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Josiah Marshall Favill, memoir

in reference to September 21, 1862

“This morning the Second corps fell in at an early hour and marched to Harper’s Ferry, encamping on Bolivar Heights. The march was very pleasant, the roads being good and the weather superb. The whole army is in camp in the vicinity, and every hill and valley within sight is dotted over with canvas villages. Harper’s Ferry is one of the picturesque spots in America, delightfully situated in the gap of the Blue Ridge Mountains…The town lays in the hollow, at the foot of the heights, and is now of no importance, except as the place where the celebrated John Brown and his followers immortalized themselves. The old blackened walls of the government arsenals, destroyed at the very beginning of the war, stand like grim skeletons in their hideousness, and with the exception of a few straggling huts, is all there is of the place.”


Author

Name: Josiah Marshall Favill

Unit: 57th New York Infantry, Co. A, F, & H

Document Information

Type: Memoir

Subject(s):

  • Descriptions of Locale

Event Location: Bolivar Heights, Jefferson Co., WV

Document Origin: N/A

Source

Favill, Josiah Marshall. The Diary of a Young Officer: Serving with the Armies of the United States During the War of the Rebellion. Chicago: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., 1909, 191-2.