At dusk on the evening of October 16, 1859, acting on direct orders from the Lord God Himself, John Brown led a band of eighteen men on a raid of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry in western Virginia. By midnight Brown's men had cut the telegraph wires and commandeered the railroad bridges leading into town. They had control of the arsenal, the armory, and the rifle factory. Then they sat back and waited for slaves from the surrounding countryside to join their rebellion. But the slaves never came.