On his way to the gallows, John Brown handed his jailer a note: “The sins of this land only will be purged with blood.”
Sixteen months later, the Civil War started.
In part, that prophetic admonition is Brown’s legacy, Kerry Altenbernd said. Alterbernd portrayed Brown Thursday night on stage at Allen County Community College.
Altenbernd also proposed that the Battle of Black Jack, 3 ½ miles east of Baldwin, was the first engagement of America’s civil war.
“That’s civil war with a small c and w,” said Altenbernd. It was the first battle of consequence between pro-slavery and free-state forces and part of what became know as the Bleeding Kansas era. The recognized American Civil War began April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter, S.C.
Altenbernd’s presentation was part of the ACCC series prompted by the book “It Happened in Kansas,” a local salute to the state’s sesquicentennial.
ALTENBERND fleshed out Brown’s life from day one – he was born in 1800 – until his death by hanging for raiding and occupying the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, W.V.
He was born into a family of abolitionists.
“My father thought slavery was an abomination,” said Altenbernd.
Brown’s first up-close exposure to slavery came when at age 12 he spent a few days with a man who kept slaves, including a boy of about Brown’s age. The slave and Brown became friends.
“I learned what slavery really was when the man became enraged and beat the black boy with a coal shovel,” Brown said. “The boy had no recourse – he was the man’s property.
“I then decided to spend the rest of my life fighting against slavery,” Brown said, which led to him having a reputation as “being odd, maybe a little insane.”
Over the next few years events re-enforced his hatred of slavery, including repeated raids by pro-slavery crowds on a free-state editor’s newspaper, first in St. Louis and then nearby in Illinois. Five times presses were seized and tossed into the Mississippi, and finally the editor “was shot dead.”
“That’s when, from behind the pulpit, I swore to dedicate the rest of my life to the destruction of slavery,” Brown said.
In 1954, the Kansas-Nebraska Act upheld popular sovereignty of states and promised, Brown and other abolitionists surmised, a spread of slavery. Accentuation came when Missourians flooded Kansas Territory polling places, prevented free-staters from voting and forced through a referendum to make Kansas pro-slavery.
The vote was a mathematical anomaly: With the throng of Missourians voting, three times more votes were cast than there were men in Kansas to vote; that was long before suffrage.
“We had four million black brothers and sisters in bondage then and I feared that the number would multiply,” Brown said.
ABOLITIONISTS organized in Kansas, and made Lawrence their free-state headquarters.
Soon violence erupted and fortified the designation of the period as “Bleeding Kansas.”
Irregularities in support of slavery by those governing Kansas were rampant, but “it was the only government we had,” said Brown, who then was in New York helping to organize a community of freed slaves.
His sons, with as much dedication to abolition as their father, were in Kansas and summoned Brown, asking him to “bring weapons.” Lawrence was surrounded by pro-slavery forces poised for attack.
Perhaps it was Divine intervention that prevented the attack being executed – the pro-slavers were camped outside the town and bitter cold weather encouraged them to negotiate a truce to the Wakarusa War, which never included a battle.
However, it was “open season on free-staters,” and Lawrence eventually was raided, with some of the town burned, including two free-state newspapers.
The simmering conflict between pro- and anti-slavery advocates continued.
Five pro-slave settlers were hacked to death in May 1956 in the Pottawatomie Massacre. Brown and his band were credited with the attack, but it never was confirmed.
A response was appointment of a slave owner, Henry Clay Pate, as a U.S. marshal, with the mission of “getting old Brown.”
“Pate and his boys were camped 20 miles south of Lawrence on the Santa Fe Trail,” and were making a habit of sacking nearby settlements, Brown recounted.
Meanwhile, Brown and a much smaller force were camped a few miles away and wanted to engage Pate’s force. It came at dawn and after several hours of fighting, during which no one was killed. Brown took custody of Pate when he came under a white flag to discuss a truce. Brown’s rationale was, “I don’t suffer fools for long.”
BROWN decided the only way to free slaves was to sweep into the South, bring a few at a time north and arm them.
Brown’s plan was to make foray into the South, “over and over until every slave is free.”
Plans don’t always come together. Brown, back in Kansas, led a raid on Vernon County, Mo., where 11 slaves were freed. A footnote was one of the women gave birth to a son, whom she named John Brown Daniels, near Garnett.
With a national view still heavy on his mind, Brown formulated another strategy, this time to raid the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to obtain weapons to arm freed slaves in the north and form an army to drive into the South.
The raid was an initial success, until a force of U.S. Marines, led by an Army officer, Robert E. Lee, arrived and swamped the arsenal. Two of Brown’s sons, Watson and Oliver, were killed and he was captured, after being wounded.
During his trial for treason, Brown’s counsel proposed he plead insanity, which likely would have led to his life being spared.
“I wouldn’t do it,” Brown said. “If I had, all I stood for would have been considered the ravings of a lunatic. My destiny was to die to end slavery.”
An aside Altenbernd mentioned was that among those who watched Brown hang was John Wilks Booth. Lincoln was in Kansas.
