The Liberty Bell became an iconic American symbol of freedom and independence from Great Britain. In 1851, church bells in Syracuse, New York, rang an alarm when U.S. marshals arrested fugitive slave William "Jerry" Williams, and abolitionists rescued Jerry and sent him to Canada. In 1859, bells rang throughout the North when abolitionist John Brown was executed for treason after his Harper's Ferry raid, and along the route his body took back to its burial site in the North Country. After the Civil War, the Women's Suffrage Movement adopted the Liberty Bell to symbolize its campaign for women's right to vote. This bell came from an old Vermont school house.