 On August 16th, 1859, Harriet Newby sent a letter to her husband. Harriet was a border state slave and her husband was Dangerfield Newby, a fugitive slave who had raised money to buy her freedom only to have her owner reject the previously agreed upon price. So Dangerfield and his wife were separated and desperate. In her letter, she made clear the desperate situation she and her infant child were in. She wrote, quote, The last two years has been like a troubled dream to me. It is said master is in want of money. If so, I know not what time he may sell me, and then all my bright hopes of the future are blasted, for there has been one bright hope to cheer me in all my troubles. That is to be with you, for if I thought I should never see you, this earth would have no charms for me. Do all you can for me, which I have no doubt you will. End quote. Dangerfield Newby was the first of John Brown's men to be killed two months after this letter was written. He was shot in the neck and left on the ground where hogs came to nibble at his corpse. The angry citizens of Harper's Ferry would poke sticks in the hole of his neck wound and some cut pieces of his ears to keep his souvenirs. Others rooted through his pockets for valuables and among the contents found Dangerfield Newby's dead body were the letters from his wife urging him to do anything he could to come and see her and the children. Nobody involved in Harper's Ferry would get a happy ending, but Dangerfield Newby's story is probably the most heartbreaking. Driven by desperation, he was the first of Brown's men shot down. His wife, just as she feared, was sold down the river to a sugar plantation in Louisiana, this being one of the most terrifying fates a slave could face, with the Louisiana sugar plantations being notoriously cruel in the way they drove their workers. The $741 Dangerfield had saved up to purchase his wife's freedom was distributed among his relatives in Ohio. John Brown was, to Dangerfield, the last desperate hope, but John Brown only led him to his death. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. This episode is probably what we would recognize as the climax of the antebellum period of the United States, John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. Even though Brown had significant difficulty finding support in the North, his actions had a tremendous impact on the South, coloring Southern perception of Northerners and effectively pouring gasoline on the secessionist fire. Bill Williams was a watchman on the B&O Railroad Bridge that ran across the Potomac River into Harper's Ferry, Virginia. Every half hour, Williams was supposed to punch a time clock during his patrol on the bridge, but his patrol would be interrupted a little bit before midnight when a pair of armed men appeared. Then 17 more came out of nowhere. Two of them were men Williams recognized and the other was a stranger. One of them was John Cook, John Brown's spy in Harper's Ferry, and the other was John Brown himself, though Williams knew him by the alias Isaac Smith. John calmly informed Williams that he was now their prisoner. Williams thought he was joking at first, but this didn't last long as he was escorted at gunpoint into the armory in Harper's Ferry where John Brown would be stationed throughout the raid, along with many other hostages. As Brown and his men were fiddling with the padlock over the armory, Daniel Willen rode by and was ordered by Brown's raiders to open the gate. He refused, and the raiders threatened him before using a crowbar to break the lock themselves. John took Willen and Williams inside the armory where he set up shop. Brown then ordered some of the men to guard the gate to the armory and dispatched various orders for the rest of them. Then he turned to his hostages and announced his goal. Quote, I want to free all the Negroes in the state. If the citizens interfere with me, I must only burn the town and have blood." End quote. At 1.30 in the morning, Lewis Washington was woken up by somebody calling his name from the hallway of his home. Washington wasn't suspicious. He assumed it was a late night visit from a friend who'd been led in by his slaves. But when Washington opened his bedroom door, still wearing his night shirt and slippers, he was surprised to see who was calling for him. John Cook. If you remember from the previous episode, Cook had met with Washington in his home and befriended the man some months prior. But John Cook was accompanied by a handful of other men. One of them was Aaron Stevens, who was holding a torch to light the dark hallway in one hand and a revolver in the other. You are our prisoner, he told Washington. He then told Washington to get dressed, which Washington did, but slowly asking the men to light candles and put out their torches in order to prevent his house from catching fire. Then he asked why the men were taking him hostage. Stevens gave the answer, quote. We have come here for the purpose of liberating all the slaves of the South, end quote. Washington assumed he was lying. And with good reason, John Cook told the men where to find Washington's heirlooms, the gun that Marquis de Lafayette had given George Washington, as well as the sword given to George Washington by Frederick the Great. Aaron Stevens also told Lewis Washington to hand over his wristwatch, but Washington, according to his personal testimony later, said, quote, you told me your purpose was philanthropic, but you did not mention at the same time that it was robbery and rascality, end quote. When Washington was escorted outside his house, his carriage pulled up. Being driven by a black man, he did not recognize. This was Shields Green, the raider who joined Brown when Brown was trying to recruit Frederick Douglass. The men then climbed into the carriage and started off toward the armory. And as they traveled, John Cook kindly asked Washington if he'd done any shooting since their contest at his home. And he apologized to Washington for having to take him prisoner after he'd shown such hospitality during his visit to Washington's home. Before reaching the armory, the carriage stopped at the home of another slave owner named John Allstat. According to Washington's testimony, the raiders broke into the home while Washington was kept under guard in the carriage. And he could hear, quote, a shout of murder and general commotion in the house, end quote. Washington was living alone, so it was easy for the raiders to take him. But Allstat had a family. The Shouts Washington could hear came from Allstat's daughter and female cousin after three raiders barged into the home and ordered Allstat to get dressed and come with them. They also took Allstat's 18-year-old son hostage. But when Allstat came outside, his seven slaves had already been gathered up and loaded into the carriage. Allstat and his son were loaded up as well. And the carriage started back toward the armory. When the hostages were unloaded at the armory, Washington was greeted by John Brown, though he didn't know who he was at first. And Brown told him, quote, you will find a fire in here, sir. It's rather cool this morning, end quote. Brown then told Washington that at dawn, he was to write to one of his friends and tell them to send a, quote, stout, able-bodied Negro, end quote, as ransom for Washington. And Brown also told Washington that he valued him as a hostage because of the moralizing effect of having a relative of George Washington as one of his captives. Before his arrival at the armory, Louis Washington did not believe the men were really trying to free slaves. He assumed they were just a group of robbers. But now he could see a handful of black men coming occasionally to warm their hands by the fire inside the armory, each carrying with them a pipe provided by John Brown. This would mostly be Allstat slaves, by the way. The majority of Washington's slaves were away when the Raiders came. This is one of the flaws in John Brown's plan, really, is that they attacked on a Sunday, which was when slaves often were allowed to go visit relatives or friends elsewhere. But there were three of Washington's slaves who were still there, and they provide an interesting study in how slaves reacted to this kind of raid. Of Washington's three slaves, one eagerly joined Brown's Raiders, which was the kind of reaction Brown assumed all slaves would have. Another slave joined the Raiders until it started to become clear that they were going to be captured or killed, and then he tried to pretend that he'd never joined the Raiders, and he was just kept there as a hostage. The third slave was afraid to join them at all, not because he was comfortable in captivity, as some people still seem to think, but because he assumed the raid was going to fail and he didn't want to face the punishment inflicted on rebellious slaves. At midnight, about the same time that Brown was making his grand announcement to the initial hostages before Louis Washington's carriage arrived, Bill Williams was to be relieved by another patrolman, Patrick Higgins. He was late that night, but when he arrived 10 minutes after midnight, he saw that all of the lamps lighting the bridge had been put out. The last punch in the time clock had been made nearly two hours ago. Higgins found out why at 30 minutes after midnight when he crossed the bridge to the Virginia side, at which point two men stood in front of them, holding spears or something that looked like spears to Higgins and rifles. One of the strange men informed Higgins that he, like Williams, was their prisoner. But instead of going quietly, Higgins swung the lantern he was carrying at the man, causing him to stumble back and then Higgins ran to a nearby hotel, threw himself through a window and told the hotel clerk, William Throckmorton, to lock the doors as they could hear gunshots from the men outside. Throckmorton had actually seen Brown and his wagon of weapons roll by sometime earlier and had assumed it was a quote, unquote, gypsy wagon. At 1.25 a.m., the express train to Baltimore arrived and Throckmorton and Higgins let the crew know that there were armed strangers on the bridge. The conductor, Andrew Phelps, responded by grabbing a lantern and going outside to investigate with the train following slowly behind him. It wasn't long before he heard a voice yell out, stand and deliver. And he could see a pair of rifle muscles in the dark pointed at him. A moment later, his lantern was snatched out of his hand and extinguished. Phelps turned to run, ordering the engineer of the train to back the train back off the bridge and he could hear gunshots behind him. And a moment later, a black man stumbled in front of him saying, I am shot. His name was Hayward Shepherd, a free black man who was employed as a baggage master at the Harper's Ferry Depot. Unbeknownst to Phelps, he'd been following behind him to see what all the commotion was about. Apparently, Shepherd had been ordered to halt just as all the other men, but he chose instead to turn and run away. One of the raiders shot behind him and a bullet hit him in the back and came clean through his chest. He was carried to a doctor who ruled that the wound was fatal. Shepherd would linger for several more hours before finally dying, but the first casualty in John Brown's war to free the slaves was a free black man who was shot by Brown's men. After Shepherds was shot, gunfire was exchanged between other raiders and Throckmorton, maybe others as well. At this point, most people still had no idea what was going on. People on the train were speculating that it might be a strike of disgruntled armory workers, or maybe they were robbers. But among the people who were caught up in the affair was a doctor named John Starrie. He's the one who checked Hayward Shepherd's wound, but at one point in the night, he also took his horse and sounded the alarm through the rest of Harper's Ferry, basically acting like Paul Revere to warn people of John Brown and his raiders. But things really started to heat up after daybreak on Monday morning the 17th. John Brown was in the armory with a handful of hostages and a few liberated slaves, and he had dispatched some of his men to other strategic points in Harper's Ferry, including the ironworks. But as people were waking up, the news of the raid would spread much more quickly. The first sign of alarm for many people in the town was that the armory bell didn't ring as it usually did every morning. The man who was supposed to have sounded the armory bell had been taken prisoner when he showed up in the morning along with several other early morning armory workers who were added to Brown's hostages. So by morning, Brown had about 40 hostages total. Now for all his terrorism, Brown treated his hostages kindly, even according to their own testimonies. And he went as far to send some of them with escorts to inform their families they were safe and to eat breakfast before returning back to the armory. He also sent instructions to the nearby wager house to send enough food to feed his men and the prisoners. John Brown also went to tell Andrew Phelps, the conductor of the B&O train, to let him know that it was safe to take his train across the bridge. Phelps was cautious and he asked Brown to escort the train across the bridge to ensure its safety, which Brown did. After he led the train into Maryland, Brown said to Phelps, quote, you no doubt wonder that a man of my age should be here with a band of armed men. But if you knew my past history, you would not wonder at it so much, end quote. Apparently this statement made a lasting impression on Phelps, enough to remember it clearly anyway. John Brown also explained to him the reason for the raid and at 7 a.m. Phelps sent a message over the telegraph line that said, quote, express train bound east under my charge was stopped this morning at Harper's Ferry by armed abolitionists. They say they have come to free the slaves and intend to do it all hazards. The leader of those men requested me to say to you that this is the last train that shall pass the bridge either east or west. It has been suggested you had better notify the secretary of war at once, end quote. Phelps also sent a second telegram saying that the captain, as he referred to Brown, was expecting 1500 reinforcements. Brown told the same to his hostages and the armory and his men. It's a matter of debate whether Brown actually believed he was going to receive a bunch of reinforcements or if he was bluffing for appearances and we don't know for sure, but I find it pretty convincing that Brown did naively believe that swarms of slaves were going to flock to join him and he really was this delusional, but we don't really know what was going on in Brown's head at this point. But as word spread throughout the town, Brown's band of raiders had been inflated by word of mouth to consisting of 750 men, including hundreds of armed black men shouting about their desire for liberty. So whether or not Brown was deliberately trying to cultivate this inaccurate perception, this is certainly what actually happened. The passengers of the B&O train were so terrified that they were scribbling notes on pieces of paper and flinging them out the windows of the train hoping that somebody would read them and send help. First report had lines used language such as quote, extensive Negro conspiracy in Virginia and Maryland and general stampede of slaves. So this is the story of the raid that is spreading throughout the country while the raid at Harper's Ferry was still taking place as word spread, some of the townspeople were grabbing their own guns and a mob started forming to defend against the raiders. One of these men was a grocer named Thomas Borley. When he learned of the attack, he picked up his shotgun and went to fight back. He reached Shenandoah Street and saw one of Brown's guards standing watch. He unleashed a load of buckshot at him but did no damage. Brown's raider returned fire with his rifle hitting Borley in the crotch. Borley died shortly after leaving behind a wife and four children, one of whom was his niece who he'd adopted after her own parents had died. Heyward Shepherd is often cited as the first person killed at Harper's Ferry and this is true if you count from the time the mortal wound was inflicted but Shepherd lingered until well into the day so Borley counts as the first person to actually die during the raid. News of Borley's death spread fast as people were already being alarmed by the sounding of the Lutheran church bells rung by John Starrie. When Starrie learned of Borley's death, he mounted his horse once again and rode to Charlestown eight miles away to try to find reinforcements. John Cook and some of Brown's other men were away from the armory at this point as Cook knew of more slave owners he could liberate slaves from. Their target now was a man who lived on the Maryland side of the border next to Harper's Ferry. He rode into town on Monday morning as he usually did when John Cook called out to him, Mr. Byrne, stop. When Byrne turned around, he saw John Cook, who he recognized, next to Charles did, who he did not recognize, sitting on a farm wagon. Cook said to him, I am very sorry to inform you that you are my prisoner. Byrne answered him, you are certainly joking to which Cook replied, I am not. Charles Tidd then pointed his rifle at Byrne and said, you must go with us to your place. We want your Negroes. Byrne owned a farm and several slaves and Cook was instructed to take him hostage, liberate his slaves who would then presumably join John Brown's party and take any weapons they could to add to Brown's growing arsenal. With Cook and Tidd were William Lehman and five of the liberated Harper's Ferry slaves who had been armed with pikes. When the men met inside Byrne's house, the raiders made themselves at home while John Cook gave his speech about how all men were created equal according to Byrne's testimony given later. Visiting Byrne was one of his female cousins who was also a witness to the affair. But although Byrne was willing to meet their demands, Cook and the others were out of luck. Byrne's slaves were away from home. Again, this was common practice, especially in border states for Sunday evenings. His slaves had left Saturday to visit family and they had not yet returned. There was nobody here to liberate so the men took Byrne as their hostage and left. They stopped again at the nearby school house which Brown had picked out as the base for his weapons depot. But by the time the men arrived, it was already 10 a.m. and the school was in session. There were about 25 children inside the school house as well as their teacher, a man named Lind Currie. Cook told Currie that he needed to use the school house to store his weapons, but he wanted Currie to continue with the lessons as normal so as not to interrupt the children's education. When he was saying this just to give you the image of what the children would have been looking at, Cook was armed with a rifle, a bowy knife and two revolvers that hung it aside. The black men were standing nearby holding their long pikes and the other two raiders were also carrying guns. So the idea that the lessons could have continued as usual seems rather absurd but this was the instruction Cook gave. Currie pointed out to Cook that his presence made it pretty much impossible for his students to engage in their lesson. So Cook turned to the children and tried to reassure them. As you can probably imagine, this had little effect and one boy was so frightened that Cook allowed Currie to escort the child home. When Currie was gone, the raiders unloaded their weapons and one of Louis Washington's slaves apparently informed Cook that Currie himself was a slave owner, something that Cook was not previously aware of. So when Currie returned, John Cook dropped his friendly pretense. According to Currie's testimony, Cook was excited and talked incessantly. With the wagon unloaded, William Lehman was sent to take the wagon and the hostage Terrence burned to the armory. A little before noon, Cook received word that everything was going well so far but not long after, he could hear gunfire and he received no information as to what it was about, who was hurt if anybody or what was going on at the armory. He did his best to maintain his confident composure. According to Currie's testimony, as a gunshot would go off, Cook would turn to one of the liberated slaves holding a pike and say, quote, there, that's another one of your oppressors gone. But as the firing continued, Cook seemed to become increasingly visibly agitated. And finally, Cook made Currie promise that he would reveal nothing of what he had witnessed and he released him. Cook then made his way down toward the Potomac to find out what was going on and what he learned was not good news. In the armory, John Brown was struggling to deal with the conflicts between his intentions and his results. He continued to assure his hostages who were being held captive by men armed with sharps rifles, pikes and torches that he meant them no harm. He blamed the shooting of Hayward Shepherd on quote, unquote, bad management by his raiders and in a bit of irony that seemed to have been lost on him, he was forcing his hostages to melt down pewter plates and dining utensils to make bullets. So as a part of his plan to free the slaves, John Brown was literally forcing his hostages to labor for him at gunpoint. The gunfire that John Cook had been hearing was not raiders killing slave owners as he claimed in the schoolhouse, but was actually Harper's Ferry citizens who set up in the building surrounding the armory to send the occasional bullet at the raiders. Though this was mostly just a way to keep them contained and in fear as the raiders themselves were concealed inside the armory safe from the gunfire. As the day went on and word spread, more people from the surrounding area grabbed their own guns and joined the defense of the town so that before the morning was over, there were more than 150 volunteers ready to fight the raiders. The volunteers were divided into five units by a local militia officer and each unit was placed strategically around the armory. Brown and his men inside the armory were surrounded and they were also being cut off from the raiders who had been sent to the schoolhouse and the rifle works. John Brown had pretty much thrown everything in on the idea that fugitive slaves would swarm in to reinforce him with no concrete idea of where these fugitives would even come from since there were only a handful of slaves in Harper's Ferry to begin with. One group of 20 volunteers was ordered to flank Brown from the Potomac Bridge. They managed to catch Brown's sentries on the bridge by surprise, firing their weapons wildly as they made their ambush. Brown's sentinels retreated with the volunteers following behind them toward the armory. Some of the raiders inside the armory came out to offer cover fire for their friends, but this didn't stop Dangerfield Newby from taking a bullet to the neck from a shooter stationed in a nearby building as I recounted in the opening anecdote of this episode. The rest of Brown's men were unwilling to risk getting shot themselves to recover his body, so he was left to be mutilated by the angry townspeople. In retrospect, it's pretty clear that Brown's party of raiders had already effectively been defeated by sticking around after the break of dawn, but the death of Dangerfield Newby was the first sign to many of them that things were turning south. Not only did Newby signify the first casualty among Brown's men, but the raiders also lost control of the all-important Potomac Bridge that crossed into Maryland. Trapped inside the armory, John Brown hoped that he would be able to use his hostages as leverage to negotiate a ceasefire. The hostages agreed to help in the negotiations and Brown sent William Thompson to escort one of the leading citizens Brown had in captivity, waving a flag of truce. As soon as the pair were outside though, the citizens who met him simply grabbed Thompson and took him to the wager house where they tied him to a chair. Then they started to interrogate him about the purpose of the attack on Harper's Ferry. Thompson revealed that he'd been misled by Brown into believing that if they attacked, blacks and non-slave holding whites would flock to support them. After Thompson was taken, another one of the hostages, Archibald Kitzmiller, convinced John Brown to send him out to try to negotiate a ceasefire. Kitzmiller was sent out under the escort of Aaron Stevens and Watson Brown. Despite waving a white handkerchief, Stevens was shot as well. The local saloon keeper, George Chambers, who had relatives among Brown's hostages broke one of the upper story windows of his saloon so he could fire out of it, along with another gunman with him. Watson Brown immediately took a bullet to the stomach. He fell back to the armory, vomiting blood. Stevens was hit as well and he returned fire, but he was hit a couple of more times and fell to the ground. As he lay bleeding, he said to Kitzmiller, quote, I have been cruelly deceived. In reply, Kitzmiller, who had been woken up before dawn by John Starrie, warning him of the raiders, said, quote, I wish I had remained at home. Stevens lost a tremendous amount of blood as he groaned in pain on the ground. One witness said, quote, I seen big beefs killed and they did not lose more blood. Another hostage, Joseph Brua, volunteered to go out and help Stevens. Brown had already lost three men while trying to sue for peace, so he let Brua go alone. But Brua demonstrated remarkable honor in that he actually did help Stevens into the wager house before returning himself to the armory, volunteering himself as a hostage until everybody else was safely freed. But now Watson was lying on the floor of the armory, bleeding out and Stevens was still miraculously alive at the wager house. Brown, meanwhile, was angry that he was not treated as a military leader, but was instead treated as a terrorist, this illustrating the delusion John Brown was operating under. With two of his comrades dying, William Lehman decided he'd be better off trying to sneak away. At about one in the afternoon, he snuck away from the armory while everybody's attention was focused on the armory gate. He crossed the railroad and jumped into the river and he got about 60 yards before he got caught. There were armed citizens on the bridge and they started to shoot at him. Two others moved toward the riverbank and started waiting in after him. In the commotion, Lehman slipped on a rock and fell in the water. He lost his rifle, but he let it go as he tried to make it to the other side using his knife to cut the straps of his ammo pouch and pistols to lighten his load. As the two men started closing in on him, he yelled, don't shoot and throw up his hands and surrender. But in response, one of the men drew his gun and shot him in the face point blank. The men then rifled through Lehman's pockets and then left his corpse in the river where it was visible under the crystal clear water. The board gunman occupying the bridge used his body for target practice, riddling it with dozens of more bullets over the day. The shooting finally dislodged the corpse from the rocks and the river carried the body away. At the rifle works, John Caggy could see other armed volunteers starting to surround it, preparing to attack. He ordered the rest of the raiders with him to get ready to escape. Like Lehman, they ducked out and started wading into the Potomac River to avoid the gunmen occupying the bridges. And like Lehman, they were spotted, shot at and chased after. There was an elderly woman who was able to see the entire episode from her home. She said of the incident, quote, our men chased them in the river just below here and I saw them shot down like dogs, end quote. Another woman said, quote, I saw one poor wretch rise above the water and someone strike him with a club. He sank again and in a moment they dragged him out of corpse, end quote. The corpse the woman described being drugged out of the river was that of John Caggy. Another of the raiders killed was a free black man named Louis Leary who was shot as he climbed on top of a large rock. He was dragged out of the river, still alive and he lingered for another 12 hours before finally passing away. Leary had a wife and infant daughter in Ohio who thought he was in Pennsylvania visiting family. When he left them, his wife Mary wondered why he had, quote, wept like a child, unquote, when he was saying his goodbyes to them. Two other men were taken prisoner. One was John Copeland, another free black raider and the other was one of the Harper's Ferry slaves who'd been liberated by Brown's men. It was only due to the intervention of a local religious leader that the two captured men weren't lynched on this spot though John Copeland would eventually be hanged and the slave would die in prison. But there were five men who'd been posted at the rifle works, the last one being a slave named Jim who'd been hired out to Louis Washington. He was not killed by the men chasing him. Instead, he tried to escape in the river but he couldn't swim and he was weighed down by his gear so he drowned. He was the first slave to die in John Brown's raid. Back at the armory, the remaining raiders were making matters worse for themselves as they retaliated for Stevens, Thompson, and Watson Brown. They managed to shoot George Turner in the neck in front of a horde of onlookers and as if to pour salt in the wound, Hayward Shepherd, the first casualty in the raid, finally died after lingering for more than 12 hours. His death came at about three in the afternoon. The mayor of Harper's Ferry, Fontaine Beckham who was also the B&O agent and Shepherd's employer according to Virginia law at the time, any free black who stayed in the state for more than a year would be sold into slavery unless they were sponsored by a white person and Beckham himself a slave owner was Shepherd sponsored. So when Shepherd died, Beckham went berserk. He pulled a pistol out of his pocket and went out to the railroad platform moving toward the raiders. As he advanced, he was shot down by Edwin Coppock. Now think of the thick irony in this entire story. John Brown conducted a raid to liberate the slaves. The first casualty in the raid was a free black man and his death outraged a slave owner who Brown's men killed as he was trying to get revenge on the raiders for killing the free black man he sponsored and employed. There is no black and white version of this history the way some people try to paint it. Coppock had no clue who the man was. He had just killed, of course. But the witnesses did know and they went crazy at seeing their mayor killed. Some people started yelling to kill William Thompson who was still tied to the chair in the wager house. A man pressed a gun against Thompson's skull and was about to shoot until a woman stopped him covering his face with her arms and shielding him from the bullet according to the man's testimony later. She wanted him to be tried legally before he was executed. Now in her own testimony, she claimed that she was afraid that if she saw the man killed, she might die herself and she denied ever touching him. So the testimonies have some conflict but she did save Thompson from being shot. She didn't stop him from being killed though instead of shooting him, the men dragged Thompson outside and tried to find a rope that they could lynch him with. Thompson's final words to his executioners were quote, you may kill me but it will be revenged. There are 80,000 persons sworn to carry out this work. End quote. These kinds of statements are worth keeping in mind as we try to understand the mindset of Southerners on the eve of secession. Thompson was obviously lying but the people in the South wouldn't know this when they read about this statement. But the men never found a rope so they simply raised their guns and killed him without the formal ceremony of a military firing squad. Before his body hit the ground, more than a dozen bullets had been pumped into him but the men wanted more blood so they stormed back to the wager house to finish off the wounded Aaron Stevens but since he was dying already, they decided to let his injuries finish him off. So now we are finally back to the time that John Cook left the schoolhouse to find out what was going on. Seeing that the rest of the Raiders were in trouble, he started shooting his own rifle across the river to draw attention away from his comrades. The ploy worked and people started shooting back at John Cook. Finally, the townspeople decided to pull back from the engine house which is where John Brown took 10 of his hostages as a small retreat further back in the armory. As Brown's men moved back toward the engine house though, they lost two more men. One was Stuart Taylor and the other was another one of Brown's sons, Oliver. Oliver Brown was only 20 years old when the raid took place and his wife Martha was pregnant with their first child. His daughter would be born in 1860 and she was named Olive in memory of her father. She died two days after she was born. After this, stricken with grief over the loss of her husband and daughter, the 17 year old Martha fell sick. She told her loved ones that she no longer had anything to live for. Gave away what few possessions she had and then died only a month after giving birth. John Brown's raid was already a failure but by now after losing two sons as well as several other men, John Brown was determined to hold out as long as he could and it would be none other than Robert E. Lee who would be brought in to help end the standoff. We will continue that part of the story in the next episode. For more content like this, visit mesis.org.