author
Osborne P. (Osborne Perry) Anderson
1830–1872
A printer, abolitionist, and memoirist, he is best remembered as the only surviving Black member of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. His firsthand account, A Voice from Harper’s Ferry, gives a rare and powerful view of one of the most dramatic antislavery actions in American history.
1 Audiobook
A voice from Harper's Ferry; a narrative of events at Harper's Ferry : with incidents prior and subsequent to its capture by Captain Brown and his men
by Osborne P. (Osborne Perry) Anderson
About the author
Born free in Pennsylvania in 1830, Osborne Perry Anderson trained as a printer and spent time at Oberlin College before moving to Chatham, Canada West. There he worked with the abolitionist newspaper The Provincial Freeman, edited by Mary Ann Shadd Cary, and became active in antislavery circles.
Anderson joined John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry and escaped after the attack failed. He later wrote A Voice from Harper’s Ferry (1861), a firsthand narrative that helped preserve the perspective of one of the raid’s Black participants.
During the Civil War, he served in the Union Army. He died in Washington, D.C., in 1872, but his life and writing remain important to readers interested in abolition, Black history, and eyewitness accounts of the fight against slavery.