John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry: A Brief History with Documents

The battles of Black Jack (where Brown, now a wanted man and outnumbered two to one, captured the man deputized to catch him) and Osawatomie in June and August of 1856, sealed John Brown’s fame as a fearsome guerilla fighter. Brown continued to evade capture, but a force of 250 men killed his son Frederick and burned the free-state town of Osawatomie to the ground. His son Jason later recalled that, while watching the flames, his father said, "God sees it. I have only a short time to live - only one death to die, and I will die fighting this cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done for. I will give them something else to do than to extend slave territory. I will carry the war into Africa.” By “Africa” Brown meant that he would next attack slavery where slavery already existed: in the South itself.

The sight of federal marshals and slave catchers on the streets of Philadelphia, Boston, or even North Elba incensed abolitionist and even larger numbers of more moderate Northerners. A fugitive in chains being returned to slavery and the South personalized the issue and made it real for thousands of Northerners for whom, up to this point, slavery had been a hazy abstraction. For an already committed abolitionist like John Brown, the new law was an abomination.

In the wake of a well-publicized case of a runaway being returned to slavery in 1851, Brown composed a manifesto and presented it to a group of free black friends in Springfield. Massachusetts. Entitled “Words of Advice: Branch of the United States League of Gileadites..., Brown's essay urged African Americans to band together to resist the Fugitive Slave Law and all who sought to enforce it—even to the point of killing slavecatchers. “Be firm, detached, and cool,” Brown wrote, “stand by one another and by your friends, while a drop of blood remains; and be hanged, if you must, but tell no tales out of school. Make no confession.” Taking a page from the African American abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet (who preached slave rebellion), Brown attempted to foment an armed resistance against the Fugitive Slave Law. Inspired by what they heard, forty-four black men and women in Springfield joined Brown's United League of the Gileadites. Without Brown's presence, however, the group took little action.