Harper's Ferry is a historic town located roughly 70 miles up the Potomac River from Washington, DC. The town was never large. Even today, fewer than 400 people reside in the town itself. However, from the late 18th to the middle 19th Century, Harper's Ferry was one of the most important sites in the United States. It was the locale of the setting of several key events leading up to--and during--the Civil War.
The origins of Harper's Ferry are in a 1751 land grant to Robert Harper, who moved into the area and started a ferry across Potomac River a decade later. This made the location a staging area for those seeking to move into either the Shenandoah Valley or to points further west. In 1763, the Virginia colonial government founded of the town of "Shenandoah Falls" at "Mr. Harper's Ferry." It was soon known simply as Harper's Ferry.
President George Washington was familiar with the area because his longtime property interests led him to promote the Potomac as the highway into the west. In 1794, he was able to get one of the new country's Federal Arsenals established at Harper's Ferry. There were only two Federal Arsenals established at that time, with the other being in Massachusetts, making Harper's Ferry an important early industrial center in post-colonial America. The facility opened in 1801, and it manufactured more than 600,000 weapons for the United States Army prior to the Civil War.
John Brown was a radical abolitionist-cum-terrorist who had already established a violent reputation in the bushwhacking between pro and anti-slavery elements in Kansas. On October 16, 1859, he led a mixed party of 21 fugitive slaves, freed slaves and abolitionists on a raid against the Federal Arsenal. Their aim was to seize arms for use in promoting a general slave uprising. The raiding party included Brown's own sons. The attack went bad when the group was confronted by an angry mob of citizens and militia, and they were forced to seek refuge in a fire house. That building was stormed by a party of United States Marines led by then Lt. Colonel Robert E. Lee. He was assisted by his aide, Lt. J. E. B. Stuart. Brown was tried for treason and hanged.
Harper's Ferry was a major transit point in the Eastern Theater during the war, as it was located at a bridging point for the Potomac River and the north end of the Shenandoah Valley. The Shenandoah was vital to the Confederate war effort in Virginia, serving both as a supply source and as a highway that was secure from Union spying. Early in the war, Virginia seized the Federal Arsenal before it could be destroyed, and for a time the relocated Harper's Ferry industrial equipment served as the Confederacy's sole domestic producer of firearms. Overall, the town changed hands eight times during the war, and figured prominently in the career of Stonewall Jackson.
After the war, Harper's Ferry was incorporated into the new state of West Virginia. In 1906, it was the setting for the first meeting of W. E. B. Du Bois' Niagara Movement. Since the early 20th Century, the town has been a popular getaway spot for residents of Washington, D.C.
