John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid

An Attempt to Ignite Mass Insurrection Among Virginia Slaves

Jun 13, 2009

In the turbulent decade of the 1850s, John Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry was the culminating act that convinced Southerners civil war was a real possibility.

Twenty-eight years after the bloody Nat Turner slave uprising, another potential insurrection took place at Harpers Ferry. Led by John Brown, the attack is frequently called the first act of the Civil War. To Southerners, Brown was an abolitionist agent supported by the new Republican Party. In the North, anti-slavery groups and sympathetic writers saw him as a martyr. As historian George M. Fredrickson writes, “No single man did more to heighten the sectional crisis of the late 1850s and increase the probability of civil war.”

At the time John Brown was planning the Harpers Ferry raid he was already well known nationally. His actions at Pottawatamie Creek in Kansas, in which five unarmed and innocent men were massacred, forced him to flee to Canada. As events in Kansas pointed to the admittance of the state as another slave state, Brown raided both in Kansas and Missouri.

Harpers Ferry, home of a Federal arsenal in Northern Virginia, was the focus of Brown’s attack. His plan was to take the armory, distribute its guns to slaves, and begin an insurrection to end slavery violently. Southerners would accuse him of attempting to ignite a race war. Although his “army” was few in number – 22 men, Brown firmly believed that thousands of slaves would rally to his cause.

John Brown was also deeply religious. He was convinced that he was the agent of God’s will by purging the nation of the evils of slavery, even if it meant bloodshed. A typical 19th Century Protestant, Brown was heavily influenced by the Old Testament in much the same way Nat Turner had been years earlier.

Although managing to secure a part of the armory, the raid was doomed to failure from the beginning. Several of Brown’s men sent to guard one of the bridges fired on a Baltimore & Ohio train passing over the bridge. The alarm was given. Church bells rang – the Southern warning of “insurrection,” and armed mobs formed.

Several of Brown’s men, including his sons, were shot. Despite cutting the telegraph lines and holding hostages, Brown and his party were subdued by Federal troops commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee. The October 16th 1859 raid ended with Brown’s capture.

Trial, Execution, and Investigation

John Brown was taken to Charles Town for trial. Found guilty and sentenced to hang, Northern abolitionists appealed to Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise to commute the sentence on the basis that Brown was insane and should be confined to an asylum. Wise rejected these appeals and John Brown was hung in December 1859.

Pro-Abolitionist newspapers, such as Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, painted Brown as a martyr who died in the cause of liberty. Poets and writers like Stephen Vincent Benet and Herman Melville immortalized Brown in verse. Even Henry David Thoreau had fallen under Brown’s spell.

Southern leaders like Jefferson Davis believed that Brown was at the center of a conspiracy that involved the North as well as England. Initial Southern newspaper accounts claimed that Brown had received financial support from New York Senator William Henry Seward as well as Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas.

A subsequent Congressional investigation, chaired by Virginia Senator James Mason, found no evidence to support these charges. The committee found that Brown’s planning was so secret, no evidence could be produced from documents or witnesses to implicate Republicans.

The Legacy of John Brown

October 2009 will mark the 150 year anniversary of the John Brown raid. Countless articles and books have been written about him and his final attempt to end slavery violently, from the bottom up. To the extent that John Brown was either a visionary hero or a terrorist will be up to the interpretations of future historians.

The copyright of the article John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid in US Civil War is owned by Michael Streich. Permission to republish John Brown and the Harpers Ferry Raid in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.