Jul 20
John Brown’s pikes. In preparation for his 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry, the abolitionist commissioned about 1,000 of these weapons, which featured a roughly 10-inch steel blade modeled after a Bowie knife attached to a 6-to-7-foot-long wooden pole.John Brown ordered the weapons to arm enslaved people who he hoped would join his insurrection. The pikes were manufactured by Charles Blair, a blacksmith from Collinsville, Connecticut. Brown stockpiled them at a farm in Maryland, but the weapons were never actually used for their intended purpose because the raid failed.
