The raid of John Brown at Harper's Ferry as I saw it

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The Raid of John Brown at Harper's
Ferry As I Saw It.

REV. SAMUEL VANDERLIP LEECH, D. D.

Author of "Ingersoll ami The 'Bible," -The Three Inebriates," -'From West
Virginia to Pompeii," "Seven Elements in Successful Preaching," Etc

PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.

I ll l DeSoto

\\ .\-lll \l. I. IN, I >. t

I INMI

Copyright by S. V. I,eech, 1909.)

CLA251S87 "

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN AT HARPER'S
FERRY AS I SAW IT.

'By REV. SAMUEL VAHDERL1P LEECH, D. D.

HI-; town of Harper's Perry is located in Jeffei

nty, West Virginia. Lucerne, in Switzerland
does not excel it in romantic grandeur of situation.
i in it- northern front the Potomac sweeps aloi
pass the national capital, and the tomb of Washington, in
it- silent flow towards the sea. < >n it- eastern side the
Shenandoah hurries to empty it- waters into the Potomac,
that in perpetual wedlock they may greet the stormy At-
lantic. Across the Potomac the Maryland Heights stand out
a- the tall sentinels of Nature. Beyond the Shenandoah are
the Blue Ridge mountains, fringing the westward boundary
of Loudon County, Virginia. Between these rivers, and
nestling inside of their very confluence, reposes Harper's
Ferry. Back "t' it- hill- lie- the famous Shenandoah Valley,
celebrated for it- natural scenery, it- historic battles ami
"Sheridan's Ride." At Harper's l-Yn\ the United States
authorities early located an Arsenal and an Armory.

Before the Civil War. the Baltimore Conference of the
Methodist Episcopal Church was constituted of five exten-
in Virginia, stretching from Alexandria t" Lew-
isburg and two great districts north of the Potomac, in-
cluding the cities of Washington and Baltimore. The first
three years of my ministerial life I -pent on Shepherdstown,
Wesl Loudon and Hillsboro Circuits, being then all in Vir-
ginia. The Virginia, now embracing Har-
per's Ferry, had nol been organized l>\ Congress a- a war
measure out of the territory "t' the mother State. < >nr Meth-
odist Episcopal church wa- theoretically an ami slavery or-

6 THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

everywhere in the South after the war had begun. This was
especially true along the border states. But John Brown —
honest, enthusiastic and intensely fanatical on the slavery
question — issued his commands. On this Sunday he as-
signed to each his earliest work. Captain Owen Brown,
Barclay Coppoc and Francis J. Merriam were to remain at
the farm to guard the arms and ammunition. Hence only
nineteen left the Kennedy farm. They were to walk down the
river road on the Maryland side to the Maryland end of the
Baltimore and Ohio railroad bridge. The Virginia end was
close to the depot, hotel. Armory and the Arsenal. Cap-
tain John Brown was to ride in the wagon with the necessary
guns, pistols and tools. Captains Cook and Tidd were to go in
advance and cut the telegraph wires on the Maryland side.
Captain Stephens and Adjutant General Kagi. were to capture
Mr. Williams, the guard of the bridge. Captain Watson Brown
and Taylor were to hold up the passenger train due from the
west at i :40 A. M. It would be bound for 'Washington and
Baltimore. Captain Oliver Brown and Thompson were to hold
* the bridges spanning the two rivers. Captain Dauphin Adol-

^ phus Thompson and Lieutenant Anderson were to hold the

\ first building in the Armory grounds popularly known after-

3 wards as "John Brown's Fort." It was the engine house

where Brown held his most distinguished prisoners. From
% the portholes of it that they made after his entrance, his men

^ did their final fighting. Captain Coppoc and Lieutenant

H Hazlitt were to hold the Arsenal outside 'and opposite the

g Armory gates. Adjutant General Kagi and Copeland were

p to seize and retain Hall's Rifle Works. They were half of

a mile up the western shore of the Shenandoah. Cap-
tain Stephens, and such men as he might select, were to go
out to the home of Colonel Lewis W. Washington, the grand
nephew of General George Washington, and bring him and
some of his adult male slaves, to the engine house. They
were also to secure the swords presented to General George
Washington by Frederick the Great and by General Lafayette.
For this object Stephens selected as his helpers Captains Tidd
and Cook and privates Leary, Green and Anderson. Brown

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

made the raid at 11:30 that night. Mr. Williams the bridge
guard was captured by Stephens and Kagi. The watchman ^j

at the Armory, Daniel YVhelan, refused Brown and his men °

admission to the grounds. They broke the locks with tools, \>

captured Whelan, and took possession of the Armory and also
of the Arsenal outside. The following prisoners were brought
in early on Monday and placed in the engine house : Jesse W.

Archibald M. Kitzmiller, assistant superintendent; Isaac Rus-
sell, a Justice of the Peace; George D. Shope, of Frederick
and J. Bird, Arsenal armorer. The white prisoners were to
be held as hostages and the blacks were to be armed and
placed in Brown's army. Cook and Tidd evidently mis-
trusted their surroundings. During the night they made
their way back to the farm and hastily escaped into Penn-
sylvania. Captain Watson Brown and Taylor held up the
train bound for Baltimore, detaining it for three hours. The
colored porter of the depot. Shepherd Hayward, went out
on the bridge to hunt for AYilliams. He was brutally shot
by one of Brown's bridge guards. Hayward managed to crawl
to the baggage room where he died at noon on Monday. Dr.
John Starry dressed his wounds and ministered to his every
want. The physician was under the impression that a band
of train robbers had captured the depot. He told this to Mr.
Kitzmiller before KitzmiUer's imprisonment. Captain E. P.
Dangerfield, clerk to the paymaster, entered the grounds and
was hustled into the engine house quite early in the morning.
Numerous arriving workmen were imprisoned in an adjoin-
ing building. Colonel Washington said that fully sixty men
were imprisoned by eight o'clock on Monday morning. The
citizens were hearing of the situation. Newby and Green,
negroes, were stationed at the junction of High and Shen-
andoah streets. Newby shot at and killed Captain George
W. Turner, a graduate of West Point. Green shot and killed
Mr. Thomas Boerley. a grocer. Dr. Claggett attended Boer-

o

•9

Graham who was master workman, Colonel Lewis W. Wash- g

ington, Terance Byrne, John M. Allstadt, John Donohue, k,

who was clerk of the railroad company ; Benjamin F. Mills, ' J»
the master armorer; Armstead M. Ball, the master machinist;

E

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

ley, who also soon died. After the mulatto had shot Turner,
a man named Bogert entered the residence of Mrs. Stephen-
son by a rear door. Having no bullet he put a large nail into
his gun, went up stairs and shot Newby, the nail cutting his
throat from ear to ear. He was also shot in the stomach by
some one else. I saw him die, in great agony, with an in-
furiated crowd around him. About ten o'clock in the morn-
ing, armed citizens crossed the Potomac and Shenandoah
rivers to prevent the escape by the bridges, or by water, of any
of the raiders. Some walked down the Maryland river road
and wounded Captain Oliver Brown on the bridge. He
reached the engine house but soon died beside his father.
Citizens seized the uninjured prisoner, Captain Thompson,
and put him under guard at the Gait hotel. Captain Stephens
tried to reach the hotel to propose, as he stated, terms of sur-
render. George Chambers wounded him, and then assisted
him into the Gait hotel, where his wounds were dressed.
About eleven o'clock in the morning the Jefferson Guards
jfrom Charlestown commanded by Captain J. \Y. Rowen ar-
rived. A half hour passed and the Hamtramck guards under
Captain V. M. Butler came to the Ferry. They were fol-
lowed by the Shepherdstown Mounted Troop commanded by
Captain' Jacob Reinhart. Then a military company from
Martinsburg twenty miles distant reached the place, under
the command of Captain Alburtis. Colonels W. R. Baylor
and John T. Gibson took the general direction of the military
affairs. Some soldiers crossed the Shenandoah along with
armed citizens to intercept the four raiders Kagi, Leary. Lee-
man and Copeland, when they should be driven out of Hall's
Rifle Works. These raiders also had in these works one of
Colonel Washington's slaves pressed into their service. All
of them ran out into the river to swim across to the Loudon
County shore. All were shot to death in the river with the
exception of Copeland. He threw up his hands and sur-
rendered. During the excitement Hazlitt and the negro
Anderson left the Arsenal and, undetected, escaped into Penn-
sylvania. Early in the morning Captain Owen Brown, Bar-
clay Coppoc and Merriam had deserted the Kennedy farm

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN 9

and gone north. Thus seven of the twenty-two men fled to
the North". Cook and Hazlitt were captured. They were re-
turned to Virginia, tried and executed.

By 2 o'clock P. M., the town and hills swarmed with
militia and citizens. Brown had barricaded the engine house
doors with the engine and reel. Inside were Captains John
Brown and his son Watson ; also Captain Oliver Brown, who
was soon dead ; Shields Green, Captain Edwin Coppoc, Lieu-
tenant Jeremiah G. Anderson, Captain Dauphin Adolphus
Thompson and ten white prisoners. The numerous prison-
ers, mostly workmen, in the adjoining structure had all es-
caped from the grounds, Brown having no port-holes on that
side of his fort. The militia were afraid to fire into the port-
holes for fear of killing some of the prominent prisoners.
About 4 o'clock the Mayor, Mr. Fontaine Beckham, aged
sixty years, who was also station agent of the railroad com-
pany, went out on the platform unarmed. He was shot dead
by the negro Shields Green. Captain Watson Brown in the
engine house received his death wound soon afterwards.
Mayor Beckham was very much beloved by the people. A
number of citizens hurried into the hotel and brutally seized
Captain Thompson, threw him over the wall into the Po-
tomac and riddled him with bullets. Mrs. Foulke of the
hotel, and her colored porter, went to the platform and
brought in the dead body of the Mayor.

As night was settling on the excited city a military com-
pany from AVinchester, Virginia, commanded by Captain B.
B. Washington, arrived by a Shenandoah Valley train.
Shortly thereafter a Baltimore and Ohio railroad train brought
several companies of soldiers from Frederick, Maryland.
They were commanded by Colonel Shriver. Soon several in-
dependent companies from Baltimore, accompanied by the
Second Fight Brigade, arrived under the general command
of General Charles C. Edgerton. Colonel Robert E. Fee of
the United States army, overtook these troops at Sandy Hook,
a mile and a half below the Ferry on the Maryland side. Fie
had come from Washington with several companies of ma-

10 THE RAID OP JOHN BROWN

rines. He was accompanied by Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart,
afterwards a famous Confederate Cavalry General; also by
Major Russell and by Lieutenant Israel Green, who died sev-
eral months ago in the West. All were regular army officers.
Colonel Lee regarded it as unwise to attack the engine house
that night, fearing that Colonel Lewis W. Washington or
other prisoners might be killed. Early in the morning he
sent Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, who had once held Brown as
a prisoner in Kansas, to demand an immediate and uncondi-
tional surrender. Brown refused to trust himself and men
to the United States officers. About this time Colonel Rob-
ert E. Lee got within range of Captain Coppoc's rifle. Pris-
oners said that Mr. Graham knocked the muzzle aside. Lee's
life was saved. Had he been then killed who knows that the
battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, and the final conflicts north
of the Appomattox would have ever been fought? On the
Confederate side no abler general or more magnificent man,
ever sat on a saddle than Robert E. Lee. He was the son of
"Light Horse Harry Lee," a brave Major General of the Rev-
olutionary War. He was the father of William Henry Fitz-
hugh Lee, who became a Major General of the Confederate
forces of Virginia, at a later date. General Robert E. Lee
made a brilliant record in the Mexican war as Chief Engineer
of the United States army. After surrendering his decimated
army to General Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox, he ac-
cepted the political situation with dignity. He became
President of the Washington University at Lexington, Vir-
ginia. The South lavished on him every possible honor.
During the late summer the Virginia legislature placed in the
National Hall of Fame, at the United States Capitol, two fine
statues of two representative men of their state. One was
the statue of General George Washington; the other that of
General Robert E. Lee.

By the advice of Colonel Lewis W. Washington all of
Brown's prisoners mounted the fire engine and the reel car-
riage and lifted up their hands when the attack began. Three
marines undertook to batter down the doors with heavy

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN 11

sledge hammers. They were not successful. Then twelve
marines struck the doors with the end of a strong ladder.
They opened. Lieutenant Green entered first of all amidst a
shower of bullets. Discovering Brown reloading his rifle
he sprang on him with his sword and cut his head and
stomach. The raider Captain Anderson rose to shoot Green.
A marine named Luke Ouinn ran his bayonet through him.
Another raider shot Luke Ouinn who soon died. Two other
marines were wounded. I saw Captains Anderson and Wat-
son Brown as they lay dying on the grass after their capture.
The dead body of Captain Oliver Brown lay beside them.
Captain Watson Brown had been dying for sixteen hours.
Captain John Brown, bleeding profusely, and Captain Steph-
ens from the hotel, were carried into the paymaster's office.
Brown's long grey beard was stained with wet blood. He
was bare headed. His shirt and trousers were grey in color.
His trousers were tucked into the top of his boots. Captain
Coppoc and the negro Green were also taken prisoners. They
were not wounded.

As Brown lay on the floor of the paymaster's office he
was very cool and courageous. Governor Henry A. Wise,
United States Senator J. M. Mason of Virginia and Honor-
aide Clement L. Vallandingham of Ohio plied him with many
questions. To all he gave intelligent and fearless replies.
He refused to involve his Northern financiers and advisers.
He took the entire responsibility on himself. He told Gov-
ernor Wise that he, Brown, was simply "An instrument in
the hands of Providence." He said to some newspaper cor-
respondents and others: "I wish to say that you had better
—all you people of the South— prepare for a settlement of
this question. You may dispose of me very easily. I am
nearly disposed of now. But this question is yet to be set-
tled—this negro question I mean. The end is not yet." Be-
fore thirteen months had passed one of the greatest Ameri-
cans of any century, Abraham Lincoln, had been elected
President of the United States; the Republican party was
for the first time dominating national affairs and, soon there-

12 THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

after, the Civil War was begun which culminated in the
physical freedom of every slave in this Republic.

On Wednesday Captains John Brown, Stephens and
Coppoc, along with Copeland and Green, were removed to
the county jail at Charlestown, ten miles south of Harper's
Ferry. Being acquainted with the jailor, Captain John Avis,
I was permitted to visit Brown on one occasion. Captain
Aaron D. Stephens was lying on a cot in the same room. I
was told that Brown had ordered out of his room a Presby-
terian minister named Lowrey when he had proposed to offer
prayer. He had also said to my first colleague, Rev. James
H. March, "You do not know the meaning of the word Chris-
tianity. Of course I regard you as a gentleman, but only as
a heathen gentleman." I was advised to say nothing to him
about prayer. He had told other visitors that he wanted no
minister to pray with him who would not be willing to die
to free a slave. I was not conscious that I was ready for
martyrdom from Brown's standpoint. I have never been
anxious to die to save the life of any body. My life is as
valuable to me and my family as any other man's is to him
and his family. But young as I was I hated American
slavery. I was a "boy minister" of a great anti-slavery de-
nomination of Christians. For more than a century the
Methodist Episcopal Church has carried in its Disciplines its
printed testimony against slavery. It is to-day the largest
fully organized anti-slavery society on earth. I would have
gladly offered prayer in Brown's room at Charlestown if an
honorable opportunity had been afforded.

At his preliminary examination before five justices. Col-
onel Davenport presiding. Brown said: "Virginians! 1 did
not ask for quarter at the time I was taken. I did not ask to
have my life spared. Your governor assured me of a fair
trial. If you seek my blood you can have it at any time
without this mockery of a trial. I have no counsel. I have
not been able to advise with any one. I know nothing of
the feelings of my fellow prisoners and am utterly unable to
attend to my own defense. If a fair trial is to be allowed
there are mitigating circumstances to be urged. But, if we

THE RAID OP JOHN BROWN

13

are forced with a mere form, a trial for execution, you might
spare yourselves that trouble. I am ready for my fate."

Two very able Virginia attorneys were assigned as a
matter of State form as counsel for Brown. They were
Honorable Charles J. Faulkner of Martinsburg, afterwards
United States Envoy Extraordinary to France, and Judge
Green, Ex-Mayor of Charlestown. The county grand jury
indicted Brown on three separate charges: first, conspiracy
with slaves for purposes of insurrection; second, treason
against the commonwealth of Virginia; third, murder in the
first degree. Mr. Faulkner withdrew from the case and Air.
Lawson Botts took his place. Mr. Samuel Chilton a learned
lawyer of Washington, D. C, and Judge Henry Griswold of
Ohio, another distinguished attorney, volunteered their serv-
ices as counsel for John Brown and were accepted. Some of
Brown's friends sent an excellent young lawyer named George
H. Hovt from Boston, as additional counsel. These attorneys
made an able defense, whatever may have been their private
opinion as to Brown's guilt or innocence. The prosecuting at-
torney for the State of Virginia was Andrew Hunter, an ex-
ceptionally brilliant orator and able lawyer. Fie was a courtly
and commanding speaker. He was gifted with a rich and
powerful voice. After the indictment of Brown by the court
of justices, the prosecuting attorney of Jefferson county, Mr.
Charles B. Harding left the prosecution almost exclusively
to Mr. Andrew Hunter, who represented the State. So too,
after the arrival of Brown's chosen outside counsel, Judge
Green and Mr. Lawson Botts withdrew, in good taste, from
his defense.

At the regular trial Brown's counsel recpiested a post-
ponement on account of the prisoner's health. But Dr.
Mason, his physician, attested the physical ability of his
patient to undergo the strain. The State was spending al-
most a thousand dollars a day for military guards and other
items. When Brown's counsel presented telegrams from his
relatives asking for delay until they could forward proofs of
his insanity, Brown said, "I will say, if the court will allow
me, that T look on this as a miserable artifice and trick of

14 THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

those who ought to take a different course in regard to me
if they take any at all. I view it with contempt more than
otherwise. I am perfectly unconscious of insanity and I re-
ject, so far as I am capable, any attempts to interfere in my
behalf on that score."

On the last day of the trial, October 31st, after six
hours of argument by Hunter, Chilton and Griswold, the
jury delivered the following verdict: "Guilty of treason,
and of conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel ;
and of murder in the first degree." On Wednes-
day, November the 2nd, he was brought into court to
receive his sentence. The County Clerk, Robert H. Brown,
asked : " Have you anything to say why sentence should
not be passed on you?" Brown, leaning on a cane, slowly
arose from his chair and with plaintive emphasis addressed
Judge Parker as follows :

"I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.
In the first place I deny everything but what I have all
along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves.
I certainly intended to have made a clean thing of
that matter as I did last winter when I went into
Missouri and took slaves without the snapping of a gun on
either side, moved them through the country and finally left
them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing
again on a larger scale. That was all I intended. T never
did intend murder or treason, or the destruction of property,
or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion or to make insurrec-
tion. I have another objection and that is that it is unjust
that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the
manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly
proved, for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the
greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this
case, — had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful,
the intelligent, the so-called great ; or in behalf of any of
their friends, either father, mother, sister, brother, wife or
children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed
what I have in this interference, it would have been all right
and every man in this court would have deemed it an act

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

15

w

orthy of reward rather than punishment. This court
acknowledges as I suppose the validity of the law of God.
I see a hook kissed here which I suppose is the Bible, or
at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things,
whatsoever I would that men should do to me I should do
even unto them. It teaches me further to 'Remember them
that are in bonds as bound with them.' I endeavored to act
up to that instruction. I say that I am yet too young to
understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe
that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always ad-
mitted freely I have done, in behalf of His despised poor
was not wrong but right. Now if it is deemed necessary
that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends
of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of
my children and with the blood of millions in this slave coun-
try whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust
enactments, I submit. So let it be done.

"Let me say one word further. I feel entirely satisfied with
the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all
the circumstances it has been more generous than I expected.
But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I never had any design
against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit
treason or excite slaves to rebellion or make any general in-
surrection. I never encouraged any man to do so but always
discouraged any idea of the kind.

"Let me say a word in regard to the statements made
by some of those connected with me. I hear it has been stated
by some of them that I induced them to join me. But the
contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as re-
gards their weakness. There is not one of them but joined
me of his own accord and the greater part of them at their own
expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a
word of conversation with, till the day they came to me and
that was for the purpose I have stated. Now I am done."

Brown's statement was not exactly sustained by the
facts. Why had he collected the Sharpe's rifles, the pikes,
the kegs of powder, many thousands of caps and much war-
like material at the Kennedy farm? Why did he and other

16 THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

armed men, break into the United States Armory and Arsenal,
make portholes in the engine house, shoot and kill citizens
and surround their own imprisoned persons with prominent
men as hostages? But everybody in the court house be-
lieved the old man when he said that he did everything with
a solitary motive, the liberation of the slaves.

Judge Parker could, under his oath, do nothing else than
to sentence him to be hung. He fixed the date for Friday,
the second of December. Brown's counsel appealed to the
Supreme Court of Virginia. Its five judges unanimously
sustained the action of the Jefferson county court.

Brown was hung on the bright and beautiful morning of
December 2nd at 11:15 o'clock. At his request Andrew
Hunter wrote his will. He then visited his fellow prisoners
who were all executed at a later date. He rode to his death
between Sheriff Campbell and Captain Avis in a furniture
wagon drawn by two white horses. He did not ride seated
on his coffin as some of his chief eulogists have affirmed.
The wagon was escorted to the scaffold by State military
companies. No citizens were allowed near to the jail.
Hence he did not kiss any negro baby as he emerged from
his prison, as Mr. Whittier has described in a poem on the
event and as artists have memorialized in paintings. The
utter absurdity of such an incident occurring under such sur-
roundings any Virginian will see. Avis, Campbell and
Hunter publicly denied it. But the story will doubtless
have immortality. In one of the companies of soldiers
walked the actor John Wilkes Booth, the infamous assassin
of Abraham Lincoln. At the head of the Lexington cadets
walked Professor Thomas Jefferson Jackson, who became
an able Confederate General and is best known to the world
as "Stonewall Jackson." As the party neared the gallows
Brown gazed on the glorious panorama of mountain and
landscape scenery. Then he said : "This is a beautiful
country." He wore a black slouch hat with the front tipped
:lip. Reaching the scaffold the numerous State troops
formed into a hollow square. Brown mounted the platform
without trepidation. Standing on the drop he said to the

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN 17

sheriff and his assistants: '•Gentlemen! I thank yon for
your kindness to me. I am ready at any time. Do not
keep me waiting-." The drop fell and in ten minutes Dr.
Mason pronounced him dead. That evening- Mrs. Brown
and her friends received the casket at Harper's Ferry and
accompanied it to the old home at North Elba, N. Y. His
funeral, as reported by the metropolitan papers, took place
there six days after his execution. An immense concourse
was in attendance. The conspicuous and brilliant orator,
Wendell Phillips, delivered the address. He closed it with
these words: "In this cottage he girded himself and went
forth to battle. Fuller success than his heart ever dreamed
of God had granted him. He sleeps in the blessings of the
crushed and the poor. Men believe more firmly in virtue
now that such a man has lived." Personally I remained in
Virginia.

On the day that Brown was hung Martyr Services, as
they were called, were held in many Northern localities. At
Concord. Dr. Edmund Sears read a poem in which are these
stanzas :

"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 length

And opes each dungeon door ;
And God's Great Charter holds and waves

O'er all the humble poor.

And then the humble poor may come

In that far distant day.
And from the felon's nameless grave

Will brush the leaves away :
And gray old men will point the spot

Beneath the pine tree's shade,
As children ask with streaming eyes

A\ "here old lohn Brown was laid."

18 THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

Before he was executed many threatening communica-
tions were received by the Virginia State and Jefferson
Countv officers. Large numbers of E. C. Stedman's poem,
entitled "John Brown of Ossawattamie," were scattered
about Charlestown. One stanza reads as follows:

"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,
Ossowattamie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever.
When you've nailed his coffin down."

AYhether they be from the North or the South, fair-
minded men, who are thoroughly conversant with the history
of this raid, can hardly cherish any doubt concerning the
turpitude of the invasion, the fairness of Brown's trial and the
justice of his conviction and execution. He fell under the
direction of a misguided conscience. The noble endowment
that philosophers call conscience, that gives its verdicts as to
the moral merit or demerit of actions and affections, was
strangely warped in Brown's intense and brave character.
The possession of this faculty of conscience is the massive
foundation of all human responsibility. Illustrations of the
moral enormities that a perverted conscience can perpetrate
are manifold along the pages of sacred and secular history.

When Jesus looked clown the aisles of the future, He
said to His disciples that the men who would finally transfig-
ure them into martyrs would murder them in the belief tha:
they were rendering acceptable service to God.

Paul declared that he regarded himself as meeting the
divine approval when he was persecuting and murdering
the primitive Christians.

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN 19

When the officers of the Spanish Inquisition saw the
agonies of the victims who refused to renounce their relig-
ious creeds they joyfully exclaimed, "Let God be glorified."

Charles the Ninth of France said he was conscientious
in ordering the Saint Bartholomew massacre that resulted in
the murder in French cities of tens of thousands of Chris-
tian Hugenots.

The Bloody Queen, Mary Tudor, said she had a pure
conscience when she sent to the scaffold the learned and gen-
tle young Ex-Queen Lady Jane Grey. Thousands of crim-
inals have sheltered their crimes in the temple of Conscience.

The trend of Brown's constant defence was that he obey-
ed his conscience. His lawless conduct, the death of many
of his party and the murder of Virginia citizens gave him
very little apparent intellectual unrest. He sowed to the
wind and reaped the logical harvest, if it is the appropriate
word, the whirlwind.

Brown's high Calvinism bordered on fatalism. Oliver
Cromwell never believed more radically in the foreordina-
'tion of all human actions than did he. When questioned con-
cerning the failure of this invasion he replied : "All of our act-
ions, even all of the follies that led to this disaster, were de-
creed to happen ages before the world was made." When
Judge Russell visited him he said: "I know that the very
errors by which my scheme was marred were decreed before
the world was made. I had no more to do with the course I
pursued than a shot leaving a cannon has to do with the spot
where it shall fall."

It is when patriotic men read the story of "John Brown's
Raid" by the torches of President Lincoln's early election, the
Civil War and the Emancipation of all American slaves, that
they seem to become blind to the terrible criminal features
of the invasion and look only at the national results and the
magnificient courage, benevolent motives and supreme self-
sacrifice of this martyr. Multitudes of visionary men regard
him as a divinely appointed John the Baptist raised up to
usher in the day of physical freedom for every slave on
American soil and their posterity to the end of time. They

20 THE RAID OP JOHN BROWN

claim that in this instance "The End has justified the Means."
His raid made the North solid against the slave system and
the South as solid against anti-slavery theories and agitators.
Before the Brown raid the vote for John C. Fremont, the Re-
publican candidate for President, was 1 341000. James Buch-
anan had 496000 majority. The year after the raid Abraham
Lincoln received 1886000 votes for President and had 491000
majority over Stephen A. Douglas, when the South voted for
another Democrat. Fremont had 114 votes in the Elec-
toral College. Lincoln had 180. Under his presidency the
emancipation of every slave on the national soil took place.
The nations of Europe learned for the first time the important
lesson that the United States was able to maintain its nation-
al unity. This raid beyond question hastened in the Civil
War. I have seen Federal regiments marching on to battle
enthusiasticallv singing:

"John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave,

But his soul is marching on."

A few weeks after Brown's execution Victor Hugo said.
"What the South slew last December was not John Brown
but slavery." His statement developed into a colossal histori-
cal truth. The great statesman, orator and senator, John J.
Ingalls of Kansas, closed an oration with these remarkable
words :

"Carlyle says that when any great change in human so-
ciety is to be wrought God raises up men to whom that
change is made to appear as the one thing needful and ab-
solutely indispensable. Scholars, orators, poets, philanthro-
pists, play their parts, but the crisis comes at last through
some one who is stigmatized as a fanatic by his contempor-
aries, and whom the supporters of the systems he assails
crucify between theives or gibbet as a felon. The man who
is not afraid to die for an idea is the most potential and con-
vincing advocate.

"Already the great intellectual leaders of the movement
for the abolition of slavery are dead. The student of the
future will exhume their orations, arguments and state pa-
pers, as a part of the subterranean history of the epoch.

THE RAID OP JOHN BROWN 21

The antiquarian will dig- up their remains from the alluvial
drift of the period, and construe their relations to the great
events in which they were actors. But the three men of this
era who will loom forever against the remotest horizon of
time, as the pvramids against the voiceless desert, or moun-
tain peaks over the subordinate plains, are Abraham Lincoln,
Ulysses S. Grant and old John Brown of Ossowattamie."

Senator Ingalls well knew that Brown had no such in-
tellectual massiveness, or splendid culture, as had Webster,
Clay, Jefferson, Sumner, and many other eminent Ameri-
cans. He referred to the majesty of personal achievements.
From this standpoint men like Garabaldi, Morse. Harriman,
Edison, Roosevelt and Cook, the Arctic explorer have been
great. Brown's life was a perpetual sacrifice for the annihila-
tion of American slavery. Very defective as a military lead-
er he was always ready to do, dare and die to assist in this
work. Even today tens of thousands of educated men re-
gard him as a monomaniac concerning the abolition of
slavery. For many years, in the state of Kansas, he had per-
mitted his own life, and the life of each of his sons, to be
in continual peril that they might assist in placing Kansas
in the constellation of free States. Men like Gerrit Smith
and John L. Stearns financed his schemes from their wealth.
Men like Henry Ward Beecher, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
George B. Cheever, AYilliam Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phil-
lips and Theodore Parker, delivered eulogies on Brown af-
ter he had been hung. They most eloquently denounced slav-
ery from pulpits and platforms; but they lived in the lime-
light of oratorical popularity and flourished amidst luxurious
ease. To Brown's immortal credit be it said that he gave
domestic security, his humble fortune, his perillous work,
the lives of his cherished sons and his own blood and life for
the anti-slavery opinions that were anchored in his soul. His
prison letters to many friends are full of intrepidity, submis-
sion to the divine providence and heroic anticipations of im-
mortal blessedness. Ten minutes before he left his jail cell
for the gallows he handed to a prison official a sheet of paper
on which he had written these words: "I, John Brown, am

22 THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be
purged away but with blood, I had, as I now think, vainly
flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might
be done."

His surpassing bravery and self-sacrihcing candor pro-
foundly impressed eminent Virginians. Governor Henry
A. Wise said: "He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw,
cut and thrust ; and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man oi
clear head, of courage, fortitude and simple ingenuousness.
He is cool, collected, indomitable; and it is but just to him
to say that he was humane to his prisoners. He is a fanatic,
but firm, and truthful and intelligent." Colonel Lewis W.
Washington and Captain John E. P. Dangerfield bore testi-
mony to his courage.

Brown's wonderful moral heroism became resplendent
after Judge Richard Parker had sentenced him to death.
Many of his letters to his friends, collected and published by
Mr. F. B. Sanford, would have done honor to the pen of Paul.
He was exultant from the standpoint of a happy spiritual
experience and triumphant as he gazed beyond this mortal
life. In one of his last letters he wrote these words: '"I sleep
as peacefully as an infant, or if I am wakeful glorious thoughts
come to me entertaining my mind. I do not believe I shall
deny my Lord and Master, Jesus Christ, in this prison or on
the scaffold. But I should do so if I denied my principles
against slavery." Surely he must have been sincere as he
faced eternity.

As early as 1820 John Quincy Adams said of the over-
throw of American slavery, "The object is vast in its com-
pass, awful in its prospects and sublime and beautiful in its
issues. A life devoted to it would be nobly spent or sacri-
ficed." John Brown, along illegal and criminal lines, placed
before the world such a life and death. He saw clearly what
American statesmen of his period saw but dimly. Beyond
all question he died as emphatically for the overthrow of
slavery as Paul died for the honor of Christianity. Three
of his favorite books were the life stories of men of great

THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN 23

achievements: — "The Life of Oliver Cromwell," "The Life
of Marco Bozarris," and "The Life of William Wallace."

Some years ago, in an oration delivered at Harper's Ferry,
the distinguished freedman and orator, the late Frederick
Douglass, said: "If John Brown did not end the war that
ended slavery he did at least begin the war that ended slavery.
If we look over the dates, places and men for which
this honor is claimed we shall find that not Carolina, but
Virginia ; not Fort Sumter, bjut Harper's Ferry and the
United States Arsenal ; not Major Anderson, but John Brown,
began the war that ended American slavery and made this
a free republic. Until this blow was struck the prospect was
dim, shadowv and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was
one of words, votes and compromises. When John Brown
stretched forth his arm the sky was cleared, the time for
compromise was gone, the armed hosts stood face to face
over the chasm of a broken Union and the clash of arms was
at hand."

And let it be remembered that when Brown had told
Douglass the details of his proposed invasion at Harper's
Ferrv, Douglass begged him to abandon his plans and assured
him that they would end. as they did, in untold disaster.

The chief authors who have written concerning John
Brown and his invasion were not in Virginia during the forty-
four days intervening between the raid and his execution.
They were destitute of any personal knowledge of the facts.
They were bitter enemies of the South and most intense ad-
mirers of the intrepid man executed at Charlestown. Their
narratives are replete with errors and contain much romance.
They are, generally, saturated with misrepresentation of the
Virginia people and are burdened with eulogistic apologies for
Brown's conduct in Virginia. Because T was on the ground
and saw things as they occurred ; because I have kept in
touch with Brown literature; and because I am in love with
the Truth I believe that my story is worthy of public con-
fidence.

I have known Virginians, personally, for over fifty years.
My long career, as a minister of Christ, was begun among

24 THE RAID OF JOHN BROWN

them. They have not deserved the traduction Brown's eulo-
gists have heaped on them. His unfortunate execution was
the logical result of his criminal and bloody raid. The Vir-
ginia people have been noble in chivalry, bounteous in hos-
pitality, sublime in kindness of heart and life and models of
high social and moral purity.

Spartacus led the way for the destruction of Roman
slavery. John Brown performed a similar service for the
American slaves. He mingled in his strange character fanat-
icism and courage — eccentricity and a prophetical insight into
future events — a warped conscience and a sublime martyr
heroism. But whether in safety or peril, at home or in pris-
on, in battle or on the scaffold, this mysterious man intensely
cherished the conviction that Joanna Baillie imbedded into
poetry :

"The strength of man sinks in the hour of trial,
But there doth live a power that for the battle
Girdeth the weak."

NOV B91909

NOV 29 1909