Harpers Ferry Main • Tour the Battlefield > Bolivar Heights
The Harpers Ferry – Prize of War wayside marker is west of Harpers Ferry on Bolivar Heights in Harpers Ferry National Historic Park. The marker is at the intersection of Whitman Avenue and Prospect Avenue next to the parking area for the Bolivar Heights trailhead. (39°19’25.6″N 77°45’40.4″W; map)
From the marker:
Harpers Ferry
Prize of War
“It may be said with truth that no spot in the United States experienced more of the horrors of war.”
– Joseph Barry,
Harpers Ferry resident
Trapped on the border between North and South, Harpers Ferry changed hands eight times during the Civil War. Because of its position on the Potomac River—an international boundary for four years from 1861 to 1865—the town’s industries were destroyed, its buildings were abandoned, its mountains were raped, and the population dwindled from more than 3,000 to fewer than 100 residents.
Both Union and Confederate forces coveted Harpers Ferry’s strategic location at the gateway to the Shenandoah Valley. The Federals used the town and its connection to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad as a supply base, launching repeated invasions from here into the heart of Virginia. The Confederates targeted this area as an avenue of invasion into the United States, occupying Harpers Ferry during the 1862 Maryland (Antietam) Campaign, the Gettysburg Campaign in 1863, and the raid on Washington in 1864.
Throughout the war, the mountains surrounding Harpers Ferry played a key role. Forests were denuded for artillery fire and firewood; the earth was carved into earthworks and forts; and ridge tops were converted into campgrounds and battlegrounds.
No one, and no thing, escaped the fury of the Civil War at Harpers Ferry.
From the caption below General Jackson’s photo:
General Thomas jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson surrounded and captured the Union garrison here in September 1862, forcing the largest surrender of United States troops during the Civil War.
(below: closeups of artwork from the marker, with their captions)
The burning of the United States Arsenal in Harpers Ferry on April 18, 1861, was the first destruction wrought during the Civil War in Virginia. Harpers Weekly, May 11, 1861
Former U.S. Armory buildings at Harpers Ferry served as Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s quartermaster and commissary supply base during his 1864 campaign in the Shenandoah Valley, where he crushed Confederate Jubal A. Early’s army. — Courtesy Harpers Ferry National Historical Park