Qualla: Harpers Ferry National Historical Park

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit USGS, Public domain. John Brown's prediction was the last thing he wrote. On the morning of December 2, 1859, on his way to the gallows in Charlestown, Virginia, he handed a slip of paper to a guard. I am now quite certain, it read, that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. He had been captured in a firehouse in Harpers Ferry six weeks earlier by a detachment of United States Marines under a colonel named Robert E. Lee. The firehouse still stands. It is now called John Brown's Fort, and it is the most visited historic site in West Virginia. Sixteen months after Brown was hanged, the country he had warned was at war with itself. Harpers Ferry would change hands eight times before it was over.

Image: USGS | Public domain

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: The Stupendous Scene

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Thomas Jefferson came here in 1783 and wrote that the passage of the Potomac through the Blue Ridge was perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature. He was looking at a triangle of water and stone: the Potomac flowing east from the Appalachians, the Shenandoah flowing nor...

Image: Public domain

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: John Brown's Raid

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown and twenty-one followers - five of them Black - seized the armory. Brown's plan was to arm enslaved people in the surrounding countryside and lead them in an insurrection. The plan failed almost immediately. No general uprising came. B...

Image: Public domain

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: Eight Times Over

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sallicio, Public domain. When Virginia seceded in April 1861, the Federal garrison at Harpers Ferry burned the armory rather than surrender it and pulled out, but they did not destroy everything. Confederate Colonel Thomas J. Jackson - not yet Stonewall - arrived a week later and shipped most of the gun-...

Image: Sallicio | Public domain

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: Storer College and the Niagara Movement

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Willingham88, CC BY-SA 4.0. Five years after Lee surrendered, a small school opened on Camp Hill above the ruined town. Storer College was one of the first integrated colleges in the United States - admitting students regardless of race, religion, or sex. Frederick Douglass served as a trustee and delivered...

Image: Willingham88 | CC BY-SA 4.0