Brown was charged with the following:
• conspiring with Negroes to produce insurrection
• treason in the Commonwealth
• murder.
The charges of inciting slave insurrection and committing murder were enough to hang the Harpers Ferry raiders. They obviously committed crimes that were considered to be capital offenses.
There is a legal/political debate to be had as to whether the raiders committed treason, but regardless, the raiders were dead men once their raid was put down.
I myself do not consider what they did to be an act of war. Brown's raiders were not part of a separate belligerent nation, nor did they represent to be one. The US definition of treason is this: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Again, Brown was not waging war against the US, nor was he giving aid and comfort to its "enemies." Just because one attacks federal property, that is not an act of treason.
Virginia considered the raiders' acts to be treason. I do not know Virginia law and how it defines treason. I can say that Brown was not tried in federal Court, and as I understand it, only the United States can adjudicate that someone committed treason against the United States. But of course the state of Virginia can make crimes of anything it wants, and call such crimes by whatever name it wants, and it doesn't matter if any of it meets the US Constitution's standard for determining treason. FYI, VA is not the only state that has convicted someone of treason against the state; see t
he Door Rebellion.
FYI, Lincoln himself did not say that the Confederates were traitors. He said that the Confederates were engaged in an insurrection against the United States. The legal issue of whether the Confederates were traitors was never adjudicated. President Johnson gave a blanket amnesty to the vast majority of Confederates, and gave pardons to most of the others. The situation of the Harpers Ferry raiders and the Confederacy are not comparable.
- Alan