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Today

At Harpers Ferry

On this day in 1859, abolitionist John Brown led a group of 21 men — 14 white, seven black — on a raid of the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (then; since 1863, West Virginia), to capture weapons and initiate a slave revolt in southern states.

Brown’s forces initially captured the armory, which had only one guard on duty that night, but the expected uprising did not occur. Soon the raiders were blocked from any escape by townspeople and local militiamen and then overwhelmed by federal troops sent into the town (commanded by Colonel Robert E. Lee, who would later lead the Confederate armies).

Ten of Brown’s men were killed during the incident; seven were captured, tried, convicted and executed, including John Brown; and five escaped. Two enslaved African-Americans joined Brown’s cause and also died in the fighting. Battling against Brown’s raiders, a Marine and four townspeople lost their lives, including the town’s mayor and a free African-American. 

Though the raid on Harpers Ferry was a failure, it set the union on the road to disunion, war, and the end of slavery. 

“John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic,” Frederick Douglass would write in remembrance of this event. “Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared. The time for compromises was gone — the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the chasm of a broken Union — and the clash of arms was at hand.”


Print out a commemorative poster:

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The Dreyfus Affair

On October 15, 1894, Alfred Dreyfus (1859 – 1935) was arrested for spying: The Dreyfus Affair began. And thus began a scandal that brought anti-Semitism into the cultural center.

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William Penn

On October 14, 1644, Willliam Penn was born. An English real estate entrepreneur, philosopher, and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania (the English North American colony and future Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), he was an early champion of democracy and religious freedom, notable for his good relations and successful treaties with the Lenape Indians. Penn died in 1718.

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Albert Jay Nock

On October 13, 1870, American social critic and education theorist Albert Jay Nock was born. Nock was the author of a number of books, including Jefferson, the Man and Our Enemy, The State, but was probably most famous for his intellectual autobiography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Man, which was widely read and admired amongst conservatives in the 1950s and ’60s.

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The New World

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas, thinking he had reached India.

Exactly two hundred years later, a letter from Massachusetts Governor William Phips ended the Salem Witch Trials.

On this date in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance was first recited by students in many U.S. public schools, as part of a celebration marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage.

The Pledge had been composed that year by Francis Bellamy, a Christian Socialist minister, and was first published in Youth’s Companion magazine, the issue dated September 8, 1892. The recital was accompanied with a salute to the flag known as the Bellamy salute. During World War II, the salute was replaced with a hand-over-heart gesture because the original form (described in detail by Bellamy) involved stretching the arm out towards the flag in a manner that resembled the later Nazi salute. The original form of the Pledge was somewhat less involved than later versions:

I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

In October an editorial addition occurred, the word “to” prefixing “the republic.”

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The Revolution Remembered

October 11, 1890, marks the founding of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

On the same date in 1976, President Gerald R. Ford approved a congressional joint resolution Public Law 94–479 to appoint, posthumously, George Washington to the grade of General of the Armies of the United States, as part of the bicentennial celebrations.

John J. Pershing (1860 – 1948) is the only other American to attain this high title, and the only one to achieve it while alive.