John Brown's Town
July 24, 2005
Harpers Ferry is about 60 miles from Washington.. in West Virginia. The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, closely following the Potomac River, once connected Harpers Ferry to Washington.. and the railroad also came through the town. In addition to being a transportation hub, an important armory was located here. Meriwether Lewis arrived at this armory in 1803 looking to outfit the expedition he would lead with William Clark to the Pacific Ocean. Some 56 years later the abolitionist John Brown attempted to take this stockpile of weapons and spark a slave rebellion.. a spectacular start to what would turn out to be an eventful few years. Harper’s Ferry would change hands eight times in the course of the Civil War.
Located on the tongue of land where the Shenandoah and Potomac come together, the historic town was liable to flooding. Two washed out bridges stand in the river, now overgrown with plants and trees.. mute testimonies to the power of flooding water. The lower part of the town.. the historic town.. is now maintained by the National Park Service, although a few hundred people still live a little higher up the hill. Harpers Ferry is hardly a crossroads anymore.
Just as the Civil War had many causes, but slavery lay at the very heart of the conflict.. so John Brown lies at the heart of Harpers Ferry, although there are certainly other points of interest. Plenty of markers relate the history of the canal and the railroad and the visit by Meriwether Lewis.. and flooding and commerce are explained.. but really, this is an historic site that has everything to do with John Brown.
John Brown was an advocate of violence in pursuit of justice. The raid at Harpers Ferry is the crowning example, but three years earlier he at least gave his approval to the killing of five proslavery settlers in Kansas, and perhaps took part in the slaughter. Yet when stacked against the immense injustice of slavery, his actions take on a certain glory.. and they were immediately celebrated by northern abolitionists. From our vantage his violence can be understood as the first bloody fruit of the Civil War.. There was a cancer in our nation that needed to be violently cut out..
He was by no means a terrorist.. his actions were aimed at fighting back against violent pro-slavery advocates, or at gaining a determined strategic objective. There was killing, but nothing aimed at causing general “terror” among civilians.. only the terror that the prospect of free and armed blacks could stir up among southerners. This was violence with a tactical point and aimed at those who enforced slavery, which is to say, I do not think Bin Laden and Co. could find in Brown a forebear.
Several times as I have passed the Supreme Court I have seen young people standing on the sidewalk with red tape over their mouths and sometimes taped signs on their backs. The tape over their mouths reads “ LIFE” and they will stand reading a Bible or hanging their heads in prayer.. and talking to passers-by about the need to change the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v. Wade. To them each abortion represents a life being taken, and they are perfectly willing to draw parallels to the Holocaust or slavery. Most are non-violent, but one can see where the comparison could lead..
But abortion is not slavery, and that will forever make violence in its behalf the action of a dangerous extremist. The pro-life movement is bound to an abstract notion about the beginning of the soul.. the moment of conception.. a notion based on theological dogma rather than any rational attempt to determine where an individual with rights under the law might come to exist. That line, I believe, should be drawn somewhere before birth, but should not extend all the way back to conception.
John Brown at Harpers Ferry launched a failed raid.. but I think we can agree that he saw something true: the gross enslavement of millions of human beings. It is still stirring to think of the words to the song:
John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave;
His soul's marching on!
He is part of our national story, almost a folk hero.. He also holds out an alluring temptation to many people who have taken up a cause. They had better be damn sure it is slavery they are opposing..
