A VOICE FROM HARPER’S FERRY.
A
NARRATIVE OF EVENTS
AT
HARPER’S FERRY;
WITH
INCIDENTS PRIOR AND SUBSEQUENT TO ITS CAPTURE BY
CAPTAIN BROWN AND HIS MEN.
BY
OSBORNE P. ANDERSON,
ONE OF THE NUMBER.
BOSTON:
PRINTED FOR THE AUTHOR.
1861.
PREFACE.
My sole purpose in publishing the following Narrative is to save from
oblivion the facts connected with one of the most important movements
of this age, with reference to the overthrow of American slavery. My
own personal experience in it, under the orders of Capt. Brown, on
the 16th and 17th of October, 1859, as the only man alive who was at
Harper’s Ferry during the entire time--the unsuccessful groping after
these facts, by individuals, impossible to be obtained, except from
an actor in the scene--and the conviction that the cause of impartial
liberty requires this duty at my hands--alone have been the motives for
writing and circulating the little book herewith presented.
I will not, under such circumstances, insult nor burden the intelligent
with excuses for defects in composition, nor for the attempt to give
the facts. A plain, unadorned, truthful story is wanted, and that by
one who knows what he says, who is known to have been at the great
encounter, and to have labored in shaping the same. My identity as a
member of Capt. Brown’s company cannot be questioned, successfully, by
any who are bent upon suppressing the truth; neither will it be by any
in Canada or the United States familiar with John Brown and his plans,
as those know his men personally, or by reputation, who enjoyed his
confidence sufficiently to know thoroughly his plans.
The readers of this narrative will therefore keep steadily in view
the main point--that they are perusing a story of events which have
happened under the eye of the great Captain, or are incidental thereto,
and _not_ a compendium of the “plans” of Capt. Brown; for as his
plans were not consummated, and as their fulfilment is committed to
the future, no one to whom they are known will recklessly expose all
of them to the public gaze. Much has been given as true that never
happened; much has been omitted that should have been made known; many
things have been left unsaid, because, up to within a short time, but
two could say them; one of them has been offered up, a sacrifice to
the Moloch, Slavery; being that other one, I propose to perform the
duty, trusting to that portion of the public who love the right for an
appreciation of my endeavor.
O. P. A.
A VOICE FROM HARPER’S FERRY.
CHAPTER I.
THE IDEA AND ITS EXPONENTS--JOHN BROWN ANOTHER MOSES.
The idea underlying the outbreak at Harper’s Ferry is not peculiar to
that movement, but dates back to a period very far beyond the memory of
the “oldest inhabitant,” and emanated from a source much superior to
the Wises and Hunters, the Buchanans and Masons of to-day. It was the
appointed work for life of an ancient patriarch spoken of in Exodus,
chap, ii., and who, true to his great commission, failed not to trouble
the conscience and to disturb the repose of the Pharaohs of Egypt with
that inexorable, “Thus saith the Lord: Let my people go!” until even
they were urgent upon the people in its behalf. Coming down through the
nations, and regardless of national boundaries or peculiarities, it has
been proclaimed and enforced by the patriarch and the warrior of the
Old World, by the enfranchised freeman and the humble slave of the New.
Its nationality is universal; its language every where understood by
the haters of tyranny; and those that accept its mission, every where
understand each other. There is an unbroken chain of sentiment and
purpose from Moses of the Jews to John Brown of America; from Kossuth,
and the liberators of France and Italy, to the untutored Gabriel, and
the Denmark Veseys, Nat Turners and Madison Washingtons of the Southern
American States. The shaping and expressing of a thought for freedom
takes the same consistence with the colored American--whether he be
an independent citizen of the Haytian nation, a proscribed but humble
nominally free colored man, a patient, toiling, but hopeful slave--as
with the proudest or noblest representative of European or American
civilization and Christianity. Lafayette, the exponent of French honor
and political integrity, and John Brown, foremost among the men of
the New World in high moral and religious principle and magnanimous
bravery, embrace as brothers of the same mother, in harmony upon the
grand mission of liberty; but, while the Frenchman entered the lists in
obedience to a desire to aid, and by invitation from the Adamses and
Hamiltons, and thus pushed on the political fortunes of those able to
help themselves, John Brown, the liberator of Kansas, the projector and
commander of the Harper’s Ferry expedition, saw in the most degraded
slave a man and a brother, whose appeal for his God-ordained rights
no one should disregard; in the toddling slave child, a captive whose
release is as imperative, and whose prerogative is as weighty, as
the most famous in the land. When the Egyptian pressed hard upon the
Hebrew, Moses slew him; and when the spirit of slavery invaded the fair
Territory of Kansas, causing the Free-State settlers to cry out because
of persecution, old John Brown, famous among the men of God for ever,
though then but little known to his fellow-men, called together his
sons and went over, as did Abraham, to the unequal contest, but on the
side of the oppressed white men of Kansas that were, and the black men
that were to be. To-day, Kansas is free, and the verdict of impartial
men is, that to John Brown, more than any other man, Kansas owes her
present position.
I am not the biographer of John Brown, but I can be indulged in giving
here the opinion common among my people of one so eminently worthy of
the highest veneration. Close observation of him, during many weeks,
and under his orders at his Kennedy-Farm fireside, also, satisfies me
that in comparing the noble old man to Moses, and other men of piety
and renown, who were chosen by God to his great work, none have been
more faithful, none have given a brighter record.