On the Border

On the Border. War's Hard Hand Came Often. , No county in West Virginia experienced more of the Civil War, or suffered more from that war, than Jefferson County., Situated on the border of North and South, with the Potomac River forming its northern border, Jefferson County could not escape a four-year horror of battles, military campaigns, opposing occupations, and graveyards full of dead soldiers. Union and Confederate flags both fluttered from atop Jefferson County's hills, and bewildered and frightened citizens never knew which banner they would see., John Brown's 1859 raid first brought the siren of war to Harpers Ferry. Smoke and flames darkened the sky when Confederate troops devastated the local economy and burned the U.S. armory. Throughout the war, Blue and Gray armies ruined crops and property, imposed martial law and suppressed Constitutional rights. But county residents also bore witness to a "new birth of freedom" when thousands of enslaved people fled bondage and sought shelter here., The crucible of war in Jefferson County helped to forge a new state, West Virginia. This beautiful, historic county is yours to explore.,

"Few were more uncomfortably situated during the Civil War than the people who lived on the border where the power of one Army ended and the authority of the other began. where sometimes one hand had control; sometimes the other, and often times neither." , , Annie Marmion, wartime resident of Harpers Ferry