Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. On October 16, , the embattled Chinese Communists break through Nationalist enemy lines and begin an epic flight from their encircled headquarters in southwest China.

On October 16, , an obscure lawyer and Congressional hopeful from the state of Illinois named Abraham Lincoln delivers a speech regarding the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which Congress had passed five months earlier. In his speech, the future president denounced the act and outlined Oscar Wilde is born on October 16, in Dublin, Ireland. He grew up in Ireland and went to England to attend Oxford, where he graduated with honors in A popular society figure known for his wit and flamboyant style, he published his own book of poems in He spent a The book, about the struggles of an orphan girl who grows up to become a governess, was an immediate popular success.

Hennard then turned the gun on himself and died by suicide. The incident was one of the deadliest On October 16, , Chevrolet begins to sell a car-truck hybrid that it calls the El Camino. On this day in , Alfred Rosenberg, the primary fabricator and disseminator of Nazi ideology, is hanged as a war criminal. By , the arsenal was established, and machines shops and rifle works factories brought industry to Harpers Ferry.

In the face of its industrial boom, the population of the town grew as Northern merchants, mechanics, and immigrant workers flooded the small western Virginia town. By the s, Harpers Ferry emerged as a significant transportation hub in the east with the building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

To begin his slave revolt, Brown planned to capture the arsenal at Harpers Ferry and use its cache of weapons to arm his followers. On the night of October 16, , Brown and a company of 21 men—including his sons—occupied the arsenal. Robert E. Lee and assisted by Captain J. Stuart , to put down the rebellion. Upon arriving in Harpers Ferry, Lee ordered the marines to storm the fort, rescue the few hostages Brown had taken earlier in the night one of which was a relative of President George Washington, and capture Brown and his men.

Brown, severely wounded in the struggle, was hanged on the morning of December 2, setting off a spark throughout the country. To Northern abolitionists, Brown was a martyr to the cause; yet to Southerners, John Brown was a symbol of northern aggression and northern hopes to destroy the Southern way of life. Fact 3: The day after Virginia seceded from the Union, Federal soldiers burnt the armory and arsenal at Harpers Ferry.

When Virginia voted to secede from the Union on April 17, , the historic arsenal at Harpers Ferry immediately became a target. Former Governor of Virginia Henry A. Wise, the same governor who had hung John Brown for carrying out similar designs on the arsenal, organized a scheme to occupy the valuable armory. Knowing that no arms supplier south of the Mason-Dixon Line could match the output or quality of Harpers Ferry, Wise hoped to raise militia to take the arsenal before the Federal government organized enough troops to hold it.

As Virginia militia bands began to assemble not four miles away, a Federal officer stationed in Harpers Ferry, Lieutenant Roger Jones, sent a distressed word to Washington that the armory was in danger and thousands of troops would be required to defend it. When it became clear that Washington was ignoring his request, Jones took matters into his own hands.

Only a handful of slaves lent Brown assistance. Instead, as Brown's band watched dawn break over the craggy ridges enclosing Harpers Ferry, local white militias—similar to today's National Guard—were hastening to arms. First to arrive were the Jefferson Guards, from nearby Charles Town.

Uniformed in blue, with tall black Mexican War-era shakos on their heads and brandishing. Newby had gone north in a failed attempt to earn enough money to buy freedom for his wife and six children. In his pocket was a letter from his wife: "It is said Master is in want of money," she had written.

As the day progressed, armed units poured in from Frederick, Maryland; Martinsburg and Shepherdstown, Virginia; and elsewhere. Brown and his raiders were soon surrounded. He and a dozen of his men held out in the engine house, a small but formidable brick building, with stout oak doors in front. Other small groups remained holed up in the musket factory and rifle works.

Acknowledging their increasingly dire predicament, Brown sent out New Yorker William Thompson, bearing a white flag, to propose a cease-fire. But Thompson was captured and held in the Galt House, a local hotel. Brown then dispatched his son, Watson, 24, and ex-cavalryman Aaron Stevens, also under a white flag, but the militiamen shot them down in the street.

Watson, although fatally wounded, managed to crawl back to the engine house. Stevens, shot four times, was arrested. When the militia stormed the rifle works, the three men inside dashed for the shallow Shenandoah, hoping to wade across. Two of them—John Kagi, vice president of Brown's provisional government, and Lewis Leary, an African-American—were shot dead in the water.

The black Oberlin student, John Copeland, reached a rock in the middle of the river, where he threw down his gun and surrendered. Twenty-year-old William Leeman slipped out of the engine house, hoping to make contact with the three men Brown had left as backup in Maryland. Leeman plunged into the Potomac and swam for his life. Trapped on an islet, he was shot dead as he tried to surrender. Throughout the afternoon, bystanders took potshots at his body. Through loopholes—small openings through which guns could be fired—that they had drilled in the engine house's thick doors, Brown's men tried to pick off their attackers, without much success.

One of their shots, however, killed the town's mayor, Fontaine Beckham, enraging the local citizenry. They dragged him onto the railroad trestle, shot him in the head as he begged for his life and tossed him over the railing into the Potomac.

By nightfall, conditions inside the engine house had grown desperate. Brown's men had not eaten for more than 24 hours. Only four remained unwounded. The bloody corpses of slain raiders, including Brown's year-old son, Oliver, lay at their feet. They knew there was no hope of escape. Eleven white hostages and two or three of their slaves were pressed against the back wall, utterly terrified.

Two pumpers and hose carts were pushed against the doors, to brace against an assault expected at any moment. Yet if Brown felt defeated, he didn't show it.

As his son Watson writhed in agony, Brown told him to die "as becomes a man. Soon perhaps a thousand men—many uniformed and disciplined, others drunk and brandishing weapons from shotguns to old muskets—would fill the narrow lanes of Harpers Ferry, surrounding Brown's tiny band. President James Buchanan had dispatched a company of Marines from Washington, under the command of one of the Army's most promising officers: Lt.

Robert E. Himself a slave owner, Lee had only disdain for abolitionists, who "he believed were exacerbating tensions by agitating among slaves and angering masters," says Elizabeth Brown Pryor, author of Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E. Lee Through His Private Letters. He gathered the 90 Marines behind a nearby warehouse and worked out a plan of attack.

In the predawn darkness, Lee's aide, a flamboyant young cavalry lieutenant, boldly approached the engine house, carrying a white flag. He was met at the door by Brown, who asked that he and his men be allowed to retreat across the river to Maryland, where they would free their hostages.

The soldier promised only that the raiders would be protected from the mob and put on trial. The lieutenant stepped aside, and with his hand gave a prearranged signal to attack. I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done.

John Brown, December 2, Explore This Park. Article John Brown's Raid. The U. In the preceding months, he had raised money from other abolitionists and ordered weapons — pikes and guns — to be used in his war against slavery. Throughout the summer Brown's Army gathered at the farmhouse. Numbering twenty-one at the time of the raid, these men stayed hidden in the attic by day, reading, writing letters, polishing their rifles and playing checkers. To avoid being seen by curious neighbors, they could only come out at night.

To keep up the appearance of a normal household, Brown sent for his daughter, fifiteen year old Annie, and Oliver's wife, seventeen year old Martha. The girls prepared meals, washed clothes and kept nosy neighbors at a distance.

Brown studied maps and conferred with John Cook, hid advance man in Harpers Ferry, about the town, armory operations, train schedules and any other information deemed valuable to his plan. The time was near. On Sunday, October 16, Brown called his men together. Following a prayer, he outlined his battle plans and instructed them, "Men get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry.