Barbara Marks, age 15, of Davenport, Iowa, for her question:
WHAT IS THE STORY OF JOHN BROWN'S BODY?
During the American Civil War, Union troops sang a song with these words: "John Brown's body lies a mouldering in his grave, but his soul goes marching on."
Hero of the song was John Brown, a radical abolitionist whose attempt to free the slaves cost a number of lives and helped indirectly to bring on the war between the states.
Brown's ancestors had sailed to America early in the colonial period. He was born in Connecticut and lived as a child in Ohio. With two marriages, he had 20 children. He did various types of work but was not a successful businessman. His family didn't have a great deal of security.
Brown hated slavery with a passion and he helped many fugitive slaves escape from America to Canada.
In 1855 Brown followed five of his sons to Kansas. They settled in Osawatomie and Brown worked to keep Kansas from becoming a slave state. In May, 1856, proslavery men attacked and burned the nearby town of Lawrence. Two days later, Brown led an expedition to Pottawatomie Creek where his men brutally murdered five proslavery settlers.
A number of small but bloody battles broke out between Free State men and those who wanted slavery. Brown became famous as "Old Osawatomie Brown" after he defended Osawatomie from attack by proslavery men in 1856.
Brown had been considering an invasion of the South and started to collect arms and men for that purpose in 1857. Although he was an outlaw, he received sympathy and aid.
Brown's plan was to raid the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry in western Virginia, which is now West Virginia. Then, protected by the mountains, he planned to encourage slaves to rebel.
Brown and 18 of his followers captured the arsenal on Oct. 16, 1859, but failed to escape. The next day, the local militia found Brown with his dead, wounded and a few prisoners in the arsenal. He was convicted of treason and hanged on Dec. 2.
After being bottled up at Harpers Ferry, Brown was finally captured by Colonel Robert E. Lee who forced the fort open. Brown was immediately delivered to the state for trial.
Northern efforts were made to have Brown declared insane, but he was convicted on charges of treason.
After his execution, Brown became a folk hero. The event even inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson to say that Brown would make the gallows "as glorious as a cross."
Brown's plan actually had no chance to succeed. The odds against him before the attack on the arsenal were so great that many people actually believed he was insane at the Harpers Ferry incident.
Even so, many Northerners thought of Brown as a martyr, while many Southerners genuinely believed his attack was part of an organized movement to end slavery. These attitudes, historians tell us, perhaps best show how divided the U.S. had become in the 1850s.