Recordpub.com - PORTAGE PATHWAYS: Death of John Brown echoed in Portage

By Roger J. Di Paolo

Record-Courier Editor

John Brown remains a controversial figure in American history, even 150 years after his death.

Some consider the abolitionist leader as a martyr for human rights, executed because of his implacable opposition to the evil of slavery. Others, however, might argue that he was a zealot whose unrepentant violence amounted to domestic terrorism.

For many in Portage County, however, the man who went to the gallows on Dec. 2, 1859, for his attack on a federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Va., was more than an anti-slavery icon. He was a former neighbor.

As he went to his death, public gatherings were held throughout the county to mourn the man the Portage County Democrat characterized as "the heroic apostle of Freedom."

Brown's violent death, the anti-slavery newspaper predicted, "will hasten the doom of slavery." It could be argued that it did, but not before thousands of Americans went to their deaths in the nation's most brutal war.

John Brown came to Ohio in 1805, when he was 5 years old, and spent his youth in Hudson, which was then part of newly organized Portage County. After living in Pennsylvania as a young adult, he returned to this area in 1835, settling in Franklin Mills -- now Kent.

He built a tannery along the Cuyahoga River, just west of the present Stow Street Bridge, and operated it briefly in association with Zenas Kent, the largest landowner in the settlement. He also built a large wooden boardinghouse nearby and acquired a 21-acre parcel of land that he hoped to develop for home sites.

He failed miserably at all he attempted. By 1840, overwhelmed by debt, he left Franklin Mills.

Brown's opposition to slavery and insistence on equal rights for African-Americans had already earned him notoriety in the settlement. A member of the Congregational Church, he raised eyebrows by inviting a black family to share his pew when it was customary for the races to worship separately.

After leaving Ohio, he settled in a New York abolitionist community, then made his way to Kansas, which was a flashpoint in the struggle over slavery. In 1856, he led a raid on a pro-slavery settlement at Pottawatomie Creek that cost the lives of five settlers. He liberated other slaves by attacking homesteads in Missouri.

In attacking Harpers Ferry, Brown hoped to spark an armed rebellion of slaves. With 21 men, including three of his sons, he seized the armory and took hostages but ultimately was overwhelmed. Two of his sons were killed, Brown was wounded and all who were captured were put on trial.

Friday, Dec. 2, 1859, the day Brown was condemned to be hanged, was a day of public mourning in many Portage County communities.

Church bells in Ravenna tolled from 1 to 2 p.m., the scheduled hour of Brown's death, "during which the spirit of the murdered martyr will wing its flight to the bosom of the murdered, crucified Savior," the Democrat reported. (Brown actually was executed shortly before noon.)

Public protest meetings and memorials were held throughout the area. Gatherings were reported in Deerfield, Garrettsville and Nelson; a meeting in Windham drew 30 to 40 residents.

By far the largest gathering took place at the Town Hall in Ravenna, where O.P. Brown, an abolitionist and temperance leader who had served as the town's first mayor, spoke for an hour that night.

"Seldom .. has an audience assembled in Ravenna in which there was so much solemnity manifested," a report submitted to the Democrat stated. "Although the hall was crowded almost to suffocation, there was a stillness that could be felt."

The Democrat's pages were filled with reports of the execution. One story was an interview with Brown's wife, Mary, reprinted from a New York City newspaper.

Mary Brown, the mother of 13 children -- Brown also fathered seven children by his first wife -- described her husband as a "singularly self-denying man" who abstained from tobacco and alcohol and was otherwise "rigidly temperate."

She said he had been planning the Harpers Ferry action "not for two years (as had been reported) but for twenty." And, she added, he was not insane.

While the Democrat's sympathy for Brown was obvious in its coverage, a competing newspaper expressed a dissenting view that may have been shared by some Portage County residents.

"If ever a man deserved hanging that man was John Brown,"
the Portage Sentinel commented.

The failed businessman who left behind a pile of debts in Franklin Mills failed, too, in what he hoped to accomplish at Harpers Ferry and paid for that failure with his life 150 years ago this week. In the process, however, he earned a place in American history.

1.	Posted by L2DeCaro November 30, 2009
	As a biographer of John Brown, I am pleased to read Mr. Di Paolo's article in remembering the abolitionist at the sesquicentennial of his martyrdom. For the record, however, the conventional portrayal of Brown as a total failure (for instance as conveyed in the unfortunately biased PBS documentary about Brown) is inaccurate. Actually Brown was one of the foremost experts in fine sheep and wool in the antebellum era and he is both mentioned as such in agricultural journals of his day. Although he was bankrupt in 1842, he improved his status later in the 1840s when he became a partner with wealthy Simon Perkins Jr. from Akron. Even though their joint venture did not succeed, Perkins begged Brown to continue with him as partner. Brown never became wealthy but by the time he became involved in Kansas affairs in 1855, he had fairly well reestablished himself as a creditable figure. Bear in mind too that the economic system of the antebellum era was not like today: bankruptcy was very common and Brown was hardly the only one who failed in business and lost money. There was no national bank, no safety nets, limited liability corporations, and "western" states like Ohio had substandard monetary and banking compared to eastern states. Many people in Ohio were hit hard like Brown, and it is a little unfair when historians elevate his losses as if they were exceptional. Ohio should be proud that John Brown was their son. A lot of people did a lot of talking about slavery, including the racially prejudiced Mr. Lincoln. But at least John Brown had a plan and tried to do something about it with the sincerity of his Christian faith. He was not mad, he was not a terrorist (he was a counter-terrorist), and his attitude toward human beings was more advanced than most of his generation. I am proud to be a student of John Brown and believe many in this nation are still catching up to him! Best wishes. http://abolitionist-john-brown.blogspot.com/