JOHN BROWN’S RAID ON HARPER’S FERRY.
The year 1859 will long be memorable for the bold attempt of John Brown
and his companions to burst the bolted door of the Southern house of
bondage, and lead out the captives by a more effectual way than they
had yet known; an attempt in which, it is true, the little band of
heroes dashed themselves to bloody death, but, at the same time, shook
the prison walls from summit to foundation, and shot wild alarm into
every tyrant heart in all the slave-land. What were the plans and
purposes of the noble old man is not precisely known, and perhaps will
never be; but whatever they were, there is reason to believe they had
been long maturing,--brooded over silently and secretly, with much
earnest thought, and under a solemn sense of religious duty.
Of the five colored men who were with the hero at the attack on
Harper’s Ferry, only two, Shields Green and John A. Copeland, were
captured alive. The first of these was a native of South Carolina,
having been born in the city of Charleston, in the year 1832. Escaping
to the North in 1857, he resided in Rochester, New York, until
attracted by the unadorned eloquence and native magnetism of John Brown.
Shields Green was of unmixed blood, good countenance, bright eye, and
small in figure. One of his companions in the Harper’s Ferry fight,
says of Green, “He was the most inexorable of all our party; a very
Turco in his hatred against the stealers of men. Wiser and better
men no doubt there were, but a braver man never lived than Shields
Green.”[53]
He behaved with becoming coolness and heroism at his execution,
ascending the scaffold with a firm, unwavering step, and died as he had
lived, a brave man, expressing to the last his eternal hatred to human
bondage, prophesying that slavery would soon come to a bloody end.
John A. Copeland was from North Carolina, and was a mulatto of superior
abilities, and a genuine lover of liberty and justice. He died as
became one who had linked his fate with that of the hero of Harper’s
Ferry.
FOOTNOTE:
[53] “A Voice from Harper’s Ferry.” O. P. Anderson.