the Harper's Ferry Raid led pretty directly to the initial events of the Civil War

The ambient fear of a national slave revolt was one Confederate leadership was obsessed with, despite the fact that these slave rebellions were extremely rare and never successful. Harper's Ferry was a kind-of 9/11 of its era, because it brought the ahem Sum of All Fears to this sudden realization. And the fact that it fell flat practically overnight didn't matter. It set of a wave of Bad Vibes (by way of mass media) that rocked the Southern States by forcing leaders to acknowledge the degree to which their institution was openly reviled. The governors of the Dixie States revolted under the naive assumption that they could quench the flames of abolitionism by crushing the northern states in a military conflict.

Harper's Ferry became a rallying point for the Republican electoralists. And it likely helped mobilize support for Lincoln as a populist candidate by making the end of slavery look like a thing that was possible. But it didn't cause the Civil War, simply because it was one of the early dominoes to fall. It was merely a symptom of the disease that was slavery. In the same way that 9/11 was Blowback from half a century of American militarism and regime change in the Middle East.

The cause of the Civil War was slavery and all the events leading up to the war were also the result of slavery. It would be more accurate to say that slavery caused The Harper's Ferry Raid than that the Raid caused the War.

What were slaves supposed to do? Vote?

Obviously, they were supposed to earn their freedom by working so hard that slavery went away on its own.

Blaming

Giving Credit

Yeah I guess I was more saying blaming Brown instead of slavers

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• inv.nadeko.net
• yt.artemislena.eu
• piped.video