- [Narrator] May 22nd, 1856,
the Senate Chamber, Washington DC.
Representative Preston Brooks walks into the hall,
two other congressmen at his back
stopping by the desk of Senator Charles Sumner.
Two days before, Sumner had delivered a fiery speech
called "The Crime against Kansas"
excoriating his slave holding colleagues,
especially Senator Andrew Butler.
"Mr. Sumner," Brooks says,
"I have read your speech twice over carefully.
It is liable in South Carolina,
and Mr. Butler is a relative of mine."
Sumner barely looks up
before Brooks raises his goldhead walking cane
and brings it down on Sumner's head again and again.
Brooks's allies then pull weapons
and prevent other senators from intervening.
Trapped between his chair and desk, Sumner can't rise
or defend himself, but finally he extricate himself
and staggers away blinded by blood.
Brooks follows still beating Sumner
with his now broken cane even as he loses consciousness.
Blood begins to pool on the Senate floor,
blood that will run as far as Kansas.
(bright music)
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The caning of Charles Sumner
was a symbolically crucial moment,
one that demonstrated
how polarized the nation had become over slavery.
It was also the event that pushed John Brown over the edge.
Brown arrived in Kansas in late 1855
to find his five sons living in crisis.
They were sick, short on food, and living in tents
within a small settlement they'd named Brown's Station.
As quickly as he could he nursed them back to health
and knocked together a couple of log cabins
to ride out the bitter winter
that was just around the corner.
But cold wasn't the only danger.
Brown's Station and the nearby abolitionist settlement
of Osawatomie where Brown's in-laws lived
were surrounded by pro-slavery settlers
determined to drive them out.
These men had threatened Brown sons and relatives.
They'd passed written death threats to two men Brown knew
and beaten a local shopkeeper.
In one particularly nasty incident,
they'd cornered a young woman
who'd been helping Brown son Frederick
make bullets for free state militias
and threatened to sexually assault her.
And elsewhere in Kansas, threats had become very real.
A pro-slavery man shot and killed his abolitionist neighbor.
And then in the depths of that icy winter
a free state man was hacked to death
and his frozen body parts dumped on his own doorstep.
Kansas was rapidly heading towards civil war,
and Brown, seeing this, founded his own militia company
getting ready to fight if need be.
Also, after the fraudulent elections of 1855
where pro-slavery militias
had captured the state legislature,
the free state camp decided to hold their own elections
and form their own government.
So, yeah.
Now there were two rival governments in Kansas,
one pro-slavery and one free state,
both with armed militias.
However, the Franklin-Pierce administration
staunchly pro-slavery
and happy to ignore the flagrant electoral cheating,
considered the free state rebels
and allowed the new governor
to appoint Missouri militia leaders as sheriffs.
This essentially let the border ruffians,
not only Missourians now, but mercenaries
and volunteers from all over the South
harass Free Staters under the cover of law.
In April of 1856, sheriff Samuel Jones,
a border ruffian leader, entered the abolitionist capitol
of Lawrence on a mission to arrest leaders
of the Free State legislature.
When he was eventually shot and driven out of town,
he then convinced a grand jury
to give him legal power to crush Lawrence.
And he returned on May 21st
with an army of 800 border ruffians.
Now, a similar standoff the previous year
had been deescalated, but not this time.
The border ruffians surrounded Lawrence,
disarmed the residence and sacked the town.
They broke windows and destroyed a legislator's house.
They smashed the presses of two abolitionist newspapers
and they attacked the largest, strongest building in town,
the Free State Hotel,
burst with a cannon then detonating gunpowder in the lobby,
and when none of that worked simply by burning it down.
Though there were few casualties,
the property devastation was considerable.
And as luck would have it, John Brown heard
about the sacking of Lawrence
and the caning of Senator Sumner on the same day.
He was furious.
Now to this point, the violence and threats in Kansas
had been incredibly one-sided.
Ho, but no more.
If they wanted violence, he would give them violence
enough that these border ruffians would think twice
before threatening or attacking another Free Stater.
Basically, they hacked around
and now they were gonna find out.
Brown handpicked a team from his militia company
consisting of his sons Owen, Solomon, Frederick, and Oliver
plus two men who'd also been threatened.
They took along old US army broad swords
with mercury filled channels in the blades.
So the liquid metal increased the force of the swing.
Then they targeted the neighbors
who'd harassed and threatened them.
First there was James Doyle and his two sons
that we talked about in episode one.
They hacked all three men to death in their front yard.
They did the same for another militiaman.
And at a third cabin, they found nearly half a dozen men.
Through questioning them, they found only one
who was in fact a border ruffian and killed him as well.
It was the start of John Brown's war on slavery.
As far as he was concerned,
it was ridiculous to consider the killing
of a few oppressors too high a price,
given the millions of black Americans
who were abused, beaten, raped and murdered
due to the practice of slavery.
But Gut Check Time, if you are feeling
a little queasy about this, that makes sense,
because while Brown's logic about liberation might be sound,
this kind of violence
always triggers reprisals and escalation.
Brown's actions called the Potawatomi Massacre
was the starting gun for the factions to go at it.
In the next four years,
at least 56 political killings occurred
during what came to be called Bleeding Kansas
and it would culminate in an incident
where border ruffians lined 11 unarmed Free Staters up
at the edge of a ravine and shot them execution style.
But that was the future.
Right now, in this historical tale,
both militias and US army troops hunted Brown,
one militia burned Brown's Station
and arrested two of Brown's sons
who had nothing to do with the killings,
even torturing John Jr.
Brown responded by rallying the 13 men
of his militia company
and attacking the 55 strong border ruffian encampment,
besieging their circled wagons in the battle of Black Jack
and taking 23 prisoners.
By now, both sides were trading attacks,
stealing livestock and destroying crops.
And on August 30th, a group of over 250 border ruffians
came for Brown at Osawatomie.
The only brown they found was Frederick,
one of Brown's favorite sons.
Frederick struggled with mental illness
and his father had always tried
to both include him in the family's struggle,
while also protecting him.
At Potawatomi he served as a lookout, not a killer.
And he'd been kept away from the fighting at Black Jack.
A scout found him walking down the town's main street
and shot him through the heart.
Brown's militia went into action trying to defend the town
against the force five to 10 times their number
equipped with cannons, but it was truly no use.
He withdrew and watched them burn the town to the ground.
It was a deep and personal loss.
But Brown's bravery at Osawatomie and his growing reputation
as a guerrilla leader had begun to turn him
into a sort of folk hero.
The citizens of Lawrence cheered him
when he next entered the town.
Northern newspapers whose reporters he'd cultivated
lauded him, while southern presses called him a murderer
and fumed that he had not yet been caught.
He was increasingly becoming known
to friend and foe alike simply as Old Brown.
Oh, and his enemies in Kansas feared him.
There was a real sense that if any pro-slavery man
decided to pick up a weapon,
Old Brown might come for them in the night.
And as the violence escalated,
backfiring on the Pierce administration
the government increasingly changed its policies
to try to curb the bloodshed,
even the cost of Kansas becoming a free state.
But by then, Brown was no longer in Kansas
rather he was in Boston and New York
meeting with the wealthy benefactors
who had bought weapons for the Free Staters.
He was a celebrity there.
The one man who'd finally stood up to southern violence
when other abolitionists had offered only petitions,
letters and newspaper editorials.
And what Brown wanted now was simple:
more money and more guns.
He met opposition.
In one meeting, he went head-to-head
with William Lloyd Garrison, the liberator editor
and advocate for Nonviolent Abolitionism.
Brown went hard at Garrison
for his ideas of gradual emancipation.
I mean, could enslaved people wait while they were whipped,
their family sold and their wives
and daughters subject to assault?
Brown got his rifles, including funding
from a more radical group of benefactors
who called themselves the Secret 6,
who were willing to back him for more
than keeping up the struggle in Kansas, which was good,
because Brown was done running guns to Kansas.
Indeed, he was assembling a strike team to hit a new target.
The Federal Armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.
John Brown was about to take his war for liberation
to the heart of the South.
And if you can't wait to hear all about what happened next
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militias from the surrounding countryside,
converge on Harper's Ferry, and Brown's raiders
find themselves facing overwhelming fire.
The first of his meant to fall is Dangerfield Newby
who is hitting the throat with an iron spike
that was loaded into a musket.
It's at this point that Brown realizes
the steel trap has snapped shut.
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