John Henry Kagi

John Henry Kagi was born in Bristolville, Ohio, in 1835, the second child of blacksmith Abraham Neff Kagy (as spelled on his gravestone) and Anna Fansler, who were of Swiss descent. John Henry Kagi adopted the Swiss spelling of the family name. Though largely self-taught, he was the best educated of Brown's raiders. He was a stenographer, at the time a useful skill for a reporter. He was Associate Editor of the Topeka Tribune and the Kansas correspondent of the New York Post He was the "western correspondent" of the New York Tribune, and writings of his are found in several other newspapers. He was an able businessman, totally abstained from alcohol, and, in contrast with John Brown, was agnostic. In 1854–55 he taught school in Hawkinstown, Shenandoah County, Virginia, near his father's birthplace, but he was compelled to leave, and never return to Hawkinstown, due to his anti-slavery views. A relative, the Virginia historian Dr. John W. Wayland, wrote the most complete monograph on Kagi and his activities. ==Abolitionist activities==

In 1855, Kagi traveled west and stayed at the cabin of his sister Barbara Kagy Mayhew and her husband Allen in Nebraska City. The Mayhew Cabin was the first site in Nebraska recognized by the National Park Service as it was used as part of the Underground Railroad. While living with the Mayhew's, Kagi earned the ability to practice law and taught Phonography. By 1856, Kagi went south to join the abolitionists working to make Kansas a free state, serving under General James H. Lane. He was imprisoned in Lecompton, then at Tecumseh, Kagi and Brown returned with their men to Kansas, where they lived in a reinforced cabin on Little Sugar Creek, near Mound City. In November 1858, Kagi and others defended the cabin from an armed posse while Brown was away. On December 20, 1858, Brown led twelve men, and Kagi led another party of eight men, into Missouri to free slaves. Brown's party freed ten slaves, but Kagi's freed only one and killed the slave's owner. According to Douglass's later account, Brown described the planned raid in detail and Douglass advised him against it. Kagi was killed by militia forces during the Harper's Ferry raid as he tried to escape across the Shenandoah River from Hall's Rifle Works. His body was first buried, with most of the other raiders killed during the raid, in a packing crate on the far side of the Shenandoah. Forty years later, in 1899, the remains of Kagi and nine other raiders were reinterred in a common grave next to John Brown's grave at John Brown Farm State Historic Site. ==In popular culture==

As a character in the novels: • Raising Holy Hell (1995) • Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1996) • Cloudsplitter (1998) • The Good Lord Bird (2013) ==See also==

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