Existing comment:
I... am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.
-- John Brown, 1859
Dangerfield Newby
1820-1859
Dangerfield Newby participated in John Brown's ill-fated raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (today West Virginia), on October 16-18, 1859, aimed at starting a revolution to end slavery. For Newby, a former slave from the Shenandoah Valley, this cause was deeply personal: his wife and children were in bondage. After a failed attempt to buy their freedom and fearing their sale to the Deep South, Newby joined Brown's small army. He was killed on his first day of fighting. The Harpers Ferry invasion pushed a divided nation closer toward war. |