JOHN BROWN'S OHIO ENVIRONMENT
by MARY LAND
Graduate Student, Western Reserve
University
The stormy years John Brown spent in
Kansas and the insur-
rection at Harper's Ferry have all but
obscured the 38 years of his
life spent in northern Ohio. In 1805,
when he was five years old,
he was brought from Connecticut to
Hudson, Ohio, a small town
near Akron. He continued to live in the
vicinity of Akron, except
for a decade in Pennsylvania, two years
in Springfield, Massa-
chusetts, and two years at North Elba,
New York, until he left
for Kansas in 1856, four years before
his death by hanging.
In spite of the years spent in Ohio,
John Brown's biographers
have given that period a cursory
treatment, preferring to devote
their best energies to the Pottawatomie
episode in Kansas or to the
attack on the arsenal and his trial and
execution. Not all this disre-
gard can be attributed to the greater
excitement of the last four
years of his life. Part of it springs
from the tendency to approach
Brown purely as a problem in psychology,
a mystic who, in the
words of his brother-in-law, believed
himself "raised up by God to
break the jaws of the wicked." The
emphasis, therefore, has been
upon the inner man lifted out of the
context of his surroundings.
Whether he is regarded as saint, folk
hero, "belated Covenanter,"
murderer, or neurotic, the environmental
factor in shaping his out-
look on the slavery question has been
indicated but slightly. His
ideas are treated as the projections of
his own personal loathing of
slavery, unrelated to the organized
antislavery movement of the
North. His plans, such as the project
for a provisional government
for the South after victory at Harper's
Ferry, are dismissed as the
figments of a disordered mind. He was,
we are told, a religious
monomaniac on the slavery question who
paid little heed to what
the rest of the North was thinking on
that subject.
Contemporary accounts do not bear out
the assumption that
Brown's case was divorced from the
general antislavery movement.
Those investigating Brown's activities
were intent upon discovering
24
JOHN BROWN 25
whether there was any connection between
those activities and the
abolitionist movement or the newly
formed Republican party.1 For
this purpose a senate investigating
committee was set up.2 The
questioning of John Brown, which had
started in the engine-house
at Harper's Ferry scarcely seven hours
after a contingent of marines
had crushed the assault, was all pointed
toward extracting from him
the names of the men and the movements
which were behind the
attack.3
It was Congressman Clement L.
Vallandigham of Ohio, later
the notorious Copperhead, who suggested
that Brown had been af-
fected by the atmosphere in which he
lived. The Western Reserve
of Ohio was known far and wide as an
abolition center with more
Underground Railroad stations than any
comparably sized area in
the country; it was a seat of defiance
of the Fugitive Slave Act
and a site of Free Soil activity which
contributed to the downfall
of the Whig party and the beginnings of
the Republican party. It
was the stamping ground of such militant
abolitionists as Charles
Backus Storrs, Elizur Wright,
Congressman Joshua Reed Giddings,
and Senator Ben Wade.
Vallandigham stated it succinctly in a letter
to the Cincinnati
Enquirer: "Learning that he [Brown] had lived in Ohio for
fifty
years, I prosecuted my inquiries to
ascertain what connection his
conspiracy might have had with the
Oberlin rescue trials then pend-
ing and the insurrectionary movement at
that time made in the
Western Reserve to organize forcible
resistance to the Fugitive
Slave Act."4 Vallandigham was
referring to the mass trial of 37
Oberlin businessmen and Oberlin College
professors, who had been
arrested under the provisions of the
Fugitive Slave Act for forcing
a planter's agent from Kentucky to give
up a Negro he was taking
1 Senator Mason of Virginia felt that
the conspiracy got its chief support from
the New England abolitionist movement. Congressional
Globe, 36 cong., 1 sess., 141.
Senator Iverson of Georgia declared that
the Republican party could not disclaim
sympathy for Brown since the party's
intention was "to break down the institution
of slavery by fair means or foul." Ibid.,
15. On the same theme Senator Ben Wade of
Ohio (Republican) said he knew that
"for the basest political purposes, that great
and overshadowing political party to
which I belong has been charged with complicity
in this affair." Ibid., 141.
2 On December 5, 1859, Senator Mason
moved that "a committee be appointed
to inquire into the facts attending the
late invasion and seizure of the armory and
arsenal of the United States at Harper's
Ferry in Virginia." The real point of the
Mason motion lay in his charge that the
committee must ascertain "whether such
invasion was made under cover of any
organization interested to subvert the govern-
ment of any of the states of the United
States." Ibid., 15.
3 New York Herald, October 21, 1859.
4 Cincinnati Enquirer, October 22, 1859.
26
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
back to the South. They had hidden the
Negro for three days in the
attic of the home of an Oberlin theology
professor and then shipped
him on to safety. This was but one
incident in a series of violent
interferences with the enforcement of
the Fugitive Slave Act, hence
Vallandigham's use of the word
"insurrectionary."
When Vallandigham attempted to connect Brown with the
Oberlin rescuers it was not entirely a
shot in the dark, for Brown
had sat in on their trial in Cleveland
in March 1859, and one mem-
ber of his band, the Negro John Anthony
Copeland, had been re-
cruited from the ranks of the rescuers.
A few weeks after Brown
left Cleveland, with the trial still in
process, his right-hand man,
John Henri Kagi, tried to arrange a jail
break for the defendants.5
Nor was Vallandigham too far wide of the
mark in trying to
connect John Brown's plans with the
"insurrectionary" atmosphere
of the Reserve, which had arisen because
of the Fugitive Slave Act.
So widespread was the resentment against
the act that "not a fugitive
was seized in Northern Ohio for the past
eight years," the Cleveland
Leader declared September 10, 1858. No doubt this was the
atmos-
phere which made it possible for John
Brown, the nation's arch-of-
fender against the Fugitive Slave Act,
to walk the streets of Cleve-
land unmolested for ten days in March
1859 while the streets were
placarded with posters offering a total
of $3,250 in reward for his
seizure.6 Yet Brown, at that time arranging
the sale of two horses
and a mule he had "liberated"
in a raid against Missouri slave
owners, moved with complete equanimity
through the streets of
Cleveland, passing the United States
Marshal's office every day, so
cool that it struck Artemus Ward, then
associate editor of the
Cleveland Plain Dealer, "that he could make his jolly fortune by
letting himself out as an Ice Cream
Freezer."7 Everyone in Cleve-
land knew Brown was wanted for his
activities in Kansas with the
Free State forces and for his
slave-liberating forays into Missouri.
Still no one came forward to claim the
reward, and the Leader
gave him free space in the editor's
columns. Groups gathered daily
at the City Hotel stables where he was
auctioning off his high-
principled mounts ("They are
southern animals with northern
5 Richard J. Hinton, John Brown and
His Men (New York, 1894), 237.
6 J.
W. Schuckers, "Old John Brown,"
in Cleveland Leader, April 29, 1894.
7 Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 22, 1859.
JOHN BROWN 27
principles," he said. "Once
pro-slavery, they are now out and out
abolitionists".).8
The disinclination of Cleveland
authorities to bring the law
down on his head did not fail to have
its effect, as Vallandigham
had surmised. In his confession, John
Cook (Brown's look-out at
Harper's Ferry) stated that his chief
and the whole company had
derived aid and comfort from the failure
of the Cleveland marshal
to arrest Brown and that "this was
all that was needed to give
courage to the wavering ones in the
practicability of the plan
and its ultimate success."9
In further attempts to link Brown to the
belligerent antislavery
movement of northern Ohio, Vallandigham
sought specifically to
involve former Congressman Joshua
Giddings, for 21 years the
leader of the house forces opposed to
slavery. After questioning
Brown as to whether he had been present
at the Cleveland Anti-
Fugitive Slave Law Convention, which
more than 10,000 people
attended, Vallandigham asked
specifically whether Giddings had
advance knowledge of the plan for
Harper's Ferry. Brown was
non-committal, whereupon Vallandigham
turned abruptly to the
old man's wounded companion, Captain
Aaron Stevens, and asked
him how far he had lived from Jefferson,
Ohio, Giddings' residence.
Before Stevens could reply, Brown
quickly instructed his fellow
prisoner: "Be very cautious,
Stevens, about an answer to that: it
might commit some friend. I would not
answer it at all."10
John Brown's restraint in revealing
details of his activity in and
about Giddings' district and his fear
that others in the northern
Ohio antislavery movement might be
involved, suggests that he was
not entirely the one-man movement his
biographers have indicated.
A study of the northern Ohio antislavery
movement and Brown's
connections with it indicates that he
must have been influenced by
his neighbors' allegiance to the same
cause, however deep-rooted
his own private war with slavery.
Perhaps the Ohio atmosphere
led him to overestimate national
antislavery sentiment, thus en-
couraging him to think along the lines
of his proposed provisional
government. On another point which has
puzzled his biographers
-his expectation that the southern Negro
would rise and flock to his
8 Schuckers, loc. cit.
9 Cleveland Leader, November 28, 1859.
10 James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown (London, 1861), 201.
28
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
banners-the answer may again be found in
the militant character
of the Negro on the Western Reserve.
Examined in the light of his
environment, Brown becomes less of a
religious monomaniac and
more of an extreme product of the same
ideational climate which
produced such individuals as Storrs,
Giddings, and Wade and such
events as the conflict between Western
Reserve College and Oberlin
College on the slavery issue and the
expulsion of the militantly
antislavery Western Reserve Synod from
the fold of the Presby-
terian Church.
II
Hudson, Ohio, where John Brown grew up,
was called a "rabid
abolition town" by the county
historian and sheriff of Akron, Sam-
uel A. Lane. Sheriff Lane knew John
Brown well, having once
arrested him and four of his sons after
they had barricaded them-
selves in their farmhouse and resisted
foreclosure with doubled-
barreled shotguns. Graphic evidence of
the sheriff's testimony was
a signpost erected just outside Hudson.
The sign displayed the
figure of a young Negro grinning broadly
and pointing toward the
town; underneath were the words,
"Dis de road to Hudson." First
erected as a joke in the mid-1830's, it
became a matter of local
pride and remained standing for many
years.l1
Regional historians of the last century
agree as to the general
antislavery character of the Western
Reserve. The most sweeping
of them all, Alfred Matthews, claimed
that northern Ohio "was the
most detested piece of abolition
territory in the whole United
States." He added that the
territory had more stations of the Under-
ground Railroad than any area of similar
size in the United States.12
Levi Coffin, president of the
Underground Railroad, spoke warmly
of the region as "good anti-slavery
neighborhood."13 Walter Buell
said of the upper part of Ohio that
"the anti-slavery spirit was
stronger there than in any other
territory of equal extent in the
United States," adding that
"Southerners were wont to sneer at it
as a state separate and distinct from
the rest of Ohio."14 In its
centennial history of Cleveland the Cleveland
World talked of the
city's reputation as a "hotbed of
abolition," and remarked that
11 Samuel A. Lane, Fifty Years and
Over of Akron (Akron, 1892), 828-829.
12 Alfred Matthews, Ohio and Her
Western Reserve (New York, 1902), 175.
13 Levi Coffin, Reminiscences of Levi
Coffin (Cincinnati, 1876), 581.
14 Walter R. Buell, Joshua Giddings: A Sketch (Cleveland,
1882), 16.
JOHN BROWN 29
"after 1841 no slave was ever
returned to bondage from the city of
Cleveland."l5 Nevin O.
Winter, historian of the neighboring Toledo
area, said of the Reserve: "It is
difficult, if not impossible, to find
a record of a slave being returned to
his master in the entire
section."16 The abolitionism of the Reserve brought
condemnation
from the South, as expressed by the Richmond
(Virginia) Republi-
can in 1848 when it said of the inhabitants of the Western
Reserve:
"A more hyprocritical, canting,
whining, totally depraved and
utterly irredeemable set of rascals
never walked the face of the
earth."17
Early antislavery controversy in upper
Ohio was centered about
the question of colonization or
emancipation. This was the discus-
sion raging in small towns like Hudson
when John Brown grew to
young manhood. Some partisans of the
issue were already sure
of their stand. State Senator Ephraim
Brown, who represented the
district where the Brown family voted,
wrote to his cousin in
Mississippi in the early 1830's: "I
not only believe as you do that
there would be much to be feared from
the blacks in the west
country in the case of war, but should
rejoice to have them rise
upon their oppressors and, if possible,
make themselves free."18
The advocates of the gradualist and the
immediatist solutions
locked in verbal combat at meetings of
the American Anti-Slavery
Society, a substantial branch of which
was to be found in almost
every little town of upper Ohio19 at a
time when not one was known
in New England.20 In 1839 the American
Anti-Slavery Society held
its convention in Cleveland, most of the
delegates coming from the
Ohio district.21
John Brown never sympathized with the
"pure discussion" ap-
proach to the slavery evil. Throughout
his life he maintained an
aloofness toward the Garrisonian brand
of abolition with its doc-
trine of nonresistance. He was attracted
to another phase of anti-
slavery activity, the Underground
Railroad. Several lines ran
15 Cleveland World, pub., History of Cleveland (Cleveland, 1896),
80-88.
l6 Nevin O. Winter, A History of
Northwest Ohio (Chicago and New York,
1917), 275.
17 Quoted in Ashtabula Sentinel, November
18, 1848.
18 George Clary Wing, Early Years on the Western Reserve; with
Extracts from
Letters of Ephraim Brown and Family (Cleveland, 1916), 25.
19 Cincinnati Philanthropist, February 19, 1836.
20 Vernon
L. Pairington, Main Currents in American Thought (New York, 1927),
II, 341.
21 Edward C. Reilly, Early Slave
Controversy on the Western Reserve (unpublished
Ph. D. thesis, Western Reserve
University, 1940), 192.
30
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
through the Western Reserve, and John
Brown and his father, Owen,
were both conductors. Every house in
which they lived had a
concealed room in the barn or the family
residence where a run-
away slave could be hidden. Any point on
Lake Erie was a con-
venient point of departure for Canada,
and there were numerous
captains of steamers and schooners, well
known to antislavery
people, who would take a Negro passenger
across the lake. As
time passed, it was said that in the
northern part of the state the
pursuer was obliged to move with nearly
as much circumspection
as the fugitive himself.22
Announcements of activity on the Under-
ground Railroad appeared regularly in
the journals of the day.23
John Brown had left his father's home in
Hudson about the
time the elder Brown was becoming
involved in the emancipationist
struggle within Western Reserve College.
From one of John's letters
it is clear that he was kept informed of
the controversy which upset
the entire Hudson community and received
national publicity. In
1825, the year he took his young family
to Pennsylvania for a ten-
year stay, his father was named one of a
three-man committee to
make arrangements for erecting a college
building at Hudson.24
Owen Brown worked on the project with
enthusiasm and became a
member of the board of trustees and a
close friend of the college's
first president, Charles Backus Storrs.
Under Storrs, Western Re-
serve College quickly attained a
nationwide reputation as a ramp-
antly abolitionist school. It admitted
Negroes and permitted free
discussion of the slavery question in
the classroom and the local
press which won it the approbation of
Garrison's Liberator. Storrs
inserted an editorial in the Hudson Observer
and Telegraph25--the
college owned a half of this
paper-advocating immediate emanci-
pation. At once two members of the
faculty, Professors Beriah
Green and Elizur Wright, were converted
to emancipation. The
trustees who were colonizationists, with
the exception of Owen
Brown, balked at outright emancipation.
Following Storrs's stand a
22 James Fairchild, The Underground
Railroad (Western Reserve Historical So-
ciety, Tract No. 87, 1895), 106.
23 For a typical advertisement, see the Painesville
Telegraph for August 25, 1859:
"The U. G. R. R.-The travel on this
line is constant and increasing. Last Monday
night some $6000 or $7000 worth of
passengers passed on the Underground track
not a thousand miles from these parts."
24 Frederick
Waite, Western Reserve University: The Hudson Era (Cleveland,
1942), 44.
25 July 7, 1832.
JOHN BROWN 31
bitter controversy took place in the
pages of the Hudson paper.26
Elizur Wright expressed the
emancipationist position and became a
favorite of the Liberator staff,
which invited him to Boston for a
week of speechmaking. The local
trustees, excepting Owen Brown,
became alarmed, and began cancelling
their subscriptions, with-
drawing their sons, and demanding the
return of the lands they
had deeded to the college. The quarrel
spread to the student body
with colonizationist students refusing
to attend the lectures of aboli-
tionist professors. Some of the students
started touring the towns
of upper Ohio making antislavery
speeches. Then the trustees
announced "with deep regret"
that they saw "a spirit of self-suffi-
ciency, pertness and disrespect . . .
prevails to a fearful extent
among the youth of the college."27
The trustees, Owen Brown again
dissenting, acted to restrain
the students from making speeches off the campus. Professor
Wright resigned, not neglecting one
parting shot when he brought a
Negro barber on the commencement stage
reserved for faculty and
trustees. A few weeks later Professor
Storrs died from tuberculosis
aggravated by his three-hour speech at
an outdoor abolitionist
meeting, an occasion dramatized in the
poem of John Greenleaf
Whittier. A new president, carefully
investigated for his leanings
on the slavery issue, was installed, and
Western Reserve began to
accept fewer Negroes as students.
Thereafter, the faculty ceased to
take sides on the question.
It was at this time that Owen Brown,
disgusted with the change
of policy, quit the board of trustees
and shifted his support to the
newly founded manual arts institute at
nearby Oberlin.28 Oberlin,
with its abolitionist principles, its
doctrine of perfectionism, and its
determination to seek a charter as a
college, became a strong rival
of Western Reserve College in the 1830's
and 1840's.29
Shortly after his father's shift of
allegiance to Oberlin, John
Brown returned to Hudson. There can be
no doubt of the fact
that he was informed of his father's
quarrel with Western Reserve,
for in September 1834, at the peak of
the conflict, he wrote his
brother Frederick that he did not
believe "Hudson, with all its con-
26 Hudson Observer & Telegraph, July
12, September 6, September 13, 1832,
January 17, 1833.
27 Waite, op. cit.,
98-102.
28 Ibid., 45.
29 Ibid., 166-170.
32 OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
flicting interests and feelings" (italics his) would, at the moment,
"afford the best place for a school for young Negroes."30
By 1835, the year of his return from Pennsylvania, the argu-
ment between the gradualists and the immediatists which had stirred
the colleges spread to the churches, the business establishments, and
even into households. The controversy within the churches was
especially significant for John Brown with his psalm-singing, daily
Bible reading, and night and evening prayers, "the only radical
abolitionist not radical in religious matters also," as Thomas W.
Higginson put it. Differences between Western Reserve College
and Oberlin Institute were accentuated when the Hudson Congrega-
tional Church divided into emancipationist and colonizationist
wings, the former known as the Oberlin church because of the fre-
quency with which Oberlin professors filled its pulpit. The Oberlin
people encouraged this division of the Hudson church.31
As the Hudson church, where John Brown's whole family were
communicants, had split into two opposing wings, so many of the
churches of the Reserve were split sharply down the middle on the
slavery issue. The schism within the church in Ohio finally grew
so sharp in 1837 that the general assembly of the Presbyterian
Church repudiated the historic Plan of Union, associating the Pres-
byterian and Congregational churches together within the Reserve,
and expelled from its fold the warring synod of the Western Re-
serve.32 After this the separated churches continued as arenas of
conflict on the subject, the "higher law" enlisting its churchly advo-
cates, as it did at one of the numerous protest meetings held at the
time of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act when citizens were advised that
"when the laws of the Republic conflict with the laws of God, it is
the duty of every 'good' citizen to render obedience to the latter."33
III
During these middle years of the slavery controversy in
northern Ohio, beginning with 1835 when he returned to the Akron
vicinity and ending twenty years later when he set out for Kansas,
John Brown engaged in various business enterprises in and about
30 Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown, a Biography Fifty Years After (Boston
and New York, 1910), 44.
31 Waite, op. cit., 167.
32 Reilly, op. cit., 384.
33 Samuel P. Orth, A History of Cleveland (Cleveland, 1910), 291.
JOHN BROWN'S HOME, AKRON Photograph of a house on Perkins Hill, Akron, where John Brown and his family lived for sev- eral years during the time of his partnership with Simon Perkins in the wool business. The pic- ture was taken about 1880; at that time the house had changed very little from its condition when it was occupied by Brown and his family. The house is now administered as a museum by the Summit County Historical Society. |
JOHN BROWN 33
Akron. At first he was fairly
successful. In 1836 he owned four
farms and one hundred acres of other
lands. He also held a one-
twentieth interest in a town site
through which a canal linking the
Ohio Canal and the Ohio River below
Pittsburgh was supposed to
be cut. The promise of boom profits to
Brown and the nineteen
other gentlemen who held allotments in
the projected town was
rudely smashed when one of Brown's
partners, General Simon
Perkins of Akron, arranged to have the
canal cut through his sec-
tion of Akron.34 The panic of 1837
followed, and John Brown, the
bank director and gentleman farmer,
became by 1842 John Brown,
the bankrupt and defendant in 21
lawsuits. From then on he lived
precariously as a sheep-raiser, a
race-horse breeder, and a wool
merchant.
Struggling to provide for his large and
ever increasing family,
John Brown was not active in the
organized antislavery movement,
which his direct-actionist spirit
disapproved of as weak and com-
promising. His daughter has indicated
that the plans for Harper's
Ferry matured during the years following
his financial debacle; he
utilized a business trip to London to
cross the channel and observe
the battlefield at Waterloo as part of
the plan that was growing in
his head. He also attempted to continue
his favorite project of aid-
ing and teaching freed Negroes at North
Elba, New York, where his
friend Gerrit Smith had provided the
grounds for a Negro colony.
Around him his neighbors on the Reserve
had transferred the
slavery issue to the realm of politics.
This resulted in a situation
where by 1842 the young Whigs,
"almost to a man," had gone into
the Liberty party, the first national
antislavery party.35 This situa-
tion, unique in the nation, was
traceable in large measure to one
man, Congressman Joshua Giddings of the
sixteenth district, which
comprised the three largest counties in
the Reserve. Giddings was
the man Vallandigham was later to be so
eager to link with John
Brown. Giddings served in congress for a
total of 21 years, succeed-
ing the aged John Quincy Adams as chief
congressional foe of the
slave power. He was slighted by his own
party, the Whigs, and a
hostile state legislature gerrymandered
his district in order to de-
feat him. In Washington he was a social
outcast because of his
34 Lane, op. cit., 834.
35 Buell, op. cit., 14.
34
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
outspoken views. Nevertheless his
northern Ohio constituents re-
peatedly returned him to office, and he
apparently used his position
to persuade them to more extreme views,
for he frequently presented
petitions from citizens' meetings in
support of his attitude on slavery
in general or on the annexation of Texas
and the Mexican War.36
The real test as to whether Giddings
represented the attitude of
his northern Ohio constituents came in
1842, when he was forced
to resign from the house after a vote of
censure. This came about
after Giddings had defended Negro slaves
who had mutinied on
board a brig sailing from Virginia to
New Orleans. The slaves
had then taken the vessel into the free
waters of British Nassau.
Daniel Webster demanded that Great
Britain hand over the muti-
neers as "the recognized property
of citizens of the United States."
Giddings countered by offering a
resolution to the effect that when
the slaves left the jurisdiction of
Virginia and embarked on the
high seas, they left behind them also
the laws of Virginia and all
attempts to reenslave them were
unwarranted by the constitution and
would be incompatible with national
honor.
Warding off an attack by two southern
members, one carrying a
bowie knife, Giddings became the subject
of a vote of censure.
Northerners disavowed him also, Caleb
Cushing holding his resolu-
tion "an approximation to a
treasonable view of the subject." After
the vote of censure had been passed,
Giddings resigned and returned
to Ohio, where he was received "not
as a punished wrong-doer but
as a champion who had maintained his
cause in the lists against a
multitude of oppressors."37 At
every town through which he passed
-Cleveland, Painesville, Ashtabula,
Jefferson, Chardon-he was
met with an ovation. Resolutions were
passed by various societies
throughout his district expressing
approval of his stand. After a
special election called by the governor
he was returned to congress
with a handsome majority.
Although he was involved in 21 lawsuits
and threatened with
bankruptcy, John Brown could not have
remained impervious to
this event. Indeed, in a letter to
Giddings written during the heat
36 In February 1842, Giddings presented
a petition from citizens of Ashtabula
praying for an amicable division of the
Union, separating free from slave states. Buell,
op. cit., 78. In 1844 and 1845 anti-Texas meetings held at
Warren, Vienna, and
Jefferson objected to the expanding of
southern economic interests at the expense of
the "free citizens of the
North." Reilly, op. cit., 152.
37 Buell, op. cit., 124.
JOHN BROWN 35
of the Kansas campaign, he stated that
he was presuming upon
"long acquaintance with your public
life."38
Giddings' break with the Whig party
precipitated a similar
break among his constituents, and the
Western Reserve became out-
standing as an early citadel of the
Liberty and Free Soil parties
when they were only splinter groups on
the national scene. In 1842
the Reserve began to turn away from its
former idol, Henry Clay,
to the tune of the popular campaign
song,
Clear the track for Emancipation!
Cars cannot run on a Clay Foundation.39
When Giddings made his formal departure
from the Whig party,
announcing that he was going to support
Van Buren, eastern poli-
ticians were thrown into a panic.
Speakers, including Seward, were
rushed into the territory and vast
quantities of Horace Greeley's
speeches were distributed, but in spite
of these efforts Van Buren
swept northern Ohio, winning more votes
than the two other candi-
dates combined. The following year,
1849, the northern Ohio con-
tingent in the state legislature
stampeded that body into naming an
ex-Liberty party man, Salmon P. Chase,
as United States Senator.40
Giddings and his Jefferson law partner,
Ben Wade, who had
been elected to the United States
Senate, were instrumental in that
movement whose purpose was the fusing of
the various antislavery
political groups-Liberty, Free Soil,
dissident Whig, and Democrat
-into a new, all-embracing party against
slavery. But it was
Joseph Medill, then the youthful editor
of the Cleveland Leader,
who called dissatisfied Clevelanders of
the various political faiths
into his office in 1854 and suggested
the name Republican for the
new party.41 Medill and Wade remained
pillars of the Republican
party, and at the outset Giddings was
very useful to the new
political movement, but by 1860 his
intransigence on the slavery is-
sue caused him to be cold-shouldered at
the convention, and he was
refused a place on the resolutions
committee.42
38 Villard, op. cit., 131.
39 William C. Cochran, The Western Reserve and the Fugitive Slave Law
(West-
ern Reserve Historical Society, Collections, Publication 101,
Cleveland, 1920), 83.
40 Reilly, op. cit., 371-373.
41 Wayne Andrews, Battle for Chicago (New
York, 1946), 49.
42 Buell, op.
cit., 208.
36
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
IV
In 1850 the antislavery campaign in the
Western Reserve
shifted its focus from politics back to
the field of direct action, an
orientation which appealed to John
Brown. It was the campaign
against the fugitive slave law which
gave the area its reputation as a
"hotbed of abolition." The
"insurrectionary" decade on the Re-
serve coincided, too, with the most
intense years of John Brown's
life, the years of the Kansas fighting,
of Pottawatomie and Osawa-
tomie, of fund-raising tours which sent
him back and forth through
upper Ohio, and, finally, of the
planning for Harper's Ferry.
Northern Ohio made voluble protests
against the fugitive slave
law from the beginning. The first step
was a round of protest meet-
ings addressed by various politicians of
the district, at which the
new law was excoriated and application
made of the doctrine of a
"higher law" than the
constitution.43 The second measure of opposi-
tion was the more forceful one of
placing obstacles in the way of
the United States marshal enforcing the
law. On November 8, 1850,
Senator Ben Wade told a Mahoning County
audience that "accept-
ance of the office of Commissioner or
Marshal under the Act by any
person claiming the privilege of
American citizenship and brother-
hood with men, will, as it deservedly
should, brand him as a traitor
to humanity."44 Apparently this
admonition was not without effect,
for eight years later the Cleveland
Leader asserted that "during the
Marshalship of Mr. Jones and Mr. Fitch
not a fugitive was seized
in northern Ohio."45
During the decade 1850-60, the Negro
population of the
Western Reserve showed a 100 per cent
increase, eloquent testimony
to the complaint of a southern slave
catcher, who declared, "Never
see so many niggers and abolitionists in
one place in my life! . . .
Might as well try to hunt the devil there
as hunt a nigger."46 The
usual procedure in evading the marshal
and the owner's agent was
for a number of citizens to gather
together and heckle the agent,
43 Cochran, op.
cit., 97-98. A meeting at Cleveland on October 1, 1850, passed
a resolution which declared that "regarding some
portion of the Fugitive Law as un-
constitutional, and the whole of it as oppressive,
unjust, and unrighteous, we deem it
the
duty of EVERY GOOD CITIZEN to
denounce, oppose and RESIST, by all proper
means, the execution of said law." Cleveland
Leader, April 14, 1850.
44 Cleveland Leader, November 8, 1850.
45 Ibid., September 10,
1858.
46 Cochran, op. cit., 121.
JOHN BROWN 37
examining his papers to see if they were
in order, frequently insist-
ing upon a trip back to the courthouse
to check the procedure.
Meanwhile the fugitive had been notified
and hidden in a cellar or
spirited on to a lake vessel.47 Frequently
both the master's agent
and the federal deputy were threatened
with physical violence.48
In the midst of all this activity news
of the Kansas-Nebraska
Act came to the Reserve, and many
Ohioans set out to "squat" in
Kansas, among them sons of John Brown,
Owen, Salmon, Frederick,
Jason, and John, Jr. Not long after,
their father joined them, and
people on the Reserve were surprised
less than a year later to learn
that the quiet farmer who had won prizes
for his sheep at the Sum-
mit County Fair had become Oswatomie
Brown, chief of the Free
State guerilla forces. The following
year, in the spring of 1857,
John Brown made a fund-raising trip
through the northern Ohio
counties on behalf of the Free State
forces. Nowhere were collec-
tions of money, food, and ammunition
more substantial than in
Akron, Cleveland, and the surrounding
towns.49 "A committee ap-
pointed to canvass the village on behalf
of the good cause," wrote
the sheriff of Akron, "gathered in
rifles, shotguns, revolvers, pistols,
swords, butcher-knives, powder, lead,
etc., with considerable con-
tributions of money-while it was more
than hinted that cases of
arms of a former independent military
company and several pack-
ages of state arms-stored in the upper
part of the jail mysteriously
disappeared about the same time."50
On the same trip the mayor of
Akron presented John Brown with a
broadsword, a relic of past
military campaigns."51
Impressed by the response of his neighbors,
John Brown re-
peatedly returned to the northern Ohio
region as an arms cache and
rendezvous for his men. While the Kansas
fighting continued, he
stored arms in Tabor, Iowa, a settlement
founded by Oberlin men
47 Fairchild,
The Underground Railroad, 103.
48 In
Akron in 1854 a crowd gathered at the railway station, where a popular
Negro barber was being returned South;
it grew so threatening that the marshal with-
drew, and the agent released the Negro
and himself left town. Lane, op. cit., 580-582.
In Painesville, in April 1859, a crowd
gave United States Marshal Johnson and a
Kentucky agent twenty minutes to leave
town. Cochran, op. cit., 120. In Hudson
the same year the fire bell, which was
the signal that a "slave catcher" had entered
the town, rang out in the middle of commencement
exercises; the students precipitately
left the hall and forcibly took away the fugitive.
Cochran, op. cit., 121. In Cleveland
in 1861 women threw red pepper in the
eyes of a deputy marshal who was trying to
take a young mulatto woman to the
station to be returned South. Orth, op. cit., 296.
49 Villard, op. cit., 86.
50 Lane, op. cit., 589.
51 Lucius V. Bierce, Reminiscences (Akron,
1898), 74.
36
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
and women.52 After the Chatham
Convention in 1858, at which
plans were drawn for the provisional
government he expected to
create in the South, he brought his men
to Cleveland. They lived in
the city for five months before moving
on to Ashtabula County,
where Giddings lived, and where they
were kept under cover by
sympathizers of the cause, including
Giddings' son.53 Meanwhile
John Brown had returned to Kansas where
he reappeared as a
guerilla chief under the name of Shubel
Morgan, testing out his
plans for Harper's Ferry by leading
raiding parties into the pro-
slavery Missouri area. In the last of
these raids he freed a number
of Negroes and "liberated"
some horses, taking both to Chicago.
He now had a price on his head for his
Kansas activities. Pres-
ident James Buchanan offered $250 for
his seizure, and the governor
of Kansas $3,000-so read the posters on
Cleveland's Public Square
when John Brown returned to his native
country for the last time.
He brought with him nine of his men but
dispersed them and sent
them on to Ashtabula County while he and
his aide, John Henri
Kagi, remained in Cleveland, staying at
the City Hotel and putting
up for auction the Missouri horses.54
Brown and Kagi found the city in an
uproar over the "Oberlin
Rescue" cases, which Vallandigham
was later to connect with
Brown. This was the most dramatic of
what the Copperhead
congressman termed the
"insurrectionary" attacks on the Fugitive
Slave Act.55 On September 12, 1858, an
Oberlin Negro named
John Price had been seized by two agents
of a Kentucky planter.
Spontaneously a crowd had formed-the
Oberlin banker, several
professors from the college, a Sunday
school superintendent, and a
number of students and village
merchants. There seems to have
been no leader. The crowd, numbering
fifty or sixty, followed the
agents to the nearby town of Wellington
and surrounded a hotel
where Price was being held. A parleying
committee was sent up to
talk to the agents; a scuffle was
started in the adjoining room, where
students had stationed themselves, and
in the melee one of the stu-
dents managed to reach through a
pipehole and knock the agent
52 Villard, op. cit., 268.
53 E. C. Lampson, "The Black
String Bands," in Cleveland Plain Dealer, Octo-
ber 8, 1899.
54 Schuckers, loc. cit.
55 Cochran, op. cit., 118-157. See also
Fairchild, The Underground Railroad for
a participant's account.
JOHN BROWN 39
down. The Negro was spirited away to the
attic of the home of a
professor of theology at Oberlin, and
there hidden until the excite-
ment blew over.
As a result 37 men were indicted under
the provisions of the
Fugitive Slave Act and their trial begun
in Cleveland in January
1859. Popular opinion reacted vigorously
in favor of the rescuers.
Protest meetings were held.56 State
politicians vied with each other
in supporting the rescuers and in
reiterating the time-honored senti-
ment of the Reserve on the slavery
issue.57 The indicted men were
installed in the Cleveland jail and
during John Brown's stay were
repeatedly visited by delegations from
the outlying towns of the
Reserve. On one occasion 2,000 persons
came in from Lorain,
twenty miles away, and marched around
the jail.58 Brown and Kagi
both attended the trial, Kagi serving as
correspondent for the New
York Tribune and the Cleveland Leader. Brown left in a few days,
but Kagi stayed on, turning in
dispatches somewhat different from
those of the Plain Dealer's Artemus
Ward, who saw that the whole
Oberlin affair had begun because
"some of the defendants are Ne-
groes and some are not. Those that are
not are apparently sorry
that they ain't."59 On May 24 Kagi was present at a mass
conven-
tion of opponents of the Fugitive Slave
Act held on Cleveland
Public Square with Giddings presiding
and Governor Salmon Chase
present to counsel moderation.
Attendance, "at the lowest esti-
mate," was set at 10,000 to
12,000.60 The meeting was held next to
56 Typical was the meeting held at
Alliance on May 2, 1859, where the towns-
people gathered to decry federal
intervention and pledge "our lives, our fortunes and
our sacred honor, if required . . . to
sustain the honor of the state unsullied."
Cochran, op. cit., 171.
The Free Will Baptists held a meeting at Geauga Lake on
May 31, 1859, resolving that "the
Fugitive Slave Law [is] . . . unconstitutional, Anti-
Christian and unjust, and therefore
without any moral obligation upon the people of the
United States." An Erie County mass
meeting found the rescuers were "charged with
no other crime than making a practical
application of the Golden Rule." Cleveland
Leader, May 20, 31, 1859.
57 Speaking at Jefferson, State Senator
Darius Caldwell said: "Do we look upon
these men as criminals? No! . . . Which
of you will not say with me, I would have
done it, and as God is my helper, I
will do it whenever an opportunity presents
itself." State Representative
Kellogg on March 7, 1859, declared the question was
one which reduced itself to
"whether a few slave holders" were to be permitted to
"place the iron hand of despotism
upon the necks of the free men and women of
Ohio, especially of this Thermoplyae [sic]
of Freedom, the Western Reserve." Cochran,
op. cit., 175-176. Defying the courts on this issue, Senator Ben
Wade told the
Ashtabula Sons of Liberty that "if
the Supreme Court of Ohio does not grant the
Habeas Corpus, the people of the Western
Reserve must grant it-sword in hand, if
need be." Cleveland Plain
Dealer, January 13, 1859.
58 Cleveland Leader, January 13,
1859.
59 Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 4, 1859.
60 Cochran, op. cit., 187.
40
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
the jail, and the Oberlin prisoners in
the jail yard addressed the
meeting from behind their wall.
Together with Charles Tidd, a fellow
member of John Brown's
band, Kagi made the acquaintance of
several of the rescuers, re-
cruiting into the band the young Oberlin
Negro John Anthony
Copeland, and his uncle, Lewis Sheridan
Leary, and influencing two
others, Samuel and Ralph Plumb, to
contribute money so that Cope-
land and Leary might get to Harper's
Ferry.61 As the trial wore on,
Kagi and Tidd laid plans for a
jail-break. Their plan did not be-
come necessary, however, for in June a
judge in adjoining Lorain
County devised a face-saving solution of
the troublesome case. The
four prosecution witnesses (the Kentucky
agents and their local
accomplices) were indicted on charges of
having kidnapped John
Price. Agreements not to prosecute were
exchanged, and both sets
of defendants released. Escorted by five
brass bands, the Cleveland
Artillery Company, and the Oberlin Hook
and Ladder Company,
the rescuers were conveyed back to
Oberlin.62
One factor emerged in the Oberlin trial
which may have been
a partial cause of John Brown's
overestimation of the militancy of
the southern Negro. This was the
militancy of the Negro on the
Reserve.63 Several of the Oberlin
rescuers were Negroes, men ap-
parently of impressive personalities.
Copeland, who participated in
the assault on the arsenal at Harper's
Ferry, was characterized by
the presiding judge at the treason trial
as "the prisoner who im-
pressed me best-there was a dignity
about him I could not help
liking."64 Another of
the Negro defendants in the rescue trial made
a plea so eloquent in the midst of the
trial, which Brown attended,
as to move one of the spectators to cry
out, "By --, I had rather be
the negur [sic] that spoke first
than that gentleman that spoke last."65
During the same period Cleveland Negroes
attacked and nearly
lynched a Cincinnati slave catcher.66
All these happenings may have
61 Cleveland Leader, November 1, 1859.
62 Cochran, op. cit., 197-203.
63 William C. Cochran, speaking of a
conversation he heard as a small boy
between his father and a Negro
blacksmith recalled that "I never heard any one state
the objections to the Fugitive Slave Law
more clearly and more elquently than this
colored man, who 'had no rights a white
man was bound to respect.' " Cochran,
op. cit., 125.
64 Villard, op. cit., 684.
65 Cleveland Leader, May 13, 1859. The man in question, Charles H. Langston,
many years later gave the dedicatory
address at the unveiling of the John Brown
monument at Osawatomie, Kansas, James
Malin, John Brown and the Legend of
Fifty-six (Philadelphia, 1942), 354.
66 Cleveland Leader, November 14, 1859.
JOHN BROWN 41
caused John Brown to universalize the
characteristics of the Negroes
he knew on the Reserve.
Leaving Cleveland, where, as Cook
related, the failure of the
marshal to arrest him was a decisive
factor in his plans, Brown
went to Ashtabula County. There, in the
district which Joshua Gid-
dings, Ben Wade, and the father of
William Dean Howells had
made the hottest abolition territory in
the state, John Brown sta-
tioned his son, John Brown, Jr. Young
Brown was to direct men
coming in from Kansas to the Anderson
farm in Virginia, where his
father and the band of eighteen men
drilled in preparation for
Harper's Ferry. Together with
"Grosh" Giddings, the congress-
man's son, Brown Jr. formed the
Ashtabula League of Freedom, an
abolition society.67 The
members of the society knew of the plan
for Harper's Ferry and were a little
scornful later of the indecent
haste with which New England liberals
(who also knew of the plan)
attempted to disavow Brown. Under John
Brown, Jr.'s direction,
the arms for the attack on the arsenal
were stored in a cabinet-
maker's shop beneath a protective
covering of coffins; after his
father was settled at the Anderson farm,
the arms were quietly
transferred to Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania, where someone from
the farm picked them up.
V
After the fiasco at Harper's Ferry, John
Brown's first step in
preparing for trial was to turn to
northern Ohio for legal defense.
Significantly, in writing to his good
friend Judge Daniel Tilden of
Cleveland, he cautioned, "Do not
send an ultra-abolitionist."68
Hiram Griswold, a middle-of-the-roader
and one of the attorneys
for the Oberlin rescuers, went to
Charlestown, where he presented
a defense which was regarded by Brown's
first biographer as
"erudite and ingenious," but
founded on an "atrocious assumption
-that the statutes of the state were
just."69 Cleveland Congressman
Albert Riddle, a writer of Gothic novels
and an abolition attorney,
regretted ever after that he had not
undertaken the assignment.70
When it became apparent that a
conviction was inevitable, a
67 Lampson, loc. cit.
68 Redpath, op. cit., 245.
69 Ibid., 239.
70 Albert G. Riddle, Recollections of
War Times (New York, 1895), 3.
42
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
number of residents of Hudson and Akron
engaged in a last-ditch
effort to save Brown.71 Professor
Matthew C. Read, a geology pro-
fessor at Western Reserve College, hit
upon the idea of stressing a
fact that was common knowledge, i. e.,
the insanity in Brown's
family on his mother's side and also,
irrelevantly, through his first
wife, Dianthe. Professor Read secured
many affidavits from friends
and relatives of the Brown family; they
were assembled by Chris-
topher P. Wolcott, an Akron abolitionist
and the brother-in-law of
Lincoln's secretary of war. The
affidavits dragged out many family
skeletons but were of no ultimate value
as Brown refused to allow
their use. Governor Wise of Virginia
declared that he believed the
prisoner to be eminently sane, thereby
ruling out either admission of
the affidavits or examination by an
alienist.72
The hanging of John Brown caused
profound repercussions in
upper Ohio. Bells were tolled, flags
lowered to half mast, black-
bordered banners flung across main
streets, as in Cleveland where
across Superior Street was hung a large
streamer bearing John
Brown's words, "I cannot better
serve the cause I love than to die
for it."73 In Akron,
banks, business places, and the court of common
pleas were closed. Memorial services
were held throughout all the
little towns of upper Ohio, according to
the sheriff of Akron.74
Defiances were flung not only at the
slave power but at the federal
government itself, which "had
allowed Southern despotism to be-
come lusty upon conciliation and
compromise."75 "The irrepressible
conflict is upon us," 1,400 persons
at the Cleveland memorial meet-
ing declared, "and it will never
end until Freedom or slavery go to
the wall. In such a contest and under
such dire necessity we say
'without fear and without reproach' let
freedom stand and the
Union be dissolved."76
Along with the mourning went much talk
of effecting a rescue
and a great deal of muttering against
the Buchanan administration.77
This talk, gathering momentum as it
traveled east, caused wild
71 Lane, op. cit., 592.
72 Villard, op. cit., 490, 507-509.
73 Orth, op. cit., 295.
74 Lane, op. cit., 591.
75 A tribute of Respect Commemorative
of the Worth and Sacrifice of John Brown
of Osawatomie: It Being a Full Report
of the Speeches Made and Resolutions Adopted
by the Citizens of Cleveland . . . on the Evening of the Day on
Which John Brown
Was Sacrificed by the Commonwealth of Virginia (Cleveland, 1859), 16.
76 Ibid., 8.
77 See Cleveland Leader throughout
the month of November 1859.
JOHN BROWN 43
rumors to spread through Charlestown and
Richmond to the effect
that efforts were going to be made to
rescue John Brown. The center
of the conspiracy was invariably said to
be the northern Ohio aboli-
tion country.78 So alarming
did the atmosphere become that on the
day of the execution the United States
marshal at Cleveland tele-
graphed to Virginia that 1,000 men were
arming there for a march
on Washington.79 Both the
Virginia government and President
Buchanan's administration responded to
these rumors. A corre-
spondent of the Cincinnati Commercial
on his way to cover the
execution fell in with Baltimore police
scouts who had been sent
"to explore the abolition counties
of Ohio in search of military
organizations set up to effect a
rescue."80 The Cleveland Leader
reported having learned from its
Washington correspondent that
President Buchanan had ordered the
arrest of Mrs. Amanda
Sturtevant of Cleveland, who had been
visited by John Brown on
his March trip.81 Shortly
after that, Dr. Daniel Breed was arrested
in Cleveland on charges of using
"seditious language in reference
to the acts of John Brown at Harper's
Ferry."82
The names of Oberlin and Ashtabula, with
their abolitionist
relationships, became symbols of fear
and hatred to the authorities
in Virginia. Attempting to make the trip
from Harper's Ferry to
Charlestown, Ohio Congressman Blake was
turned back for his own
safety when train guards learned he came
from Oberlin.83 When
Oberlin's Professor James Monroe
attempted to reach Charlestown
to reclaim the body of John Anthony
Copeland-whose parents,
being Negroes, could not travel into
Virginia-he was forced to
state that he came from
"Russia" in order to reach his destination.84
Much of the rescue talk revolved about
Ashtabula County
where John Brown, Jr., and "Old War
Horse" Giddings lived.
When John Brown's carpetbag was opened
and letters to several
members of the Ashtabula League of
Freedom were found therein,
the suspicion increased.85 Attempts were
made to bring the Ashta-
78 Wing, op. cit., 26.
79 Villard, op. cit., 490,
507-509.
80 Murat
Halstead, "The Execution of John Brown," in Ohio State
Archaeological
and Historical Quarterly, XXX (1921), 290.
81 Cleveland Leader, November 3, 1859.
82 Ibid., November 23, 1859.
83 Robert Fletcher, "John Brown and
Oberlin," in Oberlin Alumni Magazine,
February 1932, 2.
84 Ibid. "Russia" was the name of the township in which
Oberlin was situated.
85 Lampson, loc. cit.
44
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
bula accomplices--especially John Brown,
Jr., and the King broth-
ers, who had concealed the arms for the
attack in their shop-before
the Mason investigating committee in the
senate. Hearing of this,
a secret group was formed in Ashtabula a
few days after John
Brown's capture.86 Led by John Brown,
Jr., and "Grosh" Giddings,
and composed of members of the League of
Freedom, the members
bound themselves by oath never to reveal
any information they
might have relating to the raid.
Immediately the group organized
itself to prevent the serving of
subpoenas upon any of their mem-
bers. During the 46 days which
intervened between the attack on
the arsenal and John Brown's hanging,
watches were kept in and
around the county seat at Jefferson.
Each sentry used a tin horn
to warn of the approach of federal
officers. Members wore black
strings or black tapes in their lapels
for identification and have
been known, in the memoirs of county
antiquarians, as "The Black
String Bands."
Chief target of the United States
marshal was John Brown, Jr.,
who spent most of the 46 days hiding in
the Ashtabula Sentinel
office, the editor, the father of the
novelist William Dean Howells,
being a member of the inner abolitionist
circle. A few days after
the raid four of the seven men who had
been able to escape from
Harper's Ferry came into Jefferson.
There they were hidden by
friends of the Black Stringers.
Apparently the Jefferson atmosphere
was such that they did not have to keep
under cover, for on the day
Hazlett and Aaron Stevens were hanged,
Owen Brown and Barclay
Coppoc spoke to a large crowd from the
porch of the old court-
house at Jefferson. The crowd cheered
loudly as they vowed
vengeance on the slave power.87
Attempts to link John Brown and
Congressman Joshua Gid-
dings continued in the proceedings of
the Mason committee. It
was unearthed that John Brown had
written Giddings twice during
the Kansas campaign, asking for
reassurance that the federal gov-
ernment would not stop the Free State
forces from defending their
rights. Later Giddings had invited Brown
to Jefferson, where he
spoke at the Congregational Church and
had tea with the congress-
man and his wife. The friendship of the
sons of the two men was
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid.
JOHN BROWN 45
known. Queried by Vallandigham, Brown
turned aside the question
of Giddings' foreknowledge of Harper's
Ferry with the cryptic
statement that he would not answer,
"because a denial of it I
would not make and to make any
affirmation of it I should be a
great dunce."88 Correspondingly,
Giddings, in a speech in Phila-
delphia, denied knowledge of the plan
for Harper's Ferry but
avowed his acquaintance and sympathy
with Brown and declared
that the murder of Brown's son in Kansas
by border ruffians had
impelled the old man to make the raid.89
The Mason committee at
first implicated Giddings in the raid,
but, upon being threatened
with a libel suit, withdrew the charge,
retaining in its report only
the ideological attack that Giddings'
"higher law" doctrine had
encouraged Brown to commit his deed.90
John Brown did not become a martyr in
the North (except
among the abolitionists and a few of the
transcendentalists like
Emerson and Thoreau) until well after
the Civil War had begun
and a folk hero became a necessity.
Northern Democratic news-
papers such as the New York Herald damned
him as an "abolition
monomaniac."91 Republican
newspapers, in an effort to disassociate
themselves from the raid, found, as did
Horace Greeley's Tribune,
that "the prisoners in fact have no
defense."92 The Republican party
made desperate efforts to rid itself of
any implication in the raid,
condemning Brown's activities in its
1860 convention. Even that
leading opponent of the slavery forces,
Senator Ben Wade himself,
went to great pains to convince the
senate that the numerous me-
morial meetings for Brown in his home
territory were "in admira-
tion of the personal qualities of the
man; not one single man of
them stands forth to justify his
nefarious and unwarranted act."93
In the Western Reserve, on the other
hand, the canonization
process set in immediately. Not only the
abolitionists, but clergy-
men, businessmen, judges, the Akron city
administration, and the
leading newspapers of Cleveland-the Leader-and
of Akron-the
Beacon-saw by execution day that a new saint had arisen. Sermons
were preached in which John Brown was
likened to a second John
88 New York Herald, October 21, 1859.
89 George W. Julian, The Life of
Joshua R. Giddings (Chicago, 1892), 370.
90 Ibid., 371.
91 October 19, 1859.
92 October 25, 1859.
93 Congressional Globe, 36 cong., 1 sess., 142.
46
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
the Baptist, "whose daring honesty
must constitute a halo of glory
around his gallows and his grave in the
midst of this Janus-faced,
time-serving, go-between
generation."94 In Cleveland, in addition
to the funeral services at the various
churches, there were three
memorial meetings, one for Brown, one
for John Cook and the
Negro John Anthony Copeland, and one for
Edward Coppoc, a
Quaker lad from Salem, Ohio, and Shields
Green, a Negro. In
addition a special fund-raising meeting
for the widows of the men
who died was held.95 At the
Brown meeting Judge Tilden and Judge
Spaulding spoke, together with
Congressman Albert Riddle. All
agreed in evaluating Brown as a
"red-visaged angel of retributive
wrath."96 In Akron,
Mayor Lucius Verus Bierce and Sheriff Samuel
Lane spoke in the same vein.97 The
Akron Beacon declared of John
Brown, "No braver or truer spirit
lived."98
Among the clergymen the martyrdom was
noted immediately.
Reverend Luther Lee, speaking at the
Chagrin Falls Congregational
Church, declared as follows: "John
Brown differed from others in
that he alone dared to live up to the
American idea of human rights
and liberty-John Brown was a hero and a
Christian. Now he is a
martyr."99 The Reverend
James Thome, speaking at Hudson, where
many members of the Brown family still
lived, said: "For our-
selves we see no sign of hallucination
or infatuation in John Brown.
We esteem him as the Wise Man of our
times."100 In Cleveland the
Reverend A. Crooks made a scriptural
analogy, reading from
Isaiah: "He that departeth from
evil maketh himself a prey," and
deduced that John Brown was a prey of
the slave power and the
snivelling national administration.101
And the Reverend J. C. White,
speaking at the Cleveland memorial
meeting, blessed John Brown's
deed: "The great sinful system of
American slavery will never be
overthrown by pacific means. 'Without
the shedding of blood,'
there can be no remission of such a sin."102
94 Luther Lee, Dying to the Glory of
God. A Sermon Preached on the Occasion
of the Execution of Captain John
Brown, in the Congregational Church at Chagrin
falls, Ohio (Syracuse,
1860).
95 Cleveland Leader, December 19, 23, 27, 1859.
96 A Tribute of Respect, 35.
97 Lane, op. cit., 842.
98 Quoted in
Malin, op. cit., 280.
99 Lee, op.
cit., 3.
100 Oberlin Evangelist, December 8, 1859.
101 A Tribute of
Respect, 39.
102 Ibid, 37.
JOHN BROWN 47
While most northern Ohio newspapers
reacted to the news of
Harper's Ferry in line with their
general political allegiance, the
Leader, a Cleveland Republican party organ and the dominant
Cleveland newspaper for the rest of the
century, departed consider-
ably from the position taken by the
other Republican journals in
the country. The Leader's first
reaction on October 19 was to insist
that "the correct version of
Harper's Ferry will probably be that
Osawatomie Brown and his associates
contemplated a considerable
stampede of slaves"-a larger
version of the Missouri raids, the
Leader seemed to imply. It found that in the case of
"Captain
Brown, well known to many in this
region-a consuming hatred of
the exploitation of man by man had
harried an old, brave but
misguided citizen into acts the whole
country will deplore." From
its judgment of "misguided
citizen" Brown, the Leader went on to
find, on November 3: "He [Brown]
will be murdered. James
Buchanan, if justice had its due, would
be placed in Captain
Brown's place and hung for the reason
that he allowed the murder
of Captain Brown's children to go
unpunished." Throughout
November the Leader kept up its
attack on President Buchanan.
On December 1 it announced:
"Tomorrow will be a day of terror
in Virginia"; and on execution day
it rendered the final judgment:
"John Brown-a human sacrifice to
slavery-on the lips of free
men, a name canonized."
VI
The object of this treatment has not
been to render judgment
as to John Brown's character or to imply
that he was not moved,
in many ways, by inner passions. It has
merely been to suggest
that there was another side to his
nature, an outward side, which
turned toward his family, his friends,
even toward strangers in
that vast web of anger at chattel
slavery which spread over certain
areas in the North. John Brown derived
strength from these fellow
participants in a common hatred.
Contemptuous as he was of the
Garrisonian circle, who, he thought,
only "talked" opposition to
slavery, so proportionately must his
direct-actionist soul have been
impressed by those Ohio farmers,
students, theology professors,
churchgoers, and politicians, who did
not hesitate to "knock down"
a "slave-catcher," threaten a
federal marshal, or bring out a hook
and ladder company in honor of the local
abolitionists.
JOHN BROWN'S OHIO ENVIRONMENT
by MARY LAND
Graduate Student, Western Reserve
University
The stormy years John Brown spent in
Kansas and the insur-
rection at Harper's Ferry have all but
obscured the 38 years of his
life spent in northern Ohio. In 1805,
when he was five years old,
he was brought from Connecticut to
Hudson, Ohio, a small town
near Akron. He continued to live in the
vicinity of Akron, except
for a decade in Pennsylvania, two years
in Springfield, Massa-
chusetts, and two years at North Elba,
New York, until he left
for Kansas in 1856, four years before
his death by hanging.
In spite of the years spent in Ohio,
John Brown's biographers
have given that period a cursory
treatment, preferring to devote
their best energies to the Pottawatomie
episode in Kansas or to the
attack on the arsenal and his trial and
execution. Not all this disre-
gard can be attributed to the greater
excitement of the last four
years of his life. Part of it springs
from the tendency to approach
Brown purely as a problem in psychology,
a mystic who, in the
words of his brother-in-law, believed
himself "raised up by God to
break the jaws of the wicked." The
emphasis, therefore, has been
upon the inner man lifted out of the
context of his surroundings.
Whether he is regarded as saint, folk
hero, "belated Covenanter,"
murderer, or neurotic, the environmental
factor in shaping his out-
look on the slavery question has been
indicated but slightly. His
ideas are treated as the projections of
his own personal loathing of
slavery, unrelated to the organized
antislavery movement of the
North. His plans, such as the project
for a provisional government
for the South after victory at Harper's
Ferry, are dismissed as the
figments of a disordered mind. He was,
we are told, a religious
monomaniac on the slavery question who
paid little heed to what
the rest of the North was thinking on
that subject.
Contemporary accounts do not bear out
the assumption that
Brown's case was divorced from the
general antislavery movement.
Those investigating Brown's activities
were intent upon discovering
24