Brief Summary: The Life Of John Brown

1) John Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut. Brown came from a religious family that inculcated in him a strong principle in the bible and abhorrence of slavery. Throughout his life, Brown had a strong connection with the Quaker community; He admired their transparency, self-spirit, and opposition to slavery. Furthermore, different characters from the Old Testament often inspired Brown. However, one that really captured the most his attention was the passage about Gideon. Brown believed God’s purpose for him was to set the slaves free as Gideon save Israel. Brown’s father, Owen Brown, raised and disciplinant his son hewing to the Calvinist belief in the depravity of human natures, by lashing him accordingly the type of

Most Free-States colonists were antislavery but also anti-black; the Browns however believed in complete equality for black and were firm to fight for it. This period of political conflict over the matter of slavery is known as bleeding Kansas. Moreover, on May 21, 1856, ruffians robbed the new anti-slavery Town of Lawrence. When the news of the incident of Lawrence reached Brown’s station the Pottawatomie Rifle, which consisted of thirty-four men departed for the surround town but when they finally arrived it was too late. Furthermore, another mayor event that happened in in the capital building was the attack of the abolitionist Charles Sumner after denounced the “slave power” of committing “the rape of a virgin Territory” (94). In respond congressman Preston Brooks confronted Sumner in the floor of the senate claiming his speech was a defamation and then he beat him so hard that Sumner was absent from the senate for three years. Additionally, in retaliation, on May 24 a small Free-State force under John Brown attacked three cabins along Pottawatomie creek, killing five men with swords and triggered a summer of guerrilla