Biography
Edwin Coppoc was a young Quaker from Springdale, Iowa, who joined Brown's force after meeting him there in 1857. He was captured inside the engine house, tried for treason and murder, and hanged in the afternoon of December 16, 1859, after attempting an escape from the Charles Town jail with John Cook the night before.
On October 16-18, 1859, the abolitionist John Brown led 21 men in an attempted raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), aiming to arm enslaved people and ignite a general uprising against slavery. The raid was suppressed within 36 hours by U.S. Marines under Robert E. Lee. Ten raiders were killed, seven were captured, and five escaped. The captured raiders were tried by the Commonwealth of Virginia for treason against the state, murder, and conspiring with slaves to rebel — all crimes for which they were sentenced to death by hanging at Charles Town. Their executions made them, in the months before the Civil War, the most consequential political prisoners in American history.
