Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/22

22 On the night of the 16th day of October, 1859, John Brown, together with sixteen white men and five negroes as conspirators, took armed possession of the United States armory at Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, killed four of the inhabitants, and were dislodged by armed force, which they resisted, and in the action seven of the white conspirators were killed, and three of the negroes. John Brown was wounded and taken prisoner, and he, together with four others of the white conspirators, and two of the negroes, were tried, convicted, and executed, and five escaped.

2d. This took place in pursuance of a conspiracy commenced in Kansas by John Brown and most of these conspirators, in the last part of 1857 or beginning of 1858. They were young men and entirely under the influence of Brown, and had been, as well as Brown, deeply engaged in the conflicts in Kansas in 1855, 1856, and 1857. From Kansas they passed into Iowa, and from thence they were led by Brown to Chatham, in Canada West. There they, together with a number of negroes, formed a secret organization, with written articles of association, drawn up by Brown, having for its object the raising of slave insurrection in the slaveholding States and subverting the government thereof.

3d. They had two hundred Sharp's carbines and two hundred revolver pistols and about one thousand pikes, together with a quantity of clothing and ammunition. The carbines and revolvers had been procured by contributions in Massachusetts, in 1856, and forwarded to Iowa to be sent into Kansas for the aid and in the defense of the free-State people in the struggle then existing there, and they had been intrusted to John Brown for that purpose, together with the ammunition. The clothing, which had been contributed for the suffering people of Kansas, had been intrusted to him there for that purpose. In 1857 these troubles in Kansas in a great degree subsided. The associations and committees, who had made contributions, ceased operations, and these arms and munitions, in the hands of Brown, came to be almost overlooked and disregarded, until the summer of 1858, when a suggestion came to the persons having control of them, at Boston, that John Brown was about to make some improper use of them, and thereupon he was particularly charged to make no use of them but in Kansas, and for the defense of the free-State people there, the purpose for which they had been furnished. It seems that this, together with being unable to procure money, and an apprehension of being exposed, prevented him from executing the purpose of his conspiracy for that year.

In 1859, he procured to be completed in Connecticut one thousand pikes, for which he had contracted and partly paid in 1856 or 1857, for like service in Kansas, and then in 1859, he procured those pikes, and also those carbines and revolvers, and the ammunition and clothing, to be privately conveyed and secreted at or near Harper's Ferry, without the knowledge or consent of those who had contributed them for use in Kansas, and contrary to the order so given him by those in control.

4th. There is no evidence that any other citizens than those there with Brown were accessory to this outbreak or invasion, by contributions