Harper's Ferry, Va

In July, 1859, John Brown settled near Harper’s Ferry and began, with the aid of some Kansas a ociates, the forcible liberation of slaves. October 17 he seized, with seventeen whites and five negroes, the United States arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, and spent the next eighteen hours in freeing slaves, cutting telegraph wires, preparing defenses and making prisoners of fifty white men. October 18, 1,500 militia and marines arrived. They surrounded the ' armory engine house, burst open the door and captured Brown, three other whites and half a dozen negroes. Hight of the insurgents were killed. Brown was taken to Charles town, Va., and there hanged, December 2, 1859. Harper’s Ferry, Va. (1862), was in po e ion of the Union troops, and captured by Stonewall Jackson September15. The Union leaders, Miles and White, held the town with 11,000 men. Miles had posted a few regiments upon the heights commanding the town, but these were easily driven away by McLaws while Jackson approached and bombarded the town, which surrendered as he was about to attack it. Miles was mortally wounded. The garrison was captured. “ Harper's Magazine,’’ founded in 1850 by the Harper Brothers. It was originally an eclectic magazine containing the choicest contributions to English periodicals. This purely eclectic character was soon abandoned, and nearly every contemporaneous American and English writer of note has contributed to its pages. 324