THE BEHAVIOR OF THE SLAVES--CAPTAIN BROWN’S OPINION.
Of the various contradictory reports made by slaveholders and their
satellites about the time of the Harper’s Ferry conflict, none
were more untruthful than those relating to the slaves. There was
seemingly a studied attempt to enforce the belief that the slaves were
cowardly, and that they were really more in favor of Virginia masters
and slavery, than of their freedom. As a party who had an intimate
knowledge of the conduct of the colored men engaged, I am prepared to
make an emphatic denial of the gross imputation against them. They were
charged specially with being unreliable, with deserting Captain Brown
the first opportunity, and going back to their masters; and with being
so indifferent to the work of their salvation from the yoke, as to have
to be forced into service by the Captain, contrary to their will.
On the Sunday evening of the outbreak, when we visited the plantations
and acquainted the slaves with our purpose to effect their liberation,
the greatest enthusiasm was manifested by them--joy and hilarity
beamed from every countenance. One old mother, white-haired from age,
and borne down with the labors of many years in bonds, when told of
the work in hand, replied: “God bless you! God bless you!” She then
kissed the party at her house, and requested all to kneel, which we
did, and she offered prayer to God for His blessing on the enterprise,
and our success. At the slaves’ quarters, there was apparently
a general jubilee, and they stepped forward manfully, without
impressing or coaxing. In one case, only, was there any hesitation.
A dark-complexioned free-born man refused to take up arms. He showed
the only want of confidence in the movement, and far less courage than
any slave consulted about the plan. In fact, so far as I could learn,
the free blacks South are much less reliable than the slaves, and
infinitely more fearful. In Washington City, a party of free colored
persons offered their services to the Mayor, to aid in suppressing our
movement. Of the slaves who followed us to the Ferry, some were sent
to help remove stores, and the others were drawn up in a circle around
the engine-house, at one time, where they were, by Captain Brown’s
order, furnished by me with pikes, mostly, and acted as a guard to the
prisoners to prevent their escape, which they did.
As in the war of the American Revolution, the first blood shed was a
black man’s, Crispus Attuck’s, so at Harper’s Ferry, the first blood
shed by our party, after the arrival of the United States troops, was
that of a slave. In the beginning of the encounter; and before the
troops had fairly emerged from the bridge, a slave was shot. I saw
him fall. Phil, the slave who died in prison, with fear, as it was
reported, was wounded at the Ferry, and died from the effects of it. Of
the men shot on the rocks, when Kagi’s party were compelled to take to
the river, some were slaves, and they suffered death before they would
desert their companions, and their bodies fell into the waves beneath.
Captain Brown, who was surprised and pleased by the promptitude with
which they volunteered, and with their manly bearing at the scene of
violence, remarked to me, on that Monday morning, that he was agreeably
disappointed in the behavior of the slaves; for he did not expect
one out of ten to be willing to fight. The truth of the Harper’s
Ferry “raid,” as it has been called, in regard to the part taken by
the slaves, and the aid given by colored men generally, demonstrates
clearly: First, that the conduct of the slaves is a strong guarantee
of the weakness of the institution, should a favorable opportunity
occur; and, secondly, that the colored people, as a body, were well
represented by numbers, both in the fight, and in the number who
suffered martyrdom afterward.
The first report of the number of “insurrectionists” killed was
_seventeen_, which showed that several slaves were killed; for there
were only _ten_ of the men that belonged to the Kennedy Farm who lost
their lives at the Ferry, namely: John Henri Kagi, Jerry Anderson,
Watson Brown, Oliver Brown, Stewart Taylor, Adolphus Thompson, William
Thompson, William Leeman, all eight whites, and Dangerfield Newby and
Sherrard Lewis Leary, both colored. The rest reported dead, according
to their own showing, were colored. Captain Brown had but seventeen
with him, belonging to the Farm, and when all was over, there were four
besides himself taken to Charlestown, prisoners, viz: A. D. Stevens,
Edwin Coppic, white; John A. Copeland and Shields Green, colored. It
is plain to be seen from this, that there was a proper per centage of
colored men killed at the Ferry, and executed at Charlestown. Of those
that escaped from the fangs of the human bloodhounds of slavery, there
were four whites, and one colored man, myself being the sole colored
man of those at the Farm.
That hundreds of slaves were ready, and would have joined in the
work, had Captain Brown’s sympathies not been aroused in favor of the
families of his prisoners, and that a very different result would have
been seen, in consequence, there is no question. There was abundant
opportunity for him and the party to leave a place in which they held
entire sway and possession, before the arrival of the troops. And
so cowardly were the slaveholders, proper, that from Colonel Lewis
Washington, the descendant of the Father of his Country, General George
Washington, they were easily taken prisoners. They had not pluck enough
to fight, nor to use the well-loaded arms in their possession, but were
concerned rather in keeping a whole skin by parleying, or in spilling
cowardly tears, to excite pity, as did Colonel Washington, and in
that way escape merited punishment. No, the conduct of the slaves was
beyond all praise; and could our brave old Captain have steeled his
heart against the entreaties of his captives, or shut up the fountain
of his sympathies against their families--could he, for the moment,
have forgotten them, in the selfish thought of his own friends and
kindred, or, by adhering to the original plan, have left the place, and
thus looked forward to the prospective freedom of the slave--hundreds
ready and waiting would have been armed before twenty-four hours had
elapsed. As it was, even the noble old man’s mistakes were productive
of great good, the fact of which the future historian will record,
without the embarrassment attending its present narration. John Brown
did not only capture and hold Harper’s Ferry for twenty hours, but he
held the whole South. He captured President Buchanan and his Cabinet,
convulsed the whole country, killed Governor Wise, and dug the mine and
laid the train which will eventually dissolve the union between Freedom
and Slavery. The rebound reveals the truth. So let it be!
[From the New York Tribune.]
HOW OLD JOHN BROWN TOOK HARPER’S FERRY.
A BALLAD FOR THE TIMES.
[_Containing ye True History of ye Great Virginia Fright._]
John Brown in Kansas settled, like a steadfast Yankee farmer,
Brave and godly, with four sons--all stalwart men of might;
There he spoke aloud for Freedom, and the Border-strife grew warmer,
Till the Rangers fired his dwelling, in his absence in the night--
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Came homeward in the morning, to find his house burned down.
Then he grasped his trusty rifle, and boldly fought for Freedom;
Smote from border unto border the fierce invading band;
And he and his brave boys vowed--so might Heaven help and speed
’em!--
They would save those grand old prairies from the curse that
blights the land;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Said--“Boys, the Lord will aid us!” and he shoved his ramrod down.
And the Lord _did_ aid these men, and they labored day and even,
Saving Kansas from its peril--and their very lives seemed charmed;
Till the Ruffians killed one son, in the blesséd light of heaven--
In cold blood the fellows slew him, as he journeyed all unarmed;
Then Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Shed not a tear, but shut his teeth, and frowned a terrible frown.
Then they seized another brave boy--not amid the heat of battle,
But in peace, behind his plough-share--and they loaded him with
chains,
And with pikes, before their horses, even as they goad their cattle,
Drove him, cruelly, for their sport, and at last blew out his
brains;
Then Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Raised his right hand up to Heaven, calling Heaven’s vengeance down.
And he swore a fearful oath, by the name of the Almighty,
He would hunt this ravening evil, that had scathed and torn him
so--
He would seize it by the vitals; he would crush it day and night: he
Would so pursue its footsteps--so return it blow for blow--
That Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Should be a name to swear by, in backwoods or in town!
Then his beard became more grizzled, and his wild blue eye grew
wilder,
And more sharply curved his hawk’s nose, snuffing battle from
afar;
And he and the two boys left, though the Kansas strife waxed milder,
Grew more sullen, till was over the bloody Border War,
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Had grown crazy, as they reckoned, by his fearful glare and frown.
So he left the plains of Kansas and their bitter woes behind him--
Slipt off into Virginia, where the statesmen all are born--
Hired a farm by Harper’s Ferry, and no one knew where to find him,
Or whether he had turned parson, and was jacketed and shorn,
For Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Mad as he was, knew texts enough to wear a parson’s gown.
He bought no ploughs and harrows, spades and shovels, or such
trifles,
But quietly to his rancho there came, by every train,
Boxes full of pikes and pistols, and his well-beloved Sharp’s
rifles;
And eighteen other madmen joined their leader there again.
Says Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
“Boys, we have got an army large enough to whip the town!
“Whip the town and seize the muskets, free the negroes, and then arm
them--
Carry the County and the State; ay, and all the potent South;
On their own heads be the slaughter, if their victims rise to harm
them--
These Virginians! who believed not, nor would heed the warning
mouth.”
Says Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
“The world shall see a Republic, or my name is not JOHN BROWN!”
’Twas the sixteenth of October, on the evening of a Sunday--
“This good work,” declared the Captain, “shall be on a holy
night!”
It was on a Sunday evening, and before the noon of Monday,
With two sons, and Captain Stevens, fifteen privates--black and
white--
Captain Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Marched across the bridged Potomac, and knocked the sentinel down;
Took the guarded armory building, and the muskets and the cannon;
Captured all the country majors and the colonels, one by one;
Scared to death each gallant scion of Virginia they ran on,
And before the noon of Monday, I say, the deed was done.
Mad Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
With his eighteen other crazy men, went in and took the town.
Very little noise and bluster, little smell of powder, made he;
It was all done in the midnight, like the Emperor’s _coup d’etat_:
“Cut the wires: stop the rail-cars: hold the streets and bridges!”
said he--
Then declared the new Republic, with himself for guiding star--
This Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown!
And the bold two thousand citizens ran off and left the town.
Then was riding and railroading and expressing here and thither!
And the MARTINSBURG SHARPSHOOTERS, and the CHARLESTOWN VOLUNTEERS,
And the SHEPHERDSTOWN and WINCHESTER MILITIA hastened whither
Old Brown was said to muster his ten thousand grenadiers!
General Brown,
Osawatomie Brown!
Behind whose rampant banner all the North was pouring down.
But at last, ’tis said, some prisoners escaped from Old Brown’s
durance,
And the effervescent valor of Ye Chivalry broke forth,
When they learned that nineteen madmen had the marvellous
assurance--
Only nineteen--thus to seize the place, and drive them frightened
forth;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Found an army come to take him encamped around the town.
But to storm with all the forces we have mentioned was too risky;
So they hurried off to Richmond for the GOVERNMENT MARINES--
Tore them from their weeping matrons--fired their souls with Bourbon
whiskey--
Till they battered down Brown’s castle with their ladders and
machines;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Received three bayonet stabs, and a cut on his brave old crown.
Tallyho! the old Virginia gentry gathered to the baying!
In they rush and kill the game, shooting lustily away![A]
And whene’er they slay a rebel, those who come too late for slaying,
Not to lose a share of glory, fire their bullets in his clay;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
Saw his sons fall dead beside him, and between them laid him down.
How the conquerors wore their laurels--how they hastened on the
trials--
How Old Brown was placed, half-dying, on the Charlestown
Court-House floor--
How he spoke his grand oration, in the scorn of all denials--
What the brave old madman told them--these are known the country
o’er.
“Hang Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,”
Said the Judge, “and all such rebels!” with his most judicial frown.
But, Virginians, don’t do it! for I tell you that the flagon,
Filled with blood of Old Brown’s offspring, was first poured by
Southern hands:
And each drop from Old Brown’s life-veins, like the red gore of the
dragon,
May spring up a vengeful Fury, hissing through your slave-worn
lands;
And Old Brown,
Osawatomie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever, when you’ve nailed his coffin down!
FOOTNOTES:
[A] “The hunt was up--woe to the game enclosed within that fiery
circle! The town was occupied by a thousand or fifteen hundred men,
including volunteer companies from Shepherdstown, Charlestown,
Winchester, and elsewhere; but the armed and unorganized multitude
largely predominated, giving the affair more the character of a great
hunting scene than that of a battle. The savage game was holed beyond
all possibility of escape.”--_Virginia Correspondent of Harper’s
Weekly._
[From the Boston Liberator.]
JOHN BROWN OF OSAWATOMIE.
BY G. D. WHITMORE.
So you’ve convicted old John Brown! brave old Brown of Osawatomie!
And you gave him a _chivalrous_ trial, lying groaning on the floor,
With his body ripped with gashes, deaf with pain from sabre slashes,
Over the head received, when the deadly fight was o’er;
Round him guns with lighted matches, judge and lawyers pale as
ashes--
For he might, perhaps, come to again, and put you all to flight,
Or surround you, as before!
You think, no doubt, _you_’ve tried John Brown, but he’s laid there
trying _you_,
And the world has been his jury, and its judgment’s swift and true:
Over the globe the tale has rung, back to your hearts the verdict’s
flung,
That you’re found, as you’ve been always found, a brutal, cowardly
crew!
At the wave of his hand to a dozen men, two thousand slunk like
hounds;
He kennelled you up, and kept you too, till twice you saw through
the azure blue,
The day-star circle round.
No longer the taunt, our history’s new, “our hero is yet to come”--
We’ve suddenly leaped a thousand years beyond the rolling sun!
And, sheeted round with a martyr’s glory, again on earth’s renewed
the story
Of bravery, truth, and righteousness, a battle lost and won;
A life laid down for the poor and weak, the immortal crown put on;
The spark of Luther’s touched to the pile--swords gleam--black
smoke obscures the sun--
And the slave and his master are gone!
Ages hence, when all is over that shocks the sense of the world
to-day,
Pilgrims will mount the western wave, seeking the new Thermopylæ;
Then, for that brave old man with many sons, mangled and murdered,
one by one,
Whose ghosts rise up from Harper’s gorge, Missouri’s plains, and
far away
Where Kansas’ grains wave tinged with their blood, will the column
rise!
The Poet’s song and History’s page will the deeds prolong of John
of Osawatomie,
The Martyr to Truth and Right!
[From the New York Independent.]
THE VIRGINIA SCAFFOLD.
Rear on high the scaffold altar! all the world will turn to see
How a man has dared to suffer that his brothers may be free!
Hear it on some hill-side looking North and South and East and West,
Where the wind from every quarter fresh may blow upon his breast,
And the sun look down unshaded from the chill December sky,
Glad to shine upon the hero who for Freedom dared to die!
All the world will turn to see him;--from the pines of wave-washed
Maine
To the golden rivers rolling over California’s plain,
And from clear Superior’s waters, where the wild swan loves to sail,
To the Gulf-lands, summer-bosomed, fanned by ocean’s softest gale,--
Every heart will beat the faster in its sorrow or its scorn,
For the man nor courts nor prisons can annoy another morn!
And from distant climes and nations men shall westward gaze, and
say,
“He who perilled all for Freedom on the scaffold dies to-day.”
Never offering was richer, nor did temple fairer rise
For the gods serenely smiling from the blue Olympian skies;
Porphyry or granite column did not statelier cleave the air
Than the posts of yonder gallows with the cross-beam waiting
there;
And the victim, wreathed and crownéd, not for Dian nor for Jove,
But for Liberty and Manhood, comes, the sacrifice of Love.
They may hang him on the gibbet; they may raise the victor’s cry,
When they see him darkly swinging like a speck against the sky;--
Ah! the dying of a hero, that the right may win its way,
Is but sowing seed for harvest in a warm and mellow May!
Now his story shall be whispered by the firelight’s evening glow,
And in fields of rice and cotton, when the hot noon passes slow,
Till his name shall be a watch-word from Missouri to the sea,
And his planting find its reaping in the birthday of the Free!
Christ, the crucified, attend him, weak and erring though he be;
In his measure he has striven, suffering Lord! to love like Thee;
Thou the vine--thy friends the branches--is he not a branch of
Thine,
Though some dregs from earthly vintage have defiled the heavenly
wine?
Now his tendrils lie unclaspéd, bruised and prostrate on the sod,--
Take him to thine upper garden, where the husbandman is God!
“OLD JOHN BROWN.”
BY REV. E. H. SEARS.
Not any spot six feet by two
Will hold a man like thee;
John Brown will tramp the shaking earth,
From Blue Ridge to the sea,
Till the strong angel comes at last,
And opes each dungeon door,
And God’s “Great Charter” holds and waves
O’er all his humble poor.
And then the humble poor will come,
In that far-distant day,
And from the felon’s nameless grave
They’ll brush the leaves away;
And gray old men will point the spot
Beneath the pine-tree shade,
As children ask with streaming eyes
Where “Old John Brown” is laid.
DIRGE
_Sung at a Meeting in Concord, Mass., Dec. 2, 1859._
To-day, beside Potomac’s wave,
Beneath Virginia’s sky,
They slay the man who loved the slave,
And dared for him to die.
The Pilgrim Fathers’ earnest creed,
Virginia’s ancient faith,
Inspired this hero’s noblest deed,
And his reward is--Death!
Great Washington’s indignant shade
For ever urged him on--
He heard from Monticello’s glade
The voice of Jefferson.
But chiefly on the Hebrew page
He read Jehovah’s law,
And this from youth to hoary age
Obeyed with love and awe.
No selfish purpose armed his hand,
No passion aimed his blow;
How loyally he loved his land,
Impartial Time shall show.
But now the faithful martyr dies,
His brave heart beats no more,
His soul ascends the equal skies,
His earthly course is o’er.
For this we mourn, but not for him,--
Like him in God we trust;
And though our eyes with tears are dim,
We know that God is just.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. Except for the
errors listed below, spelling has been retained as originally published.
The following printer errors has been changed:
Page 4: “been loft unsaid” “been left unsaid”
Page 16: “aided in the accouchment” “aided in the accouchement”
Page 42: “would all evacute the” “would all evacuate the”
Page 51: “to blusn at the” “to blush at the”