James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

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Chapter 1: the preliminary examination.

The prisoners were formally committed to jail on the 20th of October, by a Justice of the Peace of Charlestown, on the oaths of Henry A. Wise and two others, “for feloniously conspiring with each other-, and other persons unknown, to make an abolition insurrection and open war against the Commonwealth of Virginia,” and for the additional crimes of murder and “conspiring with slaves to rebel and to make insurrection.” On the same day a warrant was issued to the Sheriff, commanding him to summon eight Justices of the Peace to hold a Preliminary Court of Examination on the 25th of October.

On the day thus appointed the Preliminary Court assembled; a person named Colonel Davenport presiding. At half past 10 o'clock in the forenoon, the prisoners were conducted from the jail under a guard of eighty armed men. Another military force was stationed around “the Court House, which was bristling with bayonets on all sides.”

John Brown and Coppie were manacled together. “The prisoners, as brought into Court,” writes a proslavery