u/eleanor_konik

Election fraud is an old problem. “Old enough to fight, not old enough to vote” is another one. The underaged men of the Augusta Greys, under pressure from the Captain, voted in favor of succession. This was… not without controversy.

The May 23 Virginia referendum was intended to ratify the secession ordinance passed by the Richmond convention in April. By then the federal armory had been burned, Confederate troops were pouring into the hills around town, and Camp Bolivar had become one of the staging grounds above the Ferry. Harpers Ferry had already been occupied by Virginia militia for more than a month.

On May 25th, William F. Brand wrote from “Camp Bolive” to Kate Armentrout and reported how the company tally had gone among the Augusta Grays:

>All of the Augusta Grays voted for secession but two & they did not vote fifteen or twenty of us was not old enough, but our Captain told us to vote if we could & every one of us voted

Brand added that one man who seemed ready to object to the under-age votes “got so bad scared that he went and voted for secession.”

The whole thing makes me wonder how much choice was involved in the voting. Soldiers certainly were pushed to treat secession as company loyalty, and military discipline was such that going against the Captain wasn't really going to fly? Desertion wasn't easy, not even after the war started turning so badly against the Confederate army that they barely had clothes. Military discipline and democracy don't strike me as natural bedfellows, tho I've never personally served.

Still, it probably didn't matter; the secession vote was pretty overwhelming: "In the city of Richmond the vote was 3,682 for secession and 3 against, and in Shenandoah County, in the Shenandoah Valley, where 13 men had voted for Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, only 5 voted against secession in May 1861. [...] The official totals certified by the governor were 125,950 for secession and 20,373 against."

Harpers Ferry Water Works announced Phase II of the Water Distribution System Upgrades, which is anticipated to begin in mid-June 2026.

At the link below are details regarding project components, project vendors, funding sources, important scheduling information for water utility customers, instructions to follow after a meter has been changed, and new customer service features.

See the full announcement here: https://www.harpersferrywv.us/water/misc/202605-meter-project-announcement.pdf

Hey y'all, I'd love to hear your stories! Can you share a nice memory of something that happened in Harpers Ferry? Bonus points if it's about a restaurant that's not around anymore, or something that's not possible to still do.

If there's interest, I might set up a special flair for the user whose story gets the most upvotes...

> Now let me tell you an important thing about my running philosophy: I really can’t stand the major name brand races that cost a ton of money and are all for profit. The Harpers Ferry Half is NOT one of those races. It’s a hometown event, money goes to support local organizations and the medals are handcrafted and GORGEOUS. > > As all the runners huddled under the tent at River Riders, Dr. Mark, the founder of the race as well as Two Rivers Treads (more on him will come in future posts!) advised us all to not think of it as a race but as a fun run, especially with the wet (near flooding!!!) conditions. He said we should be thankful we can run, and think of those affected by recent tragedies including the latest school shooting. > > These words really got to me, and I was feeling pretty choked up with emotion as a local girl took the mic to sing the National Anthem. I was deep in thought when I realized she was fumbling the words or losing her place, and that’s when she stopped singing and apologized. She explained it was her first time singing in front of a group and she was nervous. She asked to start over. > > Then a really cool thing happened: all the runners, wet before the race even started and about to head out for 13.1 waterlogged miles on a dreary morning, sang with her. I totally admit to being the biggest sap ever, but it was really a special moment. This community of runners that I felt so out of place in before is just such an awesome group of good people, and I was so proud to even be standing there among them.

Storer was probably the first private HBCU to close as a direct consequence of Brown. The next wave of Brown-linked HBCU closures came in the 60s, when Florida's Black junior colleges were merged or closed under the Civil Rights Act.

West Virginia implemented Brown faster than most states; the governor committed publicly to compliance the day after the ruling. The Attorney General issued an opinion three weeks after Brown directing the Board of Governors and the Board of Education to admit "any qualified student."

The accelerated the legislative rationale for withdrawing the stipend. The state argued the annual appropriation "was intended to finance studies by Negro students at Storer but is now unnecessary because Negroes now are eligible to enroll at other state colleges."

Public HBCUs in West Virginia survived Brown through demographic inversion. West Virginia State College went from majority-Black to roughly 78% white within a decade.

Storer had no equivalent mechanism; it was a private institution whose state appropriation existed specifically to fund Black students excluded from white public colleges. The college also lacked the endowment, regional accreditation, and alternative funding relationships that might have allowed it to reinvent itself as an integrated private college.

The NPS summary frames the Board of Education's position as preferring "state-sponsored schools that were centrally located with modern buildings and more students, and without debt and religious overtones."

There used to be an exhaustive list of all of the window errors for the Harpers Ferry quarter, and I can't find it anymore.

So like the one I'm looking for had like 50 or 60 different varieties of that quarter with the different doubling in the window panes. That is unless they uncontributed it, but at one point they were all recognized as errors.

For the last couple of days I've been unable to add or remove any new posts to the community highlights. The pencil button next to the top bar doesn't do anything but briefly change color when I click it, and when I go to the shield icon on a post and click "add to highlights" nothing happens.

I have two in r/harpersferry so this used to work, but I can't figure out why it keeps failing. Is there a limit? Is there a trick to getting the page to load just right so that those buttons work?