Crowd retraces John Brown's incendiary footsteps

Just as cold, damp weather couldn't quench John Brown's incendiary fervor, it didn't discourage those determined to follow the radical abolitionist's footsteps Friday, 150 years after he launched the raid that kindled the Civil War. Nearly 300 history lovers, some in period attire, stepped off at 8 p.m. from the grounds of a well-preserved log farmhouse in western Maryland to walk nearly five miles along dark rural roads and across a Potomac River bridge to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia. The event led by park chief historian Dennis Frye kicked off the Civil War sesquicentennial. Historians cite the failed attempt by Brown and 18 fervent followers to seize weapons from the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry as the opening salvo in the War Between the States because it incited strong passions, especially in the South. The war was fought from 1861 to 1865. Friday's occasional rain and temperatures in the low 40s delighted Frye, because the conditions mirrored those Brown and his raiders faced when they set out from the Kennedy farmhouse near Dargan that Sunday night in 1859.