A PERVERSION OF HISTORY
_But many a man has committed his greatest blunder when
attempting to write a book._
--JOHN BROWN, JR.
Concerning the things which Brown intended to do, and the plans which he
made in pursuance thereof Mr. Redpath says:[396]
It was the original intention of Captain Brown to seize the
Arsenal at Harpers Ferry on the night of the 24th of
October, and to take the arms there deposited to the
neighboring mountains, with a number of the wealthier
citizens of the vicinity, as hostages, until they should
redeem themselves by liberating an equal number of their
slaves. When at Baltimore, for satisfactory reasons, he
determined to strike the blow that was to shake the Slave
System to its foundations, on the night of the 17th.
... Harper's Ferry, by the admission of military men, was
admirably chosen as the spot at which to begin a war of
liberation. The neighboring mountains, with their
inaccessible fastnesses, with every one of which, and every
turning of their valleys, John Brown had been familiar for
seventeen years, would afford to guerrilla forces a
protection the most favorable, and a thousand opportunities
for a desperate defense or rapid retreats before
overwhelming numbers of an enemy.
This is the conception of the Harper's Ferry episode that Brown's
family, and his partisans, decided should be put forth concerning an
incident which was to have been written in streams of blood, such as
never flowed upon the continent. That anything so irrational should have
been published, or should have been seriously considered by any one, is
beyond the comprehension of thoughtful persons; and yet, the foolish
fictions therein suggested were accepted as the truth in the Northern
States, and, with some modifications of the more grotesque absurdities
therein contained, have been approved by subsequent writers and
biographers and have been incorporated with the history of our country.
Why Brown should have intended to abandon Harper's Ferry without a
struggle to retain it after having taken formal possession of the place
and of the war material stored there, if the position was admirably
chosen as the spot at which to begin a war of liberation; or how a
voluntary retreat into the mountains by a band of twenty-two men could
be regarded as a "blow" of any kind; or where the inaccessible fastness
which he intended to retreat to was located: or how he intended to
shelter and subsist his men and prisoners in an inaccessible fastness
that had not been supplied with subsistence stores or with camp and
garrison equipage of any description; or how he would be able to find
his way, if the night happened to be a dark night, up and through the
tangled obstructions upon which the fastness relied for its
inaccessibility; or how he intended to transport the military equipment
stored at Harper's Perry, to the fastness, without means of
transportation, or roads to travel on; or how he intended to prevent his
fastness from being surrounded and his communications with the world cut
off while the altruistic negotiations for the "exchange of the wealthier
citizen prisoners for an equal number of slaves," were progressing,
appear to have been matters of no concern to this biographer. It was
sufficient for his purpose to assume that these things, however
inconsistent they might be, were the things which Brown intended to do,
and that they constituted the blow which he had promised to strike. Mr.
Redpath, personally, knew what Brown intended to do. He knew that Brown,
pursuant to his pledges, planned to strike a blow that would shake the
center of the slave system; that he planned to precipitate a war of
surpassing atrocity; a war that was to begin with a carnival of
assassinations; that he intended "to assail slavery with the only weapon
that it fears":[397] a servile insurrection.
Mr. Sanborn had been a valuable instrument in Brown's hands for the
practice of his Eastern impositions. Taking his cue from Mr. Redpath,
after describing what occurred on the night of the 16th of October, he
rises to the full height of his conception of the occasion to inquire:
Why then did Brown attack Harper's Ferry, or having
captured it, why did he not leave it at once and push into
the mountains of Virginia, according to his original
plan?[398]
It was to this Mr. Sanborn, that Brown first suggested his scheme to
raise $30,000 cash, to arm and equip a company of "fifty
volunteer-regulars" for the defense of Kansas settlers. Mr. Sanborn was
impressed, deeply so, and undertook to promote the proposition. Also, he
undertook to promote Brown's scheme to have the Legislatures of
Massachusetts and New York appropriate $100,000 each, to reimburse the
Brown family for losses its members had sustained while "fighting" in
Kansas; and ever thereafter had been Brown's faithful and efficient
servant. He was a member of the "Secret War Committee" of six, and had
reason to think, and probably did think, that Brown had taken him into
his full confidence. He says:
Although Brown communicated freely to the four persons just
named,--Theodore Parker, Dr. Howe, Mr. Stearns and Col.
Higginson,--his plans of attack and defense in Virginia, it
is not known that he spoke to any but me of his purpose to
surprise the Arsenal and town of Harper's Ferry.... It is
probable that in 1858 Brown had not definitely resolved to
seize Harper's Ferry; yet he spoke of it to me beside his
coal fire in the American House, putting it as a question,
rather, without expressing his own purpose. I questioned
him a little about it; but it then passed from my mind,
and I did not think of it again until the attack had been
made a year and a half afterwards.[399]
Thus Mr. Sanborn acknowledges that Brown had not entrusted to him the
secret of his intentions, and thereby disqualifies himself as an
authority upon Brown's plans, or as having correct information
concerning what he intended to do in Virginia. It is more than probable
that upon the occasion to which Mr. Sanborn refers, Brown contemplated
confiding to him his plans for the conquest of the South by means of an
insurrection of the slaves and the massacre of the slave-holding
population, and intended to offer him a position upon his staff. Brown
and Forbes had laid plans for their campaign, with Harper's Ferry as the
base of operations, as early as January, 1857, and in pursuance thereof
had ordered the thousand spears with which to arm the blacks for the
opening horror.
Sitting beside his coal fire in the American House, his thoughts upon
his plans, and the hopes of his mighty conquest surging in his brain,
John Brown, the grim Soldier of Fortune, drew out his young companion by
indirection, and took the measure of his capacity for heroic
undertakings. Had the young man, at the close of that interview,
appealed for an omen "from that shrine whose oracles may destroy but can
never deceive," he might, in a spiritual vision, have seen upon the
invisible tablets, where Brown's mental records were kept, an
inscription, or word, similar to that which Belshazzar saw traced upon
the wall by the finger of an invisible hand. The man of "blood and iron"
had invited the interview in his letter to Mr. Sanborn of February
24th.[400] Brown's decision was adverse to Mr. Sanborn. The latter did
not suspect that he had passed through the fire of an examination, and
had been found deficient. The subject was never again taken up; the door
of opportunity closed against Mr. Sanborn.
Following the trail blazed by a discredited predecessor, the writer of
_Fifty Years After_ abandons the teachings which the record discloses
concerning this episode, and, concurring with Mr. Redpath, tries to
confirm in our history that author's perversion of the facts relating to
it. He assumes to believe, and seeks to teach the public to believe,
that Brown's plans were, comparatively, crude, and that his movement in
execution of them was of a harmless nature: that he merely intended to
attempt to carry on a guerrilla warfare from some point in the nearby
mountains, and that his entrance to Harper's Ferry was not an occupation
of the place but a "raid" upon it, undertaken for the purpose of
advertising, in a spectacular way, the guerrilla warfare which he
intended to engage in. He says:[401]
As for their general, he not only was the sole member of
the attacking force to believe in the assault on the
property of the United States at Harper's Ferry, but he
was, as they neared the all-unsuspecting town, without any
clear and definite plan of campaign. The general order
detailed the men who were to garrison various parts of the
town and hold the bridges, but beyond that, little had been
mapped out. It was all to depend upon the orders of the
commander-in-chief, who seemed bent on violating every
military principle. Thus, he had appointed no definite
place for the men to retreat to, and fixed no hour for the
withdrawal from the town. He, moreover, proceeded at once
to defy the canons by placing a river between himself and
his base of supplies,--the Kennedy Farm,--and then left no
adequate force on the river-bank to insure his being able
to fall back to that base. Hardly had he entered the town
when, by dispersing his men here and there, he made his
defeat as easy as possible. Moreover, he had in mind no
well-defined purpose in attacking Harpers Ferry, save to
begin his revolution in a spectacular way, capture a few
slave-holders and release some slaves. So far as he had
thought anything out, he expected to alarm the town and
then, with the slaves that had rallied to him, to march
back to the school-house near the Kennedy Farm, arm his
recruits and take to the hills. Another general, with the
same purpose in view would have established his mountain
camp first, swooped down upon the town in order to spread
terror throughout the State, and in an hour or two, at
most, have started back to his hill-top fastness.... Hence,
he confidently hoped to retire to the mountains before
catching sight of a soldier of the regular army or of the
militia,--by no means an unjustifiable expectation....
The danger to any raiding force would come from losing
possession of these bridges, in which case the sole means
of escape would be by swimming the rivers or climbing up
through the town toward Bolivar Heights, in the direction
of Charlestown, eight miles away.
By the gratuitous and irrelevant assumptions herein, this biographer
discredits Brown's intelligence; and by unjust, unfair, and illogical
criticisms of his conduct, seeks to conceal and to emasculate his
intentions. Authenticated facts place limitations upon the presumptions
of historians, which challenge the consistency of reckless statements,
and the logic of their conclusions concerning them. There is not an
authenticated line in this history which justifies a belief that Brown
contemplated doing the things which this author assumes that he intended
to do. His theory that the occupation of Harper's Ferry was merely an
incident in a raid, the first one of a series of undertakings in
guerrilla warfare, which he represents Brown as intending to execute
from a location within walking distance of the town, is a reflection
upon the sanity of every person connected with the movement. It is an
assumption that Brown and his men believed that they could maintain a
headquarters for such warfare in the Maryland hills--at a "hill-top
fastness," if you please--and not be "run to earth at once," as the
author states Cook would have been, if he had attempted to hide in these
inhospitable hills.[402] It is also a general denial of the historical
truth that Brown intended to invade Virginia and the Southern States,
and to establish over them the jurisdiction of a provisional government.
Moreover, it is so divergent from the lessons taught by the vast
accumulation of authenticated facts which relate to the matter, that it
constitutes a contradiction of the facts, and raises a question as to
the integrity of the author's purpose in putting it forth.
There is no room in historical literature for the indulgence of poetic
license. If Brown was a man of "_blood_ and _iron_" and his men
"hard-headed Americans" one day, they must be regarded as being such the
next day, and every day. It may be said, upon the authority of this
author, that Brown and his men were not the stupids which they are, in
this instance, represented as being. "Captains John H. Kagi and A. D.
Stevens, bravest of the brave"[403] were not words idly spoken. "The
hard-headed able Americans like Stevens, Kagi, Cook, and Gill, who lived
with John Brown month in and month out worshipped no lunatic."[404]
Grafter! Hypocrite! _Fiend!_ MONSTER! Brown was, but never a trifler. If
he ever engaged in a trifling enterprise or attempted to do anything in
a trifling manner or upon a trifling scale, it has not been recorded.
First, last, and all the time he played the limit of his resources. And
in the execution of this venture--the climax of all his undertakings--he
was neither trifling nor juggling with its details, as his biographers
have persisted in doing with his motives, and with what his intentions
and his plans were, in these premises.
Brown was not advertising his revolution when he secretly entered
Harper's Ferry. These men were not baiting Death for spectacular effect.
They had a well defined purpose in view, but it was not to "capture a
few slave-holders and release _some_ slaves." To Daniel Wheelan, Brown
stated the purpose of his coming: "I want to free all the Negroes in
this State; I have possession now of the United States Armory, and if
the citizens interfere with me I must only burn the town and have
blood." Conductor Phelps said: "They say they have come to free the
slaves and intend to do it at all hazards." Mr. W. H. Seibert states
that Kagi told him personally, that their purpose was "not the
expatriation of one slave or a thousand slaves, but their liberation in
the states wherein they were born and were now held in bondage."[405]
To Governor Wise and others, on the afternoon of October 18th, Brown
stated that his purpose in being at Harper's Ferry Would be found in the
constitution for the Provisional Government. A copy of the document
being produced, he requested Governor Wise to read it, and said that
"within a fortnight he intended to have it published at large and
distributed": an act which he could not have intended to execute from a
location in any "hill-top fastness." In reply to questions, he stated
that he intended to put the Provisional Government into operation "here,
in Virginia, where I commenced operations": that he expected to have
"three or five thousand" men or as many as he wanted to assist him. He
stated "distinctly" that he did not intend to run off any slaves, but
that he "designed to put arms in their hands to defend themselves
against their masters, and to maintain their position in Virginia and in
the South." That in the first instance he expected they and non-slave
holding whites would flock to his standard as soon as he got a footing
there at Harper's Ferry: and, as his strength increased, he would
gradually enlarge the area under his control, "furnishing a refuge for
the slaves and a rendezvous for all whites who were disposed to aid him,
until eventually he over-ran the whole South."[406]
January 5, 1860, Mr. John C. Unseld, one of Brown's prisoners testified:
I asked him why he made his attack on Virginia and at the
place he did? His answer was: "I knew there were a great
many guns there that would be of service to me, and, if I
could conquer Virginia, the balance of the Southern States
would nearly conquer themselves, there being such a large
number of slaves in them."[407]
Brown abandoned the Kennedy farm on October 16th and gave orders to Cook
to remove the supplies to a school-house which was located within about
a mile of Harper's Ferry. On the morning of the 17th the latter
peremptorily dismissed the school and took possession of the building.
To the teacher, Mr. L. F. Currie, Cook explained what they were doing
and how they intended to do it. Mr. Currie, in his testimony before the
Mason Committee stated that Cook, Tidd, and Leeman, having a Mr. Byrne
in charge as a prisoner, came to the school-house about 10 o'clock and
demanded possession of it. They then with the aid of some negroes
unloaded several boxes and a large black trunk from a wagon and carried
them into the school-house. Continuing he said:
Cook said their intention was to free the negroes; that
they intended to adopt such measures as would effectually
free them, though he said nothing about running them off,
or anything of that kind. He said this too: That those
slave-holders who would give up their slaves voluntarily,
would meet with protection; but those who refused to give
them up would be quartered upon and their property
confiscated,--used in such a way as they might think
proper,--at least they would receive no protection from
their organization or party.
Currie remained at the school-house until evening. Between 2 and 3
o'clock the firing at Harper's Ferry became "very rapid and continuous,"
and Currie asked Cook what it meant; to which he replied: "Well it
simply means that those people down there are resisting our men, and we
are shooting them down." In answer to a question as to how many men were
engaged down there Cook replied: "I do not know how many men are there
now; there may be 5,000 or there may be 10,000 for aught I know."[408]
These exhibits are but a trifling fraction of the direct testimony
relating to the subject; yet Mr. Villard, in wanton disregard of such
testimony, and of the overwhelming preponderance of historical facts
which corroborate it, puts forth his violent assumptions as to the
truth; and asks the public to believe this great undertaking to have
been merely a poorly planned raid which another general with the same
purpose in view would have conducted differently: "established his
mountain camp first; swooped down upon the town in order to spread
terror throughout the state, and in an hour or two at most, have started
back to his hill-top fastness."
"First a soldier then a citizen was Brown's plan" for the uplift of the
"emancipated blacks." "There is no doubt," says this author,[409] "that
he still expected the negroes to rise and swell his force to
irresistible proportions." Numbers are not irresistible unless they be
armed and organized. Why should "the leader of a new revolution," with
the sword of Frederick the Great in his hand, plan "to take to the
hills" in a trifling retreat, and abandon the military stores at
Harper's Ferry--the stores that were necessary to equip the irresistible
numbers for irresistible operations? The assumption that he intended to
do so is not only illogical; it is absurd.
The declaration that Brown was the sole member of the "attacking" force
to believe in the assault upon the property of the United States at
Harper's Ferry is contradicted by competent testimony, and by the
significance of the general order that provided for the occupation of
the town, and that designated the officers and men who were to take
charge of this same property. As to the unanimity of sentiment that
prevailed in relation to the matter, Mr. Redpath says:[410] "On Saturday
a meeting of the Liberators was held and the plan of operations
discussed. On Sunday evening a council was again convened and the
programme of the Captain unanimously approved."
Other documents disclose the facts that the "Captain" and his men not
only intended to seize this United States property--the arms in the
arsenal and in the rifle works--but that they intended to keep them and
to use them. A general order issued from the headquarters of their war
department provided for the organization of an army.
Jeremiah G. Anderson was one of Brown's veterans, who, with full
confidence in the final success of their venture, approved of this
movement. Late in September, writing from "near Harper's Ferry" he
said:[411]
Everything seems to work to our hand and victory will
surely perch upon our banner.... This is not a large place
but a very precious one to Uncle Sam, he has a great many
tools here.
A victor is one who conquers--who defeats an enemy. In its relation to
war, victory means the defeat of the enemy in battle. Anderson had an
army in his mind, and battles and conquest, and the establishment of the
Provisional Government, when he referred to victory, and used the word
advisedly. A "raid" upon a place may be successfully executed but it
cannot be, properly, called a victory over anything. John E. Cook
believed the arms would be used and approved of the use of them. "But
ere that day arrives," he said, "I fear that we shall hear the crash of
the battle shock and see the red gleaming of the cannon's
lightning."[412]
Brown leased the Kennedy farm because the location was suitable for his
purposes in the furtherance of his plans. From there he conducted his
secret negotiations, with the slaves, for the insurrection, and
distributed the pikes, probably 500, which his co-conspirators were to
use in their secret assassinations; but when he launched the invasion,
and debouched his command, he abandoned it. Therefore, it was not
necessary for him to leave a force "adequate" or inadequate "on the
river bank to insure his being able to fall back to that base," or to
cover a retreat still more illogical: a retreat of his little band, with
a lot of slaves, and prisoners as hostages, "to the hills" where barren
rocks afforded no shelter and "where starvation would have met him at
the threshold of his eyrie."[413]
Aside from what the record contains relating to the subject, it is
illogical to assume that the veterans of Brown's band would imperil
their lives in a scheme so dangerous--a scheme involving death upon the
gallows for every one of them if they failed--unless they approved of it
with the fullest possible degree of confidence; only absolute confidence
in the feasibility of their plans, and the hope of reward without a
parallel, could have induced these men "with soiled lives behind
them."[414] to undertake this conquest. Their arrogance upon entering
the town is evidence of their enthusiasm, and confidence in the success
of what they were doing, and of their approval of it. Their conduct was
of the swaggering, domineering kind. It was of the: Halt! or I'll kill
you! kind; conduct bred by contamination in an environment supercharged
with the scheming for murderous deeds, reeking with the planning for
assassinations, and nourished by the belief that they were not
accountable to any power upon earth for their actions. Men do not shoot
down their fellows-men for trivial causes, unless they believe they are
in control of the situation, and are immune from punishment. These men
were expecting trouble. They had come to Harper's Ferry believing they
were about to write the bloodiest chapter in history; that the most
desperate struggle in all history was imminent, and they were impatient
to have it begin. They cut the telegraph wires; made prisoners of
whomever they met; stopped the railway train carrying passengers and
mails: shot at Watchman Higgins; shot and killed the baggage-porter,
Hayward, because he did not obey the command to halt; and killed Mr.
Boerly without any apparent provocation. Men who have no confidence in
their supremacy; who do not believe they will succeed in what they are
doing, but intend to run away, and laboriously "take to the hills" and
act upon the defensive without facilities for defense, do not thus
demean themselves. The logic of Mr. Villard's theory of Brown's plans
is: That this score of "hard-headed Americans" believed they could shoot
down and kill their fellow-citizens upon the streets of Harper's Ferry
with impunity; that they could rob the homes of that neighborhood and
not be held accountable therefor; that they could carry off property:
watches, money, horses, carriages, wagons, and slaves, into the hills
adjoining the town, and not be pursued by the local authorities; that
they could take citizens of the United States into custody as prisoners,
and carry them to a "hill-top fastness," and maintain themselves there
without supplies of either food, water, shelter, or munitions of war,
other than what they carried upon their persons.
They know little of Brown's plans and of his intentions, who criticize
his strategy, in occupying Harper's Ferry, and his tenacious defense of
the position. And they know nothing of the agreements at which he had
arrived, and the engagements which he had entered into with the slaves
of that section, whom he had taken into his confidence, during the
preceding three months, and who were to launch the insurrection he had
planned, and who were to constitute the rank and file of his army of
invasion. The author of _Fifty Years After_ seems to have no clearer
conception of the subject herein, than the author of fifty years before
assumed to have. Accepting, almost at par, Mr. Redpath's deceptive
vagaries, he formulates a plan of campaign to conform with the
conditions of his absurd conclusions; and then criticizes Brown because
he did not execute his conceptions. The plans for their operations,
whatever they may have been, were satisfactory to Brown and to the
veteran adventurers who followed his flag. "The man of blood and iron"
and the "hard-headed Americans" had the plans under consideration during
the two years preceding, and had placed the seal of their approval upon
them. If they were satisfactory to those who made them, and understood
them, and staked their lives upon the successful execution of them, they
should not be denounced too confidently, not to say flippantly, by those
who do not know, or who assume not to know, what the plans were.
The details which Brown made from his command were not to "garrison
various parts of the town" and "hold the bridges"; the assignments were
made in pursuance of his well defined plan to organize and equip there
the _army_ which was to garrison the town and which was thereafter to
_burn_ the bridges and hold the approaches to it; the army that was to
invade the Southern States; the army that was to "start from here"
(Harper's Ferry) "and go through the State of Virginia and on South,"
conquering and to conquer.
The dispositions that he made of his forces were in harmony with the
theory of the insurrection, which was the key-note of the invasion. The
slaves from the east side of the Potomac--the neighborhoods of
Sharpsburg, Boonsboro, and Hagerstown--after declaring their right to
freedom, by assassinating their owners, were to report to Owen Brown at
the "school-house," there to be organized into a battalion under his
command, and, be armed with the rifles and supplied with the ammunition
that were to be deposited there for that purpose. In the same way the
slaves who were to arrive from the Middletown Valley, and from the
Frederick country, through Pleasant Valley and Sandy Hook, were to
report to Watson Brown at the Potomac bridge and by him, or by Taylor
who was stationed there with him, taken to the arsenal, where Hazlett
was in charge as quartermaster and ordnance officer, and there be armed
and equipped from the "precious tools stored there," belonging to the
United States, which were to be seized for this purpose. In a similar
manner, the slaves from Loudoun Valley and the west side of the
Shenandoah were to report to Oliver Brown and William Thompson and Newby
at the Shenandoah bridge; while the slaves coming from the country lying
between the Shenandoah and the Potomac were to report to Kagi, at the
rifle-works, and by him and his assistants--Copeland and Leary--taken to
the arsenal for their equipment. Brown had said to his friend Douglass:
"When I strike the bees will swarm and I shall want you to help me hive
them." In this manner they were to be hived, _and furnished with
stings_.
This being true, Brown defied no canons when he crossed the Potomac nor
did he thereby place a river between himself and his base of supplies.
He had, in general orders, designated Harper's Ferry as his
headquarters. _Harper's Ferry_, with its millions of dollars' worth of
military stores, was thenceforth to be his base of supplies, and the
State of Virginia and the South the field of his operations. Having
paralyzed the South with the insurrection, the Potomac was to be his
front, and behind its banks he intended to entrench his army. He
appointed no place for his men to _retreat_ to, nor made any provisions
for retreating, for the word had no place in his vocabulary. He fixed no
hour for his withdrawal from the town, because he did not intend to
withdraw from it. He was not executing a raid. Why should his captains
proudly march to Harper's Ferry; "their Sharp's rifles hung from their
shoulders, their commissions duly signed and officially sealed in their
pockets," if they were to trudge back again to the Kennedy farm in
demoralizing retreat, with no booty, and without having seen an enemy,
and before a hostile shot had been fired; and then "take to the hills,"
there to be hunted by dogs and men, as wild beasts are hunted, and be
shot down as wild beasts are shot, by slave-catchers, patrols, and
marshals. Their campaign was serious, heroic, and desperate beyond the
comprehension of Brown's biographers. Rarely in history have men
voluntarily stood to win or die as these men stood at Harper's Ferry.
There was no place on the earth where they could retreat to and live.
When Brown and his captains crossed the Potomac, the die was cast; the
_invasion_ was on. Thenceforth they might advance but not retreat; they
might fight but not run. If they came back, it would have to be "with
their shields or upon them."
There was no violation of military principles in Brown's occupation of
Harper's Ferry, or in the dispositions which he made of his men, nor in
his tenacious defense of his position. The military principles which he
violated are not referred to in the charges and specifications preferred
against him by this recent biographer. These violations were fatal to
his enterprise, but they all antedate the night of October 16, 1859. If
the hundreds of slaves whom Brown secretly armed with the Collinsville
spears, with which to assassinate their masters and their masters'
families, had done their bloody work as they had promised to do; then
the fifteen hundred men that Brown believed would report to him for duty
by 12 o'clock on the 17th,[415] and the 5,000 men whom Cook, at 4
o'clock, thought had already reported and were in action, would have
arrived, and the story of Harper's Ferry would have been different.
There would have been no violations of military principles then in
Brown's tactics and strategy, to criticise by any authority whatever.
"Another general, with the same purpose in view," and with the same
forces at his disposal, would not have improved very much upon Brown's
plans.
The hint at a hill-top fastness, where another general would have
established his camp before he "swooped" down upon the town, is a
modification of Mr. Redpath's invention of an "inaccessible fastness."
It is a delusion none the less, a delusion that was shot to pieces
within two years after Mr. Redpath framed it. Such a position has no
existence, except it be in authors' imaginations. There is not now, and
there never was a position upon either Maryland Heights or Loudoun
Heights that cannot be "stormed at with shot and shell."
During the war between the States, the Union generals fortified Mr.
Redpath's inaccessible fastness. Half way up the tangled steeps of
Maryland Heights, on a small bit of plateau--less than an acre--they
placed a battery of siege guns: two 9-inch Columbiads, a 50-pounder
Parrott, and two or three field pieces. Also, they reënforced the
natural defenses of the "hill-top fastness" by formidable breastworks,
built of rocks and trunks of trees, and protected them by abatis. On the
12th of September, 1862, the Confederate infantry swarmed all over these
inacessible fastnesses. During the 13th and 14th, the front of the
"hill-top fastness," on the summit of Maryland Heights, was a sheet of
flame and lead, enveloped in clouds of smoke. The rifle fire from the
opposing lines stripped the bark from the trunks of all the trees,
within a hundred and fifty yards of the front of these breastworks, as
clean as though they had been girdled with an ax. Not only did Jackson's
infantry penetrate these fastnesses, but during the morning of the 14th
they took two pieces of artillery to the top of these "inaccessible"
heights and "turned loose" with shot and shell upon the hill-top
fastness. During the night of the 14th, the Union commander abandoned
the inaccessible fastness, dismounted and spiked the guns on the
mountain side, and joined the forces at Harper's Ferry, on Bolivar
Heights.
On the 20th, a detachment from what had been Mansfield's Corps, of
McClellan's Army--Crawford's Brigade[416]--then in command of Col.
Joseph F. Knipe of the Forty-sixth Pennsylvania, with a section of
artillery, also climbed these inaccessible heights to drive the
Confederates from the position.[417]
There are many persons living who remember having marched or "tramped"
or "climbed" or "trudged" or "stumbled" or "hoofed it" up and down and
over these mountains, on campaign and on picket duty, during the years
of the great war; but it is doubtful if any of them ever heard of a
detachment that executed such maneuvers by "swooping." The real movement
is different, especially so if it be executed at night.
In behalf of a patient public that has long been grievously imposed upon
by partisan biographers, the writer asks unanimous consent that
references to "fastnesses," with which Brown is said to have been
"familiar for seventeen years" be barred, henceforth, from the
literature of this subject; the inhibition to include all the patterns
of fastnesses which have been exploited; from the inaccessible kind of
1859 down through the intervening years, ending with the hill-top
variety of fifty years after.