February is Black History Month and this year marks the 400th anniversary that blacks were brought to Bermuda as indentured servants. Throughout this month, The Royal Gazette will feature people, events, places and institutions that have contributed to the shaping of African history.John Brown’s preferred method of battling slavery was to free hundreds at a time in a single attack. However, the week of Christmas 1858, he made an exception and successfully rescued 11 Missouri slaves, throwing the region into a state of anxiety and adding another episode to the abolitionist movement.On December 19, 1858, Brown received news that a slave by the name of Daniels from close to the Kansas-Missouri border had crossed into Kansas to plead for rescue from the impending sale of his family. Although an agent of the Underground Railroad, Brown usually considered a raid to prevent a single sale not worthy of the risk. However, by the next day, a raiding party of nearly 20 abolitionists had been organised, with Brown — using the alias of Shubel Morgan — at the lead.On December 20, the band split up into two groups in the hope of freeing neighbouring blacks on the same trip. Daniels’s owner, Harvey Hicklan, was held up at gunpoint by Brown’s group, which subsequently extracted the Daniels family and took some of Hicklan’s possessions to support the freed slaves. Slavery supporters claimed Brown’s raiders looted cash, pocket watches, wagons and oxen. One slave owner, David Cruise, was killed during the raid. The abolitionist who killed Cruise claimed that it was in self-defence. The raiding party returned to Kansas where a twelfth African-American was born to one of the rescued slave women and christened John Brown. Brown then led the freed slaves 600 miles through extreme winter weather across Nebraska and into northeastern Iowa, fighting off a proslavery group three times its size en route.Brown’s raid was condemned by both Missouri and Kansas newspapers, which feared an all-out war along the border. The disaffection of slaves and the potential financial repercussions of further losses compelled Missouri slave owners to move more than 20 miles away from the border or to put all their bondspeople under heavy guard. Meanwhile, the Governor of Missouri offered a $3,000 reward for Brown’s capture immediately after the raid.Brown led the rescued slaves across Iowa, a process that took until March 9, 1859 to complete. Anti-slavery sympathisers provided food, warm clothing, armed guards and accommodations for the fugitives across the state. From Iowa, they were secretly put on a train to Chicago, and from there on a train to Detroit. A ferry to Windsor, Canada, carried the 12 to freedom. Brown, however, continued east and initiated a series of events that led to the Raid at Harpers Ferry from October 16 to 18, 1859 and his subsequent execution on December 2 of that year. • Sources: Robert M. De Witt, The Life, Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown (New York: Robert M. De Witt, Publisher, 1859); Oswald Garrison Villard, John Brown: A Biography Fifty Years After (Boston and New York: The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1910); Barrie Stavis, The Sword and the Word (Cranbury, New Jersey: A.S. Barnes and Co, Inc, 1970)