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= ** John Brown and American Emancipation ** = 1800: Brown born in Torrington, CT 1812: Brown’s first encounter with slavery – mistreatment of a slave boy he traveled with. 1820: Marries Diane Lusk 1826: Browns move to PA, where he starts a tannery 1832: Diane dies shortly after birth of their fifth child 1833: Marries Mary Day, who will bear him 13 more children 1836: Family follows land rush to OH but goes bankrupt (1842) when bubble bursts 1837: Mob murders antislavery leader Elijah Lovejoy, Brown vows to end slavery 1850: Fugitive Slave Act passed as part of Compromise of 1850 1851: Publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s //Uncle Tom’s Cabin// 1854: “Bleeding Kansas”: Kansas-Nebraska Act opens KS to free and slave state settlers 1855: Brown and several sons migrate to KS to join the fight for the territory. 1856: Proslavery mob sacks antislavery Lawrence, KS. Brown’s militia murders 5 unarmed proslavery settlers along Pottawattomie Creek, KS. 1857: Brown’s first contacts with leading abolitionists in New England and Midwest. 1858: Brown raids plantations in MO, guides fugitives to Canada 1859: Brown plans (Jul-Sep), executes (Oct 16) Harpers Ferry raid; convicted (Nov 2); hanged (Dec 2).  = ** Document A ** =

** Source: ** Stephen Douglas (D-IL), Speech to the U.S. Senate, January 23, 1860, //Congressional Globe// 36th Congress, 1st Session, pp. 553-554. Sir, what were the causes which produced the Harpers Ferry outrage? Without stopping to adduce evidence in detail, I have no hesitation in expressing my firm and deliberate conviction that the Harpers Ferry crime was the natural, logical, inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of the Republican party, as explained and enforced in their platform, their partisan presses, their pamphlets and books, and especially in the speeches of their leaders in and out of Congress. [Applause in the galleries.] … The great principle that underlies the organization of the Republican party is violent, irreconcilable, eternal warfare upon the institution of American slavery, with the view of its ultimate extinction throughout the land; sectional warfare is to be waged until the cotton fields of the South shall be cultivated by free labor, or the rye fields of New York and Massachusetts shall be cultivated by slave labor.  =** Document B **=

** Source: ** Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Great Hall of Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NY, February 27, 1860. [Addressing the South:] You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!! John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed to make the proof. You need to be told that persisting in a charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious slander.

Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair, but still insist that our doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration, which were not held to and made by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live." You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. … Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied with a continual protest against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our fathers, who framed the Government under which we live," declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized. … In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general, or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. …

Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it….

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it could not succeed. …  = ** Document C ** = ** Source: ** Thomas Hovenden, //Last Moments of John Brown// (1887)

 = ** Document D ** =

** Source: ** Excerpts, John Brown’s “Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the people of the United States .” ** Note: ** Among the papers Brown left behind at the Maryland farm whence he organized and launched the raid on Harpers Ferry was this document, which his attorney introduced at his trial in attempt to prove his insanity. The document contained no Bill of Rights. 

PREAMBLE.
Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked, and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion-the only conditions 'of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination-in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence: Therefore, we, citizens of the United States, and the oppressed people who, by a recent decision of the Supreme' Court, are declared to have no rights which the white man is bound to respect, together with all other people degraded by the laws thereof, do, for the time being, ordain and establish for ourselves the following Provisional Constitu­tion and Ordinances, the better to protect our persons, property, lives, and liberties, and to govern our actions

Qualifications for membership
All persons of mature age, whether proscribed, oppressed, and enslaved citizens, or of the proscribed and oppressed races of the United States, who shall agree to sustain and enforce the Provisional Constitution and Ordinances of this organization, together with all minor children of such persons, shall be held to be fully entitled to protection under the same.



ARTICLE XXVIII.
Property. All captured or confiscated property and all property the product of the labor of those belonging to this organization and of their fami­lies, shall. be held as the property of the whole, equally, without distinction, and may be used for the common benefit, or disposed of for the same object; and any person, officer, or otherwise, who shall improperly retain, secrete, use, or needlessly destroy such property, or property found, captured, or confiscated, belonging to the enemy, or shall willfully neglect to render a full and fair statement of such property by him so taken or held, shall be deemed guilty of a misde­meanor, and, on conviction, shall be punished accordingly.  

ARTICLE XXXIX.
All must labor. All persons connected in any way with this organization, and who may be entitled to full protection under it, shall be held as under obligation to labor in some way for the general good; and persons refusing or neglecting so to do, shall, on conviction, receive a suitable and appropriate punishment. 

ARTICLE XL
. Irregularities. Profane swearing, filthy conversation, indecent behavior, or indecent exposure of the person, or intoxication or quarreling, shall not be allowed or tolerated, neither unlawful intercourse of the sexes. 

ARTICLE XLV.
Persons to be seized. Persons within the limits of the territory holden by this organiza­tion, not connected with this organization, having arms at all, concealed or otherwise, shall be seized at once, or, be taken in charge of some vigilant officer, and their case thoroughly investigated; and it shall be the duty of all citizens and soldiers, as well as officers, to arrest such parties as are named in this and the preceding section or article, without the formality of complaint or warrant; and they shall be placed in charge of some proper officer for examination or for safe­keeping.   =**<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times New Roman; mso-fareast-font-family: Batang; msofareastfontfamily: Batang;">Document E **=

** Source: ** John Brown, speech at sentencing, November 2, 1859; //New York Times//, November 3, 1859 <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times New Roman; mso-fareast-font-family: Batang; msofareastfontfamily: Batang;">I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection. I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them." I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not 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 further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done! <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Batang','serif';">

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> =** Document F ** =

** Source: ** Victor Hugo, //John Brown// (1860).

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> =** Document G ** =

** Source: ** Mahala Doyle to John Brown, Chattanooga, TN Nov. 20, 1859. Altho' vengeance is not mine, I confess that I do feel gratified to hear that you were stopped in your fiendish career at Harper's Ferry, with the loss of your two sons, you can now appreciate my distress in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys, and took them out of the yard and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing. You can't say you done it to free slaves. We had none and never expected to own one...My son John Doyle whose life I beged of you is now grown up and is very desirous to be at Charlestown on the day of your execution would certainly be there if his means would permit it, that he might adjust the rope around your neck if Gov Wise would permit it. <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> =** Document H **=

Source: Frances Ellen Watkins (a free black living in Indiana) to John Brown, Nov. 25, 1859

Dear Friend: Although the hands of Slavery throw a barrier between you and me, and it may not be my privilege to see you in the prison house, Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread to send you my sympathy...I thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race. You have rocked the bloody Bastille; and I hope from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom...

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> =** Document I ** =

** Source: ** Senator James Murray Mason (D-VA) to the //States & Constitution// newspaper (Washington, D.C.), October 25, 1859. ** Note: ** Mason chaired the Senate committee that later investigated the Harpers Ferry raid. There was no //insurrection// in any form whatsoever, on the part of any of the inhabitants of that town or its vicinity. … The fact is undoubted that //not a man, black or white, joined them// after they came into Virginia, or gave them aid or assistance in any form. … On the part of the negroes, it is certain that the only emotion evinced by them was of alarm and terror, and their only refuge sought at their masters’ homes…. Not a slave escaped nor attempted to escape during the tumult.

<span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> =** Document J **=

Charlestown, Va, 2nd, December, 1859

I John Brown am now quite **certain** that the crimes of this **guilty**, **land**: **will** never be purged **away**; but with Blood. I had **as I now think**: **vainly** flattered myself that withought **very much** bloodshed; it might be done. <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA;"> =** Document K ** = ** Source: ** John Steuart Curry, Mural, “Tragic Prelude,” (1937-1942), currently hanging in State Capitol, Topeka, KS.