John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry: Causes and Legacy

Introduction

The issue of abolitionism came to a head with John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. Brown's intention was to instigate an armed slave rebellion (Horwitz). Brown and nearly two dozen other men took over a U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry in Virginia—but instead of achieving the goal of a slave revolt, the men were caught in a standoff with U.S. Marines from October 16th to the 18th. Robert E. Lee, ironically, was the commander in charge of retaking the arsenal; Lee would go on to command the Southern Army just a year and a half later. Other future Confederates who assisted in recapturing Harpers Ferry from the insurrectionist Brown and his men were Stonewall Jackson and J. E. B. Stuart (Horwitz). This paper discusses the raid, explains what happened and why, and examines the fallout that followed.

The Reason for the Raid

John Brown was a fervent abolitionist who believed that pacifism would never be sufficient to end slavery. He was a man who insisted on action—violent action if necessary (McGlone). During the Bleeding Kansas crisis, Brown had been in the thick of the violence, leading men in several battles and massacring five pro-slavery men at Pottawatomie Creek. Brown conducted the massacre along with his sons and other followers. The killing of these five pro-slavery individuals demonstrated how serious Brown was about his mission to free the slaves (Furnas).

The entire nation was on edge throughout the 1850s as the United States continued to expand westward toward the Pacific. It was unclear whether the new western states would be slave states or free states. The conflict in Kansas was symbolic of the tension running through the rest of the nation. Even in the U.S. Senate, violence had broken out: in 1856, Republican Senator Charles Sumner viciously ridiculed pro-slavery South Carolina Democratic Senator Andrew Butler on the Senate floor. Butler's cousin, acting in defense of Andrew's honor, attacked Sumner with a cane and nearly killed him. Southern Democrats applauded, while Northerners viewed the South as tyrannical (Hoffer).

Clearly, violence was in the air if men in the U.S. government were willing to resort to it on the floor of Congress itself. It should come as no surprise, then, that John Brown was leading ambushes and killing men he and his followers had captured. Brown had in his early days wanted to be a minister, but he ended up going into the tanning business. In the 1840s he was inspired by abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth to take action. He assisted in the Underground Railroad and came to know Douglass and others by establishing an abolitionist center in Massachusetts. Brown helped to free slaves and actively warred upon those who facilitated slavery (Furnas). As he gained experience through his raids, he plotted a larger attack on the South—a planned armed slave revolt—and set his sights on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Douglass opposed the scheme, believing it would fail, but Brown pushed forward, always the man of action. Herman Melville would later write a poem about Brown and refer to him as "Weird John Brown" because of his fierce, stubborn passion (Smith).

What Happened at Harpers Ferry

Douglass was right: the plan was doomed. Brown had asked Harriet Tubman to help him organize the raid. Months in advance, Brown had rented a farmhouse in Maryland near Harpers Ferry and waited for his forces to arrive—but they never came, at least not in the numbers he had anticipated (Barney). Brown met again with Douglass to try to persuade him to join the raid. Douglass refused and was in fact urging other Black Americans not to participate in Brown's plans. For Douglass, Brown was a loose cannon who would do more harm than good (Furnas).

Brown's original plan had called for a small army of more than a thousand men. On the morning of the raid, he had just over twenty. Nonetheless, he and his men entered the town, cut the telegraph wires, and took possession of the arsenal, which was guarded by only one watchman. They then took local farmers as hostages. When a train pulled into town, Brown's men panicked and opened fire, killing a free Black man on the train. In their rush to liberate the slaves of the South, the insurrectionists unwittingly made a free Black man the first casualty of the Harpers Ferry raid (Horwitz).

The local militia reacted swiftly as news of the raid spread. Militia members mounted the hills behind the arsenal and fired down upon the insurrectionists, pinning Brown and his men in place. They also took control of the bridge—the only means of entry and exit—blocking any possible escape. Brown moved his hostages to the engine house at the rear of the armory. The militia engaged again, and Brown and his men fortified themselves inside the engine house. Two of Brown's sons were killed in the fighting (Horwitz).

Lee and the Marines arrived along with J. E. B. Stuart of the Army. Stuart approached the engine house under a white flag and informed Brown that he and his men would not be shot on the spot if they surrendered. Brown refused, and the Marines broke down the door and secured Brown and his men by force (Horwitz). Altogether, five people had been killed by Brown and his men—four white and one Black. Brown stood trial in Virginia over the course of a week that November and was hanged on December 2nd.

Conclusion

The raid on Harpers Ferry was planned and executed by a zealous abolitionist who had already killed multiple men in Kansas during the Bleeding Kansas crisis. He was, in other words, a killer—though many saw him as a paragon of Christianity, a man full of religious fervor and zeal, willing to put his life on the line for his beliefs. He was also willing to put the lives of others on the line and to take the lives of others. He viewed the sin of slavery as something that could only be washed away by blood, and he wanted to be the one to spill it. In doing so he opened a deep wound in the heart of the nation from which it has still never fully recovered.

The Harpers Ferry raid represented a fantasy on Brown's part—a kind of "if you take it, they will come" scheme that he had played out in his head. In reality, he took it, and those who came were the Marines, not free Black men who recognized the righteousness of his cause and wished to join him. The only free Black man who came to town that morning was on the train, and he was killed by Brown's men when they panicked. That fact alone should be enough to demonstrate that the Harpers Ferry raid was not a carefully considered action but rather a hastily conceived plot and a delusion of grandeur on Brown's part. And yet it helped to ignite an even greater war—so perhaps John Brown looked back from beyond the grave with satisfaction, knowing that his burst of violence had helped spur on an even greater one.

Works Cited

Barney, William L. "Brown, John." The Civil War and Reconstruction: A Student Companion. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Furnas, J. C. The Road to Harpers Ferry. William Sloane Associates, 1959.

Hoffer, Williamjames Hull. The Caning of Charles Sumner: Honor, Idealism, and the Origins of the Civil War. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.

Horwitz, Tony. Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War. Henry Holt and Company, 2011.

McGlone, Robert E. John Brown's War against Slavery. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Smith, Ted A. Weird John Brown: Divine Violence and the Limits of Ethics. Stanford University Press, 2015.