Five years prior to the raid of Harper’s Ferry, the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act passed by Congress broadened the gap between the two opposing sides. In 1854, Kansas and Nebraska were still territories of the United States that had been obtained from France in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. This statute declared that the settlers of these regions could determine for themselves whether or not to allow slavery. The passage of this piece of legislation ignored the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had allowed the practice of slavery in Missouri and any new territories south of the 36° 30’ latitude line. Both Kansas and Nebraska were above that line, and clearly should have been automatically declared free regions.

During the three years between the Pottawatomie Massacre and his raid on Harper’s Ferry, Brown and his constituents were actively engaged in guerilla warfare. He also used this time as a chance to raise money for future operations in Kansas, and for his ultimate blow against slavery, which he planned to carry out in Virginia. In the spring of 1858, Brown decided that the place to strike would be the small town of Harper’s Ferry, in northern Virginia. He chose Harper’s Ferry because it contained a United States arsenal, which could provide arms for his followers.

Enraged abolitionists made the decision to converge their efforts on Kansas in an attempt to save it from becoming part of the slave-state group. Their violent undertaking, and the fight of the South against them, gave Kansas its fear-provoking moniker, “Bleeding Kansas.” Southerners realized the importance the outcome of this fight would have on their political strength. If Kansas and Nebraska became free states, this would leave Missouri surrounded on three sides by non-slaveholding states, and Southerners feared that the pressure put upon Missouri would force the institution of slavery to collapse.

The Border Ruffians were Missourians dedicated to making Kansas into a slave state at all costs. A Kansas correspondent of the New York Tribune asked readers, “Did you ever see a Border Ruffian? Imagine a fellow, tall, slim, but athletic, with yellow complexion, hairy-faced, with a dirty flannel shirt, of red, or blue, or green, a pair of commonplace, but dark-colored pants, tucked into an uncertain attitude by a leather belt, in which a dirty-handled bowie-knife is stuck rather ostentatiously, an eye slightly whiskey red, and teeth the color of a walnut. Such is your Border Ruffian of the lowest type.”

Around midnight on October 16, 1859, Brown and fourteen white and five black men crossed the Potomac River into Harper’s Ferry and overpowered watchmen at the United States Armory. He made his quarters in the thick-walled building at the gate of the armory and sent six men to seize the chief residents of the town and incite the blacks to insurrection. Later in the night, they captured about forty additional citizens of the town and confined them in one room of the armory gatehouse.

Some topics in this essay:
Maryland Virginia, John Brown, Kansas Nebraska, North South, Brown Kansas, Ruffian Imagine, , United Armory, Southern Northern, Harper’s Ferry, harper’s ferry, john brown, border ruffians, kansas nebraska, brown decided, raid harper’s ferry, kansas june, abolitionists killed, slavery south, colonel lee, raid harper’s,