The crusade against slavery was based upon the assumption that slavery, like war, is an abnormal state of society.As the tyrant produces the assassin, so on a larger scale slavery calls forth servile insurrection, or, as in the United States, an implacable struggle between free white persons and the defenders of slavery.
The propaganda of Southern and Western abolitionists had as a primary object the prevention of both servile insurrection and civil war.It was as clear to Southern abolitionists in the thirties as it was to Seward and Lincoln in the fifties that, unless the newly aroused slave power should be effectively checked, a terrible civil war would ensue.To forestall this dreaded calamity, they freely devoted their lives and fortunes.
Peaceable emancipation by state action, according to the original program, was prevented by the rise of a sectional animosity which beclouded the issue.As the leadership drifted into the hands of extremists, the conservative masses were confused, misled, or deceived.The South undoubtedly became the victim of the erroneous teachings of alarmists who believed that the anti-slavery North intended, by unlawful and unconstitutional federal action, to abolish slavery in all the States; while the North had equally exaggerated notions as to the aggressive intentions of the South.
The opposing forces finally met on the plains of Kansas, and extreme Northern opposition became personified in John Brown of Osawatomie.He was born in Connecticut in May, 1800, of New England ancestry, the sixth generation from the Mayflower.ACalvinist, a mystic, a Bible-reading Puritan, he was trained to anti-slavery sentiments in the family of Owen Brown, his father.
He passed his early childhood in the Western Reserve of Ohio, and subsequently moved from Ohio to New York, to Pennsylvania, to Ohio again, to Connecticut, to Massachusetts, and finally to New York once more.He was at various times tanner, farmer, sheep-raiser, horse-breeder,wool-merchant, and a follower of other callings as well.From a business standpoint he may be regarded as a failure, for he had been more than once a bankrupt and involved in much litigation.He was twice married and was the father of twenty children, eight of whom died in infancy.
Until the Kansas excitement nothing had occurred in the history of the Brown family to attract public attention.John Brown was not conspicuous in anti-slavery efforts or in any line of public reform.As a mere lad during the War of 1812 he accompanied his father, who was furnishing supplies to the army, and thus he saw much of soldiers and their officers.The result was that he acquired a feeling of disgust for everything military, and he consistently refused to perform the required military drill until he had passed the age for service.Not quite in harmony with these facts is the statement that he was a great admirer of Oliver Cromwell, and Rhodes says of him that he admired Nat Turner, the leader of the servile insurrection in Virginia, as much as he did George Washington.There seems to be no reason to doubt the testimony of the members of his family that John Brown always cherished a lively interest in the African race and a deep sympathy with them.As a youth he had chosen for a companion a slave boy of his own age, to whom he became greatly attached.
This slave, badly clad and poorly fed, beaten with iron shovel or anything that came first to hand, young Brown grew to regard as his equal if not his superior.And it was the contrast between their respective conditions that first led Brown to "swear eternal war with slavery." In later years John Brown, Junior, tells us that, on seeing a negro for the first time, he felt so great a sympathy for him that he wanted to take the negro home with him.This sympathy, he assures us, was a result of his father's teaching.Upon the testimony of two of John Brown's sons rests the oft-repeated story that he declared eternal war against slavery and also induced the members of his family to unite with him in formal consecration to his mission.The time given for this incident is previous to the year 1840; the idea that he was a divinely chosen agent for the deliverance of the slaves was of later development.
As early as 1834 Brown had shown some active interest in the education of negro children, first in Pennsylvania and later in Ohio.In 1848 the Brown family became associated with an enterprise of Gerrit Smith in northern New York, where a hundred thousand acres of land were offered to negro families for settlement.During the excitement over the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 Brown organized among the colored people of Springfield, Massachusetts, "The United States League of Gileadites." As an organization this undertaking proved a failure, but Brown's formal written instructions to the "Gileadites" are interesting on account of their relation to what subsequently happened.In this document, by referring to the multitudes who had suffered in their behalf, he encouraged the negroes to stand for their liberties.He instructed them to be armed and ready to rush to the rescue of any of their number who might be attacked:
