When all had been taken or sold, an enterprising mechanic started making and selling new ones. Harriet Tubman had one, and Abby Hopper Gibbons another the Marines returning to base each had one. After the action was over and most of the principals dead or imprisoned, they were sold at high prices as souvenirs. The pikes were never used a few Blacks in the engine house carried one, but none used it. Often his neighbors would visit him when he was making his chemical experiments and so well did he act his part that he was looked upon as one of profound learning and calculated to be a most useful man to the neighborhood." : 17 Brown "frequently took home with him parcels of earth, which he pretended to analyse in search of minerals. : 19–20 He told curious neighbors that they were tools for mining, which aroused no suspicion as for years the possibility of local mining for metals had been explored. He ordered from a blacksmith in Connecticut 950 pikes, for use by Blacks untrained in the use of firearms, as few were. 52-caliber Sharps carbines (" Beecher's Bibles"). Northern abolitionist groups sent 198 breech-loading. His group eventually included 21 men besides himself (16 white men, five Black men). Brown came with a small group of men minimally trained for military action. John Brown rented the Kennedy Farmhouse, with a small cabin nearby, 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Harpers Ferry, in Washington County, Maryland, and took up residence under the name Isaac Smith. John Brown – aided by the writings of supporters, including Henry David Thoreau, that turned him into a hero and icon for the Union. It was Brown's words and letters after the raid and at his trial – Virginia v. At first it was generally viewed as madness, the work of a fanatic. : 4īrown's raid caused much excitement and anxiety throughout the United States, with the South seeing it as a threat to slavery and their way of life, and some in the North perceiving it as a bold abolitionist action. A month after the attack, a Baltimore newspaper listed 26 terms used, including "insurrection", "rebellion", "treason", and "crusade". The label "raid" was not used at the time. : 17 By Tuesday morning the telegraph line had been repaired, : 21 and there were reporters from The New York Times "and other distant papers". As there were few official messages to send or receive, the telegraph carried on the next train, connected to the cut telegraph wires, was "given up to reporters", who "are in force strong as military". It carried Maryland militia, and parked on the Maryland side of the Harpers Ferry bridge, just 3 miles (4.8 km) east of the town (at the hamlet of Sandy Hook, Maryland). Reporters were on the first train leaving for Harpers Ferry after news of the raid was received, at 4 p.m. The raid was extensively covered in the press nationwide-it was the first such national crisis to be publicized using the new electrical telegraph. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his transformative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan was suicidal. Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart were among the troops guarding the arrested Brown, and John Wilkes Booth was a spectator at Brown's execution. Lee was in overall command of the operation to retake the arsenal. Several of those present at the raid would later be involved in the Civil War: Colonel Robert E. Ten of the raiders were killed during the raid, seven were tried and executed afterwards, and five escaped. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene. : 5īrown's party of 22 was defeated by a company of U.S. It has been called the dress rehearsal for, or tragic prelude to, the Civil War. John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia).
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