Antebellum America: John Brown and the Raid on Harper's Ferry
John Brown was an abolitionist leader who used violence to promote his cause, not in self-defense, but as a means of taking the fight to slaveholders. He believed that enslaved persons should rise up and fight for their freedom, and he was prepared to personally lead that cause. He first reaching national prominence for his radical abolitionism and for his fighting in Bleeding Kansas, and he would ultimately give his life to this cause.
Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, fourth in a family of eight children. Brown's paternal grandfather was Captain John Brown, who died in the Revolutionary War in New York on September 3, 1776. While Brown was very young, his father moved the family briefly to West Simsbury, Connecticut, before moving west to Hudson, Ohio, a region with strong anti-slavery sentiments. The founder of Hudson, David Hudson, was an abolitionist and an advocate of "forcible resistance by the slaves". He and Owen Brown (John's father) became friends. Owen Brown became a leading and wealthy citizen of Hudson, operating a tannery that employed Jesse Grant, father of President Ulysses S. Grant. Jesse lived with the Brown family for some years. Owen participated in offering a safe house to Underground Railroad fugitives. John studied at the school of the abolitionist Elizur Wright.
When he was 16, Brown went to New England to study to become a Gospel minister. He experienced a problem with inflammation of the eyes that ended his studies. He returned back to Hudson and taught himself surveying from a book. He worked briefly at his father's tannery before opening his own successful tannery with his adopted brother Levi Blakeslee. He married Dianthe Lusk in 1820 and their first child, John Jr., was born 13 months later. In 12 years of married life Dianthe gave birth to seven children and died from complications of childbirth in 1832.
In 1825, despite the success of the tannery, Brown and his family moved to New Richmond, Pennsylvania, a safer place for him to work on the "underground railway." There he bought 200 acres of land, and built a two-story tannery. From 1825 to 1835, the tannery was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Brown is estimated to have helped 2,500 enslaved people on their journey to Canada. In 1828 President John Quincy Adams named him the first postmaster of Randolph, Pennsylvania and he was reappointed by President Andrew Jackson.
In the summer of 1832, his wife Dianthe also died. On July 14, 1833, Brown married 17-year-old Mary Ann Day. She was the younger sister of Brown's housekeeper. They would eventually have 13 children, seven of whom were sons who worked with their father to abolish slavery. In 1836, Brown moved his family from Pennsylvania to Franklin Mills, Ohio and he constructed and operated a tannery along the Cuyahoga River. Brown suffered financial losses in the Panic of 1837. For the next several years he floundered, moving from one activity to another. Brown declared bankruptcy in federal court on September 28, 1842. In 1846, Brown moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, as an agent for Ohio wool growers in their relations with New England manufacturers of woolen goods. There he found himself among the nation;s leading abolitionists. From 1846 until he left Springfield in 1850, Brown was a member of the Free Church, where he witnessed abolitionist lectures from such luminaries as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. In Springfield Brown made connections that later yielded financial support
Kansas Territory was in the midst of a violent struggle that became known as Bleeding Kansas. Five of Brown's sons had moved to Kansas Territory in the spring of 1855. Brown followed later that year, his wagon loaded with weapons and ammunition. His wife Mary refused to relocate to Kansas.
Brown was angered by the sacking of Lawrence, the center of anti-slavery activity in Kansas, on May 21, 1856. A sheriff-led posse from Lecompton, the center of pro-slavery activity in Kansas, had destroyed two abolitionist newspapers and the Free State Hotel. News of Preston Brooks caning anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner in the United States Senate also fueled Brown's anger. Brown was outraged by both the violence of the pro-slavery forces and what he saw as a weak response by the antislavery partisans. All of this led to what became known as the Pottawatomie massacre.
During the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856, under Brown's supervision, his sons and other abolitionist settlers killed five professional slave hunters and other pro-slavery settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek, in Franklin County, Kansas. There had been no prior organized action by abolitionists against pro-slavery forces. In 1856, in retaliation, a force of Missourians, led by Captain Henry Clay Pate, captured John Jr. and Jason, destroyed the Brown family homestead, and later participated in the Sack of Lawrence. On June 2, in the Battle of Black Jack, John Brown, nine of his followers, and 20 local men successfully defended a Free State settlement at Palmyra, Kansas, against an attack by Pate. Pate and 22 of his men were taken prisoner. In August, a company of over 300 Missourians under the command of General John W. Reid crossed into Kansas and headed towards Osawatomie, intending to destroy the Free State settlements there, and then march on Topeka and Lawrence. On the morning of August 30, 1856, they shot and killed Brown's son Frederick and his neighbor David Garrison on the outskirts of Osawatomie. Brown, outnumbered more than seven to one, arranged his 38 men behind natural defenses along the road. Firing from cover, they managed to kill at least 20 of Reid's men and wounded 40 more. Reid regrouped, ordering his men to dismount and charge into the woods. Brown's small group scattered and fled. One of Brown's men was killed during the retreat and four were captured. While Brown and his surviving men hid in the woods nearby, the Missourians plundered and burned Osawatomie. Despite his defeat, Brown was seen as a hero to many Northern abolitionists.
On September 7, Brown went to Lawrence to held Free State leaders fortify against a feared assault against an expected force of 2,700 pro-slavery Missourians who were once again invading Kansas. On September 14, they skirmished near Lawrence. Serious violence was averted when the new governor of Kansas, John W. Geary, who ordered the warring parties to disarm and disband, and offered clemency to former fighters on both sides.
For a long time, Brown had spent over twenty years planning for some opportunity to free all of the enslaved people. He discussed his plans for over a day with Frederick Douglass, trying unsuccessfully to persuade Douglass to accompany him to Harpers Ferry. Douglass thought it was a mission that could never succeed. Brown returned to the East by November 1856, and spent the next two years in New England raising funds for his proposed revolt. A group of six abolitionists, two of them wealthy, agreed to offer Brown financial support for his antislavery activities. This group provided most of the financial backing for the raid on Harpers Ferry. On January 7, 1858, the Massachusetts Committee pledged to provide 200 Sharps Rifles and ammunition, which were being stored at Tabor, Iowa. In March, Brown contracted with Charles Blair for 1,000 pikes. In the following months, Brown continued to raise funds, visiting Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, Syracuse, and Boston. In Boston, he met Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He met Hugh Forbes, an English mercenary, who had experience as a military tactician fighting with Giuseppe Garibaldi in Italy in 1848. Brown hired him as his men's drillmaster. Over several weeks, the two men put together a plan for fighting slavery in the South. In November, their troops left for Kansas. Forbes had not received his salary and he returned to the East instead of going into Kansas.
With a free-state victory in the October elections, Kansas became quiet and Brown made his men return to Iowa. In January 1858, Brown left his men in Springdale, Iowa, and met with Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, where he discussed his plans with Douglass. He next went to Boston where he made secret preparations for his operation on Harper's Ferry. Brown and 12 of his followers, including his son Owen, traveled to Chatham, Ontario, where he convened a Constitutional Convention. One-third of Chatham's 6,000 residents were fugitive slaves, and it was here that Brown was introduced to Harriet Tubman, who helped him recruit for his proposed raid. Brown was elected commander-in-chief. In 1859, "A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America" was written.
Although nearly all of the delegates signed the constitution, few volunteered to join Brown's forces. Hugh Forbes tried to expose the plans to Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson and others. Brown returned to Kansas in June, and remained there for six months. There he joined forces with James Montgomery, who was leading raids into Missouri.
On December 20, Brown led his own raid, in which he liberated 11 slaves, took captive two white men, and looted horses and wagons. The Governor of Missouri announced a reward of $3,000 (equivalent to $90,478 today) for his capture. On January 20, 1859, he embarked on a lengthy journey to take the liberated slaves to Detroit and then on a ferry to Canada. While passing through Chicago, Brown met with abolitionists including Allan Pinkerton. These men arranged and raised the fare for the passage to Detroit. On March 12, 1859, Brown met with Frederick Douglass and Detroit abolitionists. Over the course of the next few months, he traveled again through Ohio, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to drum up more support for his cause.
In June he paid his last visit to his family departing for Harpers Ferry. Brown asked Harriet Tubman to gather former slaves from southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did. He arrived in Harpers Ferry on July 3, 1859. A few days later, under the name Isaac Smith, he rented a farmhouse in nearby Maryland. He awaited the arrival of his recruits, but they never materialized in the numbers he expected.
In late August Brown met with Douglass in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he revealed the Harpers Ferry plan. Douglass expressed severe reservations, rebuffing Brown's pleas to join the mission. Douglass had known of Brown's plans since early 1859 and had discouraged African-American men from enlisting.
In late September, the 950 pikes that Brown had ordered finally arrived. Brown's plan called for a brigade of 4,500 men, but Brown had only 21 men. 16 were white and 5 were black, of which 3 were free blacks, 1 freed slave, and 1 fugitive slave. They ranged in age from 21 to 49.
On October 16, 1859, Brown led 18 men in an attack on the Harpers Ferry Armory. He had received 200 breechloading .52 caliber Sharps rifles – and pikes from northern abolitionist societies in preparation for the raid. The armory was a large complex of buildings that contained 100,000 muskets and rifles, which Brown planned to seize and use to arm local slaves. He then planned to head south, drawing off more and more slaves from plantations His strategy was essentially to deplete Virginia of its slaves, causing the institution to collapse in one county after another, until the movement spread into the South, causing havoc for the economic viability of the pro-slavery states.
Initially, the raid went well. The group encountered no resistance entering the town. John Brown's raiders cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory, which was being defended by a single watchman. They rounded up hostages from nearby farms, including Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew of George Washington. They also spread the news to the local slaves that their liberation was at hand.
When an eastbound Baltimore & Ohio train approached the town, Brown stopped the train, but inexplicably allowed it to continue on its way. At the next station where the telegraph still worked, the conductor sent a telegram to B&O headquarters in Baltimore. The railroad sent telegrams to President James Buchanan and Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise. News of the raid reached Baltimore early that morning and Washington by late morning.
In the meantime, local farmers, shopkeepers, and militia pinned down the raiders in the armory by firing from the heights behind the town. Some of the local men were shot by Brown's men. At noon, a company of militia seized the bridge, blocking the only escape route. Brown then moved his prisoners and remaining raiders into the fire engine house, a small brick building at the armory's entrance. The surrounding forces barraged the engine house, and the men inside fired back. Brown sent his son Watson and another supporter out under a white flag, but the angry crowd shot them. In the shooting that followed, Brown's son Oliver was wounded. He soon died from his wounds.
By the morning of October 18 the engine house was surrounded by a company of U.S. Marines under the command of First Lieutenant Israel Greene, USMC, with Colonel Robert E. Lee of the United States Army in overall command. Army First Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart approached under a white flag and told the raiders their lives would be spared if they surrendered. Brown refused, saying, "No, I prefer to die here." The Marines used sledgehammers and a makeshift battering ram to break down the engine room door. Lieutenant Israel Greene cornered Brown and struck him several times. In three minutes Brown and the survivors were captives.
Brown's men killed four people and wounded nine. Ten of Brown's men were killed, including his sons Watson and Oliver. Five escaped, including his son Owen, and seven were captured along with Brown. They were quickly tried and hanged two weeks after their leader.
Brown and the others captured were held in the office of the armory. On October 18, 1859, Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise, Virginia Senator James M. Mason, and Representative Clement Vallandigham of Ohio arrived in Harpers Ferry. Mason led the three-hour interrogation of Brown.
Wise wanted Brown tried in Virginia, and President Buchanan did not object. Brown and his men were tried in Charles Town, just 7 miles west of Harpers Ferry. The trial began October 27, after a doctor pronounced the still-wounded Brown fit for trial. Brown was charged with murdering five persons, inciting a slave insurrection, and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. A series of lawyers were assigned to him. Hiram Griswold, a lawyer from Cleveland, argued that Brown could not be found guilty of treason against a state to which he owed no loyalty and of which he was not a resident. He also argued that Brown had not killed anyone himself, and that the raid's failure indicated that Brown had not conspired with slaves. On November 2, after a week-long trial and 45 minutes of deliberation, the Charles Town jury found Brown guilty on all three counts. He was sentenced to be hanged in public on December 2.
Under Virginia law, a month had to elapse before the death sentence could be carried out. Governor Wise resisted pressures to move up the execution date. Brown believed that his execution would strike a massive blow against Slave Power. His death sentence allowed him to publicize his anti-slavery views through the reporters present in Charles Town, and through his correspondence. Brown talked with reporters and anyone else who wanted to see him, except pro-slavery clergy.
There were plans to rescue Brown, but the town was filled with troops and militia and Brown was heavily guarded. Brown said several times that he did not want to be rescued. On December 1, Brown's wife arrived by train in Charles Town, where she joined him at the county jail for his last meal. On the day of Brown's execution, December 2, John Brown's last words were passed to a jailor on his way to the gallows. On the morning of December 2, 1859, Brown wrote and gave to his jailor Avis the words he wanted to be remembered by: I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.
Brown read his Bible and wrote a final letter to his wife, which included his will. At 11:00 a.m. he rode in a wagon, sitting on his coffin, from the county jail to the gallows. A crowd of 2,000 soldiers were present. In the crowd were future Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth, who borrowed a militia uniform to gain admission to the execution, Brown was hanged at 11:15 a.m. and pronounced dead at 11:50 a.m. Brown's body was placed in a wooden coffin with the noose still around his neck, and the coffin was then put on a train to take it away from Virginia to his family homestead in North Elba, New York for burial.
In the North, large memorial meetings took place, church bells rang, minute guns were fired, and famous writers such as Emerson and Thoreau joined many Northerners in praising Brown.
On December 14, 1859, the U.S. Senate appointed a bipartisan committee to investigate the Harpers Ferry raid and to determine whether any citizens contributed arms, ammunition or money to John Brown's men. Democrats attempted to implicate the Republicans in the raid. The Senate committee heard testimony from 32 witnesses. The report, authored by chairman James Murray Mason, a pro-slavery Democrat from Virginia, was published in June 1860. It found no direct evidence of a conspiracy. Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln rejected any connection with the raid, calling Brown "insane".
Southern slaveowners feared other abolitionists would imitate Brown and attempt to lead slave rebellions. The South reorganized its militia system which, by 1861, became a ready-made Confederate army, making the South better prepared for war. Abolitionists in the North saw Brown as a martyr.
Brown was born May 9, 1800, in Torrington, Connecticut, fourth in a family of eight children. Brown's paternal grandfather was Captain John Brown, who died in the Revolutionary War in New York on September 3, 1776. While Brown was very young, his father moved the family briefly to West Simsbury, Connecticut, before moving west to Hudson, Ohio, a region with strong anti-slavery sentiments. The founder of Hudson, David Hudson, was an abolitionist and an advocate of "forcible resistance by the slaves". He and Owen Brown (John's father) became friends. Owen Brown became a leading and wealthy citizen of Hudson, operating a tannery that employed Jesse Grant, father of President Ulysses S. Grant. Jesse lived with the Brown family for some years. Owen participated in offering a safe house to Underground Railroad fugitives. John studied at the school of the abolitionist Elizur Wright.
When he was 16, Brown went to New England to study to become a Gospel minister. He experienced a problem with inflammation of the eyes that ended his studies. He returned back to Hudson and taught himself surveying from a book. He worked briefly at his father's tannery before opening his own successful tannery with his adopted brother Levi Blakeslee. He married Dianthe Lusk in 1820 and their first child, John Jr., was born 13 months later. In 12 years of married life Dianthe gave birth to seven children and died from complications of childbirth in 1832.
In 1825, despite the success of the tannery, Brown and his family moved to New Richmond, Pennsylvania, a safer place for him to work on the "underground railway." There he bought 200 acres of land, and built a two-story tannery. From 1825 to 1835, the tannery was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. Brown is estimated to have helped 2,500 enslaved people on their journey to Canada. In 1828 President John Quincy Adams named him the first postmaster of Randolph, Pennsylvania and he was reappointed by President Andrew Jackson.
In the summer of 1832, his wife Dianthe also died. On July 14, 1833, Brown married 17-year-old Mary Ann Day. She was the younger sister of Brown's housekeeper. They would eventually have 13 children, seven of whom were sons who worked with their father to abolish slavery. In 1836, Brown moved his family from Pennsylvania to Franklin Mills, Ohio and he constructed and operated a tannery along the Cuyahoga River. Brown suffered financial losses in the Panic of 1837. For the next several years he floundered, moving from one activity to another. Brown declared bankruptcy in federal court on September 28, 1842. In 1846, Brown moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, as an agent for Ohio wool growers in their relations with New England manufacturers of woolen goods. There he found himself among the nation;s leading abolitionists. From 1846 until he left Springfield in 1850, Brown was a member of the Free Church, where he witnessed abolitionist lectures from such luminaries as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth. In Springfield Brown made connections that later yielded financial support
Kansas Territory was in the midst of a violent struggle that became known as Bleeding Kansas. Five of Brown's sons had moved to Kansas Territory in the spring of 1855. Brown followed later that year, his wagon loaded with weapons and ammunition. His wife Mary refused to relocate to Kansas.
Brown was angered by the sacking of Lawrence, the center of anti-slavery activity in Kansas, on May 21, 1856. A sheriff-led posse from Lecompton, the center of pro-slavery activity in Kansas, had destroyed two abolitionist newspapers and the Free State Hotel. News of Preston Brooks caning anti-slavery Senator Charles Sumner in the United States Senate also fueled Brown's anger. Brown was outraged by both the violence of the pro-slavery forces and what he saw as a weak response by the antislavery partisans. All of this led to what became known as the Pottawatomie massacre.
During the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856, under Brown's supervision, his sons and other abolitionist settlers killed five professional slave hunters and other pro-slavery settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek, in Franklin County, Kansas. There had been no prior organized action by abolitionists against pro-slavery forces. In 1856, in retaliation, a force of Missourians, led by Captain Henry Clay Pate, captured John Jr. and Jason, destroyed the Brown family homestead, and later participated in the Sack of Lawrence. On June 2, in the Battle of Black Jack, John Brown, nine of his followers, and 20 local men successfully defended a Free State settlement at Palmyra, Kansas, against an attack by Pate. Pate and 22 of his men were taken prisoner. In August, a company of over 300 Missourians under the command of General John W. Reid crossed into Kansas and headed towards Osawatomie, intending to destroy the Free State settlements there, and then march on Topeka and Lawrence. On the morning of August 30, 1856, they shot and killed Brown's son Frederick and his neighbor David Garrison on the outskirts of Osawatomie. Brown, outnumbered more than seven to one, arranged his 38 men behind natural defenses along the road. Firing from cover, they managed to kill at least 20 of Reid's men and wounded 40 more. Reid regrouped, ordering his men to dismount and charge into the woods. Brown's small group scattered and fled. One of Brown's men was killed during the retreat and four were captured. While Brown and his surviving men hid in the woods nearby, the Missourians plundered and burned Osawatomie. Despite his defeat, Brown was seen as a hero to many Northern abolitionists.
On September 7, Brown went to Lawrence to held Free State leaders fortify against a feared assault against an expected force of 2,700 pro-slavery Missourians who were once again invading Kansas. On September 14, they skirmished near Lawrence. Serious violence was averted when the new governor of Kansas, John W. Geary, who ordered the warring parties to disarm and disband, and offered clemency to former fighters on both sides.
For a long time, Brown had spent over twenty years planning for some opportunity to free all of the enslaved people. He discussed his plans for over a day with Frederick Douglass, trying unsuccessfully to persuade Douglass to accompany him to Harpers Ferry. Douglass thought it was a mission that could never succeed. Brown returned to the East by November 1856, and spent the next two years in New England raising funds for his proposed revolt. A group of six abolitionists, two of them wealthy, agreed to offer Brown financial support for his antislavery activities. This group provided most of the financial backing for the raid on Harpers Ferry. On January 7, 1858, the Massachusetts Committee pledged to provide 200 Sharps Rifles and ammunition, which were being stored at Tabor, Iowa. In March, Brown contracted with Charles Blair for 1,000 pikes. In the following months, Brown continued to raise funds, visiting Worcester, Springfield, New Haven, Syracuse, and Boston. In Boston, he met Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He met Hugh Forbes, an English mercenary, who had experience as a military tactician fighting with Giuseppe Garibaldi in Italy in 1848. Brown hired him as his men's drillmaster. Over several weeks, the two men put together a plan for fighting slavery in the South. In November, their troops left for Kansas. Forbes had not received his salary and he returned to the East instead of going into Kansas.
With a free-state victory in the October elections, Kansas became quiet and Brown made his men return to Iowa. In January 1858, Brown left his men in Springdale, Iowa, and met with Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, where he discussed his plans with Douglass. He next went to Boston where he made secret preparations for his operation on Harper's Ferry. Brown and 12 of his followers, including his son Owen, traveled to Chatham, Ontario, where he convened a Constitutional Convention. One-third of Chatham's 6,000 residents were fugitive slaves, and it was here that Brown was introduced to Harriet Tubman, who helped him recruit for his proposed raid. Brown was elected commander-in-chief. In 1859, "A Declaration of Liberty by the Representatives of the Slave Population of the United States of America" was written.
Although nearly all of the delegates signed the constitution, few volunteered to join Brown's forces. Hugh Forbes tried to expose the plans to Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson and others. Brown returned to Kansas in June, and remained there for six months. There he joined forces with James Montgomery, who was leading raids into Missouri.
On December 20, Brown led his own raid, in which he liberated 11 slaves, took captive two white men, and looted horses and wagons. The Governor of Missouri announced a reward of $3,000 (equivalent to $90,478 today) for his capture. On January 20, 1859, he embarked on a lengthy journey to take the liberated slaves to Detroit and then on a ferry to Canada. While passing through Chicago, Brown met with abolitionists including Allan Pinkerton. These men arranged and raised the fare for the passage to Detroit. On March 12, 1859, Brown met with Frederick Douglass and Detroit abolitionists. Over the course of the next few months, he traveled again through Ohio, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to drum up more support for his cause.
In June he paid his last visit to his family departing for Harpers Ferry. Brown asked Harriet Tubman to gather former slaves from southern Ontario who might be willing to join his fighting force, which she did. He arrived in Harpers Ferry on July 3, 1859. A few days later, under the name Isaac Smith, he rented a farmhouse in nearby Maryland. He awaited the arrival of his recruits, but they never materialized in the numbers he expected.
In late August Brown met with Douglass in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he revealed the Harpers Ferry plan. Douglass expressed severe reservations, rebuffing Brown's pleas to join the mission. Douglass had known of Brown's plans since early 1859 and had discouraged African-American men from enlisting.
In late September, the 950 pikes that Brown had ordered finally arrived. Brown's plan called for a brigade of 4,500 men, but Brown had only 21 men. 16 were white and 5 were black, of which 3 were free blacks, 1 freed slave, and 1 fugitive slave. They ranged in age from 21 to 49.
On October 16, 1859, Brown led 18 men in an attack on the Harpers Ferry Armory. He had received 200 breechloading .52 caliber Sharps rifles – and pikes from northern abolitionist societies in preparation for the raid. The armory was a large complex of buildings that contained 100,000 muskets and rifles, which Brown planned to seize and use to arm local slaves. He then planned to head south, drawing off more and more slaves from plantations His strategy was essentially to deplete Virginia of its slaves, causing the institution to collapse in one county after another, until the movement spread into the South, causing havoc for the economic viability of the pro-slavery states.
Initially, the raid went well. The group encountered no resistance entering the town. John Brown's raiders cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory, which was being defended by a single watchman. They rounded up hostages from nearby farms, including Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew of George Washington. They also spread the news to the local slaves that their liberation was at hand.
When an eastbound Baltimore & Ohio train approached the town, Brown stopped the train, but inexplicably allowed it to continue on its way. At the next station where the telegraph still worked, the conductor sent a telegram to B&O headquarters in Baltimore. The railroad sent telegrams to President James Buchanan and Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise. News of the raid reached Baltimore early that morning and Washington by late morning.
In the meantime, local farmers, shopkeepers, and militia pinned down the raiders in the armory by firing from the heights behind the town. Some of the local men were shot by Brown's men. At noon, a company of militia seized the bridge, blocking the only escape route. Brown then moved his prisoners and remaining raiders into the fire engine house, a small brick building at the armory's entrance. The surrounding forces barraged the engine house, and the men inside fired back. Brown sent his son Watson and another supporter out under a white flag, but the angry crowd shot them. In the shooting that followed, Brown's son Oliver was wounded. He soon died from his wounds.
By the morning of October 18 the engine house was surrounded by a company of U.S. Marines under the command of First Lieutenant Israel Greene, USMC, with Colonel Robert E. Lee of the United States Army in overall command. Army First Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart approached under a white flag and told the raiders their lives would be spared if they surrendered. Brown refused, saying, "No, I prefer to die here." The Marines used sledgehammers and a makeshift battering ram to break down the engine room door. Lieutenant Israel Greene cornered Brown and struck him several times. In three minutes Brown and the survivors were captives.
Brown's men killed four people and wounded nine. Ten of Brown's men were killed, including his sons Watson and Oliver. Five escaped, including his son Owen, and seven were captured along with Brown. They were quickly tried and hanged two weeks after their leader.
Brown and the others captured were held in the office of the armory. On October 18, 1859, Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise, Virginia Senator James M. Mason, and Representative Clement Vallandigham of Ohio arrived in Harpers Ferry. Mason led the three-hour interrogation of Brown.
Wise wanted Brown tried in Virginia, and President Buchanan did not object. Brown and his men were tried in Charles Town, just 7 miles west of Harpers Ferry. The trial began October 27, after a doctor pronounced the still-wounded Brown fit for trial. Brown was charged with murdering five persons, inciting a slave insurrection, and treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. A series of lawyers were assigned to him. Hiram Griswold, a lawyer from Cleveland, argued that Brown could not be found guilty of treason against a state to which he owed no loyalty and of which he was not a resident. He also argued that Brown had not killed anyone himself, and that the raid's failure indicated that Brown had not conspired with slaves. On November 2, after a week-long trial and 45 minutes of deliberation, the Charles Town jury found Brown guilty on all three counts. He was sentenced to be hanged in public on December 2.
Under Virginia law, a month had to elapse before the death sentence could be carried out. Governor Wise resisted pressures to move up the execution date. Brown believed that his execution would strike a massive blow against Slave Power. His death sentence allowed him to publicize his anti-slavery views through the reporters present in Charles Town, and through his correspondence. Brown talked with reporters and anyone else who wanted to see him, except pro-slavery clergy.
There were plans to rescue Brown, but the town was filled with troops and militia and Brown was heavily guarded. Brown said several times that he did not want to be rescued. On December 1, Brown's wife arrived by train in Charles Town, where she joined him at the county jail for his last meal. On the day of Brown's execution, December 2, John Brown's last words were passed to a jailor on his way to the gallows. On the morning of December 2, 1859, Brown wrote and gave to his jailor Avis the words he wanted to be remembered by: I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.
Brown read his Bible and wrote a final letter to his wife, which included his will. At 11:00 a.m. he rode in a wagon, sitting on his coffin, from the county jail to the gallows. A crowd of 2,000 soldiers were present. In the crowd were future Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, and John Wilkes Booth, who borrowed a militia uniform to gain admission to the execution, Brown was hanged at 11:15 a.m. and pronounced dead at 11:50 a.m. Brown's body was placed in a wooden coffin with the noose still around his neck, and the coffin was then put on a train to take it away from Virginia to his family homestead in North Elba, New York for burial.
In the North, large memorial meetings took place, church bells rang, minute guns were fired, and famous writers such as Emerson and Thoreau joined many Northerners in praising Brown.
On December 14, 1859, the U.S. Senate appointed a bipartisan committee to investigate the Harpers Ferry raid and to determine whether any citizens contributed arms, ammunition or money to John Brown's men. Democrats attempted to implicate the Republicans in the raid. The Senate committee heard testimony from 32 witnesses. The report, authored by chairman James Murray Mason, a pro-slavery Democrat from Virginia, was published in June 1860. It found no direct evidence of a conspiracy. Republicans such as Abraham Lincoln rejected any connection with the raid, calling Brown "insane".
Southern slaveowners feared other abolitionists would imitate Brown and attempt to lead slave rebellions. The South reorganized its militia system which, by 1861, became a ready-made Confederate army, making the South better prepared for war. Abolitionists in the North saw Brown as a martyr.