another of Brown’s sons, Watson. By mid-
October, a few more arrived.
On Sunday, October 16, Brown and
his men began their raid. They made a
strange assortment: veterans of the struggles
in Kansas, fugitive slaves, free blacks,
transcendental idealists, Oberlin College
men, and youthful ab­ olitionists on their
first foray into the world. The youngest was
18. The oldest, Dangerfield Newby, was a
44-year-old fugitive slave from Virginia who
hoped to rescue his wife from bondage. But
most of the raid­ers were in their 20s, half the
age of their leader, the 59-year-old Brown.
Brown left three of his recruits to guard
their supplies and arms at the farmhouse
in Maryland. The remaining 18 raiders, 13
whites and five blacks, marched with John
Brown to Harpers Ferry.
Brown’s small army arrived in Harpers
Ferry at night and quickly secured the
federal armory and arsenal and later Hall’s
Rifle Works, which manufac­tured weapons
for the national government. With the
telegraph wires cut, Brown might have easily
seized the weapons in the town, liberated
slaves in the neighborhood, and then taken
to the hills. Or he might have destroyed the
armory and literally blown up the town.
Inexplicably, though, he remained in the
armory, waiting for slaves to flock to his standard.
They never came. Instead, townsmen and
farmers surrounded the armory. These civilians
were probably not strong enough to dislodge
Brown, but they kept him pinned down.
Although Brown tried to negotiate with the
civilians, his emissaries, including his son
Watson, were shot while under a white flag. By
the morning of October 18, eight of Brown’s
men were dead or captured, and that same day
militia from Virginia and Maryland arrived.
President James Buchanan had dispatched U.S.
marines and soldiers to Harpers Ferry, with
Brevet Colonel Lee in command. Directly under
Lee was another Virginian, Lt. J.E.B. Stuart.
That morning, marines stormed the engine
house of the armory, capturing Brown and a
few of his raiders and killing the rest. By the end
Prologue 25

For Southerners, John Brown was the embodiment
of all their fears—a white man willing to die to end
slavery. For many Northerners, he was a prophet of
righteousness.
of the raid, of the 22 who had been involved
in the plot, 10 of Brown’s men, including his
sons Watson and Oliver, were dead or mortally
wounded; five, including Brown, had been
captured. Seven escaped, but two were later
captured in Pennsylvania and returned to
Virginia for trial and execution. The other five,
including Brown’s son Owen, made their way to
safe havens in Canada and remote parts of the
North. All but Owen Brown later served in the
Union Army.
Brown’s capture on October 18 set the stage
for his trial and execution. Severely wounded,
Brown had to be carried into court on October
25 for a preliminary hearing and on October
27 for his trial. The judge would not even delay
the proceedings a day to allow Brown’s lawyer
to arrive. The trial was speedy. On November
2 Brown was convicted and sentenced to
death. He was executed on December 2, and
on December 8 he was buried at the family
farm in North Elba, near Lake Placid. Many
Northerners interpreted the hasty actions of
the Virginia authorities in trying and executing
Brown as another example of Southern injustice.
26 Prologue
The apparent lack of due process in his trial thus
contributed to the Northern perception that
Brown was a martyr. The most absurd aspect
of the trial was the charge against Brown. He
was indicted and convicted of “treason” against
the state of Virginia. But as Brown pointed
out, he had never lived in Virginia, never owed
loyalty to the state, and therefore could not
have committed treason against the state. Most
Southerners, however, saw Virginia’s actions as a
properly swift response to the unspeakable acts
of a dangerous man whose goal was to destroy
their entire society.
By the time of his execution, the entire
nation was fixated on this bearded man who
spoke and looked like a biblical prophet and
whose deeds thrilled—whether with fear or
admiration or both—an entire genera­tion.
Indicative of this fixation is a shared aspect
in the otherwise divergent responses of
Wendell Phillips and Edmund Ruffin—the
great abolitionist orator and the fire-eating
Virginia secessionist. In the year following
the raid, each of them prominently carried
and displayed a “John Brown pike” that
Brown had ordered from the Connecticut
foundry. For Phillips the pike symbolized
the glory, and for Ruffin the horror, of a
servile insurrec­ tion led by a resurrected
Puritan willing to die to overthrow slavery.
Terrorist, Guerrilla Fighter,
Revolutionary?
Brown’s actions in Kansas and at Harpers Ferry
were clearly violent. He killed people or at least
supervised their death. But was he a terrorist?
At neither place do his actions comport with
what we know about modern terrorists.
The Harpers Ferry raid was his most
famous act. Brown held Harpers Ferry
from late Sunday night, October 16, until
he was captured on the 18th. He was in
possession of almost unlimited amounts of
gunpowder and weapons. He had captured
prominent citizens, most famously Colonel
Washington. He stopped a train full of
passengers and freight.
What would modern terrorists have done
in such circumstances? They might have let
the train go, only after they had robbed all the
passengers to fund further acts of terror, and
then blown up the bridge as the train crossed
from Virginia to Maryland. They might have
planted explosives on the train and let it proceed,
as terrorists did in Spain a few years ago. What
did Brown do? He boarded the train, let people
know who he was, and was seen by people who
might later have identified him. Then he let the
train continue on to Washington. These were
not the actions of a terrorist.
While in Harpers Ferry, Brown might have
blown up the federal armory (or indeed most
of the town) after taking as much powder and
weapons as his men could carry. He might
have broken into homes of prominent people
and slaughtered them. Brown did none of
these things. He waited, foolishly for sure, for
the slaves in the area to flock to him. He was
caught in a firefight with local citizens, and he
was captured by the U.S. forces. He proved
to be a disastrous military leader and a failed
“captain” of his brave and idealistic troops.
But he never acted like a terrorist. He ordered
no killings; he did not wantonly destroy
property; and he cared for his hostages. This is
simply not how terrorists act.
The events at Kansas are similar. Brown
targeted a number of individuals who had
been leading—violently leading—proslavery
forces in the area.
At the home of James Doyle, the raiders
did not kill his 16-year-old son or his wife,
Mahala, even though both could have
identified Brown and his men. Brown’s men
To learn more about
• The exhibit “Discovering
the Civil War, go to www.
archives.gov/exhibits/civil-war/.
• Selected online records
relating to the Civil War, go to www.archives.
gov/research/arc/topics/civil-war.html.
• National Commission on Terrorist Attacks
Upon the United States (the 9/11
Commission), go to www.archives.gov/
legislative/research/9-11/.
Spring 2011
killed Allen Wilkinson, but not his wife,
Louisa, who recognized one of Brown’s sons
from his voice. Mrs. Wilkinson was ill at the
time, and after killing her husband, Brown
asked her if there would be neighbors who
could help care for her.
Surely, as Robert McGlone notes, it might
seem “bizarre” that Brown was concerned
about her health after he had just killed
her husband. But her husband was guilty
of attacking free state men and threatening
the Browns, and so he was (in John Brown’s
mind) justly executed. But his wife was
innocent and not punished. This was not the
behavior of a terrorist.
Kansas—Bleeding Kansas as it is known—
was in the midst of a civil war. Between
1855 and 1860 about 200 men would be
killed in Kansas. Not all were politically
motivated, and historians disagree on what
constitutes a “political” killing. But even the
most conservative scholar of this violence
finds 56 killings that were tied to slavery
and politics. I think this number is low, and
that most of the 200 deaths were actually
politically motivated and tied to slavery and
Bleeding Kansas. But the actual number of
political killings is less important than the
understanding that in Kansas there was a
violent civil war being fought over slavery;
men on both sides were killed. Brown’s
actions are most famous because there
were five killings, and he strategically used
swords, rather than guns, which would
have alerted neighbors. This is the nature of
guerrilla warfare. It is brutal and bloody, but
it is not terrorism.
There is also a political context. In Kansas
there was no democratic government. Elections
were notoriously fraudulent and violent. The
majority of the settlers were from the free states,
but the national government recognized a
minority government that was proslavery. That
legislature made it a crime to publicly oppose
slavery. There was, at least under the formal law,
no free speech in Kansas for abolitionists. This
was also true in Virginia, when John Brown
John Brown
raided Harpers Ferry. He could not have gone
to Virginia to denounce slavery or even urge
Virginians to give up slavery. Thus, in this sense
Brown was not fighting against democratic
institutions in a free society; rather he was
fighting against an unfree society that denied
him basic civil liberties and, in Kansas, even the
right to have a fair election.
Remembering, Honoring, John Brown
So, what in the end can we make of John
Brown? If he was not a terrorist—what was
he? He might be seen as revolutionary, trying
to start a revolution to end slavery and fulfill
the goals of the Declaration of Independence.
As proslavery border ruffians tried to prevent
democracy in Kansas, and were willing to
murder and assault supporters of freedom,
John Brown surely had a right to defend
his settlement and his side. Brown did not
carefully plan the Pottawatomie raid the
way Terry Nicholas and Timothy McVeigh
planned the Oklahoma City bombing. He
reacted to specific threats and the sacking of
Lawrence by a proslavery mob. This was not
terrorism, but a fact of warfare in Bleeding
Kansas. Nevertheless, modern Americans are
uncomfortable endorsing his vengeful violence
in Kansas, however necessary it may have been.
Similarly, no one, not even the slaveholders,
could deny that slaves might legitimately
fight for their own liberty. If slaves could
fight for their liberty, then surely a white
man like Brown was not morally wrong
for joining in the fight against bondage.
Thus Harpers Ferry is in the end a blow
for freedom, against slavery. Who can deny
the legitimacy of such a venture, however
foolish, poorly designed, and incompetently
implemented? But in a society of democratic
traditions, Americans recoil at the idea of
violent revolution and raids on government
armories, even when, as was the case in
Virginia in 1859, democracy was something
of a sham, and there was neither free speech
nor free political institutions.
In the end, we properly view Brown
with mixed emotions: admiring him for his
dedication to the cause of human freedom,
marveling at his willingness to die for the
liberty of others, yet uncertain about his
methods, and certainly troubled by his
incompetent tactics at Harpers Ferry.
Perhaps we end up accepting the
argument of the abolitionist lawyer and
later governor of Massachusetts, John
A. Andrew, who declared “whether the
enterprise of John Brown and his associates
in Virginia was wise or foolish, right or
wrong; I only know that, whether the
enterprise itself was the one or the other,
John Brown himself is right.” P
Note on Soures
The very best discussion of Brown in Kansas is
found in Robert E. McGlone, John Brown’s War Against
Slavery (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
The quotation from Brown’s speech in court
is from Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator
of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia, ed. Franklin B.
Sanborn (1885), p. 585. Quotations of Frederick
Douglass and Brown are from Stephen B. Oates,
To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of
John Brown, 2nd ed. (Amherst, University of
Massachusetts Press, 1984), p. 335. For more on
Brown’s self-created martyrdom, see Paul Finkelman,
His Soul Goes Marching On: Responses to John
Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid (Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 1995), pp. 41–66.
For the conservative estimate of the number of
political killings in Kansas, see Dale E. Watts, “How
Bloody was Bleeding Kansas? Political Killings in the
Kansas Territory, 1854–1861,” Kansas History, 18
(1995): 116–129.
John Andrew’s declaration that “John Brown
himself is right” is quoted in Owald Garrison Villard,
John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years Later
(New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1943), p. 557.
Author
Paul Finkelman received his B.A. from
Syracuse University and his Ph.D. in
history from the University of Chicago.
He is the President William McKinley
Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy at Albany
Law School. He is the author or editor of more than 25
books and over 150 scholarly articles. His legal history
scholarship has been cited by numerous courts, including
the United States Supreme Court.
Prologue 27