The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1868-10-12
The Story of Harper's Ferry.

THE romance of nature and of history has been
strangely gathered about this wild and glo-
rious ravine, and the politics of our State and
city have been curiously linked to it by the
gallant deeds of Geary and of Tyndale. Har-
clothed by nature with a beauty and grandeur
that would have made it ever famous, even il
varied interests Of many other kinds had not
cOngregated around its majestic bluffs. In the
old peaceful days it enjoyed species of SEN
timental renown as being sort of Gretna
Green, to which runaway lovers from the
neighboring States fed for those bans that
were to prove the bane or bliss OF the future.
When that strange old pioneer, John Brown,
stung to madness by the violence and sinful
aggression of the propagandists of slavery,
sought stronghold for his insane venture, he
chose this mountain fastness. With hand
full of men he seized a single arsenal, and mo-
mentarily delayed the progress of single line
of travel. The action was in itself 80 trihing
that street fight has often been more disas-
trous to life, but the cause from which it
sprung and the aim at which it was intended
elevated it into what was considered ma
tional crime, and John Brown died the death
of traitor to the laws of Virginia.
Two years had not rolled around before the
aggressions of the power against which he had
striven, and the treason of the very men who
had sentenced him for that hideous crime, had
inaugurated the most extensive. treason that
he would ever have beheld, and their evil deed
ended in rendering the widest dream of that
ill-fated visionary into fact.
By strange coincidence, one of the earliest
events of this struggle was new seizure of
the grand old mountain gateway by another
''traitor." But the cause was changed, and
mad Southern fanatics strove to hold it as the
key TO the capital Of their endangered father
land.
These first days OF terror passed away, and
again the grand old ferry was under loyal
leader-s man who, by the strange freak of
fate, had learned his lesson of fealty on the
bloody borderland of Kansas. And, to round
the story into poetic fullness, beside him, with
helping heart and hand, was the brave sol iier
who saw in the mortal conflict Of the battle
field but the realization of battle that he
had himself fought with heart and miud.
Although reprobating the zealot's ill-conceived
rebellion against the law, he had recognized
the courage and truth Of the old mans heart
by the high hope and dauntless faith stirring
in his own breast; and when in the new war,
he led his aroused oountrymen against the
armed ranks of traitorous host, the actual
battle was but dim reflex of that harder
conflict waged with his own conscience when,
under the dictate Of an earnest conviction he
had risked his life to bear into safety the boiy
of a convict wrapped in all the opprobrium Of
the gallows.
By the mysterious orderings Of Providence
the slave was enfranohised as a oonseq uence
of the direct and wilful deed of Henry A. Wise
and his traitorous comrades.
The mighty mountain gateway, the scene of
so many conflicts, now opens peaceful en-
trance to line of trafc. AS If at the word OF
command the lofty peaks stand back, yelling