Description:
As the railroads promoted excursions to Harpers Ferry, fancier boardinghouses and hotels on Camp Hill accommodated an annual influx of summer boarders, mostly middle-class tourists from Washington, DC. From these establishments, there are guest books,...
Description:
During the 1840s, the sectional conflict over slavery became increasingly prominent and strident in American political life. In 1850, Senators Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun supported a complicated piece of legislation known as the...
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In June 1862, Congress gave President Lincoln authority to recruit African-Americans into the Union forces. Approximately 180,000 blacks enlisted and served in the United States Army and Navy during the Civil War.
In March 1864,...
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: Originally known as Baxter's Philadelphia Fire Zouaves, Private Shuster's regiment, the 72nd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, came from Philadelphia's volunteer fire companies. All Zouave regiments, both Union and Confederate, were modeled after the famed French Corps of Zouaves....
Description:
In July 1839, Cinque, a West African chieftain, led a revolt on board the slave ship Amistad. Although Cinque ordered the captain to return the ship and passengers to Africa, the white crew sailed into Long Island, New York, where...
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: With the coming of freedom, African-Americans sough education. Schools for ex-slaves sprang up all over the South behind the advancing Union armies. In the winter of 1864-1865, a freedmen's school was established in Harpers Ferry.
Date Created: C. 1886
Description: The Spriggs family has lived in Harpers Ferry since the 1820s.
Description: The Spriggs family has lived in Harpers Ferry since the 1820s.
Description: The Spriggs family has lived in Harpers Ferry since the 1820s.
Date Created: c. March 1989
Description: In March 1989, over 3,000 demonstrators protested New York City's level of funding and services for people with AIDS.
Description: Niagara Movement member Max Barber wrote eloquently of the meaning of Harpers Ferry as the site for the 1906 meeting, "I have heard men speak of the…thrill which comes to one as he stands…on a spot where some great deed was wrought that perceptibly advanced the world...I too have known what it...
Description: Niagara Movement member Max Barber wrote eloquently of the meaning of Harpers Ferry as the site for the 1906 meeting, "I have heard men speak of the…thrill which comes to one as he stands…on a spot where some great deed was wrought that perceptibly advanced the world...I too have known what it...
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: This is one round ball from a canister shot cartridge. Canister was most effective at close range against advancing infantry.
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: When fired at close range, the canister shell would disintegrate and scatter the formerly enclosed balls.
Date Created: 1930
Description:
The station, built in 1894, was moved to a site further up the Potomac shortly after this photograph was taken.
Description: The United States Army began to officially recruit, arm, and train African-American soldiers in 1863. In 1865, the last year of the war, one out of every ten Union soldiers was black. A total of 180,000 served and 37,000 were killed or died of disease.
Description:
America's first successful use of interchangeable parts took place in Harpers Ferry. During the 1820s and 1830s John Hall perfected machinery for producing interchangeable parts for rifles, contributing not only to the success of his rifle works, but to the development of the American...
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: This Bible belonged to Private Louis B. Hull of the 60th Ohio Regiment.
Date Created: 1847-1860
Description: Though the Federal armory brought many workers to Harpers Ferry, these workers were sustained by the businesses and manufactories of the town.
Date Created: 1861
Description: The Civil War began 18 months after John Brown seized the federal armory.
Description: Brass stencil used by the Child & McCreight Mill to mark their flour barrels
Description: In antebellum Harpers Ferry, brick supplanted native stone as a favorite building material.
Description:
A house built in the 1820s by an armory worker (and later rented to others) tells much about how the armory workshops operated before divison of labor and mechanization were common. In the early years of the armory, workers were paid by the piece. As...
Date Created: 1837
Description: Sketch of Harpers Ferry from Camp Hill showing the Wager Bridge and the new and still uncovered B&O railroad bridge.
Date Created: 1824-1835
Description: Though the Federal armory brought many workers to Harpers Ferry, these workers were sustained by the businesses and manufactories of the town.
Date Created: 1849-1852
Description: Though the Federal armory brought many workers to Harpers Ferry, these workers were sustained by the businesses and manufactories of the town.
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: This is one type of shell fired from the Union's Naval Battery on Maryland Heights. Primarily used to batter down structures, 100-pound solid shit like this was also used to bowl down troop formations. The cannon that fired these balls had a range of more than four miles.
Date Created: 1846-1870
Description:
Though the Federal armory brought many workers to Harpers Ferry, these workers were sustained by the businesses and manufactories of the town.
Description: Coal replaced wood and charcoal as the fuel in homes and factories.
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: Colonel Daniel Cameron, Jr. organized the "Scotch Regiment," officially known as the 65th Regiment Illinois Infantry Volunteers, at Camp Douglas, Chicago, Illinois, in the spring of 1862. Their uniforms, while not as colorful as the Garibaldi Guars, reflected the Scottish Highlander...
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: Colonel Dixon S. Miles' 43-year military career ended in disgrace at Harpers Ferry on September 15, 1862. His professional life before the Civil War did not foreshadow such an unfortunate end. Born in Baltimore County, Maryland, in 1804, Miles began his military training at West Point at the...
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description: Sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. on September 14, fighting broke out along the Union skirmish line on the western slope of Bolivar Heights. Colonel Jesse Segoine's 111th New York held the center of the line. During this final infantry engagement Segoine came to the aid of Private James O'...
Description: Conveyor belt buckets that held five pounds of flour, found on the site of the Child & McCreight Mill.
Description: Niagara Movement member Max Barber wrote eloquently of the meaning of Harpers Ferry as the site for the 1906 meeting, "I have heard men speak of the…thrill which comes to one as he stands…on a spot where some great deed was wrought that perceptibly advanced the world...I too have known what it...
Date Created: 1849-1852
Description: Though the Federal armory brought many workers to Harpers Ferry, these workers were sustained by the businesses and manufactories of the town.
Date Created: C. May 1905
Description: After Storer College was founded by Baptist minister Nathan Cook Brackett, it maintained a strong religious element.
Date Created: c. 1930s
Description: Factory workers in Detroit on strike against auto makers in the late 1930s for the right to organize unions.
Date Created: c. 1862
Description: This is an excerpt from the diary of Private Louis B. Hull, 60th Ohio: "September 14 A general feeling of depression observable in all the men. All seem to think that we will have to surrender or be cut to pieces. 15th Monday A rather dark page in the history of us."
Description: Many African-Americans who trained at Storer have made important contributions to society. One of them, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, completed his high school education at Storer in 1925 and began his college work there the following year. In 1963 Dr. Azikiwe became the first President of the Republic of...
Date Created: 1858
Description: The wooden stock of the musket was the first component manufactured by mass production machines. The duplicating lathe, sometimes called a Blanchard lathe for its inventor, quickly turned out walnut stocks identical to the pattern.
Date Created: c. 1850s
Description: In 1850, Congress passed a stronger Fugitive Slave Law. This legislation allowed slaveowners and their representatives to pursue runaway slaves into free states, capture them, and return the slaves to bondage. Many in the North felt the law was a license to kidnap northern free blacks. The white...
Date Created: c. 1860s
Description:
This is one of the 128 books from The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, commonly referred to as the Official Records or, simply the "O.R." Almost 2,000 pages of reports and correspondence...
Description: Fifteen hundred soldiers surrounded the site of Brown's execution in Charles Town.