A slave child in Kansas in 1856, Henry Shackleford is taken in by abolitionist John Brown after Brown confronts and has a heated argument with Shackleford's master. Now privy to Brown's movements and the anti-slavery efforts of his small militia, Shackleford keeps his head down to stay alive right up until the moment Brown launches his doomed and fatal assault on Harper's Ferry.
Henry Shackleford, a slave boy from the Kansas Territory, is caught up in John Brown's crusade for freedom of slaves and when he escapes from his master's home, he must disguise himself as a girl in order to stay safe and is nicknamed Onion by John.
Fleeing his violent master at the side of abolitionist John Brown at the height of the slavery debate in mid-nineteenth-century Kansas Territory, Henry pretends to be a girl to hide his identity throughout the raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859.
