So the quarrel went on until October, 1859, when an event happened in Virginia which greatly increased the hatred of both parties. A man named John Brown laid a plot for freeing the negroes, first in Virginia and then in the whole South.
For two years, he sent men through the South secretly to stir up the negroes and incite them to kill the whites. He bought long iron pikes for the negroes to fight with, as they did not know how to use fire-arms.
When he thought that all was ready, he entered Harper’s Ferry by night, with only eighteen men, and seized the arsenal there, sending out armed men into the country to capture the principal slave-owners and to call upon the slaves to join him. This was done secretly during the night, and the next morning every white man who left his home was seized, and imprisoned in an engine-house near the arsenal. Only a few negroes came in, and they were too much scared to aid in the deadly and dastardly work.
As soon as the news of this raid spread over the country, angry men came into town from all sides, and before night John Brown and his men were shut up in the engine-house.
Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.
Soon a band of marines, under the command of Colonel R. E. Lee, was sent out from Washington by the Government, and as John Brown would not surrender, the soldiers at once stormed the engine-house. Ten of John Brown’s men were killed by the soldiers, and all the rest, including Brown himself, were wounded. Six of the storming party were killed and nine wounded. John Brown and seven of his men were brought to trial at Charles Town, Virginia, and being found guilty of treason, were hanged.
The cadets of the Virginia Military Institute were ordered to Charles Town to protect the officers of the law. Major Jackson commanded a section of light artillery accompanying the battalion, and was present at the death of Brown. He afterwards gave his friends a graphic account of this dreadful scene.
This event cast great gloom over the country. Many persons at the North thought that John Brown had died a martyr to the cause of slavery, while the people at the South saw that they could no longer enjoy in peace and safety the rights granted to them by the Constitution.
Major Jackson was truly Southern in feeling. He believed in the “Rights of States” and also that the South ought to take her stand and resent all efforts to coerce and crush her. He, however, dreaded war and thought it the duty of Christians throughout the land to pray for peace.