Part 4
From time to time Brown called out, “Men, are you awake?” Only five of the raiders were still unwounded and able to hold a rifle: Brown himself, Edwin Coppoc, J. G. Anderson, Dauphin Thompson, and Shields Green. Stewart Taylor, the Canadian soldier of fortune, lay dead in a corner, his presentiment of death come true. He had been shot like Oliver Brown while standing at the enginehouse doorway. Oliver himself, writhing in pain, begged to be killed and put out of his misery. “If you must die, then die like a man,” snapped his father. After awhile Oliver was quiet. “I guess he is dead,” Brown said. Nearby, Watson Brown lay quietly breathing his last. The attack that had begun but 24 hours before was fast coming to an end.
THE TRAP IS SPRUNG
The somberness that permeated the fire enginehouse contrasted sharply with the din outside. Hundreds of militiamen and townspeople jammed the streets, which echoed with whoops and yells. Anxious and hysterical friends and relatives of Brown’s hostages added to the confusion. While the quasi-military operations ended at nightfall, the non-military activities continued with increasing fervor. The bars in the Wager House and Gault House Saloon were enjoying an unprecedented business. Many men were intoxicated, and they fired their guns wildly into the air and occasionally at the enginehouse. All semblance of order was gone and the “wildest excitement” prevailed throughout the night.
During this confusion two of Brown’s men made their escape. Of the raiders caught in Harpers Ferry when the Jefferson Guards seized the B & O bridge at midday on October 17, Albert Hazlett and Osborn P. Anderson, occupying the arsenal, went unnoticed during the day. At night they crept out, mingled with the disorderly crowds, crossed the Potomac into Maryland, and fled north.
Into the midst of the chaos created by the drunken and disorderly militia and townspeople marched 90 U.S. Marines led by a 52-year-old Army colonel, Robert E. Lee. Lee had been at his home in Arlington, Va., that afternoon when Lt. J. E. B. Stuart brought him secret orders to report to the War Department at once. There President Buchanan and Secretary of War Floyd told him of Brown’s attack and ordered him to leave immediately for Harpers Ferry with the only Federal troops readily available, a detachment of Marines at the Washington Navy Yard. Upon his arrival at Harpers Ferry, Lee was to take command of all forces in the town. Lieutenant Stuart, scenting excitement, asked for and received permission to accompany Lee, who, in the hurry of departure, had no time to return home and don his uniform.
The Marines, under the immediate command of Lt. Israel Green, left Washington before Lee and arrived at Sandy Hook in late afternoon. Lee and Stuart joined them at 10:30 p.m. Marching into Harpers Ferry, the Marines entered the armory yard about 11 p.m. and replaced the disorganized militia. Lee would have ordered an immediate attack on the enginehouse “But for the fear of sacrificing the lives of some of the gentlemen held ... as prisoners....”
About 2:30 a.m., October 18, Lee wrote a surrender demand and handed it to Stuart for delivery to Brown under a white flag when so directed. He hoped that the raider chieftain could be persuaded to surrender peaceably and avoid further bloodshed, but he expected that he would be taken only by force and laid his plans accordingly. In the early morning hours, Lee, believing the raid to be chiefly aimed against State authority and not the Federal Government, offered the honor of assaulting the enginehouse to Colonel Shriver of the Maryland Volunteers. Shriver declined. “These men of mine have wives and children,” he said. “I will not expose them to such risks. You are paid for doing this kind of work.” Lee then offered the task to Colonel Baylor of the Virginia militia. Baylor promptly declined it for the same reasons. Lieutenant Green was then asked if he wished “the honor of taking those men out.” Green lifted his cap, thanked Lee, and picked a storming party of 12 men. He instructed them to use only their bayonets, as bullets might injure some of the hostages.
By 7 a.m. there was enough light for operations. All arrangements for the assault had been completed. The militia formed up outside the armory wall to keep the street clear of spectators and to prevent indiscriminate firing that might injure the storming party. The Marines took position at the northwest corner of the enginehouse, just out of the line of fire from the door. Then Lieutenant Stuart moved forward with the surrender demand. Brown opened the door a few inches and placed his body against the crack so the lieutenant could not see inside. He held a cocked rifle in one hand. Stuart read the terms offered by Lee:
Colonel Lee, United States Army, commanding troops sent by the President of the United States to suppress the insurrection at this place, demands the surrender of the persons in the Armory buildings. If they will peaceably surrender themselves and restore the pillaged property, they shall be kept in safety to await the orders of the President. Col. Lee represents to them, in all frankness, that it is impossible for them to escape; that the Armory is surrounded on all sides by troops; and that if he is compelled to take them by force he cannot answer for their safety.
Robert E. Lee and J. E. B. Stuart are pictured here about the time of the raid.
According to Stuart, the parley was “a long one.” Brown refused to surrender. Instead he presented his own propositions “in every possible shape, and with admirable tact,” insisting that he, his men, and his hostages be permitted to cross the river unmolested.
Stuart, instructed not to accept any counter-proposals, sensed that further discussion was useless. Stepping back from the door, he waved his hat, a pre-arranged signal for the Marines to attack. Brown slammed the door shut and the troops came on. Three men with sledge hammers pounded the center door of the enginehouse, but it would not yield; the raiders had placed the fire engines against it. Spotting a heavy ladder nearby, Lieutenant Green directed his men to use it as a battering-ram. On the second blow the door splintered and a small opening was effected.
Lieutenant Green was the first man through. Maj. W. W. Russell, armed only with a rattan cane, followed immediately. Pvt. Luke Quinn squeezed through behind Russell and fell dead at the door, shot through his groin. Another Marine, Pvt. Mathew Ruppert, stepped over Quinn, then dropped his gun and clawed his face in pain where a bullet had torn through his cheek. The rest of the storming party entered without injury.
The hostages cowered at the rear of the building; Brown knelt between the fire engines, rifle in hand. As Green came through the row of engines, Colonel Washington greeted him and pointed at Brown. Green raised his sword and brought it down with all his strength, cutting a deep wound in the back of the raider chieftain’s neck. As Brown fell, Green lunged with his sword, striking part of the raider’s accouterments and bending the blade double. Green then showered blow after blow upon Brown’s head until he fell unconscious. Two of the raiders were killed almost immediately after the Marines entered the building: Dauphin Thompson, pinned against the rear wall by a bayonet, and Jeremiah Anderson, run through by a saber as he sought refuge under one of the fire engines. Edwin Coppoc and Shields Green surrendered. The fight was over in about 3 minutes.
None of the hostages was injured, although Lieutenant Green considered them the “sorriest lot of people I ever saw.” The dead, dying, and wounded raiders were carried outside and laid in a row on the grass. As Brown slowly regained consciousness, the Marines had trouble keeping back the throngs of militia and townspeople who wanted to see the wounded raider leader. After noon, Brown and Stevens, still suffering from the wounds he received on October 17, were carried to the paymaster’s office where a group of inquisitors, including Virginia’s Governor Henry A. Wise and Senator James M. Mason, and Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, questioned them for 3 hours in an effort to learn their purpose and the names of their supporters in the North.
During the interrogation Brown lay on the floor, his hair matted and tangled, his face, hands, and clothes soiled and smeared with blood. He talked freely, and while he readily admitted his intention to free the slaves, “and only that,” he refused to divulge the names of his Northern backers. “No man sent me here,” he said; “it was my own prompting and that of my Maker, or that of the devil, whichever you ascribe it to. I acknowledge no man in human form.” He continued:
I want you to understand, gentlemen ... that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that has moved me, and that alone. We expect no reward, except the satisfaction of endeavoring to do for those in distress and greatly oppressed, as we would be done by. The cry of distress of the oppressed is my reason, and the only thing that has prompted me to come here.
Brown then issued a prophetic warning:
I wish to say furthermore, that you had better—all you people at the South—prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily; I am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled—this negro question I mean—the end of that is not yet.
JOHN BROWN’S BODY
The day after their capture, Brown and his surviving followers—Stevens, Edwin Coppoc, Shields Green, and John Copeland—were taken to Charles Town under heavy guard and lodged in the county jail. The cell doors had hardly banged shut when they learned that they were to receive speedy trials. The grand jury was then in session, and the semiannual term of the circuit court, presided over by Judge Richard Parker, had begun.
The five raiders were arraigned on October 25, just one week after their capture. The next day they were indicted for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, for conspiring with slaves to rebel, and for murder. Each defendant pleaded “Not guilty” and each asked for a separate trial. The court consented and elected to try Brown first. Two court-appointed attorneys, 36-year-old Lawson Botts, who had helped to capture the raiders, and Thomas C. Green, the 39-year-old Mayor of Charles Town, were called upon to defend him. Charles Harding, Commonwealth Attorney for Jefferson County, and Andrew Hunter, a veteran Charles Town lawyer, served as prosecutors for the State.
The trial began on October 27. It lasted 3½ days. Still suffering from his wounds, Brown was carried back and forth from jail to courthouse, and lay on a cot during much of the proceedings. Judge Parker had hardly brought the court to order when defense counsel Botts astounded the packed courtroom (including Brown himself) by reading a telegram from A. H. Lewis of Akron, Ohio, dated October 26:
John Brown, leader of the insurrection at Harper’s Ferry, and several of his family, have resided in this county for many years. Insanity is hereditary in that family. His mother’s sister died with it, and a daughter of that sister has been two years in a Lunatic Asylum. A son and daughter of his mother’s brother have also been confined in the lunatic asylum, and another son of that brother is now insane and under close restraint. These facts can be conclusively proven by witnesses residing here, who will doubtless attend the trial if desired.
After receiving the telegram, Botts had gone to the jail to talk with Brown about it. The raider leader had readily admitted that there were instances of insanity in his mother’s side of the family (in fact, his mother had died insane), but asserted that there was none at all on his father’s side. He said his first wife had shown symptoms of it, as had two of their sons, Frederick and John, Jr. Clearly, by introducing the Lewis telegram, the defense hoped to save Brown’s life by having him declared insane and committed to an institution. But the old abolitionist refused to sanction such a plea. Rising up on his cot, he exclaimed:
I will add, if the Court will allow me, that I look upon it as a miserable artifice and pretext of those who ought to take a different course in regard to me, if they took any at all, and I view it with contempt more than otherwise. As I remarked to Mr. Green, insane persons, so far as my experience goes, have but little ability to judge of their own sanity; and, if I am insane, of course I should think I know more than all the rest of the world. But I do not think so. I am perfectly unconscious of insanity, and I reject, so far as I am capable, any attempt to interfere in my behalf on that score.
Lawson Botts and Thomas C. Green were appointed by the court to defend the raider leader. Brown, however, did not trust them to provide him an adequate defense.
Brown had more faith in the three lawyers provided by his Northern friends. Their efforts to save him from the gallows, however, proved fruitless.
Judge Parker ruled out the insanity plea on the basis that the evidence had not been presented in a reliable form. He also rejected Bott’s request for a delay in the proceedings to allow new counsel of Brown’s own choosing to come from Ohio. The trial continued.
The defense lawyers were increased to three when George Hoyt joined Botts and Green. Hoyt, a 21-year-old Boston lawyer, was sent to Charles Town by some of Brown’s Northern supporters ostensibly to defend the raider chieftain; his real mission was to gather information that might be useful to those plotting Brown’s escape.
As the trial progressed, Brown became more and more irritated with his court-appointed lawyers and openly expressed his lack of confidence in them. Botts and Green thereupon withdrew, leaving Hoyt, the woefully inexperienced “beardless boy” who was entirely unacquainted with the code and procedure of the Virginia courts and knowing very little about the case, burdened with the sole responsibility for conducting the defense in one of the most sensational trials the country had ever witnessed. He was soon reinforced, however, by more seasoned counsel. Samuel Chilton of Washington, D.C., and Hiram Griswold of Cleveland, Ohio, were persuaded by Brown’s influential friends to join the fight to save the abolitionist’s life. But their arrival made little difference; the outcome of the trial was inevitable.
The prosecution’s parade of witnesses recounted the story of the attack on Harpers Ferry, the arming of the slaves, and the deaths of Hayward Shepherd, Fontaine Beckham, and George W. Turner. Brown’s contention that, as commander in chief of a provisional army, he should be tried according to the laws of war and not as a common criminal was rejected. Other arguments offered by the defense met with equally fruitless results. Finally, on October 31, closing arguments by the prosecution and the defense were heard and at 1:45 p.m. the case went to the jury. Deliberations lasted for 45 minutes. The verdict: guilty on all three counts. A newspaper correspondent described the reaction:
Not the slightest sound was heard in the vast crowd as this verdict was thus returned and read. Not the slightest expression of elation or triumph was uttered from the hundreds present, who, a moment before, outside the court, joined in heaping threats and imprecations upon his head; nor was this strange silence interrupted during the whole of the time occupied by the forms of the Court. Old Brown himself said not even a word, but, as on previous days, turned to adjust his pallet, and then composedly stretched himself upon it.
Sentence was passed on November 2: John Brown would hang on Friday, December 2, 1859. The other raiders—Coppoc, Stevens, Copeland, and Green—were tried subsequently, found guilty, and received like sentences. Of the seven raiders who escaped from Harpers Ferry, John Cook and Albert Hazlett were captured in Pennsylvania, brought to Charles Town for trial, convicted, and hanged.
In the days following Brown’s sentencing, Virginia’s Governor Wise was swamped with mail. Many letters pleaded for clemency, some contained outright threats, while others warned of fantastic plots to effect the abolitionist’s escape. Martial law was declared in Charles Town. Militiamen were everywhere, and armed patrols kept a vigilant watch on all roads leading into town. The day of execution came, and not one of the schemes to free Brown materialized.
PROCLAMATION!
IN pursuance of instructions from the Governor of Virginia, notice is hereby given to all whom it may concern,
That, as heretofore, particularly from now until after Friday next the 2nd of December, STRANGERS found within the County of Jefferson, and Counties adjacent, having no known and proper business here, and who cannot give a satisfactory account of themselves, will be at once arrested.
That on, and for a proper period before that day, stangers[sic] and especially parties, approaching under the pretext of being present at the execution of John Brown, whether by Railroad or otherwise, will be met by the Military and turned back or arrested without regard to the amount of force, that may be required to effect this, and during the said period and especially on the 2nd of December, the citizens of Jefferson and the surrounding country are _EMPHATICALLY_ warned to remain at their homes armed and guard their own property.
On the afternoon before the execution, Brown’s grief-stricken wife was allowed to visit him in his cell. They spent several hours talking. Toward evening they parted, and Mary Brown went to Harpers Ferry to await the delivery of her husband’s body. It would be her agonizing duty to return Brown’s remains to their North Elba home for burial.
A few minutes after 11 a.m. on December 2, 1859, John Brown walked down the steps of the Charles Town jail, climbed into the back of a horse-drawn wagon, and sat down on his own coffin. Flanked by files of soldiers, the wagon moved off toward a field a short distance from the town where a scaffold had been erected. No civilians were permitted near the execution site. The field was ringed by 1,500 soldiers, among them a company of Virginia Military Institute cadets commanded by a stern-looking professor who would soon gain fame and immortality as the Confederate Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson. In the ranks of a Richmond company stood another man who, in a few short years, would also achieve immortality by committing one of the most infamous deeds in American history—John Wilkes Booth.
As the hushed military watched, Brown climbed the scaffold steps. Sheriff John W. Campbell pulled a white linen hood over the prisoner’s head and set the noose. John Avis, the jailer, asked Brown to step forward onto the trap. “You must lead me,” Brown replied, “for I cannot see.” The abolitionist’s last words were directed to Avis as one final adjustment of the noose was made. “Be quick,” he said.
At 11:30 a hatchet stroke sprung the trap and John Brown died. The voice of a militia colonel broke the stillness: “So perish all such enemies of Virginia! All such enemies of the Union! All such enemies of the human race!”
But the end was not yet. True, Brown was dead; but he had helped to arouse popular passions both North and South to the point where compromise would be impossible. The raid created a national furor and generated a wave of emotionalism that widened the sectional breach that had divided the country for so many years. Although conservative Northern opinion quickly condemned the raid as the work of a madman, the more radical hailed it as “the best news America ever had” and glorified Brown as “the new saint” whose martyrdom in the cause of human freedom would make the gallows “glorious like the cross.”
Southerners shuddered. For decades they had been defending their “peculiar institution” of slavery against the ever-increasing attacks of Northern abolitionists, but anti-slavery agitation had always followed a course of non-violence. Then Brown had come with his pikes and guns to change all that. In the false atmosphere of crisis that gripped the South in the wake of the raid, the small voices of moderates were lost in the din of extremists who saw Brown’s act as part of a vast Northern conspiracy to instigate servile insurrections throughout the slave States.
To meet this threat, real or imagined, vigilance committees were formed, volunteer military companies were organized, and more and more Southerners began to echo the sentiments of the Richmond Enquirer: “if under the form of a Confederacy our peace is disturbed, our State invaded, its peaceful citizens cruelly murdered ... by those who should be our warmest friends ... and the people of the North sustain the outrage, then let disunion come.”