« Others? | Main | Boy Crisis? » Another State Bites the Dust29 Jul 2007 07:38 pm Now that I'm in the car on the way back from Harper's Ferry I can now add West Virginia to the list of states I've visited I'd never realized that DC was so close to parts of WV, probably because until today I'd been under the impression that Harpers Ferry was in plain-vanilla Virginia. The trick, it turns out, is that back when historical events were happening, Harpers Ferry was in regular Virginia. Then, during the Civil War, they made West Virginia and Harpers Ferry was part of it. Comments (52)
It's no coincidence. Not only is Harper's Ferry the place where, essentially, the civil war began (with John Brown's raid) but that part of the state quit Virginia in opposition to slavery and secession. A very PC day trip. 
Ah, Harper's Ferry, what a historical spot. And John Brown--there stood a man. Thoreau liked him, too. He wrote:
Not to spoil the party, but John Brown was a violent fanatic. I'm a big admirer of Williams Lloyd Garrison and his ilk of abolitionists, but the perpetrator of the Potawatomie Massacre is an amiguous figure, at best.
"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land can never be purged away but with blood. I had as I now think vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done." John Brown was right.
Matt, I always admire your blog, but you are seriously telling me you didn't know any of this until today? I mean, it's one thing if you're talking about Bumcrack, WV, but this is Harper's Ferry! And you went to Harvard! All in all, this post is not exactly a stirring endorsement for the American educational system.
*ambiguous*
John Brown was a violent fanatic in a time that needed more violent fanatics, not fewer. And I didn't know it was in West Virginia either. Education is there to develop critical thinking skills, not collect trivia.
Russell Banks wrote a great historical novel about John Brown: Cloudsplitter. A subplot about Brown's son lusting after the wife of a freed slave seemed a little gratuitous and unrealistic, but otherwise I recommend the book. The period detail -- particularly of rural life in upstate New York and Bloody Kansas -- was remarkable.
And only if the state of West Virginia had never been created (unconstitutionally), I would be able to visit my heaven on earth and not leave the state. If anyone else around here's into snowboarding, Snowshoe Mountain is pretty darn good for something on the East coast. West Virginia gets alot of bad press--but it's a beautiful state with some wonderful people. Those parts 30 minutes from DC don't do it justice--you really need to spend a few hours and drive to the good parts to understand it. Snowshoe's not that pretty this time of year (but you can get some good mountain biking in), but there's plenty of places in West Virginia where you could easily forget the modern world for a day or two. It's pretty hard to do that in DC--even in Rock Creek Park. Of course, just yesterday I was helping a friend move into northwest and I realized how much I love that city. I think I'll stay in Falls Church for convenience's sake, but Washington has its charm--as long as you stay far away from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Is it trivia that West-by-god-Virginia was hoved off from Virginia as the result of the Civil War? Trivia my arse! And MattY lives in DC! Maybe these hayseed rightwing populist are correct, the DC elite are divorced from the USA, even if they went to Harvard. Commie writes :Education is there to develop critical thinking skills, not collect trivia. Critical thinking skills like: defer to popular front leftism? I being someone who generally despises populists, left or right. (Lou Dobbs and Bill O"Reilly being 2 insufferable examples)
And I didn't know it was in West Virginia either. Education is there to develop critical thinking skills, not collect trivia. While I support the primacy of critical thinking, deductive logic and construction of argument in education, the acquisition of knowledge is also essential. You simply can't be an educated person without access to facts about the world around you.
Re: And John Brown--there stood a man. John Brown was an American terrorist. Yes, yes, slavery was a great evil, but that does not justify murderous acts against innocent people. It's because of men like Brown (including his opposite numbers on the other side of the question) that the US, alone among nations, had to slaughter half a million people to end slavery. Re: John Brown was a violent fanatic in a time that needed more violent fanatics, not fewer. Violent fanatics are NEVER the answer! What was needed was men (and women!) of reason and good will. John Brown and Osama bin Laden are cut from the same cloth.
Education is there to develop critical thinking skills, not collect trivia. Critical thinking skills allow you to evaluate the validity of what other people tell you. A strong command of facts allows you to actually do stuff and come up with things to tell people. An education that focuses only on "critical thinking skills" is a privilege of upper-middle class twits with no attention span for learning who know they'll manage just fine socially and professionally even if they don't know much about the world around them. I just felt like ranting.
Good lord, I hate the "you-don't-know-this-one-single-fact-I-know-so-you're-stupid" comments. Read the post. Mistakenly associating HF with VA, when it was part of VA for part of its storied history, is hardly a case of crippling ignorance. Part of MY's charm is how, when he learns something new, he cheerfully admits that he was previously ignorant of it rather than pretending he knew it all along. And the reason more people don't have that same charm is because insecure jerks like Greg and Jozef are always waiting with their knives.
I want to tell you all a story 'bout a Harper Ferry widowed wife The note said, "Mrs. Johnson, you're wearing your dresses way too high Well, it happened that the P.T.A. was gonna meet that very afternoon
There are some things worth fighting for, and some things worth killing for. The notion that there is a bright line where revolutionary acts end and terrorism ends-- where violence is justified and where it is not-- doesn't seem historically supportable to me. John Brown and Osama bin Laden are cut from the same cloth. That is an absurd statement, even by the standards of a blog comments section.
Agree with Freddie.
Critical thinking skills allow you to evaluate the validity of what other people tell you. A strong command of facts allows you to actually do stuff and come up with things to tell people. I know you said you were ranting, but a little contextualization would be nice. Important facts one should get from an education: the position of John Brown within the northern anti-slavery movement generally, the connections between terrorism in Kansas and Harper's Ferry, the way this event moved the US closer to civil war. Trivia: that Harper's Ferry is in West Virginia, not Virginia. Obviously it's a balance between a command of facts and critical thinking. But people early in the thread were simply picking on a point of trivia.
It's because of men like Brown (including his opposite numbers on the other side of the question) that the US, alone among nations, had to slaughter half a million people to end slavery. Bullpoopy. The abolitionists, if violent, were as bad as the slave-holders? And htat Nat Turner, if he'd just known his place, the slaves would have been set free without a single shot being fired. There was a war because people were holding slaves, it's because the Southern social system was slave-dependent, it's because that dependency spawned a entire culture of injustice.
Civil War battlefields are being squeezed by development in the DC-Richmond corridor. Harpers Ferry and Gettysburg are on the Civil War Preservation Trust's ten most threatened endangered list. Get to Antietam, Gettysburg, Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville before they are surrounded by strip malls and casinos.
thanks fighting 69th. i for one like hortons take on all this: sir walter scott is to blame for the civil war. as for hf, regardless of what state its in it is one of the loveliest places on earth, particularly in april.
t's no coincidence. Not only is Harper's Ferry the place where, essentially, the civil war began (with John Brown's raid) but that part of the state quit Virginia in opposition to slavery and secession. A very PC day trip. What an ingnorant offensive bigoted post. Harper's Ferry is where the Shendendoah meets the Potomac - gorgeous country for fishing, canoeing, rafting, and camping. It's an old historic town with significance to industrial and railroading history as well as Civil War battles that had nothing to do with John Brown and his raid. As far as being tagged "that part of the state quit Virginia" - 40 counties - almost 30,000 sq.miles quit Virginia to form West Virginia, some hundreds of miles away from Harpers Ferry - so I guess anyone who goes anywhere in WVA is being "very PC". Give me a break. As I said - ignorant. Being less than an hour's drive from DC it is one of many popular day trip destinations fior DC area residents, regardless of how "PC" one is.
Petey,
Unfortunately, I feel like I should clarify my comments. In particular, I didn't mean to castigate Matt for not knowing where a particular place is. I'm from New York, and if you asked me where Binghamton is, I might, at first, have to be given the hint of "what's a flagship SUNY campus?" As I said in my post, it's one thing for Matt not knowing where some place or another is. However, I was somewhat nonplussed by Matt relating the fact that he only just learned the story of how Harpers Ferry split off from VA. Harpers Ferry, frankly, has a decent claim to being the first engagement of the American Civil War. In addition, that West Virginia was formed by free men deciding that, far from going along with the Confederacy, they were free Americans is of crucial importance. Those who would say that this is incorrect would do well to look at just which states east of the Mississippi are "red" states and which ones are "blue" states. Harpers Ferry, and more specifically, the reaction to John Brown's raid, signals a chasm that exists to this day in American life. What caused me such surprise is that an observer as astute as Matt could have spent so much of his life not realizing this. Hence my somewhat flippant remark regarding his Harvard education. For those who spoke in my defence, I would like to say, as a disclaimer, I'm an Economics major at the University of Chicago, so I'm at least as guilty as Matt of anything you've written about. So, my comments were not meant so much in opposition as they were in made shock. Furthermore, I feel that they indicate a recent tendency, for PC or "cultural marxist" or whatever reasons, to downplay traditional history, steeped as it is in men, wars, and bloodshed. Even if these are boring or uncomfortable topics for some, it should be remembered that the war begun at Harpers Ferry represents the fundamental divide in US politics, until at least the 1960s, but frankly into the present. They should, therefore, not be neglected by American schools. After all, when a delegation of Soviet historians arrived in the US for our bicentennial, and they were asked what they would like to visit first, they gave as their answer not the Freedom Trail in Massachusetts, or the Liberty Bell, or any of the other original markers of the Republic, but instead, they asked to be taken to Gettysburg, which they described as the American Stalingrad. Harpers Ferry was a fulcrum of American history, and so, yes, should be the sort of "useless trivia" that students ought to keep for their entire lives.
John Brown's raid could not have succeeded. The Northern states would not have gone willingly to the meatgrinder, in support of a slave revolt. Instead, most of the blood shed would be that of slaves, and slavery would have lasted another generation. I suppose one can postulate the Lincoln wouldn't have won without JB, or that the southern states wouldn't have been scared enough to secede. Which in turn raises the question whether slavery would have been abolished without the Civil War. We'll never know. The facile acceptance, though, of the vast death and misery doesn't speak well of elite opinion. I'm not surprised that MY hadn't known the HF is in WV -- he didn't grow up here, and leads an urban life in DC. It's really a gem in our region, though, in each season worth a visit.
Posted by Freddie | July 29, 2007 10:23 PM:"There are some things worth fighting for, and some things worth killing for." Sure but what is worth killing innocent people for? John Brown was on his way to Lawrence and when he was not needed there, he went on his way murdering half a dozen people he *suspected* of being pro-slavery along his way. What political cause is worth murdering innocent farmers for simply because they probably support your political enemies? Posted by Freddie | July 29, 2007 10:23 PM:"The notion that there is a bright line where revolutionary acts end and terrorism ends-- where violence is justified and where it is not-- doesn't seem historically supportable to me." It does to me. Posted by Freddie | July 29, 2007 10:23 PM:"That is an absurd statement, even by the standards of a blog comments section." What exactly is absurd about it? Either you are in the business of murdering civilians or you are not. Brown and Bin Laden were (assuming OBL is now pushing up the daisies). Posted by DivGuy | July 29, 2007 10:55 PM:"The abolitionists, if violent, were as bad as the slave-holders? And htat Nat Turner, if he'd just known his place, the slaves would have been set free without a single shot being fired." Well the abolitionists and slave holders are a different argument. Certainly America had a chance to resolve the slave issue peacefully as any number of other countries did. That did not happen and 600,000 people died. Britain freed its slaves without a massive war. So did Brazil. I don't recall a civil war in Cuba either. The two main exceptions are Haiti and the US - suggesting that perhaps a Revolutionary tradition might be linked to slave-freeing related violence. I don't know. However Brown pushed America along the path of confrontation. As did Nat Turner in all probability. Remember that British slaves in Britain were freed peacefully as long ago as 1772. Going out and killing all the white people probably caused the middle ground to disappear - as Brown probably wanted - which meant a harder line on slavery. Posted by DivGuy | July 29, 2007 10:55 PM:"There was a war because people were holding slaves, it's because the Southern social system was slave-dependent, it's because that dependency spawned a entire culture of injustice." There was a war because America could not continue to agree on a compromise solution to slavery nor on how to resolve their issues peacefully. Notice that the Civil War really began in Kansas and I suspect that not only were no slaves involved, there were virtually no slaves in Kansas at all.
Re: There are some things worth fighting for, and some things worth killing for. The things worth fighting begin and end with self defense. And there is never anything worth murdering for. And no, it is not absurd to compare Brown with bin Laden. Brown too was a religious fanatic who thought God had authorized him to kill. If you want to adnire abolitionists there are plenty who are worthy of that admiration, including African Americans like Harriet Tubman who actually helped free slaves whereas I don't think Brown ever freed a single one.
Just as a part of the historical record, Jon, Brown participated in many raids in the Kansas/Missouri wars that freed slaves. The things worth fighting begin and end with self defense. And there is never anything worth murdering for. That's tautological. Murder is defined as unjustified killing, while self-defense is justified killing. The question is when and in what situations killing is justified. I basically wouldn't have a moral problem with violence done during a slave revolt. You have to acknowledge that slave rebellions involved killing, and you have to construe "self defense" rather broadly - up to the point where it means justified killing - to condone it. The question of where John Brown's raids fit, as they weren't run by slaves, and did not free that many slaves, is an open question, but hiding behind tautologies and claiming hte moral high ground is not a helpful position. In the end, I see institutional slavery as an evil that justified a wide array of insurrectional acts, and I have a lot of trouble doing anything but admiring Brown.
There's an interesting parallel between John Brown and Iraq War advocates: Both operated under the assumption that the people they wanted to liberate would actually fight for their freedom in large numbers. John Brown expected blacks to stream to Harper's Ferry, take the government's weapons, and free themselves by violent revolution. They didn't. Even the few blacks he freed along the way in his raid wanted no part of his 'revolt'. Just as Iraq War advocates overestimated the capabilities of 'freedom-loving' Iraqis, so did John Brown overestimate the capabilities of American blacks. I wonder what he would think if he were alive today, to see how blacks still lag so far behind other Americans 140+ years after slavery was abolished.
Right, the cause of destroying institutional slavery and deposing Saddam Hussein are perfectly analogous. Slaves calculated, rightly, that Brown's insurrection would fail, and they would probably die. Brown's rebellion was put down in short order, first by locals hemming them in, then by Army intervention. The notion that Brown "overestimated the capabilities of American blacks" is just racism is happier garb - te blacks didn't really want freedom after all! Once the Civil War began and the destruction of slavery was on its way, slave rebellions and escapes increased massively. I'm thinking that you didn't mean to repeat the worst of pro-slavery apologetics, but that doesn't mean you didn't do it.
hmmm...I'm surprised nobody's referred to an interesting Civil War era song: "John Brown's Body" - Sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, a bunch of different versions appeared during the war. "He captured Harpers Ferry with his nineteen men so few,
Either you are in the business of murdering civilians or you are not. Brown and Bin Laden were (assuming OBL is now pushing up the daisies). So I'm sure, then, that you are routinely in the practice of criticizing Israel for killing civilians, as it routinely does, as it did by a factor of ten more than it's opponents in the recent incursion into Lebanon? Oh, but, wait. If it's an Arab or an abolitionist, it's terrorism. If it's Israeli or American military, it's self-defense. The people who are arguing for bright line distinctions are engaging in pure wishful thinking. Life doesn't work that way. It's incredible to me that people can live life in the same world as I do and still accept as gospel such childish Manicheanism.
DivGuy, The point isn't whether or not black slaves "wanted freedom" -- of course they did; who wouldn't? The point is they lacked the capability to successfully fight for it, even when offered weapons by John Brown. This is similar to the oppressed Iraqi Shiites' lack of the capability to successfully fight Saddam Hussein, even though they were the majority in Iraq, and even after Saddam's army had been routed by the Gulf War victors. As for blacks not having the capabilities to integrate successfully in American society, this was actually the position of most abolitionists, not slavery apologists. Even Lincoln believed this. That's why the American Colonization Society was founded, to give freed blacks passage to Liberia. Events over the last 140 years -- from the corruption and deterioration of black-run cities such as Detroit and Newark, to the hell-hole that Liberia has been, to the rate of blacks failing out of high school and filling prisons -- would seem to support 19th century doubts about black capabilities.
Oh, so you really did mean to recapitulate 19th century racism because you're another one of the pieces of bigoted scum that migrate over here from Sailer's place now and again. Shut the fuck up, go back to your hut and plan your cross burning with Jozef.
Britain freed its slaves without a massive war. Wrong. Britain freed its slaves after a massive rebellion in the largest slave colony, Jamaica, convinced them it was pointless to keep propping up a system that so many people disapproved of. And surely it's relevant in the comparison that slavery was only present in the Empire, and so had little direct influence on Parliament and no large constituency ready to fight to the death in Yorkshire and Wiltshire to defend its way of life?
It is trivial that Harpers Ferry is in W. Virginia. The people of Harper's Ferry at the time were not particulary anti-slave or pro-union. It was the rest of what became West Virginia that cause the state's creation. Harper's Ferry was included as a matter of strategic convenience. Even so, the Union could have left it as part of Virginia (it is on the border)and simply occupied it. It would have made little difference.
history geek: John Brown's Body is not sung to the tune of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, so much as The Battle Hymn of the Republic is sung to the tune of John Brown's body. As to the question of killing civilians, read John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights
"Reynolds focuses on the three most sanguinary and dramatic episodes in Brown's career: the engagements at Pottawatomie and Osawatomie, in Kansas, and the culminating battle at Harpers Ferry. To read this extended account is to appreciate that Brown, far from being easily incited to rage and rashness, was capable of playing a very long game. He was naturally drawn to Kansas, because it had become the battleground state in a Union that was half slave and half free. The pro-slavery settlers and infiltrators from Missouri were determined to colonize the territory and to pack its polling booths, and in this they often had the indulgence of decrepit and cowardly presidents, including Franklin Pierce. Until the appearance of Brown and his men on the scene, the slave power had had things mostly its own way. and was accustomed to using any method it saw fit. After the murder of the abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy, and especially after the famous assault on Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks, Brown decided on a reprisal raid, and slew several leading pro-slavery Kansans in the dead of night. There is no question that this represented only a small installment of payback, though Reynolds nervously characterizes it as "terrorism" and spends a great deal of time and ink in partly rationalizing the deed. The superfluity of this is easily demonstrated. Not only had the slave holders perpetrated the preponderance of atrocities, and with impunity at that, but they had begun to boast that northerners and New Englanders were congenitally soft and altogether lacking in "chivalric" and soldierly qualities. What could be more apt than that they should encounter John Brown, careless of his own safety and determined to fill the ungodly with the fear of the risen Christ? Every Cavalier should meet such a Roundhead. After Pottawatomie the swagger went out of the southerners, and after the more conventional fighting at Osawatomie, and Brown's cool-headed raid to liberate a group of slaves and take them all the way to Canada, they came to realize that they were in a hard fight. Furthermore, their sulfurous reaction to this discovery, and their stupid tendency to paint Brown as an agent of the Republican Party, made it harder and harder for the invertebrate Lincolnians to keep the issue of slavery under control."
In case there is confusion, the book John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights is by David S. Reynolds.
If John Brown had been traded to the Knicks or something, we could have had this comment thread a long time ago.
Posted by DivGuy | July 30, 2007 7:45 AM:"In the end, I see institutional slavery as an evil that justified a wide array of insurrectional acts, and I have a lot of trouble doing anything but admiring Brown." So you supported the War in Iraq did you? Can we all at least agree that the bare minimum has to be that the "insurrectional acts" actually improve things? So do you support American intervention in Dafur where slavery is also continuing? Posted by Freddie | July 30, 2007 8:56 AM:"So I'm sure, then, that you are routinely in the practice of criticizing Israel for killing civilians, as it routinely does, as it did by a factor of ten more than it's opponents in the recent incursion into Lebanon? Oh, but, wait. If it's an Arab or an abolitionist, it's terrorism. If it's Israeli or American military, it's self-defense." Damn right it is. Self-defense that is. OBL did not even try to hit a military target. Nor did John Brown. Israel and America try very hard to avoid non-legitimate targets like civilians - not that they fight many militaries, only bandits and terrorists. America and Israel are countries and made do things like maintain law and order. Lynch mobs may not. Nor may Hamas, or Hezbollah or OBL. You see the gross category error you have made? You may as well say that the KKK is the equivalent of the Public Defender's Office because they both hand out justice. So to recap the absurdity of your comments: 1. States like Israel and not even comparable to organized crime groups like Al-Qaeda 2. There is a qualitative difference in what they attempt to do. In other words, you're as wrong as it is possible for a human to be. Having said that, when Israel and the US set out to do what OBL does , deliberately, knowingly and intentionally murder civilians, then I am appalled. A good thing it does not happen often. Posted by Freddie | July 30, 2007 8:56 AM:"The people who are arguing for bright line distinctions are engaging in pure wishful thinking. Life doesn't work that way. It's incredible to me that people can live life in the same world as I do and still accept as gospel such childish Manicheanism." Actually that would be every one on your side of the argument who claims there are people so good they can kill with pure hearts and people so bad they deserve to die even if they have not committed a crime. I say that we are all sinners and have evil in our hearts. Therefore we need to be restrained from hurting each other as much as possible. Which means that violence ought to be a monopoly of many individuals working collectively and keeping each other in check so that the vile passions of any one man do not dominate the whole system, preferably one collective that is old and operates within well established and understood moral values. A state for instance. The Left lives in a Manichean world. The traditional Conservative Right knows that man is Fallen and we all suffer from original sin.
Posted by Brittain33 | July 30, 2007 9:47 AM:"Wrong. Britain freed its slaves after a massive rebellion in the largest slave colony, Jamaica, convinced them it was pointless to keep propping up a system that so many people disapproved of." Fifteen white people died. Oh yes, that's a massive war alright. In what sense of the word "wrong" is your response even relevant? Why didn't the more bloody Guyanan rebellion do the same 10 years earlier? Why not the Maroon Wars? Posted by Brittain33 | July 30, 2007 9:47 AM:"And surely it's relevant in the comparison that slavery was only present in the Empire, and so had little direct influence on Parliament and no large constituency ready to fight to the death in Yorkshire and Wiltshire to defend its way of life?" I would expect someone called Brittain to do better than this. So what if it was present in the Empire? Who else was present in the Empire? You are vaguely aware of Said's comments on Jane Austin? So you are aware that William Gladstone's father - a Jamaican slave owner - sat in Parliament? If you added up all the names of all the people who were involved in the slave trade, you'd have a vastly greater lobby than anything that Wiltshire could muster. Posted by david | July 30, 2007 10:23 AM:"It is really complicated, but all five of those men were involved in pro-slave state politics and, in some cases, violence." Sorry but could you please provide a shred of evidence of this? That Brown saw them as pro-slave is one thing, but what is the evidence that they were? Besides, it is enough to be pro-slave to deserve to die? Posted by david | July 30, 2007 10:23 AM:"After the murder of the abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy, and especially after the famous assault on Senator Charles Sumner by Representative Preston Brooks, Brown decided on a reprisal raid, and slew several leading pro-slavery Kansans in the dead of night. There is no question that this represented only a small installment of payback, though Reynolds nervously characterizes it as "terrorism" and spends a great deal of time and ink in partly rationalizing the deed." Notice that Hitchens is sticking to his Marxist roots here. Reprisal raids? There is no sign that any of the five were involved in these attacks. Payback? Only if you accept the logic of collective punishment. This is what one of the men involved said: http://www.kansashistory.us/pottamassacre.html "After my team was fed and the party had taken supper, John Brown told me for the first time what he proposed to do. He said he wanted me to pilot the company up to the forks of the creek some five or six miles above, into the neighborhood in which I lived, and show them where all the Pro-slavery men resided; that he proposed to sweep the creek as he came down of all the Pro-slavery men living on it. I positively refused to do it. He insisted upon it, but when he found that I would not go he decided to postpone the expedition until the following night. I then wanted to take my team and go home, but he refused to let me do so, and said I should remain with them. We remained in camp that night, and all day the next day. Some time after dark we were ordered to march." Hitchens defense of Brown is no different from, say, Zarqawi's defense of the murder of innocent Shia - they are men of another party. Murdering them terrorizes and causes a loss of morale. Pathetic.
Sorry, but Harper's Ferry really ought to be part of the basic mental furniture of anybody who purports to know something about American history and politics. Aside from its association with John Brown, it's also important as an early example of the federal government's intervention in the economy. Also, am I wrong, or was MY unaware that West Virginia seceded from Virginia?
Hapers Ferry, as noted above, was added after the initial formation of West Virginia. The reason may be strategic, I am not sure, but very early maps of WV do not include Jefferson County. As a true trivia aside, since Jefferson County became part of WV, Virginia has no Jefferson County at all. It has no county named after perhaps its most famous native son. It also lost Monroe County.
So what if it was present in the Empire? Who else was present in the Empire? Are you really unclear on the distinction between slavery being present in about HALF of your contiguous territory, containing a sizable minority of your voting population and much of its political leadership, vs. slavery being located 6,000 miles away on islands where the number of white residents wouldn't make up a single mid-size county in England? I wouldn't compare Jane Austen to the entire plantation aristocracy of South Carolina, no.
It takes a truly pathetic mind-- pathetic critically, intellectually, historically, and morally-- to think, unironically, that states are morally justified in doing whatever they do, because they are states. That requires a kind of cognitive dissonance, a level of self-delusion and double think, that boggles the mind.
Posted by Brittain33 | July 30, 2007 12:10 PM:"Are you really unclear on the distinction between slavery being present in about HALF of your contiguous territory, containing a sizable minority of your voting population and much of its political leadership, vs. slavery being located 6,000 miles away on islands where the number of white residents wouldn't make up a single mid-size county in England?" I am not unclear. It is just that you did not choose to make that comparison. You made one with Wiltshire. I am not a mind reader. It is not my fault if your analogies are asinine. Oh and by the way, Brazil also voted out slavery without a war. And that was present in roughly all of Brazil. Posted by Brittain33 | July 30, 2007 12:10 PM:"I wouldn't compare Jane Austen to the entire plantation aristocracy of South Carolina, no." Which is nice because you did not. Posted by Freddie | July 30, 2007 12:24 PM:"It takes a truly pathetic mind-- pathetic critically, intellectually, historically, and morally-- to think, unironically, that states are morally justified in doing whatever they do, because they are states. That requires a kind of cognitive dissonance, a level of self-delusion and double think, that boggles the mind." Well when you find such a mind let me know. God knows I don't hold to that position. God knows that no fair minded, sane, impartial person with a shred of decency, common sense and moral integrity could think I would either, Oh, it's you Freddie. What I will repeat is that while governments will from time to time do bad things, claiming that any young man is morally justified in going out and murdering people more or less at random because of some injustice in society he finds intolerable (and in these cases utterly unconnected with the victims of said violence) is a dangerous road that can only lead to chaos, murder and civil war. Rather like Iraq which does have precisely that tradition. It is a prescription for civil war and dictatorship. Alternately.
I am not unclear. It is just that you did not choose to make that comparison.... I am not a mind reader. It is not my fault if your analogies are asinine. Are you some kind of Tony Snow Turing test?
So, I guess some folks here might be appalled to learn that I never studied the Civil War AT ALL in my years of primary and secondary education? (During my years of tertiary education I didn't have time to take a survey history course and the Civil War history courses on offer were all much too high-level for me. There was this crazy assumption that I would already know the basics....) I did once, however, visit the Gettysburg battlefield with a friend. He was so excited about the idea of troops once having charged the ground we were on, it was almost endearing. I am familiar with the fact that Harper's Ferry is located in West Virginia. Both my parents are from different parts of WV. They're not even related! Fighting 69th, it's too late for Fredericksburg and Manassas -- they are already surrounded by strip malls. I hope you were tubing, MY! It was hot hot hot this weekend!
Posted by HeiGou | July 30, 2007 12:30 PM Actually, you never said it the first time, so you're not repeating anything. Don't blame me, you're the one who thinks playing word games is winning an argument.
Fredericksburg and Manassas are actually pretty well preserved - though the towns may have strip malls. I walked all over Manassas, including to parts of Bull Run outside of the Park, and barely encountered a car or two. Personally, I think out National Park Service does a first-ratee job. I was in Brussels a couple years back, and figured I'd go see Waterloo. In the town, there was a great museum where Wellington had stayed the night before the battle. But after that my reaction was kinda like, "where's the battlefield." So I ask the guy at the museum, and he tells me to catch a bus outside. I figured I'd walk and pass through some of the battlefield. Boy was I wrong. I had to cut ovr highways, under overpasses, through neighborhoods and down roads with the equivalent of strip malls before I finally reached the Butte du Lion (no idea if thats spelled right) - the statue that marks where the Prince of Orange had been wounded. Once you climb to the top of that, and look down immediately next to the mound, you se....a go kart track. That lion is all that's left of the battlefield. Even Wellington, after returning to the battlefield some years later and seeing the Lion, built by William I, complained "They ruined my battlefield." Imagine if he saw it today. I say kudos to the NPS for saving as much of our battlefields as they have. By the way, if you live in the DC area, you have no excuse for not knowing your civil war history. Frredericksburg, Manassas, Petersburg, Richmond, Gettysburg, Antietam and Harper's Ferry are all within a couple hours drive - an easy day trip. Half the war was fought in our backyard! Go out and learn!
For one who castigates the pundits for their admitted shallowness your grasp of American history is quite scary. Read "Battle Cry Of Freedom" by James M. McPherson. You might enjoy it. Harper's Ferry changed hands four times during the Civil War and is no mean historical site in it's own right. The Confederates sited artillery on Maryland Hights and Loundoun Hights which domimated the town. Go back and take a look and you will see the impossible situation that the defenders faced. The inevitable surrender of the Union garrison was the largest (numerically) surrender of American troops ever. The battle of Harper's Ferry along with Crampton's and Turner's Gap were the preludes to the battle of Antietam. If you want to see a relatively unspoiled Civil War battlefield go to Antietam - it is no farther than Haper's Ferry. The battle of Antietam was the bloodiest day in American history and should give any sane person pause to think.
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Heads in the Sand
Wasn't that where John Brown did his thing?
Posted by sangfroid826 | July 29, 2007 7:59 PM