2-356-063 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

John Brown, American abolitionist, (c1880). Brown (1800-1859) believed that armed insurrection was the only way to end slavery in the United States. He led the Free-staters in the Bleeding Kansas conflict that broke out in 1855 and was involved in the killing of five pro-slavery southerners at Pottawatomie in 1856. In 1859 he led a raid on the federal armoury at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, that was intended to obtain weapons begin an uprising against slavery in the southern states. Brown was captured after the raid, tried and hanged for treason. A print from Cassell's History of the United States, by Edmund Ollier, Volume III, Cassell Petter and Galpin, London, c1880.