John Brown’s nemesis at Harpers Ferry

In the spring of 1858, Brown called a gathering of Black and white followers in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, where he declared his desire to build a stronghold for runaway slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia. A temporary constitution for the citizens of the United States was his idea, and it was adopted by the convention. Gerrit Smith and several well-known Boston abolitionists provided him with moral and financial support, which helped him win the position of commander in chief in this paper government. This group, subsequently known as the "Secret Six," also included entrepreneur George L. Stearns, preachers Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Theodore Parker, physician and educator Samuel Gridley Howe, and teacher and later journalist Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. Some of them had contributed money to Brown's endeavors in Kansas, and they would do the same for his upcoming and most well-known project.

In the summer of 1859, Brown established his headquarters in a rented farmhouse in Maryland across the Potomac from Harpers Ferry, the location of a government armory, with an armed group of 16 white and 5 Black abolitionists. He promptly grabbed control of the armory on the evening of October 16 and gathered about 60 influential persons in the neighborhood as hostages. Brown used this drastic measure in the vain hope that slaves who had escaped would support his uprising and form an "army of emancipation" to free their fellow slaves. He and his men resisted the local militia for the rest of the day and night, but the next morning he gave up to a group of soldiers led by Col. Robert E. Lee. This group of soldiers included a few U.S. Marines who had broken into the armory and outnumbered Brown and his companions. Brown suffered injuries, and 10 of his supporters—two of the sons—died. John Wilkes Booth, the future assassin of Abraham Lincoln, was present at the execution as a militiaman.