Biography
John Brown was an American abolitionist whose conviction that slavery could only be ended by armed force placed him decades ahead of mainstream antislavery politics. After leading the antislavery militia in the Bleeding Kansas conflict of 1856, he spent three years planning the raid on Harpers Ferry as the opening act of a war of liberation. After the raid failed he was tried in Charles Town in October 1859, convicted of treason against Virginia, murder, and conspiring with enslaved people to rebel, and hanged on December 2, 1859. His final written statement read, in full: 'I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.' His execution was widely regarded, even by Brown's critics, as one of the proximate causes of the Civil War.
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.
