HARPERS FERRY RAID

John Brown (1800–1859) was an American abolitionist and insurrectionist whose violent raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 played a key role in sharpening the regional tensions that led to the American Civil War (1861–1865). John Brown was born at the turn of the nineteenth century in Torrington, Connecticut, and spent his childhood in Ohio, where he encountered and absorbed strong anti-slavery sentiments from the local population. Over the next three decades Brown raised a large family, but failed at a series of businesses. By 1855, Brown's antislavery stance had evolved into the conviction that God had chosen him to free the slaves from bondage. He followed five of his sons to Kansas to join the growing struggle between pro-slavery and Free Soiler forces over the legal status of slavery in the territory. (The Free Soil party was a U.S. political party with a main objective to prevent the extension of slavery to newly acquired U.S. territories.)

Angered by the ravaging of the Free Soiler town of Lawrence, Kansas, by pro-slavery guerrillas in May 1856, Brown and four of his sons launched a brutal retaliatory raid three days later. In a nighttime attack on a pro-slavery settlement on Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas, Brown and his followers killed five settlers. The murders inflamed the conflict in Kansas as hundreds of settlers rushed to arm themselves. By the end of 1856, at least 200 Kansas citizens lay dead. The tragedy in Kansas ignited the national debate over slavery. Animosities hardened, and in Washington, D.C., pro-slavery and anti-slavery congressmen hurled curses and threats at each other in the Capitol over responsibility of the "bleeding Kansas." President Franklin Pierce (1853–1857) made matters much worse. An advocate of Southern interests, he refused to intervene when intimidation and fraud led to the election of a pro-slavery legislature.

For many Northerners, including respected intellectuals such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, John Brown was considered a hero, praised for his righteous and uncompromising stand against slavery. To Southerners, Brown was a loathed and feared abolitionist who threatened a core institution of Southern society. He personified the horrible fate that awaited if the North was able to dictate its will on the issue of slavery.

Encouraged by his celebrity, but alarmed by the apparent victory of pro-slavery forces in Kansas, Brown next conceived a plot to strike a mortal blow against slavery. With a group of 18 white and black followers, Brown attacked and seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown hoped the assault would inspire slaves to join his cause. Arming the slaves in his group with weapons from the arsenal, Brown then intended to establish a Negro republic in the woods of Virginia. From this stronghold he planned to wage war against the South, his forces continuously strengthened by slave rebellions and private Northern assistance.

The failure of the raid was inevitable. The local population and militia quickly mobilized against the group, which failed to recruit a single slave to its side, let alone spark a general rebellion. The raid's fate was sealed when a company of United States Marines under the command of Army Colonel Robert E. Lee, ordered to the site by President James Buchanan (1857–1861), charged the engine house in which Brown and his followers had barricaded themselves. Ten of his group were killed and Brown was wounded and captured.

Brown's grand scheme lasted only 36 hours, but the impact of his raid on Harpers Ferry was far reaching. Although Brown was tried, convicted, and ultimately hanged for treason, he conducted his defense with uncharacteristic dignity and muted religious conviction, inspiring a wellspring of sympathy and support in the North. In death, Brown did more to provoke the dispute over slavery than he accomplished alive. Not surprisingly, Brown's raid heightened the sense of threat in the South, where many concluded the North approved his behavior, and that secession was the only viable solution to the great struggle over the future of slavery.

See also: Bleeding Kansas, Civil War (Economic Causes of), Harpers Ferry Armory

FURTHER READING

Connelley, William Elsey. John Brown. Topeka, KS: Crane and Company, 1900.

Fried, Albert. John Brown's Journey: Notes and Reflections on His America and Mine. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday, 1978.

Keller, Allan. Thunder at Harper's Ferry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1958.

Nelson, Truman. The Old Man: John Brown at Harpers Ferry. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1973.

Oates, Stephen B. To Purge This Land With Blood: A Biography of John Brown. New York: Harper and Row, 1970.

Villard, Oswald Garrison. John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1965.