Echoes From a Pioneer Life

ISBN: 1946640603

Author: Arter, Jared Maurice

Condition: New

Product DescriptionLARGE PRINT EDITION: For a brief while all sorts of rumors were afloat, and all the day long groups of men on horseback, armed with revolvers shot guns, and rifles, could be seen going towards Harper's Ferry, the scene of excitement. These accomplished nothing. Troops of two States, Virginia and Maryland, and a company of U. S. Marines were summoned and after two days succeeded in dislodging and capturing Brown and his sixteen white comrades. The trial, conviction and hanging in Charles Town of John Brown and six of his men is familiar history. On the day of his execution, Dec. 2, 1859, he handed this paper to one of his guards: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done." Within a year and a half from the day of his death, the North and the South were at war with each other, and a Northern regiment, on its way to, the front, was singing: "John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave: But his soul is marching on." Small Print Edition: ISBN-10: 1453707026About the AuthorThe subject of this autobiography, Jared Maurice Arter, was born a slave Jan. 27, 1850. He first saw the light in a little one-room log cabin, on a small farm lying on both sides of the Winchester Turnpike and the Shepherdstown Highway, at their crossing. The Big House on this farm, located four miles from each, marked the halfway point between the now famous towns of Harper's Ferry and Charles Town both in Jefferson County, W. Va. Jared well remembers the John Brown Raid and the great excitement arising therefrom. The master of the Little plantation, William Schaeffer, of Pennsylvania Dutch extraction, was inspector of arms in the United States Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. He was accustomed to rise and leave home on horseback at 5 o'clock of mornings, to eat breakfast with his mother and father in Bolivar, and to go from there to his work in the arsenal. On the morning of the John Brown Raid he left at 5 o'clock as usual. Soon the news spread that Brown and his men had made a raid through the county on the previous night, had taken into custody a number of the leading citizens, had captured Harper's Ferry and the arsenal and had barricaded himself and his men in the engine-house of the armory and was holding the captured citizens as prisoners or hostages.