Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War Hardcover – Bargain Price

by Tony Horwitz

  “simple jail fare”: New York Tribune, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “showed a”: Andrew Hunter, “John Brown’s Raid,” 178.

  Final exchange: New York Herald, Dec. 3, 1859, and Evening Star (Washington D.C.), Dec. 3, 1859.

  “MY DEAR WIFE”: John Brown to Mary Brown, Dec. 2, 1859, in Villard, John Brown, 553.

  “John Brown”: John Brown note, headed “To be inscribed on the old family monument at North Elba,” HSP.

  “only say”: John Brown to Jeremiah Brown, Dec. 1, 1859, BSC.

  “something from”: Lora Case to John Brown, Nov. 28, 1859, in James Redpath, Echoes of Harpers Ferry (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 423–24.

  “Your most”: John Brown to Lora Case, Dec. 2, 1859, in Clarence Gee, “John Brown’s Last Letter,” Ohio History, Sept. 1930, courtesy of Louis DeCaro. See also Lora Case, “Hudson of Long Ago,” HLHS.

  “So I returned”: Ecclesiastes 4:1. For a complete list, see “J.B.’s Marked Texts from the Blessing Bible,” OGV.

  “As soon”: Virginia Free Press, Dec. 8, 1859.

  “false statements” and “of their own accord”: Virginia Free Press, Dec. 8, 1859.

  “You know I opposed”: ibid.

  “die like men” and “telling them”: ibid.

  “I feel it in my soul”: ibid.

  “Stand up like a man”: ibid.

  “He that is slow”: John Brown to Aaron Stevens, Dec. 2, 1859, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  “a warm”: David Strother, unpublished account of execution, Virginia Historical Society.

  “just like a May”: Louis Starry, quoted in J. Hampton Baumgartner, “Fifty Years After John Brown” (Baltimore: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Co., 1909), 8, HFNHP.

  “a game man”: Virginia Free Press, Dec. 8, 1859.

  “This is a beautiful”: New York Herald, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “so as”: “Recollections of Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Hunter,” The Times-Democrat (New Orleans), Sept. 6, 1887.

  “Why this jealous”: New York Tribune, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “carpet slippers”: Evening Star, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “Gentlemen”: Baltimore American, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “the same”: Evening Star, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “You must”: New York Herald, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “the same even”: Evening Star, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “No”: New York Herald, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “quietly”: David Strother, unpublished account of execution, Virginia Historical Society.

  “upright as a soldier”: J.T.L. Preston, “The Execution of John Brown,” The Southern Bivouac, Aug. 1886, BSC.

  “All ready”: Evening Star, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “With the fall”: James I. Robertson, Jr., Stonewall Jackson: The Man, the Soldier, the Legend (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997), 198–99.

  “There was”: New York Tribune, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “This motion”: Evening Star, Dec. 3, 1859.

  “Of Sympathy”: David Strother, unpublished account of execution, Virginia Historical Society.

  “He behaved”: Robertson, Stonewall Jackson, 199.

  “I was proud”: John Rhodehamel and Louise Taper, “Right or Wrong, God Judge Me”: The Writings of John Wilkes Booth (Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 125.

  “trator”: ibid., 60.

  “a brave”: Asia Booth Clarke, John Wilkes Booth, A Sister’s Memoir, Terry Alford, ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1996), 81.

  “John Brown was”: ibid., 88.

  “robber & murderer”: William Kauffman Scarborough, ed., The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, vol. 1 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), 366–67. As an agriculturalist, Ruffin was famous for an 1832 article, “Essay on Calcareous Manures.”

  “stir the sluggish blood”: ibid., 348.

  “the seat of war”: ibid., 361.

  “with readiness” and other execution quotes: ibid., 368–71.

  “Sample of the favors”: ibid., 368.

  “The object”: New York Herald, Dec. 4, 1859.

  “I John Brown”: “Final Statement,” Chicago Historical Society.

  “Should God”: John Brown to family, Jan. 23, 1855, Chicago Historical Society.

  “Without”: Hebrews 9:22.

  “Brown’s old-fashioned”: Sanborn, The Life and Letters, 620.

  “would be better”: ibid. Brown’s final note passed from Hiram O’Bannon to the jailer John Avis to a collector, Alexander Ross, who exhibited it at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1892–93. See Boyd Stutler to Dr. David Hearns, April 21, 1953, BSC. The note was barely reported at the time of Brown’s hanging; the only mentions I can find are in Charleston (S.C.) Courier, Tri-Weekly on Dec. 15, 1859, and Lowell (Massachusetts) Daily Citizen and News, on Dec. 20, 1859. The first prominent mention was in Franklin Sanborn’s article “The Virginia Campaign of John Brown,” Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1875, 721.

  Chapter 13: Dissevering the Ties That Bind Us

  “O Patriot True!”: Paul Finkelman, ed., His Soul Goes Marching On (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1995), 315.

  “Living, he made”: Louisa May Alcott, “With a Rose, That Bloomed on the Day of John Brown’s Martrydom,” The Liberator, Jan. 20, 1860. Alcott made note of writing the verse in her diary on Dec. 2, 1859, but was less enthusiastic about hosting the Brown girls while they attended Sanborn’s school in Concord. “John Brown’s daughters came to board, and upset my plans of rest and writing … . I had my fit of woe up garret on the fat rat-bag” (Ednah Cheney, ed., Louisa May Alcott: Her Life, Letters, and Journals [Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1890], 105, 127).

  “But the streaming”: The poem and an excellent analysis of it can be found in Zoe Trodd and John Stauffer, Meteor of War, 246–48.

  “Even now as I write”: diary entry for Dec. 2, 1859, in Samuel Longfellow, Life of Henry Wadsworth Long fellow, with Extracts from His Journals and Correspondence (Boston, 1886), vol. 2, 347. In the same entry he wrote of Brown’s hanging: “This will be a great day in our history; the date of a new Revolution,—quite as much needed as the old one.”

  “Martyr’s Day” and “From the firmament”: Trodd and Stauffer, Meteor of War, 213–17.

  “cracked,” “justly,” and “name may be”: Allan Nevins and Milton Thomas, eds., The Diary of George Templeton Strong (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 465, 473. Foreigners also sensed that the United States would be forever changed by Brown’s hanging. The French novelist Victor Hugo wrote in a letter on December 2 that “the murder of Brown” would open an “irreparable fault” in the Union, “which would in the end tear it asunder” (Trodd and Stauffer, 169). The anecdote about the Connecticut woman’s visit to Brown’s birthplace is from Sarah Pritchard to “Mr. Kilborn,” May, 6, 1900, BSC.

  “I am a non-resistant”: The Liberator, Dec. 16, 1859.

  “simplicity and consistency”: Nevins and Thomas, Diary of George Templeton Strong, 474. See also Samuel May to Lydia Maria Child, Jan. 13, 1860, BSC. “If John Brown erred in the plan which he devised his subsequent conduct has well nigh converted the nation.”

  “our entire block” and “When he come”: Louisa Williamson to Jedidiah Williamson, Dec. 8, 1859, BSC. See also “Notes on John Brown’s Body in New York,” BSC. For the funeral train’s arrival in Philadelphia, see Baltimore American, Dec. 6, 1859.

  “Blow Ye the Trumpet” and other details of Brown’s funeral: New York Tribune, Dec. 13, 1859.

  “History will date”: New York Weekly Tribune, Dec. 17, 1859.

  “if we would allow him”: Jefferson Davis, remarks to the U.S. Senate, Dec. 8, 1859, quoted in Trodd and Stauffer, Meteor of War, 261.

  “Union meetings” and “FANATICISM REBUKED”: William Rasmussen and Robert Tilton, The Portent (Richmond: Virginia Historical Society, 2009), 58.

  “the bond of commerce”: ibid, 60.

  “John Brown, and a thousand” and “even if it rushes”: Davis, remarks to the U.S. Senate, in Trodd and Stauffer, Meteo
r of War, 260.

  “as ambitious as Lucifer”: Henry Mayer, All on Fire, 515.

  “last and crowning aggression”: Trodd and Stauffer, Meteor of War, 256.

  “right to secede”: “Resolution of South Carolina,” Dec. 27, 1859, State Library of Virginia.

  “The Harper’s Ferry invasion”: address of the Hon. C. G. Memminger to State of Virginia, Jan. 19, 1860, OGV.

  “incendiary” and “dangerous emissaries”: New York Herald, Dec. 19, 1859.

  “suspicious” and “enticing negroes”: Baltimore American, Dec. 6, 16, 1859. The lynching is described in the Baltimore American, Dec. 16, 1859.

  “I do not exaggerate”: Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 227.

  “use, eat, drink”: Finkelman, His Soul Goes Marching On, 157.

  “to secede in a body”: Baltimore American, Dec. 22, 1859.

  “abolition a cancer” and “We must rely”: Gov. Wise speech to Assembly, Dec. 5, 1859, Governor’s Message and Reports of the Public Officers of the State (Richmond: William F. Ritchie, 1859), State Library of Virginia.

  “The prisoners seem”: Baltimore American, Dec. 15, 1859.

  “A dungeon bare”: Baltimore American, Dec. 13, 1859.

  “wayward tendencies”: Jeannette Mather Lord, “John Brown: They Had a Concern,” West Virginia History, April 1959, BSC.

  “I have seen my folly”: Baltimore American, Dec. 13, 1859.

  “So you may know”: Irving Richman, John Brown Among the Quakers, 51.

  “professed a desire”: Virginia Free Press, Dec. 22, 1859.

  “Each expressed a hope”: Baltimore American, Dec. 17, 1859.

  “playing possum”: ibid. This and the paper of December 19 have details of the breakout. A Kansas ally of Brown later said that a free-state fighter had sneaked into Charlestown, claimed to hate abolitionists, and been hired as a jail guard. He conspired with Cook and Coppoc to be posted outside the yard wall on the night of December 14. But their escape was delayed a day and, as a result, the Kansan wasn’t on duty. See Villard, John Brown, 571, and Hinton, John Brown and His Men, 396–97.

  “We do not wish”: Virginia Free Press, Dec. 22, 1859.

  “would make a very genteel”: Harper’s Weekly, Nov. 12, 1859.

  “copper-colored” and “behaved himself”: Andrew Hunter, “John Brown’s Raid,” 188. He added: “If it had been possible to recommend a pardon for any of them, it would have been for this man.”

  “I am so soon to stand”: John Copeland to his brother, Dec. 10, 1859, quoted in Nudelman, John Brown’s Body, 68, and Ashtabula Sentinel, Dec. 21, 1859.

  “Last night”: For full text of this and other Copeland letters, see http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/Copeland/copeland_letters.htm. Also, in slightly different form, Intercepted Letters, Gov. Wise Executive Papers, State Library of Virginia, and “The John Brown Letters Found in Virginia State Library 1901,” Virginia Historical Magazine of History and Biography, April 1903, 383–84, and October 1902, 170–71.

  “Copeland seemed to suffer”: New York Weekly Tribune, Dec. 17, 1859.

  “Yes. To your orders”: The telegrams from Copeland’s father, and Henry Wise’s reply on December 12, are in the John Copeland file, OGV.

  “the Negro convicts are not”: Gov. Wise, note on back of request for bodies from Dr. Edmund Mason, Dec. 14, 1859, Executive Papers, State Library of Virginia.

  “This nigger that you are”: James Monroe, Thursday Lectures, Addresses and Essays (Oberlin, Ohio: Edward J. Goodrich, 1897), 170.

  “A fine athletic figure”: ibid., 175. For an excellent discussion of the treatment of black bodies in the nineteenth century, see Nudelman, John Brown’s Body.

  “remarkably cheerful”: from the report in the Cincinnati Gazette, Dec. 16, 1859, BSC.

  “Remember me to all my friends”: ibid.

  “a settled expression of despair”: ibid.

  “Stop a minute”: New York Herald, Dec. 17, 1859.

  “then waved his hand”: Shepherdstown (Virginia) Register, Dec. 24, 1859, BSC.

  “to expedite death”: Virginia Free Press, Dec. 22, 1859.

  “always at heart”: interview with Virginia Kennedy Cook Johnston, 1908, OGV.

  “a great fondness”: ibid.

  “I had a very hard time”: Aaron Stevens to Annie Brown, Jan. 5, 1860, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  “Such black and penetrating”: George Hoyt to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Oct. 31, 1859, extracted in letter from Higginson to Brown family, Nov. 4, 1859, BSC.

  “We feel an increased”: Mary Miller to Aaron Stevens, Feb. 3, 1860, KSHS.

  “I have looked”: E. F. Curtis to Aaron Stevens, Feb. 28, 1860, KSHS.

  a “regular young lion”: Rebecca Spring to Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Jan. 23, 1860, BPL.

  “My dear little boy”: For this and other correspondence, see Sarah Barkin, Rebecca Buffum Spring and the Politics of Motherhood in Antebellum America (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Libraries, 2006).

  “Your son in the bonds”: ibid.

  “My love is very warm”: Aaron Stevens to Jennie Dunbar, Sept. 1, 1859, KSHS.

  “hoping that I am”: Aaron Stevens to Jennie Dunbar, Dec. 3, 1859, KSHS.

  “A rare and delicate type”: Katherine Mayo, “A Lieutenant of John Brown,” New York Evening Post, 1909, clipping in BSC.

  “He did not seem”: Ellis Lindsley to James Redpath, Feb. 29, 1860, KSHS.

  “Be of good cheer”: Jennie Dunbar’s statements are from her letter to Aaron Stevens, Dec. 13, 1859, OGV. This letter incorporates an earlier one she wrote on November 12 and didn’t send until December.

  “pure spring water”: Aaron Stevens to Jennie Dunbar, Dec. 20, 1859, KSHS.

  “She loves you as a brother”: Julia Lindsley to Aaron Stevens, Feb. 9, 1860, KSHS. See also Ellis Lindsley to James Redpath, Feb. 29, 1860, telling of Dunbar’s refusal to accept money as the “soul bride” of Stevens.

  “When I think”: Ashtabula Sentinel, Feb. 22, 1860.

  “god and Savior” and “good actions”: Aaron Stevens to “My Dear Brother,” Feb. 20, 1860, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  “I expect”: Aaron Stevens to “My Dear Sister,” Jan. 18, 1860, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  “to dance on nothing” and “I think now”: Aaron Stevens to “Unkcle James,” Dec. 11, 1859, quoted in “The John Brown Letters Found in the Virginia State Library.”

  “I have a desire to live”: Aaron Stevens to “My Dear Brother,” Feb. 23, 1860, Gilder Lehrman Collection.

  “supposing her to be”: Ashtabula Sentinel, March 28, 1860, OGV.

  “the worst of”: ibid.

  “I left him”: Jennie Dunbar to James Redpath, May 7, 1860, OGV.