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.

Brown went to Kansas with the no intent to settle there permanently; rather, he went only to join in the fight to make Kansas a free state, hoping that it would take only two or three years to achieve this, and planning to then aid in the struggle in another part of the country. He arrived to find his family in a pitiable state, sick and hungry. He immediately took control, and his endless energy and unconquerable spirit held them over through the winter of 1855-1856. He prepared to meet the “Border Ruffians” with the same violence with which they threatened abolitionist settlers in Kansas.

On May 20 and 21, 1856, the Border Ruffians roared into Lawrence, Kansas and killed two abolitionists. They pillaged the town, bombarding the Free State Hotel with thirty-two cannonballs and then setting it on fire. They also burned the offices of two abolitionist newspapers to the ground, as they did the home of Charles Robinson, a well-known abolitionist. After two days, the raid ended with the Border Ruffians in control after their triumph.

The sons of John Brown were among those who decided to leave their homes in the North and travel to Kansas. Frederick, Owen, and Salmon Brown left Ohio in October of 1854 with their families, cattle, and horses, until they made it to Meredosia, Illinois, where they spent the winter waiting until the spring thaws would make it viable to cross the Missouri River. They entered Kansas on April 20, 1855, and headed to Osawatomie, near the home of their Reverend Samuel Lyle Adair, their uncle who had moved to Kansas the year before. By June, Jason, John, Jr., Oliver, and Watson Brown had arrived to join them in the establishment of a Brown settlement. In less than six months, John Brown, Sr., arrived from New York to join his sons, bringing his son-in-law, Henry Thompson, with him. While it was difficult to leave the rest of his family in New York, he used this as an opportunity to point out the horrible conditions of life for slaves, who were all too often sold on the slave market to different owners: “If it is so painful for us to part with the hope of meeting again, how of the poor slaves?”

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.

In response to threats from abolitionists that an attempt would be made to rescue Brown and his surviving follower

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