John Brown Country

The park the plaque names became a stage for presidents. On August 31, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt spoke at Osawatomie and set out what he called the New Nationalism, arguing that human welfare should come before property rights; the program carried into his Progressive campaign of 1912. The legislature named the battleground John Brown Memorial Park in 1911, a stone building was raised over the Adair cabin in 1928, and George Fite Waters's statue of Brown followed in 1935. On December 6, 2011, Barack Obama reprised Roosevelt's themes at Osawatomie High School.

What the plaque says

John Brown Country Osawatomie -- the name derives from a combination of Osage and Pottawatomie -- was settled in 1854 by Free-State families from the Ohio Valley and New England. John Brown, soon to become famous for his militant abolitionism, joined five of his sons at their homes near the new town in October, 1855. By the spring of 1856, local defiance of Proslavery laws and officials was so notorious that 170 Missourians "punished" the area by looting Osawatomie. Two months later Free-State men destroyed a nearby Proslavery camp. On August 30 occurred the second battle of Osawatomie, in which a Proslavery force of 400 drove out the defenders, 40 men led by John Brown, and then plundered and burned the town. Among those killed that day was Brown's son Frederick. At the John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie is the cabin of the Rev. Samuel Adair, Brown's brother-in-law, with whom he often stayed. The Republican party of Kansas was organized at Osawatomie in May, 1859, with Horace Greeley, famous editor of the New York Tribune, as the convention's principal speaker. Erected by Kansas Historical Society and State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• John Brown Museum State Historic Site — 0.5 mi
  The log cabin of Samuel and Florella Adair at Osawatomie, Oberlin-trained abolitionists whose home was an Underground Railroad station and the headquarters of Florella's half brother, John Brown.
• Mine Creek Battlefield State Historic Site — 28 mi
  The Linn County ford where some 2,500 Union cavalrymen charged about 7,000 of Sterling Price's retreating Confederates in October 1864 and broke them against the creek.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Black Jack — 21 mi
• Overland Trails — 21 mi
• Baldwin — 22 mi
• Marais des Cygnes Massacre — 23 mi