In the New World the profitable interactions with nature could be seen in the southern agricultural communities through the prosperity gained by the tilling the soil. However, throughout many northern communities, the ability of the inhabitants to benefit from what nature afforded them was limited requiring them to look beyond the simple relations between humans and the natural world. As this quest to look beyond the natural relationships with the land gained strength the inhabitants of the northern portions of the continent looked to change the foundation upon which the traditional relationship between the natural world and individual humans had for so long been based. Thus as northern industrialists struggled in the face of external competition the southern agriculturally based economy prospered. However, with John Hancock Hall’s successful demonstration of the principles of interchangeability in 1819, northern industrialists were better able to compete in an increasingly international market place allowing northern industries to compete and later surpass the southern agricultural agenda.
Embracing these transcendentalist ideas, John Brown came to Harpers Ferry Virginia seeking to bring about an end to the natural practice of enslaving others. As threats to a peoples’ perception of those inalienable rights were perpetuated the quest for the basic interests of all men resulted in a fight for supremacy within a singular governing body. Thus, with the results of the War Between the States freeing those long held in bondage against their will, a dilemma emerged among the former slaves as they sought to work towards the future within a world still dominated by the natural rights of man. Building on fears provoked by Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, many prominent white Americans looked upon an educated slave as a threat to them personally. Thus, while a few slave owners allowed their slaves to gain the rudiments of an education, the prospects of numerous educated slaves banding together threatened the slave owners’ perception of social stability.
In the early years of the former slaves’ struggle to gain those natural rights guaranteed to all men, and enumerated by Thomas Jefferson In his Declaration of Independence, the freedman’s relative inability to separate their basic interests from those of their former masters forced early leaders in the African Americans struggle for equality to embrace the white man’s conception of what constituted the natural rights of all men. However, with the development of a definitive idea of what the rights of the freedmen should consist of, the quest to separate the African-Americans peoples’ conception of those inalienable rights from the white man’s conception began. W.E.B. Dubois, the first African-American to graduate with a doctorate in history from Yale, challenged the accommodationist policies of Booker T. Washington. Gaining the support of others, Dubois and his “talented tenth” formulated a set of demands which, if acted upon, would give the African-American people many of those rights previously sublimated to the interests of the white American. Thus as the changing relationship between humans and the natural world have influenced the development of the larger community of men, the smaller communities of man like Harpers Ferry West Virginia, have had to deal with both the general relations between the inhabitants of the greater whole and the specific interests of individuals within a smaller community of man.
Harpers Ferry Virginia from 1747 to 1796 was largely free of any outside influences affecting the development of the community at Shenandoah Falls. However, with the arrival of workers at the armory site in 1799 and the armory going into continual production in 1801, the presence of those looking beyond just their immediate interests toward future goals changed the unincorporated town into a dualistic community. The six major themes of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park taken together show Harpers Ferry’s role in multiple facets of American history. Separating these six major themes, however, offers insight into the town’s development as a separate entity. Thus, as the inhabitants of the community seeking their immediate interests and those building for the future interacted with one another, the record of the those interred in the Harpers cemetery both known and unknown offers an insight into the history of the town and its small but influential relationship with the history of the American nation.
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