John Brown Junior

Brown moved with four of his brothers to Kansas Territory in spring 1855. While his brothers Frederick, Owen, and Salmon traveled by land, Brown and his brother Jason traveled by boat, along with their families. He was elected to the territorial legislature in 1856.

Brown did not join his father and brothers in the Pottawatomie Massacre of May, 1856. However, he was captured by Henry Clay Pate, a border ruffian and commander of a proslavery militia, in connection with the murders. He was turned over to federal authority, Captain Thomas J. Wood. He was beaten by the soldiers and suffered a mental breakdown.

His father, John Brown, plotted a rescue. His troops overtook proslavery men in the Battle of Black Jack near Palmyra on June 2, 1856. The elder Brown captured Pate and his men, provisions, horses, mules, and equipment. He agreed to release the prisoners in exchange for his sons.

A proslavery court in Lecompton charged John Brown, Jr., with high treason because he was a free-state politician. He was finally released from prison in September.[3] Shortly after this, John Jr. left Kansas with his father.

John Jr. was not part of the raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, but he knew all the details and was part of the process of preparing for it. When his brother Owen escaped capture, he took safe refuge with John Jr. at his home in northeast Ohio.

John Jr. was a member of the Topeka Legislature.[4]

Because of tensions between John Brown and other members of the plans and cause, John Brown appointed John Jr. as the intelligence agent and liaison.[5] This meant that John Jr. would be the go-between for John Brown and other members. This provided safety for John Brown and secrecy.

It was suspected that John Jr. was aware of his father's plans to raid the arsenal in Virginia. This plan was addressed to several men, although the definite position and location of attack might not have been as widely known except to those closest to Brown.[6] It is said that John Jr. was well aware of the plans for the Virginia arsenal.[7]

John Jr. received word from his father to move the "tools" for the raid.[8] The letter told John Jr. to do this "with perfect quiet" and to move only the tools, "not the other stuff", to a safe place where only Jr. and "the keeper" would know where they were. This cryptic message was received and Jr. travelled to Conneaut, Ohio, where the weapons had been secretly shipped, and moved them several miles south to a farm in Cherry Valley township.[8]

In early 1860, the U.S. Senate created a Select Committee to report on the invasion of Harper's Ferry. James M. Mason, head of the committee, submitted a resolution to compel John Jr. and two others to testify. A deputy of the Senate's Sergeant-at-Arms was sent to arrest the individuals—according to the report, Brown was then living in Ashtabula County, Ohio—and bring them to Washington. The deputy reported that Brown could not be arrested without the employment of armed force.[9]

John Brown sent John Jr. on a journey throughout the state of Pennsylvania, wanting him to find men "of the right stripe" [10] willing to join John Brown's cause. The areas that John Jr. was ordered to visit, specifically, were Gettysburg, Bedford, Chambersburg, and Uniontown.[10] John Jr. also spent time visiting Massachusetts, New York, and Canada, trying to enlist black supporters. Neither of these missions produced the desired results, and the "army" attacking the Arsenal was merely twenty-one men.

In July 1861, Brown decided to recruit a company of soldiers that would travel to Kansas and enlist with Kansas volunteer forces then operating in Missouri under the auspices of Kansas Senator James H. Lane. His intention was to enlist "abolitionists of the intense sort"[12] and muster them under Colonel James Montgomery, one of Lane's three Lieutenants.[13] John Brown's "Sharpshooters" garnered significant press attention as they traveled from Ohio to Kansas.[14][15] However, on its arrival, the company had only signed 66 men. On November 9, 1861, while Brown was still recruiting in Michigan, the company elected to join Colonel Charles R. Jennison's First Kansas Cavalry, later designated the Kansas Seventh Volunteer Cavalry, and known in Missouri as Jennison's Jayhawkers.[13] Upon his own arrival in December, Brown was mustered in as the captain of Company K of the Kansas Seventh. Brown served as captain of the company until May 1862, when he resigned because of his rheumatoid arthritis.[12] He was succeeded as captain of the company by his second lieutenant, George H. Hoyt, who had been one of his father's lawyers following the Harpers Ferry attack.[12]

Following his resignation, Brown purchased 10 acres on the south shore of South Bass Island at Put-in-Bay, Ohio,[16] becoming a socialist later in life.[17] A visitor about 1871 described him as a "quiet, genial, warm-hearted farmer, amateur geologist, and land surveyor".[18]

In 1882 John Jr. travelled to Martinsville, Indiana, to identify the body of his brother Watson. (See Burning of Winchester Medical College.) He was the guest of the Governor of Indiana for dinner.

He remained at Put-In-Bay until his death on May 3, 1895.[19]

He is portrayed by Dennis Weaver in the 1955 American historical drama film Seven Angry Men.[20]

In The Good Lord Bird, a 2020 Showtime Limited Series based on the 2013 novel of the same name, he is played by Nick Eversman.[21]