大家好，我是吉娜·鲁福. Thank you for the positive feedback on my last post about Montpelier! This blog post is dedicated to recalling our trip to Harper’s Ferry and the things that Dennis 弗莱 (who I have been fortunate enough to contact in preparation for writing this) taught us about the actions of John Brown on that night. First and foremost I would like to share the path of John Brown–a path that we followed. Now, imagine this: it is 1859 and there is only one bridge across the Potomac River. (we walked along a more modern bridge (made in 1894) that was parallel to the ruins that the bridge had sat atop.) Brown and his initial “army” of 18 men cross that bridge from Maryland at around 10:45 pm on Sunday, 10月16日, 1859. “The single greatest danger to the bridge was sparks from locomotives, 于是派了一名消防员看守.” (Dennis 弗莱) this single fireman ends up being seized at the bridge. Brown and his men then proceed on what is now the West Virginia but at the time had been Virginia, 桥的一侧, 他们冲进美国军械库了吗. 在这里他们抓住了另一个消防员/守望者. 他们的计划? To raid the arsenal and provide slaves with weapons necessary to protect themselves. 布朗现在拥有了军械库和武器库, 但这就是他的计划开始出现问题的地方. The bridge watchman escapes and manages to flag down a passenger train at around 1:15 am on Monday. This is an obvious issue for John Brown; if he allows the train to depart, 他围攻的消息会传出去，他的计划就会被挫败. 黎明前不久, 虽然, he lets the train go and soon word arrives in Washington about the attack.
President Buchanan orders for US Marines to storm Harper’s Ferry to take down the rebels. Buchanan sends the marines to the armory fire house (Brown’s temporary headquarters), 第一个海军陆战队员, a man by the name Israel Greene crawls through a breech in the door big enough for one man and under a stationed fire truck that blocked the entrance. While Brown and his men hide out and discuss their next movements, 格林可以爬进大楼而不被发现. The first person he sees when he emerges in the fire house is John Brown. Greene does not know Brown, but knows that he is the enemy and thrusts his sword at him. 值得注意的是, 约翰·布朗没有受伤, as the sword does not penetrate because the blade struck a brass breast plate Brown is wearing. 不幸的是, 布朗的运气到头了, as Greene quickly decides to use the hilt of his sword as a club and beats Brown unconscious. 布朗被捕了, 删除, and brought to Charles Town where he is tried not on a federal level, but by the state of Virginia which finds him guilty of treason with the intention of leading a slave rebellion. Had he been tried by the federal government or in the North where 他的行为 were seen as pretty heroic, 也许布朗会被解雇或被判入狱. Since he was tried by Virginia, 虽然, he was executed by hanging on December 2nd, 1859. 而我的同学, 老师, and I walked the grounds of Harper’s Ferry and listened to the remarkable Dennis 弗莱 describe the events of that evening, I found a great irony in the fact that the first casualty of the raid was Hayward Shepherd, a baggage porter for the railroad and free black man who was prematurely shot while attempting to determine why the train hadn’t made it to the station on time.
While the day of our tour was hot (as many of ours have been considering its Virginia in July), it was abundantly clear that no amount of heat could distract us from the knowledge we were being fed by Mr. 弗莱. 去看美国最古老的铁路, to seeing how the town itself was able to maintain the façade of timelessness that I so admire as they prepared to celebrate their anniversary, 我们参观的每个人都完全被迷住了. We were even able to stand on the ruins of a Civil War hospital as the river crashed and turned below the soles of our shoes and the sun beat down on us. The hospital was left to ruins long after the Civil War due to flooding, but while its walls may not stand upright the stories of those who suffered and died there from their injuries and disease could be felt. As we were asked to put ourselves in the shoes of a citizen of America at the time of the raid we were proposed the question: “Would you follow Brown?我把这个问题延伸到你们所有人. Me, personally, I decided that I would not have followed Brown. 在我看来, 他的行为, 而有效的, were radical and driven by emotion and I would have much rather used my words and tried to appeal to the human emotion rather than resort to violence. So, there is the story of Harper’s Ferry and the path of John Brown and his men. 虽然我已经做了研究，并与我的同龄人交谈, 布朗的道德问题仍然困扰着我. 在我个人看来，作为一个充满希望的历史学家和小说家, I believe that history is neither black nor white but entirely gray. Every person and event is absolutely devoid of color; nothing is full good or full bad and it is for that exact reason that I hope to educate others on the humanity of history, because if we continue to let our emotions determine our recall of events, 历史永远不会被准确地记录下来.
