Review:

Harpers Ferry was still a part of the state of Virginia when John Brown's Fort was built in 1848. Back then, it was used to house a fire engine and as a guard-house by the Harpers Ferry Armory. It gets its current name, and the notoriety that comes with it, from a raid led by John Brown in 1859, when Brown and a group of abolitionists took the armory by force and held 60 people hostage. They intended to take the weapons stored there and distribute them to abolitionists, but were soon stormed by a group of marines which included Robert E. Lee. Although their raid failed, John Brown’s Fort, as it came to be known, later became a tourist hotspot and practically a shrine for African Americans in the late 1800s. The building was dismantled and brought to Chicago for the World’s Fair in 1893, and eventually returned to Harpers Ferry in 1895.

Shenandoah St & Potomac St, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425, Phone: 304-535-6029

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