NARRATOR: On the night of October 16, 1859, the abolitionist John Brown, a white man from Connecticut, and his band of 21 men stormed the federal arsenal in the sleepy river town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with the intention of seizing the arsenal's weapons and waging a greater war against slavery. It was just the latest dramatic action taken by a man intent on stopping slavery through violence.

DAVID REYNOLDS: He wasn't naturally a violent person. In fact, he was very religious, very Christian. But he was just driven to an absolute fury by the fact that it looked like slavery was legally entrenched, almost in cement. And he said, the only thing that's going to solve this is violence. He raids Virginia to try to free the slaves, and escaped to the mountains with them to create slave revolts throughout the South, in an effort to disrupt slavery.

[GUNSHOTS]

NARRATOR: In Harpers Ferry, Brown and his army of liberation swiftly moved through the village. They occupied the arsenal, taking hostages. But armed citizens surrounded the rebels exchanging gunfire, until the US Marines arrived, led by a general named Robert E. Lee. Three days later, Brown was cornered and subdued.

While John Brown awaited trial and sentencing, he spread his abolitionist message from prison through his published personal letters. And his words captivated the nation. Seven weeks after his arrest, John Brown and his surviving men were convicted and hanged. But Brown's execution and the violence he orchestrated at Harpers Ferry had a profound effect on the country.

- He really wanted to create panic in the South, and he did, even though he "failed", quote unquote, because he was captured. He was put in prison. He was hanged. He did create panic, a lot of panic, in the south.

NARRATOR: John Brown created fear among southerners, who felt northern abolitionists would stop at nothing, even resort to violence, to abolish slavery.

DAVID REYNOLDS: It fanned the somewhat dormant secessionist feeling in the south. It's really secession, the secession of the southern states, that caused the Civil War.

NARRATOR: Although condemned for his use of violence, Brown's vision for a bloody end to slavery would be realized within a year with the start of the Civil War.

- It took just an extreme bloodletting to get rid of slavery. So, in that sense, sadly enough, John Brown was right in the idea the violence was needed.