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John Brown pike


This pike was confiscated in connection with John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, October 16–18, 1859. Two and a half years before, Brown had contracted with Charles Blair, a forgemaster in Collinsville, Connecticut, to make 950 pikes for a dollar a piece. Brown intended to issue these inexpensive weapons to his army of slave insurgents. He had the pikes designed in the fashion of a Bowie knife he had taken from a captured Missourian in the border war against the slave power in Kansas.


Division of the History of Technology, Armed Forces History
National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution
Behring Center

 

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