The raid on Harpers Ferry was intended to be the first stage in an elaborate plan to establish an independent stronghold of freed slaves in the mountains of Maryland and Virginia an enterprise that had won moral and financial support from several prominent Bostonians. Choosing Harpers Ferry because of its arsenal and because of its location as a convenient gateway to the South, John Brown and his band of 16 whites and five blacks seized the armoury on the night of October 16. Quickly the entire countryside was alerted, and combined state and federal troops overwhelmed the raiders in two days. Seventeen men died in the fighting, and Brown and his six surviving followers were hanged before the end of the year. Although the raid on Harpers Ferry was denounced by a majority of Northerners, it electrified the South already fearful of slave insurrections and convinced slaveholders that abolitionists would stop at nothing to eradicate slavery. It also created a martyr, John Brown, for the antislavery cause
