A compelling new look at the story of five African Americans—nearly a third of John Brown's raiders in 1859—who collectively have never been subject of a book

Late on the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of 18 raiders descended on Harpers Ferry at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages and retreated to a fire engine house where they barricaded themselves until a contingent of US Marines battered their way in on October 18.The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted and hanged. Among Brown's raiders were five African Americans whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and, even today, are little remembered. Two—John Copeland and Shields Green—were executed. Two others—Dangerfield Newby and Lewis Leary—died at the scene. Newby, the first to go, was shot in the neck, then dismembered by townspeople and left for the hogs. He was trying to liberate his enslaved wife and children.Of the five, only Osborne Perry Anderson escaped and lived to publish the lone insider account of the event that, most historians agree, was a catalyst to the catastrophic Civil War that followed over the country's original sin of slavery.Five for Freedom is the story of these five brave men, the circumstances in which they were born and how they came together at this time and place, grew to manhood and died. Their lives and deaths affected future generations, not just of their descendants, but of us all. It is a story that continues to resonate in the present.

Eugene L. Meyer is an award-winning veteran journalist with eclectic interests but special passions for history, lifestyles, travel, real estate and the Chesapeake Bay. He has been widely published in magazines, authored two books and was for many years a reporter and editor at the Washington Post. Since leaving the Post in 2004, Meyer has garnered more than a dozen awards for his work, and has had more than 50 bylines in The New York Times. His first journalism job was as Washington bureau librarian for the old New York Herald Tribune, where he got to tag along with a White House reporter and watch the 1964 Civil Rights Act being signed into law.