US HISTORY: THEN AND NOW
SIMON BARBER: Polishing the wheels of hindsight in the US
Once a month, I ride the Capitol Limited between Washington and Cumberland, 290km to the west, at the foot of the Allegheny mountains as a volunteer lecturer. The railroad follows the sinuous Potomac River and the remains of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal that run beside it. My job is to talk to passengers about the history of what they are seeing from the observation car. Halfway along the route we come to Harper’s Ferry where the Potomac is joined from the south by the Shenandoah and passes through the Blue Ridge. The view, wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1783, is "one of the most stupendous in nature". The town itself, in its heyday, was less picturesque. "An abominable little village," an English tourist called it in 1836. "Here is the government manufactory of firearms; and the smell of coal smoke and the clanking of hammers prevent one’s enjoyment from being unmixed."As we approach Harper’s Ferry, I ask my audience what the name John Brown means to them. I am referring to the radical...
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