Posted on 03/21/2009 7:02:03 AM PDT by Liz
A series of reenactments, dramatic productions, family activities and special tours are scheduled this year as Civil War sites in West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania commemorate the 150th anniversary of abolitionist John Brown’s October 1859 raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. Although the raid itself failed, it succeeded in exacerbating the divide between North and South, pushing the nation closer to civil war.
“Before the raid, negotiations and a compromise between North and South might have been possible; however, after the attack—and Brown’s trial and hanging—emotions ran so high that armed conflict became inevitable,” says Tom Riford of the Hagerstown-Washington County Convention and Visitors Bureau.
At the time, Brown was denounced on both sides of the Mason–Dixon Line as a terrorist and an enemy of the Union, but others just as passionately revered him as a martyr. Brown inspires those same polarized opinions among today’s visitors to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park (nps.gov/hafe), says Todd Bolton, events committee chair for the John Brown Sesquicentennial Quad-State Committee (johnbrownraid.org). “Our job at Harpers Ferry is to present the facts and the history, and let people decide for themselves,” he says.
There will be plenty of opportunities this year to learn about Brown, beginning on April 18 with the first Signature Event of the sesquicentennial: “Prelude to History: The Wedding of Virginia Kennedy” at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. The day’s attractions include a dramatic monologue about the raid told from the perspective of the wife of raider John Cook. Visitors can also enjoy period music, youth activities and tours of the Lower Town at Harpers Ferry, which has been preserved as it appeared during the Civil War era.
The town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, lies at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, bordering Maryland and Virginia. The 3,500-acre National Park extends into all three states. Brown had his northern headquarters in Pennsylvania, the fourth member of the quad-state committee. On May 22, the John Brown House in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, will be rededicated and reopened after a major renovation.
The Kennedy Farmhouse in Samples Manor, Maryland, staging place for the raid, will host a rare open house with tours and demonstrations July 12. Frederick County, Maryland, attracts the spotlight August 8–9 for its Militia and Fire Company Days, with displays of antique fire-fighting equipment. Other events happen throughout the summer and fall, including regular ranger-guided tours of Brown-related sites in the National Park and surrounding areas.
The centerpiece of the sesquicentennial observation takes place in the Harpers Ferry area October 16–18, 150 years to the day after the raid and subsequent siege. Following a twilight reenactment Friday of Brown’s six-mile march to Harpers Ferry, the commemoration continues on Saturday and Sunday with a full slate of music, living history, family activities and ranger-guided programs.
Because of the significance of the raid, the John Brown Sesquicentennial is regarded as a prelude to the Civil War Sesquicentennial, which the nation will observe from 2011 to 2015.
—Theresa Gawlas Medoff
Learn more about the Civil War and the nation’s sesquicentennial plans at cwar.nps.gov/civilwar/abcivwarSesqInit.htm. The information in this story was accurate when it was published in the March/April 2009 issue of AAA World, but dates, times and prices may have changed since then. We suggest you verify such details directly with the listed establishments before making travel plans.
Email: info@johnbrownraid.org
fwiw, the CRETIN that wrote your so-called ballad (who is PERMANENTLY banned from FR) is a LITTLE, but not much, more intelligent than you are.
perhaps you should head over to DU & hold hands with him. you two deserve each other.
free dixie,sw
Your friend got the quote wrong. Look it up after you look up Tobias Puch.
fwiw, the CRETIN that wrote your so-called ballad (who is PERMANENTLY banned from FR)
You just can't keep things straight in your head, can you? Such a persecution complex you have. For your information I wrote that poem myself and first put it up in 2007.
Say, will that copy of "Blacks in Blue and Gray" tell us that Blackerby was a professor at Tuskegee?
Slavery was not guaranteed labour as the slaves would often escape or be unproductive. It is a rather stupid way of trying to generate any out put as the labour force has virtually no incentive to work.
The figures on slave owning families is just another way you Leftists like to infer that slave ownership was rampant when in fact all you are doing is trying to INFLATE the figures by lumping in families who have no connection to the institution itself. This would be like accusing American "families" of electing Obama just because 1 or more member of an entire family might have voted for him. This is guilt by association. Furthermore: Lincoln was not elected in the South which is something you conveniently overlook because if the South remained in the Union they would have had government without representation.
The men murdered in the massacre were leaders in the pro-slavery movement that incited violence and murder in Kansas and led the movement of fraud at the ballots. There was blatant injustice going on in Kansas and they sought leading figures out. I believe it is more on a militia movement for freedom like the American Revolution and when you don’t even have your gov’t to protect you and your rights and sanctioning a brutal practice that left those enslaved to be murdered, brutalized at the will of their ‘masters’, it was not so easy to just put it like that. Desperate times called for desperate measures.
Boy, am I seeing some parallels to modern times in these comments. Substitute America for Kansas, take out the references to slavery (at least the "chattel" kind), and you've pretty much got the situation today, as I see it.
No they were not.
Furthermore: Many states only joined the Union after receiving the guarantee that they could secede from it at any time. Lincoln violated this oath as well.
No state received such a guarantee. Three states included assumptions in their ratification documents, but such assumptions were meaningless if they violated the Constitution. All states after the original 13 didn't join anything. They were admitted, allowed to join only after a majority of the existing states gave their approval. If they are allowed in only with the approval of the other states then why should leaving not require the same?
Ergo: Unilateral secession is Constitutional.
Ergo: It was not.
...ergo when one or more states leave: it is illegal to FORCE them back at the point of a gun.
Allowing, for the sake of argument, that the secession was legal, when the South started a war to further their aims then they had to accept the consequences for their actions.
Slavery was not guaranteed labour as the slaves would often escape or be unproductive. It is a rather stupid way of trying to generate any out put as the labour force has virtually no incentive to work.
Apparently enough of the 4 million slaves stayed put and were productive enough to make the institution to pay off.
The figures on slave owning families is just another way you Leftists like to infer that slave ownership was rampant when in fact all you are doing is trying to INFLATE the figures by lumping in families who have no connection to the institution itself.
And failure to accept clear statistic is a Nazi hallmark.
Or Commie. One of the two.
This would be like accusing American "families" of electing Obama just because 1 or more member of an entire family might have voted for him.
No, more like when one person in a family owns a car the entire family draws benefit from it.
Furthermore: Lincoln was not elected in the South which is something you conveniently overlook because if the South remained in the Union they would have had government without representation.
Completely idiotic. Lincoln received a majority of the electoral votes, the South continued to have their Constitutional representation in the Senate and their Constitutional over-representation in the House.
Yet St. Paul sent the slave Onesimus back to his master Philemon. And in I Timothy 6:1-4 [1699 Geneva] several rules about master/servant relations are given, among them, “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and [his] doctrine be not blasphemed.”.
Dude, YANKEES sailed the oceans blue to purchase their cargoes of human flesh. Rape? The percentage of mulattos was almost 4 times higher in the North.
People died over independence over taxes and you say it wasn’t right for a movement within a country to work to abolish true slavery?
Lincoln and Congress both stated that the war was for union, not slavery. Lincoln saw nothing wrong with an amendment making slavery permanent & irrevocable.
Just because something is state sanctioned does not make it right and the United States was wrong to allow slavery to continue for so long.
Yet a holocaust [abortion] has occurred here in the US, disproportionally murdering MILLIONS more blacks, and yet no one advocates Civil War to end it. And folks like you rail about a practice that was common and almost world-wide, but far more blacks have been butchered by doctors that violate their Hippocratic oath with each abortion.
With your attitude I can’t see why you’re a “bushfamfan”. While the Bushes are Yankees through and through, except for Laura, I doubt that they would support John Brown. Brown was the Che Guevera of his day.
No offense, but what do you think about God commanding that thieves [Exodus 22:3] and debtors unable to repay [II Kings 4:1, Leviticus 25:39] be sold into slavery?
Really?
"Can the liberties of a nation be sure when we remove their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people, that these liberties are a gift from God? Thomas Jefferson
"Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams
"You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments; rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the Universe" John Adams - 2nd Pres.
"(T)he foundation of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; ...the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained..." George Washington, First Inaugural, April 30 1789
What many fail to understand is that the Atlantic Ocean was not replete with ships carrying members of those other religions.
Exactly.
So I can safely put you down as being VIOLENTLY against an institution that God commanded to be employed?
“I’m a direct descendent of the terrorist.”
-
No?
For Real?
Dang.
Is that why you are living in the Congo and everything?
Yes, I’m a direct descendent.
I was registered with the Illinois flag and then F.R. started posting the last comment from the state site onto the main page. I got tired of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling just to get to news/activism. It seems there are some Illinois posters who love to copy and paste really long replies.
I tried to find out how to resign from the state site and couldn’t figure it out but I did know how to change locations and figured there wouldn’t be a whole lot of traffic from the Congo, so now I fly the Congo flag instead of the Illinois flag and so far there have been zero postings appear on my news/activism page from the Congo.
Nope. It was against the law to kill a slave. Upheld in Mississippi [State v. Jones (1821)], Tennessee [Fields v. State (1829)] and others.
I have been taught that Christianity is part of the law of the land. The four gospels upon the clerk's table admonish me it is so every time they are used in administering oaths. ...What is conclusive with me, that this is all that was intended, is, the punishment inflicted by the act. For willful and malicious murder, the offender is to suffer death without the benefit of clergy — the former punishment. ...
It is well said by one of the judges of North Carolina, that the master has a right to exact the labor of his slave; that far, the rights of the slave are suspended; but this gives the master no right over the life of the slave. I add to this saying of the judge, that law which says thou shalt not kill, protects the slave; and he is within its very letter. Law, reason, Christianity and common humanity, all point out one way.
Justice Jacob Peck, Fields v. The State Of Tennessee, 1 Yerger 156 (1829).
what you posted in #236 was, in one word, FALSE.
free dixie,sw
Well you can be in denial all you want but Georgia / New York / Rhode Island & Virgina did not join the Union until getting assurances that they could leave at any time. This was not honoured obviously by Lincoln. The CSA / South did not “start” the war. Lincoln & the North purposely started the war when he invaded the sovereign CSA & even instigated the war when he attempted to rearm the former Union forts within the CSA thereby giving Lincoln the excuse he required when his troops were resisted.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.