Harpers Ferry Raid (Muzzey, 1920)

[John Brown] felt that he was commissioned by God to free the slaves in the South. He conceived the wild plan of posting in the fastnesses of the Appalachian Mountains small bodies of armed men, who should make descents into the plains, seize negroes, and conduct them back to his ‘camps of freedom.’ He made a beginning at the little Virginia town of Harpers Ferry, at the junction of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, where with only eighteen men he seized the United States arsenal and, raiding the houses of a few of the neighboring planters, forcibly freed about thirty of their slaves. They were huddled together with his men in the arsenal, rather bewildered, and more like captives than newly baptized freemen, when a detachment of United States marines (under the command of Robert E. Lee) arrived on the scene, battered down the doors of the arsenal, and easily made captives of Brown's band (October 18, 1859). Brown, severely wounded, was tried for treason by the laws of Virginia. He pleaded only his divine commission in his defense and was speedily condemned and hanged. When Brown was hailed as a martyr by many antislavery men in the North, who were jubilant to see a blow struck for freedom, even if it were a murderous blow, thousands in the South were persuaded that the "Black Republicans" were determined to let loose upon their wives and children the horrors of negro massacre.