by Tony Horwitz
“The old man’s”: ibid.
“upon”: “Colonel Lee’s report, Mason Report, 45.
“if the wounded”: New York Herald, Oct. 21, 1859.
“the great work”: John Brown to wife and children, Jan. 30, 1858, in Louis Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, 118.
“a corpse”: Craig M. Simpson, A Good Southerner: The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2001), 20.
“The Governor”: “David Hunter Strother’s Lecture on John Brown in Cleveland, 1868.” There is some confusion about the sequence of interviews in the paymaster’s office. It appears that Wise and Hunter conducted the first, a few hours after Brown’s capture, and may also have been present for the second, longer interview by James Mason and others.
“Old Brown”: Baltimore American, Oct. 21, 1859 (citing the Richmond Enquirer).
“You are in”: ibid.
“He was singularly free”: Andrew Hunter, “John Brown’s Raid,” Publications of the Southern History Association, July 1897, 167.
“He is the gamest”: Baltimore American, Oct. 21, 1859.
“He is a bundle”: Baltimore American, Oct. 26, 1859.
“No sign of weakness”: Baltimore American, Oct. 21, 1859.
“SEN. MASON—How”: For this and other quotations from the interview, I have drawn on reports in the New York Herald and the Baltimore American on Oct. 21, 1859. A reporter from the Cincinnati Gazette was also present.
“I think you”: Baltimore American, Oct. 21, 1859.
“I want you to”: ibid.
“You had better”: ibid. Other details and the quotation about the plan of government and the carpetbag are from Andrew Hunter, “John Brown’s Raid.”
Chapter 10: His Despised Poor
“The boards”: “The Last Hours of the John Brown Raid,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, April 1965, 176. The anecdote about Christine Fouke collecting Fontaine Beckham in a wheelbarrow appeared in the New York Herald, Oct. 21, 1859.
“A dog”: “The Last Hours of the John Brown Raid,” 173. The dead insurgents were buried “together like a parcel of dead dogs,” one local wrote (George Mauzy to Burtons, Dec. 3, 1859, HFNHP). A woman who witnessed the burial “said the men were buried much as an equal number of dead animals would have been” (Milwaukee Sentinel, Nov. 5, 1899). See also Thomas Featherstonhaugh, “The Final Burial of the Followers of John Brown,” New England Magazine, April 1901.
“The work”: W. P. Smith to J. W. Garrett, Oct. 18, 1859, Correspondence Relating to the Insurrection at Harper’s Ferry, Western Maryland Historical Library.
“The result”: Colonel Lee’s report, Mason Report, 42.
“shaking”: New York Herald, Oct. 21, 1859.
“To arms!”: Baltimore American, Oct. 21, 1859.
“for the scene”: Colonel Lee’s report, Mason Report, 43.
“all the necessaries”: ibid., 42. For an inventory of the seized arms and equipment, see the list accompanying the testimony of Archibald Kitzmiller, Mason Report, A051–52.
“done up”: Baltimore Clipper, Oct. 20, 1859.
“answering”: Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1859, OGV.
“the existence”: Baltimore Clipper, Oct. 20, 1859.
“Sons of Virginia!”: J. Rosengarten, “John Brown’s Raid,” BSC.
“I would have given”: Baltimore American, Oct. 24, 1859.
“a numerous”: Governor Wise, “Speech to Assembly,” Dec. 5, 1859, in Governor’s Message and Reports of the Public Officers of the State.
“no quarter”: ibid.
“Northern man”: David Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 141.
“a matter”: Brian McGinty, John Brown’s Trial (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009), 82.
“Lynch them!”: James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown, 286.
“A supper basket”: New York Herald, Oct. 21, 1859.
“he would turn”: New York Herald, Oct. 25, 1859.
“the notorious”: Baltimore American, Oct. 23, 1859.
“sheer madness”: “John Cook’s confession,” in Richard Hinton, John Brown and His Men, 711.
“he could wield”: “Owen Brown’s Escape from Harper’s Ferry,” Atlantic Monthly, March 1874, 353. Most of the details of the escape are from Owen’s vivid account.
“made himself”: ibid.
“exceedingly merry”: ibid.
“Cook never came”: ibid., 354.
“Leave, leave!”: ibid., 356. For more on Cook’s capture, see the Baltimore American, Oct. 28–29, 1859. For women who wanted to rescue him from jail, see the article by Cook’s lawyer, A. K. McClure, “An Episode of John Brown’s Raid,” Lippincott’s Magazine, Sept. 1883, 279–87.
“looks like”: “A Proclamation by the Governor,” Nov. 3, 1859, Calendar of Virginia State Papers, 90.
“a consumptive”: ibid.
“sometimes”: ibid.
“very rough”: New York Herald, Oct. 22, 1859.
“dug the mine”: Osborne Anderson, “A Voice from Harper’s Ferry,” 62.
“INFERNAL DESPERADOES”: Independent Democrat (Charlestown), Oct. 18, 1859.
“Cash for Negroes” and “MEN, WOMEN”: Virginia Free Press, Oct. 13, 1859. The ad referring to Avis states that he is “authorized to buy for a gentleman’s use on his own plantation 50 NEGROES” and that he can be reached at the Charlestown jail. The town was named for Charles Washington, who had laid it out in 1786, calling the main thoroughfares “George” and “Washington” in honor of his famous older brother. The Washingtons and other early settlers were transplants from the Virginia Tidewater, and Charlestown grew into a farming and horse-racing center with four times as many slaves as Harpers Ferry. For more on local history, the Jefferson County Museum in Charles Town has an excellent collection.
“There is danger”: Governor Wise to Col. Lucius Davis, Oct. 22, 1859, Governor Henry A. Wise Executive Papers, State Library of Virginia.
“die of his wounds”: Andrew Hunter to Gov. Wise, Oct 22, 1859, Governor Wise Executive Papers, State Library of Virginia.
“There is an evident”: Baltimore American, Oct. 26, 1859.
“weak and haggard”: ibid.
“Virginians”: ibid.
“If you seek my blood”: ibid.
“I have now”: ibid.
“drum-head justice”: Andrew Hunter, quoted in Baltimore American, Nov. 1, 1859.
“I will not”: Virginia Free Press, Oct. 20, 1859.
“What we aim”: J. E. Norris, History of the Lower Shenandoah Valley (Chicago: A. Warner and Co., 1890), 443–44. Historians have speculated that Hunter may have had another purpose in bringing the treason charge. Virginia’s governor could unilaterally pardon or lessen the punishment of men sentenced to death for murder or incitement of slaves. He didn’t have this power in the case of treason.
For quotations from the indictment, see Records of Jefferson Co. Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, BSC, available online at www.wvculture.org/history/johnbrown/jbjeffcc.html.
“He has”: Baltimore American, Oct. 27, 1859.
“determined to resist”: Baltimore American, Oct. 28, 1859.
“The floor”: New York Herald, Nov. 10, 1859.
“comfortably”: New York Tribune, Nov. 5, 1859.
“a Lunatic”: For the telegram and an excellent discussion of the law as it related to insanity, see McGinty, John Brown’s Trial, 132–35.
“As mad as”: Chicago Press and Tribune, Oct. 21, 1859.
“excitable”: For descriptions of Brown’s “insanity,” see Villard, John Brown, 508, and interviews with John Whedon, Robert Thompson, and Benjamin Waite, OGV. On monomania, see testimony of John Andrews, Mason Report, A192: “I noticed that the old gentleman in conversation scarcely regarded other people, was entirely self-poised, self-possessed, sufficient to himself, and appeared to have no emotion of any sort, but to be entirely absorbed in an idea, which preoccupied h
im and seemed to put him in a position of transcending an ordinary emotion and ordinary reason.”
“openly”: E. B. Whitman to Franklin Sanborn, Jan. 16, 1858, KSHS.
“God’s instrument”: Louis DeCaro, Fire from the Midst of You, 248. See also letter of H. C. Gill, June 1, 1892, quoted in Irving Richman, John Brown Among the Quakers, 29: “He told me repeatedly, while talking, that he believed he was an instrument in the hands of God.” My speculation about manic depression draws on an interview with Dr. Earle Silber of Chevy Chase, Md., as well as on other sources.
“an idiot”: Code of Virginia, 1849, cited in McGinty, John Brown’s Trial, 133.
“I look upon”: Robert De Witt, The Life, Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown, 8.
“too absurd”: New York Tribune, Nov. 1, 1859.
“an intelligent”: De Witt, The Life, Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown, 13.
“were doing”: ibid., 16.
“As a Southern”: Baltimore American, Oct. 31, 1859.
“moral courage”: De Witt, The Life, Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown, 31.
“Gentlemen of the jury” and other quotes on the verdict: New York Herald, Nov. 1, 1859, and De Witt, 34–35.
“Nigger-Worshipping”: William Rasmussen and Robert Tilton, The Portent: John Brown’s Raid in American Memory (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 2009), 39.
“a fanatic” and “a wild and absurd”: New York Times, Nov. 3 and 21, 1859: “In common with the whole North, we have been astonished at the immense outcry raised over that wild and absurd freak of a hard-headed, strong-willed fanatic.”
a “deplorable”: New York Tribune, Oct. 19, 1859.
“misguided, wild”: Liberator, Oct. 21, 1859, quoted in Villard, John Brown, 473.
“Our old friend”: Franklin Sanborn to Theodore Parker, Oct. 22, 1859, Houghton Library. Sanborn would later change his mind, writing Parker on Nov. 14, 1859, “The failure is a success; it has done more for Freedom than years of talk could” (BPL).
“According”: Franklin Sanborn to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oct. 21, 1859, BPL.
“I have always”: Frederick Douglass to the Rochester (New York) Democrat and Republican, Oct. 31, 1859; the same letter was published in the New York Tribune, Nov. 4, 1859.
“noble and heroic”: ibid.
“but a hazy”: letter of Gerrit Smith, March 21, 1860, in Ralph Harlow, “Gerrit Smith and the John Brown Raid,” American Historical Review, Oct. 1932, 32—60. For an excellent discussion of Smith’s illness and treatment, see John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 238–45, 261–62. Also see “The ‘Black Dream’ of Gerrit Smith, New York Abolitionist,” by John R. McKivigan and Madeleine Leveille, Library Associates Courier (Syracuse University), fall 1985, 51–76. Smith’s correspondence—and litigation—over claims that he knew more than he let on can be found in the Houghton Library, and in the Smith Papers, Syracuse University.
“That event”: Samuel Gridley Howe to New York Tribune, Nov. 16, 1859.
“extreme” and “two sad results”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson, draft of letter to Samuel Gridley Howe, Nov. 15, 1859, BPL. This letter appears not to have been sent, but Higginson wrote the same to Sanborn, who quotes it in a letter back to Higginson, Nov. 17, 1859, BPL.
“Sanborn is there”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Franklin Sanborn, November 1859, BPL.
“There is no need”: Thomas Wentworth Higginson to Lysander Spooner, Nov. 28, 1859, quoted in Edward Renehan, The Secret Six, 219.
“Is it possible”: Thoreau’s “A Plea for Captain John Brown” was widely published and has been repeatedly anthologized, though often in abridged form. The version from which I have quoted is at http://www.transcendentalists.com/thoreau_plea_john_brown.htm.
“It was late” and “block of stone”: New York Tribune, Nov. 5, 1859.
“say why sentence”: New York Herald, Nov. 3, 1859.
“He seemed to be”: New York Tribune, Nov. 5, 1859.
“I have” and other quotes from Brown’s speech: New York Herald, Nov. 3, 1859, and Baltimore American, Nov. 3, 1859. The two accounts differ only slightly.
“in the hurry”: John Brown to Andrew Hunter, Nov. 22, 1859, in Franklin Sanborn, The Life and Letters of John Brown, 584.
“You have been found” and other quotations of Parker’s: Jefferson County Court Records, OGV.
“damned”: New York Tribune, Nov. 5, 1859.
“This indecorum”: Baltimore American, Nov. 3, 1859.
“composure”: New York Herald, Nov. 3, 1859.
“spoke timidly”: New York Tribune, Nov. 3, 1859.
“indifferent”: Cleon Moore to David Hunter Strother, Nov. 4, 1859, BSC.
“said he”: Jefferson County Court Records, BSC.
“Has anything”: William Henry Furness to J. M. McKim, Nov. 3, 1859, quoted in Villard, John Brown, 646–47.
“no consciousness” and “ends of justice”: Brown’s speech to the court, Nov. 2, 1859, in New York Herald, Nov. 3, 1859.
“the two best”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 8 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 125. This appears in the essay “Eloquence.”
“lost his head” and “fatal blunder”: Ralph Waldo Emerson to William Emerson, Oct. 23, 1859, in Ralph Rusk, ed., Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 5 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 178.
“unschooled” and other quotes from the essay “Heroism”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays: First Series (1841). E-text at University of Virginia Library, http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/EmeEssF.html.
“his simple, artless” and Emerson’s other observations concerning Brown: Emerson, “Remarks at a Meeting for the Relief of the Family of John Brown, November 18, 1859,” in The Complete Works, vol. 10.
“He believes in two articles”: quoted in John J. McDonald, “Emerson and John Brown,” New England Quarterly, Sept. 1971, 383.
“None purer”: James Elliot Cabot, A Memoir of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1888), 597. Cabot notes that Emerson omitted these lines from a published version of the essay ten years later, “distance of time having brought the case into a juster perspective.” For more on Emerson and Thoreau and their impact, see David S. Reynolds, John Brown, Abolitionist: The Man Who Killed Slavery, Sparked the Civil War, and Seeded Civil Rights (New York: Knopf, 2005), 344–47, 363–36.
“I have been”: John Brown to Mary Brown, Nov. 10, 1859, HSP.
“You know”: John Brown to “My Dear Friend E.B.,” Nov. 1, 1859, in Louis Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, 137.
“often covered my head”: John Brown to Rev. Heman Humphrey, Nov. 25, 1859, in Ruchames, A John Brown Reader, 158.
“Jesus of Nazareth”: John Brown to family, Nov. 8, 1859, HSP.
“will do vastly more”: ibid.