Franklin County Kansas territory May 24 1856 in the dead of night the militiamen entered the house with guns and ordered three men James Doyle and his adult sons William and Drury to come with them they reluctantly comply while Doyle's wife and the boy's mother watches sobbing the armed men lead the Doyles into the dark and begin to question them had they participated in the sacking of the Abolitionist town of Lawrence you see three days ago an armed paramilitary Force had descended on Lawrence flying banners reading southern rights and varying racist phrases they had smashed the presses of its two abolitionist newspapers and burned down the Free State hotel as they were being questioned the Doyles noticed something these interrogators were not from the law rather they are the radical abolitionist John Brown and two of his sons and this is not an arrest of course we don't know exactly how they responded but at a signal from Brown broadswords flash in the Moonlight and when the screaming dies down Brown finishes James Doyle with the pistol shot and he and his boys depart they have a busy night ahead of them there are three more slavers on his list tonight [Music] thanks so much to trade coffee for keeping us history loving beans well caffeinated John Brown is one of the most controversial figures in American history a radical abolitionist he preached that a non-violent solution to slavery was not possible that all races were equal under God and the law and that the only form of emancipation was immediate and total if that required a violent Uprising then so be it now while we as modern people admire his goals of racial equality and an immediate end to slavery in the 1850s these were extreme views even amongst abolitionists and Brown's use of violence horrified the largely pacifist anti-slavery movement at the time at first he was referred to as insane as a zealot and debates continue to this day over whether he was a hero or what we would today call a terrorist his willingness to act on his principles to spill white blood to liberate black people would make him simultaneously one of the most admired and hated men in America especially after he seized a federal Arsenal in an attempt to kick start and arm a massive slave rebellion in fact he's often listed personal as lighting the fuse of the Civil War and if that's true we know when the match was struck Ohio 1812. John Brown has just met a slave owner for the first time and he likes him it's a marshal who runs the town where John has just delivered his father's cattle and at a dinner party the Marshal cannot stop talking about how great he thinks John is he's amazed that John only 12 drove his father's cattle here alone he recounts Jon's adventures and life of hardship moving from Connecticut to Frontier Ohio and losing his mother at age eight and as the party talks they're served by the Marshall slave a boy about John's age earlier that evening the two had played as friends now Jon is a strict calvinist raised in the Abolitionist hotbed of Hudson Ohio he'd been taught slavery is evil and he'd seen the escaped slaves his father a conductor on the Underground Railroad hid on their Farm but this Marshall he doesn't seem evil he's so nice but as the guests leave the same man who treated John so kindly walks to the fireplace picks up an iron shovel and begins beating his friend over the head with it for not serving the food fast enough that was John Brown's first brush with slavery not the kind portrayed in abolitionist pamphlets and speeches mind you but real slavery where you could see the bruises and smell the blood it horrified him truly he thought this was a sin against God and brown thought about God a lot he did so while wandering the woods during his off hours after working in his father's Tannery he memorized the Bible cover to cover and could recite any verse perfectly on command however his dreams of becoming a minister were dashed at the age of 16. when he went East to do Preparatory theological studies but found himself unequal to it his schooling was poor and an eye condition made him unable to keep up with the reading he instead returned to Hudson to start a new Tannery complete with a room for hiding escaped slaves it was a success though Brown gained a reputation as a bit of an eccentric who would not weigh and cell hides unless they were fully dried even if the customer wanted them no customer of mine is paying for water they brought in a woman to bake bread and John though shy would go on to marry her daughter dianthi they would have seven children together now we have to take a moment to talk about what brown was like as a father because for him battling slavery would become a family affair Brown ruled over his family like an Old Testament patriarch he could be gentle and affectionate singing his children to sleep and nursing them when they were ill but even minor infractions in the brown household were corrected with a switch despite Brown clearly not enjoying it in fact once when his eldest son John Jr had accumulated 25 lashes Brown saw an opportunity for Religious Education after giving the teenage boy eight he handed Junior the switch and told him that he would take the other 17. a lesson he hoped in both Jesus taking on the sins of the world and that Junior hurt his father when he disobeyed when he was 25 Brown sold his Tannery and relocated the family to Pennsylvania this was partially because Brown never felt content unless he was building something but also because the escaped slaves he hid at his farm would be safer despite his youth Brown became a major figure in the community there founding another Tannery surveying becoming a postmaster and helping 2 500 people escape to Canada over the next decade until Misfortune struck first his four-year-old son died followed by dianthi dying in childbirth delivering a stillborn daughter Brown himself ill and in deep grief sent his five children to a neighbor as he spent hours each day lying face down on their graves and weeping he remarried the next year to the 17 year old Marianne daughter of his housekeeper with whom he'd have 13 more children yet Brown's businesses never recovered from his last year he moved his family back to Ohio and bought land near a developing Canal sure he'd be able to sell it for an enormous profit however the panic of 1837 wiped him out and his large number of children in short he'd never be financially sound again this was yet another confusing period for brown he knocked around working where he could find it and he fretted that despite his work on the Underground Railroad he simply wasn't doing enough to battle slavery he was ejected from his church for inviting a black family to sit in his Pew and mused over starting a school for African-American Youth and Brown's dark decade was mirrored nationally in The Wider Abolitionist Movement during the time of Brown's father it had been assumed that with the importation of slaves banned in 1807 the institution would die out instead it was growing more powerful politically and economically slave owners had responded to the Titan Supply with livestock-like breeding programs doubling the enslaved population from 2 million to 4 million efforts to stop slavery's expansion failed as well pro-slavery legislators negotiated the Missouri Compromise of 1820 creating a situation where for every Northern free state added to the union a southern slave state would be added as well slave delivery Advocates also increasingly relied upon violence in 1835 a pro-slavery mob in Boston crashed a lecture by William Lloyd Garrison founder of the American anti-slavery Society the 1500 rioters pulled Garrison through the street by a rope and only the mayor's intervention prevented his lynching another blow came in 1837 when an armed mob besieged Minister and abolitionist newspaper editor Elijah P Lovejoy in the warehouse that he'd used to hide his printing press Lovejoy was shot five times and had to be buried in an unmarked grave to prevent desecration Memorial Services were held Across the Nation and in Springfield Massachusetts a strange thing happened at the end of the service as the last hymn reverberated a man stepped from the back of the church and raised his right hand he was new in town a wool specialist I think but he'd already made an impression here by God the man said in the presence of these Witnesses from this time I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery it was John Brown and he had found his mission a mission he was in exactly the right place to pursue since he had moved to Springfield in order to make the connections that would help him strike a death blow to slavery connections that would put him in contact with Frederick Douglass Harriet Tubman and the secret six the Abolitionist financiers who discreetly funded his Guerrilla War the path to Bloody Kansas was laid and John Brown would follow it seriously there's so much more for us to cover we're gonna need a pick-me-up ooh so you know what that means Zoe heck yeah coffee a clock delivered right to my door thanks Trade coffee now as some of you probably know by now I've gotten pretty deep into what one could call The Infinity Gauntlet of convenient Commodities and okay actually hold on a second I'm gonna stop reading the script real quick do you all know how long I have wanted 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you are a coffee lover I think you're going to really dig this what if I told you that Ahmed Ziad Turk Angela valenciana archolite games Casey muscha Dominic valenciana Joseph Lane kuyakoi and Skyler Holmes were all legendary patrons I'm not kidding [Music]