THE REBELLION OF THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES John Brown, who declared and honestly believed himself chosen of the Lord to strike the shackles from the southern slave, was hanged on the gallows at Charlestown, near Harper's Ferry, Virginia, on the 2d day of December, 1859, as a penalty for his misguided attempt to cause an uprising of the blacks in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry, where he and his small band of followers had forcibly taken possession of the United States arsenal.  This event caused a furor of excitement in the south and events that made for internecine strife and the bloodiest civil war on record were hastened at a furious speed toward Fort Sumter, where the shot was fired that echoed its baleful significance throughout the hills and vales of Christendom.  The walls of Fort Sumter were battered by the rebel guns at Charleston, South Carolina, by the would-be assassins of the Union on the morning of April 12, 1861, and in twenty-four hours thereafter new of the world-momentous action had reached every accessible corner of the United States.  In the south the portentous message was generally received with boisterous demonstrations of joy and the belief on the part of the masses that the day would soon come for their deliverance from the "northern yoke" and that their "peculiar institution" was to be perpetuated under the constitution and laws of a new confederacy of states.  In the north a different feeling possessed the people.  The firing on Fort Sumter was looked upon with anger and sadness, and the determination was at once formed to uphold the integrity of the Union and the perpetuity of its institutions.  It was then that Abraham Lincoln began his great work of preserving the Union. Debbie Clough G-erischer G-erischer Family Web Site http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/ Assistant CC, Iowa Gen Web, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ List Manager for: IASCOTT-L * G-erischer-L * D-encker-L Fitzpatirck-L * V-lerebome-L * Huntington-L * Otis-L * Algar-L EIGS-L * Pickens-L * McNab-L * Patris-L - Rankin-L