At eight o'clock on Sunday night, the sixteenth of October, 1859, John
Brown drove his one-horse wagon to the door of the rude log house in
which he had hidden with his disciples for four months.
It was a damp, chill evening of mid fall. Heavy rain clouds obscured the
stars and not a traveler ventured along the wind-swept roads. From the
attic were loaded into the wagon crowbars, sledge hammers, iron pikes
and oil-soaked faggots.
The crowbars and sledge hammers might be used on the gates or doors.
There could be no doubt about the use to which the leader intended to
put the pikes and torches.
When the wagon had been loaded the old man summoned his faithful son,
Owen.
"Captain Owen Brown," the steel voice rang, "you will take private
Barclay Coppoc and F.J. Merriam and establish a guard over this house
as the headquarters of our expedition. Hold it at all hazards. You are
guarding the written records of our work, the names of associates, the
reserves of our arms and ammunition. We will send you reinforcements in
due time."
Owen saluted his commander and the two privates under his command took
their places beside him.
Brown waved to the eighteen men standing around the wagon.
"Get on your arms, and to the Ferry!"
They had been ready for hours, eager for the Deed. Not one among them in
his heart believed in the wisdom of this assault, yet so grim was the
power of Brown's mind over the wills of his followers, there was not a
laggard among them.
Brown drove the wagon and led the procession down the pitch-black road
toward the town. The men fell in line two abreast and slowly marched
behind the team.
Cook and Tidd, raised to the rank of Captains, their commissions
duly signed, led the tramping men. There were many captains in this
remarkable army of twenty-one. There were more officers than privates.
The officers were commissioned to recruit their black companies when the
first blow had been struck.
The enterprise on which these twenty-one veteran rangers had started in
the chill night was by no means so foolhardy as appears on the surface.
The leader was leaving his base of supplies with a rear guard of but
three men. Yet the army on the march consisted of but eighteen. He knew
that the United States Arsenal had but one guarded gate and that the
old watchman had not fired a gun in twenty-five years. It would be the
simplest thing to force this gate and the Arsenal was in their hands.
The Rifle Works had but a single guard. They could be taken in five
minutes. Once inside these enclosures, he had unlimited guns and
ammunition at his command.
The town would be asleep at ten o'clock when he arrived at the Maryland
end of the covered bridge across the Potomac. Eighteen armed men were an
ample force to capture the unsuspecting town. Not a single policeman was
on duty after ten. The people were not in the habit of locking their
doors.
The one principle of military law which the leader was apparently
violating was the failure to provide a plan of retreat. But retreat was
the last thing he intended to face.
The one thing on which he had staked his life and the success of his
daring undertaking was the swarming of the black bees. His theory was
reasonable from the Abolitionist's point of view. He believed that negro
Chattel Slavery as practiced in the South was the sum of all villainies.
And the Southern slave holders were the arch criminals and oppressors of
human history. In his Preamble of the new "Constitution" to which his
men had sworn allegiance, he had described this condition as one
of "perpetual imprisonment, and hopeless servitude or absolute
extermination." If the negroes of the South were held in the chains of
such a system, if they were being beaten and exterminated, the black
bees _would_ swarm at the first call of a master leader and deluge the
soil in blood.
John Brown believed this as he believed in the God to whom he prayed
before he loaded his pikes and torches on the wagon. These black legions
would swarm to-night! He could hear their shouts of joy and revenge
as they gripped their pikes and swung into line under his God imposed
leadership.
The whole scheme was based on this faith. If Garrison's words were true,
if the Southern slave holder was a fiend, if Mrs. Stowe's arraignment of
Slavery on the grounds of its inhuman cruelty was a true indictment, his
faith was well grounded.
His thousand pikes in the hands of a thousand determined blacks led by
the trained Captains whom he had commissioned was a force adequate to
hold the town of Harper's Ferry and invade the Black Belt beyond the
Peak.
The moment these black legions swarmed and weapons were placed in their
hands the insurrection would spread with lightning rapidity. The weapons
were in the Arsenal. The massacres would be sweeping through Virginia,
North and South Carolina before an adequate force could reach this
mountain pass. And when they reached it, he would be at the head of a
black, savage army moving southward with resistless power.
The only question was the swarming of this dark army. Cook, who had
spent nearly a year among the people and knew these slaves best, was the
one man who held a doubt. For this reason he had begged Brown a second
time to let him sound the strongest men among the slaves and try their
spirit. Brown refused. He knew a negro. He was simply a white man in a
black skin by an accident of climate. He knew exactly what he would do
when put to the test. To discuss the subject was a waste of words. And
so with faith serene in the success of the Deed, he paused but a moment
at the entrance of the bridge.
He ordered Captains Kagi and Stevens to advance and take as prisoner
William Williams, the watchman. The two rangers captured Williams
without a struggle.
"A good joke, boys," he laughed.
"You'll find it a good one before the night's over," Stevens answered.
When he attempted to move, a revolver at his breast still failed to
convince him.
"Go 'way, you boys, with your foolishness. It's a dark night, but I'm
used to being scared!"
It was not until Kagi gave him a rap over the head with his rifle that
he sat down in amazement and wiped the sweat from his brow. He forgot
the chill of the night air. His brain was suddenly on fire.
Brown waited at the entrance of the bridge until the watchman had been
captured and Cook and Tidd had cut the line on the Maryland side of the
river.
He then advanced across the covered way to the gate of the Arsenal hut a
few yards beyond the Virginia entrance.
He captured Daniel Whelan, the watchman at the Arsenal entrance.
Dumbfounded but stubborn, he refused to betray his trust by surrendering
the keys.
"Open the gate!" Brown commanded.
"To hell wid yez!"
A half dozen rifles were thrust at his head.
He folded his arms and stood his ground.
They pushed a lantern into his face and Brown studied him a moment. He
didn't wish a gun fired yet. The town was asleep and he wanted it to
sleep.
"Get a crowbar," he ordered.
They got a crowbar from the wagon, jammed it into the chain which held
the wagon gate and twisted the chain until it snapped. He drove the
wagon inside, closed the gate and the United States Arsenal was in his
hands.
Brown placed the two watchmen in charge of his men, Jerry Anderson and
Dauphin Thompson.
He spoke to the prisoners in sharp command.
"Behave yourselves, now. I've come here to free all the negroes in this
State. If I'm interfered with I'll burn the town and have blood."
Every man who passed through the dark streets was accosted, made
prisoner and placed under guard.
Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc were ordered to hold the Armory. Oliver Brown
and William Thompson were sent to seize the Shenandoah bridge, the
direct line of march into the slave-thronged lower valley.
Stevens was sent to capture the Rifle Works which was accomplished in
two minutes.
The program had worked exactly as Brown had predicted. Not a shot had
been fired and they were masters of the town, its two bridges, the
United States Arsenal, Armory and Rifle Works.
The men were now despatched through the town for the real work of the
night--the arming of the black legion with pikes and torches.
It was one o'clock before the first accident happened. Patrick Higgins,
the second night watchman, came to relieve Williams on the Maryland
bridge.
Oliver Brown, on guard, cried:
"You're my prisoner, sir."
The Irishman grinned.
"Yez don't till me!"
Without another word he struck Oliver a blow. The crack of a rifle was
the answer. In his rage young Brown was too quick with the shot. The
bullet plowed a furrow in Higgins' skull but failed to pierce it.
He ran into the shadows.
Once inside the Wager House, he gave the alarm. The train from the West
pulled into the station and was about to start across the bridge when
Higgins, his face still streaked with blood, rushed up to the conductor
and told him what had happened. He went forward to investigate, was
fired on and backed his train out to the next station.
As the train pulled out Shepherd Haywood, a freedman, the baggage master
of the station, walked toward the bridge to find the missing watchman.
The raiders shot him through the breast and he fell mortally wounded.
The first victim was a faithful colored employee of Mayor Beekham, the
station master of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.
The shot that killed him roused a man of action. Dr. John D. Starry
lived but a stone's throw from the spot where Haywood had fallen.
Hearing the shot and the groans of the wounded man, the doctor hastened
to his rescue and carried him into the station. He could give no
coherent account of what had happened and was already in a dying
condition.
The doctor investigated. He approached two groups of the raiders, was
challenged and retreated. Satisfied of the seriousness of the attack
when he saw two armed white men lead three negroes holding pikes in
their hands into the Armory gate, he saddled his horse and rode to his
neighbors in town and country and gave the alarm.
While this dangerous messenger was on his foam-flecked horse, Brown,
true to his quixotic sense of the dramatic, sent a raiding party of
picked men to capture Colonel Washington and bring to his headquarters
in the Arsenal the sword and pistols. On this foolish mission he
despatched Captains Stevens, Cook and Tidd, with three negro privates,
Leary, Anderson and Green. He gave positive orders that Colonel
Washington should be forced to surrender the sword of the first
President into the hands of a negro.
Day was dawning as the strange procession on its return passed through
the Armory gate. In his own carriage was seated Colonel Washington and
his neighbor, John H. Allstead. Their slaves and valuables were packed
in the stolen wagons drawn by stolen horses.
Brown stood rifle in hand to receive them.
"This," said Stevens to Washington, "is John Brown."
"Osawatomie Brown of Kansas," the old man added with a stiffening of his
figure.
He then handed a pike to each of the slaves captured at Bellair and
Allstead's:
"Stand guard over these white men."
The negroes took the pikes and held them gingerly.
At sunrise Kagi sent an urgent message to his Chief advising him that
the Rifle Works could not be held in the face of an assault. He begged
him to retreat across the Potomac at the earliest possible moment.
Retreat was a word not in the old man's vocabulary. He sent Leary to
reinforce him, with orders to hold the works.
He buckled the sword and pistols of Washington about his gaunt waist
and counted his prisoners. He had forty whites within the enclosure. He
counted the slaves whom he had armed with pikes. He had enrolled under
his banner less than fifty. They stood in huddled groups of wonder and
fear.
The black bees had failed to swarm.
He scanned the horizon and not a single burning home lighted the skies.
It had begun to drizzle rain. Not a torch had been used.
He had lost four precious hours in his quixotic expedition to capture
Colonel Washington, his sword and slaves. He could not believe this a
mistake. God had shown him the dramatic power of the act. He held a
Washington in his possession. He was being guarded by his own slaves,
armed. The scene would make him famous. It would stir the millions of
the North. It would drive the South to desperation.
The thing that stunned him was the failure of the black legions to
mobilize under the Captains whom he had appointed to lead them.
It was incredible.
He paced the enclosure, feverishly recalling the histories of mobs which
he had studied, especially the fury of the French populace when the
restraints of Law and Tradition had been lifted by the tocsin of the
Revolution. The moment the beast beneath the skin of religion and
culture was unchained, the massacres began. Every cruelty known to man
had been their pastime.
And these beasts were white men. How much more should he expect of the
Blacks? Haiti had given him assurance of darker deeds. The world was
shivering with the horrors of the Black uprising in Haiti when he was
born. He had drunk the story from his Puritan mother's breast. From
childhood he had brooded with secret joy over its bloody details.
The Black Bees had swarmed there and Toussaint L'Overture had hived them
as he had asked Frederick Douglas to hive them here. They seized the
rudest weapons and wiped out the white population. They butchered ten
thousand French men, women and children. And not a cry of pity or mercy
found an echo in a savage breast.
What was wrong here?
He had proclaimed the slave a freeman. He had placed an iron pike in his
right hand and a torch in his left. Why had they not answered with a
shout of triumph?
His somber mind refused to believe that they would not rise. Even now he
was sure they were mobilizing in a sheltered mountain gorge. Before noon
he would hear the roar of their coming and see the terror-stricken faces
of the whites fleeing before their rush.
He had repeated to his Northern crowds the fable of negro suffering in
the South until he believed the lie himself. He believed it with every
beat of his stern Puritan heart. And he had repeated and shouted it
until the gathering Abolitionist mob believed it as a message from God.
The fact that the system of African slavery, as actually practiced in
the South, was the mildest and most humane form of labor ever fixed
by the masters of men, they refused to consider. The mob leader never
allows his followers to consider facts.
He knows that his crowd prefers dreams to facts. Dreams are the motives
of crowd action. The dream, the illusion, the unreality have ever been
the forces that have shaped human history in its hours of crisis when
Fate has placed the future in the hands of the mob.
The fact that Slavery in the South had lifted millions of black
savages--half of them from cannibal tribes--into the light of human
civilization--that it had been their school, their teacher, their
church, their inspiration--did not exist, because it was a fact. They
did not deal in facts.
And so again Brown lifted his burning eyes toward the hills reflected
in the mirror of the rivers. Down one of those rocky slopes the Black
Legion would sweep before the day was done!
He had boldly despatched Cook across the Potomac bridge with the wagons,
horses and treasures stolen from Colonel Washington's house to be stored
at headquarters. There was still no doubt or shadow of turning in his
imperious soul.
With each passing moment the swift feet of the avengers were closing the
trap into which he had walked.
By ten o'clock the terror-stricken people of the town and county had
seized their weapons and the fight began. Bullets were whistling from
every street corner and every window commanding a glimpse of the Arsenal
and Armory.
Brown's handful of men began to fall. The Rifle Works surrendered first
and his guard of three men were all dead or wounded. By three o'clock
his forces had been cut to pieces and he had taken refuge in the Engine
House of the Armory. The bridges were held by the people. Owen, Cook and
his guard at the old log house on the Maryland side were cut off and
could not come to his rescue.
The amazing news of an Abolition invasion of Virginia and the capture
of the United States Arsenal and Rifle Works had shaken the nation.
President Buchanan hastily summoned from Arlington the foremost soldier
of the Republic and despatched Colonel Robert E. Lee to the scene
with the only troops available at the Capital, a company of marines.
Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart volunteered to act as his aide. The young
cavalier was in the East celebrating the birth of a baby boy.