Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Raid at Harpers Ferry


The raid at Harpers Ferry involved a "mad" abolitionist, five black men, 17 more abolitionists, a doctor, a general, and 88 marines. The "mad" abolitionist was John Brown. His followers included the 17 abolitionists, 3 free blacks, 1 freed slave, and 1 fugitive slave. John Brown wanted to start a slave revolt. He thought, "If I'm going to start a revolt, the slaves will need weapons." so he decided to raid a weapons cache at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. He successfully captured the cache but the first shot that he fired with the new weapons accidentally hit a black man who was working on a train. A doctor heard the shot and came right away. He said that the wound was to bad to heal and that he couldn't do anything about it. Once he saw that there was abolitionists he started thinking about what he was going to do. He said that he was going to go back to his house and go to bed but instead he went straight to the town stables. He road to all of the surrounding towns shouting that there was an abolitionist taking over Harpers Ferry. General Lee (who was a general for the confederates happened to be in one of those towns but sadly he wasn't with his army. He immediately gathered any town militia who were willing to fight. There was also a group of marines in a different town. They teamed up with General Lee and took back Harpers Ferry. John Brown was then tried for treason and was eventually hung.

Kian, Franks Design Team

1 comment:

BelThorne said...

Thanks for answering our questions with more info. Its very intersting!

Megan Beal,
Frank's Design Team