Great American Adventure Stories

by Tom McCarthy

  The three men who had been sent forward to the caches left the remnant of the provisions which had not been destroyed where it could easily be seen by Reed and his companions. Hurrying forward, they reached Woodworth’s camp, and two men, John Stark and Howard Oakley, returned and met Reed’s party. It was quite time. With frozen feet and exhausted bodies, the members of the second relief were in a sad plight. They left the settlements strong, hearty men. They returned in a half-dead condition. Several lost some of their toes on account of having them frozen, and one or two were crippled for life. They had been three days on the way from Starved Camp to Woodworth’s. Cady and Stone overtook Reed and his companions on the second day after leaving Starved Camp. On the night of the third day, they arrived at Woodworth’s.

  When Patty Reed reached Woodworth’s and had been provided with suitable food, an incident occurred which fully illustrates the tenderness and womanliness of her nature. Knowing that her mother and dear ones were safe, knowing that relief would speedily return to those on the mountains, realizing that for her there was to be no more hunger or snow and that she would no longer be separated from her father, her feelings may well be imagined. In her quiet joy, she was not wholly alone. Hidden away in her bosom, during all the suffering and agony of the journey over the mountains, were a number of childish treasures. First, there was a lock of silvery gray hair which her own hand had cut from the head of her Grandmother Keyes way back on the Big Blue River. Patty had always been a favorite with her grandma, and when the latter died, Patty secured this lock of hair. She tied it up in a little piece of old-fashioned lawn, dotted with wee blue flowers, and always carried it in her bosom. But this was not all. She had a dainty little glass saltcellar, scarcely larger than the inside of a hummingbird’s nest, and, what was more precious than this, a tiny, wooden doll. This doll had been her constant companion. It had black eyes and hair and was indeed very pretty. At Woodworth’s camp, Patty told “Dolly” all her joy and gladness, and who cannot pardon the little girl for thinking her dolly looked happy as she listened?

  Patty Reed is now Mrs. Frank Lewis of San Jose, California. She has a pleasant home and a beautiful family of children. Yet oftentimes the mother, the grown-up daughters, and the younger members of the family gather with tear-dimmed eyes about a little sacred box. In this box is the lock of hair in the piece of lawn, the tiny saltcellar, the much loved “Dolly,” and an old woolen mitten, in the thumb of which are yet the traces of fine crumbs.

  Very noble was the part which Mrs. Margaret Breen performed in this Donner tragedy, and very beautifully has that part been recorded by a woman’s hand. It is written so tenderly, so delicately, and with so much reverence for the maternal love which alone sustained Mrs. Breen that it can hardly be improved. This account was published by its author, Mrs. Farnham, in 1849 and is made the basis of the following sketch. With alterations here and there made for the sake of brevity, the article is as it was written:

  There was no food in Starved Camp. There was nothing to eat, save a few seeds tied in bits of cloth that had been brought along by someone and the precious lump of sugar. There were also a few teaspoonfuls of tea. They sat and lay by the fire most of the day, with what heavy hearts, who shall know! They were upon about thirty feet of snow. The dead lay before them, a ghastlier sight in the sunshine that succeeded the storm than when the dark clouds overhung them. They had no words of cheer to speak to each other, no courage or hope to share, but those which pointed to a life where hunger and cold could never come, and their benumbed faculties were scarcely able to seize upon a consolation so remote from the thoughts and wants that absorbed their whole being.

  A situation like this will not awaken in common natures religious trust. Under such protracted suffering, the animal outgrows the spiritual in frightful disproportion. Yet the mother’s sublime faith, which had brought her thus far through her agonies with a heart still warm toward those who shared them, did not fail her now. She spoke gently to one and another, asked her husband to repeat the litany and the children to join her in the responses, and endeavored to fix their minds upon the time when the relief would probably come. Nature, as unerringly as philosophy could have done, taught her that the only hope of sustaining those about her was to set before them a termination to their sufferings.

  What days and nights were those that went by while they waited! Life waning visibly in those about her; not a morsel of food to offer them; her own infant—and the little one that had been cherished and saved through all by the mother now dead—wasting hourly into the more perfect image of death; her husband worn to a skeleton; it needed the fullest measure of exalted faith, of womanly tenderness and self-sacrifice, to sustain her through such a season. She watched by night as well as by day. She gathered wood to keep them warm. She boiled the handful of tea and dispensed it to them, and when she found one sunken and speechless, she broke with her teeth a morsel of the precious sugar and put it in his lips. She fed her babe freely on snow water, and scanty as was the wardrobe she had, she managed to get fresh clothing next to its skin two or three times a week. Where, one asks in wonder and reverence, did she get the strength and courage for all this? She sat all night by her family, her elbows on her knees, brooding over the meek little victim that lay there, watching those who slept, and occasionally dozing with a fearful consciousness of their terrible condition always upon her. The sense of peril never slumbered. Many times during the night, she went to the sleepers to ascertain if they all still breathed. She put her hand under their blankets and held it before the mouth. In this way she assured herself that they were yet alive. But once her blood curdled to find, on approaching her hand to the lips of one of her own children, there was no warm breath upon it. She tried to open his mouth and found the jaws set. She roused her husband, “Oh! Patrick, man! Arise and help me! James is dying!” “Let him die!” said the miserable father. “He will be better off than any of us.” She was terribly shocked by this reply. In her own expressive language, her heart stood still when she heard it. She was bewildered and knew not where to set her weary hands to work, but she recovered in a few moments and began to chafe the breast and hands of the perishing boy. She broke a bit of sugar and with considerable effort forced it between his teeth with a few drops of snow water. She saw him swallow, then a slight convulsive motion stirred his features, he stretched his limbs feebly, and in a moment more opened his eyes and looked upon her. How fervent were her thanks to the Great Father, whom she forgot not day or night.

  Thus she went on. The tea leaves were eaten, the seeds chewed, the sugar all dispensed. The days were bright and, compared with the nights, comfortable. Occasionally, when the sun shone, their voices were heard, though generally they sat or lay in a kind of stupor from which she often found it alarmingly difficult to arouse them. When the gray evening twilight drew its deepening curtain over the cold glittering heavens and the icy waste, and when the famishing bodies had been covered from the frost that pinched them with but little less keenness than the unrelenting hunger, the solitude seemed to rend her very brain. Her own powers faltered. But she said her prayers over many times in the darkness as well as the light and always with renewed trust in Him who had not yet forsaken her, and thus she sat out her weary watch. After the turning of the night, she always sat watching for the morning star, which seemed, every time she saw it rise clear in the cold eastern sky, to renew the promise, “As thy day is, so shall thy strength be.”

  Their fire had melted the snow to a considerable depth, and they were lying on the bank above. Thus they had less of its heat than they needed and found some difficulty in getting the fuel she gathered placed so it would burn. One morning after she had hailed her messenger of promise and the light had increased so as to render objects visible in the distance, she looked as usual over the white expanse that lay to the southwest to see if any dark, moving specks were visible upon its surface. Only the treetops, which she had scanned so often as to be quite familia
r with their appearance, were to be seen. With a heavy heart, she brought herself back from that distant hope to consider what was immediately about her. The fire had sunk so far away that they had felt but little of its warmth the last two nights, and casting her eyes down into the snow pit, whence it sent forth only a dull glow, she thought she saw the welcome face of beloved mother Earth. It was such a renewing sight after their long, freezing separation from it. She immediately aroused her eldest son, John, and, with a great deal of difficulty and repeating words of cheer and encouragement, brought him to understand that she wished him to descend by one of the treetops which had fallen in so as to make a sort of ladder and see if they could reach the naked earth and if it were possible for them all to go down. She trembled with fear at the vacant silence in which he at first gazed at her, but at length, after she had told him a great many times, he said “Yes, Mother,” and went.

  He reached the bottom safely and presently spoke to her. There was naked, dry earth under his feet; it was warm, and he wished her to come down. She laid her baby beside some of the sleepers and descended. Immediately she determined upon taking them all down. How good, she thought, as she descended the boughs, was the God whom she trusted. By perseverance, by entreaty, by encouragement, and with her own aid, she got them into this snug shelter.

  Relief came not, and as starvation crept closer and closer to himself and those about him, Patrick Breen determined that it was his duty to employ the means of sustaining life which God seemed to have placed before them. The lives of all might be saved by resorting to such food as others, in like circumstances, had subsisted upon. Mrs. Breen, however, declared that she would die and see her children die before her life or theirs should be preserved by such means. If ever the father gave to the dying children, it was without her consent or knowledge. She never tasted nor knew of her children partaking. Mrs. Farnham says that, when Patrick Breen ascended to obtain the dreadful repast, his wife, frozen with horror, hid her face in her hands and could not look up. She was conscious of his return and of something going on about the fire, but she could not bring herself to uncover her eyes till all had subsided again into silence. Her husband remarked that perhaps they were wrong in rejecting a means of sustaining life of which others had availed themselves, but she put away the suggestion so fearfully that it was never renewed nor acted upon by any of her family. She and her children were now, indeed, reaching the utmost verge of life. A little more battle with the grim enemies that had pursued them so relentlessly, twenty-four or at most forty-eight hours of such warfare, and all would be ended. The infants still breathed but were so wasted they could only be moved by raising them bodily with the hands. It seemed as if even their light weight would have dragged the limbs from their bodies. Occasionally through the day, she ascended the tree to look out. It was an incident now and seemed to kindle more life than when it only required a turn of the head or a glance of the eye to tell that there was no living thing near them. She could no longer walk on the snow, but she had still strength enough to crawl from tree to tree to gather a few boughs, which she threw along before her to the pit and piled them in to renew the fire. The eighth day was passed. On the ninth morning, she ascended to watch for her star of mercy. Clear and bright it stood over against her beseeching gaze, set in the light liquid blue that overflows the pathway of the opening day. She prayed earnestly as she gazed, for she knew that there were but few hours of life in those dearest to her. If human aid came not that day, some eyes that would soon look imploringly into hers would be closed in death before that star would rise again. Would she herself, with all her endurance and resisting love, live to see it? Were they at length to perish? Great God! Should it be permitted that they, who had been preserved through so much, should die at last so miserably?

  Her eyes were dim and her sight wavering. She could not distinguish trees from men on the snow, but had they been near, she could have heard them, for her ear had grown so sensitive that the slightest unaccustomed noise arrested her attention. She went below with a heavier heart than ever before. She had not a word of hope to answer the languid, inquiring countenances that were turned to her face, and she was conscious that it told the story of her despair. Yet she strove with some half-insane words to suggest that somebody would surely come to them that day. Another would be too late, and the pity of men’s hearts and the mercy of God would surely bring them. The pallor of death seemed already to be stealing over the sunken countenances that surrounded her, and weak as she was, she could remain below but a few minutes together. She felt she could have died had she let go her resolution at any time within the last forty-eight hours. They repeated the litany. The responses came so feebly that they were scarcely audible, and the protracted utterances seemed wearisome. At last it was over, and they rested in silence.

  The sun mounted high and higher in the heavens, and when the day was three or four hours old, she placed her trembling feet again upon the ladder to look out once more. The corpses of the dead lay always before her as she reached the top—the mother and her son and the little boy, whose remains she could not even glance at since they had been mutilated. The blanket that covered them could not shut out the horror of the sight.

  The rays of the sun fell on her with a friendly warmth, but she could not look into the light that flooded the white expanse. Her eyes lacked strength and steadiness, and she rested herself against a tree and endeavored to gather her wandering faculties in vain. The enfeebled will could no longer hold rule over them. She had broken perceptions, fragments of visions, contradictory and mixed—former mingled with latter times. Recollections of plenty and rural peace came up from her clear, tranquil childhood, which seemed to have been another state of existence; flashes of her latter life—its comfort and abundance—gleams of maternal pride in her children who had been growing up about her to ease and independence.

  She lived through all the phases which her simple life had ever worn in the few moments of repose after the dizzy effort of ascending; as the thin blood left her whirling brain and returned to its shrunken channels, she grew more clearly conscious of the terrible present and remembered the weary quest upon which she came. It was not the memory of thought; it was that of love, the old tugging at the heart that had never relaxed long enough to say, “Now I am done; I can bear no more!” The miserable ones down there—for them her wavering life came back; at thought of them, she turned her face listlessly the way it had so often gazed. But this time something caused it to flush as if the blood, thin and cold as it was, would burst its vessels! What was it? Nothing that she saw, for her eyes were quite dimmed by the sudden access of excitement! It was the sound of voices! By a superhuman effort, she kept herself from falling! Was it reality or delusion? She must at least live to know the truth. It came again and again. She grew calmer as she became more assured, and the first distinct words she heard uttered were, “There is Mrs. Breen alive yet, anyhow!” Three men were advancing toward her. She knew that now there would be no more starving. Death was repelled for this time from the precious little flock he had so long threatened, and she might offer up thanksgiving unchecked by the dreads and fears that had so long frozen her.

  5

  Eyewitness

  The Raid at Harpers Ferry

  By Reverend Samuel Vanderlip Leech

  The story of John Brown’s attack on Harpers Ferry has been recounted for years in history books but never as it was by a man who watched it unfold and knew its importance. Was it heroic or ill-fated folly? A firsthand view from the front lines.

  The town of Harpers Ferry is located in Jefferson County, West Virginia. Lucerne, in Switzerland, does not excel it in romantic grandeur of situation. On its northern front, the Potomac sweeps along to pass the national capital and the tomb of Washington in its silent flow toward the sea. On its eastern side, the Shenandoah hurries to empty its waters into the Potomac, that in perpetual wedlock they may greet the stormy Atlantic. Across the Potomac t
he Maryland Heights stand out as 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 Harpers Ferry. Back of its hills lies the famous Shenandoah Valley, celebrated for its natural scenery, its historic battles, and “Sheridan’s ride.” At Harpers Ferry 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 extensive districts in Virginia, stretching from Alexandria to Lewisburg, and two great districts north of the Potomac, including the cities of Washington and Baltimore. The first three years of my ministerial life, I spent on Shepherdstown, West Loudon, and Hillsboro Circuits, being then all in Virginia. The state of West Virginia, now embracing Harpers Ferry, had not been organized by Congress as a war measure out of the territory of the mother state. Our Methodist Episcopal Church was theoretically an antislavery organization, but our Virginia and Maryland members held thousands of inherited and many purchased slaves. These were generally well-cared-for and contented. Being close to the free soil of Pennsylvania, they could have gotten there in a night had they wished to escape bondage, and then they could have easily reached Canada by that Northern aid called the “Underground Railroad.”

  On the Sunday night when John Brown and his men invaded Virginia, I slept within a half mile of Harpers Ferry. That day I inaugurated revival services at my westward appointment called “Ebenezer” in Loudon County, two miles from Harpers Ferry. I was twenty-two years of age.

  Three months before this raid, Captain John Brown with two of his sons, Owen and Oliver, and Jeremiah G. Anderson, calling themselves “Isaac Smith and Sons,” rented a small farm on the Maryland side of the Potomac, four miles from Harpers Ferry. It was known as the “Booth-Kennedy Place.” They also carried on across the mountains at Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, a small hardware store managed by John H. Kagi. It was a depot for the munitions of war to be hauled to their Maryland farm. Another of Brown’s men, John E. Cook, sold maps in the vicinity. He was a relative of Governor Willard of Indiana, who secured the services of Hon. Daniel W. Voorhees, attorney general of Indiana, to defend Cook at his after-trial in Virginia. It was a time of profound national peace. Brown and his men represented themselves as geologists, miners, and speculators. They had a mule and wagon with which to haul their boxes from Chambersburg. A wealthy merchant of Boston, Mr. George Luther Stearns, chairman of the Massachusetts Aid Society, had financed Brown’s Kansas border warfare work, as well as his approaching Harpers Ferry raid. Other Northern friends assisted. Brown had completed his preparations and collected his twenty-one helpers early in October 1859. He had hidden in an old log cabin on the place 200 Sharpe’s rifles; 13,000 rifle cartridges; 950 long iron pikes; 200 revolving pistols; 100,000 pistol caps; 40,000 percussion caps; 250 pounds of powder; 12 reams of cartridge paper; and other warlike materials. He organized his twenty-two men, himself included, into a “military provisional government” to superintend the possible uprising of the slaves of Virginia. Thirteen of these men had engaged in border warfare in Kansas in a successful effort to prevent Kansas from becoming a slave state. He, sixteen other white men, and five negroes constituted his entire Virginia army. The white men were Captain John Brown; Adjutant General John H. Kagi; and Captains Owen Brown, Oliver Brown, Watson Brown, Aaron D. Stephens, John E. Cook, Dauphin Adolphus Thompson, George P. Tidd, William Thompson, and Edwin Coppoc. The lieutenants were Jeremiah G. Anderson, Albert Hazlitt, and William Henry Leeman. The privates numbered eight. Three of them were white men and five were negroes. The whites were Francis J. Merriam, Barclay Coppoc, and Steward Taylor. The negroes were Dangerfield Newby, Osborne P. Anderson, John A. Copeland, Sherrard Lewis Leary, and Shields Green.