Authors: Tony Horwitz
Tags: #John Brown, #Abolition, #Civil War Period (1850-1877)
Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War Hardcover – Bargain Price (32 page)
BOOK: Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War Hardcover – Bargain Price
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Wise also sent detectives to track down the escaped insurgents and gather intelligence on plots to free Brown. These and other sources generated ever graver alarms. One rumor told of up to a thousand armed men approaching from Ohio, led—improbably—by John Brown, Jr. By the time Colonel Davis pleaded for aid to combat the guerrillas he believed were lighting fires near Charlestown, Wise was only too ready to oblige. He quickly boarded a train himself, arriving in Charlestown on November 20 with four hundred soldiers. Another hundred and fifty men with cannon came the next day.
These reinforcements brought the force in and around Charlestown to about a thousand, straining the capacity of citizens to board and supply them. Soldiers made barracks of the courthouse, schools, churches, even graveyards. “Everything in the shape of business is suspended, and the inhabitants seem to do nothing but make efforts to provide for the military,” the
Baltimore American
reported.
Baltimore American
reported.
The patrols that fanned out across the countryside failed to turn up any guerrillas. Though a few slaves were arrested on suspicion of arson, none appear to have been charged. The true culprit was probably the strong winds and “too dry” weather that the farmer James Hooff noted in his daily diary that fall. Also, despite constant alarms—including reports “that there are rockets firing from all the mountains”—the rumored legions of Brown rescuers never appeared.
This left most soldiers in Charlestown with little to do, apart from frequent dress parades. Press reports described the troops passing the time by playing a game of chase called Fox and Hounds, posing for portraits at a “daguerreotype wagon,” holding cotillions in their barracks, and rehearsing “tragedy from ancient and modern dramatists.”
The Richmond Grays in Charlestown, 1859
One of these antic militiamen was a noted young actor named John Wilkes Booth. He had been in Richmond preparing for a play called
The Filibuster
when he noticed troops readying to board a train for Charlestown. Borrowing portions of two men’s uniforms, Booth decided to play soldier and tag along. “He was a remarkably handsome man, with a winning personality and would regale us around the camp fire with recitations from Shakespeare,” wrote a member of Booth’s adopted unit, the Richmond Grays.
The Filibuster
when he noticed troops readying to board a train for Charlestown. Borrowing portions of two men’s uniforms, Booth decided to play soldier and tag along. “He was a remarkably handsome man, with a winning personality and would regale us around the camp fire with recitations from Shakespeare,” wrote a member of Booth’s adopted unit, the Richmond Grays.
In later years, Booth would theatrically inflate the extent of his service in Jefferson County. He would also invoke John Brown as he devised his own daring plan to take violent action against a government he despised.
ALTHOUGH GOVERNOR WISE HAD clearly called out many more troops than needed, it turned out that his informants weren’t entirely delusional in warning of a rescue attempt. Higginson and a few other diehards had dreamed of freeing Brown almost from the moment of his capture. One of the northern lawyers who arrived during the trial, George Hoyt, had actually gone to Virginia as a spy in an effort to gather information for a possible jailbreak. He made a detailed sketch of the prison, but a few days after his arrival he reported to a co-conspirator that Brown “positively refused his consent to any such plan,” which in any event was hopeless due to the tight security. “
There is no chance
of his ultimate rescue,” Hoyt wrote on October 30.
There is no chance
of his ultimate rescue,” Hoyt wrote on October 30.
This failed to deter some would-be rescuers. One alleged plot involved a Kansas woman who would visit Brown’s cell with a rescue plan hidden inside a wax ball in her mouth, which she would then transfer to the prisoner’s mouth while kissing him. Another scheme called for an execution-day assault by revolutionary German émigrés, wielding “Orsini bombs”—spiked projectiles named for an Italian who had hurled them at Napoleon III in a failed assassination attempt the year before. There was also a plan to kidnap Governor Wise, bundle him aboard a boat in Richmond, and hold him hostage in exchange for Brown. These latter two plots actually reached the recruitment stage, but both were as expensive as they were outlandish. They were abandoned when sufficient money and men failed to materialize.
Legal attempts to save Brown from the gallows also foundered. Defense lawyers petitioned Virginia’s Supreme Court to reconsider the verdict due to defects in the indictment; they also sought clemency on the basis of Brown’s alleged insanity, supported by the affidavits from Ohioans who knew him and his family. This had a momentary effect on Governor Wise, who wrote a letter asking the head of Virginia’s lunatic asylum to evaluate Brown. “If the prisoner is insane,” Wise wrote, “he ought to be cured.” But Wise immediately countermanded his own request; the letter was never sent.
Wise could still seek approval from the state legislature to commute Brown’s death sentence. He was strongly urged to do so, and not only by
the prisoner’s supporters. “To hang a fanatic is to make a martyr of him and fledge another brood of the same sort,” opined the pro-southern
Journal of Commerce,
in New York. Former president John Tyler, of Virginia, agreed. “Brown deserves to die a thousand deaths upon the Rack to end in fire and termination in Hell,” he wrote Wise, but from “a point of political policy as cold as marble,” hanging him would only aid the abolitionist cause. If Wise commuted the death sentence to life in prison, “the magnanimity of Virginia will be commended, and the wisdom of her Governor extolled, the enemy disarmed and the triumph of the Democracy secured.”
the prisoner’s supporters. “To hang a fanatic is to make a martyr of him and fledge another brood of the same sort,” opined the pro-southern
Journal of Commerce,
in New York. Former president John Tyler, of Virginia, agreed. “Brown deserves to die a thousand deaths upon the Rack to end in fire and termination in Hell,” he wrote Wise, but from “a point of political policy as cold as marble,” hanging him would only aid the abolitionist cause. If Wise commuted the death sentence to life in prison, “the magnanimity of Virginia will be commended, and the wisdom of her Governor extolled, the enemy disarmed and the triumph of the Democracy secured.”
Wise wrote long and considered replies to these appeals, including one by Lydia Maria Child, a prominent women’s rights activist and self-described “uncompromising abolitionist.” Their initially civil letters turned into a barbed exchange that was published in the
New York Tribune
. This in turn drew the ire of the wife of Virginia senator James Mason, who rebuked Child for supporting “the hoary-headed murderer of Harper’s Ferry,” whose success would “condemn women of your race” to “see their husbands and fathers murdered, their children butchered, the ground strewed with the brains of their babies.” Child’s correspondence with the Virginians was published as a tract by the American Anti-slavery Society and quickly sold 300,000 copies.
New York Tribune
. This in turn drew the ire of the wife of Virginia senator James Mason, who rebuked Child for supporting “the hoary-headed murderer of Harper’s Ferry,” whose success would “condemn women of your race” to “see their husbands and fathers murdered, their children butchered, the ground strewed with the brains of their babies.” Child’s correspondence with the Virginians was published as a tract by the American Anti-slavery Society and quickly sold 300,000 copies.
This and other exchanges only hardened Wise’s conviction that Brown’s northern sympathizers were culpable in the attack—if not literally, then in spirit. “I will not reprieve or pardon one man now after the letters I have rec’d from the North,” Wise wrote to Andrew Hunter on November 6. He expressed a similar view to a Pennsylvanian who shared a train ride with him and was struck by the Virginian’s fixation on northern opinion. “Gov. Wise told me there was one condition on which he would surrender Gen. Brown—which was that I should deliver up to him General Sympathy for execution in his stead. The Governor and the citizens are evidently more afraid of the latter than of the former.”
Wise dwelled on northern sympathies again in an address to the Virginia Assembly. “Shall John Brown be pardoned, lest he might be canonized by execution of felony for confessed murder, robbery and treason in inciting servile insurrection in Virginia? Why a martyr? Because
thousands applaud his acts and opinions, and glorify his crimes?” To Wise, the course was clear. “Sympathy was in insurrection, and had to be subdued more sternly than was John Brown.”
thousands applaud his acts and opinions, and glorify his crimes?” To Wise, the course was clear. “Sympathy was in insurrection, and had to be subdued more sternly than was John Brown.”
The only possible brake on Wise’s determination to hang Brown was the Supreme Court of Virginia, but on November 19 it unanimously rejected the appeal by Brown’s lawyers. Wise and his troops reached Charlestown the next day, and on the twenty-first he visited Brown and the other prisoners. “Governor Wise left them,” the
Baltimore American
reported, “with an injunction that they prepare for their doom, as under no circumstances whatever would the arm of the Executive be interposed in their behalf.”
Baltimore American
reported, “with an injunction that they prepare for their doom, as under no circumstances whatever would the arm of the Executive be interposed in their behalf.”
The
American
also reported that “Brown was still as determined as ever, justifying his course” at Harpers Ferry to the governor and “perfectly resigned to his fate.” He had, after all, never asked for clemency, had rejected an insanity defense, and had discouraged rescue attempts. Even so, the Supreme Court decision, and Wise’s visit, cleared away any remaining doubt that Brown’s sentence would be carried out eleven days hence, on December 2.
American
also reported that “Brown was still as determined as ever, justifying his course” at Harpers Ferry to the governor and “perfectly resigned to his fate.” He had, after all, never asked for clemency, had rejected an insanity defense, and had discouraged rescue attempts. Even so, the Supreme Court decision, and Wise’s visit, cleared away any remaining doubt that Brown’s sentence would be carried out eleven days hence, on December 2.
AS HIS APPOINTMENT DATE with the gallows neared, the prisoner picked up the pace of his letter writing and moved to final matters.
“I have now been confined over a month, with a good opportunity to look the whole thing as ‘fair in the face’ as I am capable of doing; and I now feel it most grateful that I am counted in the least possible degree worthy to suffer for the truth,” Brown wrote his children in North Elba the day after Wise’s visit. “I want you all to ‘be of good cheer.’ This life is intended as a season of training, chastisement, temptation, affliction, and trial.”
Despite his impending execution, Brown’s health and mood improved. He found himself “able to sit up to read; & write pretty much all day: as well as part of the Night,” he wrote his wife on November 26. He also hosted a plethora of new visitors, many of them soldiers posted to Charlestown who were curious to see the archvillain they’d come to guard. These callers included men who had fought against him at Harpers Ferry and
even a few foes from Kansas. Brown spoke to them frankly about the evils of slavery, and relished playing the role of Christian teacher. As he wrote an admirer on the twenty-fourth: “I have many very interesting visits from pro-slavery persons almost daily, & I endeavor to improve them
faithfully, plainly, and kindly
. I do not think I ever enjoyed life better than since my confinement here.”
even a few foes from Kansas. Brown spoke to them frankly about the evils of slavery, and relished playing the role of Christian teacher. As he wrote an admirer on the twenty-fourth: “I have many very interesting visits from pro-slavery persons almost daily, & I endeavor to improve them
faithfully, plainly, and kindly
. I do not think I ever enjoyed life better than since my confinement here.”
The only company Brown could not abide was that of southern clergymen. One who tried to speak with him wrote in a letter: “He said that he would not receive the services of any minister of religion, for he believed that they, as apologists of slavery, had violated the laws of nature and of God, and that they ought first to sanctify themselves by becoming abolitionists, and then they might be worthy to minister unto him.” Brown likewise told visiting Methodist ministers that “they had better pray for themselves.”
He was more receptive to journalists, answering their questions on a range of topics. Asked by the
Baltimore American
for his views on “amalgamation,” or interracial marriage, “he responded, that although he was opposed to it, yet he would much prefer a son or a daughter of his to marry an industrious and honest negro than an indolent and dishonest white man.” Brown also gave written answers to questions posed by the
Independent Democrat,
one of the hostile local papers. Asked about his opinion of the justice meted out to him, Brown replied: “I feel no shame on account of my doom.” Yet as a Calvinist, he could never be sure that he was among God’s Elect.
Baltimore American
for his views on “amalgamation,” or interracial marriage, “he responded, that although he was opposed to it, yet he would much prefer a son or a daughter of his to marry an industrious and honest negro than an indolent and dishonest white man.” Brown also gave written answers to questions posed by the
Independent Democrat,
one of the hostile local papers. Asked about his opinion of the justice meted out to him, Brown replied: “I feel no shame on account of my doom.” Yet as a Calvinist, he could never be sure that he was among God’s Elect.
Question: To what political party do you belong?
Answer: To God’s party. (I think)
Brown also spoke of his spiritual doubts in a letter to Mary a week before his scheduled execution. “Life is made up of a series of changes: & let us try to meet them in the best maner possible,” he wrote. “The near aproach of my great change is not the occasion of any particular dread. I trust that God who has sustained me so long; will not forsake me when I most feel my need of
Fatherly aid: & support
. Should he hide his face; my spirit will droop, & die:
but not otherwise
: be assured. My only anxiety is
to be properly assured of my fitness for the company of those who are ‘washed from
all filthiness
.’”
Fatherly aid: & support
. Should he hide his face; my spirit will droop, & die:
but not otherwise
: be assured. My only anxiety is
to be properly assured of my fitness for the company of those who are ‘washed from
all filthiness
.’”
But his mind was not only on God. He ended the letter by telling Mary:
If you
now feel
that you are
equal
to the undertaking do
exactly as
you FEEL
disposed to do
about coming to see me before I suffer. I
am entirely willing
.
now feel
that you are
equal
to the undertaking do
exactly as
you FEEL
disposed to do
about coming to see me before I suffer. I
am entirely willing
.
Your affectionate Husband
John Brown.
So Let It Be Done!
D
uring his weeks in confinement, Brown was often asked about the failure of his attack on Harpers Ferry. What had gone wrong? In reply, Brown took full responsibility and faulted his own judgment. He had held tightly to the engine house instead of the Potomac bridge, and he had mistakenly believed his hostages would shield him from attack. But he repeatedly blamed his compassionate nature as well; as one reporter wrote after interviewing Brown, “It was a feeling of humanity that betrayed him.” He had let the train full of frightened passengers go, and had been delayed in Harpers Ferry out of concern for the welfare of his prisoners.
uring his weeks in confinement, Brown was often asked about the failure of his attack on Harpers Ferry. What had gone wrong? In reply, Brown took full responsibility and faulted his own judgment. He had held tightly to the engine house instead of the Potomac bridge, and he had mistakenly believed his hostages would shield him from attack. But he repeatedly blamed his compassionate nature as well; as one reporter wrote after interviewing Brown, “It was a feeling of humanity that betrayed him.” He had let the train full of frightened passengers go, and had been delayed in Harpers Ferry out of concern for the welfare of his prisoners.
However, Brown had come to terms with the failure of his intended mission. “I have been
a good deal
disappointed as it regards
myself
in not keeping up
to my own plans
; but I feel reconciled to that even; for Gods plan, was Infinitely better;
no doubt
; or I should have kept to my own,” he wrote the Reverend H. L. Vaill, who had tutored him as a teenager. “Had Samson kept to his
determination
of not telling Delilah wherein his great strength lay; he would probably have never overturned the house.”
a good deal
disappointed as it regards
myself
in not keeping up
to my own plans
; but I feel reconciled to that even; for Gods plan, was Infinitely better;
no doubt
; or I should have kept to my own,” he wrote the Reverend H. L. Vaill, who had tutored him as a teenager. “Had Samson kept to his
determination
of not telling Delilah wherein his great strength lay; he would probably have never overturned the house.”
The Samson reference was telling, as was another observation he made in his letter to Vaill. “I cannot believe that any thing I have
done suffered or may yet suffer will be lost
; to the
cause
of God or of
humanity
: & before I began my work at Harpers Ferry; I felt assured that in the
worst event
; it would certainly PAY.”
done suffered or may yet suffer will be lost
; to the
cause
of God or of
humanity
: & before I began my work at Harpers Ferry; I felt assured that in the
worst event
; it would certainly PAY.”
This was a rare acknowledgment by Brown that he had ever harbored doubt about the prospects for his attack. It also gave substance to the suspicion of some observers that Brown had launched his strike knowing it was doomed. As William Lloyd Garrison wrote a friend on the day after Brown’s conviction: “His raid into Virginia looks utterly lacking in common sense—a desperate self-sacrifice for the purpose of giving an earthquake shock to the slave system, and thus hastening the day for a universal catastrophe.”
A first cousin of Brown’s also questioned why his kinsman had gone “wading in blood” to inevitable defeat. “What you intended was an impossibility,” the Reverend Heman Humphrey wrote him in prison. No one in his “right mind” would “have plunged headlong, as you did, into the lion’s den, where you were certain to be devoured.”
In reply, Brown assured Humphrey that he wasn’t insane, and again made reference to Samson, referring to him as the “poor erring servant” of whom it was said, “He shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the Philistines.” As told in the Book of Judges, Samson, shorn of his strength by Delilah, was taken captive by the idolatrous Philistines, who gouged out his eyes and brought the shackled Israelite forth to entertain thousands of men and women at their temple in Gaza. Samson then asked God to “strengthen me just once more” before grasping the pillars of the temple and pulling it down on himself and all those gathered round. “Thus he killed many more as he died than while he lived.”
Brown echoed this line in writing about Samson to Reverend Humphrey. “For many years I have felt a strong impression that God had given me powers and faculties, unworthy as I was, that he intended to use for a similar purpose. This most unmerited honor He has seen fit to bestow; and whether, like the same poor frail man to whom I allude, my death may be of vastly more value than my life is, I think quite beyond human foresight.”
Northern admirers might cast Brown as a Christ figure, and he was willing to play that part. But the role he wrote for himself at the end was that of God’s avenger, wounded and in bonds, triumphantly crying at the last, “Let me die with the Philistines!”
NO SINGLE PASSAGE OF Scripture defined Brown; in the course of his life, he took inspiration from a multitude of biblical figures. Nor is it possible to pinpoint when he first saw shades of Samson’s story in his own. But he referred to Samson’s “victory” in his writing well before Harpers Ferry, and his prison letters suggested he had mulled the parallels between the biblical hero and himself for many years.
Brown’s identification with Samson also illuminated many aspects of his Virginia mission that otherwise defied explanation. The first mystery concerned his attack plan. What exactly was it? Brown’s own version kept shifting. In court, he said he planned to run slaves north to freedom, as he’d done in Missouri. He later retracted this, saying he had hoped to arm slaves “without any bloodshed” so they could defend themselves in the South. At other times, he spoke of a mountain-based guerrilla campaign that would oppose U.S. troops if necessary and carve out a provisional state, ultimately toppling the government.
His men provided a more consistent picture of what
they
thought Brown intended, at least in the campaign’s first stage. In their view, Brown planned to seize the armory, carry off its weapons, and quickly move back into the mountains with liberated slaves and any others who joined them. Some of Brown’s men were also under the impression that similar strikes were to be made elsewhere in the South, by allied parties.
they
thought Brown intended, at least in the campaign’s first stage. In their view, Brown planned to seize the armory, carry off its weapons, and quickly move back into the mountains with liberated slaves and any others who joined them. Some of Brown’s men were also under the impression that similar strikes were to be made elsewhere in the South, by allied parties.
The detailed maps and other documents found at the Kennedy farm further suggested that Brown had well-laid plans for an extended campaign across the South. And his confidants described military preparations he had made over many years, including close study of historical precedents and sketches of mountain forts he intended to build.
But when Brown finally launched his strike, he gave little sign of pursuing any of his purported plans. Where was the mountain base he spoke of establishing, or the log redoubts he’d diagrammed for Frederick Douglass, Franklin Sanborn, and his own children? The Maryland schoolhouse and the Kennedy farm were meager strongholds, particularly if Brown envisioned large numbers of men following him back into the hills. With winter approaching, how would he feed and shelter those who flocked to his mountain refuge? For that matter, why did Brown
fail to take even a modest supply of food for the small force he led across the Potomac?
fail to take even a modest supply of food for the small force he led across the Potomac?
Brown’s behavior in Harpers Ferry didn’t accord with his alleged plans, either. He said he had chosen to target the town because of its vast supply of arms. If so, why did he leave the town’s hundred thousand guns untouched during the time he controlled the armory, arsenal, and rifle works? How did he plan to transport these weapons? And why was he bringing his own guns forward to the schoolhouse, when Harpers Ferry held an abundant store?
Brown’s handling of civilians was also puzzling. He took white men hostage not only as a shield, but also to trade for able-bodied blacks. That, at least, is what he told his prisoners and, later, reporters. He ultimately collected about forty hostages, more than he could easily handle, and they gave him an ample pool from which to barter for black men. Yet Brown took no steps to trade any of his prisoners—not a single one.
Nor did he alert blacks to his intentions, either before or during the attack. He specifically cautioned Cook against doing so, and once the mission was under way, very few blacks apart from the slaves taken with Lewis Washington and John Allstadt had any way of knowing who the insurgents were or why they’d come. The great majority of slaves in Jefferson County lived on farms at some distance from Harpers Ferry. How were they to learn of Brown’s crusade so they could join it?
Even more mysterious, and ultimately disastrous, was Brown’s failure to budge from his position at Harpers Ferry. His supposed plan centered on mobility and surprise: a lightning strike on the armory, the swift liberation of plantation slaves, a move into the hills, and rolling attacks along the chain of mountains reaching into the South. But as soon as Brown took Harpers Ferry, he became completely immobile, barely moving for thirty hours after he breached the armory gate. He failed to properly secure the Potomac bridge, which was crucial to his maneuverability, and he concentrated most of his tiny force in a fortified but exposed position at the armory. The five men he posted at the rifle works were likewise stationary. Having established these vulnerable beachheads, as well as a smaller one at the arsenal, Brown proceeded to linger, for no discernible reason, until he was surrounded and massively outgunned.
Brown never gave satisfactory explanations for any of this behavior.
The claim that he had deviated from his plans because compassion compelled him to care for rail passengers and prisoners made little sense. He knew that trains stopped in town at night, and he had always intended to take hostages. Did he have no advance plan for dealing with these challenges? And if the welfare of civilians was his greatest concern, why did he refuse to surrender, or at least to release his prisoners, once it became apparent that his situation was utterly hopeless? Instead, despite ample warning and obvious preparations for an attack by troops outside, Brown chose to make a last stand in the engine house, endangering the hostages and his remaining accomplices, including his badly wounded son and two or three others who told him they wanted to lay down their arms.
The claim that he had deviated from his plans because compassion compelled him to care for rail passengers and prisoners made little sense. He knew that trains stopped in town at night, and he had always intended to take hostages. Did he have no advance plan for dealing with these challenges? And if the welfare of civilians was his greatest concern, why did he refuse to surrender, or at least to release his prisoners, once it became apparent that his situation was utterly hopeless? Instead, despite ample warning and obvious preparations for an attack by troops outside, Brown chose to make a last stand in the engine house, endangering the hostages and his remaining accomplices, including his badly wounded son and two or three others who told him they wanted to lay down their arms.
Brown’s surviving men couldn’t explain his actions, either. Some of them said that their commander anticipated thousands of reinforcements. But no trace of this mysterious legion was ever found. “Captain Brown was all activity, though I could not help thinking at times he appeared somewhat puzzled,” wrote Osborne Anderson, who got away.
Charles Tidd, another escapee, was less charitable. He felt Brown had attacked with too few men, failed to deliver on his promise to burn bridges, and then resisted the pleas of his men to withdraw. At one point during the battle, while moving arms into position in Maryland, Tidd went down to the Potomac bridge. “Some of the boys begged of me to go and try to persuade him that it was best to leave there, but I could not make him think so,” he said. Kagi was likewise rebuffed. Of the sixteen men posted with Brown on the Virginia side of the Potomac that day, all but Osborne Anderson would be killed, or captured and sentenced to hang.
Four months later, having made his way to New England, Tidd told Annie Brown: “I sometimes feel as if the ‘old man’ murdered the boys, after all that was said against going to Harper’s Ferry, and the opposition of the whole company, to think that he should have stayed there so long, until they were all taken or slaughtered.” He also told Higginson that Annie’s slain brothers, Watson and Oliver, had opposed their father’s plan “most of all.”
LONG AFTER THE INSURRECTION, another sibling, Salmon Brown, claimed to have warned his brothers about the risk of following their father into Harpers Ferry. “I said to the boys before they left: ‘You know
father. You know he will
dally
till he is trapped.’” Salmon blamed this vacillation on his father’s chronic “horror of departing from the
order
that he fixed in his own mind. I felt that at Harper’s Ferry this very thing would be likely to trap him. He would insist on getting everything arranged just to suit him before he would consent to make a move.”
father. You know he will
dally
till he is trapped.’” Salmon blamed this vacillation on his father’s chronic “horror of departing from the
order
that he fixed in his own mind. I felt that at Harper’s Ferry this very thing would be likely to trap him. He would insist on getting everything arranged just to suit him before he would consent to make a move.”
Salmon had fought with his father in Kansas and was regarded by one of his sisters as the most levelheaded of the Brown clan. His version of the Harpers Ferry debacle sounded plausible, particularly given his father’s demonstrated inflexibility earlier in his career. But Salmon offered his analysis fifty years after Harpers Ferry, while explaining to a researcher why he’d stayed home when his father and brothers went ahead to Virginia.
More telling, perhaps, was another comment Salmon made in the same interview: “Father’s idea in his Harper’s Ferry movement, was to agitate the slavery question. Not to create an insurrection. The intention of the pikes was to strike terror—to make agitation.” This disturbance, Salmon said, would spark the great conflict Brown believed was necessary to end slavery. “He wanted to bring on the war. I have heard him talk of it many times.”
Though Salmon made this statement with considerable hindsight, it accorded with the testimony of many others who were close to Brown and knew of his plan. Richard Hinton, a Kansas ally who learned of the Virginia plot in the summer of 1858, wrote that the attack was intended to “strike terror into the heart of the slave States by the amount of the organization it would exhibit, and the strength it gathered.” The Provisional Constitution, Hinton said, was not just a governing document. It was a scare tactic, “to alarm the Oligarchy by discipline and the show of organization.”
That same summer, in 1858, Brown stayed at the home of a Kansas aid official, William Arny, who was later called to testify before the U.S. Senate. He said Brown derided eastern abolitionists as do-nothings and considered Republicans “of no account, for they were opposed to carrying the war into Africa; they were opposed to meddling with slavery in the States where it existed.” About the same time, Brown told William Phillips, the Kansas correspondent of the
New York Tribune,
that Southerners
and their allies in Washington would never “relinquish the machinery of this government into the hands of opponents of slavery.” Brown believed the Slave Power was already preparing for armed separation. “We have reached a point where nothing but war can settle the question,” Phillips quoted him as saying.
New York Tribune,
that Southerners
and their allies in Washington would never “relinquish the machinery of this government into the hands of opponents of slavery.” Brown believed the Slave Power was already preparing for armed separation. “We have reached a point where nothing but war can settle the question,” Phillips quoted him as saying.
Brown may have genuinely believed that with twenty-one men and God as his defender, he could seize Harpers Ferry, carry off its arms, attract and sustain a large guerrilla army, and ultimately bring down the institution of slavery. But the manifest implausibility of this scheme, and Brown’s failure to take the steps necessary to fulfill it, strongly suggest that he had a second plan.
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