Existing comment:
The Raid
At 10:30pm on October 16, 1859 [which was a Sunday], John Brown's raid began. Brown and his 21 followers quickly seized the US Armory, Arsenal, Rifle Works, and the bridges over the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, and made prisoners of the unarmed night watchmen. About a dozen slaves were temporarily freed from county farms while their owners were taken as hostages. By 10 o'clock Monday morning, Brown's hostage total had risen to 39, at a cost in lives of one of Brown's men and three local people. However, Brown soon lost control of the situation. His expected support did not come, but hundreds of volunteer militiamen did. The opposing forces cut off all of Brown's escape routes and killed almost half of his men by mid-afternoon. Events took an ugly turn as enraged townspeople used the dead bodies of the Northern invaders for target practice. When Federal troops arrived late that night, only Brown and four of his men were left to fight on. The assault on Brown's fort in the Armory fire engine house the next morning only lasted a matter of minutes. All of the hostages were freed. None of the slaves escaped. Thirty-six hours after it began, John Brown's attack on slavery in the Southern states was over. The controversy was just beginning. |