Battle of Harpers Ferry

John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16 to 18, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia). It has been called the dress rehearsal for, or tragic prelude to, the Civil War.: 5 Brown's party of 22 was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines, led by First Lieutenant Israel Greene. Ten of the raiders were killed during the raid, seven were tried and executed afterwards, and five escaped. Several of those present at the raid would later be involved in the Civil War: Colonel Robert E. Lee was in overall command of the operation to retake the arsenal. Stonewall Jackson and Jeb Stuart were among the troops guarding the arrested Brown, and John Wilkes Booth was a spectator at Brown's execution. John Brown had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, both of whom he had met in his transformative years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him in his raid, but Tubman was prevented by illness and Douglass declined, as he believed Brown's plan was suicidal.The raid was extensively covered in the press nationwide—it was the first such national crisis to be publicized using the new electrical telegraph. Reporters were on the first train leaving for Harpers Ferry after news of the raid was received, at 4 p.m. on Monday, October 17. It carried Maryland militia, and parked on the Maryland side of the Harpers Ferry bridge, just 3 miles (4.8 km) east of the town (at the hamlet of Sandy Hook, Maryland). As there were few official messages to send or receive, the telegraph carried on the next train, connected to the cut telegraph wires, was "given up to reporters", who "are in force strong as military".: 17  By Tuesday morning the telegraph line had been repaired,: 21  and there were reporters from The New York Times "and other distant papers".: 23 The label "raid" was not used at the time. A month after the attack, a Baltimore newspaper listed 26 terms used, including "insurrection", "rebellion", "treason", and "crusade". "Raid" was not among them.: 4 Brown's raid caused much excitement and anxiety throughout the United States, with the South seeing it as a threat to slavery and their way of life, and some in the North perceiving it as a bold abolitionist action. At first it was generally viewed as madness, the work of a fanatic. It was Brown's words and letters after the raid and at his trial – Virginia v. John Brown – aided by the writings of supporters, including Henry David Thoreau, that turned him into a hero and icon for the Union.

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, originally Harpers Ferry National Monument, is located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers in and around Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The park includes the historic center of Harpers Ferry, notable as a key 19th-century industrial area and as the scene of John Brown's failed abolitionist uprising. It contains the most visited historic site in the state of West Virginia, John Brown's Fort.The park includes land in the Shenandoah Valley in Jefferson County, West Virginia; Washington County, Maryland and Loudoun County, Virginia. The park is managed by the National Park Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Originally designated Harpers Ferry National Monument in 1944, the park was declared a National Historical Park by the U.S. Congress in 1963. Consisting of almost 4,000 acres (16 km2), it includes the site of which Thomas Jefferson once wrote, "The passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature" after visiting the area in 1783. Due to a mixture of historical events and ample recreational opportunities, all within 50 miles (80 km) of Washington, D.C., the park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. In 2017, the Park's Superintendent was Tyrone Brandyburg.The park was originally planned as a memorial to John Brown, responsible for what is by far the most famous incident in Harpers Ferry's history, his 1859 raid and capture of the federal armory. NPS officials in the 1930s focused on John Brown's raid and the Civil War to justify acquiring parts of Harpers Ferry for a historical and military park. Like the figure of John Brown himself, this proved enormously controversial, with opposition from white supremacist organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.: 86 

John Brown's Fort was originally built in 1848 for use as a guard and fire engine house by the federal Harpers Ferry Armory,in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, West Virginia). An 1848 military report described the building as "An engine and guard-house 35 1/2 x 24 feet, one story brick, covered with slate, and having copper gutters and down spouts…"The building achieved fame when it became the anti-slavery advocate John Brown's refuge during his 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, in which he hoped launch the overthrow of slavery. It is the only surviving building of the Armory; the others were destroyed during the Civil War. The building quickly became a tourist attraction; the words John Brown's Fort—a new name—were painted over the three doors, to attract tourists. It has been moved four times: in 1891 to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, in 1895 to the Murphey Farm near Harpers Ferry, in 1909 to the campus of historically black Storer College in Harpers Ferry, and in 1968 by the National Park Service to its present location in lower Harpers Ferry, near its original site. An obelisk stands where it was originally located. The building, obelisk, and Storer campus are all now part of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. In 2016 the building was honored with a U.S. quarter.

St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia occupies a prominent location on the heights above Harpers Ferry. The original church was built in 1833 in a pseudo-Gothic style which it kept through the Civil War, the only church in Harpers Ferry to escape destruction during the war. The church was extensively altered in 1896 in the then-popular Neo-Gothic style to produce the church seen today. The church commands a sweeping vista across the gorge of the Shenandoah River above its confluence with the Potomac River. The street along the side of the church building is part of the Appalachian Trail. A short trail leads from the church to Jefferson Rock. St. Peter's Church is a mission church of St. James in Charles Town. A Mass is offered at the historic church Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

Harpers Ferry station is a historic railway station in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It is currently served by Amtrak's Capitol Limited as well as MARC commuter service. Built by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the station is part of the Harpers Ferry Historic District. It is a wooden frame Victorian style building, dating from 1889. It sits on buried foundations of original Harpers Ferry armory buildings.In 2007, the station was rededicated following a $2.2 million renovation, which included restoration of the station's tower.

The B & O Railroad Potomac River Crossing is a 15-acre (6.1 ha) historic site where a set of railroad bridges, originally built by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, span the Potomac River between Sandy Hook, Maryland and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on February 14, 1978 for its significance in commerce, engineering, industry, invention, and transportation.

The Shenandoah River is the principal tributary of the Potomac River, 55.6 miles (89.5 km) long with two forks approximately 100 miles (160 km) long each, in the U.S. states of Virginia and West Virginia. The river and its tributaries drain the central and lower Shenandoah Valley and the Page Valley in the Appalachians on the west side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in northwestern Virginia and the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. There is a hydroelectric plant along the Shenandoah river constructed in 2014 by Dominion.

Jefferson Rock is a rock formation on the Appalachian Trail in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. It consists of several large masses of Harpers shale, piled one upon the other, that overlook the Shenandoah River just prior to its confluence with the Potomac River. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing property of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park on October 15, 1966.

Harpers Ferry is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, United States, in the lower Shenandoah Valley. The population was 285 at the 2020 census. Situated at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where the U.S. states of Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia meet, it is the easternmost town in West Virginia. During the American Civil War, it was the northernmost point of Confederate-controlled territory. An 1890 history book on the town called it "the best strategic point in the whole South."The town was formerly spelled Harper's Ferry with an apostrophe, so named because in the 18th century it was the site of a ferry service owned and operated by Robert Harper. The United States Board on Geographic Names, whose Domestic Name Committee is reluctant to include apostrophes in official place names, established the standard spelling of "Harpers Ferry" by 1891.By far, the most important event in the town's history was John Brown's raid on the Harpers Ferry Armory in 1859.Prior to the American Civil War, Harpers Ferry was a manufacturing town as well as a major transportation hub. The main economic activity in the town in the 20th and 21st centuries is tourism. John Brown's Fort is the most visited tourist site in the state of West Virginia. The headquarters of the Appalachian Trail are there—not the midpoint, but close to it, and easily accessible—and the buildings of the former Storer College are used by the National Park Service for one of its four national training centers. The National Park Service is Harpers Ferry's largest employer in the 21st century.The lower town has been reconstructed by the National Park Service. It was in ruins by the end of the American Civil War, not helped by later river flooding.: 15  "The fact that Harpers Ferry was first and foremost an industrial village during the 19th century is not apparent in the sights, sounds, or smells of the town today.": 10 

Storer College was a historically black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put it, it was a unique institution whose focus changed several times. There is no one category of college into which it fits neatly. Sometimes white students studied alongside Black students, which at the time was prohibited by law at state-supported schools in West Virginia and the other Southern states, and sometimes in the North. In the twentieth century, Storer was at the center of the growing protest movement against Jim Crow treatment that would lead to the NAACP and the Civil Rights Movement. The first American meeting of the predecessor of the NAACP, the Niagara Movement, was held at Storer in 1906. John Brown's Fort, a symbol of the end of slavery in the United States, was located from 1909 until 1968 on the Storer campus, where it was used as the college museum. The Storer campus is now part of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

Virginius Island is a formerly inhabited island of some 12 acres (4.9 ha), on the Shenandoah River in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The island was created by the Shenandoah Canal, constructed by the Patowmack Company between 1806 and 1807, which separates it from the town of Harpers Ferry. The canal was constructed to enable boats to bypass rapids on the river, and also channel water to drive machinery. In the nineteenth century Virginius Island contained Harpers Ferry's industry (aside from the Arsenal) and working-class housing: a boarding house and row houses. Virginius Island is part of the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park.

The Potomac Water Gap is a double water gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, located at the intersection of the states of Virginia, West Virginia and Maryland, near Harpers Ferry. At 256 feet (78 m), it is the lowest crossing of the Blue Ridge Mountains.