Through the gloom of the night, Sunday, October 16, 1859, a small band of men tramped silently behind a horse-drawn wagon down a winding Maryland road leading to Harpers Ferry, Va. From the shoulder of each man hung loosely a Sharps rifle, hidden by long gray shawls that protected the ghostly figures against the chilling air of approaching winter. A slight drizzle of rain veiled the towering Blue Ridge Mountains with an eerie mist. Not a sound broke the stillness, save the tramping feet and the creaking wagon.
Side by side marched lawyer and farmer, escaped convict and pious Quaker, Spiritualist and ex-slave, joined in common cause by a hatred of slavery. Some had received their baptism of fire in “Bleeding Kansas,” where a bitter 5-year war between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions left death and destruction in its wake and foreshadowed a larger conflict to come. Most were students of guerrilla tactics; all were willing to die to free the slaves.
This strange little force, five Negroes and 14 whites, was the “Provisional Army of the United States,” about to launch a fantastic scheme to rid the country of its “peculiar institution” once and for all, a scheme conjured up by the fierce-eyed, bearded man seated on the wagon—“Commander in Chief” John Brown. He was the planner, the organizer, the driving force, the reason why these men were trudging down this rough Maryland road to an uncertain fate.
THE ROAD TO HARPERS FERRY
This man who would electrify the Nation and bring it closer to civil war by his audacious attack on slavery was born at Torrington, Conn., on May 9, 1800, the son of Owen and Ruth Mills Brown. The Browns were a simple, frugal, and hard-working family. They had a deep and abiding interest in religion, and from earliest childhood John Brown was taught the value of strong religious habits. He was required, along with his brothers and sisters, to participate in daily Bible reading and prayer sessions. “Fear God & keep his commandments” was his father’s constant admonition. It was also his father who taught him to view the enslavement of Negroes as a sin against God.
The future abolitionist and martyr in the cause of Negro freedom was born in this stark, shutterless farmhouse in Torrington, Conn. He lived here only 5 years. In 1805 his father, Owen Brown (above), sold the farm and moved the family west to Ohio.
In 1805 the Browns, like many other families of the period, moved west to Ohio. There, in the little settlement of Hudson, about 25 miles south of Cleveland, John grew to manhood. He received little formal education; most of what he learned came from what he afterwards called the “School of adversity.” He cared little for studies, preferring life in the open. Consistently choosing the “hardest & roughest” kinds of play because they afforded him “almost the only compensation for the confinement & restraints of school,” he was extremely proud of his ability to “wrestle, & Snow ball, & run, & jump, & knock off old seedy Wool hats.”
