Part 3
Daniel Whelan, the armory’s nightwatchman, heard the wagon coming down the street from the depot. Thinking it was the head watchman, he came out from his station in the fire enginehouse (a one-story, two-room brick building that doubled as a guard post just inside the armory grounds) to find several rifles pointed at him. “Open the gate!” someone yelled. Out of sheer cussedness, or perhaps fright, Whelan refused. One of the raiders took the crowbar from the wagon and twisted it in the chain until the lock snapped. The gate was thrown open and the wagon rolled into the yard. To his prisoners, Whelan and Williams, Brown announced his purpose:
I came here from Kansas, and this is a slave state; I want to free all the Negroes in this state; I have possession now of the United States armory, and if the citizens interfere with me I must only burn the town and have blood.
Once in control of the armory, Brown detailed his men to other objectives. Oliver Brown and William Thompson were sent to watch the bridge across the Shenandoah River, while Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc moved into the unguarded arsenal. Another group of raiders under Stevens made its way down Shenandoah Street to the rifle factory on Lower Hall Island. Again the watchman was surprised and easily captured. Telling Kagi and Copeland to watch the rifle works—Leary would join them later—Stevens marched the watchman and several young men picked up on the street back to the armory grounds.
So far Brown’s occupation of the town had been quiet and peaceful. It did not last. About midnight another watchman, Patrick Higgins, a Sandy Hook resident, arrived at the Maryland end of the B & O bridge to relieve Williams. Finding the structure dark he called out loudly; he was answered quietly by Taylor and Watson Brown, who took him prisoner. As he was being escorted across the bridge, Higgins suddenly lashed out, struck Brown in the face, and raced toward the town. Taylor fired after him. The ball grazed the watchman’s scalp, but he reached the Wager House safely. The first shot of the raid had been fired.
About this same time Stevens led several raiders on a special mission to capture Col. Lewis W. Washington, the 46-year-old great-grandnephew of George Washington. The colonel, a small but prosperous planter, lived near Halltown just off the Charles Town Turnpike about 5 miles west of Harpers Ferry. He owned a pistol presented to General Washington by the Marquis de Lafayette and a sword reportedly presented by the Prussian King Frederick the Great. Brown wanted these weapons. When he struck the first blow to free the slaves he rather fancied the idea of wearing the sword and brandishing the pistol once owned by the man who had led the fight to free the American colonists from a similar kind of tyranny.
Battering down Washington’s door, Stevens, Tidd, Cook, and three Negroes—Anderson, Leary, and Green—summoned the colonel from his bed. Washington offered no resistance. Calmly surrendering the sword and pistol, he then dressed and climbed into his carriage for the trip to Harpers Ferry. The raiders and Washington’s three slaves crammed into the colonel’s four-horse farm wagon and followed along behind the carriage.
LEGEND A Armory Employee Dwellings P Private Dwellings V Vacant at Time of Raid
On the way the procession stopped at the home of another slaveholder, John Allstadt, just west of Bolivar Heights. Again using a fence rail to gain entrance, the raiders forced Allstadt and his 18-year-old son into the wagon while the terror-stricken women of the house shrieked “Murder!” from the upstairs windows. Allstadt’s four slaves were also added to the group.
While Stevens’ party was gathering hostages, the first note of tragedy was sounded. At 1:25 a.m. the Baltimore and Ohio passenger train eastbound for Baltimore arrived at Harpers Ferry and was stopped by a clerk from the Wager House who told conductor A. J. Phelps of the recent “startling” events. Phelps refused to allow the train to cross the bridge until it had been checked, and he sent engineer William McKay and baggagemaster Jacob Cromwell out to investigate. They were halted by Brown’s guards, who turned them back at gunpoint.
Hayward Shepherd, the station baggageman, heard the commotion and walked out to see what was going on. Shepherd, a free Negro, was highly respected and well-liked by all who knew him. As he approached the bridge a raider told him to halt. Instead, Shepherd turned around and started back toward the station. A shot rang out and he fell gravely wounded. He dragged himself back to the station where he died the next afternoon. The first person to die at the hands of the men who had come to free the slaves was, in fact, a Negro already free.
Between 4 and 5 a.m. the caravan containing Colonel Washington and the Allstadts arrived at the armory. Brown armed the frightened slaves with pikes and told them to guard the prisoners, who were placed in the enginehouse and now numbered about a half-dozen. “Keep these white men inside,” he said. Turning to Washington, Brown explained that he had taken him hostage because “as the aid to the Governor of Virginia, I knew you would endeavor to perform your duty, and perhaps you would have been a troublesome customer to me; and, apart from that, I wanted you particularly for the moral effect it would give our cause, having one of your name our prisoner.” As dawn approached the number of Brown’s prisoners increased as unsuspecting armory employees reporting for work were seized as they passed through the gate. Perhaps as many as 40 hostages were eventually jammed into the two rooms of the enginehouse.
Near dawn, John Cook, with two raiders and a handful of pike-carrying Negroes, took the wagon across the bridge into Maryland to bring the weapons closer to the town to arm the hundreds of slaves soon expected to join the fight. The rest of Brown’s “army” settled down at their posts in the waning darkness to await the coming of day, the last for many of them.
Thus far the citizens of Harpers Ferry had offered no resistance to the invasion of their town, primarily because most of the townspeople knew nothing of what was taking place. At the first streak of daylight, Dr. John Starry, a 35-year-old local physician who had maintained an all-night vigil beside the dying Hayward Shepherd, began to alert the people to the danger. After arousing the residents of Virginius Island, he rode to warn Acting Armory Superintendent A. M. Kitzmiller. Next he ordered the Lutheran Church bell rung to assemble the citizens and ascertain what arms were available for defense. Then he sent a messenger off to Shepherdstown and another to Charles Town to alert their militia companies of the armed occupation of Harpers Ferry.
Among the townspeople there were only one or two squirrel rifles and a few shotguns, none of which were really fit for use. All other weapons were in the arsenal buildings, and they were occupied by the raiders. Knowing it would be futile to confront Brown’s men unarmed, Dr. Starry headed for Charles Town, 8 miles away, to hurry its militia along. But no prompting was necessary. To Charles Town residents the news from Harpers Ferry was frightening, for it awakened memories of the 1831 Nat Turner slave rebellion in Virginia’s tidewater region when more than 50 whites, mostly women and children, were murdered before the bloody uprising was put down. The Jefferson Guards and another hastily formed company would march as soon as possible.
At daylight on October 17 Brown allowed the B & O passenger train to continue its journey to Baltimore. Conductor Phelps wasted no time in sounding the alarm. At Monocacy, Md., at 7:05 a.m. he telegraphed his superiors about the night’s events, adding:
They say they have come to free the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards. The leader of those men requested me to say to you that this is the last train that shall pass the bridge either East or West. If it is attempted it will be at the peril of the lives of those having them in charge.... It has been suggested you had better notify the Secretary of War at once. The telegraph lines are cut East and West of Harper’s Ferry and this is the first station that I could send a dispatch from.
John W. Garrett, president of the railroad, saw the message when it came in and immediately sent word to President James Buchanan and Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise. At the same time he alerted Maj. Gen. George H. Stewart, commanding Baltimore’s First Light Division of the Maryland Volunteers. Word was also flashed to Frederick, Md., and that town’s militia was soon under arms.
By 7 a.m. the residents of Harpers Ferry had discovered a supply of guns in a building overlooked by the raiders, and some of the townspeople began to move against Brown and his men. Alexander Kelly, armed with a shotgun, approached the corner of High and Shenandoah Streets, about 100 yards from the armory. Before he could fire, several bullets whizzed past his head, one putting a hole through his hat. Shortly afterwards, groceryman Thomas Boerly, a man of great physical strength and courage, approached the same corner and opened fire on a group of Brown’s men standing in the arsenal yard, diagonally across the street from the armory gate. A return bullet knocked him down with a “ghastly” wound, from which he soon died.
A lull followed the shooting of Boerly. Brown, having made no provision to feed his men and hostages, released Walter Kemp, an infirm Wager House bartender captured earlier, in exchange for 45 breakfasts. But when the food came, few ate it. Many, including Washington, Allstadt, and Brown himself, feared it had been drugged or poisoned.
Meanwhile, Kagi, still at the rifle factory, was anxiously sending messages to Brown urging him to leave Harpers Ferry while they still had the chance. Brown ignored the pleas and continued to direct operations with no apparent thought that outside forces would be moving against him once the alarm had spread. Why, is anybody’s guess. Up until noon of October 17, despite the erratic fire from the townspeople, the raiders could have fought their way to safety in the mountains. Instead, Brown waited, doing nothing. By mid-day it was too late, and the jaws of the “steel-trap” foreseen by Frederick Douglass closed swiftly.
THE TIGER CAGED
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.