"Had I so interfered on behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great...and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right..."
- John Brown (to the Virginia Court in Charlestown on Nov 2, 1859)
"Reminiscences of the Civil War by a Confederate Staff Officer"
In Harper's Ferry there was an armory and arsenal belonging to the government. At the time of the raid large quantities of arms, 100,000 stand of rifles, had been made there and were stored in the arsenal for use when needed.
The north easternmost end of the Valley of Virginia was settled by families mainly from Eastern Virginia, attracted by the fertility of the soil. They brought with them the institution of slavery, which, no matter what its faults may have been, gave to the people a phase of social life, an immunity from the drudgery of existence, a leisure for the cultivation of mind and manners. People opposed to slavery were simply ignorant of the subject. They said slavery was brutal, therefore slave-owners were brutal. Bad men are brutal often, and some slave-owners were brutal; but that they were brutal as a class, I deny.
