John Brown's Ghost

Soon, Brown lost his farm and was arrested when he tried to prevent his own eviction. He lost four children to dysentery in 1843. He moved his family around to several places and tried to feed his family while carrying out his personal mission of being God’s messenger.

In 1855 five of his sons moved to Kansas and acquired homesteads so that they could vote against slaver in that state. When a pro-slavery mob seized the polls and forced the vote to go their way, the Brown men wrote to their father about the situation.

John Brown assembled as many weapons as he could and left for Kansas. Arriving at his son’s settlement, called “Brown’s Station” he found his children sick and the settlement no more than a mucky area with a few tents. Within a few days John Brown took charge, building a cabin and taking care of his sons.

After hearing reports of violence against abolitionists, Brown went into the woods to pray. When he came out, he told his men to sharpen their swords. The group headed for a pro-slaver settlement on Pottawatomie Creek. There, the vigilantes slaughtered five men.

John Brown became a wanted fugitive. He became known as a guerrilla fighter, hiding in the woods. He started traveling the country trying to round up guns and money for his cause. In the areas far away from the Pottawatomie massacre, he was regarded as a romantic hero.

In July of 1859 Brown rented the Kennedy Farmhouse, which is about seven miles from Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. At the time the town contained a federal armory that housed over 100,000 guns. Brown recruited 21 men to help him seize the weapons and to promote a slave uprising.

On the evening of October 16, 1859, Brown gathered him men and seized the armory. Things went perfectly until a train appeared. A baggage master ran out to warn the train, and was shot and killed by one of Brown’s men. Ironically, this man was a free African American. The train was able to get through and spread the news of the raid along the route it followed.

Soon, local townspeople and militiamen gathered to shoot at the raiders from the surrounding hills. Colonel Robert E. Lee was assigned to take back the armory, Ninety military men set out from Washington, DC, including Jeb Stuart.

The next day, members of the Virginia militia

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