Abolitionist John Brown Was Executed

On December 2, 1859, abolitionist John Brown was hanged at Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), convicted of treason, murder, and conspiring to incite a slave insurrection. The sentence came just six weeks after his armed raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, an audacious attempt to seize weapons and ignite a revolt against slavery across the South.

The raid collapsed within two days. Most of Brown’s small band were killed or captured by U.S. Marines, and Brown himself was wounded and seized. His trial lasted barely a week before a Virginia court condemned him to death. On the morning of his execution, he handed a guard a note warning that the nation’s crimes would be purged only with blood.

“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

Many Northerners hailed Brown as a martyr, while the South recoiled in alarm. The episode sharpened the bitter sectional divide and is widely seen as a milestone on the road to the Civil War, which erupted little more than a year later.