by Herb Karl
The assignments having been given, Brown allowed his eyes to settle for a moment on each man. They all leaned forward in anticipation of his closing words.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “this is the Sabbath—the sixteenth day of the month of October in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine. Be assured the nation will remember that on this day the war against chattel slavery was begun, a day when the promise of the Declaration of Independence was fulfilled and the Lord’s instructions heeded. Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you.”
All eyes were on Brown as he tucked his Bible under his arm and headed for the kitchen, and nobody moved until Osborne Anderson announced the meeting was adjourned.
Kagi and Stevens stayed with the men. There was unfinished business that required their attention. Kagi filled out certificates for those who were to serve as officers. Although Brown had offered commissions to Osborne Anderson and the other men of color, they all declined. Stevens, meanwhile, took the latest arrivals aside and read them the constitution of the provisional government, afterward administering the oath of allegiance as specified in Article 48.
Together, Stevens and Cook held a training session on the use of the carbines and pistols. For some of the volunteers it was their first exposure to guns. Later, the men were told to rest, that they would be doing their work when the residents of Harpers Ferry were asleep.
Alone in the kitchen, Brown leafed through his Bible. From time to time he could hear the voice of Stevens asserting itself over the din of activity in the adjacent room.
“With this carbine you are worth ten men with muzzle loaders.”
Stevens was right. Skilled shooters equipped with Sharps breech-loaders could produce several times the firepower of men armed with muskets requiring powder and ball to be rammed down a barrel after every shot.
“And don’t forget to blow the excess powder off the breech before you pull the trigger. Your darlings back home shan’t like it if you show up with powder burns all over your pretty cheeks.”
Laughter.
The old man had put his Bible aside and was removing papers from his carpetbag when he felt the blood draining from his extremities. He touched his brow; it was wet and cold. He prayed he wasn’t experiencing another attack of his malarial illness—not now, not within hours of launching an invasion he’d been anticipating for decades. He closed his eyes and willed the symptoms to subside.
He was bent forward at the table, his head resting in his cupped hands, when Owen appeared at the kitchen door. “Father?”
Brown raised his head. “Sit down, Owen.” The voice sounded weak.
“You don’t look well, Father.”
“It shall pass.”
Owen was familiar with the signs of his father’s illness: the pasty complexion, the sweating. He’d nursed him in the past and now watched as the old man struggled to compose himself. When Owen tried to persuade him to delay the invasion, the response was unequivocal: “I’ll not postpone this action another day, another hour, another minute.”
Owen knew it was useless to argue. He said, “I came to tell you what we’ve learned from Newby.” Because Dangerfield Newby knew the Harpers Ferry area well enough to avoid the slave patrols, he’d been given permission by Brown to gather intelligence from neighboring farms.
“And what does Newby have to say?”
“Another slave, Father. A suicide. The day after his wife was sold south. He was found hanging in an orchard nearby. That’s six altogether since we’ve been here—five murdered, one suicide. All within a few miles.”
Brown let his head slump to his chest. Owen got up to leave.
“Wait.”
The old man gestured for his son to remain seated. Owen had come at a time when the old man needed to talk. And Owen was available, perhaps by chance, though Brown placed little stock in chance. The Lord had brought his son to him in his time of need.
“What is it, Father?”
“I have been troubled by the opposition of some of the men, Owen. I almost considered abandoning the undertaking.”
“We’ve gone too far for that,” Owen said.
Brown straightened himself, drawing on strength he held in reserve. He took a rag from his coat pocket, wiped the sweat from his forehead and beard. Owen would understand what he had to say. Of all his sons, Owen was the steadiest. He’d been at Pottawatomie and Black Jack and would have fought at Osawatomie had he not come down with his own debilitating illness. He was the only son willing to accompany him on his return to Kansas in the spring of 1857. And when it was time to commit to the Virginia invasion, Owen did so without hesitation.
The words Brown confided in Owen were spoken solemnly: “We have only one life to live and once to die. And if we lose our lives in this endeavor it will perhaps do more for our cause than our lives could be worth in any other way.”
Owen pushed back his chair. He’d served his purpose, having listened to his father purge himself of doubts. Anyway, it was apparent from the languid gaze—focused on nothing Owen could discern—that Brown’s mind was drifting. So Owen stood and quietly slipped out of the kitchen.
Brown’s thoughts wandered to his other sons, sons with whom his relationship was enigmatic at best. It confounded him that he was thinking about anything but the mission on which he was about to embark.
Seven of Brown’s boys had reached adulthood in an era when infant mortality was commonplace. The four sons from his first marriage—his wife having died in childbirth—included Owen, John Jr., Jason, and Frederick. Mary gave birth to Watson, Salmon, and Oliver. When they were babies stricken with illness or disease, Brown treated all of them with tenderness and affection. It wasn’t unusual for him to respond to their cries in the middle of the night, holding them close and crooning a favorite hymn. But this changed as they grew older. Displays of affection were replaced by a demand for obedience erected on a foundation of spiritual duty. He continually reminded them to fear God and follow the Commandments.
No memory of his sons was more vivid to him then when, as a young father, he administered a most extraordinary form of punishment to ten-year-old John Jr., the one to whom he gave his own name with the expectation that the hopes and dreams of the father would be taken on by the son. Young John had been guilty of a number of minor transgressions, and Brown devised a system for holding him accountable, entering the offenses in a logbook along with the number of lashes to be meted out as punishment for each offense. When Brown deemed it was time to settle the account, he found a beech switch and the whipping commenced. However, after only a few lashes he stopped, removed his shirt, then ordered his astonished son to take the switch and lay it on him until drops of blood showed on his back. Brown wanted to demonstrate an act of atonement, that the sins of the guilty could be absolved when the innocent submitted to punishment intended for the sinner.
Years later Brown came to believe that this lesson—like others he tried to teach—produced the opposite effect, turning his sons away from a Christian faith rather than leading them to it. The boys grew to manhood questioning their father’s rigid brand of Calvinism. But it didn’t affect their belief in his cause. They didn’t need the justification of Holy Scripture to know slavery was wrong and worthy of eradication.
Brown’s religious indoctrination and harsh disciplinary practices—coupled with his desire that the boys become independent thinkers—yielded other unintended consequences. After the battle at Black Jack Springs, Oliver, then seventeen, got into a physical confrontation with his father. Oliver had taken a pistol from one of Henry Clay Pate’s men, intending to give it to a relative. But Brown objected, insisting the relative would never use the weapon, and tried to take it away from Oliver. With Salmon encouraging his younger brother, a scuffle ensued. Oliver grabbed his father’s arms and pinned him against a wagon. When Brown demanded to be let go, Oliver—in a reversal of roles—told him, “Not till you agree to behave yourself.” It took a while for the o
ld man to discover that his child-rearing methods had prompted his sons to challenge his authority, and that this was especially true of Oliver and Salmon.
As the boys matured, Brown continued to ask much of them, though he rarely acknowledged their sacrifices—or did so only when they weren’t around to hear his words of praise. When John Jr. was falsely implicated in the Pottawatomie killings and driven to the brink of insanity during his forced march across the Kansas prairie, Brown seemed to repress the incident, interrupting Jason as he told the story of John Jr.’s ordeal to William A. Phillips, the New York Tribune correspondent. However, during a fundraising tour in New England, Brown proudly revealed the grisly details of his eldest son’s suffering—even held up the chains used to restrain him.
It was the same with Frederick, murdered at Osawatomie. Though Frederick’s charge into Pate’s men at Black Jack marked the turning point of the battle, Brown made no mention of it in his letters. But later, when he promised Mary that he would inscribe Frederick’s name on the tombstone of his grandfather, he elevated Frederick to the status of the man he regarded a hero of the Revolutionary War.
Then there was Jason, self-described as the greatest coward in the family. Brown had come to accept his son’s compassionate nature—revealed so vividly after the battle at Osawatomie when he told of nursing the wounded Southern boy, the story that concluded with a fierce denunciation of the “honor of war.” Brown knew then what he suspected all along—that Jason was a kind, loving human being incapable of the warrior mentality necessary for fighting the slave power. It hadn’t come as a surprise when Jason declined to follow him to Virginia.
Not so with Salmon. His failure to join Brown for the invasion was difficult to accept. Salmon had been faithful to the cause since Kansas, but attempts to persuade him to come to Virginia were fruitless. Was it the controlling influence of his wife, who wouldn’t allow him to say good-bye to his brothers Watson and Oliver because she feared he’d join them? Or did he truly doubt the wisdom of his father’s plan to attack a federal armory? Brown didn’t know of the warning Salmon had offered Oliver regarding their father: Beware that his dalliances don’t get you trapped.
Though he couldn’t get Salmon to commit, Brown had managed to entice Watson and Oliver in spite of resistance from their wives, both of whom had good reason to want their husbands to remain at home. Watson’s wife, Isabella, had a new baby, and Oliver’s Martha was pregnant, something she discovered shortly after leaving the Kennedy farm.
It was especially difficult for Watson to leave his young wife and child. In his letters from Maryland, he wrote Isabella, “I think of you all day and dream of you at night. I would gladly come home and stay with you always but for the cause that brought me here—a desire to do something for others and not live wholly for my own happiness.” Then later, “Oh, Bell, I do want to see you and the little fellow very much, but I must wait . . . I sometimes think perhaps we shall not meet again. If we should not, you have an object to live for—to be a mother to our little boy.”
Like his brothers, Watson grew up admiring his father’s dedication to a cause that promised to change the course of the nation. But Watson hadn’t gone to Kansas, so he only knew of his father’s actions from what he read and what his brothers told him. Now it was his turn to serve. Brown reminded him, as he had Jason after the battle at Osawatomie, “to take care to let nothing get in the way of your duty—neither wife nor child.” Watson would go to Virginia, even though he harbored doubts about his father’s plan.
As Brown sat at the kitchen table in the Maryland farmhouse musing about what might have been, it didn’t cross his mind that his sons had a genuine affection for him, in spite of the relentless demands he placed on them and despite the fact that when they were armed and under his command, he regarded them as soldiers—no different from the rest of the men in his company.
To his sons, however, Brown would always be their father, and for their service to him they wanted nothing in return—other than his approval.
It was late in the afternoon when the old man discovered he’d fallen asleep in his chair at the kitchen table. There was a chill in the air, the last embers in the stove having turned to ash. He was acutely aware that no sound was coming from the adjacent room, and for an instant he was struck by a feeling of dread; he’d lost track of time and felt disconnected from the men. In his haste to get up from the table, he stumbled, then righted himself and headed for the porch. He found Kagi and Stevens sitting in the chairs normally occupied by whoever was assigned the watch.
Stevens stood up. “Anything wrong, Captain?”
Brown shrugged. He thought it better not to express his irritation at having slept away hours that could have been put to better use.
“Didn’t want to wake you, Captain,” Kagi offered. “Owen said you needed rest.”
“What about the men?”
Stevens: “Resting if not sleeping. They’ve done about all they can do.”
“Have they eaten?”
Kagi: “Some dried beef and biscuits—and the apples. They filled their pockets with the apples.” Cook had brought a bushel of apples donated by a local farmer.
Stevens scanned the gray sky. “More rain seems likely, Captain.”
Brown nodded, though he felt disoriented. The sense of losing control he experienced when he awoke in the kitchen had unnerved him. “The men should be readying themselves,” he said brusquely. “And they need to load the wagon. I shall have words for them.” Repeating a series of orders made him feel better. He needed all his wits about him in order to lead his men on a mission, the outcome of which—as he intimated to Owen earlier—was not as certain as he once believed.
“Everything will be ready, Captain,” Kagi assured him. “The men will do their duty.”
The old man trusted Kagi and Stevens implicitly. He turned and walked back to the kitchen, where he’d left a pile of papers lying on the table. He may have been bothered by a feeling of uncertainty, but at least he could put the contents of his carpetbag in order.
Darkness came early to the Maryland farm. Low clouds pressed down on the tiny house, blocking out the moon and stars. A light rain fell.
Brown walked out of the kitchen onto the porch and peered through the open doorway of the dimly lit living room. The room was alive with the chaotic activity that precedes the order and discipline at the start of a military operation. The old man watched as his soldiers buckled on the leather belts from which hung the pouches filled with cartridges and percussion caps.
Stevens was making sure the pouches were situated properly. “Cartridges on the left, boys. Caps on the right.”
Brown had instructed Stevens to give each man forty of the .52 caliber paper cartridges for their Sharps carbines, along with a generous supply of percussion caps. However, the old man hadn’t acquired a sufficient quantity of tape primers for the Maynard revolvers. His soldiers would have to get by with what was available, enough primers for a six-shot load for each revolver.
In a room that barely accommodated the men—providing they stayed in one spot—the tangle of activity Brown witnessed was almost comical. His soldiers were in good spirits, testing the fit of their homemade ponchos, avoiding collisions as they donned the cumbersome garments.
No one seemed aware that Brown was watching—except Kagi. When he saw the old man standing in the shadows outside the door, he turned around and retreated through the crush of bodies to the back of the room, then ascended the flight of stairs leading to the attic. He returned carrying a large burlap sack.
The men quieted and gave their attention to Kagi.
Holding the sack aloft, he said, “Captain Brown has prepared us for an evening such as this.” He reached into the sack and pulled out a glossy, broad-brimmed slouch hat. He gave it a toss, then reached into the bag and pulled out another. The hats were waterproof—made of canvas and treated with pine tar and shellac. They’d been purchased in Philadelphia after Brown attended the meeting wi
th his abolitionist allies. Kagi made sure every man had a hat.
As Brown stood on the porch observing the almost jubilant activity, he felt some relief from the despair that had been gnawing at him most of the day. He was pleased to see his volunteers uniformly attired in identical gray ponchos and black slouch hats; they truly looked like a military unit.
The mood of the men changed when Brown entered the room. Elation was transformed into earnest anticipation.
More than anything else, the old man wanted the invasion to serve as a signal to anyone—whether enslaved or free, whether black or white—who wished to join him in a war of liberation. The invasion would be a successful first step if he awakened the nation to his cause and struck fear in the hearts of the slaveholding elite. When the slaveholders learned of the invasion, he wanted them to “imagine the whole North was upon them pell-mell.” But at the same time he had no desire to engage in a violent confrontation with the residents of Harpers Ferry. He’d taken this into account as he thought about the final remarks he wanted to make to his soldiers before the march to the village.
“And now, gentlemen,” he said, “let me press this one thing on your minds. You all know how dear life is to you and how dear your lives are to your friends. And, in remembering that, consider that the lives of others are as dear to them as yours are to you. Do not, therefore, take the life of anyone if you can possibly avoid it. But if it is necessary to take a life in order to save your own, then make sure work of it.”
Promptly at eight o’clock Stevens formed the men into two ranks in front of the farmhouse. Since early afternoon there had been rain, but it finally stopped and the night air turned colder. The wool blankets would make the march to the Ferry more bearable. Low clouds continued to obscure the moon and stars.