The Greatest White Man in American History

Meet John Brown, the greatest white man in American History.

Born on May 9, 1800 in Torrington, Connecticut, to parents Ruth Mills and Owen Brown, he was a radical abolitionist leader who fought against slavery in every way possible…even if it meant killing enslavers.

All together Brown had twenty children, unfortunately, only half survived their childhoods, and two more were killed during the raid on Harper’s Ferry. Seven by his first wife Dianthe Lusk and thirteen by his second wife Mary Ann Day.

Brown relocated his large family very frequently, moving restlessly through Ohio, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York and working as a tanner, sheep drover, wool merchant, farmer, and land speculator. In 1849 he settled his family in a Black community in North Elba, New York.

In the spring of 1858, Brown organized a meeting of Black and white supporters in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, at which he announced his intention of establishing in the Maryland and Virginia mountains a stronghold for escaping slaves.

In the summer of 1859, with an armed group of 16 white and 5 Black abolitionists, Brown set up a headquarters in a rented farmhouse in Maryland, across the Potomac from Harpers Ferry, the site of a federal armoury. On the night of October 16, he quickly took the armoury and rounded up some 60 leading men of the area as hostages. Brown took this desperate action in the hope that escaped slaves would join his rebellion, forming an “army of emancipation” with which to liberate their fellow slaves. Throughout the next day and night, he and his men held out against the local militia, but on the following morning he surrendered to a contingency of troops under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee, including a small force of U.S. Marines that had broken into the armoury and overpowered Brown and his comrades.

Brown himself was wounded, and 10 of his followers (including two sons) were killed.

It gets even worst. After Brown’s son (Watson Brown) was killed, a local medical school that supported slavery took his body, preserved it and displayed it as a pro-slavery exhibit in the medical school. They made shoes with some of his skin and took some his finger bones for souvenirs. (How messed up is that).

Brown earned a measure of fame as the leader of antislavery guerrillas in Bleeding Kansas, the small civil war fought between proslavery and antislavery advocates for control of the new territory of Kansas. He was feared after he led the retaliatory raid that resulted in the Pottawatomie Massacre.

After the Harpers Ferry Raid, Brown was tried for murder, slave insurrection, and treason against the state. He was convicted and hanged on December 2, 1859, in Charles Town, Virginia (now in West Virginia).

In 2020, an historical drama miniseries by the name of (The Good Lord Bird) was released. This series is based on the 2013 novel by James McBride. Focusing on Brown’s attack on American slavery, the series was created and executive produced by Ethan Hawke and Mark Richard.

Why are they not teaching this in school?