Stearns, George Luther

Life Span
to
Full name
George Luther Stearns
Place of Birth
Birth Date Certainty
Exact
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Sectional choice
North
Origins
Free State
No. of Spouses
2
No. of Children
3
Family
Luther Stearns (father), Mary Hall (mother), Mary Ann Train (first wife), Mary Elizabeth Preston (second wife, 1843)
Occupation
Businessman
Relation to Slavery
White non-slaveholder
Political Parties
Whig
Liberty
Free Soil
Republican
Other Affiliations
Abolitionists (Anti-Slavery Society)
Military
Union Army

George Luther Stearns (American National Biography)

Scholarship
By 1856 Stearns was deeply involved in the antislavery struggle in Kansas. As chair of the Kansas Committee of Massachusetts, Stearns raised money (much of it his own) to purchase Sharpe's rifles and other supplies to support the free state settlers in their fight against proslavery Missourians and a federally supported proslavery territorial government at Lecompton, Kansas. Deeply impressed with John Brown's call for retributive justice, Stearns became an important financial backer of the guerrilla chieftain in Kansas and joined the "Secret Six" in supporting and financing Brown's plans to extend his antislavery guerrilla war into Virginia.

After Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Stearns and a fellow conspirator, Samuel Gridley Howe, fled briefly to Montreal. But Stearns returned to defend his actions before a Senate committee investigating the role of "subversive organizations." He admitted that he supported Brown's efforts to "go into Virginia or some other state and relieve slaves," but he denied any knowledge of plans to commit treason against the United States. The committee uncovered no evidence to indicate that Stearns or anyone else outside Brown's raiding party had such knowledge.
Louis S. Gerteis, "Stearns, George Luther," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00946.html.
Chicago Style Entry Link
Renehan, Edward J., Jr. The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997. view record
Rossbach, Jeffery S. Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret Six, and a Theory of Slave Violence. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. view record
How to Cite This Page: "Stearns, George Luther," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/6635.