John Brown knew trouble had arrived when the train stopped.

He expected the eastbound Baltimore & Ohio (B&O) passenger express from Wheeling. It chugged toward the Harpers Ferry train station right on time, shortly after 1:00 a.m., on a drizzly Monday morning (October 17, 1859). Brown intended for the train to make its routine stop and departure—revealing no evidence that he had just seized the nearby U.S armory and arsenal and launched his war against slavery.

Then occurred the unexpected. The Potomac River bridge watchman escaped from Brown’s captors. He frantically flagged the engineer to halt before pulling into the station. Believing Brown’s guerilla force a band of robbers, the engineer froze the locomotive.

Baggage porter Heyward Shepherd, curious why the train had halted short of the station, ventured to investigate. Armed men surprised him and ordered him to stop. Shepherd panicked. Brown’s men shot him. The first person to die in John Brown’s war against slavery was a “free Black" man.

The Shepherd shots echoed loudly and awakened Dr. John Starry. Concerned about altercation and possible injury, Starry went to investigate. Brown’s men quickly seized Starry and brought him to Shepherd. The doctor pronounced his wounds mortal. Then Brown committed a fatal tactical error. His men did not retain Starry, who disappeared into the darkness, raced to the nearest livery to obtain his horse, and sounded the alarm. John Starry was the “Paul Revere” of Harpers Ferry.

Starry’s startling summons thrust local militias into action. Citizen soldiers from Charles Town, Shepherdstown, and Martinsburg donned their uniforms and grabbed their weapons. Militia from Frederick and Baltimore in Maryland, as well as from Berryville and Winchester in Virginia, began rushing toward Harpers Ferry—most of the 500 militiamen arriving via railroad. For the first time in American history, railroads enabled a rapid response to a military crisis. So rapid, in fact, that Monday before noon, Brown was cut off and surrounded, hunkered down in the armory fire-engine house, with no hope of escape.

The B&O passenger train, meanwhile, had departed toward Baltimore about dawn, with Brown’s permission (his war plans did not require a train). At a nearby telegraph office, the frantic conductor informed railroad officials: “Shots fired. Train detained. Bridge seized. Armed men. Baggage porter fatally wounded. No more passage of trains permitted. Insurrectionists 150 strong!”

Alarm soon arrived in Washington. President James Buchanan ordered veteran U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee to command the response and dispatched 90 U.S. Marines from the federal capital to quelch Brown’s rebellion.

Before dawn on Tuesday (October 18), Lee positioned the Marines on both sides of “John Brown’s Fort,” and prepared for assault. Brown held leading citizens as hostages, however, forcing Lee to hesitate “for fear of sacrificing the lives of some of the gentlemen held by [Brown] as prisoners.”

To encourage Brown to surrender, Lee dispatched U. S. Army Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart as his messenger. Stuart approached cautiously, in early dawn light, knowing he could be shot down through portholes carved through the walls of the fire-engine house. No firing erupted. Upon reaching the thick-planked doors, Brown pried one open about four inches, lodged his body into the crevice, and cocked the carbine in his hand.

“Are you ready to surrender and trust to the mercy of the Government?” inquired Stuart.

 “No!” replied Brown. “I prefer to die here.”

Stuart backed away from the doors and waved his hat—the signal for the Marines to attack. Three Marines sprang forward with sledgehammers, attempting to dislodge the barricaded doors. They failed. Then 12 Marines used a ladder as a battering ram and, on a second thrust, shattered “a ragged hole down in the right-hand door.” Through this opening—so small only one soldier could crawl through at once—pushed Lieutenant Israel Green, commander of the Marines.  

Once inside, a hostage pointed to Brown. “Quicker than thought I brought my saber down with all my strength,” Green recalled. “I did not strike him firm where I intended [and] he received a deep saber cut in the back of his neck.” As Brown fell, Green “gave him a saber thrust in the left breast.” It should have—and would have—killed Brown, except the blade struck a metal breastplate Brown was wearing. It did not penetrate. “The blade bent double,” marveled the shocked Marine. Only one inch had saved Brown. Not by chance, by Brown’s belief. The hand of God had stopped that thrust.

In three minutes, the fight concluded. Brown’s remaining four soldiers were either killed or captured. Marine Private Luke Quinn was mortally wounded; one other Marine was severely wounded. None of the 11 hostages was harmed.

By 7:30 a.m., less than a day and a half after Brown’s attack at Harpers Ferry had commenced, John Brown’s war had ended. Or had it just begun?