Today in 1859, John Brown and 18 men begin their raid on the Federal Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Having already received 200 breechloading .52 caliber Sharps rifles and pikes from northern abolitionist societies, Brown hoped to secure the more than 100,000 muskets and rifles contained in the armory and use to arm local slaves. They would then head south, drawing off more and more men from plantations, essentially to depleting Virginia of its slaves, and causing the institution to collapse in one county after another.
Initially, all went well. Meeting no resistance entering the town, they cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory, which was being defended by a single watchman. Things started to go wrong when an eastbound Baltimore & Ohio train approached the town and train's baggage master tried to warn the passengers. Brown's men yelled for him to halt and then opened fire. The baggage master, a free black man Hayward Shepherd, became the first casualty of John Brown's war against slavery. Inexplicably, after the shooting of Shepherd, the train was permitted to continue on its way, allowing news of the raid reaching Baltimore and Washington by late morning.
By then, local farmers, shopkeepers, and militia pinned down the raiders in the armory by firing from the heights behind the town. At noon, a company of militia seized the bridge, blocking the only escape route and prompting Brown to move his raiders into the engine house, a small brick building at the entrance to the armory. By the morning of October 18 the engine house, later known as John Brown's Fort, was surrounded by a company of U.S. Marines under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee of the United States Army. A young Army lieutenant, J.E.B. Stuart, approached under a white flag and told the raiders that their lives would be spared if they surrendered. Brown refused, saying, "No, I prefer to die here." Stuart then gave a signal and within three minutes, Brown and the survivors were dead or captives. Charged and convicted with murder, conspiring with slaves to rebel, and with treason against Virginia on November 2, Brown would be executed by hanging in Charlestown one month later
