Harpers Ferry

As a South Carolinian, raised on an educational system with a high proportion of revisionist history, I was a work in progress. Examples: All slaves were happy; the Civil War was about state’s rights; Nat Turner was a bad man. That South Carolina history showed no love to abolitionist John Brown.

Once in my lifetime, I was a park ranger at Fort Sumter National Monument in Charleston, SC. That experience taught me that the National Park Service has a significant influence on  disseminating the history of the United States. The public has high confidence that the interpretation at the National Park Service is well researched and real.

The Slave Dwelling Project has applied its vision, mission, and goals at four National Park Service sites. The bureaucracy involved in conducting programs at NPS sites is a difficult nut to crack. As a former park ranger, I know a little about how that bureaucracy works.

Sleeping in slave dwellings throughout this nation has taken me to some exciting places. It has also allowed me to examine more thoroughly the lives of some enslaving historical figures who some perceive as heroes, like some of our founding fathers.

Not all historical figures that the Slave Dwelling Project has come in contact are heroes; history painted them as notorious, villains, and terrorists. Additionally, I marvel at the likes of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner. By Denmark Vesey planning a slave revolt and Nat Turner conducting a slave revolt, both men dispel the myth of all enslaved people being happy with their lot in life.

For the past two years, I have been chasing the footprints of abolitionist John Brown. In 2018, I, and a group of students and their chaperones from Marquette University High School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had the pleasure of visiting the John Brown Museum in Osawatomie, Kansas. Because of bureaucracy, my subsequent request to spend a night in that cabin in Osawatomie was denied. Earlier this year, I, with that same group from Wisconsin, had a sleepover at Kennedy Farm in Sharpsburg, Maryland, where John Brown planned his raid on Harper’s Ferry. The proprietor of Kennedy Farm, Sprigg Singleton Lynn, welcomed us with open arms. We visited the site of the gallows of John Brown’s hanging, the courthouse of his conviction and the museum that houses the wagon that transported him to the gallows. 

The quest to chase the footprints of John Brown was not my idea. Chris Lese is a history teacher at Marquette University High School. I met him at a Civil War conference at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Virginia. The Slave Dwelling Project was in its infancy, and Chris floated this idea about bringing his class to South Carolina to spend the night in some slave cabins. Since that initial SC visit, I have met Chris and his class in Northern Virginia, Mississippi, Wisconsin, and Missouri, all those times sleeping in slave dwellings. We have also ventured into the states of Kansas and Illinois for site visits and sleepovers. Picking up the John Brown trail has been a bonus to our adventures.

On this recent trip to Harpers Ferry, I had an opportunity to do two things, increase the Slave Dwelling Project’s relationship with the National Park Service and delve deeper into the life of John Brown. To pull this off, a lot of moving parts had to come together. Catherine Baldau, Executive Director of the Harpers Ferry Park Association, would be the person to make it all happen. The planning process survived a government shutdown, property acquisition, and coordinating stakeholders.

The acquired property was the Allstadt House, the home of John Allstadt, which played a vital role in John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. On the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and his army of enslaved men launched their attack on Harpers Ferry from Kennedy Farm just across the Potomac River in Maryland. Brown detached a party under John Cook to seize hostages. At about 1:30 A.M. on October 17, Cook captured Col. Lewis W. Washington and three enslaved people at nearby Beallair. He then led his party to the Allstadt House on the way to Harpers Ferry, knocked down the door with a fence rail at about 3 A.M., and took as prisoners Allstadt, his son John Thomas Allstadt and seven enslaved people. The hostages rode in Washington’s wagon to Harpers Ferry, where they were placed under guard by the raiders in the fire-engine house.

The Allstadt House is now the property of the National Park Service, and it was there that I would spend the night. By Big House standards, the house is not that spectacular. The previous owners did what was necessary to ensure the house, and its remaining out-buildings remained on the landscape. Unfortunately, I did not get the opportunity to explore its interior. There was a point in this quest of sleeping in slave dwellings when not going in the big house would not concern me. Very early in the project, I was not interested in exploring how lavishly the enslavers lived while the enslaved people lived in little slave dwellings. I now examine these big houses to see how spatial segregation influenced how these hoses were built. In other words, I want to see how in the design of a building, the enslaved people would function in these spaces. Did the enslaver want them to be seen or unseen when they occupied these spaces? A big house having multiple staircases could help solve that mystery.

Catherine Baldau organized a public event at the Allstadt House that made the transfer of the property to the National Park Service official. Later that day, I gave a presentation to park visitors at Harpers Ferry. The subject was the Slave Dwelling Project’s interactions with the National Park Service to date. What made the presentation meaningful for me was, I gave it at John Brown’s Fort. Although moved many times, it was the firehouse where John Brown and his men barricaded themselves. It was that building that Robert E. Lee and a contingency of Marines stormed to capture John Brown and his men. Unfortunately, my search for fingerprints in the bricks yielded nothing. 

The sleepover came with challenges. Where would I sleep, under the big tent or in the breezeway of the big house? I chose the breezeway to keep the sleepover more authentic. The well-attended conversation around the campfire competed with the noise of the nearby highway traffic. Our sleepover was the first official program at the site since its transfer to the National Park Service.

Most of the participants were there only for the conversation, and by design, only eight of us would stay for the sleepover.

Conclusion

There are elements of history that deserve reexamination. You must do this by using the knowledge you bring to the table in your current state versus your understanding of that history when it first learned by you. In applying this way of thinking to myself, yes, I can blame the system for teaching me a revisionist history. I can also blame myself if I continued to foster that way of thinking and had no desire to move beyond that way of thinking.  For, to think that way is a dishonor to the enslaved Ancestors. I choose to move on and honor them. 

As for John Brown, some say he fired the first shot of the Civil War. I don’t know how many lives were snuffed out by John Brown. I do know that it took a Civil War to put an end to the same institution of which he rebelled.

So, thank you, Catherine Baldau and the National Park Service for allowing the Slave Dwelling Project the opportunity to delve deeper into the life of abolitionist John Brown.

Chalma Quarles

I enjoyed being part of the slave dwelling project in Harpers Ferry where the structure was the dwelling of a slave owner and significant in the history of John Brown. We had the option of sleeping on the grounds where the actual slave dwellings would’ve been and where the slaves would have toiled. Or, we could sleep on different outside portions connected to the master’s dwelling. I debated where to sleep until the front porch of the house was identified. I was sure I wanted to sleep on the front porch in the entryway of the slave owner’s home. As an African-American, I couldn’t think of a circumstance during slavery times where it would have been acceptable for me to layout and sleep there unbothered by anyone. So, that’s where I wanted to be. It felt good. I felt empowered being able to make that choice.