December 2 and 16, 1859, and March 16, 1860 - Hanging John Brown and six others

December 2 and 16, 1859, and March 16, 1860

Hanging John Brown and his men 

Charleston, WV


* The Col. who oversaw this execution then built himself a mansion in the shadow of the gallows. Weird.


Are you, are you, going to the tree...

A private home today: "Kids, clean your toys - you're going to ruin the site of the gallows' scaffold!" 

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=41650

John Brown Hanging Site
Creation of a Martyr
— Prelude to War —

This is where seven men were hanged in December 1859 and March 1860 for their part in John Brown’s Raid on Harpers Ferry. The scaffold stood here in a large field.

A month after the trial, on December 2, 1859, John Brown was the first to die. He rode here in a wagon, sitting on his casket, with his arms tied. His last message, which he gave to a jail guard, read: “I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.”

Eight hundred militiamen under Col. John T. Gibson stood guard to prevent any attempt to free Brown. Brown’s body was returned to his wife in Harpers Ferry and taken home to North Elba, New York, for burial. Many Northerners regarded him as a martyr.

Among those present at Brown’s execution were Thomas J. (later “Stonewall”) Jackson, then an instructor at Virginia Military Institute, John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, and Edmund Ruffin, who fired one of the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter.

On December 16, white raiders John Cook and Edwin Coppic and black raiders Shields Green and John Copeland were hanged here. Raiders Aaron Stevens and Albert Hazlett followed on March 16.

In 1892, Gibson, the militia commander, built the Victorian house that stands here today.
 

And here's a new marker from 2025!

Fresh Marker - 2025!

Abolitionists Shields Green and John Copeland Jr. were sacrificed at the gallows on Dec. 6, 1859 for their pursuit of freedom for all Americans. Young Green and Copeland were two of the five African American men who participated in the revolt against slavery along with John Brown in Harpers Ferry in 1859. The field to the east was the hanging site.

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=12603

Within these grounds a short distance east of this marker is the site of the scaffold on which John Brown, leader of the Harpers Ferry raid, was executed December the Second, 1859.



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