John Brown's Raid -- October 16, 1859
On the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown and twenty-one men attempted to raid the federal armory and arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). Their plan was to capture the armory and arsenal and recruit slaves to rise and join them. Once Brown and his men armed the slaves with guns from the arsenal, they hoped to head south to free more slaves and eventually destroy slavery.
At the start of their attack, Brown and his men cut telegraph wires and seized federal property. They captured two masters and ten slaves, and briefly detained a Baltimore and Ohio train and inadvertently killed the black baggage master. The conductor reported the raid to authorities in Washington, D.C. By dawn on October 17, Brown and his raiders were holed up inside an engine house with the local militia, angry townspeople, and farmers laying siege to the building. No slaves had escaped to join them.
President James Buchanan dispatched federal troops led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart to control the mob of citizens and local militia and capture those responsible for the raid. The next morning, Stuart and his men stormed the engine house and ended the fighting. By the time Brown and seven of his men were captured, five had escaped, and nine of his men were dead, including two of his sons. On the other side, seven people were dead, and ten were wounded.
Lee handed Brown and his remaining men over to Virginia to face charges of treason. Democratic presses, both in the North and South, blamed abolitionists and Republicans for the uprising but many people in the North cheered Brown. Brown was convicted of treason against Virginia on October 31 and hanged at Charlestown, Virginia, on December 2. Northern abolitionists made a martyr out of him, which shocked white Southerners who saw his actions as proof that the North meant to end slavery by any means necessary, even through murder.
In his annual message to Congress, in December 1859, President Buchanan declared that the raid on Harper's Ferry symbolized "an incurable disease in the public mind." That "disease," he predicted, might end up "in an open war by the North to abolish slavery in the South." Buchanan added that he did not share Southerners' agitation over John Brown but gave no reassurances.
Buchanan, ever conciliatory, tried not to alienate anyone -- either secessionist or unionist -- but pleased no one. By refusing to take a firm stand on either side of the slavery issue, Buchanan failed to resolve the question, leaving his nation's gravest crisis to his successor. Indeed, Buchanan's passivity is considered by many historians to have been a prime contributing factor in the coming of the Civil War.
For more information, please visit the James Buchanan home page or go to more Events in Presidential History.
