by H. W. Brands
“I have,” Washington replied.
“Where is it?”
“It is on my person.”
“I want it,” Stevens said.
“You shall not have it,” Washington answered.
“Take care, sir,” Stevens warned. Changing the subject, he said, “Have you money?”
Washington said he did, and that Stevens shouldn’t have it.
“Take care, sir,” Stevens repeated.
“I am going to speak very plainly,” Washington said. “You told me your purpose was philanthropic, but you did not mention at the same time that it was robbery and rascality.” He told Stevens and the others that because they had him outgunned, they could forcibly divest him of his watch and money, but he wouldn’t surrender them.
Stevens considered the situation. “I presume you have heard of Osawatomie Brown?” he said.
“No, I have not,” Washington said.
“Then you have paid very little attention to Kansas matters.”
Washington said he had become so disgusted by the news from Kansas that whenever he encountered a news article with the word “Kansas,” he stopped reading.
“Well,” said Stevens, in a tone Washington interpreted as self-important, “you will see him this morning.”
The other raiders had been rounding up Washington’s slaves. They located only three, the others being away on a Sunday night visiting family and friends on other farms. The raiders hitched up a carriage and a wagon. Stevens ordered Washington into the carriage, which Shields Green, the friend of Frederick Douglass, drove. The raiders, not knowing the horses or the livery, had fouled things up; Washington had to straighten them out. In the wagon were several of Washington’s male slaves; the women were left behind. The slaves looked unhappy, Washington thought.
The two vehicles and the raiders set off in the direction of Harpers Ferry. Before long they passed a house belonging to a widow named Henderson. Aaron Stevens seemed ready to enter the house, but Washington told him that only the widow and her daughters lived there. “It would be an infamous shame to wake them up at this hour of the night,” he said. Stevens grudgingly agreed.
Farther on they passed the property of John Allstadt. The raiders were not to be denied a second time. They removed a rail from Allstadt’s fence and carried it toward the house. “I heard the jar of the rail against the door, and in a few moments there was a shout of murder and general commotion in the house,” Washington recounted. “I thought first it was his servants hallooing murder, but he told me afterwards it was his daughters; finding this commotion going on, they put their heads out of the window and hallooed murder; one of these fellows drew his rifle on them and ordered them to go in and shut the window.” Allstadt and his nineteen-year-old son, under guard, and several of his slaves, hardly more willing, were loaded in a wagon, and the whole contingent continued toward Harpers Ferry.
Washington gradually realized that Stevens had been truthful in talking of wanting to free the slaves. “Up to that time I supposed it was merely a robbing party who possibly had some room at the Ferry,” he said. “I did not look on the thing as very serious at all until we drove to the armory gate, and the party on the front seat of the carriage said ‘All’s well,’ and the reply came from the sentinel at the gate ‘All’s well.’ Then the gates were opened and I was driven in and was received by old Brown.”
John Brown greeted the prisoners cordially, considering the circumstances. “You will find a fire in here, sir,” he told Washington, motioning to the armory’s engine house. “It is rather cool this morning.”
They went inside, and Brown explained to Washington why he had been arrested. “My particular reason for taking you first was that, as the aide to the governor of Virginia, I knew you would endeavor to perform your duty, and perhaps you would have been a troublesome customer to me,” he said. “Apart from that, I wanted you particularly for the moral effect it would give our cause, having one of your name as a prisoner.” Brown said he might not keep Washington for long. “It is too dark to see to write at this time, but when it shall have cleared off a little and become lighter, if you have not pen and ink, I will furnish them to you, and I shall require you to write to some of your friends to send a stout, able-bodied negro. I think after a while, possibly, I shall be enabled to release you, but only on the condition of getting your friends to send in a negro man as a ransom.” Brown added, by way of warning, “I shall be very attentive to you, sir, for I may get the worst of it in my first encounter, and if so, your life is worth as much as mine.”
* * *
—
WASHINGTON TOOK NOTE, and not with pleasure, that his slaves were treated as well as he. “They were brought in to the fire,” he recalled. The engine house was a brick building about twenty-four feet square, divided in two by an interior wall, forming what the locals called the engine house proper and the watch house. The stove was in the watch house. Washington was led directly into the watch house to warm up; he was followed by his slaves. “They came in repeatedly to warm themselves,” he recalled.
Washington also took note that his slaves were armed. Osborne Anderson had been in the party that seized Lewis Washington and John Allstadt and their slaves. Anderson’s account of the night had the prisoners showing less composure than Washington’s version did. “Col. Washington opened his room door and begged us not to kill him,” Anderson wrote. Washington shivered with fear on learning he was going to be taken prisoner, Anderson said. “He stood as if speechless or terrified.” He begged to be let alone. “You can have my slaves if you will let me remain,” Anderson quoted him. Washington’s plea failing, he lost his nerve. “The colonel cried heartily when he found he must submit,” Anderson said.
He complained still more on being made to hand over his heirloom sword to Anderson, a black man. John Brown had given special orders on this point; when enforced by Aaron Stevens and John Cook, the order made Washington still more upset.
John Allstadt was equally flummoxed, Anderson related. “He went into as great a fever of excitement as Washington had done. We could have his slaves, also, if we would only leave him.” When this was denied, he grew very anxious. “He hesitated, puttered around, fumbled and meditated for a long time.” Only then did he accept the inevitable.
After Anderson helped deliver Washington and Allstadt to Harpers Ferry, he listened to Brown give orders to Aaron Stevens and one or two others. “Capt. Brown next ordered me to take the pikes out of the wagon in which he rode to the Ferry, and to place them in the hands of the colored men who had come with us from the plantations, and others who had come forward without having had communication with any of our party,” Anderson said. The number of these latter—the slave volunteers—inspired intense interest and much debate before long; Anderson declined to offer a tally. But he made a point to stress that the idea for arming the slaves had been Brown’s. “It was out of the circumstances connected with the fulfillment of this order that the false charge against ‘Anderson’ as leader, or ‘ringleader,’ of the negroes grew,” he wrote.
* * *
—
BY THE TIME the party with Lewis Washington and John Allstadt and their slaves returned to Harpers Ferry, the situation there had grown more complicated. The man scheduled to relieve the bridge watchman at the turn of the shift arrived; when he refused to surrender to Oliver Brown, he was shot. The bullet only nicked him, and he escaped. The sound of the shot awoke people nearby, and the man’s story told confusedly of armed strangers in the town.
A bit before one thirty on the morning of Monday, October 17, the regular eastbound Baltimore & Ohio train rolled into the Harpers Ferry station. The wounded watchman informed the conductor that there were armed men on the bridge leading out of the town. The conductor, A. J. Phelps, held the train. While he did, Shephard Hayward, a free black man and the baggage master at the station, walked to
ward the bridge looking for the absent watchman. Hayward evidently hadn’t heard about the raiders. He did hear a call to halt but instead turned around and headed back toward the station. One of the raiders, presumably thinking he was going to spread the alarm, shot him in the back.
John Starry was a physician who lived in Harpers Ferry. His residence was close to the railroad bridge. “About half past one o’clock, I heard a shot fired in the direction of the Baltimore & Ohio railroad bridge, the iron span of the bridge, and immediately afterwards a cry of distress, as if somebody had been hurt,” Starry recalled. He leaped out of bed and went into the street. “When I got there I found the negro porter, Hayward, shot, the ball entering from behind, through the body, nearly on a line with the base of the heart, a little below it. He told me that he had been out on the railroad bridge looking for a watchman who was missing, and he had been ordered to halt by some men who were there, and, instead of doing that, he turned to go back to the office, and as he turned they shot him in the back. I understood from him that he walked from there to the office, and when I found him he was lying on a plank upon two chairs in the office.”
Starry did what he could for Hayward, which wasn’t much, and returned to the street. He saw strange men bearing rifles go into the armory. His curiosity and sense of civic responsibility caused him to look into the matter. “I went then to the armory gate, and before I got to the gate I called for the watchmen. I was ordered to halt. I did so, and inquired of the men who halted me what had become of the watchmen. I wanted to inquire why they allowed persons to go in and out of that gate, when they knew they were shooting down those whom they met in the street.” Starry asked for two of the watchmen by name: Medler and Murphy. “The fellow told me that there were no watchmen there; that he did not know Medler or Murphy, but, said he, ‘There are a few of us here.’ ” Starry didn’t know what the stranger was talking about. He retreated yet didn’t go home, instead lingering to find out what the invaders were up to. “That was about three o’clock, I suppose,” he said. “I watched them from that time until daylight, sometimes very close to them, and sometimes further off. About four o’clock I heard a wagon coming down the street. I did not know what that meant, and I watched them as closely as I could. About five minutes after five o’clock, I saw a four-horse team driving over the Baltimore and Ohio railroad bridge.” This was part of the procession coming from Lewis Washington’s and John Allstadt’s farms. “I did not know whose it was. In that wagon there were three men standing up in the front part, with spears in their hands, white men, and two were walking alongside armed with rifles. I did not see any negroes. I saw but these men. I understood afterwards there were negroes with them, but I did not see them.”
30
MORNINGS COME LATE to Harpers Ferry, with the Maryland Heights above the east bank of the Potomac slowing the sunrise. As the sky lightened on that Monday morning, the Baltimore & Ohio train pulled out of the Harpers Ferry station. John Brown had decided to release it. Surprise had achieved all it could for him; the time had come to let the world understand that emancipation had begun. The train crossed the river and proceeded into Maryland. At the first opportunity conductor Phelps halted the train and telegraphed the news of the occupation of Harpers Ferry. “Express train bound east, under my charge, was stopped this morning at Harpers Ferry by armed abolitionists,” he explained. “They have possession of the bridge and the arms and armory of the United States.” The conductor told of the shooting of the baggage man. “The doctor says he cannot survive.” He described the raiders: “They are headed by a man who calls himself Anderson and number about one hundred and fifty strong. They say they have come to free the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards. The leader of those men requested me to say to you that this is the last train that shall pass the bridge either east or west. If it is attempted, it will be at the peril of the lives of those having them in charge.”
The telegram reached the railroad headquarters in Baltimore just before eight o’clock that morning. It wasn’t initially believed. “Your dispatch is evidently exaggerated and written under excitement,” responded W. P. Smith, the B&O train master. “Why should our trains be stopped by abolitionists, and how do you know they are such and that they number one hundred or more? What is their object? Let me know at once before we proceed to extremities.”
“My dispatch was not exaggerated, neither was it written under excitement as you suppose,” Phelps insisted in reply. “I have not made it half as bad as it is. The Captain told me that his object was to liberate all the slaves, and that he expected a reinforcement of 1500 men to assist him. Hayward, the negro porter, was shot through the body, and I suppose by this time is dead. The Captain also said he didn’t want to shed any more blood.”
Train master Smith, whose job was to keep the trains running, still didn’t believe the conductor. In a wire to the station master at Wheeling, west of Harpers Ferry, Smith wrote, “Matter is probably much exaggerated and we fear it may injure us if prematurely published. Don’t let our trains be interrupted.”
* * *
—
AS THE TOWNSPEOPLE of Harpers Ferry awoke, word of the alien force in their midst passed from person to person and household to household. From within the armory Osborne Anderson observed the effect. “Daylight revealed great confusion, and as the sun arose, the panic spread like wild-fire,” he recounted. “Men, women and children could be seen leaving their homes in every direction, some seeking refuge among residents and in quarters further away, others climbing up the hillsides and hurrying off in various directions, evidently impelled by a sudden fear which was plainly visible in their countenances or in their movements.”
A few armory workers, unaware of the danger, walked into the grasp of the raiders and were taken prisoner. Before long no one was left who didn’t know. And those who did know, exaggerated. “The spectators, about this time, became apparently wild with fright and excitement,” Anderson wrote. “The number of prisoners was magnified to hundreds, and the judgment-day could not have presented more terrors, in its awful and certain prospective punishment to the justly condemned for the wicked deeds of a lifetime, the chief of which would no doubt be slaveholding, than did Capt. Brown’s operations.”
As the morning passed, the broader world began to respond. Conductor Phelps told others besides his boss what he had seen and heard; the tale grew more lurid as it changed hands. A news dispatch from Frederick, Maryland, to Baltimore declared, “Information has been received here this morning of a formidable negro insurrection at Harpers Ferry. An armed band of abolitionists have full possession of Harpers Ferry and the United States arsenal….They are led by about two hundred and fifty whites, with a gang of negroes fighting for their freedom….The leader told Conductor Phelps, of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad train, that they ‘were determined to have liberty, or die in the attempt.’ ”
The alarm caused militia leaders in Maryland to summon their troops for action. Riders from Harpers Ferry informed towns on the Virginia side of the Potomac; Virginia companies mobilized as well.
“It was about twelve o’clock in the day when we were first attacked by the troops,” Osborne Anderson recalled. John Brown had been preparing for this. “Capt. Brown was all activity, though I could not help thinking that at times he appeared somewhat puzzled.” As the conflict drew near, he settled down. He strapped on the sword of George Washington and made ready to defy the forces of Washington’s own state.
The Maryland militia reached Harpers Ferry first, and started across the Potomac bridge. Brown pulled his men from outlying positions into a firm center. “The troops are on the bridge, coming into town,” he declared. “We will give them a warm reception.” As the Marylanders approached, Brown counseled patience. “Be cool. Don’t waste your powder and shot. Take aim and make every shot count.” Brown’s men were well armed, but Brown bore no gun, only the ceremonial sword. Yet he stood at the fro
nt, in plain view of the attackers.
They came off the bridge to within sixty yards of the armory gate. “Let go upon them!” shouted Brown. His men fired, felling several of the militia. His men reloaded; the Marylanders kept coming, albeit less confidently than before. Brown’s men fired; more militia went down.
“From marching in solid martial columns, they became scattered,” Anderson said of the Maryland militia. “Some hastened to seize upon and bear up the wounded and dying—several lay dead upon the ground.” Anderson inferred that the militia had expected the raiders to disperse at the soldiers’ approach; the fact that the raiders had held their ground and inflicted lethal damage compelled them to reconsider. “The consequence of their unexpected reception was, after leaving several of their dead on the field, they beat a confused retreat to the bridge.” There they stayed, awaiting reinforcements.
The raiders suffered more from the sniping of townsmen than from the aborted assault of the militia. “Dangerfield Newby, one of our colored men, was shot through the head by a person who took aim at him from a brick store window on the opposite side of the street, and who was there for the purpose of firing upon us,” Anderson related, still indignant years later. “Newby was a brave fellow. He was one of my comrades.” Shields Green avenged Newby. “Green raised his rifle in an instant and brought down the cowardly murderer before the latter could get his gun back through the sash.”
The raiders’ position became more precarious at mid-afternoon, when the Virginia militia arrived. “Armed men could be seen coming from every direction,” Osborne Anderson recalled. “Soldiers were marching and countermarching, and on the mountains a host of blood-thirsty ruffians swarmed, waiting for their opportunity to pounce upon the little band.” After the new troops took up positions, the battle was resumed, with the raiders giving as good as they got. “Volley upon volley was discharged, and the echoes from the hills, the shrieks of the townspeople, and the groans of their wounded and dying, all of which filled the air, were truly frightful.” Anderson, without citing evidence beyond his impression from behind the armory walls, later contended that the Virginians’ losses were greater than they afterward let on. “The Virginians may well conceal their losses, and Southern chivalry may hide its brazen head, for their boasted bravery was well tested that day, and in no way to their advantage.”