Original subtitles

By the middle of the 19th century,

the United States has claimed the entire continent

from the Atlantic coast all the way to the pacific ocean,

but every step west deepens a conflict

that has divided the nation from its earliest days.

Northern states see the west as a place

where settlers can make a living by working their own land.

While southern states want to extend

their plantation economies and expand slavery into the west.

When Kansas territory is opened up to settlers in 1854,

abolitionist John brown launches a crusade

to keep slavery out.

His violent actions will shock the nation

and interrupt the settlement of the American west.

People live on myths,

and the myths that really stick in the American experience

are the myths of the west.

The mountains were taller, the deserts were harsher,

the snows were deeper.

American west conjures wonder, possibility, opportunity.

The figure of the mountain man.

Notorious outlaws.

The cowboy.

The discovery of gold in California.

This train of wagons trailing across the prairie.

Everybody has a reason for wanting this land.

But most of that land was already occupied.

We have been residents for more than 10,000 years.

This is a clash of two different ways

of seeing life itself, fighting for the future

of your homeland on the one side.

And fighting for the destiny

of the new republic on the other side.

The history of the west is a creation story.

It's the creation of what we think of as modern america.

The west is a place where anything is possible.

It is the essence of the American dream.

The core of this is, what are we to be as a nation?

The reckoning is coming.

The west is this canvas on which American dreams

become larger than life.

By the late 1840s, the westward movement

of the United States has become unstoppable.

In a single term at the white house,

president James k. Polk sees the largest

territorial expansion in American history.

A treaty with britain gives him what's now Oregon

and a victory in the Mexican-American war

reshapes the nation by adding present day California,

Utah, Arizona, new Mexico, and most of Colorado.

But with this unprecedented growth comes instability,

raising questions about the future of the nation.

In the 19th century, the issue of slavery

is literally linked to everything,

including westward expansion.

As new territory is acquired,

the big question on the table is,

will those become free states

or will they become slave states?

Since long before the revolutionary war,

slavery has been an undeniable part of america's identity.

And the south's economy is deeply rooted

in slavery and cotton.

It's hard for us in the 21st century

to understand the importance of cotton.

Cotton really is king.

Cotton was producing 60% of American exports.

It was central to the American economy.

Slavery is essential to the growing of cotton,

but slavery is just corroding American life.

By the 1840s, the debate over slavery

threatens to tear the nation apart.

It results in the fracture of political parties.

It splits families, it creates zealots.

It is the battle for the soul of america

by two competing ideologies, two competing visions

of what america can be.

By 1850, there are roughly

three million enslaved people in the American south.

Southerners see a future with slaves working on plantations

in the west and mines in California.

But in the north, slavery is considered a national sin.

The institution has been banned in 15 northern states,

and many northerners want to prevent slavery

from spreading into the new territories.

There's an emerging idea in america called free soil,

and this is an idea that says everything in the west,

every unorganised piece of territory in the United States

ought to be free soil.

It should be free of slavery.

Free soilers, they oppose slavery

not because they are sympathetic to blacks.

They are opposed to the institutional slavery

dominating the areas where they live.

But there's another anti-slavery group in the north.

They oppose slavery on moral grounds

and want to outlaw it outright.

The abolitionists.

Abolitionism before the civil war

is still kind of a fringe position.

So the abolitionists are fighting an uphill battle,

a David and Goliath battle of the first order.

And on the front lines of that battle

is a man named John brown.

John brown believed that every black man, woman, and child

needs to be a free person with equal rights and status

and voting power and everything else

as anybody else in america,

and we are not free until this is abolished.

He seems to have this charismatic streak in him

that certain people were willing to follow.

And if he says, "why are you not joining me

in the fight against slavery?"

You'd really be asking yourself, "gee, you know, why?

I mean, I should."

John brown made them believe

that this was something that they needed to do.

You can only understand John brown's views on slavery

and on race if you understand the kind of religion

that he grew up in,

strict calvinists, but their calvinism was one that said

the most important part of your christianity is the degree

to which you treat everybody around you,

regardless of race, condition, status, as your equal.

John brown marries and has several children,

but his first wife dies.

He then remarries and he and his second wife

have an additional 13 children,

but seven of them die either at childbirth

or in early childhood.

Brown is so familiar with illness and loss.

I think that brown's personal experience of suffering

makes him deeply sensitive to the pain

and suffering to all of the enslaved,

especially of children.

As the country pushes west,

the slavery question ignites fierce passions

on both sides of the issue.

So far, the federal government has managed

to keep an equal number of free states and slave states.

But each time a new territory is up for statehood,

it triggers a national debate,

leading to a series of compromises.

So one of the first big ones is

the Missouri compromise of 1820.

They established that Maine will come in as a free state,

Missouri will come in as a slave state,

and they'll draw a line on the 3630 parallel

on the southern border of Missouri.

Everything below this line is a slave state.

Everything above it is a free state.

This balance holds for 30 years

until gold-rich California seeks to enter the union.

The admission of California

to the union would mean a free state,

and that would tip the balance in congress.

And that was something the southern states

could not possibly accept.

Congress passes the compromise of 1850.

And Henry Clay comes along,

"the man in a crisis" as Lincoln often said,

and he's able to author a series of bills

which gives things to both sides.

California comes in as a free state,

but Utah and new Mexico will come in as slave territories.

The deal adds California as a free state,

but slave states demand something even more.

In the deal is the fugitive slave act,

which the southerners love.

If you have a runaway slave, they would have to be returned.

The fugitive slave act is the thing

that most incited people like John brown.

The other is the dred Scott decision

where the supreme court makes a shattering decision

that blacks are not even citizens.

These things coming together deepen brown's feeling

that violence is the only answer.

Still, the compromises have managed

to keep political peace between the north and south.

But in 1854, the issue of slavery

is thrust back into the national spotlight.

In 1854, senator Stephen a. Douglas of Illinois,

who's one of the big movers and shakers in congress,

has visions, as do many people,

of a transcontinental railroad.

The region along the proposed route

is unorganised territory occupied by

dozens of native tribes.

If Douglas wants to build his railroad,

he'll have to find a way to organise the land.

So in 1854, he introduces the Kansas-Nebraska act.

It would repeal the Missouri compromise

and create two new territories,

putting them both on a path towards statehood.

Douglas comes up with what he thinks is a simple solution.

He will allow the people in Kansas and Nebraska

to decide for themselves

whether they'll be free states or slave states.

This proposal touches off the usual firestorm,

which is, okay, new states, but what kind?

For northerners, you're taking away something

they thought they had.

This promise that that northern part

of the Louisiana purchase would be free.

Now it's potentially open to slavery.

So they say, "we've been betrayed.

We're having to re fight a battle we fought 30 years ago."

Stephen Douglas believes this will solve the problem

because there will be civil debate

and the majority will win.

He has no idea that he's basically touched off

a period of intense frontier violence.

After a fierce debate in the senate,

the Kansas-Nebraska act passes in may of 1854

and the territories are opened up for American settlement.

Most Americans assume that Nebraska will be a free state

because it's located so far north,

but the fate of Kansas is not so clear.

There's gonna be a vote very soon

to determine the state legislature,

and the question is, will they be a pro-slavery legislature

or will they be an anti-slavery legislature?

Whoever gets there first with the most people,

the pro-slavery folks or the anti-slavery folks,

they will be the ones to write the rules

when Kansas becomes a state.

So there's a race to Kansas,

not only among legitimate settlers,

people who want to go there and live,

but by people who want to go

and make a statement for their position.

Before the act is even passed,

powerful anti-slavery activists in the north raise funds

to send over 1,000 free staters to Kansas

to settle the lands, including five of John brown's sons.

At the same time, hundreds of pro-slavery settlers

rush in from Missouri.

Missouri is a slave state,

and the pro-slavery forces, the so-called border ruffians

can just rush right over the border.

Border ruffians was the term that was used in the press

to describe the armed, violent,

often drunken missourians who rode into Kansas

and intimidated the free state settlers.

Southerners really believe that

if they lose this battle, slavery will end.

Northerners understood this too,

that if they could stop slavery in Kansas,

that they could probably stop the spread of slavery.

So both sides are filled with an enormous level

of righteousness and moral fervour over this.

But the west is the great prize.

There's the north, there's the south, they both want the west.

With critical elections looming in Kansas,

border ruffians from Missouri are determined

to beat the free state majority by any means necessary.

Border ruffians intimidate election officials,

stuff ballot boxes.

And lo and behold, the results show their success.

It's an overwhelmingly pro-slavery

territorial legislature.

They drop a constitution, the lecompton constitution,

which entails death penalties in many cases

for any kind of anti-slavery activity.

Opponents of slavery are outraged,

and so they actually organise their own territorial election

and elect a rival government in Lawrence, Kansas

filled with anti-slavery territorial legislators.

Now, there are two rival legislatures in Kansas

and neither one is backing down.

John brown, Jr. writes a letter to his father.

Basically it says,

"we're outgunned, we're out-intimidated.

We're gonna be killed basically, unless you come

and bring us weapons.

Come join us."

Kansas is ground zero of the struggle over slavery,

the future of the country as far as

people like John brown are concerned.

How Kansas goes is how the nation goes.

You've gotta go to Kansas

if you're really committed to the cause.

John brown makes the arduous two-month journey

over 1,300 miles from the east coast to Kansas.

Along the way, he stops in Ohio to load up on weapons

and hides them in his wagon.

Finally, in October of 1855,

brown arrives to fight alongside his sons.

The battle over Kansas was a battle

over much more than Kansas.

It was a battle over the whole west.

What happens in Kansas is kind of a mini civil war,

a dress rehearsal for what will come

across the entire country.

It's a struggle for control of the land.

By now, there's a pro-slavery capital

in lecompton, Kansas, and just 13 miles away,

there's a rival anti-slavery legislature based in Lawrence.

But the us president, Franklin Pierce, is a northern democrat

and a southern sympathiser whose administration

is staunchly pro-slavery.

The pro-slavery people win.

It's the border ruffians, the missourians,

who dominate the political discussion in the first years

after the Kansas-Nebraska act.

But those against slavery know

they have the true majority and refuse to give up.

If either side loses this, in a sense,

they lose the future of america,

and so they're gonna fight it out.

Free state and pro-slavery partisans

established claims to land and began to work land

sometimes right next door to one another.

And they argued.

They get engaged in clashes, raids on each other,

assassinations, and all of that bloodshed

gets covered in the newspapers.

News of the conflict spreads quickly

thanks to the electric telegraph.

By 1852, there are 23,000 miles of telegraph lines

reaching from the east coast across the Mississippi.

For the first time,

information moved faster than people.

The telegraph increased the speed of communication

44 million times over the pony express.

That changes everything.

News can be transmitted instantaneously

all over the country as long as

telegraph wires are strung up.

So Kansas became a brawl that was being watched carefully

throughout the rest of the United States.

By the spring of 1856, shootouts, beatings,

and assassinations have become commonplace in Kansas,

but the violence is mostly one-sided.

The vast majority of that political violence in Kansas

is being carried out by pro-slavery activists.

In an effort to protect the anti-slavery population

in Kansas, brown and his sons put together a small militia.

Meanwhile, the border ruffians prepare an invasion.

Lawrence, it becomes the beacon

for those who are anti-slavery

and it also becomes anathema for those who are pro-slavery.

And so the border ruffians feel like

they have to destroy it.

On may 21st, 1856, border ruffians from Missouri

cross over into Kansas and attack the town.

And of course, it causes outrage not only in Kansas

among anti-slavery forces but anti-slavery folks

all across the country.

The sacking of Lawrence becomes a flashpoint

in the heated debate around slavery

and how western states should enter the union.

For men like John brown, it seems like Kansas

is falling to pro-slavery forces.

Brown says something has to be done now.

They have to understand that they cannot continue

to do this with impunity.

John brown decides that now or never,

you've got to strike back, and to use the term

from our own time, it has to be shock and awe.

In the summer of 1856, news of the violent attack

on the anti-slavery headquarters

of Lawrence, Kansas spreads across america.

Abolitionists fear they're losing the battle for the future

of the country while pro-slavery activists grow even bolder.

Weeks later, an act of savagery in the halls

of the us senate brings the nation to a boiling point.

Charles Sumner, senator from Massachusetts,

has given a five-hour speech condemning the south

for its promotion of slavery in Kansas.

The next day, Sumner is at his desk in the senate chamber

working on some paperwork,

and Preston Brooks, congressman from south Carolina,

walks up behind him, and without any warning at all,

begins to savagely beat him with a wooden cane.

Sumner is nearly killed.

He's covered with blood.

He's concussed, he's passed out.

But here's the part that just chills your blood.

This made Preston Brooks a hero in the south

and pieces of the cane were cut up and made into rings.

These rings were worn as necklaces by southerners.

The beating of Sumner becomes a catalyst

for mobilising public opinion in the north,

but Preston Brooks has become a hero in the south.

The idea that the same event could be seen

in two different ways, it shows that the two sides

are no longer even speaking the same language,

fanning the flames of the fire even more in Kansas.

The core of this strikes at the heart of American values.

Where do we want to be as a nation?

The question at the time of bleeding Kansas

is being settled in bloodshed between American citizens.

After the sacking of Lawrence and the assault

in the senate, John brown decides

there can be no peaceful resolution

to the question of slavery in Kansas.

He gets his sons together, several other people,

and they decide to stage a raid against pro-slavery settlers

in a nearby community, pottawatomie creek.

But at the end of the day, they're coming up

to make Kansas a slave state,

and brown's not having any of it.

On the night of may 24th, 1856,

John brown and his men sneak into

the settlement of pottawatomie.

They go in the middle of the night

to the home of several pro-slavery sympathisers

who are homesteading on the pottawatomie creek.

The person they're really looking for

is a guy named Dutch Henry.

He is a major player on the pro-slavery side.

That's the real target that they have in mind.

The first cabin they approach

is owned by a man named James Doyle,

a member of the local pro-slavery political party.

When Doyle opens the door,

John brown and several of his followers burst in,

grab Doyle and his two teenage sons.

They dragged them out of the house.

On the command of their father,

John brown's sons hack these men to death with broadswords.

Brown continues to go house to house

looking for Dutch Henry, killing a total of five people

in the settlement of pottawatomie that night.

He never finds his target, but it doesn't matter.

John brown's point has been made.

This is an act that is often represented as enraged.

It's not, it's strategic.

John brown, he was sending a political message

to other potentially pro-slavery settlers.

You come to Kansas, this could happen to you.

Brown seems to disappear into the night,

but the pottawatomie massacre makes headlines

across the country, sending a chill throughout the south.

People don't know for sure who the perpetrator

of the pottawatomie massacres were,

but they have a pretty good idea

that it was John brown and company.

And so the territorial governor puts out a $500 reward

on John brown, dead or alive.

John brown is a wanted man, but he can be found nowhere.

He has disappeared into the wilderness and eludes capture.

But two of brown's sons aren't as lucky.

Though they weren't directly involved in the massacre,

Jason and John Jr. are captured by border ruffians.

They visit a savage beating upon these two men

and then force them to walk all the way

to the pro-slavery stronghold of lecompton, Kansas.

While brown's sons are held hostage,

one of the men involved in the capture

goes after John brown himself.

Henry Clay pate comes from

a Virginia slave-holding family.

He ends up making his way to Missouri

where he starts a pro-slavery newspaper

and ends up becoming a prominent pro-slavery militia leader.

Pate gathers a group of vigilantes to hunt John brown.

Along the way, he does some burning

of some free state settlements.

And brown learns on June 1st of 1856

that pate and his 60 men are camped near Blackjack creek

that they're looking for John brown.

And by the way, that pate had been among

the pro-slavery militias who had captured

John Jr. and Jason.

John brown gathers as many followers as he can,

amassing a group of 26 men.

He's outnumbered more than two to one,

but he believes that god is on his side

and plans to drive pate and his men out of Kansas.

He believes, his sons believe,

all the anti-slavery folks believe

that it's not just the fate of Kansas,

it's the macro level fate of the nation

that's gonna be determined by this new territory.

Brown and his force sneak up on pate

and launch a full-on attack on the encampment.

The showdown is about to begin.

June 1856.

It's now been two years since

the Kansas-Nebraska act was passed.

Kansas, still not a state, finds itself at the centre

of an increasingly violent fight for the future of america.

Bleeding Kansas makes it clear that the nation

has to make a decision about what it intends to be.

Is it gonna be a slave-holding republic?

Is it gonna be a nation of freemen?

As america is moving west, there's almost a seam

that literally opens up in the fabric of the continent

because it's the free states and the slave states,

and that divide just keeps pushing west

and pushing west until it runs into bloody conflict.

On June 2nd, 1856,

John brown leads his men to Blackjack creek.

He's about to go head-to-head

with pro-slavery leader Henry Clay pate and 60 men.

So John brown has no direct military experience,

but he's determined to fight this by any means necessary.

As John brown's force approaches pate at Blackjack,

he divides his force as a strategy.

The combined effect of having gunfire

coming from two directions fools pate

into thinking that he's greatly outnumbered,

which in fact they're not.

And he puts up a flag of surrender.

As a result, brown and his men take captive

26 missourians whom they hold for several days

and begin to try to negotiate with for a captive exchange

for the freedom of brown's sons.

Most of the fighting in Kansas has been ambushes,

reprisal, counter reprisal, you know, small group conflict.

What's important about the battle of Blackjack is that

this is essentially two small armies squaring off

in fairly standard military fashion.

When news of the battle spreads throughout the nation,

it polarises the country even more.

Some believe that it's a precursor to a larger conflict,

an all-out war between the north and the south.

One of the things that is an issue in the west,

is there any such thing really as an American union

in more than name or is the diversity

and sort of polarisation,

something that's gonna outweigh any sense of unity.

As debate over the future of the west

grows even more heated, brown's campaign of terror

was starting to see results in Washington.

President Pierce has become widely unpopular

due to the violence in Kansas.

More importantly, 1856 is an election year.

Franklin Pierce says we need to send federal troops in

and disarm everybody and show that

we are the federal government and we're neutral,

something they'd never done before.

It's a turning point for Kansas.

The us government is no longer blindly supporting

the pro-slavery side.

Now they're neutral.

This battle turns out to cement

the balance of terror and really be

the tipping point to the advantage

of the free state citizens of Kansas.

Brown has achieved a decisive

anti-slavery victory in Kansas.

His sons are eventually released from custody.

But despite his success, brown won't stop.

We get to that point where we have to come to reckon

with the fact that there are some evils in the world

that are so very great, that regardless

of our own personal feelings, we have to go to war.

As debate over slavery embroils the country,

the us population continues to grow.

Throughout the 1850s, four million new immigrants

flood into the nation, many of whom will head west.

Such rapid expansion brings with it new tensions,

especially in Kansas.

Kansas becomes the first area in the United States

where pro-slavery people and anti-slavery people

are occupying literally the same ground.

John brown's determination to stop slavery

further inflames this conflict.

His exploits have become national news.

At this point in the middle of 1856,

John brown has been involved

in several of these sensational incidents,

and his name has become a household name in Kansas

and in many ways across the country.

I think he probably becomes even more famous in the south

than he does in the north.

They believe that almost every abolitionist

was a budding John brown.

He becomes this sort of larger-than-life

threatening figure, tremendous fear

at the mere mention of his name.

The rumours fly that John brown and his raiders are nearby

and people believe it because of the exploits

that they've been reading about and hearing about.

And he captivated journalists.

Journalists followed him around

and they found themselves swept up in this as well,

he's a most remarkable individual.

During the summer of 1856,

John brown continues to gather support

and stages raids on pro-slavery settlements,

not necessarily to kill people, but to terrorise them.

Whenever possible during one of these raids,

John brown would actually stop

and lecture the pro-slavery folks that he was attacking

and give them a lecture on the evils of slavery

and the need for them to convert

and to see the waywardness of their ways

and to become advocates of free soil.

The political violence in Kansas

takes its final toll on the Pierce administration.

Pierce's reputation is so badly tarnished

by bleeding Kansas that in 1856, he elects not to run,

but endorses James Buchanan

for the Democratic nomination for the presidency.

But in order for Buchanan to be successful,

he has to restore faith in a Democratic party,

and that means restoring order in Kansas.

Pierce appoints a new territorial governor

to Kansas, John geary.

He plans to disband militias on both sides

and drive out bands of armed vigilantes from the territory.

Geary is a republican.

Thousands join the new republican party,

conservatives and moderates who want to repeal

the Kansas-Nebraska act and prevent slavery

from extending itself to the western territories.

The republican party, it's not an abolitionist party,

but it's an anti-slavery party that is absolutely committed

to preventing slavery moving

into one inch of free territory.

The whig party is split into factions,

pro-slavery and anti-slavery.

The Democratic party is forced to choose an identity

and it embraced slavery.

When the border ruffians hear

there's a new republican governor coming to Kansas,

they spring into action.

Several hundred militia men unite under the command

of former Mexican war officer, John Reid,

and they have their eye on osawatomie.

Not only is the town an abolitionist hub,

it's home to John brown's half sister,

and he sometimes uses her cabin as his headquarters.

Brown and his troops get information

that osawatomie is a target

and so they're there already when Reid arrives.

On the night of August 29th, 1856,

John brown and his forces camp along

the outskirts of the osawatomie.

But one of his sons stays in town to mind the horses.

John brown's son, Frederick, is out on a road

and he encounters some pro-slavery forces of Reid's.

They shoot him and kill him and leave him dead in the road.

When John brown learns of the death of his son Frederick,

he decides the time to attack has arrived.

He rallies his forces at osawatomie

and the battle begins.

In August of 1856, general John w. Reid

moves to attack the anti-slavery town

of osawatomie, Kansas with over 300 men.

Nothing stands in the way of him

destroying the city, except John brown.

Brown is vastly outnumbered,

but he's beaten these odds before

utilising these guerilla tactics,

and he believes there's no reason he can't do it again.

One thing that John brown does

that's really smart is he takes about 38 of his men

and puts them in the nearby tree line

so that they're hidden and also protected from gunfire.

And as Reid's men approach them,

John brown gives the signal, they open fire.

Now!

Surprise Reid's men, kill about 60 of them.

But Reid's forces quickly recover

from the initial surprise attack

and drive brown's militia back into the woods.

Then, while brown and his men are retreating,

Reid's men burn the town.

John brown ends up technically losing the battle,

but even in loss, the battle builds his fame.

He's now really the face of anti-slavery activism

and militarism in Kansas.

Because brown was willing

to stand up against such impossible odds,

he for the rest of his life was known as osawatomie brown.

Just weeks after the battle,

the new governor arrives and immediately disbands

both the pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces.

But despite his efforts, the violence in Kansas continues,

pushing the federal government to defer

the question of statehood for Kansas and Nebraska.

For the moment, the spread of slavery is on pause,

but brown's fight now goes beyond the American west.

John brown, trading on his Kansas fame,

comes back to the east

and begins to meet with abolitionists

and decides that he's now going to execute the plan

that he's been formulating for more than a decade,

to bring the war into the south itself.

In October of 1859,

brown stages a raid on the federal arsenal

at Harpers ferry, Virginia.

He hopes to trigger a massive slave uprising,

but the plan quickly goes awry.

Brown is captured and convicted of treason, murder,

and conspiring with slaves to rebel.

When he's executed in December,

news travels through the country

and brown's reputation is crystallised

as both hero and villain.

I see John brown as a religious zealot.

I see him as someone who has beliefs

that I deplore and beliefs that I admire.

John brown is a necessary figure in American history.

He is as necessary as Lincoln was necessary.

We didn't need them to live.

We needed them to do what they did.

Just over a year after John brown's death,

the fierce debate over slavery

erupts into the bloodiest conflict

in the nation's history, civil war.

In the heat of that battle, Lincoln signs two acts

he hopes will ensure that the west remains free.

The homestead act, which offers 160-acre plots

to settlers for a nominal fee,

and the railroad act, which assigns land

to the transcontinental railroad.

As the union victory seals the fate of slavery,

these two acts will reignite westward movement.

And in the coming years, settlers both white and black

will flood across the continent.

And a nation tired of war

will again confront a powerful native force,

one that will stop at nothing to defend its homeland.