Source: WV History Film Project
WEST VIRGINIA HISTORY 6/24/92,
CAMERA ROLL 213, SOUND 79
DENNIS FRYE INTERVIEW , TAKE 1, CAMERA
213, SOUND 79
Q: Dennis, tell me what it must be on a lot of people's minds as they're driving into Harpers Ferry, West Virginia? What happened here? ...
TAKE 2
Q: As people are coming into town I'm sure they
ask themselves the question that they can't answer.
Harpers Ferry, what happened here?
JJFA 0074
DF: People are just enthralled by the story of Harpers
Ferry and the histories, a complex national history
that we have. Harpers Ferry fits into that role in
many different niches. We're not a place simply of
natural beauty; we're not a place simply where the
Shenandoah and Potomac rivers come together; we're
not a place of the mountains of the Blue Ridge, but
we're a place where people changed this nation's path,
changed this nation's future, brought new life
invigorated, new excitement, new energy, into the
nation. So Harpers Ferry is exciting to people
because much of what happened here in the past is
still very relevant to them in today's society and their
everyday lives.
Q: Let's talk about how it has impacted the
national course of events in the United States. Tell
me about what you consider to be the big impact,
which is the establishment of the armory by
Washington in 1795?
JJFA 0166
DF: George Washington established a United States
armory at Harpers Ferry primarily because he was
interested in balance. He wanted a federal installation
in the north and one in the south. They were already
producing weapons at Springfield, Massachusetts so
the Congress and the President, President Washington
determined that that would be a logical place to have
a federal armory and arsenal. But the question of
where to place one in the south was never a question
for George Washington. Washington had surveyed in
this area as a young man; he was familiar with the
water power of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers,
and he wanted to utilize that power to build a defense
complex here at Harpers Ferry.
JJFA 0227
Washington was also interested in the economic
development of the Potomac Valley, which he saw as
the heart of the new nation. And one way to do that
would to infuse federal dollars along the Potomac
river corridor, and so Washington selected Harpers
Ferry not only because of water power, but also
because of the economic potential, the economic
growth that it would bring in the Potomac
Valley.
Q: How would that become significant?
JJFA 0269
DF: Several things. First of all Washington, George
Washington recommended the armory location at
Harpers Ferry, but when the engineers came out and
surveyed the area, they recommended against Harpers
Ferry. They said that because of its location, because
of its rather remoteness at that time, it was not a good
place to place an industrial complex. They also noted
that the water power was good at certain times of the
year, but the Shenandoah and Potomac were also
subject to drought, meaning that the machinery would
not be able to run during much of the rest of the year.
And they were also concerned about little room to
build. Because the cliffs of the Maryland and
Virginia shores came right to the river banks, they felt
that there would not be enough room to place
buildings here in order to manufacture the
weapons.
JJFA 0341
So Washington, when he received this negative report
from the engineers, threw his hands up in the air and
said, 'What's this? I sent you out there to tell me that
this is an ideal location for a federal armory. You
send me a report that states we shouldn't place one
here? Go back and do it again.' So they came back
out to Harpers Ferry, they submitted another report
which was quite favorable to the President, and
consequently a United States armory and arsenal were
established here.
Q: Then what happens, the first half of the 19th
century slowly develops into sort of a new type of
place, a place people would become very familiar
later in the century in West Virginia as a sort of a
company town, where the workers are working at the
armory down in the valley, the superintendents on the
hill. Tell me about that.
JJFA 0421
DF: For 60 years Harpers Ferry would manufacture
weapons for the United States government. Rifles,
muskets, small arms only, never any artillery
produced here, but small arms. The men who worked
at the armory and there were no women who worked
in the armory at that time, but the men who were
employed here initially began as craft-oriented,
skilled laborers. They were recruited from
Pennsylvania and from Maryland and from the
Massachusetts area, skilled craftsmen who understood
the mechanics and understood the craft involved in
building every piece of a weapon.
JJFA 0482
Everything from producing the barrel to the
manufacture of a lock and its parts, to the creative
stocks -- all of that was brought to the Harpers Ferry
Armory through the craft-orientation of the gunsmiths
who worked in the mid-Atlantic states. These people
produced some of the prettiest weapons that the
United States has ever known, and certainly the
prettiest military weapons the united States
government had manufactured. But what they did as
time went along, this craft orientation was very slowly
replaced a more mechanized process -- a process
where machines were manufacture of most of the
parts, and the machines then were eventually make
the weapons interchangeable. The problem with the
craft orientation as these men manufactured guns here
is that if a weapon broke on the field, you could not
simply pick up one piece and replace the damaged
piece because the two would not fit together.
JJFA 0573
With interchangeable parts, a broken piece could be
replaced by another piece identical to it. And so the
craftsmen was very slowly changed from the piece by
piece work of hand, craft, to machine by machine
manufacture, where every piece came out very
similar. So consequently Harpers Ferry represented
not the birth place of the industrial revolution, but
certainly one of areas of the growing pains of the
industrial revolution because as craftsmen were
replaced by machines, people were put out of work.
And so we had a serious problem with unemployment
here as time went on. We had a serious problem with
adjustment to the work place. People were very
concerned about losing their jobs, losing their craft,
and being replaced by the much more efficient, and
much less costly machine.
JJFA 0662
Harpers Ferry really represented a microcosm of what
was happening in the nation with regard to the
industrial revolution. As craft was being replaced by
machine, as individual artistic talent was being
replaced by mass produced, efficient, effective
systems of production, and so we began to see that
transition across the nation, but it was very much
epitomized by Harpers Ferry. United States
government was pouring government dollars; they
wanted the best, most effective system possible, and
so if that meant replacement of the individual in favor
of the machine, the individual was disposable.
TAKE 3
Q: ... a little bit of understanding of what
Harpers Ferry's role in industry and the shifting
economy. Describe for me how the town evolved,
how the social conditions evolved that worked with
that industrial town?
JJFA 0763
DF: Harpers Ferry was very unique with regard to the
mix of people who lived here. It's considered a
southern town of course because it was south
Potomac river, but the people who came here
represent not only the variety of culture in this
country, but also culture from other countries. For
example, because of the infusion of government
dollars into the Harpers Ferry armory the government
was constantly transporting technology from the New
England states into Harpers Ferry, and so you didn't
have a simple group of people build up which were
always thinking the same things and always coming
to the same conclusion. We began to have different
opinions being injected into the population.
JJFA 0834
A New Englander from Springfield, Massachusetts,
who had a different upbringing, a different religious
background, a different culture, coming to Harpers
Ferry in a southern climate and a southern town,
would begin to mix and give diversity to the
population. So, we did have people coming from
Massachusetts and actually living with and sharing
with the people of the town, bringing new ideas and
new thoughts. But even more importantly, we have
quite an immigration into Harpers Ferry as a result of
labor that was imported into this country to construct
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake
and Ohio Canal, and this gave Harpers Ferry the
feeling of a melting pot in miniature.
JJFA 0905
The Irish, who were brought here to help with the
construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal,
many of them would come and remain in the Harpers
Ferry area. One of the earliest churches in this entire
section of the Shenandoah Valley that was a Catholic
church, was built at Harpers Ferry in 1830 as a result
of this influx of Irish immigrants that were coming
here during the 1830's with the construction of the C
& O Canal; and with the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, many German laborers were imported into
the nation for the construction of that transportation
line, and they also came through the Harpers Ferry
area.
JJFA 0960
So you had an interesting mix of Irish and German
laborers working in the same very close-knit
environment, totally different cultures. Many of the
Germans unable to speak English; many of the Irish
of course with their accent, native Virginians, native
Marylanders, people from Pennsylvania and New
England who were brought here by the government to
give an infusion of their understanding of new
technologies to build weapons. Quite a complex
group of people that gave Harpers Ferry great culture
diversity. ...
WEST VIRGINIA, SOUND ROLL 80,
DENNIS FRYE INTERVIEW
DENNIS FRYE INTERVIEW, TAKE 4 CAMERA
ROLL 214, SOUND 80
Q: Dennis, tell me about that other group of
imported laborers who came in to Harpers Ferry.
JJFA 1038
DF: Of course Virginia was the largest slave holding
state in the United States in the period prior to the
Civil War, and Harpers Ferry being in the state of
Virginia, had both slaves and free blacks within the
population. By the mid-century period, the census
records show that we had a hundred and fifty slaves
and a hundred and fifty blacks who were free blacks
in the population of Harpers Ferry and Bolivar.
That's all of a population total of about 3,000, so
almost ten percent of the population was black, half
free; the other half slave.
JJFA 1103
These people certainly had an impact on what
happened at Harpers Ferry. Some of the slaves in fact
actually worked in the armory. They would be hired
out as people who could perform various tasks within
the armory itself, hired not themselves; the
government would not pay a slave and hire the slave
to work in the armory, but they would hire from the
owner of that slave. A hundred dollars, a hundred
and fifty dollars perhaps per year, so that a slave
could perform functions within the armory
operation.
Q: Tell me that again in a paragraph. Give me
that little bit about the government didn't participate
directly in slavery but indirectly there was slaves
...
JJFA 1181
DF: Slaves who resided here in Harpers Ferry did
work in the U.S. Armory. Now the government didn't
actually hire the slave to work in the armory, but they
would hire from the master of the slave, the slave
owner who would paid a hundred to a hundred and
fifty dollars and then that individual would perform
tasks within the armory functions. Free blacks also
worked for the government for pay. For example,
there was a stone mason, an excellent stone mason,
who was a free black who was hired by the
government to construct some of the canal walls and
some of the foundations for buildings that were
constructed at the armory. But it's interesting in some
of the correspondence that the government at times
was not interested in paying him the wage that they
would have paid a white person performing the same
task. And so there would be correspondence between
armory officials and the treasury department to
determine just how much they should pay this
individual for the work that he did.
JJFA 1282
But that's what differentiated a slave from a freed
black. The slave of course would not receive direct
income. It went to the master. The free black did
receive that income, but the quotation of the word
'free' you must be very careful because a free black in
Harpers Ferry did not have the same freedom that a
white male would have living in the town. And so the
only difference between a slave and a free black was
that a free black did have some freedom to move
about and did not answer directly to a master. But in
terms of regulation, they were very, very similar in
the application to both slave and free black.
Q: So we have Germans, we have Irish, we have
New Englanders, slaves, free blacks. Describe for me
the geography then of Harpers Ferry where you have
workers living at the bottom of the hill ? ?
JJFA 1372
DF: Yes, Harpers Ferry with its diverse population,
you found blacks living with whites. Free blacks
living with whites. Slaves living with their white
masters. You did not have segregated populations
throughout the town as we think of segregated areas
in many of today's cities. But you did have a cultural
social layering in the town. For example, Harpers
Ferry, the low lands which sit between the Potomac
and the Shenandoah where the factory buildings were
located along the river, in many of the areas that we
refer to as the lower town, that's where the factory
workers lived. They lived in housing that first of all
was provided by the government and eventually over
time that housing was available for purchase by these
workers. But as you begin to move out of the factory
area, you begin to move up the hill into what we refer
to today as the 'upper town'.
JJFA 1462
That's where the leaders of the armory resided. That's
where the entrepreneurs lived. That's where the
armory superintendent resided, the armory paymaster,
the highest paid officials, the decision makers for the
armory, all lived well above the actual factory itself,
above the factory workers. One reason for that was
that they felt the climate was much healthier at the
upper levels of town than down where the actual
production occurred. They also felt they had better
water, better air, they had more room and space. The
people who lived up here generally had their own
individual gardens and animals. They would have a
place for their own carriage, for their own horses,
stables. Whereas individuals living in the lower town
might have a very small garden plot and maybe a
little bit of grass, but very few people had any space
to place their own horse or other animals.
JJFA 1550
So you do see that diversification and stratification,
based on social hierarchy, who were the leaders of the
armory and where were they? High above those who
actually worked in the factory. You also find that
same situation with the business community. The
businessmen had their shops and businesses in the
commercial district, in the lower town, but they didn't
live down there most of them. Most of the
businessmen also resided in the area where the
armory superintendent and other representatives of
the armory hierarchy lived. But there was an
adjoining town called Bolivar, which also sat above
the factory towns area, but Bolivar became primarily
a working class town.
JJFA 1621
Many armorers who were able to make enough
money to buy their own property and build their own
home would leave the lower town area and go only
one mile to the little community of Bolivar. And so
over time, during the mid part of the 19th century,
Bolivar began to flourish as an armory workers town.
And it's interesting that even today, many of people in
Harpers Ferry are seen as middle to upper class white
collar people, whereas many of the folks who reside
in Bolivar today are still seen as working class people
in the community, so that stratification is very much
in existence in Harpers Ferry and in Bolivar
today.
Q: Your description of Harpers Ferry, I thought
for a second you were describing a coal town in the
1920's or a company town?
JJFA 1704
DF: Harpers Ferry is the classic company town, but
what makes Harpers Ferry different from other
company towns is who owned and operated Harpers
Ferry -- the United States government. United States
government dollars were poured into the development
of the factories; the employees who worked here
received U.S. government salaries; the products that
were produced here went to the United States
government; the weapons were all property of the
United States, so this is the classic, classic company
town. But the hierarchy, the leader, the owner was
the United States government; in fact, although
population of Harpers Ferry in 1850 was
approximately 3,000, the town was not incorporated
because very few of the town's residents owned any of
the property.
JJFA 1792
It all belonged to the United States government. And
so, this town in my judgment if you consider is the
oldest developed U.S. government town in this
country, what will come to most people's mind is
Washington, D.C., but Harpers Ferry also represents
a U.S. government company town.
Q: Tell me about Washington's dream of the C &
O and how it impacted Harpers Ferry?
JJFA 1849
DF: The heartland for the nation during the period of
George Washington's presidency was the Potomac
valley. Washington saw that as the gateway into the
fertile Shenandoah valley and further west into the
markets of the Ohio valley, but the Potomac river of
course is one which has numerous falls and is not
very navigable in many areas. And so during the mid
1780's Washington and a group of businessmen
formed the Potomac Canal Company, which was a
vision to open the Potomac river to navigation from
the area western Maryland, western Virginia, all the
way to the Chesapeake Bay. To do this, they wanted
to develop a system of skirting canal. A skirting
canal literally would go around rapids in the river.
Where the river was navigable, they would utilize the
slack water in the river, but wherever they ran into a
falls, they would build a canal system and lock
system that would go around that and then back into
the river you would go again.
JJFA 1943
Here at Harpers Ferry with the falls of the Potomac
and the Shenandoah rivers, they did build a system of
skirting canals. The Potomac Canal was later
superseded by the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. The
first spade full of earth was turned by President John
Quincy Adams in 1828, just a little outside of
Washington at Georgetown. And there they had great
hope of utilizing the canal system to again to open up
the riches of the Ohio valley, hence Chesapeake and
Ohio Canal was the name designation. But it's ironic
on the same day that John Quincy Adams turned that
first spade of earth to begin the C&O Canal, only a
few miles north of Georgetown at Baltimore ...
SOUND ROLL 81, FRYE INTERVIEW
TAKE 5, ROLL 215, SOUND 81, FRYE
INTERVIEW
Q: Dennis, tell me about this coincidence in a
single day . . .
JJFB 0025
DF: On the same day that John Quincy Adams ... On
the same day that John Quincy Adams dug the first
spade of earth for the C & O Canal at Georgetown,
just outside of Washington with great hoopla, great
fanfare and great vision to finally open up George
Washington's Potomac valley, a few miles to the north
in Baltimore, a group of entrepreneurs were
conducting an experiment, and the experiment was
the railroad. There they laid the cornerstone, not a
rail, but a cornerstone on July 4, 1828, for the new
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, and the race
for the riches of the Ohio Valley had begun.
JJFB 0093
By the time the two different, very different
transportation systems arrived at Harpers Ferry in
1834, they had been fighting and bickering over the
very close right away along the Potomac river, the
railroad had had enough, and it decided to go to the
Virginia legislature and petition to come across the
river at Harpers Ferry and no longer have to worry
about fighting the canal for right of way to the
western riches. The Virginia legislature agreed; a
bridge was constructed at Harpers Ferry, and the
railroad continued west. And that's the end of the
story because there on out, the B&O indeed raced
west and by 1852 had reached Wheeling and the Ohio
river.
JJFB 0166
On the other hand the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
never went any further west than Cumberland,
Maryland and was almost bankrupt by the time it
reached Cumberland in 1850. And so the railroad
won the race; the experiment proved successful, but it
shows the glory of entrepreneurship and the
willingness to take risks because when they began on
July 4, 1828 the canal was the proven means of
transportation, and the railroad was a total
experiment. How much it had changed in a couple of
decades.
Q: Let's go to 1859; tell me why ?? ? with a
crazy plan ? ? at that time.
JJFB 0244
DF: John Brown came to Harpers Ferry because of
the United States Armory and Arsenal. There were
100,000 weapons stored in two arsenal buildings here
at Harpers Ferry. Brown intended to utilize those
weapons to bring about an end to slavery throughout
the south, specifically he would take the weapons,
train slaves, former slaves that he would liberate, and
be able to utilize this new army to liberate additional
slaves throughout the south for at that time there were
four million men, women, and children in bondage in
the southern states. Brown's plan also was to utilize
the mountains of Virginia as his stronghold. Brown
had trained himself in guerrilla warfare, so his plan
would be hit and run tactics. Strike, allow escape,
slaves to escape, and bring them into his fold.
JJFB 0339
So, Virginia really became the nerve center of
Brown's plan to liberate hundreds of thousands of
slaves, and Harpers Ferry would be the beginning of
that liberation. Many think the old man was crazy,
insane, a lunatic; after all, there was insanity in the
Brown family, proven. Yet, his plan, his attack of
Harpers Ferry armory was initially well conceived.
Brown had an advanced scout here who had lived in
the Harpers Ferry region for over a year before he had
arrived. Information had been sent from this scout to
Brown. The scout knew who the leading people of
the town were. He knew when the work hours were
for the armory. He knew when the business were
open. He knew how many men worked in the
armory, what their shifts were. He knew how many
men guarded the armory. He knew the routes in and
out of Harpers Ferry, and so with this advance man
here which no one knew, no one knew about Brown
nor about what his plans were in this region, Brown
felt very comfortable in the plan which he
devised.
JJFB 0451
So on the night of October 16, 1859, a rainy, foggy,
miserable evening, Brown and eighteen men and his
army, all of his men with commissions, advanced
across the Potomac river bridge, where they met the
one night watchman. Eighteen against one. Brown
won without a hassle. His access in and out of town
is secure. Moments later he comes to the armory
gate, rattles the gate, and walking out from the
armory fire engine comes one night watchman.
Eighteen against one. Brown won again. All of the
armory fell into Brown's possession, and the same
watchman who guarded the armory also is responsible
for the arsenal. So, Brown also had the keys to the
arsenal buildings. That's not insane; that's
brilliant.
Q: How did it start to unravel?
JJFB 0547
DF: It really unravel ... Brown's plan which had been
working so well during its first few hours began to
unravel about one o'clock in the morning when one of
his men, one of the prisoners he had captured at the
bridge coming into Harpers Ferry escaped, began to
run out along the railroad along the river and as he
was running to the west, they flagged down a
passenger train, which Brown had expected to come
into town. He knew that it would be arriving; he did
not intend to stop it. Everything would be business as
usual although nothing was usual at the moment. But
unfortunately for Brown the train stopped. The night
baggage porter, named Heyward Shepherd noticed
that the train was late.
JJFB 0628
One report speaks about the engineer blowing his
whistle after he had been warned by the bridge
watchman that there were thugs and robbers in
Harpers Ferry who were there to steal from the train
people, from the passengers, not realizing this was a
group of abolitionist who had come to strike a blow
against slavery. The night watchman walked out on
the railroad platform, excuse me it was the baggage
master who walked out on the railroad platform. ...
The baggage master walked out onto the railroad
platform in search of the passenger train. As he was
looking west, he was confronted by a few of Brown's
men. 'Who are you? What are you doing here?' And
instead of stopping to respond, he panicked and began
to run. And as Heyward Shepherd began running
along the platform, Brown's men told him to
'Halt!'
JJFB 0702
The adrenaline began to pump even harder, and
Shepherd ran faster. Not wanting any other
individual to escape, two of Brown's men raised their
weapons and fired and Shepherd was hit in the groin
and he fell, mortally wounded. That shot which rang
out awoke a doctor who lived somewhere very near
the armory. His name was Dr. John Starry. Starry,
thinking there might have been a problem, shortly
after midnight rises from his bed, puts his clothes on,
walks out on to Shenandoah Street and down toward
the armory. When he arrives there he's confronted by
a few of Brown's men. 'Who are you? What are you
doing here?' 'I'm a doctor.' ...
TAKE 6
Q: Tell me about the doctor who heard the
shots?
JJFB 0779
DF: So shortly after one o'clock in the morning when
Brown's men fired their guns to stop Heyward
Shepherd from running from them, one of those shots
was heard by Dr. John Starry, who lived somewhere
near the armory. We're not certain exactly where.
Starry rose from his bed, put his clothes on, went
outside. He was confronted by several of Brown's
men as he arrived at the armory. 'Who are you?'
'What are you doing here?' 'I heard a shot is someone
hurt?' They took him, Dr. Starry, to the wounded
Heyward Shepherd. In the darkness, Starry looked
him over and said, 'I can do nothing for this man; he's
badly wounded, and I'll think he'll die.' And here
Brown's men made their fatal error. Instead of
holding Dr. Starry as a hostage, they allowed him to
walk away.
JJFB 0852
And Starry whose ears had been wide open, his eyes
viewing all that was around him, had taken in what
was happening. Starry did not go back to bed. He
went to the livery, grabbed a horse, and began to ride.
And he rode to neighboring communities stating
loudly that Harpers Ferry had been captured by
abolitionists. And when he arrived at Charles Town,
church bells began to ring and people came out.
'Where's the fire?' There was no fire, no building fire,
but there was an abolition fire at Harpers Ferry, and
the militia began to arrive. And the militia began to
march upon Harpers Ferry, and in a very short time
Brown was trapped and surrounded by local
militia.
JJFB 0920
John Starry is a real hero for the people of Harpers
Ferry and Jefferson County because he sounded the
alarm, was the first to sound the alarm. We've all
heard of Paul Revere and that shot and Paul Revere's
ride to warn the people the British were coming.
We've never heard of John Starry, and John Starry is
the Paul Revere of the John Brown raid. ...
SOUND ROLL 82, CAMERA ROLL 216, FRYE INTERVIEW, TAKE 7
Q: So the militia starts converging on Harpers
Ferry. Then what happened?
JJFB 0996
DF: Brown becomes trapped in the armory fire engine
house which he had been utilizing as his central
headquarters. Brown, although trapped, has one
advantage and that advantage is hostages. Several
prominent people in the community and in the region
had been taken as hostage, including the great
grand-nephew of George Washington, Colonel Lewis
Washington and some of Lewis Washington's slaves
and personal possessions. Brown wanted Washington
because Washington represented a symbol of
liberation, a symbol of freedom, a symbol of new
revolution, and so huddled in the engine house are
less than 20 people, the hostages and what few of
Brown's men still remained to defend him.
JJFB 1066
On the morning of October 18th when the raid is
barely 36 hours old, the United States Marines, who
had arrived earlier that day under the command of a
person who never was a marine, Lieutenant Colonel
Robert E. Lee, are here to make the final approach.
Lee, being the gentlemen Virginian offered his fellow
militia commanders, also gentlemen Virginians, the
opportunity to make the attack on the engine house.
But they demurred to Colonel Lee and said: 'You're
the professional soldiers. You are the people who are
paid to do this, and it's dangerous. You may have the
honor of making the attack. We have surrounded
him; our job is complete.' So with that, Lee gives
instructions to J. E. B. Stuart, who was along also not
as a marine, but as the person who delivered the
message to Colonel Lee from the War Department.
And so that's how Lee and Stuart arrived here
together with the United States Marines.
JJFB 1162
Stuart went up to the building to parlay with Brown.
There was some discussion back and forth. Brown's
point was: 'You let me and my men leave with the
hostages, and we will promise them no harm. You
will not follow, and we will release the hostages when
we feel we are a safe distance from Harpers Ferry.'
Of course Brown intended to go into Pennsylvania
and leave behind now his failed raid. Stuart was
instructed to demand surrender, and not to accept any
other terms. So since the two men were not able to
negotiate favorable terms, Stuart backed away from
the fire engine house, raised his hat, swung it in the
air; and that was the symbol for the marines to
assault. The marines first of all grabbed a sledge
hammer and tried to beat down the doors of the
engine house, which Brown had barricaded with ropes
and ladders and fire engines. They did not
succeed.
JJFB 1245
But since it was a fire engine house, they discovered a
nearby ladder and twelve of them got on that ladder
and tried to use it as a battering ram. And the first
time they struck the fire engine house doors nothing
happened. But they backed up, re-grouped, and
advanced again, and the second time where that
sledge hammer had been used it had weakened the
fabric of the door, and the second assault by the
marines with the fire engineer ladder, they smashed
through the door right were the sledge hammer had
been doing its work. It produced a very small hole,
only large enough for one man at a time to crawl
through. And the first man through was a marine,
Lieutenant Israel Green. Head first, the rest of his
body following, coming into a smoke filled, cloudy,
dark room, not knowing what awaited him.
JJFB 1326
And as he walked into the middle of the room
someone pointed out to him Ossawatomie, which was
Brown's nickname from Bloody Kansas. And Brown
who apparently for the first time understood that the
engine house had been penetrated by the marines,
turned around; and with that Green lunged at Brown
with his saber -- lunged a direct blow right toward the
navel. He struck Brown and pushed him down, but
the sword did not penetrate. In fact when Green
raised his sword and looked at it, no longer was it a
long saber, but it had bent over and now looked like a
sickle. And Green looked at his sword and he looked
at Brown and puzzled momentarily. What had
happened? What had the sword struck? Well, we
later found out that Brown was wearing a buckle, and
the sword had struck that buckle with such force that
instead of penetrating, it almost had broken it in
half.
JJFB 1418
And this is where history becomes a matter of a
quarter of an inch. A quarter of an inch high or low
or a quarter of an inch to the right or to the left away
from that buckle, that sword would have penetrated
Brown and he would have died on that very cold
brick floor. But instead it was deflected and Brown
would survive. He would be badly wounded by saber
blows with the hilt of the sword by Green and he
would fall unconscious. In the meantime additional
marines would come into the building. In a period of
three minutes it was over. From the time that first
penetration occurred with the ladder to the time when
all the hostages were safe, and all the raiders either
captured or killed, three minutes would go by. It's a
very important three minutes in American
history.
JJFB 1499
They would bring Brown out of the engine house
eventually, badly wounded. And there was a hush
silence by the people, a throng, the crowd which had
gathered to watch the climax of the raid, because
many people when they saw John Brown dragged out
of that building, knew him, but they didn't know him
as John Brown. They didn't know him as the
abolitionist fighter. He didn't know him as the ardent
anti-slavery crusader. They didn't know him as
Ossawatomie of Bloody Kansas, but they knew him
as Isaac Smith, a man who had recently moved into
the area with his sons to go prospecting in the
mountains, a man who had walked the streets of
Harpers Ferry, bought newspapers and groceries in
the town, had come up and greeted people with his
hand.
JJFB 1582
They knew him. This was the man who had
perpetrated this raid, had perpetrated this crime
against Virginia, and what the meaning of Brown was
trust. No longer could the people of Harpers Ferry
trust any stranger. Any person who walked into their
midst from henceforth was another John Brown who
came to take their slaves.
Q: ? ? I want you to tell me ? ? 17th of October, and Brown ? ? scenes in waiting. Execution of Brown ??
TAKE 8
Q: John Brown ? ?
DF: Yes, John Brown is taken to Charles Town, the
county seat of Jefferson County, where he is placed
on trial for treason, murder and inciting slave
rebellion.
TAKE 9
JJFB 1718
DF: Brown was taken to Charles Town, the county
seat of Jefferson County, where he was tried for
murder, treason, and inciting slave rebellion. The
trial was fast, but Brown declared it fair. On
November 2, 1859, shortly after, -- he had been
captured on October 18, the judge pronounced that he
was guilty and that he would be executed by hanging
in Charles Town one month later on December 2.
The reaction throughout the north and the south was
mixed. The southern reaction was justice. Brown
after all had come to steal private property. For the
southerner, the slave was property; the slave was
guaranteed property by the Constitution of the United
States, and so no one, no individual had the right to
steal another person's property.
JJFB 1824
And that's exactly what Brown intended to do when
he came to free the slaves was steal from southerners.
That's the law. But from a moral perspective, which
is what many of the abolitionist brethren proclaimed,
Brown was right. Slavery is a sin against humanity,
that to own another person is a sin against your fellow
man, and so for Brown's raid, although a failure, to
occur was a benefit to the northern abolitionists. It
gave them something. It have them hope; it gave
them an opportunity to further declare the evils of
slavery from the moral perspective.
JJFB 1913
So, Brown really represents a clash between religious
belief because Brown had convinced himself that he
was an instrument of God, that he had been sent here
by Jehovah with the bible as his creed, to declare war
against slavery versus the law of man. The law of
God from Brown's perspective versus the law of man
which guaranteed individual property rights and
hence guaranteed the institution of slavery and its
existence in the southern states.
FRYE INTERVIEW, SOUND 83, TAKE 10, ROLL 217
Q: To sum up, tell me in your mind what impact John Brown was on the nation in the middle of the 19th century?
TAKE 11
Q: ... Tell me what impact John Brown had on
the nation in the middle of the 19th century?
JJFC 0072
DF: John Brown's raid can best be summarized with
one word: emotion, an outpouring of emotion across
the land. Emotion of how dare this individual and
this group of men strike against our personal
property? How dare they come and try to steal our
slaves from us versus the emotion of: Hurrah for
Brown! This is fabulous. This is the stroke of
lightening we've been waiting for to crash into the
southern land and shake them to their hearts. The
northern perspective was Brown, hero -- Brown,
martyr -- Brown, the man of God who had been called
by God to rid the nation of the curse of slavery. The
southern perspective was that Brown was the very
Devil himself, who had been placed amidst the people
of the south. ...
TAKE 12
Q: Compare the northern and the southern
perspectives on what happened to John Brown?
JJFC 0176
DF: The northern perspective was that Brown was a
bolt of lightening into the heart of the southern land,
that he struck a blow for freedom, that he shook the
south to its very heart. From a northerner's point of
view, the northern abolitionist, Brown was a hero. He
was a martyr; he was a man of God, who had been
called by God to rid this nation of the curse of
slavery. From the southern perspective, however,
Brown was evil incarnate, Brown was the Devil
himself. Brown was an individual who had come to
bring terror and horror to the people of the south.
And so Brown I feel can best be summarized by the
emotion that he unleashed, north and south. John
Brown carved a canyon, a grand canyon between the
north and the south.
JJFC 0257
And we would not be able to again span the canyon
that Brown placed between the two nations. In
addition, Brown can best be understood from a
perspective of heated debate. No longer could you
stand on top of the fence and not topple either for
slavery or against slavery. Brown took away the
opportunity for compromise. Brown as one author
once wrote: 'probably can be summarized as the
individual who took away reason, took away any of
the opportunity to simply discuss it without getting
fervently involved. Peace rules the day when reason
rules the mind.' And Brown took away that reason
and soon our nation would have no peace. John
Brown still lives very much of the heart of this nation
today, and I think Stephen Vincent Benet best
summarized Brown in his famous epic poem, "John
Brown's Body," when he wrote: "You can weigh
John Brown's body well enough but how and in what
way do you weigh John Brown?"
Q: Tell me about the next part of the story which
is the Civil War breaks out and early in that war
Union forces ? ? Harpers Ferry and ? ?
JJFC 0408
DF: The first property destruction to occur in the state
of Virginia at the outbreak of the Civil War, less than
twenty-four hours after Virginia succeeded from the
union, occurred at Harpers Ferry. United States
troops, somewhere between 40 and 50 United States
regulars, were informed that the Virginia militia were
advancing against the town, 3,000 Virginia militia.
In reality there were only three hundred, but the point
was that Virginia troops were coming to Harpers
Ferry to seize the armory and arsenal. So the
lieutenant in charge of this several hundred thousand
dollar complex, a lieutenant, that responsibility on his
shoulders, determined that since he could not defend
the armory and arsenal, he would have to destroy it.
And so about ten p.m. on the night of April 18, 1861,
the torches were lit, the fires were set, and the
explosions occurred, and the arsenals blew up.
JJFC 0488
Fifteen thousand stand of weapons completely
destroyed, consumed by the flames. People shaken
out of their beds as they looked around that night and
they saw the flames towering up against Maryland
and the Loudoun Heights. What has happened?
What is happening to our land? Many of those same
people after they recovered from their initial shock
put their clothes on, ran out to the armory to try to
extinguish the fire and most cases they succeeded.
They weren't interested in union and confederacy;
they weren't interested in north and south; they were
interested in saving their jobs. And every time they
put out the flame, they saved their own job or the job
of a friend.
JJFC 0548
So the armory was salvaged, and all the machinery
that manufactured the weapons was saved from the
flames, but the Virginia militia had arrived and soon
to arrive in command of the Virginia militia would be
Thomas Jonathan Jackson, Colonel Jackson, Ol' Blue
Light they called him, a professor of the Virginia
Military Institute, quite an eccentric man, a native of
western Virginia, Clarksburg. Many don't realize it,
but Jackson's first command of the Civil War would
be at Harpers Ferry, and it was at Harpers Ferry
where he would take the troops of a stonewall that
would stand later at Manassas and Jackson would
drill and drill and discipline those troops and from my
perspective the stonewall that stood at Manassas was
molded by Stonewall Jackson at Harpers Ferry in the
first two months of the war in April and May of
1861.
JJFC 0636
In mid-June, 1861, confederate authorities
determined that Harpers Ferry was not worth holding,
that they should not remain in position on the border
between north and south, and so Harpers Ferry was
abandoned. The railroad bridge was blown up, the
armory buildings were destroyed, and Harpers Ferry
would soon become a ghost town, isolated and very,
very vulnerable to forces from both union and
confederacy. The only thing that separated Harpers
Ferry from north and south was nine hundred feet of
the Potomac river. Potomac river became the Rio
Grande river, it became the border between Canada
and the United States because now we had two
warring nations under two separate flags under two
separate presidents and Harpers Ferry was right on
the border between these two warring countries.
JJFC 0716
And so the Potomac, in effect, became an
international boundary between the union and the
confederacy. And unfortunately for Harpers Ferry, it
sat right on the edge of that boundary.
Q: What were Jackson's feelings about
destroying both Harpers Ferry and Martinsburg?
JJFC 0748
DF: Jackson certainly was not comfortable with
destroying property in Virginia, but Jackson was a
warrior. He was the consummate commander. He
understood that war brought destruction. He
understood that war would bring death and misery.
So for Jackson to destroy when he would leave areas,
destroy the railroad round house at Martinsburg, to
destroy trains that he had captured on the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad, to assist with the destruction of
the armory at Harpers Ferry, for Thomas J. Jackson
those were simply the results of war, a war that he did
not want, a war that many other Virginians did not
desire, but now that he had thrown his hat in with the
confederacy, he would execute the edicts of war. And
if that war brought death, misery and destruction, so
be it.
Q: A twist of fate that's so common in war,
September 1862 that it rolls ? ?
JJFC 0851
DF: Little did Thomas Jackson realize in the spring of
1861 that he would return in September 1862 as the
most famous man in America. The most famous man
not only in the south, but also in the north; and for
that matter, he may have been the most famous man
known throughout the world in the fall of 1862
because of his famous exploits during that summer of
1862 in the Shenandoah Valley. ... During that
spring of 1862 in ...
JJFC 0914
Little did Thomas J. Jackson realize that when he
would return to Harpers Ferry in September of 1862,
many would consider him the most famous man in
America, not only in the north but also in the south of
course. But throughout much of the world, Jackson
was acclaimed as a brilliant military man because of
his exploits in the Shenandoah valley in the spring of
1862. So we have the confederacy's most famous
commander directed to capture Harpers Ferry in the
fall of 1862 by army northern Virginia commander,
Robert E. Lee, who of course was Stonewall's
superior. What would happen is when the
confederates invaded Maryland in September, the first
week of September of '62, they expected the 14,000
union soldiers who occupied Harpers Ferry and
Martinsburg to be withdrawn to the north.
JJFC 0998
General Lee depended on the Harpers
Ferry-Martinsburg corridor into the Shenandoah
valley as his avenue of supply, transportation,
communication, and possible retreat. But with all of
these thousands of blue coats holding the lower end of
the valley ...
FRYE INTERVIEW, TAKE 13, ROLL 218, SOUND 84
Q: Tell me about Stonewall's season of Harpers
Ferry ? ?
JJFC 1034
DF: On the afternoon of September 13th, three
converging confederate columns, totaling 23,000
men, almost half of Robert E. Lee's entire army that
had come into Maryland, was advancing on the three
mountains surrounding Harpers Ferry, Maryland
Heights, Loudoun Heights, and Schoolhouse Ridge
(Bolivar Heights). What would happen is that the
confederates would take the mountains after some
resistance on Maryland Heights, but once the
confederates had the high ground, it was only a matter
of time the Federals would be forced to surrender.
Jackson's men would drag artillery to the Heights.
They would begin a bombardment, ferocious
bombardment, on September 14th; and although
psychologically weakened and damaged and very,
very concerned about their well being, the Federals
didn't surrender on the 14th, and so Jackson during
the night of the 15th changed some of his troop
positions.
JJFC 1120
He moved infantry behind the left flank of the union
lines; he brought artillery closer to bear at point blank
range, and as the fog began to rise on Monday
morning, September the 15th, the changes were
immense for the federal commander. And as the
lanyards were pulled on the federal artillery and the
bombardment began, in a very short period of time
the union commander, Dixon Miles, decided 'I've had
enough. We cannot sustain any more casualties or
can we possibly survive this type of bombardment and
possible infantry assault. So Miles made the decision
to raise the white flag, and mid morning on
September 15th, the union garrison surrendered.
JJFC 1183
What did Jackson accomplish? What had he done at
Harpers Ferry? Extraordinary, extraordinary.
Seventy three pieces of artillery fell into confederate
hands. You can take all the battles of the army in
northern Virginia, put them together here in the
eastern theater, and the number of guns that they
captured and they kept on battlefields from '62
through '65 doesn't equal 73 pieces of artillery.
Jackson, 73 in one fell sweep. Two hundred wagons,
confederate quarter masters were smiling from ear to
ear, new transport for the army. Twelve thousand
small arms, weapons. That's enough fire power to
equip an entire army corps, but most important is that
Stonewall Jackson captured 12,500 United States
soldiers, and that is the largest capitulation of United
States Forces during the Civil War. And in fact, up
until the fall of Bataan in WWII, Harpers Ferry rated
as the number one surrender of United States troops in
American History.
JJFC 1303
So Jackson was brilliant here. It is one of the greatest
confederate victories; and in fact if you take a look at
Stonewall Jackson and all of his individual battles, he
commanded many troops here. He commanded in a
difficult situation. He was under a tight time
constraint. The enemy was advancing against his
rear. General Lee was in great trouble in the north
near South Mountain in Sharpsburg Jackson had to
perform; he did, and I consider it Stonewall Jackson's
most brilliant victory of the war when you consider
his results.
Q: The war then drifts out of western Virginia
and instead of West Virginia, only to come back in a
different form in 1864. Phil Sheridan leads his troops
on a sweep through the valley in Virginia and
ex-slaves come and start pouring as refugees into
Harpers Ferry. Describe that.
JJFC 1395
DF: Harpers Ferry became General Sheridan's base of
operations during his 1864 valley campaign
conducted in the fall of 1864, and as Sheridan's army
of 40,000 men moved up and down the valley,
defeating the confederate forces time and again, many
hundreds of refugees would come to seek refuge
behind union lines at Harpers Ferry. Many of those
refugees were former slaves, and it became problem
for the government here because with these people,
these former slaves arriving at Harpers Ferry, they
needed shelter. They needed food; they needed
clothing. Most of them had no education, and so they
began to try to serve the needs of what at that time
was known as the 'contraband of war' here behind
union lines. When the war would end, many of these
former slaves remained in this area and continued to
live in abandoned buildings in Harpers Ferry.
JJFC 1492
The Freedman's Bureau made this one of its central
distribution points, central headquarters for former
slaves so that they could help keep them fed and
provide them with shelter and give them places to
live, and they also began to educate the former slaves.
And to that effect, missionaries, people from New
England, began to come into the south to serve as
teachers, as instructors, as people who would provide
education to former slaves, believing that education
was the route to success. Eventually at Harpers Ferry,
that would produce an educational institution known
as Storer College, named after John Storer who was a
philanthropist from Maine, who donated $10,000 to
the Free Will Baptists who had established a mission
here at Harpers Ferry for the education of former
slaves.
JJFC 1574
They were very fortunate in that the United States
government decided that it would not rebuild the
armory, so there were many vacant government
buildings here; and when the Freedman's Bureau was
petitioned by the Free Will Baptists to obtain these
buildings as the nucleus for Storer College, the
infrastructure was provided. So the school began in
1867 formally, and it continued to function as a
school and as an institution primarily for former
slaves in its early years, but it lasted all the way up
until 1954. One of the unique things about Storer
College is that Storer required his money be used only
for an integrated school. Storer demanded that his
school be open to both male and female, both white
and black. So it's an example of one of the earliest
integrated schools in West Virginia.
Q: Before we skip over the refugee situation, I've
read accounts of children, infant mortality in Harpers
Ferry refugee camps and women working as
domestics and the men being forced to go out and ??
to work as farming hands and children being
abandoned. They were living in tents, ? ?
DF: Are you talking about 1864 or '65.
Q: '65.
JJFC 1703
DF: ....Conditions for the former slaves, despite the
efforts of the army and despite the efforts of the
Freedman's Bureau were not very good. Disease was
rampant. Tuberculosis was a problem. Many of the
women had difficulties finding an adequate shelter for
their families. Many of the men were not able to get
enough income to make a suitable living and were
forced to go out and try to find work away from their
families. So we have the division of families, we have
difficulty providing food and shelter, the difficulty of
education. Education is meaningless if you're hungry,
if you have no place to live; and so Harpers Ferry
truly was a refugee camp where the conditions were
not very good.
Q: We've kind of come full circle to the last
question: What excites you or keeps you ? so
passionate about conveying the history of this place,
this one small place? ?
JJFC 1797
DF: I am so passionate about Harpers Ferry and the
history of this area because I know of very few places
where so much occurred that changed the nation's
history, that changed the path that we were following
in one small community. Harpers Ferry represents
the microcosm of America during the nineteenth
century. It's a place where you can come and learn
about the people of the past without leaving that place
to go to many disparate areas to get little pieces of the
story. Many of those pieces all come together at the
confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah
River.
JJFC 1856
Many of those pieces, the story of the industrial
revolution, the story of slavery, the story of John
Brown, the story of the Civil War, the story to rid this
nation of slavery, the story of education for former
slaves, the story of the struggle for freedom, all of that
happened at Harpers Ferry. And it really represents
America in miniature. It truly represents 19th century
America as it grew, as it struggled, as it experienced
pain and hardship, as it flourished. That's Harpers
Ferry.
ROOM TONE FOR FRYE INTERVIEW
JJFC 1944