John Brown's Raid

An “excellent” account of the failed nighttime raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859 and the fiery abolitionist who led it ( The NYMAS Review ). The first shot of the American Civil War was not fired on April 12, 1861, in Charleston, South Carolina, but instead came on October 16, 1859, in Harpers Ferry, Virginia—or so claimed former slave turned abolitionist Frederick Douglass. John Brown, the infamous fighter on the Kansas plains and detester of slavery, led a band of nineteen men on a desperate night