![]() ![]() ![]() Instead of mellowing with age, both men's positions calcified over slavery as the years passed. The rough-hewn Brown was born in Connecticut and grew up in Ohio in a family with deep Puritan roots that commingled with absolute abolitionism. In many ways, the 65-year-old Ruffin, the son of a Virginia planter of the second tier along the James River, was the mirror image of the 59-year-old Brown. Among the strangers caught up in the frenzy of suspicion were Wise himself when he forgot the day's password Colonel Robert Baylor, who had commanded Virginia's militia when Brown attacked Harpers Ferry and Edmund Ruffin, famed agronomist, the "missionary of disunion" then without honor in his home state. Passwords were the order of the night and day. Troops on the streets and surrounding roads were there to enforce their edict. Green, agreed on the best way to preserve the peace in the court house: Be suspicious of all strangers-day or night, demand residents stay in their homes, close down businesses, and stop all trains from entering Jefferson County. Less than a week before John Brown was to hang for treason, Virginia Governor Henry Wise and the mayor of Charles Town, Thomas C. ![]() Their names were John Brown and Edmund Ruffin. Thousands of troops had poured into Jefferson County, on orders to repel with force any "invaders." And two old men would emerge as "martyrs" to their causes that were as diametrically opposite from one another as could be imagined. Lee from a city park, and a fear that white supremacists and antifa militants would turn any future confrontation into a bloodier event there, Virginia was braced for an even deadlier showdown in the fall of 1859. Long before the tumult and rage in Charlottesville last year over the removal of a statue of Robert E. The old court house at Charles Town, Jefferson County, Virginia, where John Brown was tried for treason. ![]()
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