A TRIP TO CHARLESTOWN.
One morning I took the train up the Valley to Charlestown, distant from
Harper’s Ferry eight miles.
The railroad was still in the hands of the government. There were
military guards on the platforms, and about an equal mixture of
Loyalists and Rebels within the cars. Furloughed soldiers, returning to
their regiments at Winchester or Staunton, occupied seats with
Confederate officers just out of their uniforms. The strong, dark,
defiant, self-satisfied face typical of the second-rate “chivalry,” and
the good-natured, shrewd, inquisitive physiognomy of the Yankee
speculator going to look at Southern lands, were to be seen side by
side, in curious contrast. There also rode the well-dressed wealthy
planter, who had been to Washington to solicit pardon for his
treasonable acts, and the humble freedman returning to the home from
which he had been driven by violence, when the war closed and left him
free. Mothers and daughters of the first families of Virginia sat serene
and uncomplaining in the atmosphere of mothers and daughters of the
despised race, late their slaves or their neighbors’, but now citizens
like themselves, free to go and come, and as clearly entitled to places
in the government train as the proudest dames of the land.
We passed through a region of country stamped all over by the
devastating heel of war. For miles not a fence or cultivated field was
visible.
“It is just like this all the way up the Shenandoah Valley,” said a
gentleman at my side, a Union man from Winchester. “The wealthiest
people with us are now the poorest. With hundreds of acres they can’t
raise a dollar. Their slaves have left them, and they have no money,
even if they have the disposition, to hire the freed people.”
I suggested that farms, under such circumstances, should be for sale at
low rates.
“They should be; but your Southern aristocrat is a monomaniac on the
subject of owning land. He will part with his acres about as willingly
as he will part with his life. If the Valley had not been the best part
of Virginia, it would long ago have been spoiled by the ruinous system
of agriculture in use here. Instead of tilling thoroughly a small farm,
a man fancies he is doing a wise thing by half tilling a large one.
Slave labor is always slovenly and unprofitable. But everything is being
revolutionized now. Northern men and northern methods are coming into
this Valley as sure as water runs down-hill. It is the greatest corn,
wheat, and grass country in the world. The only objection to it is that
in spots the limestone crops out a good deal. There was scarcely
anything raised this season except grass; you could see hundreds of
acres of that waving breast-high without a fence.”
At the end of a long hour’s ride we arrived at Charlestown, chiefly
interesting to me as the place of John Brown’s martyrdom. We alighted
from the train on the edge of boundless unfenced fields, into whose
melancholy solitudes the desolate streets emptied themselves—rivers to
that ocean of weeds. The town resembled to my eye some unprotected
female sitting sorrowful on the wayside, in tattered and faded apparel,
with unkempt tresses fallen negligently about features which might once
have been attractive.
On the steps of a boarding-house I found an acquaintance whose
countenance gleamed with pleasure “at sight,” as he said, “of a single
loyal face in that nest of secession.” He had been two or three days in
the place, waiting for luggage which had been miscarried.
“They are all Rebels here,—all Rebels!” he exclaimed, as he took his
cane and walked with me. “They are a pitiably poverty-stricken set;
there is no money in the place, and scarcely anything to eat. We have
for breakfast salt-fish, fried potatoes, and treason. Fried potatoes,
treason, and salt-fish for dinner. At supper the fare is slightly
varied, and we have treason, salt-fish, fried potatoes, and a little
more treason. My landlady’s daughter is Southern fire incarnate; and she
illustrates Southern politeness by abusing Northern people and the
government from morning till night, for my especial edification.
Sometimes I venture to answer her, when she flies at me, figuratively
speaking, like a cat. The women are not the only outspoken Rebels,
although they are the worst. The men don’t hesitate to declare their
sentiments, in season and out of season.” My friend concluded with this
figure: “The war-feeling here is like a burning bush with a wet blanket
wrapped around it. Looked at from the outside, the fire seems quenched.
But just peep under the blanket, and there it is, all alive, and eating,
eating in. The wet blanket is the present government policy; and every
act of conciliation shown the Rebels is just letting in so much air to
feed the fire.”
A short walk up into the centre of the town took us to the scene of John
Brown’s trial. It was a consolation to see that the jail had been laid
in ashes, and that the court-house, where that mockery of justice was
performed, was a ruin abandoned to rats and toads. Four massy white
brick pillars, still standing, supported a riddled roof, through which
God’s blue sky and gracious sunshine smiled. The main portion of the
building had been literally torn to pieces. In the floorless hall of
justice rank weeds were growing. Names of Union soldiers were scrawled
along the walls. No torch had been applied to the wood-work, but the
work of destruction had been performed by the hands of hilarious
soldier-boys ripping up floors and pulling down laths and joists to the
tune of “John Brown,”—the swelling melody of the song, and the
accompaniment of crashing partitions, reminding the citizens, who
thought to have destroyed the old hero, that his soul was marching on.
It was also a consolation to know that the court-house and jail would
probably never be rebuilt, the county-seat having been removed from
Charlestown to Shepherdstown—“forever,” say the resolute loyal citizens
of Jefferson County, who refuse to vote it back again.
As we were taking comfort, reflecting how unexpectedly at last justice
had been done in that court-house, the townspeople passed on the
sidewalk, “daughters and sons of beauty,” for they were mostly a
fine-looking, spirited class; one of whom, at a question which I put to
him, stopped quite willingly and talked with us. I have seldom seen a
handsomer young face, a steadier eye, or more decided poise and aplomb;
neither have I ever seen the outward garment of courtesy so plumply
filled out with the spirit of arrogance. His brief replies, spoken with
a pleasant countenance, yet with short, sharp, downward inflections,
were like pistol-shots. Very evidently the death of John Brown, and the
war that came swooping down in the old man’s path to avenge him, and to
accomplish the work wherein he failed, were not pleasing subjects to
this young southern blood. And no wonder. His coat had an empty sleeve.
The arm which should have been there had been lost fighting against his
country. His almost savage answers did not move me; but all the while I
looked with compassion at his fine young face, and that pendent idle
sleeve. He had fought against his country; his country had won; and he
was of those who had lost, not arms and legs only, but all they had been
madly fighting for, and more,—prosperity, prestige, power. His beautiful
South was devastated, and her soil drenched with the best blood of her
young men. Whether regarded as a crime or a virtue, the folly of making
war upon the mighty North was now demonstrated, and the despised Yankees
had proved conquerors of the chivalry of the South. “Well may your
thoughts be bitter,” my heart said, as I thanked him for his
information.
To my surprise he appeared mollified, his answers losing their explosive
quality and sharp downward inflection. He even seemed inclined to
continue the conversation; and as we passed on, we left him on the
sidewalk looking after us wistfully, as if the spirit working within him
had still some word to say different from any he had yet spoken. What
his secret thoughts were, standing there with his dangling sleeve, it
would be interesting to know.
Walking on through the town, we came to other barren and open fields on
the farther side. Here we engaged a bright young colored girl to guide
us to the spot where John Brown’s gallows stood. She led us into the
wilderness of weeds, waist-high to her as she tramped on, parting them
before her with her hands. The country all around us lay utterly
desolate, without enclosures, and without cultivation. We seemed to be
striking out into the rolling prairies of the West, except that these
fields of ripening and fading weeds had not the summer freshness of the
prairie-grass. A few scattering groves skirted them; and here and there
a fenceless road drew its winding, dusty line away over the arid hills.
“This is about where it was,” said the girl, after searching some time
among the tall weeds. “Nobody knows now just where the gallows stood.
There was a tree here, but that has been cut down and carried away,
stump and roots and all, by folks that wanted something to remember John
Brown by. Every soldier took a piece of it, if ’twas only a little
chip.” So widely and deeply had the dying old hero impressed his spirit
upon his countrymen; affording the last great illustration of the power
of Truth to render even the gallows venerable, and to glorify an
ignominious death.
I stood long on the spot the girl pointed out to us, amid the gracefully
drooping golden-rods, and looked at the same sky old John Brown looked
his last upon, and the same groves, and the distant Blue Ridge, the
sight of whose cerulean summits, clad in Sabbath tranquillity and
softest heavenly light, must have conveyed a sweet assurance to his
soul.
Then I turned and looked at the town, out of which flocked the curious
crowds to witness his death. Over the heads of the spectators, over the
heads of the soldiery surrounding him, his eye ranged until arrested by
one strangely prominent object. There it still stands on the outskirts
of the town, between it and the fields,—a church, pointing its silent
finger to heaven, and recalling to the earnest heart those texts of
Scripture from which John Brown drew his inspiration, and for the truth
of which he willingly gave his life.
I had the curiosity to stop at this church on our way back to the town.
The hand of ruin had smitten it. Only the brick walls and zinc-covered
spire remained uninjured. The belfry had been broken open, the windows
demolished. The doors were gone. Within, you saw a hollow thing,
symbolical. Two huge naked beams extended from end to end of the empty
walls, which were scribbled over with soldiers’ names, and with
patriotic mottoes interesting for proud Virginians to read. The floors
had been torn up and consumed in cooking soldiers’ rations; and the foul
and trampled interior showed plainly what use it had served. The church,
which overlooked John Brown’s martyrdom, and under whose roof his
executioners assembled afterwards to worship, not the God of the poor
and the oppressed, but the God of the slaveholder and the aristocrat,
had been converted into a stable.