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Iowa Governor Samuel Kirkwood's refusal to extradite Barclay Coppoc to Virginia to face prosecution for his alleged roll in John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry on the grounds that Virginia Governor Letcher's request is defective, one of the most important and rarest documents dealing with the John Brown conspiracy. Coppoc was one of the band who with John Brown struck the blow for emancipation at Harper's Ferry on October 16th, 1859. He escaped and made his way to Iowa, reaching Springdale on December 17th, destitute and exhausted, and learning his brother had died on the gallows the day before. He had a friendly welcome, and his Iowa sympathizers banded together in a military organization to protect him from his pursuers. An agent from Virginia arrived the following month, but he was stonewalled both by Governor Kirkwood and by the local citizenry and law enforcement officials. Coppoc remained free, and in this pamphlet Kirkwood defends his actions, and counters Virginia Governor Letcher's "insinuations of my sympathy with the crimes lately committed in Virginia," and accuses the southern governor of trying to inflame sectional prejudice, and of acting on behalf of those who seek "to destroy the Union if they cannot control it."