“Hanging Site of John Brown. Creation of a Martyr. Prelude to War.”
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John Brown
John Brown was an American abolitionist in the decades preceding the American Civil War. An evangelical Christian of strong religious convictions, Brown was profoundly influenced by the Puritan faith of his upbringing. He believed that he was "an instrument of God", raised to strike the "death blow" to slavery in the United States, a "sacred obligation". Brown was the leading exponent of violence…
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business · American abolitionist (1800–1859) · abolitionist · entrepreneur · tanner · postmaster · social activist · politician · also John Brown, John Brown (abolitionist), Isaac Smith, Brown
Born 9 May 1800 · Died 2 December 1859 · Q189366
61 published statements · 0 followers
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2026· 5 entries
“Allstadt House – John Brown's Hostages – Prelude to War”
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“Edge Hill Cemetery – John Brown Raid Victims”
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“Jefferson County Courthouse – Where John Brown Was Tried”
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“blood will do vastly more towards advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavoured to promote, than all I have done in my life before.”
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2017· 1 entry
The Vermont Legislature designated October 16, the date of the raid, as John Brown Day
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2012· 1 entry
At the Discovery Park of America museum park in Union City, Tennessee
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2009· 1 entry
A two-day symposium, "John Brown Comes Home", was held, on the influence of Brown's raid
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2007· 2 entries
Brown was inducted into the National Abolition Hall of Fame, in Peterboro, New York
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"there is no consensus of fairness with respect to Brown in either the academy or the media
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2006· 1 entry
It was placed at the site on the former Storer campus where the Fort had been located
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1999· 1 entry
John Brown Day was celebrated on May 1
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1978· 1 entry
NYU historian Albert Fried concluded that historians who portrayed Brown as a dysfunctional figure are "really informing me of their predilections, their judgment of the historical event, their identification with the mo
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1976· 1 entry
“The Ancient People and the Newly Come”
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1959· 1 entry
A "sanitized" play about him was produced at Harper's Ferry
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1946· 1 entry
The John Brown Memorial Association held its 24th annual pilgrimage to the grave in North Elba, where there were memorial services
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1937· 1 entry
It was published by Penguin in 1958 and this edition is available in the Internet Archive
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1933· 1 entry
It was the first three-act play to be presented on television, the BBC, in 1938
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1931· 2 entries
The United Daughters of the Confederacy and Sons of Confederate Veterans erected a counter-monument, to Heyward Shepherd, a free black man who was the first fatality of the Harpers Ferry raid, claiming without evidence t
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After years of controversy, a tablet was erected in Harpers Ferry by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, honoring the key "Lost Cause" belief that their slaves were happy and nei
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1911· 1 entry
At a cost of $2,000 (equivalent to $69,107 in 2025)
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1910· 1 entry
8,000 people attended and Jason Brown, at the time John Brown's oldest living child, spoke
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1906· 1 entry
The Niagara Movement, predecessor of the NAACP, celebrated John Brown Day on August 17
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1899· 1 entry
The remains of 12 of Brown's other collaborators, including his son Oliver, were located and brought to North Elba
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1890· 1 entry
“Why I Am a Social Revolutionist”
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1873· 1 entry
That he did not think his father wrote down the entire plan
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1868· 1 entry
Contained according to a November 7, 1859, advertisement "a full-length Wax Figure of OSAWATOMIE BROWN, taken from life, and a KNIFE found on the body of his son, at Harper's Ferry"
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1865· 2 entries
The first black school west of the Mississippi River
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Brown was the most famous American: emblem to the North, as Wendell Phillips put it, and traitor to the South
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1863· 1 entry
Julia Ward Howe wrote the popular hymn the Battle Hymn of the Republic to the tune of John Brown's Body, which included a line "As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free", comparing Brown's sacrifice to th
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1861· 1 entry
“Built by Rev. Samuel Adair brother-in-law of John Brown”
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1860· 1 entry
Family and admirers of Brown gathered at his farm for a memorial
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1859· 9 entries
For Southern medical schools, never to return
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The first person executed for treason in the history of the United States
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Died 1859-12-02.
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His widow took his body there for burial; the trip took five days, and he was buried on December 8
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Mary Ann Brown, who had stayed away from the prison due to Brown's concern for her safety, visited her husband for several hours with permission from Governor Wise
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The hotel had at least 25 guests, including I
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Brown met with Frederick Douglass and Detroit abolitionists George DeBaptiste, William Lambert, and others at William Webb's house in Detroit to discuss emancipation
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Embarked on a lengthy journey to take the liberated slaves to Detroit and then on a ferry to Canada
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"A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America" was written
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1856· 1 entry
The pro-slavery activists began a campaign to seize Kansas on their own terms
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1850· 4 entries
Brown was a member of the Free Church, where he witnessed abolitionist lectures by the likes of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth
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Brown would refer affectionately to the revolt, in saying "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery
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The United States passed the Fugitive Slave Act, a law mandating that authorities in free states aid in the return of escaped slaves and imposing penalties on those who aid in their escape
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Instructed the League to act "quickly, quietly, and efficiently" to protect slaves that escaped to Springfield – words that would foreshadow Brown's later actions preceding Harpers Ferry
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1848· 1 entry
Bankrupt and having lost the family's house, Brown heard of Gerrit Smith's Adirondack land grants to poor black men, in so remote a location that Brown later called it Timbuctoo, and decided to move his family there to e
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1847· 2 entries
Daguerreotype of Brown (see above) and the now-lost painting by Louis Ransom of the famous, apocryphal incident of Brown kissing a black baby on his way to the gallows, reproduced in an Currier & Ives print (see Painting
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After speaking at the Free Church, Douglass spent a night speaking with Brown, after which Douglass wrote, "From this night spent with John Brown in Springfield, Mass
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1846· 1 entry
Brown moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, as an agent for Ohio wool growers in their relations with New England manufacturers of woolen goods, but "also as a means of developing his scheme of emancipation"
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1844· 1 entry
The city's African-American abolitionists had founded the Sanford Street Free Church, now known as St
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1843· 1 entry
Three of his children—Charles, Peter, Austin—died of dysentery
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1836· 1 entry
Brown moved his family from Pennsylvania to Franklin Mills, Ohio, where he taught Sunday school
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1833· 1 entry
Brown married 17-year-old Mary Ann Day (1817–1884), originally from Washington County, New York; she was the younger sister of Brown's housekeeper at the time
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1831· 1 entry
Brown's son Frederick (I) died, at the age of 4
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1829· 1 entry
Some white families asked Brown to help them drive off Native Americans who hunted annually in the area
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1828· 1 entry
President John Quincy Adams named him the first postmaster of Randolph Township, Pennsylvania; he was reappointed by President Andrew Jackson, serving until he left Pennsylvania in 1835
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1825· 1 entry
And lived there until 1835, longer than he did anywhere else
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1805· 1 entry
The family moved, again, to Hudson, Ohio, in the Western Reserve, which at the time was mostly wilderness; it became the most anti-slavery region of the country
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1800· 2 entries
Born 1800-05-09.
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John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, to Owen Brown (1771–1856) and Ruth Mills (1772–1808).
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