In the room immediately behind this wall, the abolitionist John Brown and five of his raiders were tried for treason against the state of Virginia, murder, and inciting slaves to rebel after Brown led 21 men to seize the federal arsenal and armory at Harpers Ferry on the night of October 16, 1859, hoping to start an insurrection to topple slavery; fifteen people died before the raiders were taken. Sixty-three years later in Charles Town, labor leader Bill Blizzard and about 800 miners from the coalfields near the Kentucky border were brought to the courthouse for trial on charges of treason against the state of West Virginia and murder after violence between mine guards and miners in counties 250 miles away had escalated into full-scale open warfare in the summer of 1921, when fifteen thousand armed miners marched toward Blair Mountain against trenches and machine guns, and at least two dozen men died before federal troops arrived and the fighting subsided.
