William Earle Williams’s photograph bears no obvious indicators of the historic events that played out at this place in the years just before the Civil War. But, in fact, the tree is on the site where the abolitionist leader John Brown was hanged in 1859 following his capture at Harper’s Ferry where he led a failed attempt to seize a United States arsenal and initiate a slave revolt. Williams demonstrates how even unassuming landscapes bear witness to events that shape countless lives and fundamentally alter the structures of our society.