Sunday, Oct. 16, 1859. A light rain fell across the dark and sleeping town of Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. The name of the town lost its apostrophe in 1891, and earlier, in 1863, the town itself became a part of West Virginia, as the only state to secede from a Confederate state. But before these changes, on that night in 1859, a band of 21 armed raiders, led by an old man with a white beard, unleashed hell not only on the town but also on the nation. They kidnapped several prominent citizens, including the slave owner Lewis Washington, a distant relative of America’s first president. They cut telegraph wires in and out of the town, seized the federal armory and a rifle works, and declared to various citizens that an insurrection was underway. Ironically, of this attempt to spark a slave rebellion, the first casualty was a freed black man, …