Civil War Trust

Trigger Events of the Civil War

John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry

Photograph of John Brown in 1859 (Library of Congress)

John Brown, whose raid brought Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) to national attention, was a native of Connecticut, had been an abolitionist all his life, and in 1855-56 had been a leader in the bloody sectional strife in Kansas. Of stern religious bent, ardent to the point of fanaticism, he had conceived a plan to liberate slaves by violence and set up a free-Negro stronghold in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia.

He fixed upon Harpers Ferry as the starting point for the insurrection, apparently because the town was near the Mason-Dixon line and the surrounding mountains were suitable for guerrilla warfare. Further, capture of the thousands of arms stored in the arsenal of the U.S. Armory at the ferry could equip a formidable army.

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Brown and his 21-man “army of liberation” attacked Harpers Ferry on the night of October 16, 1859, seizing the armory and several other strategic points before the startled townspeople realized their purpose. When the alarm spread and local citizens and militia converged on the town, the raiders barricaded themselves in the armory fire engine and guard house. They were captured when a contingent of marines commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart stormed the building on the morning of October 18. Brought to trial for murder, treason, and conspiring with slaves to create the insurrection, Brown was found guilty and subsequently hanged at nearby Charles Town on December 2, 1859.

The day of his execution, Brown wrote a last (and prophetic) message to his jailor. In clear but slightly unsteady handwriting, it said: “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.”

Sixteen months later, on April 12, 1861, the war that John Brown seemed to foretell began at a place called Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.