The new State of West Virginia had been created during the war, and Harper's Ferry is the eastern extremity of that state. The then dominant political faction, as usual, persecuted those, who in their day, were so intolerant, and harsh election and school laws were enacted for the purpose of rendering the defeated party incapable of ever again asserting itself. During this state of affairs the writer was elected superintendent of free schools, and never will he forget the perplexities imposed on him by the office. It was his bounden duty to establish schools all over the county, but it was equally incumbent on him by law to see that no teacher was employed for any of the public schools who refused to take an iron-clad oath setting forth his or her unfaltering love for the union and hatred for its enemies, and also, that the applicant for the place of teacher had never given aid in any way to the late rebels. When it is considered that ninety-nine in every hundred of the inhabitants of the county had been in active sympathy with the rebellion, it will be evident that the school superintendent's only way to escape a dilemma was to send to the loyal states for teachers. Again, the salaries paid were too small to tempt people from the north to reside in a hostile land to train pupils rendered refractory by the bad examples of the war and imbued by their parents with a hatred for "Yankees" as all northern people were styled. Finally, the writer, finding it impossible to comply with the letter of an absurd and contradictory law, resolved on following the spirit and underlying principle of all public school legislation, and he took on himself to dispense with all test oaths and employ teachers without reference to their politics. His action in the matter brought him very near to impeachment, but he brazened it out until the expiration of his term. Again, a registration law then enacted, depriving sympathizers with the south of the right to vote at elections, put into the power of county boards to allow or refuse this right at their own sweet wills. Of course, the boards were composed of "loyal men" and it is easy to imagine how petty spite or interest in the election of some candidate for office too often swayed the judges. Those whose property had been injured by the rebels sought recompense by suing before the courts the officers whose men had inflicted the damage, and all these causes, with many others, combined to keep the town and neighborhood in a ferment for several years, so that many thought that they had gained but little by the cessation of actual warfare. Time, however, has happily cured the wounds, though the scars will ever remain, and it is confidently hoped that the historic village--the theme of this little book will flourish again some day--the better, perhaps, for the fiery ordeal through which it has passed--so mote it be!