William Maxon's Farm: John Brown's Iowa Training Ground

The farm that once stood on this ground was more than a homestead. William Maxon ran a station on the Underground Railroad here in Iowa, sheltering freedom-seekers moving north. And in eighteen fifty-seven and eighteen fifty-eight, the abolitionist John Brown of Ossawatomie came to this farm and used it as a training base.

Brown recruited and drilled eleven men here before leading them east toward his most audacious plan: the raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, that October. Brown believed that seizing weapons and sparking a general slave uprising could break the institution of slavery by force.

The raid failed. Brown was captured, tried, and hanged in December eighteen fifty-nine. But the trial electrified the nation and deepened the fractures that would crack open into Civil War within two years.