John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry (1859): Spark of the War

John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry was an armed attempt by the abolitionist John Brown to seize the United States armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and spark an uprising of enslaved people. It began on the night of 16 October 1859 and ended two days later when US Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee stormed Brown’s last stronghold. The raid failed, but Brown’s trial and execution electrified the nation and pushed North and South further towards war.

Background: John Brown’s war on slavery

John Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800 and raised in a deeply religious household that regarded slavery as a sin. After decades of business failures, farming and work with the Underground Railroad, he became convinced that only force could end slavery. In Bleeding Kansas he led the Pottawatomie killings of May 1856 and fought pro-slavery forces, gaining national notoriety.

Brown then developed a larger plan. He would capture the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, at the meeting of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, arm enslaved people who he expected would flock to him, and set up a free base in the Appalachian Mountains from which raids would spread southward. He was funded by a small group of Northern supporters later called the Secret Six, including the minister Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the reformer Samuel Gridley Howe and the wealthy philanthropist Gerrit Smith.

Not all abolitionists agreed. Frederick Douglass met Brown in August 1859 and declined to join, warning that attacking federal property would be a trap.

The raid

In the summer of 1859 Brown rented the Kennedy Farm in Maryland, a few miles from Harpers Ferry, under the name Isaac Smith, and gathered weapons and recruits. His force numbered 21 men besides himself: 16 white and 5 Black, among them three of his sons.

The five Black raiders came from varied backgrounds. Shields Green had escaped from slavery in South Carolina and chose to follow Brown after meeting him with Frederick Douglass. John Anthony Copeland and Lewis Sheridan Leary were free men from Oberlin, Ohio, and Osborne Perry Anderson was a free-born printer who had lived in Canada. Anderson escaped after the raid and in 1861 published A Voice from Harper’s Ferry, the only account by a surviving Black participant. Harriet Tubman, who knew Brown and helped him recruit in Canada, supported the plan but did not take part.

On the night of Sunday 16 October 1859, Brown left three men at the farm and led the rest into town. They cut telegraph wires, took the armory, the arsenal and Hall’s Rifle Works, and seized hostages, including Colonel Lewis Washington, a great-grandnephew of George Washington. The first person killed was Heyward Shepherd, a free Black baggage master at the railway station, shot when he challenged the raiders.

Brown then hesitated. He allowed an eastbound train to continue on its way, and its crew spread the alarm. No large-scale uprising of enslaved people took place. By the morning of 17 October local militia companies and armed townspeople had surrounded the raiders and cut off the bridges. Dangerfield Newby, a Black raider hoping to free his enslaved wife and children, was among the first of Brown’s men killed, and the town’s mayor, Fontaine Beckham, was shot during the fighting. Brown retreated with his remaining men and several hostages into the armory’s brick fire-engine house.

The marines storm the engine house

President James Buchanan sent a detachment of about 90 US Marines from Washington. Command was given to Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee of the army, who happened to be on leave at his home in Arlington, across the Potomac from Washington, with Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart as his aide. Both would later become famous Confederate generals.

At dawn on 18 October Stuart approached the engine house under a flag of truce and demanded surrender. Brown refused. Marines under Lieutenant Israel Greene battered in the door with a ladder and rushed inside; the fight lasted only a few minutes. Greene struck Brown down with his sword, and one marine, Private Luke Quinn, was killed. All the hostages were freed alive.

By the numbers

Trial and execution

Brown was tried by the Commonwealth of Virginia in Charles Town, the county seat, beginning in late October. Still recovering from his wounds, he lay on a cot for much of the trial. On 31 October 1859 the jury convicted him of treason against Virginia, murder and conspiring with enslaved people to rebel, and on 2 November he was sentenced to death.

Brown’s calm dignity in court and his eloquent letters from prison won him wide sympathy in the North. He was hanged in Charles Town on 2 December 1859. Among the troops guarding the gallows were cadets from the Virginia Military Institute under Thomas J. Jackson, later known as “Stonewall”, and in a militia company stood the actor John Wilkes Booth. On his way to execution Brown handed a guard a note predicting that the crimes of “this guilty land” would never be purged away but with blood.

Reactions

Northern opinion was divided. Republican leaders, including Abraham Lincoln, condemned the raid as lawless, while writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau praised Brown as a moral hero. Church bells tolled in many Northern towns on the day of his execution.

In the South, the raid confirmed long-held fears of slave revolt instigated by Northern abolitionists. Militias were expanded, suspected abolitionists were harassed, and Southern politicians pointed to Northern praise for Brown as evidence that the Union no longer protected them. A Senate committee investigated the raid but found no wider conspiracy among Republicans.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Large numbers of enslaved people joined the raid. Fact: A few hostages’ slaves were brought along, but there was no general uprising; the local population had little warning of Brown’s plan.
• Myth: Brown was convicted of treason against the United States. Fact: He was tried and convicted by the state of Virginia, for treason against Virginia.
• Myth: Robert E. Lee was a Confederate officer at Harpers Ferry. Fact: In 1859 Lee was a US Army officer acting on federal orders; secession was still more than a year away.

Timeline

• 1859, summer: Brown rents the Kennedy Farm in Maryland as a base.
• 1859, 16 October, night: Brown’s men seize the armory and take hostages.
• 1859, 17 October: Militia surround the raiders; Brown retreats into the engine house.
• 1859, 18 October, dawn: US Marines storm the engine house and capture Brown.
• 1859, 31 October - 2 November: Brown is convicted and then sentenced to death.
• 1859, 2 December: Brown is hanged at Charles Town.
• 1860, March: Captured raiders Aaron Stevens and Albert Hazlett are hanged, the last of the seven executions.

Why it matters

The raid lasted barely 36 hours, but it became one of the sparks of the Civil War. Coming after the Dred Scott decision, it convinced many Southerners that secession was their only safety and gave Northerners a martyr. Within eighteen months of Brown’s death came the attack on Fort Sumter, and Union soldiers were marching to the song “John Brown’s Body”.