John Brown on the Run - American History, 1493-1945

John Brown to Mary Ann Brown reporting on his avoidance of Uncle Sam’s hound

16 April 1857

View the letter from John Brown to Mary Ann Brown reporting on his avoidance of the US Marshall in the resource

This letter was written by abolitionist John Brown to his wife Mary and their children in 1857. John Brown was a White abolitionist who believed that the only way to bring an end to slavery in the south of the country was through armed action. In 1856 his followers had killed five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie. In early 1857 he had been in Boston, making acquaintance with other abolitionist thinkers but also trying to raise money to arm a slave revolt in Kansas. Despite giving a series of passionate lectures on the subject he raised little of what he needed and although many of his friends had donated arms and small amount of money to the cause he became despondent. Learning that a U.S. marshal had just passed through Cleveland on his way to arrest him, Brown went into hiding. He convinced abolitionist judge Thomas B. Russell and his wife to allow him to stay with them at the beginning of April and he stayed there for a few weeks, barricading himself into an upstairs bedroom. Feeling sad Brown wrote his Farewell to New England, indignant at the perceived lack of help they had offered to his cause. According to biographies, he left the Russells' home in mid-April and took a night train to upper New York. In this letter, dated 16 April, he explains to his wife that “one of Uncle Sam’s hounds was at Cleveland on my track” but goes on to say that he has “no great fear of getting caught”. He says that he has trust in God to send him back with “irons in rather than upon my hands” a reference to the arms he was trying to obtain.

In 1859, Brown led a raid on the federal armoury at Harpers Ferry. He had intended to use the weapons to arm the enslaved people in Kansas. The raid was a disaster and Brown himself was captured, tried for treason against the commonwealth of Virginia and sentenced to death by hanging. Brown’s stand against slavery cost him his life, as well as that of two of his sons. However, his work was not in vain. The the events that led to his death in 1859 sparked both excitement and fury across the United States, and are seen as a spark towards the outbreak of the American Civil War two years later in 1861. His final written words prior to his death were ominous: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.”