It was a wet Monday in October, on my return from a journey, with a
large party of friends and acquaintances, as far north as Chicago and as
far south as St. Louis and the Iron Mountain. We were gradually nearing
home, and the fun and jollity grew apace as we got closer to the end of
our holiday and to the beginning of our every-day work. Our day's ride
was intended to be from Cumberland (on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad)
to Baltimore. The murky drizzle made our comfortable car all the more
cozy, and the picturesque glories of that part of Western Virginia,
through which we had come very leisurely and enjoyably, were heightened
by the contrast of the dull cloud that hung over the valley of the
Potomac. At Martinsburg the train was stopped for an unusually long
time; and in spite of close questioning, we were obliged to satisfy our
curiosity with a confused story of an outbreak and a strike among the
workmen at the armory, with a consequent detention of trains, at
Harper's Ferry. The train pushed on slowly, and at last came to a dead
halt at a station called The Old Furnace. There a squad of half a dozen
lazy Virginia farmers--we should call them a picket just now, in our day
of military experiences--told us half a dozen stories about the troubles
ahead, and finally the people in charge of our train determined to send
it back to wait for further news from below. A young engineer who was
employed on the railroad was directed to go along the track to examine
it, and see what, if any, damage had been done. As I had brushed up an
acquaintance with him, I volunteered to accompany him, and then was
joined by a young Englishman, a Guardsman on his travels, one of the
Welsh Wynns, just returning from a shooting-tour over the Prairies. We
started off in the rain and mud, and kept together till we came to a
bridle-path crossing the railroad and climbing up the hills. Here we met
a country doctor, who offered to guide us to Bolivar, whence we could
come down to the Ferry, and as the trains would be detained there for
several hours, there would be time enough to see all the armory
workshops and wonders. So off we started up the muddy hillside, leaving
our engineer to his task on the railroad; for what pedestrian would not
prefer the worst dirt road to the best railroad for an hour's walking?
Our Englishman was ailing and really unwell, and half-way up the rough
hill left us to return to the easy comfort of the train.
My guide--Dr. Marmion was the name he gave in exchange for mine--said
that the row at the Ferry was nothing but a riotous demonstration by the
workmen. He came from quite a distance, and, hearing these vague
reports, had turned off to visit his patients in this quarter, so that
he might learn the real facts; and as it was then only a little past
nine, he had time to do his morning's work in Bolivar. So there we
parted, he agreeing to join me again at the Ferry; and he did so later
in the day.
Turning to the left on the main pike, I found little knots of lounging
villagers gathered in the rain and mud, spitting, swearing, and
discussing the news from the Ferry. Few of them had been there, and none
of them agreed in their account of the troubles; so I plodded on over
the hill and down the sharp slope that led to the Ferry. Just as I began
the descent, a person rode up on horseback, gun in hand, and as we came
in sight of the armory, he told me the true story,--that a band of men
were gathered together to set the slaves free, and that, after starting
the outbreak on the night before, they had taken refuge down below. He
pointed with his gun, and we were standing side by side, when a sudden
flash and a sharp report and a bullet stopped his story and his life.
The few people above us looked down from behind the shelter of houses
and fences;--from below not a soul was visible in the streets and alleys
of Harper's Ferry, and only a few persons could be seen moving about the
buildings in the armory inclosure. In a minute, some of the townspeople,
holding out a white handkerchief, came down to the fallen man, and,
quite undisturbed, carried him up the hill and to the nearest
house,--all with hardly a question or a word of explanation. Shocked by
what was then rare enough to be appalling,--sudden and violent death by
fire-arms in the hands of concealed men,--I started off again, meaning
to go down to the Ferry, with some vague notion of being a peace-maker,
and at least of satisfying my curiosity as to the meaning of all these
mysteries: for while I saw that that fatal rifle-shot meant destruction,
I had no conception of a plot.
Just as I reached the point where I had joined the poor man who had
fallen,--it was a Mr. Turner, formerly a captain in the army, and a
person deservedly held in high esteem by all his friends and
neighbors,--a knot of two or three armed men stopped me, and after a
short parley directed me to some one in authority, who would hear my
story. The guard who escorted me to the great man was garrulous and kind
enough to tell me more in detail the story, now familiar to all of us,
of the capture of Mr. Lewis Washington and other persons of note in the
Sunday night raid of a body of unknown men. The dread of something yet
to come, with which the people were manifestly possessed, was such as
only those can know who have lived in a Slave State; and while there was
plenty of talk of the steadiness of the slaves near the Ferry, it was
plain that that was the magazine that was momentarily in danger of going
off and carrying them all along with it.
The officers of the neighboring militia had gathered together in the
main tavern of the place, without waiting for their men, but not
unmindful of the impressive effect of full uniform, and half a dozen
kinds of military toggery were displayed on the half-dozen persons
convened in a sort of drum-head court-martial. I was not the only
prisoner, and had an opportunity to hear the recitals of my fellows in
luck. First and foremost of all was a huge, swaggering, black-bearded,
gold-chain and scarlet-velvet-waistcoated, piratical-looking fellow, who
announced himself as a Border Ruffian, of Virginia stock, and now
visiting his relations near the Ferry; but he said that he had fought
with the Southern Rights party in the Kansas war, and that when he
heard of the "raid," as he familiarly called the then unfamiliar feat of
the Sunday night just past, he knew who was at the top and bottom of it,
and he described in a truthful sort of way the man whose name and
features were alike unknown to all his listeners,--"Ossawatomie Brown,"
"Old John Brown." Garnishing the story of their earlier contests with
plentiful oaths, he gave us a lively picture of their personal
hand-to-hand rights in the West, and said that he had come to help fight
his old friend and enemy, and to fight him fair, just as they did in
"M'souri." He wanted ten or a dozen men to arm themselves to the teeth,
and he'd lead 'em straight on. His indignation at his arrest and at the
evident incredulity of his hearers and judges was not a whit less hearty
and genuine than his curses on their cowardice in postponing any attack
or risk of fighting until the arrival of militia, or soldiers, or help
of some kind, in strength to overpower the little band in the armory, to
make resistance useless, and an attack, if that was necessary, safe
enough to secure some valiant man to lead it on.
My story was soon told, I was a traveller; my train had been stopped; I
had started off on foot, meaning to walk over the hill to the Ferry, and
expecting there to meet the train to go on to Baltimore. The
interruptions were plentiful, and the talk blatant. I showed a ticket, a
memorandum-book giving the dates and distances of my recent journey, and
a novel (I think it was one of Balzac's) in French, and on it was
written in pencil my name and address. That was the key-note of plenty
of suspicion. How could they believe any man from a Northern city
innocent of a knowledge of the plot now bursting about their ears? Would
not my travelling-companions from the same latitude be ready to help
free the slaves? and if I was set at liberty, would it not be only too
easy to communicate between the little host already beleaguered in the
armory engine-house and the mythical great host that was gathered in the
North and ready to pour itself over the South? Of course all this, the
staple of their every-day discussions, was strange enough to my ears;
and I listened in a sort of silent wonderment that men could talk such
balderdash. Any serious project of a great Northern movement on behalf
of Southern slaves was then as far from credible and as strange to my
ears as it was possible to be. It seemed hardly worth while to answer
their suggestions; I therefore spoke of neighbors of theirs who were
friends of mine, and of other prominent persons in this and other parts
of Virginia who were acquaintances, and for a little time I hoped to be
allowed to go free; but after more loud talk and a squabble that marked
by its growing violence the growing drunkenness of the whole party,
court and guard and spectators all, I was ordered along with the other
prisoners to be held in custody for the present. We were marched off,
first to one house and then to another, looking for a convenient prison,
and finally found one in a shop. Here--it was a country store--we sat
and smoked and drank and chatted with our guard and with their friends
inside and out. Now and then a volley was fired in the streets of the
village below us, and we would all go to a line fence where we could see
its effects: generally it was only riotous noise, but occasionally it
was directed against the engine-house or on some one moving through the
armory-yard.
As the militia in and out of uniform, and the men from far and near,
armed in all sorts of ways, began to come into the village in squads,
their strength seemed to give them increased confidence, and especially
in the perfectly safe place where I sat with half a dozen others under a
heavy guard. Now and then an ugly-looking fowling-piece or an awkwardly
handled pistol was threateningly pointed at us, with a half-laughing and
half-drunken threat of keeping us safe. Toward afternoon we were ordered
for the night to Charlestown, and to the jail there that has grown so
famous by its hospitality to our successors. The journey across was
particularly enlivening. My special guard was a gentlemanly young
lawyer, one of the Kennedys of that ilk; and to his cleverness I think I
owed my safe arrival at the end of our journey. Every turn in the road
brought us face to face with an angry crowd, gathering from far and
near, armed and ready to do instant justice on a helpless victim.
Kennedy, however, gracefully waived them back to the wagons behind us,
where other prisoners, in less skilful hands, were pretty badly used.
The houses on the road were utterly deserted; on the first news of an
outbreak by the slaves, the women and children were hurried off to the
larger towns,--the men coming slowly back in squads and arming as best
they could, and the negroes keeping themselves hid out of sight on all
sides.
The eight miles' distance to Charlestown was lengthened out by the rain
and mud, and the various hindrances of the way, so that the day was
closing as we came into the main street of the straggling little town.
The first odd sight was a procession of black and white children playing
soldiers, led by a chubby black boy, full of a sense of authority, and
evidently readily accepted by his white and black comrades in childlike
faith. The next was a fine, handsome house, where a large number of
ladies from the country round had been gathered together, and as we were
greeted in going by, my guide stopped, and introducing me, I explained
my position. They were all ready with their sympathy, and all
overpowering with their gratitude, when I pooh-poohed their fear of a
great Northern invasion, and said that the people of the North were just
as innocent of any participation in this business as they themselves
were. Our line of march resumed brought us to the prison, and I was not
sorry to have the shock of an enforced visit somewhat lessened by a
general invitation from mine host of an adjoining tavern to liquor up.
Of course I was noways chary of invitations to the crowd, and the
bar-room being full, I made the bar my rostrum, and indulged in a piece
of autobiography that was intended to gain the general consent to return
to my fellow-travellers, who were reported still at Martinsburg. If I
cannot boast of great success _at_ the bar, I am as little proud of my
eloquence _on_ the bar. One of the Kennedys, brother to my guard, did
suggest taking me to his house, half a mile off; but to that Colonel
Davenport, a bustling great man of the village, answered, that, as there
was sure to be some hanging at night, it would be safer to be in the
prison, as well from the mob as from any escape on my own part, and it
was better to stay contentedly where I was. Doctor Marmion, my
acquaintance of the morning, rode over to find me and to explain his
part in my visit to the Ferry, hoping that such a confirmation of my
story would secure my immediate release. But by that time I was in the
custody of the sheriff, by some military legal process; and while that
officer was kind and civil, he refused to do anything, except promise me
an early hearing before the court-martial, which was to reassemble the
next day. Finally, I was hustled through a gaping, pot-valiant crowd,
into the prison, where the mob had violently taken possession; and it
was a good while before I could be got up stairs and safely locked into
my cell. The bolts were shot pretty sharply, but the sense of relief
from the threats and impertinence of the bullying fellows outside quite
outweighed my sensation of novelty on finding myself in such strange
quarters. My supper was sent up, my friendly guard gave me cigars, and a
buxom daughter of the jailer lent me a candle. I lay down on a rough cot
and was soon asleep; my last recollection was of my sturdy guard, armed
and wakeful, in front of my cell; and I woke after several hours of
sound, refreshing slumber, startled by the noise of his angry answers to
some still more angry and very drunken men. They had, so I learned
partly then and partly afterwards, broken into the jail, and hurried
from the cell next to mine a poor black prisoner, who was forthwith
hanged; and, whetted by their sport, they had returned to find a fresh
victim. Fortunately, in the turmoil of their first attack, the only
other prisoner easily got hold of was a white boy, who escaped, while I
owed my safety to Kennedy's earnest protestations, and to his ready use
of a still more convincing argument, a loaded pistol and a quick hand.
Early morning was very welcome, for it brought the court-martial up to
Charlestown, and I was soon ready for a hearing. Fortunately, after a
good deal of angry discussion and some threats of a short shrift, a
message came up from the Ferry from Governor Wise; and as I boldly
claimed acquaintance with him, they granted me leave to send down a note
to him, asking for his confirmation of my statements. While this was
doing, I was paroled and served my Kansas colleague by advice to hold
his tongue; he did so, and was soon released; and my messenger returned
with such advices, in the shape of a pretty sharp reprimand to the busy
court-martial for their interference with the liberty of the citizen, as
speedily got me my freedom. I used it to buy such articles of clothing
as could be had in Charlestown, and my prison clothes were gladly thrown
aside. Some of my fellow-travellers reached the place in time to find me
snugly ensconced in the tavern, waiting for an ancient carriage; with
them we drove back to the Ferry in solemn state. The same deserted
houses and the same skulking out of sight by the inhabitants showed the
fear that outlasted even the arrival of heavy militia reinforcements. We
stopped at Mr. Lewis Washington's, and, without let or hindrance, walked
through the pretty grounds and the bright rooms and the neat negro huts,
all alike lifeless, and yet showing at every turn the suddenness and the
recentness of the fright that had carried everybody off. Our ride
through Bolivar was cheered by a vigorous greeting from my captor of the
day before,--the village shoemaker, a brawny fellow,--who declared that
he knew I was all right, that he had taken care of me, that he would not
have me hanged or shot, and "wouldn't I give him sum't to have a drink
all round, and if I ever came again, please to stop and see him"; and so
I did, when I came back with my regiment in war-times; but then no
shoemaker was to be found.
I paid my respects to Governor Wise, and thanked him for my release; was
introduced to Colonel Lee, (now the Rebel general,) and to the officers
of the little squad of marines who had carried the stronghold of the
"invaders," as the Governor persistently called them. In company with
"Porte Crayon," Mr. Strothers, a native of that part of Virginia, and
well known by his sketches of Southern life in "Harper's Magazine," I
went to the engine-house, and there saw the marks of the desperate
defence and of the desperate bravery of John Brown and his men. I saw,
too, John Brown himself. Wounded, bleeding, haggard, and defeated, and
expecting death with more or less of agony as it was more or less near,
John Brown was the finest specimen of a man that I ever saw. His great,
gaunt form, his noble head and face, his iron-gray hair and patriarchal
beard, with the patient endurance of his own suffering, and his painful
anxiety for the fate of his sons and the welfare of his men, his
reticence when jeered at, his readiness to turn away wrath with a kind
answer, his whole appearance and manner, what he looked, what he
said,--all impressed me with the deepest sense of reverence. If his
being likened to anything in history could have made the scene more
solemn, I should say that he was likest to the pictured or the ideal
representation of a Roundhead Puritan dying for his faith, and silently
glorying in the sacrifice not only of life, but of all that made life
dearest to him. His wounded men showed in their patient endurance the
influence of his example; while the vulgar herd of lookers-on, fair
representatives of the cowardly militia-men who had waited for the
little force of regulars to achieve the capture of the engine-house and
its garrison, were ready to prove their further cowardice by maltreating
the prisoners. The marines, who alone had sacrificed life in the
attack, were sturdily bent on guarding them from any harsh handling. I
turned away sadly from the old man's side, sought and got the
information he wanted concerning "his people," as he called them, and
was rewarded with his thanks in a few simple words, and in a voice that
was as gentle as a woman's. The Governor, as soon as he was told of the
condition of the prisoners, had them cared for, and, in all his
bitterness at their doings, never spoke of them in terms other than
honorable to himself and to them. He persistently praised John Brown for
his bravery and his endurance; and he was just as firm in declaring him
the victim of shrewd and designing men, whose schemes he would yet
fathom.
The day was a busy one; for little squads of regulars were sent out on
the Maryland Heights to search for the stores accumulated there; and
each foraging party was followed by a tail of stragglers from all the
volunteers on the ground, who valiantly kept on to the Maryland side of
the bridge that crossed the Potomac, and then, their courage oozing out
of their fingers and toes both, stopped there and waited for the return
of the regulars. On the instant of their arrival, each time fetching a
great hay-wagon full of captured goods, tents, picks, spades, pikes, the
tag-rag and bobtail party at once set to work to help themselves to the
nearest articles, and were soon seen making off homeward with their
contraband of war on their backs. The plunder, however, was not confined
to the captured property. A strong force of militia soon invaded the
armory, and every man helped himself to a rifle and a brace of pistols,
and then, tiring of the load, began to chaffer and bargain for their
sale. Governor Wise was called on to interfere and preserve the
Government property; he came into the little inclosure of the works, and
began an eloquent address, but seeing its uselessness, broke off and put
his Richmond Grays on guard; and then the distribution of public
property was made through the regular channels,--that is, the men inside
brought guns and pistols to the men on guard, and they passed them out
to their friends beyond, so that the trade went on almost as free as
ever.
Night soon came, and it was made hideous by the drunken noise and
turmoil of the crowd in the village; matters were made worse, too, by
the Governor's order to impress all the horses; and the decent, sober
men trudged home rather out of humor with their patriotic sacrifice;
while the tipsy and pot-valiant militia fought and squabbled with each
other, and only ceased that sport to pursue and hunt down some fugitive
negroes, and one or two half-maddened drunken fellows who in their
frenzy proclaimed themselves John Brown's men. Tired out at last, the
Governor took refuge in the Wager House;--for an hour or two, he had
stood on the porch haranguing an impatient crowd as "Sons of Virginia!"
Within doors the scene was stranger still. Huddled together in the worst
inn's worst room, the Governor and his staff at a table with tallow
candles guttering in the darkness, the Richmond Grays lying around the
floor in picturesque and (then) novel pursuit of soft planks, a motley
audience was gathered together to hear the papers captured at John
Brown's house--the Kennedy farm on Maryland Heights--read out with the
Governor's running comments. The purpose of all this was plain enough.
It was meant to serve as proof of a knowledge and instigation of the
raid by prominent persons and party-leaders in the North. The most
innocent notes and letters, commonplace newspaper-paragraphs and printed
cuttings, were distorted and twisted by the reading and by the talking
into clear instructions and positive plots. However, the main impression
was of the picturesqueness of the soldiers resting on their knapsacks,
and their arms stacked in the dark corners,--of the Governor and his
satellites, some of them in brilliant militia array, seated around the
lighted table,--and of the grotesque eloquence with which either the
Governor or some of his prominent people would now and then burst out
into an oratorical tirade, all thrown away on his sleepy auditors, and
lost to the world for want of some clever shorthand writer.
In the morning I was glad to hear that my belated train had spent the
last forty-eight hours at Martinsburg, and I did not a bit regret that
my two days had been so full of adventure and incident. Waiting for its
coming, I walked once more through the village, with one of the watchmen
of the armory, who had been captured by John Brown and spent the night
with him in the engine-house, and heard in all its freshness the story
now so well known. Then I bade Governor Wise good-bye, and was duly
thanked for my valiant services to the noble Mother of States, and
rewarded by being offered the honorary and honorable title of A.D.C. to
the commander-in-chief of Virginia, both for past services and for the
future tasks to be met, of beating off invading hosts from the
North,--all in the Governor's eye. Luckily for both sides, I declined
the handsome offer; for my next visit to Virginia was as an A.D.C. to a
general commanding troops, not of the North, but of the United States,
invading, not the Virginia of John Brown's time, but the Virginia of a
wicked Southern Confederacy.
Not long after, I received a letter of thanks from Governor Wise,
written at Richmond and with a good deal of official flattery. His son
Jennings, an old acquaintance of mine in pleasant days in Germany, came
to see me, too, with civil messages from his father. Poor fellow! he
paid the forfeit of his rebellious treason with his life at Roanoke
Island. His father pays the heavier penalty of living to see the civil
war fomented by him making its dreadful progress, and in its course
crushing out all his ancient popularity and power.
In spite of many scenes of noble heroism and devoted bravery in
legitimate warfare, and in the glorious campaigns of our own successful
armies, I have never seen any life in death so grand as that of John
Brown, and to me there is more than an idle refrain in the solemn chorus
of our advancing hosts,--
"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the ground,
As we go marching on!"
In the summer of 1862, I was brought again to Harper's Ferry, with my
regiment, and the old familiar scenes were carefully revisited. The
terrible destruction of fine public buildings, the wanton waste of
private property, the deserted village instead of the thriving town, the
utter ruin and wretchedness of the country all about, and the bleak
waste of land from Harper's Ferry to Charlestown, are all set features
in every picture of the war in Virginia. At my old head-quarters in
Charlestown jail there was less change than I had expected; its sturdy
walls had withstood attack and defence better than the newer and more
showy structures; the few inhabitants left behind after the ebb and flow
of so many army waves, Rebel and Union succeeding each other at pretty
regular intervals, were the well-to-do of former days, looking after
their household gods, sadly battered and the worse for wear, but still
cherished very dearly. Of my old acquaintances, it was a melancholy
pleasure to learn that Colonel Baylor, who was mainly anxious to have me
hanged, had in this war been reduced to the ranks for cowardice, and
then was shot in the act of desertion. Kennedy was still living at home,
but his brother was in the Rebel service. The lesser people were all
scattered; the better class of workmen had gone to Springfield or to
private gun-shops in the North,--the poorer sort, either into the Rebel
army or to some other dim distance, and all trace of them was lost.
The thousands who have come and gone through Harper's Ferry and past
Bolivar Heights will recall the waste and desolation of what was once a
blooming garden-spot, full of thrift and industry and comfort almost
unknown elsewhere south of the fatal slave-line; thousands who are yet
to pass that way will see in the ruins of the place traces of the
avenging spirit that has marked forever the scene of _John Brown's
Raid_.