ON THIS DAY...

December 2, 1859

THE AMERICAN abolitionist John Brown was hanged this day in 1859 for the role he played in the armed raid on the Harpers Ferry armoury in Virginia. His motive was to start a liberation movement among slaves by arming them. He was desperately unhappy with what he viewed as the pacifist approach of many abolitionists, and he believed that the only way to win freedom for the slaves was by armed insurrection.

“These men are all talk, what we need is action,” was his cry. He had already been waging a campaign; in 1856 he and his supporters killed five pro-slavery settlers at the Pottawatomie massacre.

He had also commanded anti-slavery forces in a series of skirmishes.

But he is most widely remembered for his ill-fated raid on Harpers Ferry on October 16. Brown had spent much of his life doing poorly in