Impact

           Short Term Impact

After the raid on Harper's Ferry, John Brown was taken by Robert E. Lee and his men to a nearby courthouse in Charles Town. He was put in prison until he could be tried. John Brown was found gulity of insurrection, treason, murder, and mounting a slave revolt. Brown was subsequently sentenced to death and was hung on Dec. 2nd, 1859. Mary Ann Brown, his wife, took his body to their family farm in New York. The farm and gravesite are currently known as John Brown Farm State Historic Site. After the Raid on Harper's Ferry, the entire nation took a side on the issue of Brown. Many Southerners were angered by his killings, and others were scared at the thought of a slave revolt. However, the northern states had a very different reaction to his deeds and execution. Brown was seen a martyr for the Abolitionist cause and his death was one of the last straws for American Slavery.            

           Long Term Impact

Many people in the north were done with slavery in America. Just two years after Brown's death, the American Civil War began. Brown was one of the major causes to this conflict because he scared the South into thinking that their way of life was at stake. Many Southerners were economically tied to slavery because they needed the almost free slave labor to make money on their plantations and farms. This deadly war pitted the North against the South. Many soldiers on both sides would keep Brown in their minds as a reason to fight. The Emancipation Proclamation would ban slavery on January 1, 1863, but the fight to end slavery would last until the end of the war in 1865. Brown is still remembered today as a hero and a symbol for equality. Because he was a white man that was willing to shed blood for the cause of black people, he is seen as as a radicalist that was not afraid to kill. He changed history by helping to cause the Civil War, thus ending slavery. The America that we know today would be very different without him. To put it into his own words, "The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."