# John Brown Q: how does a broadsword appear in 1856 Kansas?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [March 3, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944 "2013-03-03T22:54:35Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Slithy\_Tove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slithy_Tove)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2013, 10:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/1 "2013-03-03T22:54:35Z")
In the Potawatomi Massacre, John Brown and his sons captured and killed 5 pro-slavery enemies. History records the weapon used as a broadsword.
Like a Viking sword? I imagine there were plenty of cavalry sabers available. Napoleonic-era infantrymen had short, straight swords for multiple uses besides melee fighting. But would a local blacksmith be able to make a satisfactory broadsword? Or did Brown get his sword from a theater company?
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2013, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/2 "2013-03-03T23:03:05Z")
‘Broadsword’ doesn’t necessarily mean the kind of sword associated with knights. Brown & Co. might have used a basket-hilted sword (‘Scottish broadsword’, e.g.) that was in use throughout the 18th Century.
EDIT: To avoid confusion, I know that the Massacre occurred in the 19th Century. However, 18th Century broadswords might well have been readily available at the time.
.
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### Author:  [@Jimmy\_Chitwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jimmy_Chitwood)
#### Post date: [March 3, 2013, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/3 "2013-03-03T23:05:08Z")
I don’t know anything about swords, so I can’t tell you what they were, but they were a gift to Brown from “General” Lucius Bierce, Ambrose’s uncle, who had his own colorful history with the Ohio militia from [a few decades prior.](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/bierce.htm)
> [@](#):
>
> One of his friends and neighbors in Akron was a wild-haired, cold-eyed fellow-Connecticut emigrant named John Brown. As an attorney, Lucius was well acquainted with the chronically litigious Brown, who also happened to be a coreligionist in the local Congregational church (although much more fervent–fanatical, really–than the increasingly skeptical Lucius). Following passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 and the subsequent outbreak of violence in the affected territories, Brown determined to follow his erratic star and join the antislavery forces there. When he left Ohio, he took with him, compliments of Lucius Bierce, a wagonload of arms and ammunition somewhat questionably appropriated from a disbanded militia store in Tallmadge. Included in the haul were the broadswords carried by Lucius and his men in the Windsor campaign, the same broadswords that Brown and his henchmen would use to butcher a family of proslavery settlers on the banks of Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas, a few months hence. If Lucius felt any complicity in the crime, he never let it bother him. When Brown was hanged in December 1859 for the bloody fiasco at Harpers Ferry, Lucius urged that Akron’s courts and businesses be closed, and mourning bells tolled for a solid hour across the town. At a rally that evening, he gave his old friend a rousing send-off, praising him as “the first martyr in the irrepressible conflict of liberty with slavery.” Said Lucius, “Thank God I furnished him with arms, and right good use did he make of them. Men like Brown may die, but their acts and principles will live forever.” Unlike, one might add, their victims.
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### Author:  [@SCAdian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SCAdian)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/4 "2013-03-04T00:48:26Z")
As Johnny L. A. said, it was probably something like [this](http://www.swordsoftheeast.com/scottishbaskethiltbroadsword.aspx)…
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### Author:  [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/5 "2013-03-04T03:24:56Z")
[Lincoln was challenged to a duel and chose broadswords.](http://www.lib.niu.edu/1995/ihy950248.html)
So, they must have been around.
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/6 "2013-03-04T06:23:54Z")
“Broadsword” is a relatively modern term - 18th Century, at the earliest - referring to any blade heavier than a rapier or saber. Properly speaking, it should not be used to refer to medieval weapons.
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### Author:  [@solosam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/solosam)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/7 "2013-03-04T19:42:59Z")
Certain military units continued to use swords, not just as antiques. For example, some Confederate artillery units in the Civil War still issued “broadswords.”
Here is a contemporary example:
[http://www.horsesoldier.com/products/edged-weapons/swords/3645](http://www.horsesoldier.com/products/edged-weapons/swords/3645)
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### Author:  [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/8 "2013-03-04T20:22:09Z")
> [@Alessan](#):
>
> “Broadsword” is a relatively modern term - 18th Century, at the earliest - referring to any blade heavier than a rapier or saber. Properly speaking, it should not be used to refer to medieval weapons.
So what did they call them in the 12th century?
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### Author:  [@Apollyon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apollyon)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/9 "2013-03-04T20:56:11Z")
> [@tdn](#):
>
> So what did they call them in the 12th century?
\A sword?\ 🙂
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/10 "2013-03-04T23:26:11Z")
> [@Apollyon](#):
>
> \A sword?\ 🙂
Pretty much that, although the modern term for what’s popularly perceived as the “classic” medieval blade is the “[Arming Sword](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_sword)” or “Knightly Sword”.
Either way, referring to any sword used before 1550 or so as a “broadsword” is generally considered incorrect.
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/11 "2013-03-04T23:42:18Z")
> [@Alessan](#):
>
> Pretty much that, although the modern term for what’s popularly perceived as the “classic” medieval blade is the “[Arming Sword](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_sword)” or “Knightly Sword”.
>
> Either way, referring to any sword used before 1550 or so as a “broadsword” is generally considered incorrect.
[Interesting essay](http://www.thearma.org/essays/broadsword.htm) on that very topic:
> [@Very Interesting Essay](#):
>
> ARMA receives a considerable amount of email and correspondence from people who use the term “broadsword”. Sometimes they‘ll ask us how we “practice or teach broadsword”, or they’ll tell us how they “train in broadsword” or what kind of “broadswords” they own, while others will ask us questions about how other swords compare to “Medieval broadswords”. These inquiries come form a range of students, sport fencers and followers of Asian martial arts, fighters from living history and reenactment groups, Highlander fans, Medievalists, renn-fair participants, and members of various historical-combat societies. As the following article taken from a forthcoming Historical Fencing Compendium makes clear, each time we have to first stop them and ask, “What exactly do you mean by broadsword?”
Their position agrees with you, **Alessan**.
I guess there’s an entire generation of us that learned our swordsmanship from Dungeons and Dragons and never quite got the straight dope. Ignorance vanquished (critical hit, triple damage!)
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### Author:  [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2013, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/12 "2013-03-04T23:54:47Z")
> [@gnoitall](#):
>
> [Interesting essay](http://www.thearma.org/essays/broadsword.htm) on that very topic:
> Their position agrees with you, **Alessan**.
>
> I guess there’s an entire generation of us that learned our swordsmanship from Dungeons and Dragons and never quite got the straight dope. Ignorance vanquished (critical hit, triple damage!)
1st and 2 Edition AD&D, actually; they’re the only ones that had “broadswords”. Those of us who started with \*regular \*D&D know that swords come in just three shapes: Short, Normal, and Two-Handed.
(Don’t try to out-geek me, pal.)
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [March 6, 2013, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/13 "2013-03-06T20:06:55Z")
> [@Alessan](#):
>
> 1st and 2 Edition AD&D, actually; they’re the only ones that had “broadswords”. Those of us who started with \*regular \*D&D know that swords come in just three shapes: Short, Normal, and Two-Handed.
>
> (Don’t try to out-geek me, pal.)
\I did briefly start out with D&D (little books, in the box; 1974 edition), but our little group transitioned rather quickly to AD&D (not first edition; there were no other editions, just TSR and then WoTC trying to make unjustified money). Still, I’m not gonna pretend to out-nerd anyone. I have enough trouble shooing obvious noobs off my lawn without broadening my trouble space with alpha-geek fights.\
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### Author:  [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2013, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/14 "2013-03-16T01:42:46Z")
From Bruce Catton’s book “This Hallowed Ground: a History of the Civil War”
“As weapons go, these swords have an odd history. They were shorter than cavalry sabers, straight in blade, and some forgotten armorer had made them originally to government order as cavalry broadswords. (In the old days all gunners wore swords for defense against attack by charging dragoons). Then, in a sale of surplus property, the swords had been bought by a harebrained secret society in Ohio which called itself the Grand Eagles and which fuzzily imagined that one day it would attack and conquer Canada. The society’s plans came to nothing, and when a cranky hard-mouthed farmer-turned-sheep-trader came through the state muttering that the way to keep slavery out of Kansas was to go out there and “meddle directly with the peculiar institution,” the swords had been turned over to him. They were made of good steel and the society which had had such grand plans for them had had ornamental eagles etched on the blades.”
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### Author:  [@Bob\_X](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bob_X)
#### Post date: [March 16, 2013, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/john-brown-q-how-does-a-broadsword-appear-in-1856-kansas/651944/15 "2013-03-16T01:53:34Z")
“Broadsword” is an early example of a “retronym”, where a word has to be coined for a subcategory which used to be the entirety of the category but no longer is: like “analogue watch” (after digital watches came to be) or “conventional weapons” (after ABC weapons came to be) or, a personal favorite, “British English” (which is really “English English” since we don’t mean Scots English when we say “British English”, but we do need some way to distinguish it from American English or Australian English). Only after rapiers, fencing epees, etc. came to exist was it necessary to invent a special term for the kind of “sword” that used to be the only kind of sword there was.