John Brown's Provisional Constitution

Hundreds of copies of a provisional constitution were found among John Brown's papers after his 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia. It called for a new state in the Appalachian Mountains, a sort of West Virginia, populated by volunteer freedom fighters and escaped slaves from plantations, which were at lower altitudes. It was introduced into evidence at his trial as evidence of sedition.

John Brown also wrote, at about the same time, a little-known Declaration of Liberty, inspired by the U.S. Declaration of Independence.^{: 162–163}