John Brown Museum State Hist Site

Location:  John Brown Memorial Park, Osawatomie

Contact:  Phone--   913/755-4384

Admission:  Free Will Donation

Photos Copyright H. Schuster.  Please do not use without permission.

Martyr, patriot, opportunist, or fanatic?  Even nearly 150 years after his death, John Brown's true character is still being defined, revised and refined.  Whatever your opinion on the man, there is no denying he had a large impact on Kansas History during it's territorial years.  This  time leading up to the American Civil War was marked by violence and bloodshed in the Kansas Territory, and would come to be known as "Bleeding Kansas".

Prior to the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1855, the area which is now Kansas and Nebraska were Indian Territory and weren't open to White settlement.  All that changed with the passage of the act, plus the law stipulated that the settlers of the territories would decide by vote if the future state would be a "free" or "slave" state.  Prior to this, Congress had decided whether a state would or wouldn't allow slavery, and had maintained roughly the same number of slave states as free states.  This new idea, "Popular Souvernty" as it was called, would set the stage for a series of bloody skirmishes between those who believed in slavery and those who didn't.  Ultimately, a larger Civil War would rage, but for now the acts were played on a smaller stage, and John Brown and his sons would play an important part.

Brown first came to Kansas Territory in 1855 at the urging of his sons who had settled near Osawatomie.  All were adamantly free state in their beliefs, and soon became involved with the slavery struggle in Kansas.  In May 1856, Brown and his sons carried out an attack on the cabins of two proslavery settlers, and killed five men; some were nearly hacked in two so vicious was the attack.  Brown maintained his raid, the Pottawatomie Creek Massacre, was in retaliation for a proslavery raid on the city of Lawrence which had taken place earlier.  Some historical evidence suggests Brown's main objective was stealing the victims horses, but none the less the raid was just one more step in the escalation of hostilities.  In August of the same year, proslavery forces numbering 250 men attacked Brown's forces, numbering only thirty, near Osawatomie.  Brown was soon forced to retreat.  The town was burned, and John Brown lost a son during the battle, which became known as the Battle of Osawatomie--the largest battle of the "Bleeding Kansas" era.  The John Brown Memorial Park is the site where Brown's forces initially met the proslavery forces before being forced into retreat.  The statue of Brown in the center of the park was cast in the same foundry as was the Liberty Bell.

The stone structure (photo, right), was built in 1928 to protect the cabin of Samuel and Florella Adair, John Brown's brother-in-law and step sister who had also settled in the Osawatomie area in 1855.   The Adair cabin was moved to its present location in Brown Memorial Park in 1912..   Brown apparently spent little time at the cabin, but was a visitor when in the area.  Soon after the Battle of Osawatomie, Brown left Kansas for a time.  He returned to the territory from time to time, and in late 1858 participated in a raid into Missouri to free slaves.  By the Spring of the following year, John Brown was in Canada planning the raid on Harper's Ferry, VA and the armory there.  He felt this dramatic act would instigate a spontaneous uprising of the slaves in the South.  The raid was a failure, and Brown and his eighteen men, including three of his sons, were captured and tried.  Brown was hanged for his crime in December of 1859, and if the cause of the Civil War can be traced to a single event, this was it.  The execution of Brown so polarized the nation that a civil war was all but inevitable.  In death, Brown ultimately brought about what he had so fanatically pursued in life:  The freeing of the slaves.  But this freedom would have to be purchased with the blood of many thousands of young men on both sides in the most costly war the United States has ever waged, the Civil War.

Inside, the cabin contains many articles from Brown's period in the Kansas Territory.  Some of these items actually belonged to either Brown or the Adair family.  Samuel Adair continued to live in the log cabin until his death in 1898, Florella having preceded him in 1865.

On a night in 1995, the museum was broken into, some articles stolen, and the cabin was set on fire to cover the burglary.  The quick actions of the Osawtomie Fire Department saved most of the cabin and its remaining contents.  The criminal was apprehended and is currently stamping license plates somewhere while he contemplates how his stupid and selfish act of theft and vandalism stole from future generations their very history.

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