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The Perfect Steel Trap Harpers Ferry 1859 is a historical novel surrounding the John Brown raid, trial and execution in Harpers Ferry and Charlestown, Virginia in 1859. The four hundred-page book is narrated by Owen Brown, one of John Brown's sons, who escaped from Harpers Ferry and lived until 1889. He and another raider, Osborne Anderson, supposedly gathered the information for this book from participants in the events to get for themselves answers regarding what happened.
All characters in this book are real and were really at the scene. They provide about two dozen eyewitness accounts provided through their unedited reports. Photographs and drawings accompany the text. You will meet famous persons who were on the scene, like Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, Jeb Stuart, Governor Henry Wise, and Thomas Jackson (later to be known as “Stonewall”). And you will meet just ordinary citizens like Margarette Brown and Christine Fouke.
Along the way you will be taken on the harrowing escape of seven of the raiders, along the ridge of South Mountain to points north, as they were pursued by men and their dogs. The large bounty placed on their heads being the prize everyone was seeking. Two were eventually recaptured, but five escaped and were never found.
You will learn about the raid, the trial and the execution, from accounts of A. J. Phelps the conductor of the B & O Railroad, Judge Parker the trial judge, and David Hunter Strother, Harpers Weekly journalist and artist. And you will meet highly unlikely participants, like J. B. Wilkes, an actor: Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor; and Josiah Perham, railroad entrepreneur.
The Perfect Steel Trap Harpers Ferry 1859 is based on fact. Newspaper accounts, telegrams and court documents included in the book will tell you what really happened during these exciting times. Frederick Douglass, who told John Brown that Harpers Ferry was “the perfect steel trap”, provides the title of this book. Douglass told him, once Brown and his men got in, the trap would close and all would be lost.
