The Charles Town militia, consisting of the regular company of the
Jefferson Guards and a specially formed volunteer company, was armed and
on its way by train to Harpers Ferry by 10 a.m. The militia commander,
Col. John T. Gibson, had not waited for orders from Richmond but had set
out as soon as the men could be gotten ready. Arriving at Halltown,
about midway between Charles Town and Harpers Ferry, Gibson, fearing the
track ahead might be torn up, took the militia off the train and marched
by road to Allstadt’s Crossroads west of Bolivar Heights.
[Illustration: Watson Brown]
[Illustration: William Thompson]
At Allstadt’s, Gibson divided his force. He sent Mexican War veteran
Capt. J. W. Rowan with the Jefferson Guards in a wide sweep to the west
of Harpers Ferry to capture the B & O bridge. Gibson himself would take
the volunteer company on into town. Rowan’s men crossed the Potomac
about a mile above Harpers Ferry and, advancing along the towpath of the
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, arrived at the Maryland end of the bridge by
noon. With little difficulty they drove its defenders—Oliver Brown,
William Thompson, and Dangerfield Newby—back toward the armory yard.
Only Brown and Thompson made it. Newby, the ex-slave who had joined John
Brown to free his wife and children, was killed by a 6-inch spike fired
from a smoothbore musket. He was the first of the raiders to die.
In the meantime, Colonel Gibson’s force had arrived in Harpers Ferry and
he sent a detachment of citizens under Capt. Lawson Botts, a Charles
Town attorney, to secure the Gault House Saloon at the rear of the
arsenal and commanding the Shenandoah bridge and the entrance to the
armory yard. Another detachment under Capt. John Avis, the Charles Town
jailer, took up positions in houses along Shenandoah Street from which
to fire into the arsenal grounds.
The attack of the Charles Town militia cut off Brown’s escape route and
separated him from his men in Maryland and those still holding the rifle
factory. At last, perhaps realizing the hopelessness of his situation,
Brown sought a truce. But when hostage Rezin Cross and raider William
Thompson emerged from the enginehouse under a white flag, the
townspeople ignored the flag, seized Thompson, and dragged him off to
the Wager House where he was kept under guard.
Still not convinced, Brown tried again. This time he sent his son Watson
and Aaron Stevens with Acting Armory Superintendent Kitzmiller, taken
hostage earlier in the day. As the trio marched onto the street and came
opposite the Galt House, several shots rang out and both raiders fell.
Stevens, severely wounded, lay bleeding in the street; Watson Brown,
mortally wounded, dragged himself back to the enginehouse. Joseph Brua,
one of the hostages, volunteered to aid the wounded Stevens. As bullets
richocheted off the flagstone walk, Brua walked out, lifted up the
wounded raider, and carried him to the Wager House for medical
attention. Then, incredibly, he strolled back to the enginehouse and
again took his place among Brown’s prisoners. Kitzmiller escaped.
About the time Stevens and Watson Brown were shot, raider William Leeman
attempted to escape. Dashing through the upper end of the armory yard,
he plunged into the frigid Potomac, comparatively shallow at this point,
and made for the Maryland shore. Soon spotted, a shower of bullets hit
the water around him and he was forced to take refuge on an islet in the
river. G. A. Schoppert, a Harpers Ferry resident, waded out to where
Leeman lay marooned, pointed a pistol at his head, and pulled the
trigger. For the rest of the day Leeman’s body was a target for the
undisciplined militia and townspeople.
[Illustration: Oliver Brown, William Thompson, and Dangerfield Newby
were forced to abandon their post at the Maryland end of the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge when they were attacked by the
Jefferson Guards. Brown and Thompson reached the armory grounds
safely, but Newby (below) was shot and killed as he came off the
bridge.]
[Illustration: Dangerfield Newby]
When a raider shot and killed George W. Turner about 2 p.m., the crowd
grew ugly. Turner, a West Point graduate, was a prominent and highly
respected area planter. When Fontaine Beckham, the mayor of Harpers
Ferry and agent for the B & O Railroad, was killed, the townspeople
turned into a howling, raging mob.
Beckham, a well-liked man of somewhat high-strung temperament, had been
greatly disturbed by the earlier shooting of Hayward Shepherd, his
friend and faithful helper at the depot. Despite warnings from friends
to keep away, Beckham, unarmed, walked out on the railroad to see what
was going on. He paced up and down the B & O trestle bordering the
armory yard about 30 yards from the enginehouse. Several raiders spotted
him peering around the water tower in front of their stronghold and
thought that he was placing himself in position to fire through the
doors. Edwin Coppoc, posted at the doorway of the enginehouse, leveled
his rifle at the mayor.
“Don’t fire, man, for God’s sake!” screamed one of the hostages.
“They’ll shoot in here and kill us all.”
Coppoc ignored the warning and pulled the trigger. Beckham fell, a
bullet through his heart. Oliver Brown, standing beside Coppoc in the
partly opened doorway, aimed his rifle at another man on the trestle,
but before he could fire he keeled over with “a mortal wound that gave
horrible pain.” Both of Brown’s sons now lay dying at their father’s
feet.
Enraged by the shooting of Beckham, the townspeople turned on prisoner
William Thompson. Led by Harry Hunter, a young Charles Town volunteer
and the grandnephew of the murdered mayor, a group of men stormed into
the Wager House, grabbed Thompson, and dragged him out onto the B & O
bridge. “You may kill me but it will be revenged,” Thompson yelled;
“there are eighty thousand persons sworn to carry out this work.” These
were his last words. The mob shot him several times and tossed his body
into the Potomac to serve, like Leeman’s, as a target for the remainder
of the day.
While Brown’s situation at the fire enginehouse was growing
progressively worse, his three-man detachment holding the rifle works
came under fire. Under Kagi’s leadership these men had held the works
uncontested during the morning and early afternoon. About 2:30 p.m. Dr.
Starry organized a party of “citizens and neighbors” and launched an
attack against the raiders from Shenandoah Street. After a brief
exchange of shots, Kagi, Lewis Leary, and John Copeland dashed out the
back of the building, scrambled across the Winchester and Potomac
Railroad tracks, and waded into the shallow Shenandoah River. Some
townspeople posted on the opposite bank spotted the fleeing men and
opened fire. The raiders, caught in a crossfire, made for a large flat
rock in the middle of the river. Kagi, Brown’s most trusted and able
lieutenant, was killed in the attempt and Leary was mortally wounded.
Copeland reached the rock only to be dragged ashore, where the excited
crowd screamed “Lynch him! Lynch him!” But Dr. Starry intervened, and
the frightened Negro was hustled off to jail.
At the enginehouse, the raiders continued to exchange occasional shots
with the Charles Town militia and the townspeople. By now Brown had
separated his prisoners. Eleven of the more important hostages who might
be used for bargaining purposes were moved into the engineroom with his
dwindling band, while the others remained crowded into the tiny
guardroom. The two rooms were separated by a solid brick wall.
[Illustration: Lewis S. Leary]
[Illustration: William H. Leeman]
About 3 p.m., shortly after the raiders were driven out of the rifle
works, a militia company arrived by train from Martinsburg, Va. Headed
by Capt. E. G. Alburtis and comprised mostly of B & O Railroad
employees, this company marched on the enginehouse from the upper end of
the armory yard and came close to ending the raid. Brown positioned his
men in front of the building to meet the attack. Alburtis’ contingent,
advancing briskly and maintaining a steady fire, forced the raiders back
inside. Smashing the windows of the guardroom, the militiamen freed the
prisoners but were forced to withdraw after eight of their number were
wounded from the constant fire pouring from the partly opened
enginehouse door. Alburtis later complained that had his men been
supported by the other militia companies present, John Brown’s raid
would have been ended.
Other militia units now began to arrive. Between 3 and 4 p.m. the
Hamtramck Guards and the Shepherdstown Troop, both from Shepherdstown,
Va., came in. At dusk three uniformed companies from Frederick, Md.,
appeared, followed later in the evening by a Winchester, Va., company
under R. B. Washington, and five companies of the Maryland Volunteers
under General Stewart from Baltimore. None of them made any attempt to
dislodge Brown and his men from the enginehouse, but all added to the
general confusion and hysteria gripping the town.
[Illustration: The attack on the enginehouse by Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad employees led by Capt. E. G. Alburtis is shown in this
contemporary engraving from _Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper_.
Alburtis’ attack failed to dislodge the raiders, but his men did
manage to free several of Brown’s hostages.]
On the other side of the Potomac, Cook, Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc,
Meriam, Tidd, and several Negroes had been transferring weapons to a
tiny schoolhouse midway between Harpers Ferry and the Kennedy farm. As
the day wore on and the firing from town became heavier, they began to
suspect that something might have gone wrong. At about 4 p.m. Cook
headed for the B & O bridge to see what was happening. To get a better
vantage point, he climbed the craggy face of Maryland Heights where he
could look directly into the center of the town. Seeing that his
compatriots were “completely surrounded,” he decided to try to take some
of the pressure off by firing across the river at men posted in the
houses along High Street overlooking the armory. His shot was instantly
answered by a volley of bullets that severed a branch he was clutching
for support and sent him tumbling down the rocky cliff. Badly cut and
bruised from the fall, he limped back to the schoolhouse and joined the
others. Realizing there was nothing they could do to aid their comrades
trapped in the enginehouse, they reluctantly gathered their belongings,
climbed the mountain and headed north.
[Illustration: Stewart Taylor]
[Illustration: John A. Copeland]
[Illustration: Jeremiah G. Anderson]
Time was quickly running out for John Brown. As resistance became
partially organized at Harpers Ferry, steps were taken to seal off any
possibility of support reaching the raiders. Fearing that Brown’s raid
might be part of a general uprising, all approaches to the town were
guarded, and all travelers not familiar to residents of the area were
immediately arrested and shipped off to the county jail at Charles Town.
As night approached, the firing sputtered out. Brown, knowing escape was
impossible, again attempted to bargain for freedom. In verbal and
written pleas he offered to release his hostages if he and his men were
allowed to leave unmolested. Col. Robert W. Taylor, now commanding the
Virginia militia units at Harpers Ferry, rejected the offers, sending
back word that if the prisoners were immediately released he would let
the Government deal with Brown and his men. But the old abolitionist
would not yield, and prisoners, slaves, and raiders alike settled down,
as best they could, to what would be a long and depressing night.
Brown paced up and down like a caged tiger. It had been hours since he
or any of them had tasted food or drink. The cold night air chilled
their bones and the pungent odor of gunpowder stung their nostrils. The
large-scale slave support that he had counted upon and for which the
pikes were intended had not materialized. This was largely his own
doing, however, for in his desire for absolute secrecy he had given no
advance word that he was coming. The slaves had no idea that a raid was
in progress. The few his men had picked up at the Washington and
Allstadt farms were of no use to him. They were frightened and preferred
to remain with the white hostages rather than take an active part in
their own salvation. Most likely they would not have joined him at all
had they not been taken from their homes at gunpoint.
From time to time Brown called out, “Men, are you awake?” Only five of
the raiders were still unwounded and able to hold a rifle: Brown
himself, Edwin Coppoc, J. G. Anderson, Dauphin Thompson, and Shields
Green. Stewart Taylor, the Canadian soldier of fortune, lay dead in a
corner, his presentiment of death come true. He had been shot like
Oliver Brown while standing at the enginehouse doorway. Oliver himself,
writhing in pain, begged to be killed and put out of his misery. “If you
must die, then die like a man,” snapped his father. After awhile Oliver
was quiet. “I guess he is dead,” Brown said. Nearby, Watson Brown lay
quietly breathing his last. The attack that had begun but 24 hours
before was fast coming to an end.