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Article: Harpers Ferry Raid
- Article from:
- Gale Encyclopedia of U.S. Economic History
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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HARPERS FERRY RAID
John Brown (1800
–
1859) was an American abolitionist and insurrectionist whose violent raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 played a key role in sharpening the regional tensions that led to the American Civil War (1861
–
1865). John Brown was born at the turn of the nineteenth century in Torrington, Connecticut, and spent his childhood in Ohio, where he encountered and absorbed strong anti-slavery sentiments from the local population. Over the next three decades Brown raised a large family, but failed at a series of businesses. By 1855, Brown's antislavery stance had evolved into the conviction that God had chosen him to free the ...