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 36 degrees 30' 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.

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 was 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,

"OK, 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.

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 wanna 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 a thousand 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.

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 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 1300 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,

shoot-outs, beatings, and assassinations

had 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 wanna 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're 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 had become national news.

At this point in the middle of 1856,

John Brown has been involved in several 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.

Rumours fly that John Brown and his raiders are nearby

and people believe it because of the exploits

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 crystalised

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.

Subtitles by Sky Access Services

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.