Camp Charlestown, August 30, 1864
This is the place the chivalry hung old John Brown some four years since. It has been a beautiful place, many elegant residences, fine stores, printing press, and public halls. Now how changed! Not a store in the place, in fact nothing but the women and children and a few old men live here; a few of the fine residences look as though they were kept up, but everything around is sad and gloomy, and then to add to all, the Sixth Corps (some fifteen or twenty thousand troops) as they passed through the place, had all their bands, some twenty, play “John Brown.”
I met an old man the other day in the street, and said to him, “This is the place you hung old John Brown.” “Yes,” he replied. “How long since?” said I. “Four years since and,” added he, “never had no peace since.”
SOURCE: Charles Richard Williams, editor, Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, Volume 2, p. 500-1
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