Mary J. Thornley
Words: 1,092
[Dispatch]


Harper's Ferry

There were lush green trees, and lawns, and the elevated railroad trestle, and a lone woman applying dark paint to a wooden shed door. Mountains loomed on either side. I step into the gutter and see it's a concave viaduct with large round stones embedded in concrete. The street itself is a matching mixture of smaller stones and pebbles. The town lies about me, green, cool, serene, and still.


Capitol Limited

This was my introduction to Harper's Ferry, a town I had seen before only while coursing through by train on the Capitol Limited route. I knew it was scenic; two rivers converged there. The entire route from Ohio through Cumberland, and beyond, was surpassingly lovely. The Blue Ridge Mountains shed glory and majesty everywhere. The swaying train followed the river through a veritable garden of eden. I used to wait with considerable anticipation for the stop at Harper's Ferry, stationing myself on the upper floor of the observation car, coffee in hand, and from this vantage point study the town sleeping in the foliage, the river rushing by below.


Blue Ridge Mountains

I didn't know then that on this spot--just under the train, where I had passed so often--an incredible thing had happened. In 1859, a man, John Brown, rode into the scenic town with a band of supporters laboriously recruited--and attacked a Federal arsenal--hoping to seize a weapons stockpile.


John Brown

I'd heard about John Brown in grade school, but I'd never considered how it might have affected the town or the townspeople.


Shenandoah River

Where the Shenandoah and the Potomac rivers converged, on what is now an empty lot overgrown with grass and weeds, an armory and an arsenal--among other impressive structures--had once stood. Many of the townspeople were long ago employed there in arms production.


Potomac River

Eighteen uneasy months after Brown was found guilty and hanged, Virginia seceded from the Union. Rebel soldiers immediately began to march on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. To keep the rebels from getting the weapons stash, Union soldiers set fire to the armory. The town's economy collapsed.

On first walking into town, and stopping at the Visitor's Center, I espied, a short distance away, an innocuous-looking building. It was a rectangular brick structure with bow windows set high on its long sides.
It appeared to be a carriage house, economical and elegant, and its appearance gave no hint as to its role in history. I moved on, reading information signage posted here and there at random. Bit by bit, the full enormity of what had happened, and the role of the carriage house, emerged. I found myself once again standing before it, awed.

A beleaguered John Brown and his supporters took shelter in the carriage house after an unsuccessful attempt to take the Federal arsenal, and valiantly held off Union soldiers. The carriage house had originally been sited on the flood plain where the armory and the arsenal had stood. It had housed fire carriages, and was later referred to as John Brown's Fort. The original location of the Fort, just a stone's throw from where it now stands, is marked by a white pillar.

John Brown was found guilty, and was hung, in nearby Charles Town. He was forced to ride on his own coffin to the gibbet. His death cast an uneasy pall over the country. Brown had thrown down a moral gauntlet; will our country be slave--or free? War breaks out in earnest just over a year later, and the arsenal Brown had sought to take is burned. It is as if the very stones cry out for justice for Brown after his death.

I stop on High Street, drawn to another building open for exhibit. This had once been a bakery owned by a German immigrant. He carried pies to sell to passengers on the train. His wife passed away, and one day, after hostilities had broken out, he walked down to the river to look at the Maryland side, hoping to see the Stars and Stripes. He was caught by a stray bullet. The baker crawled home, and died in his bakery. I looked at the route he must have traversed to get home; it was all uphill. I imagine the stricken man staggering, falling, crawling home inchmeal, and collapsing finally on his own floor.

Union soldiers commandeered the bakery and used it as an office. The German's orphaned children left. Later, they reclaimed their father's property.

I enter the John Brown museum. Photos of an improbably youthful John Brown, smooth-cheeked and mild, show a man hardening with resolve as he grays. His mouth, a wide slash in his face, seems to turn down at the corners, making him look increasingly grim. By the time he attacks Harper's Ferry he's august, gray and bearded. An interactive map traces his travels; he darts from town to town, state to state, New England, Kansas, Iowa. He seems to whirl like a dervish. In spite of all he can do, his financial enterprises all end disastrously; he confides to a friend that he wants to die. Researchers surmise that his involvement in the abolition of slavery keeps him going. He plans the attack on the arsenal; he wants to raise an army of former slaves; what could be more flamboyant, more fitting than that those who were wronged should rise up and claim justice? Brown turns a mordant, cynical eye on a dithering Congress. He asks Frederick Douglass to join him but Douglass warns, "You are walking into a steel trap!"

And it happens just as Douglass says. Brown and his co-conspirators ride into this sleepy hamlet--and ride out again into history.

Harper's Ferry is now a National Park. There are endless possibilities for hiking, biking, tubing, and sightseeing. The Appalachian Trail and the C&O Canal meander through, and I saw many hikers with backpacks and thick boots shouldering their way with a determined air. There is an urban outfitter in the town and I go inside. The interior seemed to have been cut out of solid rock. The floor was an immense uneven piece of gray slate. A narrow channel has been cut into the floor to channel a trickle of errant water out of the room.

There is much to ponder in this town. Few places can hold as much history and ambiguity, beauty and charm, war and remembrance. I've seen Baltimore, Colonial Williamsburg, Monticello, and Mt. Vernon. Harper's Ferry is perhaps the only place that represents the overwhelming conviction of one person that everyone must be free in America.