John Brown and His Mission in Kansas

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John Brown and his mission in Kansas
John Brown was a 19th century military abolitionist who is remembered in Kansas for his actions and leadership towards abolition of slavery. John Brown was born on May 9th, 1800 to Calvinist Owen Brown and Ruth Mills (Biography, 2015). He was an ardent abolitionist who led major rebellions against slavery through forces such as Underground Railroad and the League of Gileadites. He believed slavery was not to be stopped through negotiations but by violent overthrows and activism.
During the bleeding Kansas conflicts of the 1850’s he together with his sons enlisted a small army of insurrectionists who undertook major rebellions on pro-slavery residents of Kansas. His main agenda in defeating slavery was to lead a rebellion among the slaves by arming them there by making it possible to defeat slavery. The end of this rebellion was in 1859 when Brown led his army to attack the federal armory at Harpers Ferry. This raid was aimed at capturing weapons to be given to the slaves to further push forward the violent rebellion. It was not successful and Brown was captured and was sentenced to death by hanging in December 2nd, 1859 (Reynolds, 2009).
John Brown was a very astute figure in the fight against slavery and through his rebellions he became very popular with the northerners who were majorly the black immigrants. He believed that he was the instrument of God meant to punish the white settlers and industry owners who owned the slaves. He was so much dissatisfied with the pacifism which was encouraged by organized abolitionist movements who believed that slavery could be ended by advocating peaceful resistance (Horwitz, 2012). From his believe, peaceful resistance had failed terribly and thus what needed to be done was violent action. This is what led him to form rebellious groups with like- thinking insurrects with the aim of leading a revolution against slavery by raiding the pro-slavery population and arming the slaves too to take part in the rebellion.
Brown dismissed peaceful campaigns to end slavery as mere talk and in 1856 he led his supporters in the Bleeding Kansas crisis where they attacked pro-slavery southerners and killed five of them and injured several others. This is revolution is referred to as the Pottawatomie massacre. John Brown treaded a line which many southerners never tried to. Most of them were supporters of slavery who saw the blacks as worthless and that was the reason why there were treated as slaves (Hinton, 2011).
In his formative early life his family moved from Connecticut to Springfield, Massachusetts, where Brown interacted with other abolitionists before him. He was involved in the Free Church in Springfield where abolitionists such as Fredrick Douglas and Sojourner Truth gave lectures on how to lead the abolition of slavery. He was a major force in the city and helped greatly in the transformation of the city to become one of the powerful centers of abolitionism and most significant stops on the Underground Railroad (Horn, 2009). He was a force to reckon in Springfield and the St. John’s Congregational Church which he attended and undertook his missions from i...