Biography
Shields Green was a fugitive from slavery in South Carolina who had escaped to the North and become close to Frederick Douglass. When Brown met with Douglass shortly before the raid to make a final plea for Douglass to join, Douglass declined; Green answered, 'I b'lieve I'll go with the old man,' and traveled with Brown to Harpers Ferry. He was captured during the raid, tried under Virginia law for treason, and hanged on the morning of December 16, 1859.
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.
