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Harper's Ferry   /hˈɑrpərz fˈɛri/   Listen
Harper's Ferry

noun
1.
A small town in northeastern West Virginia that was the site of a raid in 1859 by the abolitionist John Brown and his followers who captured an arsenal that was located there.  Synonym: Harpers Ferry.






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"Harper's Ferry" Quotes from Famous Books



... a man who had brooded over the exciting scenes through which he had passed in Kansas until he thought himself called upon to take the law into his own hands, seized upon the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry (1859), and proclaimed freedom to the slaves in the vicinity. His feeble band was soon overpowered by United States troops, and Brown himself hanged as a traitor. Though it was soon known that in his wild design he had asked counsel of no ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.

... line of the Union, and separated by the "border" state of Maryland from Pennsylvania and the North, was for some time in great peril. Virginia, and with it the Federal navy yard at Norfolk and the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, was controlled by the rebels. Baltimore was the scene of a bloody riot as the first Northern regiment (6th Mass.) passed through on its way to Washington on the 19th of April, and, until troops could be spared to protect the railway through Maryland, all reinforcements for the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... twenty years later, when Captain John Brown was taken at Harper's Ferry, Thoreau was the first to come forward in his defence. The committees wrote to him unanimously that his action was premature. "I did not send to you for advice," said he, "but to announce that I was to speak." I have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... is now," said Meade "that General Lee evacuated that position, not from the fear that he would be dislodged from it by any active operations on my part, but that he was fearful a force would be sent to Harper's Ferry to cut off his communications.... That was what ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... which they differed was allowed to slumber. But the awakening has been coming by degrees, and now the South had felt that it was come. Old John Brown, who did his best to create a servile insurrection at Harper's Ferry, has been canonized through the North and West, to the amazement and horror of the South. The decision in the "Dred Scott" case, given by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, has ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope

... glad to see him. Morgan's Men were really coming, that very day, the Major said, and he told her much thrilling news. Jackson had obliterated Pope at the second battle of Manassas. Eleven thousand prisoners had been taken at Harper's Ferry and Lee had gone on into Maryland on the flank of Washington. Recruits were coming into the Confederacy by the thousands. Bragg had fifty-five thousand men and an impregnable stronghold in front of Buell, who had but few men more—not enough to count ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... negro race that the wrongs of their long bondage provoked them to no such crime, and that the war seems not to have suggested, much less started any such attempt. Indeed, even when urged to violence by white leaders, as the slaves of Maryland had been in 1859 during John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, they had refused to respond. Nevertheless it was plain from the first that slavery was to play an important part in the Civil War. Not only were the people of the South battling for the principle of slavery; their slaves were a great source of military strength. ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay

... of every description between Monocacy creek and St. John's (comprising the whole of the Upper Potomac); no passenger or merchandise could be conveyed from Maryland into Virginia without a proper pass, and then only at the two specified places—Harper's Ferry and Point of Rocks; any one transgressing this edict was liable to arrest and trial ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence

... already fought slavery in Kansas, where it was trying to invade free soil, and in 1859 he thought that the time had come to carry the war into the enemy's country. He did this by placing himself with a small force of daring young men, several of his own sons among the rest, in the mountains near Harper's Ferry. He hoped that when he had seized the United States Arsenal at that point, and given them arms the slaves would join him, and help to fight their way to the free states under his lead. But when they were attacked ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells



Words linked to "Harper's Ferry" :   town, Mountain State, West Virginia, WV



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