John Brown’s Body

This week in 1859, John Brown and his small band of abolitionists took the arsenal in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Howard Zinn explained his importance: “John Brown, more than any other white American, devoted his life, and finally sacrificed it, on behalf of freedom for the slave. His plan, impossible and courageous, was to seize the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia with a band of black and white abolitionists and set off a revolt of slaves throughout the South. The plan failed. Some of his men, including two of his own sons, were killed. John Brown was wounded, captured, sentenced…