Harpers Ferry Raid (Spencer, 1874)

The bitterness and keenness of southern feeling on the subject of slavery and its issues, were greatly increased by a strange, wild attempt on the part of a man named John Brown, a native of New York, to produce a rising of the slaves in Virginia. Brown, it appears from his history, had become excited beyond all control on the slavery question, and having been a sharer in the difficulties and violent contentions in Kansas, he seemed to think himself called upon to devote his life and energies to the freeing of the slaves. Several of his sons and a small body of others (twenty-two in all, seventeen white, five black) joined him; arms and ammunition were collected; and on the night of October 16th, he made a descent upon Harper's Ferry, a town of about five thousand inhabitants, and containing the United States arsenal with 100,000 stand of arms. The buildings being unguarded, were seized upon; prominent citizens were arrested; and the workmen connected with the armory, on going to their business in the morning, were also captured. About thirty prisoners were thus made. The alarm spread rapidly, and the exaggerated reports were speedily circulated of the extent of the force, the objects had in view, the rising of the slaves, etc…. Brown and his party finally entrenched themselves in the engine house, where they struggled to the last; but late in the night a body of United States marines, under Colonel Lee, invested the engine house, and early on the 18th, succeeded in battering down the door and capturing the insurgents.