The Raid on Harpers Ferry occurred from 16 to 18 October 1859 when the abolitionist John Brown and a small force of abolitionist insurrectionists raided the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, intent on seizing the arsenal's weapons and starting a slave uprising that would destroy the American South's economy and bring an end to slavery. However, the revolt was crushed by the US Marine Corps and the Virginia and Maryland militias, and Brown was executed. The raid heightened sectional tensions between the North and South, ultimately resulting in the outbreak of the American Civil War less than two years later.
Background[]
In 1858, the year the ruling Democratic Party lost control of Congress, many Republicans made powerful speeches on how the issue of slavery divided the nation. Most famous of these speeches was Abraham Lincoln's "House Divided" speech delivered in Springfield, Illinois in May 1858, in which he declared, "I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free." The speech went on to refer to the situation in Kansas and the upholding of the Dred Scott decision.
Even more inflammatory was a speech delivered by New York Senator William H. Seward in October 1858 in Rochester. He argued that an "irrepressible conflict" existed within the country. The nation "must and will...become either entirely a slave-holding nation or a free-labor nation." Democrats condemned the speech as dangerous agitation and when, a year later, John Brown led the attack on Harpers Ferry, Northern Democratic and Southern newspapers blamed Seward's theory of an "irrepressible conflict" for Brown's actions.
History[]
On 16 October 1859, the abolitionist John Brown and 21 men, including five free Blacks and three of his sons, crossed the Potomac River and marched to Harpers Ferry, Virginia in the rain. They cut telegraph lines, rounded up hostages, and seized parts of the federal arsenal. Within 12 hours of Brown's raid, militia and locals trapped him and his men in the federal armory's fire engine house. By midnight the next day, Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived with 87 Marines to rescue the hostages and subdue the raiders. Brown refused to surrender and the Marines rushed the engine house, battering down the door, killing or wounding many of the remaining raiders, and collecting the hostages unharmed.
Abolitionist roots[]
Born in Connecticut in 1800, John Brown as a youth and adult moved regularly, usually after one of his many business failures. His deeply religious parents instilled in him a hatred of slavery that led to an early involvement in abolitionism. He served as a member of the "Underground Railroad" and lived for two years in a freedman's community. By the age of 50, Brown saw himself as ordained by God to avenge the evils of slavery.
In August 1855, he joined five of his sons in Kansas to fight against the pro-slavery faction there. Following the reports of the sack of Lawrence, Brown sought vengeance. He led six men, including four of his sons, to the homes of pro-slavery families living near Pottawatomie Creek and hacked the men and older boys to death with broadswords. In another incident at Osawatomie, he and his men killed a large number of pro-slavery raiders from Missouri. These exploits gained Brown an infamous reputation and the nickname "Old Osawatomie Brown."
Funding the raid[]
Brown now seized upon the idea of inciting slave insurrection. He believed that if slaves rose up in great numbers, the economy of the South would collapse. In spite of his actions in Kansas, he traveled openly in New England, routinely appearing at abolitionist meetings and private parties. His exploits and appearance - simple clothing and an intensity of expression - attracted those tired of simply talking about slavery.
One by one, Brown gathered a small group of radical abolitionists, six in all, who would support and fund his fight 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-inch 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' 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 riad, but was declared fit to stand trial at Charles Town, Virginia on 27 October. Found guilty of treason against Virginia, he was sentenced to hang on 2 December.
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 A. 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 26 October 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."
Aftermath[]
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.
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.
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.