Jefferson County’s connection to major Civil War history began in October 1859, when abolitionist John Brown raided the U.S. Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, was quickly captured, and was brought to Charles Town for trial, conviction, and execution. On December 2, 1859, Brown passed by here in a light freight wagon on the way to his execution, and the wagon was owned by local undertaker and cabinet-maker George W. Sadler, who also made Brown’s coffin. During the war, the county’s position at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley, known as the Breadbasket of the Confederacy, and its nearness to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad made it strategically important to both sides. Confederate troops trained in Harpers Ferry in 1861 under Col. Thomas J. Jackson, who returned in September 1862 to capture the Federal garrison just before the Battle of Antietam. After that battle, Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army retreated through the county, and his wounded filled buildings in Shepherdstown. In July 1864, part of Gen. Jubal A. Early’s army passed through on his Washington Raid, and in September Union Gen. Philip H. Sheridan launched his Valley Campaign from Charles Town. Two notable Charles Town natives also served in the war: R. Preston Chew, barely eighteen in 1861, raised an artillery battery and later led horse artillery under Gens. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart; and Martin R. Delany, a free black born in 1812, became a writer, physician, black nationalist, and one of the few black officers in the U.S. Army in 1865, commissioned a major and holding the highest rank.