The Strange Story of Harper's Ferry, with Legends of the Surrounding CountryBarry, Joseph
History
The Strange Story of Harper's Ferry, with Legends of the Surrounding Country
Barry, Joseph
Harpers Ferry (W. Va.) -- History; Harpers Ferry (W. Va.) -- History -- John Brown's Raid, 1859
On the 4th of July a lively skirmish took place between Captain John
Henderson's company of confederate cavalry and a part of the 9th New
York regiment of militia, which a few days before had occupied Sandy
Hook in Maryland--one mile east of Harper's Ferry--the same village in
which John Brown boarded when he first came to the neighborhood--the
federal soldiers being on the Maryland side and the confederates on the
Virginia shore of the river, the game was at "long taw" and
comparatively little damage was done. Two men were killed on the
Maryland bank and at least one wounded on the Virginia side. The name of
one of the slain New Yorkers was Banks and it was said that he was a man
of high character in his regiment and at his home, but the name of the
other is unknown to the author. The man wounded on the Virginia shore
was a shoemaker of Harper's Ferry, named Harding, who, although not in
the army, was a sympathizer with the south. On this occasion he was on a
spree and, having exposed himself recklessly, he received a dangerous
wound. He was an Irishman by birth, and had served many years in the
British East India Company's forces. The honor of having wounded him
was claimed by John, better known as "Ginger" Chambers, a citizen of
Harper's Ferry, who, being strongly attached to the Union and, happening
to be at Sandy Hook at this time, picked up a gun and fell into ranks
with the New Yorkers. Poor Ginger afterwards met his weird not far from
the spot where he fought on that 4th of July. On the morning of October
14th, 1874, he was almost literally cut to pieces by an engine of the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad while on his way to take charge of a train
of which he was the conductor. Prominent among the confederates in this
skirmish was a man named James Miller, of Halltown, Jefferson county,
and it is thought that it was he who killed Banks. In a short time
after, while he was under the influence of whiskey, he, in company with
a fellow-soldier named Kerfott, shot his captain--Henderson--wounding
him severely, and for this offense he was executed in Winchester by
order of a court martial. The skirmish, of course, effected little
beyond putting the few old people who still clung to their homes at the
place into a most uncomfortable state of alarm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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