Biography
John Anthony Copeland Jr. was a free Black abolitionist from Oberlin, Ohio, where he had been involved in the 1858 Oberlin–Wellington Rescue of a recaptured fugitive. He joined Brown's force as one of five Black raiders. Captured at the rifle works during the raid, he was tried separately under Virginia law (which denied Black defendants the same procedural protections as white defendants) and hanged on the morning of December 16, 1859. His final letter to his family is one of the most widely cited statements of antislavery resolve from the era.
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.
