CHAPTER XLII.
JOHN BROWN'S RAID ON HARPER'S FERRY.
The year 1859 will long be memorable for the bold
attempt of John Brown and his companions to burst
the bolted door of the Southern house of bondage,
and lead out the captives by a more effectual way than
they had yet known; an attempt in which, it is true,
the little band of heroes dashed themselves to bloody
death, but, at the same time, shook the prison walls
from summit to foundation, and shot wild alarm into
every tyrant heart in all the slave-land. What were
the plans and purposes of the noble old man is not
precisely known, and perhaps will never be; but
whatever they were, there is reason to believe they
had been long maturing,—brooded over silently and
secretly, with much earnest thought, and under a
solemn sense of religious duty.
Of the five colored men who were with the hero at the attack on Harper's Ferry, only two, Shields Green and John A. Copeland, were captured alive. The first of these was a native of South Carolina, having been born in the city of Charleston, in the year 1832. Escaping to the North in 1857, he re-
