DK - The American Civil War

THE RAID AT HARPERS FERRY

While many labeled Brown a fanatic or a

lunatic, others—both in the North and the

South—cherished his memory, albeit for

widely differing motives.

FREE BLACKS PREPARE

After decades of ineffectual talk, a white

abolitionist had finally joined hands with black

men to attack slavery on its home soil. In the

North, free blacks organized military companies

in cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York,

and Pittsburgh. Brown was lionized, becoming

a potent symbol and subject of a popular song

on the lips of black soldiers when they joined

the Union army in 1863 168–69 ❯❯.

BOOST TO THE CAUSE OF SECESSION

Fears of slave revolts wracked the South

throughout 1860. Those intent on secession

used Brown’s raid as a warning of the horrors of

insurrection. One such advocate, Edmund Ruffin

of Virginia, went to great lengths to keep the

memory of the raid alive. He asked officials at

Harpers Ferry to send him the pikes seized after

the raid, labeled them “Samples of the favors

designed for us by our Northern Brethren,”

and sent one to each Southern governor.

against slavery. The “Secret Six” were
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a
minister and future Civil War officer;
Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, a Boston
physician; Reverend Theodore Parker,
a renowned speaker and Unitarian
minister; Franklin Sanborn, a friend of
Thoreau and Emerson; Gerrit Smith, a
wealthy reformer and philanthropist
who had previously given Brown land
in the Adirondacks; and George Luther
Stearns, a key financier of the Emigrant
Aid Company, which funded settlement
of Kansas by anti-slavery homesteaders.

Planning the raid
By the summer of 1859, Brown had
switched his focus to Virginia. His target
was the federal armory at Harpers Ferry,
which would provide arms for some
18,000 slaves living in the surrounding
counties. He already had a large quantity

of weapons. The Massachusetts-Kansas

Committee provided him with 200

Sharps rifles in 1857 and he paid a

Connecticut blacksmith to craft 1,000

pikes with 10-in (25-cm) blades. He

shipped 198 rifles and 950 of the pikes

to the Maryland farm near Harpers

Ferry, where his men were to gather.

At a secret meeting in Chambersburg,

Pennsylvania, Brown tried to persuade

prominent abolitionist Frederick

Douglass to participate in the raid. He

refused, warning Brown that the

enterprise seemed doomed.

Sentenced to death

Douglass’s misgivings proved

correct. The attackers failed to

remove any of the arsenal’s

weapons and only five escaped

capture and death. Brown’s own

trial was swift. He had been

wounded in the raid, but was declared

fit to stand to trial at Charles Town,

Virginia, on October 27. Found guilty

of treason against Virginia, he was

sentenced to hang on December 2.

Americans generally condemned

Brown’s violence, but a clear division

characterized views on his goals and

personal courage. Abolitionist Lydia Maria

Child wrote to Virginia Governor Henry

Wise and offered to nurse Brown as he

awaited execution. Republican

newspapers noted Brown’s extremism, but

reminded readers that it resulted from the

presence of slavery—a moral and political

evil. Southern editors pointed out that no

slaves had joined Brown’s attack. On

October 26, 1859, a North Carolina paper,

the Wilmington Daily Herald, wrote that

this proved that “slaves love, honor, and

obey their masters.” Those who wanted

an independent Southern government

warned that only independence could

protect Southern slavery from future

attacks by emboldened abolitionists.

Reactions to the execution

Public sentiment was polarized between

those who celebrated Brown’s execution

and those who publicly mourned him.

Southerners deeply resented Northern

expressions of support for Brown.

Especially galling was that national

figures, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson,

compared Brown to Christ and his

gallows to the cross. A Richmond editor

remarked that the raid and public

responses to it “advanced the cause of

disunion more than any event ... since

the formation of the government.”

AFTER

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the

crimes of this guilty land will never be purged

away, but with blood.”

A NOTE FROM BROWN TO HIS JAILER BEFORE HIS EXECUTION, DECEMBER 2, 1859

John Brown

This daguerreotype was taken in 1846–47 by

African-American photographer Augustus Washington

in Hartford, Connecticut. The pose recalls Brown’s

oath to dedicate his life to the destruction of slavery.

John Brown’s last moments

As his legend grew, Brown’s “martyrdom” was wildly

romanticized by writers and artists. This apocryphal

scene of Brown kissing a black baby on his way to the

scaffold was painted in 1882–84 by Thomas Hovenden.

Confiscated pike
This pike was confiscated at the time of John Brown’s
capture at Harpers Ferry. Brown commissioned 1,000
such weapons with a view to arming insurgent slaves.

Brown’s raid and death inspired an

unknown writer or writers to compose

the marching song, “John Brown’s Body.”

By the outbreak of the Civil War, it was

already a favorite with Union troops.