Amid the festering hostilities between North and South
in the 1850s, John Brown’s zealous opposition to slavery
grew. On October 16, 1859, having long dreamed of organizing
a guerrilla force to liberate slaves, he began implementing
his plan with an armed raid on the federal arsenal at
Harpers Ferry, Virginia. The scheme, however, failed disastrously.
Brown himself was tried and found guilty of murder and
treason in nearby Charles Town, the county seat. On December
2, 1859, he was hanged.
The Harpers Ferry raid freed no slaves, but it did
bring the nation one step closer to civil war. Moved
by Brown's heroic dignity as he went to his death, many
Northerners concluded that he was the victim of evil,
and they regretted not that he had acted but that he
had failed. In response, Southerners viewed Brown as
a sign that they must either break their allegiance
to the Union or be destroyed by an increasingly fanatical
North.
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