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“Men, get on your arms; we will proceed to the Ferry,” ordered John Brown one October night in 1859. The ferry was Harpers Ferry, home to the largest arsenal of rifles in the United States. Brown hoped to capture Harpers Ferry and arm a nationwide slave revolt. But it all went wrong almost immediately and Brown was hanged having failed to free a single slave. Why, then, University of Maryland historian Richard Bell asks, was John Brown’s raid so significant?
