what did john brown hope to gain at harper’s ferry?
Taking The Town: Harpers Ferry, Due west.Va., sits at the confluence of the Potomac River (right) and Shenandoah River (left). In 1859, John Dark-brown and his raiders gained control of the town and its guns by taking both Shenandoah and Potomac bridges, essentially cutting the town off.
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On the evening of Oct. 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown led 21 men downwards the road to Harpers Ferry in what is today West Virginia. The plan was to take the town'southward federal armory and, ultimately, ignite a nationwide uprising against slavery.
The raid failed, merely six years later, Brown's dream was realized and slavery became illegal.
In his new book, Midnight Rise: John Brownish and the Raid That Sparked the Ceremonious War, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz tells the story of John Brown, a man destined to change history through an insurgence that has often gone unmentioned in Civil War stories.
A Fearless Leader: John Brown was built-in in Connecticut and raised by a father who was passionately anti-slavery. He was 59 years old when he led his raid on Harpers Ferry.
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A Fearless Leader: John Chocolate-brown was born in Connecticut and raised by a male parent who was passionately anti-slavery. He was 59 years old when he led his raid on Harpers Ferry.
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Planning The Raid
At the Kennedy Farmhouse, just outside Harpers Ferry, Horwitz shows NPR's Scott Simon where Brown and his co-conspirators pretended to be farmers while they planned their raid.
"The Kennedy farm is where Chocolate-brown gathers his weapons and guerrilla fighters in the summer before the raid," Horwitz says. "This is really the tense, sweaty lead-up to the action, and he assembles this remarkable band of 21 men: farmers, factory workers, fugitive slaves, three of his sons and even his own teenage girl and daughter-in-law who come up here to deed as housekeepers and lookouts."
While many abolitionists were condescending toward blacks, believing them to be too docile to fight for their liberty, Brownish made a point of recruiting fugitive slaves and freed blacks to be role of the raid.
"He felt that it was both necessary and a moral imperative that blacks fight alongside whites for their freedom," Horwitz says. "So of his ring of 21 men, 5 of them are black."
Midnight Rise
John Dark-brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
Brown's army consisted of men who were so moved past their leader's cause that they were willing to lay downwards their lives for it. At that place was just something about Dark-brown that made men desire to follow him. According to Horwitz, i Boston hostess described information technology as a moral magnetism that gave him the ability to stir a person'south conscience. Transcendentalist Bronson Alcott called him "'the manliest man I ever met."
But Brown was also a striking physical character with an unbending conviction. He hoped his raid would spark a conflagration that would be the end of slavery — he didn't just want to free the slaves of Harpers Ferry; he wanted to shock the nation.
"Here you had a U.Due south. armory, a symbol of American power, and he wanted to practice something dramatic to really wake the country up," Horwitz says. "I recall attacking Harpers Ferry was as much for its stupor value as for its logistical value."
The 'Horrible Scene' At John Brown's Fort
On the night of the raid, Brown and his men seized the baby-sit on the span to Harpers Ferry and sneaked across the Potomac River, communicable the town by surprise.
Harpers Ferry sits at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, and then past holding the bridge over the Potomac and the bridge over the Shenandoah, the raiders had full command of the town and its 100,000 guns.
Only that didn't last long.
Thirty-two hours after the raid began, it came to an end in a small brick engine house that subsequently came to be known every bit John Brown'south Fort. Trapped in the structure with his remaining men, 10 hostages and five newly liberated slaves, Brown faced a howling mob outside and a group of U.Southward. Marines led by Robert E. Lee.
Inside the engine house, with 1 son dead and the other dying, Brown waited for the attack.
John Chocolate-brown's Last Stand: Subsequently the raid, John Chocolate-brown's Fort — part of the U.S. Arsenal and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry — became the boondocks's only armory building to survive the Ceremonious War.
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Slave2TehTink via Flickr
John Brown's Last Stand: Later on the raid, John Brown's Fort — part of the U.S. Arsenal and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry — became the boondocks's merely arsenal building to survive the Civil State of war.
Slave2TehTink via Flickr
"It'due south a horrible scene," Horwitz says. "Nosotros're in a stable substantially. Information technology's the size of what today would exist a two-car garage and you have 25 or so terrified men in here who tin't even see out because the windows are and then high."
Dark-brown refused to surrender, so instead the Marines bashed their way in, killing several of the raiders. Brown himself got beaten to the ground, but miraculously survived.
If he had died, Horwitz says, "This story might have been very different. It might have been a kind of odd, piffling episode. Information technology's really in defeat that Brownish triumphs."
John Brown went on trial the next week, charged with treason, kickoff-degree murder and inciting insurrection. When he was given the chance to address the court, he made no excuses and did not plead for his life. Instead, he told those gathered:
If information technology is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my claret further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are overlooked by wicked, brutal and unjust enactments — I submit; so let it be washed!
Brown was hanged on Dec. ii, 1859.
A 'Rock In The Shoe' Of U.South. History
According to Horwitz, there's an statement to be made that the Ceremonious State of war began in 1859 at Harpers Ferry, rather than in 1861 at Fort Sumter or Manassas, because that's where things really started going downhill.
Tony Horwitz has written for The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. His books include Confederates in the Cranium and Baghdad Without a Map.
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Courtesy of Tony Horwitz
Tony Horwitz has written for The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. His books include Confederates in the Attic and Baghdad Without a Map.
Courtesy of Tony Horwitz
"At the fourth dimension of Brown's raid, the nation is divided but people still think possibly nosotros tin can compromise and prevaricate and somehow put off this reckoning over the division in our country and the division over slavery," he says.
Chocolate-brown'due south raid crushed that hope.
"You had Northerners and Southerners [at Harpers Ferry] killing each other over slavery," he says. "It really exposes and greatly widens the divide between N and South."
The insurgence Brown tried to set up off never flared; but the state of war he always idea would exist the price of slavery began just sixteen months afterward.
Today, Horwitz says, Brown'due south story continues to raise persistent questions: Did John Brownish fire the commencement shots of the Ceremonious War? Do ends always justify the means? Was he right to use violence to try to put an terminate to slavery?
"Brown really touches many of the hot buttons in our history and culture: violence, race, religious fundamentalism, the right of the individual to defy their government," Horwitz says.
"He'south that stone in the shoe of our history."
Source: https://www.npr.org/2011/10/22/141564113/the-harpers-ferry-rising-that-hastened-civil-war
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