John Brown of Osawatomie, the guerrilla captain of Bleeding Kansas and leader of the abortive raid on Harpers Ferry to free the slaves, was hanged on the bright balmy morning of December 2, 1859. The scene of the execution of the old abolition raider was at Charlestown, then in Virginia, but soon to become Charlestown, West Virginia, through the agency of a war which Brown’s Harpers Ferry foray hastened.

Few men have filled as many pages of American history as this farmer-like old crusader, and none have been—or are today—more controversial. Down to this time, opinions as to his character vary almost as greatly as they did the day he was hanged. John Brown, as Edmund Clarence Stedman said, “troubled them more than ever when they nailed his coffin down.”

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