HARPER'S FERRY
There now occurred another strange event which, if it had been
specially designed as a climax for the series of great political
sensations since 1852, could scarcely have been more dramatic. This
was John Brown's invasion of Harper's Ferry in order to create a slave
insurrection. We can only understand the transaction as far as we can
understand the man, and both remain somewhat enigmatical.
Of Puritan descent, John Brown was born in Connecticut in the year
1800. When he was five years old, the family moved to Ohio, at that
time a comparative wilderness. Here he grew up a strong, vigorous boy
of the woods. His father taught him the tanner's trade; but a restless
disposition drove him to frequent changes of scene and effort when he
grew to manhood. He attempted surveying. He became a divinity student.
He tried farming and tanning in Pennsylvania, and tanning and
speculating in real estate in Ohio. Cattle-dealing was his next
venture; from this to sheep-raising; and by a natural transition to
the business of a wool-factor in Massachusetts. This not succeeding,
he made a trip to Europe. Returning, he accepted from Gerrit Smith a
tract of mountain land in the Adirondacks, where he proposed to found
and foster colonies of free negroes. This undertaking proved abortive,
like all his others, and he once more went back to the wool business
in Ohio.
Twice married, nineteen children had been born to him, of whom eleven
were living when, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska bill plunged the
country into the heat of political strife. Four of his sons moved away
to the new Territory in the first rush of emigrants; several others
went later. When the Border-Ruffian hostilities broke out, John Brown
followed, with money and arms contributed in the North. With his sons
as a nucleus, he gathered a little band of fifteen to twenty
adventurers, and soon made his name a terror in the lawless guerrilla
warfare of the day. His fighting was of the prevailing type,
justifiable, if at all, only on the score of defensive retaliation,
and some of his acts were as criminal and atrocious as the worst of
those committed by the Border Ruffians.[1] His losses, one son
murdered, another wounded to the death, and a third rendered insane
from cruel treatment, are scarcely compensated by the transitory
notoriety he gathered in a few fool-hardy skirmishes.
[Sidenote] James Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 48.
[Sidenote] Sanborn, in the "Atlantic," April, 1872.
These varied experiences give us something of a clue to his character:
a strong will; great physical energy; sanguine, fanatical temperament;
unbounded courage and little wisdom; crude, visionary ideality; the
inspiration of biblical precepts and Old Testament hero-worship; and
ambition curbed to irritation by the hard fetters of labor, privation,
and enforced endurance. In association, habit, language, and conduct,
he was clean, but coarse; honest, but rude. In disposition he mingled
the sacrificing tenderness with the sacrificial sternness of his
prototypes in Jewish history. He could lay his own child on the altar
without a pang. The strongest element of his character was religious
fanaticism. Taught from earliest childhood to "fear God and keep his
commandments," he believed firmly in the divine authenticity of the
Bible, and memorized much of its contents. His favorite texts became
literal and imperative mandates; he came to feel that he bore the
commission and enjoyed the protection of the Almighty. In his Kansas
camps he prayed and saw visions; believed he wielded the sword of the
Lord and of Gideon; had faith that the angels encompassed him. He
desired no other safeguard than his own ideas of justice and his own
convictions of duty. These ideas and convictions, however, refused
obedience to accepted laws and morals, and were mere fantastic and
pernicious outgrowths of his religious fanaticism. His courage partook
of the recklessness of insanity. He did not count odds. "What are five
to one?" he asked; and at another time he said, "One man in the right,
ready to die, will chase a thousand." Perhaps he even believed he held
a charmed life, for he boasted that he had been fired at thirty times
and only his hair had been touched. In personal appearance he was tall
and slender, with rather a military bearing. He had an impressive,
half-persuasive, half-commanding manner. He was always very secretive,
affected much mystery in movements, came and went abruptly, was direct
and dogmatic to bluntness in his conversation. His education was
scant, his reading limited; he wrote strong phrases in bad
orthography. If we may believe the intimations from himself and those
who knew him best, he had not only acquired a passionate hatred of the
institution of slavery, but had for twenty years nursed the longing to
become a liberator of slaves in the Southern States. To this end he
read various stories of insurrections, and meditated on the
vicissitudes, chances, and strategy of partisan warfare. A year's
border fighting in Kansas not only suddenly put thought into action,
but his personal and family sacrifices intensified his visionary
ambition into a stern and inflexible purpose.
[Illustration: JOHN BROWN.]
It is impossible to trace exactly how and when the Harper's Ferry
invasion first took practical shape in John Brown's mind, but the
indications are that it grew little by little out of his Kansas
experience. His earliest collisions with the Border Ruffians occurred
the spring and summer of 1856. In the autumn of that year the United
States troops dispersed his band, and generally suppressed the civil
war. In January, 1857, we find him in the Eastern States, appealing
for arms and supplies to various committees and in various places,
alleging that he desired to organize and equip a company of one
hundred minute-men, who were "mixed up with the people of Kansas," but
who should be ready on call to rush to the defense of freedom. This
appeal only partly succeeded. From one committee he obtained authority
as agent over certain arms stored in Iowa, the custody and control of
which had been in dispute. From another committee he obtained a
portion of the clothing he desired. From still other sources he
received certain moneys, but not sufficient for his requirements. Two
circumstances, however, indicate that he was practicing a deception
upon the committees and public. He entered into a contract with a
blacksmith, in Collinsville, Connecticut, to manufacture him 1000
pikes of a certain pattern,[2] to be completed in 90 days, and paid
$550 on the contract. There is no record that he mentioned this matter
to any committee. His proposed Kansas minute-men were only to be one
hundred in number, and the pikes could not be for them; his
explanation to the blacksmith, that they would be a good weapon of
defense for Kansas settlers, was clearly a subterfuge. These pikes,
ordered about March 23, 1857, were without doubt intended for his
Virginia invasion; and in fact the identical lot, finished after long
delay, under the same contract, were shipped to him in September,
1859, and were actually used in his Harper's Ferry attempt. The other
circumstance is that, about the time of his contract for the pikes, he
also, without the knowledge of committees or friends, engaged an
adventurer, named Forbes, to go West and give military instruction to
his company--a measure neither useful nor practicable for Kansas
defense. These two acts may be taken as the first preparation for
Harper's Ferry.
But merely to conceive great enterprises is not to perform them, and
every after-step of John Brown reveals his lamentable weakness and
utter inadequacy for the heroic role to which he fancied himself
called. His first blunder was in divulging all his plans to Forbes, an
utter stranger, while he was so careful in concealing them from
others. Forbes, as ambitious and reckless as himself, of course soon
quarreled with him, and left him, and endeavored first to supplant and
then betray him.
[Sidenote] Realf, Testimony Mason Report, p. 91. Ibid., pp. 91-4.
Meanwhile, little by little, Brown gathered one colored and six white
confederates from among his former followers in Kansas, and assembled
them for drill and training in Iowa; four others joined him there.
These, together with his son Owen, counted, all told, a band of twelve
persons engaged for, and partly informed of, his purpose. He left them
there for instruction during the first three months of the year 1858,
while he himself went East to procure means.
[Sidenote] "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 51.
At the beginning of February, 1858, John Brown became, and remained
for about a month, a guest at the house of Frederick Douglass, in
Rochester, New York. Immediately on his arrival there he wrote to a
prominent Boston abolitionist, T.W. Higginson: "I now want to get, for
the perfecting of by far the most important undertaking of my whole
life, from $500 to $800 within the next sixty days. I have written
Rev. Theodore Parker, George L. Stearns, and F.B. Sanborn, Esquires,
on the subject."
[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 438.
Correspondence and mutual requests for a conference ensued, and
finally these Boston friends sent Sanborn to the house of Gerrit
Smith, in Peterboro, New York, where a meeting had been arranged.
Sanborn was a young man of twenty-six, just graduated from college,
who, as secretary of various Massachusetts committees, had been the
active agent for sending contributions to Kansas. He arrived on the
evening of Washington's birthday, February 22, 1858, and took part in
a council of conspiracy, of which John Brown was the moving will and
chief actor.
[Sidenote] "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 52. Sanborn in "Atlantic,"
March, 1875, p. 329; also, Mason Report, pp. 48-59.
Brown began by reading to the council a long document which he had
drafted since his stay in Rochester. It called itself a "Provisional
Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States,"
which, as it explained, looked to no overthrow of States or
dissolution of the Union, but simply to "amendment and repeal." It was
not in any sense a reasonable project of government, but simply an
ill-jointed outline of rules for a proposed slave insurrection. The
scheme, so far as any comprehension of it may be gleaned from the
various reports which remain, was something as follows:
[Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 55.
[Sidenote] Blair, Testimony, Mason Report, pp. 121-5.
[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 438.
Somewhere in the Virginia mountains he would raise the standard of
revolt and liberation. Enthusiasts would join him from the free
States, and escaped blacks come to his help from Canada. From Virginia
and the neighboring slave-States of North Carolina, South Carolina,
Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, fugitive slaves, with their
families, would flock to his camps. He would take his supplies,
provisions, and horses by force from the neighboring plantations.
Money, plate, watches, and jewelry would "constitute a liberal safety
or intelligence fund." For arms, he had 200 Sharps rifles, and 200
revolvers, with which he would arm his best marksmen. His ruder
followers, and even the women and children, he would arm with pikes to
defend the fortifications. He would construct defenses of palisades
and earth-works. He would use natural strongholds; find secret
mountain-passes to connect one with another; retreat from and evade
attacks he could not overcome. He would maintain and indefinitely
prolong a guerrilla war, of which the Seminole Indians in Florida and
the negroes in Hayti afforded examples. With success, he would enlarge
the area of his occupation so as to include arable valleys and
low-lands bordering the Alleghany range in the slave-States; and here
he would colonize, govern, and educate the blacks he had freed, and
maintain their liberty. He would make captures and reprisals,
confiscate property, take, hold, and exchange prisoners and especially
white hostages and exchange them for slaves to liberate. He would
recognize neutrals, make treaties, exercise humanity, prevent crime,
repress immorality, and observe all established laws of war. Success
would render his revolt permanent, and in the end, through "amendment
and repeal," abolish slavery. If, at the worst, he were driven from
the mountains he would retreat with his followers through the free
States to Canada. He had 12 recruits drilling in Iowa, and a
half-executed contract for 1000 pikes in Connecticut; furnish him $800
in money and he would begin operations in May.
[Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," March, 1875, p. 329.
[Sidenote] Redpath, "Life of John Brown," p. 206.
[Sidenote] Sanborn in "Atlantic," July, 1872, p. 52.
This, if we supply continuity and arrangement to his vagaries, must
have been approximately what he felt or dreamily saw, and outlined in
vigorous words to his auditors. His listening friends were dumfounded
at the audacity as well as heart-sick at the hopelessness of such an
attempt. They pointed out the almost certainty of failure and
destruction, and attempted to dissuade him from the mad scheme; but to
no purpose. They saw they were dealing with a foregone conclusion; he
had convoked them, not to advise as to methods, but to furnish the
means. All reasonable argument he met with his rigid dogmatic
formulas, his selected proverbs, his favorite texts of Scripture. The
following, preserved by various witnesses as samples of his sayings at
other times, indicate his reasoning on this occasion: "Give a slave a
pike and you make him a man. I would not give Sharps rifles to more
than ten men in a hundred, and then only when they have learned to use
them. A ravine is better than a plain. Woods and mountain-sides can be
held by resolute men against ten times their force. Nat Turner, with
fifty men, held Virginia five weeks; the same number, well organized
and armed, can shake the system out of the State." "A few men in the
right, and knowing they are right, can overturn a king. Twenty men in
the Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in two years." "If God
be for us, who can be against us? Except the Lord keep the city, the
watchman waketh but in vain."
[Sidenote] Ibid., March, 1875, p. 329.
[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," p. 439.
[Sidenote] Sanborn, "Atlantic," July, 1872, pp. 53-4.
One of the participants relates, that--"When the agitated party broke
up their council for the night, it was perfectly plain that Brown
could not be held back from his purpose." The discussion of the
friends on the second day (February 23) was therefore only whether
they should aid him, or oppose him, or remain indifferent. Against
every admonition of reason, mere personal sympathy seems to have
carried a decision in favor of the first of these alternatives. "You
see how it is," said the chief counselor, Gerrit Smith; "our dear old
friend has made up his mind to this course and cannot be turned from
it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must support him." Brown
has left an exact statement of his own motive and expectation, in a
letter to Sanborn on the following day. "I have only had this one
opportunity in a life of nearly sixty years ... God has honored but
comparatively a very small part of mankind with any possible chance
for such mighty and soul-satisfying rewards ... I expect nothing but
to endure hardness, but I expect to effect a mighty conquest, even
though it be like the last victory of Samson."
[Sidenote] Realf, Testimony, Mason Report, p. 99.
Nine days later Brown went to Boston, where the conspiracy was
enlarged and strengthened by the promises and encouragements of a
little coterie of radical abolitionists.[3] Within the next two months
the funds he desired were contributed and sent him. Meanwhile Brown
returned West, and moved his company of recruits from Iowa, by way of
Chicago and Detroit, to the town of Chatham, in Canada West, arriving
there about the 1st of May. By written invitations, Brown here called
together what is described as "a quiet convention of the friends of
freedom," to perfect his organization. On the 8th of May, 1858, they
held a meeting with closed doors, there being present the original
company of ten or eleven white members and one colored, whom Brown had
brought with him, and a somewhat miscellaneous gathering of negro
residents of Canada. Some sort of promise of secrecy was mutually
made; then John Brown, in a speech, laid his plan before the meeting.
One Delany, a colored doctor, in a response, promised the assistance
of all the colored people in Canada. The provisional constitution
drafted by Brown at Rochester was read and adopted by articles, and
about forty-five persons signed their names to the "Constitution," for
the "proscribed and oppressed races of the United States." Two days
afterwards, the meeting again convened for the election of officers;
John Brown was elected commander-in-chief by acclamation; other
members were by the same summary method appointed secretary of war,
secretary of state, secretary of the treasury, and two of them members
of congress. The election of a president was prudently postponed.
This Chatham Convention cannot claim consideration as a serious
deliberative proceeding. John Brown was its sole life and voice. The
colored Canadians were nothing but spectators. The ten white recruits
were mere Kansas adventurers, mostly boys in years and waifs in
society, perhaps depending largely for livelihood on the employment or
bounty, precarious as it was, of their leader. Upon this reckless,
drifting material the strong despotic will, emotional enthusiasm, and
mysterious rhapsodical talk of John Brown exercised an irresistible
fascination; he drew them by easy gradations into his confidence and
conspiracy. The remaining element, John Brown's son in the Chatham
meeting, and other sons and relatives in the Harper's Ferry attack,
are of course but the long educated instruments of the father's
thought and purpose.
[Sidenote] Stearns to Brown, May 14, 1858: Howe, Testimony, Mason
Report, p. 177.
With funds provided, with his plan of government accepted, and himself
formally appointed commander-in-chief, Brown doubtless thought his
campaign about to begin; it was however destined to an unexpected
interruption. The discarded and disappointed adventurer Forbes had
informed several prominent Republicans in Washington City that Brown
was meditating an unlawful enterprise; and the Boston committee,
warned that certain arms in Brown's custody, which had been
contributed for Kansas defense, were about to be flagrantly misused,
dared not incur the public odium of complicity in such a deception and
breach of faith. The Chatham organization was scarcely completed when
Brown received word from the Boston committee that he must not use the
arms (the 200 Sharps rifles and 200 revolvers) which had been
intrusted to him for any other purpose than for the defense of Kansas.
Brown hurried to Boston; but oral consultation with his friends
confirmed the necessity for postponement; and it was arranged that, to
lull suspicion, he should return to Kansas and await a more favorable
opportunity. He yielded assent, and that fall and winter performed the
exploit of leading an armed foray into Missouri, and carrying away
eleven slaves to Canada--an achievement which, while to a certain
degree it placed him in the attitude of a public outlaw, nevertheless
greatly increased his own and his followers' confidence in the success
of his general plan. Gradually the various obstacles melted away.
Kansas became pacified. The adventurer Forbes faded out of sight and
importance. The disputed Sharps rifles and revolvers were transferred
from committee to committee, and finally turned over to a private
individual to satisfy a debt. He in turn delivered them to Brown
without any hampering conditions. The Connecticut blacksmith finished
and shipped the thousand pikes. The contributions from the Boston
committee swelled from one to several thousands of dollars. The
recruits, with a few changes, though scattered in various parts of the
country, were generally held to their organization and promise, and
slightly increased in number. The provisional constitution and sundry
blank commissions were surreptitiously printed, and captains and
lieutenants appointed by the signature of John Brown "Commander-in-Chief,"
countersigned by the "Secretary of War."
Gradually, also, the commander-in-chief resolved on an important
modification of his plan: that, instead of plunging at once into the
Virginia mountains, he would begin by the capture of the United States
armory and arsenal at Harper's Ferry. Two advantages seem to have
vaguely suggested themselves to his mind as likely to arise from this
course: the possession of a large quantity of Government arms, and the
widespread panic and moral influence of so bold an attempt. But it
nowhere appears that he had any conception of the increased risk and
danger it involved, or that he adopted the slightest precaution to
meet them.
Harper's Ferry was a town of five thousand inhabitants, lying between
the slave-States of Maryland and Virginia, at the confluence of the
Potomac and the Shenandoah rivers, where the united streams flow
through a picturesque gap in the single mountain-range called the Blue
Ridge. The situation possesses none of the elements which would make
it a defensible fastness for protracted guerrilla warfare, such as was
contemplated in Brown's plan. The mountains are everywhere
approachable without difficulty; are pierced by roads and farms in all
directions; contain few natural resources for sustenance, defense, or
concealment; are easily observed or controlled from the plain by
superior forces. The town is irregular, compact, and hilly; a bridge
across each stream connects it with the opposite shores, and the
Government factory and buildings, which utilized the water-power of
the Potomac, lay in the lowest part of the point of land between the
streams. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the Potomac bridge.
On the 4th of July, 1859, John Brown, under an assumed name, with two
sons and another follower, appeared near Harper's Ferry, and soon
after rented the Kennedy Farm, in Maryland, five miles from town,
where he made a pretense of cattle-dealing and mining; but in reality
collected secretly his rifles, revolvers, ammunition, pikes, blankets,
tents, and miscellaneous articles for a campaign. His rather eccentric
actions, and the irregular coming and going of occasional strangers at
his cabin, created no suspicion in the neighborhood. Cautiously
increasing his supplies, and gathering his recruits, he appointed the
attack for the 24th of October; but for some unexplained reason (fear
of treachery, it is vaguely suggested) he precipitated his movement in
advance of that date. From this point the occurrences exhibit no
foresight or completeness of preparation, no diligent pursuit of an
intelligent plan, nor skill to devise momentary expedients; only a
blind impulse to act.
On Sunday evening, October 16, 1859, Brown gave his final orders,
humanely directing his men to take no life where they could avoid it.
Placing a few pikes and other implements in his one-horse wagon, he
started with his company of eighteen followers at 8 o'clock in the
evening, leaving five men behind. They cut the telegraph wires on the
way, and reached Harper's Ferry about 11 o'clock. He himself broke
open the armory gates, took the watchmen prisoners, and made that
place his headquarters. Separating his men into small detachments, he
took possession of, and attempted to hold, the two bridges, the
arsenal, and the rifle-factory. Next he sent six of his men five miles
into the country to bring in several prominent slaveowners and their
slaves. This was accomplished before daylight, and all were brought as
prisoners to Brown at the armory. With them they also brought a large
four-horse farm wagon, which he now sent to transfer arms from the
Kennedy farm to a school-house on the Maryland side of the Potomac,
about one mile from the town.
Meanwhile, about midnight of Sunday, they detained the railroad train
three hours, but finally allowed it to proceed. A negro porter was
shot on the bridge. The town began to be alarmed. Citizens were
captured at various points, and brought to swell the number of
prisoners at the armory, counting forty or fifty by morning. Still,
not until daylight, and even until the usual hour of rising on Monday
morning, did the town comprehend the nature and extent of the trouble.
What, now, did Brown intend to do? What result did he look for from
his movement thus far? Amid his conflicting acts and contradictory
explanations, the indications seem clear only on two or three points.
Both he and his men gave everybody to understand without reserve that
they had come not to kill whites, but only to liberate slaves. Soon,
also, he placed pikes in the hands of his black prisoners. But that
ceremony did not make soldiers of them, as his favorite maxim taught.
They held them in their hands with listless indifference, remaining
themselves, as before, an incumbrance instead of a reënforcement. He
gave his white prisoners notice that he would hold them as hostages,
and informed one or two that, after daylight, he would exchange them
for slaves. Before the general fighting began, he endeavored to effect
an armistice or compromise with the citizens, to stop bloodshed, on
condition that he be permitted to hold the armory and retain the
liberated negroes. All this warrants the inference that he expected to
hold the town, first, by the effect of terror; secondly, by the
display of leniency and kindness; and supposed that he could remain
indefinitely, and dictate terms at his leisure. The fallacy of this
scheme became quickly apparent.
As the day dawned upon the town and the truth upon the citizens, his
situation in a military point of view was already hopeless--eighteen
men against perhaps 1000 adults, and these eighteen scattered in four
or five different squads, without means of mutual support,
communication, or even contingent orders! Gradually, as the startled
citizens became certain of the insignificant numbers of the
assailants, an irregular street-firing broke out between Brown's
sentinels and individuals with firearms. The alarm was carried to
neighboring towns, and killed and wounded on both sides augmented the
excitement. Tradition rather than definite record asserts that some of
Brown's lieutenants began to comprehend that they were in a trap, and
advised him to retreat. Nearly all his eulogists have assumed that
such was his original plan, and his own subsequent excuses hint at
this intention. But the claim is clearly untenable. He had no means of
defensive retreat--no provisions, no transportation for his arms and
equipage, no supply of ammunition. The suggestion is an evident
afterthought.
Whether from choice or necessity, however, he remained only to find
himself more and more closely pressed. By Monday noon the squad in the
rifle-works, distant one mile from the armory, had been driven out,
killed, and captured. The other squads, not so far from their leader,
joined him at the armory, minus their losses. Already he was driven to
take refuge with his diminished force in the engine-house, a low,
strong brick building in the armory yard, where they barricaded doors
and improvised loop-holes, and into which they took with them ten
selected prisoners as hostages. But the expedient was one of
desperation. By this movement Brown literally shut himself up in his
own prison, from which escape was impossible.
A desultory fire was kept up through doors and loop-holes. But now the
whole country had become thoroughly aroused, and sundry military
companies from neighboring towns and counties poured into Harper's
Ferry. Brown himself at length realized the hopelessness of his
position, and parleyed for leave to retreat across the river on
condition of his giving up his prisoners; but it was too late.
President Buchanan also took prompt measures; and on Monday night a
detachment of eighty marines from the Washington navy-yard, under
command of Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the United States army,
the same who afterwards became the principal leader of the Confederate
armies in the rebellion, reached the scene of action, and were
stationed in the armory yard so as to cut off the insurgents from all
retreat. At daylight on Tuesday morning Brown was summoned to
surrender at discretion, but he refused. The instant the officer left
the engine-house a storming-party of marines battered in the doors; in
five minutes the conflict was over. One marine was shot dead in the
assault; Brown fell under severe sword and bayonet wounds, two of his
sons lay dead or dying, and four or five of his men were made
prisoners, only two remaining unhurt. The great scheme of liberation
built up through nearly three years of elaborate conspiracy, and
designed to be executed in defiance of law, by individual enterprise
with pikes, rifles, forts, guerrilla war, prisoners, hostages, and
plunder, was, after an experimental campaign of thirty-six hours, in
utter collapse. Of Brown's total force of twenty-two men, ten were
killed, five escaped, and seven were captured, tried, and hanged. Of
the townspeople, five had been killed and eight wounded.
[Illustration: HOUSE IN WHICH JOHN BROWN WAS BORN, TORRINGTON,
CONNECTICUT.]
[Sidenote] Sanborn in the "Atlantic," Dec. 1875. p. 718.
While John Brown's ability for military leadership was too
insignificant even for comment, his moral and personal courage
compelled the admiration of his enemies. Arraigned before a Virginia
court, the authorities hurried through his trial for treason,
conspiracy, and murder, with an unseemly precipitancy, almost
calculated to make him seem the accuser, and the commonwealth the
trembling culprit. He acknowledged his acts with frankness, defended
his purpose with a sincerity that betokened honest conviction, bore
his wounds and met his fate with a manly fortitude. Eight years
before, he had written, in a document organizing a band of colored
people in Springfield, Massachusetts, to resist the fugitive-slave
law: "Nothing so charms the American people as personal bravery. The
trial for life of one bold, and to some extent successful, man, for
defending his rights in good earnest, would arouse more sympathy
throughout the nation than the accumulated wrongs and sufferings of
more than three millions of our submissive colored population." Even
now, when mere Quixotic knight-errantry and his own positive violation
of the rights of individuals and society had put his life in forfeit,
this sympathy for his boldness and misfortune came to him in large
measure. Questioned by Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and
Representative Vallandigham about his accomplices, he refused to say
anything except about what he had done, and freely took upon himself
the whole responsibility. He was so warped by his religious training
as to have become a fatalist as well as a fanatic. "All our actions,"
he said to one who visited him in prison, "even all the follies that
led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was
made." Perverted Calvinistic philosophy is the key which unlocks the
mystery of Brown's life and deeds.
He was convicted, sentenced, and hanged on the 2d of December.
Congress met a few days afterwards, and the Senate appointed an
investigating committee to inquire into the seizure of the United
States armory and arsenal. The long and searching examination of many
witnesses brought out with sufficient distinctness the varied personal
plottings of Brown, but failed to reveal that half a dozen radical
abolition clergymen of Boston were party to the conspiracy; nor did
they then or afterwards justify their own conduct by showing that
Christ ever counseled treason, abetted conspiracy, or led rebellion
against established government. From beginning to end, the whole act
was reprehensible, and fraught with evil result. Modern civilization
and republican government require that beyond the self-defense
necessary to the protection of life and limb, all coercive reform
shall act by authority of law only.
[Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 18.
Upon politics the main effect of the Harper's Ferry incident was to
aggravate the temper and increase the bitterness of all parties.
Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; Mason, of Virginia; and Fitch, of
Indiana, Democratic members of the Senate investigating committee,
sought diligently but unsuccessfully to find grounds to hold the
Republican party at large responsible for Brown's raid. They felt
obliged to report that they could not recommend any legislation to
meet similar cases in the future, since the "invasion" of Virginia was
not of the kind mentioned in the Constitution, but was "simply the act
of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political
authority." Collamer, of Vermont, and Doolittle, of Wisconsin,
Republican members of the committee, in their minority report,
considered the affair an outgrowth of the pro-slavery lawlessness in
Kansas. Senator Douglas, of Illinois, however, apparently with the
object of still further setting himself right with the South, and
atoning for his Freeport heresy, made a long speech in advocacy of a
law to punish conspiracies in one State or Territory against the
government, people, or property of another; once more quoting
Lincoln's Springfield speech, and Seward's Rochester speech as
containing revolutionary doctrines.
[Sidenote] Dec, 2, 1859.
[Sidenote] James Redpath, "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p. 41.
[Sidenote] George Willis Cooke, "Life of Emerson," p. 140.
In the country at large, as in Congress, the John Brown raid excited
bitter discussion and radically diverse comment--some execrating him
as a deservedly punished felon, while others exalted him as a saint.
His Boston friends particularly, who had encouraged him with voice or
money, were extravagant in their demonstrations of approval and
admiration. On the day of his execution religious services were held,
and funeral bells were tolled. "The road to heaven," said Theodore
Parker, "is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also,
as easy." "Some eighteen hundred years ago," said Thoreau, "Christ
was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These
are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links." Emerson,
using a yet stronger figure, had already called him "a new saint,
waiting yet his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the
gallows glorious like the cross."
[Sidenote] Lecture at Brooklyn, November 1, 1859.
[Sidenote] "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p. 48.
[Sidenote] Letter to Committee of Merchants, December 20, 1859.
Ibid., p. 299.
Amid this conflict of argument, public opinion in the free-States
gravitated to neither extreme. It accepted neither the declaration of
the great orator Wendell Phillips, that "the lesson of the hour is
insurrection," nor the assertion of the great lawyer Charles O'Conor,
that slavery "is in its own nature, as an institution, beneficial to
both races."
This chapter would be incomplete if we neglected to quote Mr.
Lincoln's opinion of the Harper's Ferry attempt. His quiet and
common-sense criticism of the affair, pronounced a few months after
its occurrence, was substantially the conclusion to which the average
public judgment has come after the lapse of a quarter of a century:
[Sidenote] Lincoln, Cooper Institute Speech, Feb. 27, 1860.
Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before
the Republican party was organized. What induced the Southampton
insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three
times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry? You can
scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that
Southampton was "got up by Black Republicanism." In the present
state of things in the United States, I do not think a general or
even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible. The
indispensable concert of action cannot be attained. The slaves
have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen,
black or white, supply it. The explosive materials are everywhere
in parcels; but there neither are nor can be supplied the
indispensable connecting trains.
Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves for
their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is true.
A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and communicated
to twenty individuals before some one of them, to save the life of
a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. This is the rule;
and the slave revolution in Hayti was not an exception to it, but
a case occurring under peculiar circumstances. The gunpowder plot
of British history, though not connected with slaves, was more in
point. In that ease, only about twenty were admitted to the
secret; and yet one of them, in his anxiety to save a friend,
betrayed the plot to that friend, and, by consequence, averted the
calamity. Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and open or
stealthy assassinations in the field, and local revolts extending
to a score or so, will continue to occur as the natural results of
slavery; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I think, can
happen in this country for a long time. Whoever much fears or much
hopes for such an event will be alike disappointed....
John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.
It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in
which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd
that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it
could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds
with the many attempts related in history, at the assassination of
kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a
people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate
them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his
own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy,
precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in
the one ease, and on New England in the other, does not disprove
the sameness of the two things.
[Sidenote] "Tribune Almanac," 1860.
The aggravation of partisan temper over the Harper's Ferry incident
found a manifestation in a contest over the Speakership in the House
of Representatives as prolonged and bitter as that which attended the
election of Banks. In the Congressional elections of 1858, following
the Lecompton controversy, the Democrats had once more lost control of
the House of Representatives; there having been chosen 113
Republicans, 93 Administration Democrats, 8 anti-Lecompton Democrats,
and 23 South Americans, as they were called; that is, members, mainly
from the slave-States, opposed to the Administration.
[Sidenote] "Globe," December 5, 1859, p. 3.
This Thirty-sixth Congress began its session three days after the
execution of John Brown, and the election of a Speaker was the first
work of the new House of Representatives. The Republicans, not having
a majority, made no caucus nomination; but John Sherman, of Ohio, had
the largest following on the first ballot, and thereafter received
their united efforts to elect him. At this point a Missouri member
introduced a resolution declaring: "That the doctrines and sentiments
of a certain book called 'The Impending Crisis of the South--How to
Meet It,' purporting to have been written by one Hinton R. Helper [of
North Carolina], are insurrectionary and hostile to the domestic peace
and tranquillity of the country, and that no member of this House who
has indorsed and recommended it, or the compend from it, is fit to be
Speaker of this House."
This resolution was aimed at Sherman, who with some seventy
Republicans of the previous Congress had signed a circular indorsing
and recommending the book upon the general statement that it was an
anti-slavery work, written by a Southerner. The book addressed itself
to non-slaveholding Southern whites, and was mainly made up of
statistics, but contained occasional passages of intolerant and
vindictive sentiment against slaveholders. Whether it could be
considered "insurrectionary" depended altogether on the pro-slavery or
anti-slavery bias of the critic. Besides, the author had agreed that
the obnoxious passages should not be printed in the compendium which
the Republicans recommended in their circular. When interrogated, Mr.
Sherman replied that he had never seen the book, and that "I am
opposed to any interference whatever by the people of the free-States
with, the relations of master and slave in the slave-States." But the
disavowal did not relieve him from Southern enmity. The fire-eaters
seized the pretext to charge him with all manner of "abolition"
intentions, and by violent debate and the utterance of threats of
disunion made the House a parliamentary and almost a revolutionary
babel for nearly two months. Certain appropriations were exhausted,
and the treasury was in great need of funds. Efforts were made to
adopt the plurality rule, and to choose a Speaker for a limited
period; but every such movement was resisted for the purpose of
defeating Sherman, or rather, through his defeat to force the North
into unconditional submission to extreme pro-slavery sentiment. The
struggle, nominally over an incident, was in reality over a policy.
On January 30, 1860, Mr. Sherman withdrew his name, and the solid
Republican vote was given to William Pennington, of New Jersey,
another Republican, who, on February 1, was elected Speaker by 117
votes, 4 opposing members having come to his support. The South gained
nothing by the obstructionist policy of its members. During the long
contest, extending through forty-four ballots, their votes were
scattered among many candidates of different factions, while the
Republicans maintained an almost unbroken steadiness of party
discipline. On the whole, the principal results of the struggle were,
to sectionalize parties more completely, ripen Southern sentiment
towards secession, and combine wavering voters in the free-States in
support of Republican doctrines.
----------
[1] On the night of May 24-25, 1856, five pro-slavery men living on
Pottawatomie Creek, in Kansas, were mysteriously and brutally
assassinated. The relatives and friends of the deceased charged John
Brown and his band with these murders, which the relatives and friends
of Brown persistently denied. His latest biographer, however,
unreservedly admits his guilt: "For some reason he [John Brown] chose
not to strike a blow himself; and this is what Salmon Brown meant when
he declared that his father 'was not a participator in the deed.' It
was a very narrow interpretation of the word 'participator' which
would permit such a denial; but it was no doubt honestly made,
although for the purpose of disguising what John Brown's real agency
in the matter was. He was, in fact, the originator and performer of
these executions, although the hands that dealt the wounds were those
of others."--Frank B. Sanborn, "Life and Letters of John Brown," pp.
263-4.
[2] "He was exhibiting to a number of gentlemen, who happened to be
collected together in a druggist's store, some weapons which he
claimed to have taken from Captain Pate in Kansas. Among them was a
two-edged dirk, with a blade about eight inches long, and he remarked
that if he had a lot of those things to attach to poles about six feet
long, they would be a capital weapon of defense for the settlers of
Kansas.... When he came to make the contract, he wrote it to have
malleable ferrules, cast solid, and a guard to be of malleable iron.
That was all the difference.... After seeing the sample he made a
slight alteration. One was, to have a screw to put in, as the one here
has, so that they could be unshipped in case of necessity."--Blair,
Testimony before Investigating Committee, Senate Report No. 278, 1st
Sess. 36th Cong., pp. 121-2.
[3] "Meantime I had communicated his plans at his request to Theodore
Parker, Wentworth Higginson, and Dr. Howe, and had given Mr. Stearns
some general conception of them ... No other person in New England
except these four was informed by me of the affair, though there were
many who knew or suspected Brown's general purpose ... Brown's first
request, in 1858, was for a fund of $1000 only; with this in hand he
promised to take the field either in April or May. Mr. Stearns acted
as treasurer of this fund, and before the 1st of May nearly the whole
amount had been paid in or subscribed."--Frank B. Sanborn, "Atlantic,"
April, 1875, pp. 456-7.