On This Day: John Brown's Raid on Harpers Ferry. ... of Virginia during that time but is now the state West Virginia. The group hoped this would initiate a broader slave revolt.

Commemorations are being held in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland today to mark the 150th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown’s raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. We end ...

Mainly, he wants to restore Brown’s centrality to the Civil War, and he does. By writing John Brown out as an oddity or sideshow, he insists, we miss the essential reality of the war: what was ...