Harpers Ferry
If you like history, then you should read about Harpers Ferry, the most bloodiest and evil attack that John Brown did!

The small town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, played a significant  role in the United States history, even before the state of West Virginia, separated from West Virginia during the Civil War . In 1859, John Brown, an abolitionist,( someone who wanted slavery abolished), led a raid on the town. 

    He hoped to use weapons seized from slaves in the area. Brown then planned to launch similar raids elsewhere from the surrounding hills. He did not succeed, but the raid contributed to the tensions leading to the Civil War.  
      During the Civil War, both the Confederate and the Union armies wanted to control of Harpers Ferry. Not only did it have an arsenal and an armory,( a place where weapons are stored), but also  the town was located  at the meeting point of important railroads   and at the meetings of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. In fact, Harpers Ferry changed hands eight times during the war which shows just how much both sides  wanted to control it.
    From 1736, when Robert En Route, from Pennsylvania to admit that the Potomac above the Gap was the Potomac, the maps of  1738 and there about all the early tales, above Harpers Ferry called the Cohongoruton.
  from 1736, when Robert Harper, en route from Pennsylvania to the valley stopped to build a ferry and settled there to operate it. Harpers Ferry, located where the Warriors Path crossed the Potomac has been a gateway to the south.  
 To most of us "Harpers Ferry", brings to mind the Civil War. Yet its history started almost 200 years ago before that when Charles the second made the famous Culpeper Grant, bounded by the Potomac and Rappahannock, to their headwaters, it was thought that the Potomac began at the present site of Harpers Ferry.
 It was not until sixty years later that Lord Fairfax, who inherited the grant, took steps to have it established as a feet that the Potomac did not originate at the junction of the two rivers in the Gap but extended far into the mountains.   
 Tradition states that a hunter from old Spotsylvania crossed the "Blue Mountains," wandered across the valley was lost in the mountains beyond, and was finally captured by Indians who took him to the French Settlements. 
 Ultimately he reached Paris, and from there got to England, where he met Lord Fairfax. It was this hunters description of the marvelous country "back beyond the mountains" that aroused him to a realization within his grasp.   
  Led to controversy over the headwaters of the Potomac and the ultimate employment of young George Washington to survey the domain beyond the mountains. While this story of the hunter seems incredible, it is not impossible, it may have some foundation in fact.
 The men he had recruited the pervious year changed there minds, moved away, or simply didn't think the plan would work.
 In the year 1858 one of Browns followers had threatened to reveal the plan would work. In the year 1858 one of Browns followers had threatened to reveal the plan so Brown was asked to postpone the launch. So Brown agreed to ho into hiding.
 In August of 1859 Brown met with Frederic Douglass when Brown told his friends of his intentions of seizing the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry rather that staging guerilla warfare from the mountains . The arsenal was in affect, the federal government and, in Douglass' estimation, a grave mistake. "Your walking into a perfect steel-trap" he said to Brown," and you will never get out alive."
  Brown set out for Harpers Ferry with 21 men -- 5 blacks, including Dangerfield Newberry, who hoped to rescue his wife who still was a slave, and 16 whites, two of which were his sons.
Leaving after sundown, the men crossed the Potomac, then walked all night in heavy rain, reaching town at 4a.m. They cut telegraph wires, then made their assault. First they captured Halls Riffle Works, a supplier of weapons to the government. Brown and his men rounded up 60 prominent citizens of the town and held them as hostages, hoping that their slaves would fight. No slaves came forth.
  Under a white flag, one of Browns sons was sent out to negotiate with citizens. He was shot and killed. News of the insurrection, relayed by the conductor of an express train heading to Baltimore, reached president Buchanan.
  By the time they arrived, eight of Browns 22--man army had already been killed. Lee's men moved in and quickly ended the insurrection. In the end, ten of Browns men were killed (including two blacks and both of  his sons), seven were captured (two of these later), and five had escaped. 
   Brown, who was seriously wounded,. was taken to Charleston, Virginia along with the other captures. They were quickly tried, sentenced, and  ten executed. Browns statements during his trial reached the nation, in spring many with his righteous indignation toward slavery.
Abolitionist Brown launched his raid on Sunday evening determined to seize the 100,000 weapons at the arsenal and to use Blue Ridge Mountains for guerrilla warfare, on October 16, 1859. His 21- man "army of Liberation" seized the Armory and several other strategic points. Thirty-six hours after the raid begun, with most of his men killed or wounded, Brown was captured in the armory fire engine house when U.S. marines stormed the building. Because of the town tragic location on the Baltimore and Ohio railroad at the northern end of the Shenandoah valley, Union and Confederate troops moved through Harpers Ferry frequently.
 On April 18, 1861, less than 24 hours after Virginia seceded from the Union. Federal solders set fire to the Armory and Arsenal to keep them out of confederate hands.
 Federal forces re-occupied Harpers Ferry in 1862. During the Confederacy's first invasion of the North, on September 15, 1862. Major General Tomas J "stonewall' Jackson surrounded and captured the 12.500- man Union garrison stationed here. When the federals returned to Harpers Ferry after the battle at Antietam, they began transforming the surrounding heights. 
 In 1864, Union General Philip H. Sheridan used Harpers Ferry as his base of operations against Confederate troops in the Shenandoah valley.
  African Americans have been apart of the Harpers Ferry story since before the American Revolution. The first black arrived here in the mid-1700's as a slave to Robert Harper. By the time of John Browns raid in 1859, about ten percent of the towns residents were black. The towns 150 slaves, considered property, could be rented out or sold, used as collateral for business Tran sections, or given away. During the Civil War, Harpers Ferry became one of many Union garrison towns where runaway slaves, or "contraband" sought refuge. 
 A Philadelphia builder, Robert Harper, gave the community its name. He settled there sometime between 1734 and 1747. He also experienced in 1748 the bane of the Ferry's very existence- flooding the two rivers.
  How important it became very clear when abolitionist, John Brown seized the Armory and Arsenal on October 16, 1859. He saw the ferry as the place to capture arms with, which to equip an army and free the slaves of the deep south. Brown's raid turned out to be a failure, but it set the country in motion toward the Civil War. 
 Within hours confederates fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, in Charleston South Carolina, Virginia authorities moved to capture Harpers Ferry. They wanted its arms and they wanted to control the railroad and canal.
   The Ferry was a little more than a ghost after the war. The federal government sold what was left of the property and arsenal and all other property. Efforts to rebuild its commercial base were frequently devastated record breaking floods.
But out of ashes came two occurrences. The first was a small, church- owned school for the African Americans, Sorter College. In the 1890,s Civil rights leaders convinced there in their effort to create a new, national origination that would fight for the rights of blacks, that movement eventually led to the creation of the NAACP.    
  The lower town was a little more of a shell in these years, but the upper town profited from a growing tourism town profited business. At the turn of the century as many as 28 trains a day came to the Ferry and visitors  flocked to the high-and-dry hill tops house.
                                                       THANKS FOR READING ABOUT HARPERS FERRY.

 

                                                                                              BY JOSLYN LONNIS

     In Harpers Ferry region <http://www.patc.net./history/archive/harperfery.html> May 9, 2005
     Harpers Ferry<http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2940.html> May 9, 2005
    Harpers Ferry, West Virginia< http://www.americiaslibary.gov/cgi-bin/page.chi/es/wv/harpers_1.htm>  May 9, 2005
    Harpers Ferry<http://www.nps.gov/hafe/history.html> May 9, 20056
   Harpers Ferry<http://wvweb.com/cities/harpers_ferry> May 9, 2005