2-356-070 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Night march on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, c1861 (c1880). Harper's Ferry was the site of a federal armoury. In 1859 the abolitionist John Brown attacked the armoury in an attempt to acquire weapons to start an armed uprising against slavery in the southern states. When Virginia seceded from the Union in April 1861 the federal soldiers attempted to burn the arsenal down and destroy its machinery, without success. The town was in a strategically important position and changed hands eight times during the Civil War. A print from Cassell's History of the United States, by Edmund Ollier, Volume III, Cassell Petter and Galpin, London, c1880.