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During the spring of 1858, John Brown held a meeting in Ontario between blacks and whites in which he stated his intentions to form a stronghold in the mountains between Virginia and Maryland for escaped slaves, even going so far as to adopt his own provisional constitution for the United States, which his group adopted.  Several prominent Boston abolitionists also gave him financial and moral support.

During the spring of 1858, John Brown held a meeting in Ontario between blacks and whites in which he stated his intentions to form a stronghold in the mountains between Virginia and Maryland for escaped slaves, even going so far as to adopt his own provisional constitution for the United States, which his group adopted.  Several prominent Boston abolitionists also gave him financial and moral support.

By summer, 1859, Brown was in a rented farmhouse in Maryland, across the river from the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia; with him was an armed band of sixteen whites and five blacks. On the night of October 16, he raided the armoury and taken some sixty of the area's leading men as hostages, and hoped that slaves would get word of his forming an "army of emancipation", escape, and fight with him to liberate their fellow slaves. For the next thiry hours he and his men held out against the local militia, but on the following morning a small force of United States Marines led by Army colonel [[Robert E. Lee]] had quickly broken into the arsenal building, wounding Brown, and killing two of his sons and ten other followers. He was tried for murder, slave insurrection, and treason, and at the end he was convicted and hanged.  The day he was to die he spoke no last words, merely handing a note to a guard on which he had written a last, prophetic statement: ''"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."'' (TL 1, pp. 70-89) Words very similar to Brown's and expressing the exact same idea found their way into Lincoln's second inaugural addres in 1865.

By summer, 1859, Brown was in a rented farmhouse in Maryland, across the river from the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia; with him was an armed band of sixteen whites and five blacks. On the night of October 16, he raided the armoury and taken some sixty of the area's leading men as hostages, and hoped that slaves would get word of his forming an "army of emancipation", escape, and fight with him to liberate their fellow slaves. For the next thiry hours he and his men held out against the local militia, but on the following morning a small force of United States Marines led by Army colonel [[Robert E. Lee]] had quickly broken into the arsenal building, wounding Brown, and killing two of his sons and ten other followers. He was tried for murder, slave insurrection, and treason, and at the end he was convicted and hanged.  The day he was to die he spoke no last words, merely handing a note to a guard on which he had written a last, prophetic statement: ''"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."'' (TL 1, pp. 70-89)

===1860 Presidential campaign===

===1860 Presidential campaign===