by Herb Karl
The pounding stopped.
Moments later it resumed, but the noise of the collisions was louder. The sledgehammers had been replaced with a ladder used as a battering ram. The batten near the bottom of the door cracked, causing two of the oak staves to cave inward. Then came another strike. It split the batten in half, further shoving the staves into the room, leaving enough space at the base of the door for a man to wriggle inside.
Brown and his soldiers fired a volley into the splintered door.
The smoke from detonating black powder filled the room, made it hard to see the marine crawling through the opening. He rose to his feet, armed only with a sword, and moved past the fire wagons to the middle of the room. He was followed in quick succession by four more marines, each dragging a musket, each musket equipped with a bayonet.
Voices cried out, but another volley from the Sharps carbines rendered the words unintelligible.
The smoke thickened. Brown’s eyes were focused on reloading his carbine when he glimpsed a sword’s descending blade; it grazed his head and struck his shoulder near the neck. The blow drove him to his knees.
The marine wielding the sword redirected his attack, thrusting the tip of the blade into the blue-gray haze at what he must have judged was Brown’s chest. It was a mighty thrust, but it missed the target, crushing the old man’s leather ammunition pouch, half filled with paper cartridges. When the marine withdrew his sword, it was bent practically in half. He grabbed the collapsed blade and began swinging the weapon like a battle-ax, striking Brown—once, twice, thrice—until there was neither movement nor sound coming from the body that lay at his feet, a body barely visible in the smoke-filled room.
Brown heard nothing. Not the calls of surrender from his soldiers. Not the voice of a hostage pointing and shouting, “There is Osawatomie.” Not the cries of Dauphin Thompson or Jerry Anderson—both mortally wounded from bayonet stabs.
According to a report issued later by Lieutenant Israel Green, the leader of the storming party, the assault lasted fewer than three minutes. Green noted that one of his men was killed, another slightly wounded.
Brown—his body gashed and bruised—was alive.
Lieutenant Green later blamed himself for Brown’s good fortune. In his haste to respond to the order to muster his marines and rush to Harpers Ferry, Green inadvertently had strapped on his ceremonial sword—a finely crafted weapon whose dull blade and blunt tip made it ill suited for hand-to-hand combat.
As for the other occupants of the engine room, all the hostages survived. Of the four liberated slaves, Jim—who was as committed to the fighting as Brown’s soldiers—fled and was later discovered floating facedown in the Shenandoah River. Another of the slaves was killed during the assault. A third was arrested, dying shortly thereafter of pneumonia while in captivity; the remaining slave somehow managed to dissolve into the crush of villagers demanding swift justice for the invaders.
“Kill them! Kill them!” the villagers shouted as they poured into the musket factory’s yard.
Colonel Lee ordered the marines to restrain the mob while Brown was carried to the office of the armory paymaster. Edwin Coppoc and Shields Green—both unhurt—were moved to the firehouse’s watch room, along with Watson, who was judged to be beyond medical help. The lone survivor of the fight at the rifle works, John Copeland, was brought in by the sheriff and locked up with his comrades in the watch room.
Meanwhile, in the paymaster’s office, Brown—the left side of his face swollen and bleeding—lay on the floor on a straw-filled mattress. Though his injuries were painful, he willed them to a remote region of his consciousness. He was far more afflicted with a sense of personal failure, the belief that he made miscalculations and that the collapse of the invasion could have been avoided. But his commitment to his purpose was undiminished. His faith required him to right the wrongs in society as he found them, and because slavery was the worst of all wrongs, its abolition was his sacred duty.
Next to Brown lay Aaron Stevens, who had been transferred from the Wager House. Stevens’s wounds—shotgun pellets lodged in his head and shoulders—were more serious than the old man’s, but Colonel Lee judged that with medical attention he’d survive. While the two men waited for a doctor, they could hear the angry cries of the citizens outside the paymaster’s office. As difficult as their situation was, it didn’t deter Brown from cautioning Stevens to take care not to betray his fellow brothers in arms—those transporting weapons and ammunition from the Maryland farmhouse, as well as Osborne Anderson and Albert Hazlett, who—as far as the old man knew—were still at the arsenal. He wondered if any managed to escape. Captain Sinn had said nothing about activity on the Maryland side of the Potomac or the taking of prisoners inside the arsenal gates.
As the old man weighed these and other questions, the door to the paymaster’s office opened and Colonel Lee appeared. He was with the doctor who had attended Watson.
Brown said to the doctor, “You saw my son.”
“I examined him this morning.” The doctor’s tone changed as he added, “It saddens me to say there is little we can do.” A pause. “But his spirit is good. I heard him tell a reporter he had done his duty as he saw it.”
He had done his duty. The words brought a small measure of satisfaction to Brown as he continued to show no outward signs of the grief he felt for those who perished during the invasion.
The doctor inspected Stevens’s wounds and explained to Colonel Lee that removing the pellets from Stevens’s head and shoulders would require a surgeon. He moved to Brown, pushed aside the blood-encrusted beard. “This wound is not severe,” he said. He lifted Brown’s shirt and noted the bruises on the shoulder and the gashes on the neck and back. “These will heal,” he said.
Knowing there were other men requiring medical attention, the colonel dismissed the doctor, then said to Brown, “The telegraph wires your men destroyed have been restored. As a consequence, news of what happened here has spread quickly. I’m afraid a number of influential men—and some newspaper reporters—will be coming, and they will want to interview you.” Lee waited for a response, but when none came he declared in a gesture of magnanimity, “If you see this as an annoyance or painful in any way, I shall be happy to exclude all visitors from the room.”
Though his jaw ached and speech was difficult for him, Brown said, “I am grateful for your concern, Colonel. But I am glad to make my motives clearly understood.”
Lee walked to the door. He had other matters on his mind, among them information he received from the hostage Terence Byrne. Byrne had told him about the weapons that were being transported from the Kennedy farm to the schoolhouse, and Lee had responded by sending Lieutenant Stuart and a detachment of marines to look into the situation. The colonel was eager to learn what Stuart had discovered.
From the floor of the paymaster’s office, Brown could hear marines dispersing the villagers. He also could hear the labored breathing of Stevens, who lay beside him. He knew his comrade would suffer his wounds bravely.
Brown found himself thinking about something Lee had said. The colonel had claimed the telegraph was responsible for the swift response to the invasion and that because of the telegraph “influential men” accompanied by newspaper reporters were aboard trains speeding toward Harpers Ferry. For quite some time—several years, in fact—Brown had regarded the telegraph and the steam locomotive as the great inventions of his era, had even spoken to his benefactor George Stearns about their unrealized potential as he and Stearns dined together in a Boston hotel just a few months earlier. Brown was especially intrigued by the telegraph; he thought it was much more than a means for the railroad lines to manage their schedules, even though it was used for such. Brown had told Stearns that the telegraph and the steam locomotive had shrunk the nation, brought people closer together than was ever before possible.
Now, because of the telegraph, journalists on their way to Harpers Ferry would be able to send their reports to newspapers near
and far—reports that in some cases would appear in print within hours of their transmission.
Brown soon would have a chance to tell his own story, to explain what his motives were and, in so doing, reach the hearts and minds of a vast audience in both the North and the South. Was this God’s plan for him? To sheathe his sword and do nothing more than speak his true purpose? If he could do this, would his invasion still be a failure? Once more, he reasoned, the newspapers would be his allies—as they had been in Kansas. When the visitors came to ask him questions, he’d choose his words wisely.
By midafternoon a dozen men were crowded around Brown and Stevens, both still lying on their straw-filled mattresses. Among those present was Virginia’s Governor Henry Wise, who came by express train from the capital in Richmond. Representative Clement Vallandigham of Ohio, an outspoken advocate of proslavery interests, had boarded a train in Washington, DC, as soon as he learned the perpetrators of a servile insurrection had been arrested. Virginia’s Senator James Mason came from his nearby home. Others in the room included Colonel Lee, Lieutenant Stuart, and three journalists, one of whom—a correspondent for the New York Herald—recorded practically everything that was said during an interview lasting almost three hours.
It became clear that many of the questions Brown was asked were intended to induce him to incriminate others. Mason did his best to get the old man to admit he was part of a conspiracy financed by abolitionists. Vallandigham followed Mason’s lead, hoping to implicate a political rival—the former antislavery congressman Joshua Giddings, reputed to be Brown’s friend. The old man deflected such questions, but when the opportunity arose to defend his cause, his responses were elegant and to the point.
Reporter: “Upon what principal do you justify your acts?”
Brown: “Upon the Golden Rule. I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them. That is why I am here. Not to gratify any personal animosity, not for revenge, not because I have a vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and wronged—who are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God—that has brought me here.”
And later, speaking directly to the correspondent from the Herald: “I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people oppressed by the slave system just as much as I respect the rights of the people of our nation who are 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.”
Hoping to wrap up the interview so he could wire his story back to New York, the Herald reporter asked Brown if there was anything else he wanted to say. The old man responded, “I have only to say that I claim to be here to carry out a measure I believe perfectly justifiable. Not to act the part of an incendiary or ruffian but to aid those suffering great wrong.” Brown scanned the room before adding, “I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better—all you people of the South—prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for. 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 question is not yet.”
As the reporters raced for the B&O Railroad office to telegraph stories to their newspapers and to alert their editors that more details were coming, the “influential” visitors stepped outside the paymaster’s office to discuss a document Senator Mason held up during the interview. Mason had spoken of it as a “constitution” and asked Brown for an explanation, admitting he hadn’t yet had a chance to read it. Brown replied, “I wish you would give that paper close attention.”
The document was one of many Lieutenant Stuart came across during a search of the Kennedy farmhouse earlier in the day. Stuart had found Brown’s carpetbag. It was filled with documents—copies of the constitution for the provisional government and a substantial amount of personal correspondence. The letters, many of them from Brown’s most active supporters, were of particular interest to Governor Wise—a gaunt, quick-tempered slaveholder who already had announced publicly that he favored Virginia’s secession from the Union.
Wise spent most of the afternoon at a table in the Wager House parlor surrounded by his staff, reading the letters aloud, looking for proof the invasion was instigated by wealthy abolitionists. Before he retired to his room, he was convinced he had enough information to bring charges of conspiracy against the members of Brown’s secret committee and several other individuals, among them Frederick Douglass.
Brown was standing beside his mattress in the paymaster’s office inspecting a large bruise on his side when Colonel Lee came at dusk to tell him Watson was near death. Lee said, “Your son is totally at peace despite the suffering he has had to endure.”
Brown thanked the colonel, tucked his shirt into his trousers as he gazed down at a sleeping Stevens. The old man was gratified to learn Watson soon would be escaping his pain. He couldn’t have accepted Watson’s fate so easily—as well as all the other lives that had been sacrificed because of his decisions—were it not for his abiding belief that his actions were predestined by his God.
Lee, meanwhile, out of respect for the grief he presumed the old man was feeling, stood quietly for a few minutes. Then he informed Brown that he and Stevens, along with the men currently held under guard in the firehouse, were to be taken by train in the morning to nearby Charles Town. Once they arrived at the county seat, Brown and his surviving soldiers were to be confined in the Charles Town jail while a grand jury investigation was in progress. A squad of marines currently posted outside the paymaster’s office would remain in place until Brown and his men were safely aboard the train to Charles Town.
The colonel excused himself. Brown returned to his mattress.
The old man hadn’t slept since the invasion began. He’d been under constant stress during the past forty-eight hours and had suffered symptoms of his malarial illness. Now he found himself overwhelmed by fatigue. In spite of his wounds and the myriad concerns that swirled in his head, he slipped into a deep sleep.
He even dreamed. The dream had come to him many times over the years—a dream in which a young John Brown witnessed a thin, poorly clad slave boy being beaten with an iron shovel.
21
Nine Days Later
October 27, 1859
Charles Town, Virginia
On the morning Brown’s trial was to begin, his physical appearance had improved. Though the gash on his neck wasn’t healed completely, the swelling under his eye had subsided and he no longer wore a bandage around his head. In his cell in the Charles Town jail he sat on his cot, a collection of newspapers spread out before him. Sunlight filtered through a barred window that overlooked a yard surrounded by a high brick wall. On the stone floor beneath the window was a table covered with more newspapers.
Aaron Stevens lay nearby, still suffering the effects of shotgun pellets embedded in his skull and shoulders. Brown read aloud from the newspapers while Stevens listened dutifully, even though his head ached and he found it difficult to concentrate. Still, the news reports made it obvious to the ailing Stevens that the invasion of Harpers Ferry had instilled fear and outrage among slaveholders throughout the South.
Along one wall of the cell a fire burned in an inordinately large fireplace. The jailer had started the fire the previous evening in anticipation of an early morning frost. The warmth it gave was a comfort to both men but especially Stevens. With his blanket pulled up to his chin, he was resigned to the fact that he’d probably receive little additional medical attention, but he was grateful his wounds had been cleaned and bandaged.
Brown had been awake since before dawn. He’d dressed and stoked the fire and at first light was looking through the newspapers provided by his jailer—stout, round-faced John Avis. Avis lived with his wife and child in quarters across the corridor from the
cells occupied by Brown and the others taken at Harpers Ferry. It was his wife’s job to cook for the prisoners and tend to their laundry and other needs, all of which she undertook without a trace of contempt, having found the new arrivals courteous and respectful.
A bond of sorts had begun to develop between Brown and Avis. As a captain in the Charles Town militia, the jailer had been in charge of a company summoned to the Ferry by the physician John Starry. Avis and his men were partly responsible for bringing about Brown’s final retreat to the firehouse’s engine room; it wasn’t unusual for the old man to acknowledge his opponents’ mettle, and he felt Avis and his company deserving. Though the jailer expressed no sympathy for Brown’s actions, the two men had opportunities to talk. Brown was able to explain his purpose and that he drew inspiration from Holy Scripture and the Declaration of Independence.
The jailer soon became the old man’s only source of reliable information—information that included what had become of the rest of Brown’s soldiers. The old man learned of the men who had escaped—Charles Plummer Tidd, Barclay Coppoc, Francis Jackson Merriam, Osborne Anderson, and his son Owen. John Cook and Albert Hazlett had also managed to escape, but in the past few days they’d been hunted down and would soon join the prisoners in Charles Town.
With genuine remorse Avis also told him of the men who didn’t survive—how the dead were tossed into shallow riverbank graves and that medical students were allowed to dig up some of the corpses and carry them off for laboratory dissection. Through the sharing of this and other personal information, Brown’s relationship with the jailer became close, so much so that Avis extended the old man favors, among them paper and pencil so he could write letters. The jailer also turned a blind eye as newspapers from distant cities in both the North and South found their way into Brown’s cell, smuggled in by reporters and visitors.