John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

[xxmagex]

I'm recenetly been pondering John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.

There are 2 what if I want to explore

1)The original plan was for the raid to take place in 1858. There would have been more raiders and more support. The raid was delayed because a Englishmen "Hugh Forbes", who was to train the raiders, got upset over not being paid started to threaten to spill the secret over the raid. The plan was delayed to 1859, at which time there were fewer men in the raiding party and support had diminshed. What if John Brown had found a way to pay Forbes and the raid had taken place in 1858?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)#Gathering_forces

2) During the raid, for reasons unclear, John Brown seem to delay action and did not make any moves to flee Harper's Ferry before the authorities arrived to surround him. He also allowed word of the raid to leak out to the rest of the country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)#The_Raid
What if John Brown had acted decisively. Seizing weapons and freeing slaves and then fleeing the town with them before the authorities were able to react? His plan seemed to be to set up a semi-guerilla war against the Slave states from the Appalachia mountains as he undertook further raids. Is tihs feasible or would he only delay his demise?

 

[Flocculencio]

Actually I'd think a successful John Brown would actually set back the Abolitionist cause quite a bit. A lot of the Abolitionists would have been sober Northern middle-class Protestants who would have been horrified at the idea of actually arming the blacks and using them to fight white government troops.

It might actually serve to delay the Civil War for a few years or even (though unlikely) pave the way to peaceful secession

"To Our Northern brothers- though we have waited long in the hope that our pleas for our peculiar institution would be heeded we find that though the ties of our brotherhood shall evermore remain, we must sever the ties of government. We have waited long and patiently while agitators arm Negroes and set them upon White Men, raising bandit armies in the name of "Abolition". It is clear that the Federal government can no longer guarantee the security of its citizens in these Southern states and, as such, like two brothers taking different roads, so must our states bid farewell to our brothers..."

 

[a989chris]

I personally highly doubt that John Brown could have succeeded to any great extent in the long term.

1. No slave uprising had ever done much in previous attempts. Most ended with the slaves being executed, and none ever became widespread.

2. As someone stated before, the abolitionists in the north would have reacted with fear and anger if they learned of armed slaves fighting white government troops. No real support for Brown's cause.

3. Soldiers would have most likely hunted Brown down within a few months at most and he would have died in OTL style.

 

[HueyLong]

Slaves wouldn't rise up even if goaded by John Brown. They didn't with Union armies just a few miles away.