Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"This situation attracted the attention of John Brown, a devout abolitionist in his mid-50s, who believe that slavery in the United States was delaying the second coming of Christ. . . . Brown hoped to stir up a slave insurrection. . . . It was in pursuit of the scheme that, with a band of 15 whites and five blacks, he led a raid on the United States armory at Harper's Ferry in Virginia. At the Armory Brown took many local slave owners prisoner and armed their slaves. However, the next day the armory was stormed by a force of U.S. Marines, commanded by the future General Robert E. Lee. Brown was wounded, and two of his sons and eight others were killed. Taken prisoner, he was hanged, achieving immortality as an abolitionist martyr." [Furtado: 1001 Days]