Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Background and Summary

Harpers Ferry is an historic town in Jefferson County, W.Va. It is situated at the very place that the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers meet, where the states of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia meet. The town is located on a low lying flood plain created by the two rivers, and it is thus surrounded by higher ground on all sides. Historically, Harpers Ferry is best known for abolitionist John Brown's raid on the Armory in that town in 1859 and its role in the Civil War.

In the 2000 census, the town had a population of 307. Harpers Ferry is located within Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters is located in Harpers Ferry and the town is one of only a few that the Appalachian Trail passes through directly.

In 1751, Robert Harper was given a patent on 125 acres at the present location of the town. In 1761, Harper established a ferry across the Potomac River making the town a starting point for settlers moving into the Shenandoah Valley and further west. In 1763, the Virginia General Assembly established the town of "Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper's Ferry."

On October 25, 1783, Thomas Jefferson visited Harpers Ferry. He viewed "the passage of the Potomac though the Blue Ridge" from a rock that is now named for him. Jefferson said the area was "perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.” And George Washington, as president of the Patowmack Company, which was formed to complete river improvements on the Potomac and its tributaries, traveled to Harpers Ferry during the summer of 1785 to determine the need for bypass canals. In 1794, Washington's familiarity with the area led him to propose the site as the location for a new federal armory and arsenal. Some of Washington's family moved to the area, for example his great-great nephew Col. Lewis Washington.

In 1796, the federal government purchased a 125-acre parcel of land from the heirs of Harper and, in 1799; construction began on the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harpers Ferry. This was one of only two such facilities in the U.S., the other being located in Springfield, Mass., and between the two most of the small arms for the U.S. Army were produced. Soon, the town was transformed into an industrial center.

The Armory produced more than 600,000 muskets, rifles, and pistols between 1801 and 1861. Its inventor, Capt. John H. Hall, pioneered the use of interchangeable parts in firearms manufactured at his rifle works at the Armory between 1820 and 1840. His M1819 Hall rifle was the first breech loading weapon adopted by the army. Industrialization continued to boom in 1833 when the Chesapeake River and the Ohio Canal reached Harpers Ferry, linking it with Washington, D.C. A year later, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad began train service through Harpers Ferry.

John Brown's Raid

On October 16, 1859, the radical abolitionist, John Brown, led a group of 22 men in a raid on the Armory. Five of the men were black; three of them were free blacks, one was a freed slave, and one a fugitive slave. During this time, assisting fugitive slaves was illegal due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott case decision that said freed slaves were still property of their masters even if they escaped or moved to territory that was anti-slavery and became a freed person; they must be returned to their master. Brown attacked and captured several buildings in the small town. He hoped to use the captured weapons to initiate a slave uprising throughout the South.

The first shot during the rebellion mortally wounded a man named Heyward Shepherd, a night baggage porter for the B&O railroad. The noise from that shot roused John Starry from his sleep. He walked from his nearby home to investigate the shooting and was confronted by Brown's men. After demands from Brown and the raiders, Starry stated that he was a doctor but could do nothing more for Shepherd, so Brown's men allowed him to leave. Instead of going home Starry went to the Livery stable and mounted a horse.

Riding to neighboring towns and villages, Starry shouted that Harpers Ferry had been overtaken by abolitionists. When he reached nearby Charles Town, people rang the church bells to arouse citizens. Meanwhile, Starry then coordinated a counterattack. Brown's men were quickly surrounded by local citizens and a make-shift militia, and they were forced to retreat to the engine house adjacent to the Armory. Starry became a local hero for sounding the alarm on the raid.

Scrambling for a response to the mini-uprising, the U.S. secretary of war found himself asking for the assistance of the Navy, who were the troops stationed nearest to Harpers Ferry. Lt. Israel Greene was ordered to take a troop of 86 marines to the town. In need of an officer to lead the expedition, Col. Robert E. Lee, who was on leave nearby, was assigned commander along with Lt. J. E. B. Stuart as his aide-de-camp. The whole contingent arrived via train on October 18, and after failure of negotiation, they stormed the fire house and captured most of Brown’s raiders, killing a few and suffering a casualty of their own. Brown was persecuted for treason against the state of Virginia and hanged in nearby Charles Town. Starry's testimony was integral to Brown's conviction. The raid fueled the fire for the American Civil War.

Harpers in Wartime

The Civil War proved disastrous for Harpers Ferry, which underwent new ownership by either the Union Army or the Confederate as many as thirteen times between 1861 and 1865. When Virginia seceded in April of 1861, the U.S. garrison attempted to burn the arsenal and destroy the machinery. Locals saved the equipment, which was later transferred to a more secure location in Richmond, Va. Harpers Ferry’s Armory never produced arms again.

Because of the town's strategic location on the railroad and at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, both Union and Confederate troops moved through Harpers Ferry frequently. The town's garrison of 14,000 federal troops played a key role in the Confederate invasion of Maryland in September of 1862. Gen. Robert E. Lee did not want to continue on to Pennsylvania without capturing Harpers Ferry, which was on his supply line and would control one of his possible routes of retreat if the invasion did not go well. Dividing his army of approximately 40,000 into four sections, he used the cover of the mountains and sent three columns under Officer Stonewall Jackson to surround and capture the town.

The Battle of Harpers Ferry started with light fighting September 13 Maryland Heights to the northeast and Loudoun Heights to the south were being captured. After an artillery bombardment on September 14 and September 15, the federal garrison surrendered. Because of the delay in capturing Harpers Ferry, and the movement of Federal forces west, Gen. Lee was forced to regroup in the town of Sharpsburg, Va., leading to the Battle of Antietam two days later; the bloodiest single day in American military history. And without the distraction of Union forces at Harpers Ferry during the Antietam campaign, the ability of Union forces to turn back the Confederate invasion is not likely to have happened.

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Harpers Ferry, along with all of both Berkeley and Jefferson Counties, was separated from Virginia and incorporated into West Virginia. The inhabitants of these counties, as well as the Virginia legislature, protested, but the federal government proceeded regardless. This forms part of West Virginia’s "panhandle.”

The Niagara Movement and Beyond

On August 15, 1906, the Niagara Movement, led by scholar W.E.B. DuBois, held its first meeting on the campus of Storer College in the town of Harpers Ferry. The three-day gathering, which was held to discuss how to secure civil rights for Blacks, was later described by DuBois as "one of the greatest meetings that American Negroes ever held." Attendees of the 1906 meeting walked from Storer College to the nearby farm owned by the Murphy family. It was the site of the fort where Brown's historic quest to lead a rebellion so that four million enslaved Blacks could be freed came to a quick and bloody ending.

In 1944, most of the town became part of the National Park Service and it is now maintained as the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The majority of the existing homes in Harpers Ferry are very old, and some of these are registered in the Places. At the 2000 census, there were 307 people living in Harpers Ferry; 153 households and 89 families resided in the town. The ethnic makeup of the town was 89.9 percent White, 9.12 percent Black, 0.33 percent Native American, and 0.65 percent Hispanic. Also, 0.65 percent of its population was from two or more races. The median income for a household in the town was $52,344 and the per capita income for the town was $29,638. 

Sources: wikipedia.org; http://www.harpersferrywv.us/; Sullivan, David. The United States Marine Corps in the Civil War - The First Year. White Mane Publishing Company, Inc., 1997; Reynolds, John. John Brown: Abolitionist. New York: Knopf, 2005; http://www.nps.gov/hafe/home.htm; http://historicharpersferry.org/; http://factfinder.census.gov/. style="background: #f8fcff">