by Herb Karl
Brown, along with his fellow prisoners—Stevens, Edwin Coppoc, Shields Green, and John Copeland—already had appeared at a series of preliminary hearings. In front of a packed courtroom they listened to testimony from a list of witnesses that included the hostages held in the engine room. When the examination was over the prisoners were asked to choose whom they wished to represent them.
With one eye peering out of a slit in his swollen face, Brown rose from his seat. An injury to his jaw caused him pain as he spoke, but he felt obligated to make sure his adversaries understood that he had no doubts about the legitimacy of his purpose and that he was quite willing to face the consequences of his actions.
“I did not ask for any quarter at the time I was taken,” he said. “The governor of the state of Virginia tendered me assurances that I should have a fair trial, but under no circumstances whatever will I be able to have a fair trial. If you seek my blood, you can have it at any moment without this mockery of a trial . . . I have now little further to ask, other than I may not be foolishly insulted only as cowardly barbarians insult those who fall under their power.”
Governor Henry Wise may have tendered Brown assurances, but as long as Wise had a say in the matter, the man who violated the sovereignty of Virginia was going to be subjected to the full extent of the state’s judicial powers. When the train from the Ferry carrying the governor and his prisoners pulled into Charles Town, Wise summoned Richard Parker, the judge who presided over the circuit court.
“We must bring Brown to trial without a moment’s delay,” the governor told Judge Parker, “before the black Republicans get their hands on him.”
Wise was referring to certain members of a national political party that had been in existence only five years: the Republicans. The radical wing of the party—the so-called black Republicans—hated the existence of slavery in a nation that claimed individual liberty as a core value. Wise suspected the black Republicans might attempt to bring Brown to trial in federal court—a logical choice, given that Brown’s headquarters was located in a federal armory and that much of the fighting took place on armory grounds. If the black Republicans succeeded, Wise thought they might use the trial to advance their antislavery agenda. And even if the black Republicans didn’t meddle, Wise wanted to make a statement: Virginia had the right to act unilaterally when it was threatened with insurrection. As a politician who had called for his state’s secession from the Union and as a Southerner who clung tenaciously to a code of honor—having survived no fewer than eight duels—Wise was embarrassed that Virginia militias didn’t defeat the handful of insurgents at the armory, choosing instead to rely on federal troops. He felt Virginians ought to be able to take care of themselves, and he didn’t want the federal government nosing around where it didn’t belong. However, the more he thought about the situation, the more he saw Brown’s actions furthering the case for disunion—for the South breaking away from the North and forming its own confederation of states, a possibility he was inclined to favor.
Whatever its eventual impact, the invasion of Harpers Ferry—at least the exaggerated reports circulated at the outset—created an enormous stir, rekindling nightmares of another Nat Turner revolt, something that had haunted Virginia slaveholders for nearly three decades. In order to calm fears and send a message to abolitionists with thoughts of imitating Brown, Governor Wise wanted justice administered swiftly. And he had a valid excuse for doing so. The semiannual term of the circuit court was nearing its conclusion, and if Brown wasn’t brought to trial immediately he couldn’t be tried for another six months. Too much time for Virginians consumed by fear and anger to have to wait.
Wise may have despised Brown’s aims, but he admired the old man’s courage, his willingness to die for what he believed in. After listening to him speak his mind from a mat on the floor of the armory paymaster’s office and chatting with him as he was being taken to the train for the trip to Charles Town, Wise said of Brown, “He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw—cut and thrust and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and he inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth.” Wise no doubt had experienced the old man’s ability to captivate an audience, a skill that knew no boundaries—affecting friends and enemies in equal measure.
Brown’s parting words to the governor were uttered on the railroad platform in Charles Town. The old man waited with his hands cuffed behind his back as militiamen stood ready to take him and his comrades to their jail cells. Jeering citizens milled about; one came forward and called Brown a robber.
Brown looked the man in the eye and declared, “It is you who are robbers—you slaveholders.” He paused, surveying the rest of the people on the platform and added, “And you who choose to do nothing about it.”
An annoyed Wise chose to respond: “Mr. Brown, the silver of your beard is reddened by the blood of crime, and it is meet that you should eschew those hard words and think upon eternity.”
“Governor,” Brown said calmly, “I have from all appearances not more than fifteen or twenty years the start of you in the journey to that eternity of which you kindly warn me. And whether my tenure here shall be fifteen months or fifteen days or fifteen hours, I am equally prepared to go. There is an entire eternity behind and an entire eternity before, and the little speck in the center, however long, is but comparatively a minute. The difference between your tenure and mine is trifling, and I want therefore to tell you to be prepared. I am prepared. You slaveholders have a heavy responsibility, and it behooves you to prepare more than it does me.”
Wise pivoted and boarded the train for Richmond. Brown and his men were hustled off to the Charles Town jail.
When the last of the preliminary hearings ended, the grand jury was ready to issue its charges. Brown and Stevens were brought to court on their cots. Stevens had complained of dizziness. Though Brown’s injuries were not as serious as his cellmate’s, he refused to leave his cell unless he, too, was carried into the courtroom on a cot.
Brown would continue to occupy a cot throughout his trial—rising only when he wished to participate in the questioning of witnesses or to make a statement. His insistence on lying prostrate at the feet of his accusers was partly due to his injuries and partly as a protest of what he regarded an unfair rush to judgment—though it may have been equally the result of what the late John Kagi had called a “talent for the dramatic.” No matter what they felt about Brown’s deeds at Harpers Ferry, how could those following his trial—either in person or in the newspapers—not find something to admire about a wounded man who defended himself from his prison bed? And though Virginians may have been in a hurry to convict him, they wanted to give the appearance of conducting a fair trial—particularly after denying his request for a delay in order that he might have sufficient time to recover from his injuries. So they felt obliged to grant Brown certain privileges, not the least of which was to allow him to be tried from a cot.
No special concessions were made, however, when it was time for the charges to be presented by the grand jury. Both Brown and Stevens were told to get up and stand before the bar alongside the three unimpaired prisoners. Bailiffs held Stevens erect. Brown used the back of a chair to support himself.
The clerk began reading:
“Conspiring with rebellious slaves to produce an insurrection . . .
“Committing treason by waging war against the Commonwealth of Virginia . . .
“Feloniously and willfully committing murder within the Commonwealth’s jurisdiction . . .”
All the defendants pleaded not guilty. Brown’s trial was slated to begin the following day.
And so, as he sat on his cot browsing through newspapers on the morning he was to be taken to court, Brown was convinced his God had laid out a new path for him. His war on slavery wasn’t over. But the weapons of war had changed. Guns and pikes were to be replaced with words—his words�
��and the old man was confident he was equal to the task.
There was a rapping on the cell door’s iron bars and the rattle of keys, the clicking of a falling tumbler. The door swung open and the jailer stuck his head inside.
“The guards will be here soon,” Avis said. “In the meantime I have something Mrs. Avis prepared—something to warm you on this cool morning.” The jailer glanced at Stevens, saw his eyes were open, and added, “For you, too.” He stepped back into the corridor and reappeared with a tray that held a steaming kettle, two tin cups, and a mound of biscuits. “I know you don’t favor coffee,” Avis said to Brown, “so I’ve brought my wife’s English tea.” He set the tray on the table.
Brown said, “You can tell Mrs. Avis her kindnesses are always appreciated. She and this nourishment shall receive the blessing of the Lord.”
The jailer retreated from the cell, returning moments later with a pair of bulky leg irons dangling from a two-foot chain. He spoke apologetically: “I think it unnecessary you should be required to wear these to your trial, Captain, but the governor fears attempts will be made to rescue you.”
Brown nodded and said, “The governor seems to have taken extraordinary precautions.” The old man knew that a cannon had been placed outside the courthouse and another at the entrance to the jail.
“He’s not yet declared martial law,” Avis said of the governor, “though a stranger in town might think so. Militiamen roam the streets, everyone is armed, and more troops are on the way from Richmond.”
While the jailer knelt at Brown’s feet to attach the leg irons, the old man was submissive, remarking that he was happy to be bound in the manner of those he sought to free from bondage.
After Avis departed, Stevens lifted his head. “Well, Captain,” he said, “I now see what you meant when you said slavery could be frightened out of existence.”
Although Brown didn’t respond, Stevens’s words brought to mind some things the old man hadn’t shared with his cellmate. There were stories in the local newspaper of fires of unknown origin that had flared up in the surrounding countryside, and a Richmond daily reported that slaveholders in the Charles Town area had seen their barns, stables, and stockyards consumed by flames, giving the night skies a “lurid glare.” It was Avis who first told Brown of the fires, that they were rumored to have been set by slaves intent on avenging the failed invasion, that some of the slaves responsible for the fires were the runaways who joined Brown at Harpers Ferry and saw the futility of continuing to fight; they had managed to escape, only to resume guerrilla activities on their own. The fires caused great fear among the residents of Charles Town and neighboring communities. But fear that grew out of revenge was abhorrent to Brown, and he worried that his efforts to rid the nation of slavery would be tainted by it, even though the fires may have been the work of men who felt they were walking in John Brown’s footsteps.
The old man had spoken about none of this with Stevens. Nor had he disclosed the fact that Northern newspapers were critical of the invasion and had attempted to discredit him. Editors called him reckless, monomaniacal, someone who “met with the fate which he courted.” They called the invasion the work of a madman.
The chain on his leg irons trailed noisily across the stone floor as Brown shuffled to the table. He lifted the kettle from the tray and poured the hot tea, then shuffled back to Stevens’s cot. Brown helped Stevens sit up and held him while he sipped the tea—which was how the guards found them when they entered the cell.
“The judge and jury are ready for you, Mr. Brown,” said the sergeant of the guard.
Brown shuffled to his cot, collected the newspapers, and put them on the table. He returned to the cot, sat down, and swung his shackled legs onto the straw-filled mattress. He nodded to the sergeant.
“Let us not keep Virginia waiting,” he said, then lay down, pulling up the blanket. He shut his eyes as the cot with him on it was hoisted into the air and carried into a street crowded with onlookers. Militiamen—muskets loaded, bayonets fixed—marched alongside.
22
Minutes Later
October 27, 1859
Charles Town, Virginia
Diagonally across the street from the jail stood the Jefferson County Courthouse, a compact two-story brick building whose facade consisted of a portico and four thick columns. Were it not for a massive cupola rising from its gabled roof, the building would have been a typical example of the neoclassical style that had become a staple of Southern architecture. Immediately inside the doors was the courtroom, occupying the entire ground floor and amply lit by large windows on all four walls. Stoves provided warmth, though they were hardly needed; the body heat generated by a room packed with spectators was more than adequate. The air gave off the odor of cigar smoke and perspiration.
Brown’s cot was carried down a narrow aisle and placed before Judge Parker, who sat at a table on a dais enclosed by a railing. On either side of the aisle were the tables for the defense and prosecution. To the side of the dais was the jury box.
There was a long table reserved for journalists, a number of whom were with the Associated Press, a group of correspondents employed by a half dozen New York dailies. The rest of the reporters represented individual newspapers. The journalists had chosen to segregate themselves—Northern reporters on one side of the table, their Southern counterparts on the other.
Brown lay on his cot with a blanket covering his head. He seemed oblivious to the opening remarks—until one of his court-appointed attorneys, Lawson Botts, rose from his chair and waved a piece paper at Judge Parker.
“I have here, your honor, a telegraphed message recently received that I should like to read to the court.”
The judge nodded. “Go ahead, Mr. Botts.”
The cracking of peanuts and chestnuts by the nonsmoking spectators ceased. The room fell silent.
Botts had only to read the first few sentences before it was evident the information contained in the message—an account of a history of insanity among Brown’s close and distant relatives—was intended to show the invasion of Harpers Ferry as the work of a deranged mind. When Botts finished reading, he announced he’d shared the message with Brown earlier and that his client refused an insanity plea and sought no immunity of any kind.
Brown hadn’t expected the message to be read in court. Even though Botts acknowledged that Brown rejected what the message insinuated, the specter of insanity hanging over his trial was something the old man dreaded. That Botts would even raise the issue confirmed Brown’s belief that his court-appointed attorneys were incapable of providing the kind of defense he desired. He knew that the people who sent the message were well intentioned, that they were trying to save him from the gallows, but he also knew they were naive. They didn’t understand that it was imperative he be perceived as a rational human being, someone who honestly believed he did what was right, even though he may have violated the laws of the nation and the Commonwealth of Virginia. To imply he might suffer bouts of insanity would ruin everything the old man was trying to accomplish; it would turn his decision to use his trial as a platform for justifying his purpose—liberating the slaves—into a meaningless endeavor.
So he pushed aside his covers, exposing his shackled legs, and—with difficulty—got to his feet. He looked at the jury, then turned to Judge Parker: “If it please the court, I should like to put an end to what I look upon as a miserable artifice and pretext of those who ought to have taken a different course in regard to me, if they took any at all, and I view the one they have taken with contempt.” Brown went on to explain why he shouldn’t be considered insane, putting to rest any attempt to use the claim of insanity as a strategy for his defense.
Judge Parker accepted Brown’s argument and instructed the jury to do likewise.
The trial lasted five days.
Reports were transmitted by a press that had daily access to the telegraph. Newspaper editors—North and South—took the reports wired from Charles Town and tra
nsformed them into front-page copy reflecting their attitudes toward Brown and the sectional biases of their readers.
In the South, Brown was branded a fanatic and a tool of Northern abolitionists. The letters taken from his carpetbag enabled Southern editors to justify the claim that wealthy abolitionists and black Republicans were conspiring with Brown to destroy a way of life that had existed in the South for more than two centuries.
In the North, the story line wasn’t so rigid. When the trial began, Brown’s detractors far outnumbered his supporters. As the end neared, however, Northern papers tilted ever so slightly in his direction. This was especially apparent when the hostages spoke favorably of their treatment by Brown. When the description of his reaction to the killing of Will Thompson was printed, readers were left with a portrait of a man who was far from a cold, calculating fanatic. Brown wept when the men who shot Thompson bragged to the court about tossing him half-alive into the Potomac, watching him drown, then continuing to fire at his lifeless body.
On the fourth day of the trial, two highly regarded attorneys—hired in a last-ditch effort by Brown’s Massachusetts friends to replace the defense lawyers appointed by the court—gave closing arguments. Though the arguments were forceful, they had little effect on the jurors.
It took only forty-five minutes for the jury to return with a verdict.
The spectators sat inert, the only movement coming from the table occupied by the reporters as they flipped open their notepads. Brown lay on his cot with only his bearded face visible. His eyes were closed, and his face bore a serene expression.
At the behest of Judge Parker, the clerk of the court read a brief statement recapitulating the charges, after which he turned to the jury:
“Gentlemen of the jury, what say you? Is the prisoner at the bar—John Brown—guilty or not guilty?”