More about John Brown and the Underground Railroad
From the time he was a child, John Brown believed that slavery was wrong. As an adult he vowed to do something about it. In 1855 he and five of his sons came to Kansas Territory to help ensure that it would become a free state. He and his followers crossed the border into Missouri seeking enslaved people who wished to escape, then led them to freedom. On his last journey through Kansas in late 1858, he stopped at Joel Grover’s barn with 12 escapees. They continued north from Lawrence, up the “Lane Trail” toward Iowa, where they caught a train to Chicago and then crossed into Canada.
Later in 1859, Brown and his sons traveled to Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now part of West Virginia) and tried to incite a slave uprising. They attacked a federal arsenal (a weapons cache), but were surrounded by U.S. soldiers. John Brown was wounded and captured. He was tried for treason and hanged on December 2, 1859.
The wall mural entitled “Tragic Prelude” painted by John Steuart Curry is displayed in the Kansas Capitol Building in Topeka. It portrays John Brown holding a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other. A statue of John Brown stands near the old site of Quindaro in Kansas City, Kansas (see a photo on the Quindaro page of The Spirit of Quindaro).
