. Highways and byways of the South. ildren were amiableand bright, and they acquitted themselves on the wholevery creditably. The great event in the history of Harpers Ferrywas John Browns raid, in the autumn of 1859. Everyone in town knows the story of it, and many person-ally experienced its terror. A monument near therailway station marks the place where formerly wasJohn Browns Fort, as the small brick fire-enginehouse came to be called in which he made his finaldefence. The raid was a thunderbolt out of a clearsky. To quote a citizen with whom I talked in hishome kitchen, We were as much s
. Highways and byways of the South. ildren were amiableand bright, and they acquitted themselves on the wholevery creditably. The great event in the history of Harpers Ferrywas John Browns raid, in the autumn of 1859. Everyone in town knows the story of it, and many person-ally experienced its terror. A monument near therailway station marks the place where formerly wasJohn Browns Fort, as the small brick fire-enginehouse came to be called in which he made his finaldefence. The raid was a thunderbolt out of a clearsky. To quote a citizen with whom I talked in hishome kitchen, We were as much surprised as youwould be if I was to pick up that tea-kettle there onthe stove and throw it at your head. The town was at that time a place of five thousandinhabitants, and its chief industry was the manufactureof arms in a government armory. Brown, with hiscompanions, some months preceding their foray, renteda farm five miles distant on the Maryland side of the THE NEW YORK Pi • ? :.:brary 1 ASTUh, LiNOX ANDTILD£N A Chat on the Road John Browns Town 251 Potomac. It lay in a seeluded woodland hollow amongthe high hills, and their home was a two-story log houseno longer standing. The region, however, is muchthe same as it was then, though the cultivated area andnumber of families has somewhat increased. Anotherbuilding which figured in the raid was a small logschoolhouse about a mile back from the river. Itssite was pointed out to me by a man who lived closeby. He was just coming out of his home gate, andI was returning from a visit to the farm Brown hadrented. Thars whar it stood, said he, right overthe fence near that brook you see yonder. Brownintentioned to make it a depot of arms, and three ofhis men got in thar endurin the night of the raid andfilled it up with pikes and rifles, and when the school-master come they made him prisoner and drove awaythe scholars. John Smith — that was what Browncalled himself—and the rest of em had been arounhyar most of t
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Keywords: ., bookauthorjohnsonc, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1904
