In the morning I was glad to hear that my belated train had spent the last forty-eight hours at Martinsburg, and I did not a bit regret that my two days had been so full of adventure and incident. Waiting for its coming, I walked once more through the village, with one of the watchmen of the armory, who had been captured by John Brown and spent the night with him in the engine-house, and heard in all its freshness the story now so well known. Then I bade Governor Wise good-bye, and was duly thanked for my valiant services to the noble Mother of States, and rewarded by being offered the honorary and honorable title of A.D.C. to the commander-in-chief of Virginia, both for past services and for the future tasks to be met, of beating off invading hosts from the North,--all in the Governor's eye. Luckily for both sides, I declined the handsome offer; for my next visit to Virginia was as an A.D.C. to a general commanding troops, not of the North, but of the United States, invading, not the Virginia of John Brown's time, but the Virginia of a wicked Southern Confederacy.
Not long after, I received a letter of thanks from Governor Wise, written at Richmond and with a good deal of official flattery. His son Jennings, an old acquaintance of mine in pleasant days in Germany, came to see me, too, with civil messages from his father. Poor fellow! he paid the forfeit of his rebellious treason with his life at Roanoke Island. His father pays the heavier penalty of living to see the civil war fomented by him making its dreadful progress, and in its course crushing out all his ancient popularity and power.
In spite of many scenes of noble heroism and devoted bravery in legitimate warfare, and in the glorious campaigns of our own successful armies, I have never seen any life in death so grand as that of John Brown, and to me there is more than an idle refrain in the solemn chorus of our advancing hosts,--
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground, As we go marching on!"
In the summer of 1862, I was brought again to Harper's Ferry, with my regiment, and the old familiar scenes were carefully revisited. The terrible destruction of fine public buildings, the wanton waste of private property, the deserted village instead of the thriving town, the utter ruin and wretchedness of the country all about, and the bleak waste of land from Harper's Ferry to Charlestown, are all set features in every picture of the war in Virginia. At my old head-quarters in Charlestown jail there was less change than I had expected; its sturdy walls had withstood attack and defence better than the newer and more showy structures; the few inhabitants left behind after the ebb and flow of so many army waves, Rebel and Union succeeding each other at pretty regular intervals, were the well-to-do of former days, looking after their household gods, sadly battered and the worse for wear, but still cherished very dearly. Of my old acquaintances, it was a melancholy pleasure to learn that Colonel Baylor, who was mainly anxious to have me hanged, had in this war been reduced to the ranks for cowardice, and then was shot in the act of desertion. Kennedy was still living at home, but his brother was in the Rebel service. The lesser people were all scattered; the better class of workmen had gone to Springfield or to private gun-shops in the North,--the poorer sort, either into the Rebel army or to some other dim distance, and all trace of them was lost.