Giving Up on John Brown?
ANNETTE ON THE ROAD A Disoriented Annette Stumbles Around Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, Until Things Look Up
Notes from Annette
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Annette Laing, PhD (History), Brit in the US
How Long Is This Post? About 4,000 words, 20 minutes
"I want to free all the negroes in this [slave] state... if the citizens interfere with me, I must only burn down the town and have blood.”
—Abolitionist John Brown, after being wounded and captured at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, October, 1859. He was later hanged for treason and attempted insurrection.
Hmm. Nobody can accuse John Brown of mincing words.
Think of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and what pops into most Americans’ heads is John Brown’s failed attempt to lead a revolt of enslaved people, two years before the Civil War.
Honestly? I always thought it was a bit daft that Brown tried to rally enslaved people in what was then the hilly, western part of the state of Virginia, not exactly a plantation area where you found masses of enslaved people standing by to rebel. Anyway, pictures I saw of Brown always made him look a bit bonkers. So that explained everything.
This is my cue to remind you that I’m an academic historian of early America and modern Britain, happiest in the 18th century. Yes, I taught a bit of 19th and 20th century US history in introductory courses. But I tended to steer my lectures toward subjects that I knew something about, and none of my hungover freshmen seemed to mind.
So I didn’t say much about John Brown, partly because of time constraints, and partly because I saw him as an awkward example of “white saviorism", and I had a lot to say about how enslaved people exercised agency: In other words, they resisted without needing a white person to take charge.
Mind you, I’ve known the name of John Brown since I sang that song at school in England, with its astonishingly upfront lyric of “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave”. In a sensitive age, when even the Brits are starting to whisper the mealy-mouthed “passed away” instead of flat out saying “died”, singing about decomposition seems downright unseemly.
After I moved to the US in my teens, it occurred to me that John Brown’s Body must be an alt version of an official Civil War patriotic song, The Battle Hymn of The Republic. Well, obviously! How could I have not seen that!
But no. It was the other way round. John Brown’s Body came first, sung to a folk tune. Battle Hymn, by sensitive Victorian lady Julia Ward Howe, is great in its own right. But it’s not the original.
Goes to show that nothing in the past is obvious. And the same is true for my recent trip to Harpers Ferry, now in West Virginia, accompanied (as ever) by my long-suffering spouse, and non-historian, He Who Shall Not Be Named On The Internets (HWSBNOTI, or Hoosen Benoti).
My first visit to Harpers Ferry was with our son Hoosen, Jr., in 2017, I think. We were hurrying around the country visiting colleges, so only popped in briefly. I don’t remember much, except for the startling view, which I now wanted to show to Hoosen. And, maybe this time, I said, I might also pick up something interesting about John Brown.
Ya know . . . One day, I’ll grab a recent work of academic history, and we’ll get to grips with John Brown himself. But not now. Let me explain.
Well, At Least the View’s Nice
Harpers Ferry lies where the Shenandoah River meets the Potomac River, as the Potomac heads toward Washington DC and the Chesapeake Bay. So let’s start with my meh photo of the view (Potomac comes in on the left, Shenandoah is on the right, view down the middle is the Potomac, sorry this sucks…) Behind me is Harpers Ferry.
Disoriented at the National Park
Thanks to John Brown, and frequent floods, Shenandoah Street, the Harpers Ferry road that lies closest to the two rivers, is owned by the US Government. Weird though this may seem to Brits, the National Parks Service takes care of hundreds of places that someone has at some time decided are of National Historic Importance, as well as places of natural beauty.
What is thought to be Nationally Important (Historically Speaking) keeps changing, but, back in 1944, when the NPS took on Harpers Ferry, battles and presidents were the main attractions at NPS sites. Harpers Ferry, known for John Brown’s attack and some Civil War action, plus natural beauty, was a shoo-in as a National Park.
National Historic Parks tend to follow the same formula: They’re run by Park Rangers in military-style uniforms with wide-brimmed hats. Most also feature a Visitor Center with EITHER old, dusty, and boring displays (if they haven’t been updated since forever) OR outdated displays including breakable “hands on” thingies, if they were last updated in the 90s, OR up to the minute 21st century displays based on actual historians’ input. Excitingly, more and more NPS Visitor Centers are in this third category (woot!)
Harpers Ferry, alas, is not.
Laing, you say, Get on with it! Tell us about Harper's Ferry!
Hold on. This matters. Harpers Ferry NHP is on a priority list somewhere: Renovation is already starting, but for now, it’s a great example of why it’s important to redo museums from time to time. History isn’t the past. It’s how we interpret the past, and we change. That means that good museums, including National Parks, have to try to keep up. And also they figure out what does and doesn’t work in getting visitors up to speed, and need a chance to apply these lessons. I didn’t intend to write about this today, but… You’ll see.
We parked the car at the Visitor Center, having been urged at the admission booth to take the bus. Sure enough, two buses were standing by to, um, ferry us to Harpers Ferry, a couple of miles away. But I wasn’t keen.
“When Hoosen, Jr and I came here,” I said. “We didn’t bother with the bus. We drove right into town. I don’t know why.” Discussion ensued, but we decided on the bus. First, though, the Visitor Center! I love a good Visitor Center! I get a head start in understanding a historic place! I learn stories! We headed inside.
Agh. I honestly thought we’d walked into the wrong building: One small room. No museum displays, except a sad and elderly miniature model of Harpers Ferry. No (gasp!) gift shop, Just two staff behind a desk with a plexiglass shield, talking to a small group of visitors. This wasn’t right.
So, literally, I walked back outside, and searched for the real Visitor Center. How could I have missed it? But the only other building was the loos. I thought about asking the staff what the deal was, but the buses were showing signs of leaving. I didn’t want to find out they only came rarely. We boarded.
I know this sounds crazy, but I don’t like visiting historic sites without getting officially oriented, or, as Brits say in a wonderful excess of syllables, orientated. But hark! A recorded narration started up onboard the bus as soon as we began to move. “Harpers Ferry,” said a man’s voice importantly . . . Then the bus drowned out his words. I now heard Blibble [background music] blobble people mumble town indistinct war blubble.
Now began my grumble that lasted pretty much most of the visit. Poor Hoosen. “No Visitor Center,” I seethed, “and this recording sucks. What are people supposed to get out of this place?”
That’s when I remembered what Hoosen, Jr. and I had done when we visited: We had strolled through the buildings on Shenandoah Street, took in the amazing view, visited a small lame exhibit on Black history (which I couldn’t otherwise remember at all, not a good sign), got bored, got back in the car, and buggered off. This isn’t my normal behavior at NPS historic parks. Now, I was starting to remember why Harpers Ferry was different.
So Hoosen and I walked the couple of hundred yards from the bus stop to the two short blocks of restored buildings. I tried to orient myself. “Well, I guess that’s the gift shop,” I said, pointing at the building labeled BOOKSHOP. I asked the girl behind the counter, the first NPS employee we saw (or would see) in town, “Why isn’t there a proper Visitor Center?” She looked confused, “We have a Visitor Center,” she said. “Across the street.”
Thanking her, I grabbed a typical free (and slim) NPS fold-out guide/map for the Park. And then I noticed , among various little knick-knacks on her counter, another fold-out leaflet, costing a dollar: Harpers Ferry Black Heritage Walking Tour. That might be interesting, I thought. Not just John Brown. Not produced by the NPS, hence the cost. I bought it, and shoved both publications in my bag.
We headed over the street. There was no sign on the building opposite that said “Visitor Center”. It was unmarked except with a cheesy cheap banner taped inside the window, announcing INFORMATION. I tried the door, and it wouldn’t budge. “It’s locked,” I said to Hoosen. “What the hell?” This, folks, is a first. The Visitor Center which wasn’t a Visitor Center had locked out Visitors. How was I supposed to get orientated, I asked myself in a rising tide of irritation? And suppose it was just a place where we found out the location of the loos? (Behind us, in case you’re wondering. I had already sussed them out, trust me).
Hoosen, imagining himself having superior door-opening skills, did not accept my judgment, and tried it himself. Nope. “Told you,” I said. “This is ridiculous.” It was hot outside, and I was getting meaner.
Back to the gift shop. Counter girl at first tries to tell me the Visitor Center should be open, and therefore it is. Finally, she agrees to call someone. Now we waited. We sat on a bench in the sun, wrangling the unfolded official NPS guide map, our only source of orientation so far.
Look, I’m not great at grappling a huge, opened out leaflet, and trying to read carefully, and think about what I'm reading, while batting off wasps and feeling sunburn on my nose. This is why I would rather watch a movie and read info panels in an nice air-conditioned Visitor Center.
I gave up trying to wrestle my map into submission, and opened up the Black history tour leaflet, which, alas, was also huge and in small print. I peered at it. And learned the self-guided tour features no fewer than 34 sites.
Thirty-four. I looked at the map in despair. “A lot of the Black history stuff seems to be up there,” I said, pointing to a very long, very steep staircase between the gift shop and another building. It was a stairway to heaven. It headed uphill into the clouds at a dizzying angle.
I considered the challenge before us, as we contemplated our pursuit of Harpers Ferry’s Black history. “We’ll need a week to do 34 sites up there,” I said. “Plus a tent. And ropes. And a sherpa.”
Hoosen is more of a practical problem solver. “Do you want me to get the car? We could drive.” Honestly, Hoosen would offer to swim a raging river and bring back an elephant clamped between his teeth, if it helped. He’s a good man. But I decided to pull myself together. “We should walk through the Park area first,” I said in my grown-up voice. “Let’s do some of the Black history tour after that.” I wondered if we would.
Meanwhile . . . Nobody had turned up yet to open the supposed Visitor Center. I know things happen, especially in COVID times, but this was truly strange. We decided to wander around some more. As we walked into the first building we came to, I glanced over at some antique machinery, and decided we were in a recreated print shop. In full-on overheated and grumpy mode, I now made a weak effort to to give a rat’s ass about Historic Local Industry as I cast my jaundiced eye over an info panel.
It didn’t help that the info panel was written with all the enthusiasm of Droopy Dog. Something something, it said, “brought many workers to Harpers Ferry, these workers were sustained by the businesses and manufactories of the town. A sample of the goods produced by the industries of Harpers Ferry is depicted by these items.” I looked doubtfully at the depicted items. They were in a glass case, although I can’t imagine anyone would bother to try to pinch them: A bolt of cloth. A few scraps of leather. Something wood that looked distinctly like Weetabix [US Readers: Weetabix is a breakfast cereal that comes in hard cakes. Add milk, and hey presto! It turns into brown sludge]
Fast losing the will to live, I tottered to the other side of the room, to pretend to myself that I find old printing equipment scintillating. Now that I looked, though, I realized that the machines weren’t printing presses. Lock, Stock, and Barrel, I read. Oh. So this was where muskets were made. I kept trying to care. Great place to open a factory, the info panel told me, because of power from two rivers, blah blah. “Representative examples of machines used in the 1850s.” Blurble. “The barrel of a musket required exacting production techniques.” Oh, Good God, please make it stop. I’m so bored. “A special type of machine called a barrel-turning lathe smoothed the exterior of the barrel and cut the correct taper from breech to muzzle. . . first component manufactured…. production machines . . . Seriously, could this interpretation be any more tedious?. . blah blah blah…. Please, Hoosen, let’s grab an ice cream, and go.
Wait. Did this next panel say rifling? My brain began to perk up. So this isn’t a recreated artisanal shop making antique bespoke olde worlde muskets for a few customers. It’s a representation of a gun factory that once made modern, rapid fire weapons.
Wait, didn’t John Brown come to Harpers Ferry to capture the federal armory? What’s an armory anyway? I think of it as a few muskets propped against the wall of a glorified closet (I told you I do 18th century history….)
Hmm. We recrossed the street, and, lo, the Visitor Center was magically unlocked. We stepped inside. We were alone. No staff, nobody else. It was just one room. So we watched the orientation film running on a loop.
Surprisingly to me, it didn’t talk much about John Brown, Harpers Ferry’s celebrity visitor. The movie was mostly about the town of Harpers Ferry itself, which, for much of its history, I learned, was inhabited mostly by poor white factory workers, although a photo showed a black guy in a jaunty boater happily chatting to white people.
This, I took to symbolize how everyone knew everyone and they all got along, which made me instantly suspicious: We were, after all, in the South, where, in a long residence in Georgia, I learned that a lot of us get along great only until we open our mouths and contradict Someone Important, and then it’s Scary Time. I also learned in the Centre that Harper's Ferry, West Virginia got massively, devastatingly flooded out. Repeatedly. No wonder, with two rivers.
HARPERS FERRY ARMS A NATION, an info panel announced. I started reading. The story was becoming clearer:
“In an age of waterpower, the village of "Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper's Ferry" was a factory town waiting to happen. When George Washington, impressed by "its inexhaustible supply of water," chose Harpers Ferry as the site of the nation's second arms factory, the town's early fate was sealed.”
Now this was more like it. An emerging picture starting to form, of a town always changing, and always depending on water. From Mr. Harper’s Ferry, to the factories, including those that made the guns that explained why John Brown tried to start a slave revolt here, of all places. A place of repeated devastating floods, of 19th century tourists drawn by the view, of the 21st century tourist we would see on her rented paddleboard— with her dog clinging on by its claws!— trying to move forward against the relentless flow of the Shenandoah. My brain was fast waking up. I read on. I sipped water in the air-conditioning. I was feeling refreshed. I was feeling a bit more orientated.
“America's first successful use of interchangeable parts took place in Harpers Ferry. During the 1820s and 1830s, John Hall perfected machinery for producing interchangeable parts, contributing not only to the success of his rifle works but to the development of the American . . . “
Got it. It was sinking in now. Harpers Ferry wasn’t just where the US Government stored arms. It was where the guns were made. Using mass-production techniques, and water power, a factory could produce so many guns, the US could hold a massive bloodbath, two years after Brown conspired, attacked, and was hanged, Harpers Ferry helped make it possible for Americans to slaughter Americans in unimaginable numbers. It was only possible because men saw money in water.
Typical Tourists
But I still wasn’t sure what the stories were. After leaving the Visitor Center, we looked around the building next door, just one room representing a Union jail for Confederate prisoners during the Civil War. By that time, I thought, John Brown was a-mouldering in his grave. How many visitors get that, I thought, or am I just being snobby?
We walked on down the short street. A generic olde general store. An old pharmacy window. “Let’s go look at the rivers,” I said.
And that’s when we met a man I’ll call Bob. Not a Park Ranger. Not a quasi-military uniform, just a badge. A volunteer guide. “You guys have any questions?”
“I do,” I said. “Where do we learn about John Brown?” Bob pointed across the street to a building labeled “JOHN BROWN”. “Um, just testing,” I said. I quickly changed the subject to Black history.
“The Black history museum’s closed right now,” he said. “They’re remodeling it.” He mentioned the Black history walking tour, but I said I despaired of walking uphill in the heat. “You can drive,” he said. “Storer College is at the top of the hill.”
I had read about Storer College in the tour leaflet, a long-closed Black college. And, I had been surprised to learn, it was once the meeting place of the Niagara Movement, the people who started the NAACP, and kicked off the modern civil rights movement. Yes, I wanted to go there. He gave us driving instructions.
“It’s a shame, though,” I said. “If I hadn’t happened to notice the leaflet in the shop, I might not have twigged the college was there. And it’s not very accessible, is it, not when we take the bus?”
Bob acknowledged that signage and orientation needed help. In fact, that’s what motivated him to volunteer, to spend his days introducing people to the many stories of Harpers Ferry, making sure their journeys are worthwhile. Over the years, funds for roving Rangers have been cut, so Bob is the man. He’s a gem.
“Most people,” he said, “get off the bus, walk down the street, look at the view, then turn round, and go back to the bus.”
“Really? Shocking,” I said quickly, still not sure I didn't want to do just that.
So Hoosen and I said goodbye to Bob, walked into the John Brown exhibit and . ..
Wow! I burst out laughing. A massive painting of John Brown as swivel-eyed loon! Rifle in one hand, Bible in the other, Confederate and Union troops and the smoke of war behind him (weird, he was dead two years before the Civil War). And, OMG, look, he’s standing on a Confederate soldier’s head! Did the Daughters of the Confederacy curate this museum? I mean, shouldn’t we be prepared for this eyeful, because nobody else but me seems to get that it’s hilarious? Or that it’s supposed to kick off a convo about how John Brown is remembered? Too subtle for the casual visitor, folks.
It was at this moment that I decided that I would NOT use this trip as the basis for an NBH post about John Brown. Getting that right will require actual books by actual historians.
My decision was confirmed by the lame video we now watched, which gave us every tiny detail of Brown’s failed venture, without explaining why it mattered in the larger scheme of things. “It's just a play by play of what happened,” Hoosen muttered, as he got up. He was right. I didn't feel enlightened.
This whole place, I realized, needs a massive update. And soon. I believe it will get one, but, meanwhile, it’s exhibit A of why sometimes museums can be frustrating and boring, even when we’re happy to put in effort to get acquainted.
Taking A Walk for John Brown
Do you still want to do the Black History tour, Hoosen asked? Not really, I thought. From my quick look, it seemed like it was going to take us to see the house of every local worthy in the 19th century Black community. Still, though…
“I’d like to see Storer College,” I said.
In the end, we did drive around the upper part of town with the leaflet as our guide. We saw, behind scaffolding, a hotel made up of several houses, once owned by Storer College, that had hosted mostly white tourists from Washington, DC. That caught my attention, and made me want to know more. We saw the home of the white Northern minister who came South and founded Storer College after the Civil War. We learned of black students who stayed in the college grounds for their own safety because going to downtown Harpers Ferry could lead to their being beaten up, or worse. So much for “people getting along.”
So much to say, so little time. But here was where the men and women of the Niagara Movement met in 1906. They first met in 1905, at Niagara Falls, hence the name, but had been forced to move their meeting from Buffalo, New York, to Canada because of violent threats. They came together at the worst time for Black Americans, a time of unspeakable racist violence against them.
And from the Niagara meetings emerged the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which led the legal attack on segregation, and is still with us. Here’s the famous photo of the 1906 Niagara meeting at Storer College, minus the women who attended, with W.E.B. Du Bois fifth from the right in the front row, and another photo of the same building today:
One day soon, I hope, tourists will be encouraged and helped to see what we saw. Until then, most will wander bewildered along a block of Shenandoah Street before getting back on the bus, feeling a bit let down. They won’t see the place where, at a time when black Americans were being assaulted, tortured, and murdered by white mobs, Black civil rights leaders met to plan for a better future. They won’t know that the delegates, movingly, magnanimously, kept a candle lit for John Brown.
A commemorative program from the 100th anniversary celebration of the Niagara Movement, reminded those present in 2006 that “In 1906, the Niagara Movement delegates celebrated John Brown’s Day.” At six in the morning, more than a century ago, these middle-class black professionals walked down to John Brown’s Fort, the building (still there) where Brown held his last stand. They took off their shoes and socks, and marched barefoot around this “hallowed ground”, in single file. As they did, they sang Battle Hymn of the Republic, and, of course, John Brown’s Body.
Makes you think, doesn’t it? There’s so much more to Harpers Ferry than an odd textbook tale of a crazy white guy leading a failed slave rebellion.
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Interested in the Niagara Movement? You might enjoy this NBH piece I wrote last year, on a civil rights meeting in Georgia that W.E.B. Du Bois attended a few months before he went to Harpers Ferry.
Coincidentally, I just edited an entry called "John Brown's Holy War against Slavery." Prior to Harpers Ferry, he had been helping slaves escape from their owners in Bleeding Kansas and killed a few pro-slavery owners. He was a notorious abolitionist and one of America's most wanted, so he grew the beard as a disguise. The takeover was not too challenging for the 18 guys in the raid. The Armory had one guard and the Arsenal across the street was unguarded. Amazingly, Brown had 20 children by two wives, 8 of whom survived him. Three of his sons died with him at Harper's Ferry (or the hanging thereafter). Of course, I had to find out if he had any living descendants--and yes, he does. They should be lobbying for some improvement of the park.
My first view of this spectacular area occurred just last month, while binge watching the show below, Episode 5 is in the DC area and includes a great heron rookery near Harper's Ferry, the host is Christian Cooper, I found this episode very moving.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/extraordinary-birder-with-christian-cooper1