Last week I discussed a southern newspaper that argued that only legal means should be used against abolitionists who threatened southern communities. Immediately after the Harpers Ferry Raid, however, this newspaper had a different perspective. The editor was not concerned about abolitionists invading the South, but rather argued in late October 1859 that Harpers Ferry would actually reduce sectional tensions. “We think that a great deal of good will result from the Harper’s Ferry affair – much more than could have been anticipated,” as the Fayetteville Observer explained. Only “fanatics” in the North supported Brown’s raid. The Observer also argued that Harpers Ferry would split the Republican party. An editorial in an Indiana newspaper was one of “many…signs of conservative Republicans [who were] cutting loose from the ultra fragments of their party.” While the Observer later admitted that Brown’s raid had not “heal[ed] the sectional breach,” it is still important to consider this newspaper’s initial reaction.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has a new online exhibit on John Brown. The exhibit covers Brown’s life in the 1850s, the attack on Harpers Ferry, and Brown’s legacy. While only a few documents are available right now, they will add more material every month through March 2010.

The Gilder Lehrman Institute has a number of other online exhibits, including one on the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (co-produced by the House Divided Project).

These two reports from November 1860 use John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry to argue that a federal arsenal in Fayetteville, North Carolina had to protected, but not in the way that one might expect. Rather than have the local militia continue to provide protection, some Fayetteville residents asked the War Department to send soldiers. While some objected that “local authorities [had] to protect government property at their own expense,” the Fayetteville Observer explained that “the chief inducement…was to negative any idea of a John Brown raid here.” The presence of a US Army company from New York apparently did not cause any serious problems. “So far from irritating the public mind,” the Fayetteville Observer noted that “[their presence] has very materially quieted the public mind here.”

Though previously mentioned in another post, the The Valley of the Shadow Project has a wide range of primary sources from newspapers, maps, letters, and statistics all available for use in the 7-12 classroom. Broken up chronologically into three periods, the Project archives two communities (Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania) between the years of 1859 and 1870. A particularly good lesson plan by Alice Carter compares the impact and the development of the railroads in both counties using various articles from historical newspapers. The lesson provides a teacher with preselected articles, however, one may choose to either find newspaper accounts that reflect individual class interests or allow students to search for their own, using the newspaper indexes. One special note: teachers could extend the lesson and explore the impact of railroads during reconstruction.

The Valley of the Shadow is a great resource for anyone who wants to learn more about the different ways that northerners and southerners reacted to John Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry. This digital history project, which from the Virginia Center for Digital History, focuses on two communities – Augusta County, Virginia and Franklin County, Pennsylvania – and their experiences between 1859 – 1870. Besides letters and diary entries, four newspapers are available (two newspapers were published in each county in 1859). The site also provides transcripts for most items as well as enough background information to put the material in context. While everything related to Harpers Ferry is not in a specific section on the site, it is easy to browse to find it.

Understanding family life in the 19th century necessitates a look at what was popular with children at the time.  This website, put together by an English professor at West Chester University, lists periodicals for children published in the nineteenth century, each of which includes a chronological list of its important articles and links to a digital copy.  The magazine Youth’s Companion (which has also been digitized here) covers the most extensive range of topics, with many articles imparting a moral lesson.  There are some very interesting articles from the war period to be found as well.   Other publications worth noting for their relevance to the circumstances of the Civil War are the Student and Schoolmate, The Slave’s Friend, and The Little Corporal.  These primary resources make a great addition to a classroom discussion of the nineteenth century from the perspective of children.

A number of organizations in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland have organized events for the sesquicentennial anniversary of John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. These include the Virginia Historical Society’s exhibit “The Portent: John Brown’s Raid in American Memory,” a reenactment of the march from the Kennedy Farm in Maryland to Harpers Ferry, and an academic symposium. The full list of events schedule for Oct – Dec 2009 is available here. (Registration is required for some of the events). In addition, the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park will commemorate Brown’s raid with a wide range of activities from Oct. 16-18. Check out the full schedule here. Teachers may want to check out this list of resources, which include links to lesson plans.

The South’s reaction to John Brown’s attack is often characterized as a violent one. “The shock and fear John Brown had instigated fueled widespread panic…[that] fed into paranoia vented in aggressive acts,” as historian David Reynolds explains. Yet not all southerners accepted violent actions. Protecting their communities remained a high priority, but these southerners argued that extralegal means should not be employed. Not only were existing laws more than sufficient, but violent actions impugned southern honor. Someone who “was tarred and feathered” “for sympathsing [sic] with old Brown” may have “richly deserved his punishment,” but the Greensboro Patriot argued that the best solution was “to let the law take its course.” Other editors in North Carolina reached similar conclusions. “The laws are ample to protect the South,” as the Fayetteville Observer explained in November 1859. The Observer later implied that southern honor was at stake: “in some places the prejudice against Northern men has been carried to an extent at once injurious to the interests and disgraceful to the character of the South.” Brown attacked Harpers Ferry 150 years ago, but as historian William Freehling observers, we still have much to learn about the “subtleties of the southern  response.”

“Slavery & Abolition in the US: Select Publications of the 1800s,” a digital collection from Dickinson College and Millersville University, has several important resources on the Harpers Ferry raid. James Redpath, a reporter who strongly supported abolitionists, published The Public Life of Capt. John Brown in April 1860. Redpath, who first met Brown in Kansas, “[became] an avid promoter of the John Brown legend” as historian David Reynolds explains. (He also published Echoes of Harpers Ferry in 1860, which you can find on Google Books). Franklin B. Sanborn was one of the “secret six,” who provided Brown with financial assistance during the 1850s, and he published The Life and Letters of John Brown, Liberator of Kansas, and Martyr of Virginia in 1885. Also available is abolitionist Richard J. Hinton’s John Brown and His Men; With Some Account of the Roads Traveled to Reach Harper’s Ferry (1894). Hinton met Brown in Kansas when he became involved in the fight against slavery.

The Samuel J. May Anti-Slavery Collection at Cornell University also has material on Brown’s raid, including Osborne P. Anderson’s account – Voice from Harper’s Ferry (1861). Anderson, who was born to a free black family in Pennsylvania and attended Oberlin College, was the only African American who was not captured during the attack. The site also includes other biographies and several sermons (George Cheever – Nov. 6, 1859; James Clarke – Nov. 6, 1859; John Gregory – Dec. 4, 1859; Nathaniel Colver – Dec. 11, 1859).

You can also learn more about some of these authors on the People tab of the Harpers Ferry major topic in House Divided.

This month the Journal of American History published a special issue on Abraham Lincoln where I contributed an essay which claimed that the future of Lincoln studies lies mainly in digital work –both in new, ambitious research projects and also in innovative forms of web-based presentation.  Okay, so I realize this claim seems more than a little self-serving since I’m a Lincoln scholar who also happens to be focused on various digital projects, but I do sincerely believe that this is the future and will stand by the claim.  The JAH provided a roundtable forum for responses by leading scholars such as Edward Ayers, Catherine Clinton, Michael Holt, Mark Neely, and Douglas Wilson.  The exchange was lively (i.e. some of these guys actually disagreed with me) but it’s still just the beginning.  I hope some of you will not only read the article and the roundtable, but also will check out the accompanying website and then will offer your own comments –positive or negative.   The website features all kinds of cutting-edge research tools, including a hypergraph and timemap, both built by Rafael Alvarado (University of Virginia) as well as a  bibliography of hundreds of full-text recollections about Lincoln and a clickable word cloud of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.  There are also examples of new forms of digital presentation, including an interactive essay format that we developed here at House Divided (courtesy of Russell Toris, Class of 2011) of which I am particularly eager to hear feedback.  The point of all this work is to demonstrate that digital technology offers new ways to think about old topics.  At least that’s what I hope people will come to realize and support.  But I’m willing to listen to skeptics … so please register your opinion.