Brown believed this war would end the “peculiar institution” of slavery in the United States forever and that God approved of his plan. He intended to start a war between slaves and slaveholders by distributing these weapons to the enslaved. By 1859, fueled by donations from wealthy abolitionists, Brown was again ready to strike a blow against slavery and slaveholders-this time in the South.īrown’s target was the sleepy Virginia town of Harper’s Ferry (now spelled “Harpers Ferry'), where he planned to capture the stockpile of guns and ammunition at the federal arsenal.

It was in “Bleeding Kansas,” named for violent conflicts between proslavery and antislavery settlers there, that John Brown led a guerilla warfare campaign against the territory’s proslavery settlers, including a deadly attack against residents of Pottawatomie Creek. John Brown first made a name for himself as a militant abolitionist in 1854, when Brown traveled to Kansas following the Kansas-Nebraska Act, intent on defending the territory from the scourge of slavery.

Tombstone territory the hostage