John Brown\'s Raid Lead to the Civil

¶ … John Brown's Raid lead to the Civil War?

In 1859, John Brown led an attack on a federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry in Virginia with the hope of arming slaves for a revolt against their masters. The plot failed and Brown was captured and hanged. Northern abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison,

Horace Greeley, and Frederick Douglas hailed Brown as a martyr, but Southerners viewed him as a crazed lunatic. The fanatical and probably mentally unstable Brown confirmed the South's worst fears of radical abolitionism when he made this attempt to galvanize a slave uprising. This was the most noted attempt at a genuine slave revolt since Nat Turner's revolt of 1831. This "act of war" enraged the South. Newspapers throughout the South were crying for John Brown's death. The Mobile Register wrote,

The ark of covenent has been desecrated. For the first time the soil of the South has been invaded and its blood has been shed upon its own soil by armed abolitionists" who invoked our slaves to rebellion" (Oates 320). "The Harper's Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of Disunion more than any other event that has happened since the formation of the Government" (Oates 323).

His impractical plan was to use guns from the federal arsenal (which he specifically targeted) to arm Virginia's slaves. Federal troops, under the command of Robert E. Lee captured Brown and his band after a two-day siege.

Some moderates in the North, including Lincoln, condemned Brown's actions of violence, but southerners were not convinced by their words. The raid on Harper's Ferry struck terror in the heart of the South and encouraged northerners, for it "showed how fragile the system of slavery was beneath its brutal exterior" (Nelson 215). Some extreme Southerners believed that the entire Northern militia was behind the raid in addition to Brown and the slaves. Many agreed with the sentiments of Ralph Waldo Emerson who described Brown as "that new saint, than whom none was purer or more brave was ever led by love of men into conflict and death, the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross" (Nelson 218). William Lloyd Garrison said, "In firing his gun, John Brown has merely told what time of day it is - it is high noon. Thank God" (Dupuy, 7). Lincoln said in his debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858 that, "A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe that this Government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." However, the raid led to even further division. And the divided house could not stand when it came to war (Dupuy 4).

After the condemnation of Brown and his associates, fearing from published threats that an attempt might be made by Northern sympathizers to rescue them, Governor Wise ordered Virginia troops to Charlestown to guard the prisoners until after their execution.

Toward the last of November about 1,000 were there assembled, among them the cadets of the Virginia military institute, under command of Col F.H. Smith, the superintendent.

Maj T.J. Jackson, the famous "Stonewall" Jackson of the war, was present in command of the cadet battery. He witnessed the execution of Brown about midday, December 2, 1859. In a letter to his wife he wrote of Brown, "he behaved with unflinching firmness," and of the execution: "My command was in front of the cadets, all facing south. One howitzer I assigned to Mr. Truehart, on the left of the cadets, and with the other I remained on the right" (Oates 328). Other troops occupied different positions around the scaffold, and altogether it was an imposing but very solemn scene. People were very much impressed with the thought that before the onlookers stood a man, in the full vigor of health, who gave his life for what he believed was evil.

On the day of Brown's execution, bells were tolled and minute guns fired in many places in the North, and church services and public meetings were held for the purpose of glorifying his deeds and sanctifying the cause he represented, recognizing in him a martyr to the teachings of the abolitionists. "Eventually his name became the slogan under which, as a battle hymn, the Northern troops invaded and overran the South" (Scott and Robert, 142). In reference to Brown's invasion of Virginia, Hon A.H. Stephens, in his history of the United States, says: "This act greatly inflamed the Southern mind, especially as it was lauded by the official authorities of those Northern States which had refused to comply with their obligations under the Constitution in the matter of the rendition of fugitive slaves" (Scott and Robert 148).