Harpers Ferry Raid
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- Date:
- October 16, 1859 - October 18, 1859
- Location:
- Harpers Ferry
- United States
- West Virginia
- Context:
- American Civil War
- Key People:
- John Brown
Harpers Ferry Raid, (October 16–18, 1859), assault by an armed band of abolitionists led by John Brown on the federal armoury located at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now in West Virginia). It was a main precipitating incident to the American Civil War.
The raid on Harpers Ferry was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia—an enterprise that had won moral and financial support from several prominent Bostonians. Choosing Harpers Ferry because of its arsenal and because of its location as a convenient gateway to the South, John Brown and his band of 16 whites and five blacks seized the armoury on the night of October 16.
Sporadic fighting took place around the arsenal for two days. On October 18, combined state and federal troops (the latter commanded by Col. Robert E. Lee and including Lieut. Jeb Stuart) subdued Brown and his collaborators. Seventeen men died in the fighting. Brown was indicted for treason on October 25. He and his six surviving followers were hanged before the end of the year.
Although the raid on Harpers Ferry was denounced by a majority of Northerners, it electrified the South—already fearful of slave rebellions—and convinced slaveholders that abolitionists would stop at nothing to eradicate slavery. It also created a martyr, John Brown, for the antislavery cause. When he learned that Brown had been executed, essayist, philospher, and dedicated abolitionist Henry David Thoreau said:
I heard, to be sure, that he had been hanged, but I did not know what that meant—and not after any number of days shall I believe it. Of all the men who are said to be my contemporaries, it seems to me that John Brown is the only one who has not died.