AROUND HARPER’S FERRY.
At Harper’s Ferry the Potomac and Shenandoah unite their waters and flow
through an enormous gap in the Blue Ridge. The angle of land thus formed
is a sort of promontory; around the base of which, just where the rivers
meet, the curious little old town is built. Higher up the promontory lie
Bolivar Heights. On the north, just across the Potomac from the Ferry,
rise Maryland Heights; while on the east, across the Shenandoah, are
Loudon Heights, an equally precipitous and lofty crag. With sublime
rocky fronts these two mountains stand gazing at each other across the
river which has evidently forced its way through them here. Just where
the streams are united the once happily wedded mountains are divorced.
No doubt there was once a stupendous cataract here, pouring its shining
sheet towards the morning sun, from a vast inland sea; for the tourist
still finds, far up the steep face of the mountains, dimples which in
past ages ceaselessly whirling water-eddies made. In some of these
scooped places sand and smooth-worn pebbles still remain. But the
mountain-wall has long since been sundered, and the inland sea drained
off; the river forcing a way not only for itself but for the turnpike,
railroad, and canal, fore-ordained in the beginning to appear in the
ripeness of time and follow the river’s course.
Thus the town, as you perceive, is situated in the midst of scenery
which should make it a favorite place of summer resort. The cliffs are
picturesquely tufted, and tasselled, and draped with foliage, boughs of
trees, and festoons of wild vines, through which here and there upshoot
the perpendicular columns of some bold crag, softened into beauty by the
many-colored lichens that stud its sides. I count an evening walk under
Loudon Heights, with the broad, sprawling river hoarsely babbling over
its rocky bed on one side, and the still precipices soaring to heaven on
the other,—and the narrow stony road cut round their base lying before
me, untrodden at that hour by any human foot save my own,—I count that
lonely walk amid the cool, dewy scents stealing out of the undergrowth,
and the colors of the evening sky gilding the cliffs, as one of the
pleasantest of my life. What is there, as you look up at those soaring
summits and the low clouds sailing silently over them, that fills the
heart so full?
The morning after my arrival I climbed Maryland Heights by the winding
military road which owes its existence to the war. I have seen nothing
since the view from Mount Washington to be compared with the panorama
which unrolled itself around me as I ascended. Pictures of two States
were there, indescribably tinted in the early morning light,—beautiful
Maryland, still more beautiful Virginia, with the green Potomac valley
marking the boundary between. On the Maryland side were the little
valleys of the Monocacy and the Antietam. Opposite lay the valley of the
Shenandoah, dotted with trees, its green fields spotted with the darker
green of groves, a vast tract stretching away into a realm of hazy
light, belted with sun and mist, and bounded by faint outlines of
mountains so soft they seemed built of ether but a little more condensed
than the blue of the sky.
Yet it was war and not beauty which led man to these heights. The timber
which once covered them was cut away when the forts were constructed, in
order to afford free range for the guns; and a thick undergrowth now
takes its place. There are strong works on the summit, the sight of
which kindles anew one’s indignation at the imbecility which surrendered
them, with Harper’s Ferry and a small army, at a time when such an act
was sufficient to prolong the war perhaps for years.
It is a steep mile and more by the road from the Ferry to the top of the
cliffs: a mile which richly repays the travel. Yet one need not go so
far nor climb so high to see the beauties of the place. Whichever way
you turn, river, or rock, or wild woods charm the eye. The Potomac comes
down from its verdant bowers gurgling among its innumerable rocky
islets. On one side is the canal, on the other the race which feeds the
government works, each tumbling its yeasty super-flux over waste-weir
walls into the river. With the noise of those snowy cascades sweetly
blends the note of the boatman’s bugle approaching the locks. The eye
ranges from the river to the crags a thousand feet above, and all along
the mountain side, gracefully adorned with sparse timber, feathery
boughs and trees loaded down with vines, and is never weary of the
picture. At evening, you sit watching the sunset colors fade, until the
softened gray and dusky-brown tints of the cliffs deepen into darkness,
and the moon comes out and silvers them.
But while the region presents such features of beauty and grandeur, the
town is the reverse of agreeable. It is said to have been a pleasant and
picturesque place formerly. The streets were well graded, and the
hill-sides above were graced with terraces and trees. But war has
changed all. Freshets tear down the centre of the streets, and the
dreary hill-sides present only ragged growths of weeds. The town itself
lies half in ruins. The government works were duly destroyed by the
Rebels; of the extensive buildings which comprised the armory,
rolling-mills, foundry, and machine-shops, you see but little more than
the burnt-out, empty shells. Of the bridge across the Shenandoah only
the ruined piers are left; still less remains of the old bridge over the
Potomac. And all about the town are rubbish, and filth, and stench.
Almost alone of the government buildings, John Brown’s “Engine-house”
has escaped destruction. It has come out of the ordeal of war terribly
bruised and battered, it is true, its windows blackened and patched like
the eyes of a pugilist; but there it still stands, with its brown brick
walls and little wooden belfry, like a monument which no Rebel hands
were permitted to demolish. It is now used as a storehouse for arms.
The first time I visited this scene of the first blood shed in the great
civil war, which, although so few dreamed of it, was even then
beginning,—for John Brown’s flaming deed was as a torch flung into the
ready-heaped combustibles of the rebellion,—while I stood viewing the
spot with an interest which must have betrayed itself, a genial old
gentleman, coming out of the government repair-shop close by, accosted
me. We soon fell into conversation, and he told me the story of John
Brown at Harper’s Ferry.
“So they took the old man and hung him; and all the time the men that
did it were plotting treason and murder by the wholesale. They did it in
a hurry, because if they delayed, they wouldn’t have been able to hang
him at all. A strong current of public feeling was turning in his favor.
Such a sacrifice of himself set many to thinking on the subject who
never thought before; many who had to acknowledge in their hearts that
slavery was wrong and that old John Brown was right. I speak what I
know, for I was here at the time. I have lived in Harper’s Ferry fifteen
years. I was born and bred in a slave State, but I never let my love of
the institution blind me to everything else. Slavery has been the curse
of this country, and she is now beginning to bless the day she was
delivered from it.”
“Are there many people here who think as you do?”
“Enough to carry the day at the polls. The most of them are coming round
to right views of negro suffrage, too. That is the only justice for the
blacks, and it is the only safety for us. The idea of allowing the loyal
colored population to be represented by the whites, the most of whom
were traitors,—of letting a Rebel just out of the Confederate army vote,
and telling a colored man just out of the Union army that he has no
vote,—the idea is so perfectly absurd that the Rebels themselves must
acknowledge it.”
I was hardly less interested in the conversation of an intelligent
colored waiter at the hotel. He had formerly been held as a slave in the
vicinity of Staunton. At the close of the war he came to the Ferry to
find employment.
“There wasn’t much chance for me up there. Besides, I came near losing
my life before I got away. You see, the masters, soon as they found out
they couldn’t keep their slaves, began to treat them about as bad as
could be. Then, because I made use of this remark, that I didn’t think
we colored folks ought to be blamed for what wasn’t our fault, for we
didn’t make the war, and neither did we declare ourselves free,—just
because I said that, not in a saucy way, but as I say it to you now, one
man put a pistol to my head, and was going to shoot me. I got away from
him, and left. A great many came away at the same time, for it wasn’t
possible for us to stay there.
“Now tell me candidly,” said I, “how the colored people themselves
behaved.”
“Well, just tolerable. They were like a bird let out of a cage. You know
how a bird that has been long in a cage will act when the door is
opened; he makes a curious fluttering for a little while. It was just so
with the colored people. They didn’t know at first what to do with
themselves. But they got sobered pretty soon, and they are behaving very
decent now.”
Harper’s Ferry affords a striking illustration of the folly of
secession. The government works here gave subsistence to several hundred
souls, and were the life of the place. The attempt to overturn the
government failed; but the government works, together with their own
prosperity, the mad fanatics of Harper’s Ferry succeeded easily enough
in destroying. “The place never will be anything again,” said Mr. B., of
the repair-shop, “unless the government decides to rebuild the
armory,—and it is doubtful if that is ever done.”
Yet, with the grandeur of its scenery, the tremendous water-power
afforded by its two rushing rivers, and the natural advantage it enjoys
as the key to the fertile Shenandoah Valley, Harper’s Ferry, redeemed
from slavery, and opened to Northern enterprise, should become a
beautiful and busy town.