John Brown's Fort and Museum, Harpers Ferry, WV

Explored 9/19/25

Previous Post from the day of, with protest and more interior photos

Now sitting 100 feet from its original location (after having been moved 4 times inc. to Chicago!), John Brown’s Fort serves as a museum dedicated to the man and the raid that sparked the civil war in the name of freedom. I highly recommend visiting to learn more about this righteous man.

A bronze sculpture of John Brown and Cyprian Norwid with an excerpt of one of his poems which reads (also in polish):

Accept o John my songs inceptive rise, ere Kosoiuszko’s shade and Washington’s do quake for ere the song natures a man sometimes dies, But ‘ere the song does die a nation… will awake

Sign under the plaque reads:

John Brown an International Perspective John Brown’s strike against slavery and for freedom received attention and praise abroad as well as at home. Serf, reformers, artists and intellectuals in Europe embroaced John Brown as a leader in the struggle for human freedom. Cyprian Norwid, a Polish poet and philosopher, praised John Brown in two poems written in 1859. At the end of World War II, Teodor J. Lopatkiewicz, a United States Consul with thte State Department, discovered this book of Norwid poems in the ruins of war-torn Poland. The American Council for Polish Culture commissioned this bronze sculpture of John Brown and Cyprian Norwid. The National Park Service received the sculpture and book during a special ceremony on October 20, 1990, in commemoration of the universal aspiration for freedom.

(Under this caption there is a book of poems written by Norwid with the John Brown poems on display)

A sword used by one of John Brown’s Raiders Sword text:

Scorning Man’s Law: John Brown in Kansas Incidents between pro slavery and antislavery settlers in Kansas became increasingly violent in the mid 1850s. By May 1856 pro-slavery forces had rigged elections, terrorized anti-slavery settlers, burned the city of Lawrence and killed many free-state advocates. John Brown, determinted to retaliate, led his militia company, the Liberty Guards, along Pottawatomie Creek in late May. There the armed band killed five pro-slavery settlers, none of whom owned slaves.

John Doyle, a survivor of an attack by Brown and his men at Pottawatomie Creek, reported: I found my father and one brother, William, lying dead in the road about two hundred yards from the house. I saw my other brother lying dead on the ground about one hundred and fifty yards from the house… his fingers were cut off, and his arms were cut off; his head was cut open; there was a hole in his breast. William’s head was cut open, and a hole was in his jaw, as though it was made by a knife, and a hole was in his side. My fated was shot in the forehead and stabbed in the breast.

Lower text:

A Sword from “Bleeding Kansas” This sword is believed to have been carried by one of John Brown’s men in a raid against pro-slavery settlers in the Pottawatomie, Kansas. In a letter to a Quaker woman, John Brown justified his violent actions with a reference to the New Testament. You know that Christ once armed Peter. So also in my case I think he put a sward into my hand and there continued it so long as he saw best.

Photos of Shields Green and Dangerfield Newby, the other two men who were hanged as a result of John Brown’s raid.

Shields Green, 1836-1859 “A braver man never lived” Shields Green escaped slavery in South Carolina in 1856. He left behind a young son as he fled north to find freedom. Moving back and forth between Rochester, New York and Canada, Green worked as a waiter and a servant. While in Rochester he met Frederick Douglass, a former slave and leading Black abolitionist. At Douglass’ home in January 1858, Green met John Brown. At Brown’s request the trio gathered again the following year in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where the old man revealed his intention to seize the federal armory and arsenal in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Douglass counseled against the attack on federal property and refused to join. Twenty three year old Shields Green, rumored to be the son of an African Prince sold into slavery, parted with Douglass and followed John Brown.

Dangerfield Newby, 1825-1859 “devoted to family” Dangerfield Newby’s white father freed his wife and children when he got permission from the owner of his family to leave Virginia and move to (unreadable). Later, working as a blacksmith, Newby saved about $750 to purchase his wife and the youngest of his six children from a different Virginia slaveholder. In a series of letters to her husband, Dangerfield, in 1859, Harriet Newby wrote about their children and of her “lone bright hope… to be with you.” She had pleaded with her husband to buy her as soon as possible, “for if you do not get me somebody else will.” Dangerfield Newby’s effort to free his loved ones failed when the owner of his wife and children increased the price. Newby soon joined John Brown, whom he had met in Oberlin, Ohio. Friends described Newby as a quiet man, upright, quick tempered and devoted to family.” Dangerfield Newby arrived at Brown’s Maryland hideout in late August 1859, his wife’s letters in hand.