John Brown, American Abolitionist, Hanged on This Day

John Brown, shown above in a colorized portrait and then a painting that is in the Kansas Capitol, was hanged on this day, December 2, in 1859, after a kangaroo court trial in Virginia.

John Brown is sometimes called a madman but nothing could be further from the truth. He was a deeply religious man who felt --- absolutely correctly at the time in 1859 because slavery was expanding --- that nothing would end slavery in the United States unless someone took direct action. 

He decided to attempt to bloodlessly end slavery by going into the south and providing slaves with a safe place to which to escape on their way to Canada, in the mountains in the South. The fact that his strategy was flawed should not detract from the fact that his goal was good, as almost all people now would agree.

There are many reasons his trial was unfair. He was severely injured and all courts now, and almost all then, would have delayed the trial until the defendant was sufficiently well. Instead Brown had to be brought into his trial on a bed. He was not allowed time for his lawyer to arrive although the lawyer was on his way. And Brown was charged with treason against Virginia, a state to which he owed no loyalty and therefore could not be guilty of treason. 

Nevertheless, everyone knew he would be rushed to a guilty verdict. So, about 6 weeks after his raid on Harpers Ferry he was sentenced to death by hanging. Present at his execution were men later to become famous such as Stonewall Jackson and John Wilkes Booth.

Poets such as Henry David Thoreau in his "Plea for Captain Brown" quoted Brown. "I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage."

And his last note was prophetic. "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood." Almost exactly one year later, very much because of John Brown, the states of the South started to secede from the United States, plunging our country into a Civil War that resulted in the deaths of 2% of our population, a percentage that today would mean the deaths of 6.4 million Americans.