There were troops enough on the ground at this time to have carried Brown's position by assault; and it is probable that an attack upon the armory would have been ordered, had such extreme measures been deemed necessary, which was not the case. Besides, if an assault had been made by these undisciplined men, it would have been attended with the loss of many lives, which, under the circumstances, would have been without justification. Brown and his party were in a position from which they could not escape; neither could his surrender be long deferred. A prevailing report, too, that a detachment of United States troops—marines—would soon arrive, under the command of an experienced officer of the regular army, may have had some influence in determining what should be done. However, before nightfall, a Mr. Samuel Strider delivered a summons to Brown, demanding his surrender, to which Brown replied as follows:

The terms of the note were promptly declined by Colonel Robert W. Baylor, of the Virginia Cavalry, who seems to have been the ranking officer present. He said that "under no conditions would he consent to a removal of the citizen prisoners across the river." Still later in the evening the three companies, in uniform, arrived from Frederick, Maryland. One of these was under the command of Captain Sinn. This officer proceeded to the engine-house and entered into a lengthy conversation with Brown. During this interview Brown renewed his proposal to leave the place, and complained of the treatment his men, bearing a flag of truce, had received; that they "had been shot down like dogs." Being told that men in his position must expect such treatment, Brown replied that before coming there "he had weighed the responsibility and should not shrink from it." He thought, however, that he was entitled to better treatment from the people because of what he had not done to them; that he "had had full possession of the town and could have massacred all the inhabitants had he thought proper to do so."

During afternoon of the 17th, President Buchanan ordered three companies of artillery, from Fortress Monroe, to the scene of the trouble; also the detachment of marines, at the Washington Navy Yard. The latter were under the command of Lieutenant Israel Green, U. S. M. C. He also ordered Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, Second United States Cavalry, brevet colonel United States army, to proceed to Harper's Ferry and assume command of all the United States troops concentrating there. General J. E. B. Stuart, at that time a first lieutenant in the First United States Cavalry accompanied Lee as a volunteer aide. The artillery from Fortress Monroe was detained at Baltimore by order of Colonel Lee. With two howitzers and ninety men Green left Washington for Harper's Ferry, at 3:30 p. m. En route he received orders from Colonel Lee to stop at Sandy Hook, a station within a mile, nearly, of his destination. At 10 o'clock Lee arrived at Sandy Hook on a special train. The marines were then formed, and marched to Harper's Ferry, leaving the howitzers aboard the cars. Arriving at the town, after consultation with the volunteer commanders present, Lee ordered the militia to vacate the armory grounds, and put the control, or care of the situation, in the hands of Lieutenant Green.

Before ordering the assault upon the engine-house, which, to save the lives of Brown's prisoners, was to be executed with the bayonet, Lee offered the honor of commanding the action to the regimental commanders of the volunteers: Colonel Shriver of the Maryland troops and Colonel Baylor of the Virginians; an offer which both of these officers, in behalf of their men, had the moral courage to wisely and properly decline. Colonel Shriver said, in effect, that they had come to help the people of Harper's Ferry in an emergency: that the emergency, in view of the United States troops present, was now passed; that his men had wives and children at home, and since it was not necessary to expose them to such risk as this attack involved, he would not voluntarily do so. Colonel Baylor expressed similar views. But, later, there was trouble over the matter. The pride of the Governor of Virginia, Henry E. Wise, was hurt because the Virginia troops had not done on the 17th what Lee, Stuart, Green, and the marines did so creditably on the morning of the 18th. As a result, charges of misconduct were preferred against Colonel Baylor, by Mr. O. Jennings Wise, a son of the Governor; and a court of inquiry was convened in June, 1860, to investigate the case. Mr. Villard states that in a letter addressed to the court, by Mr. Wise, the latter charged that Colonel Baylor had assumed command on the 17th, "contrary to his grade and the nature of his commission." That he had acted without orders; that he was guilty of cowardice in not storming the engine-house, and of "unofficer-like conduct in assigning a false, cowardly and insulting reason for not leading the attack on the engine-house when the service was offered to him by Colonel Lee: to-wit—that it was a duty which belonged to the mercenaries of the regular service—meaning the marines—who were paid for it"; and, finally for using "violent and ungentlemanly language about his Commander-in-Chief (Governor Wise)."

After the militia officers had declined the command of the storming party, it was offered to Lieutenant Green, who, of course, accepted it, and, taking off his cap, thanked his commander for the honor, with soldierly courtesy.

Early on the morning of the 18th, Colonel Lee sent a demand upon Brown to surrender, which was read to him at the door of the engine-house by Lieutenant Stuart. The order read as follows:[385]

It had been agreed upon between Stuart and Green, that, after having read the order to Brown, if he should refuse to surrender, as they supposed he would, Stuart would then signal by a wave of his cap, at the sight of which Green would order his company forward to the assault. His plan of attack was to advance with twelve men, holding another twelve in reserve to support them, if they should be disabled, and with a heavy sledge-hammer break down the door of the engine-house, and if successful, then, with the full command rush the insurgents with fixed bayonets. Upon seeing the signal agreed upon, Green ordered the attack. While being fired upon from within the engine-house, the marines, armed with the sledge, attempted to beat down the doors, but without success; then seeing a heavy ladder lying nearby, Green ordered some of the men to take it up and use it against the doors as a battering-ram. This expedient was successful. Two blows by the improvised engine of war sufficed to break a ragged hole, low down, in the right-hand door. Through the opening thus made, Green, and Major Russell, pay-master, United States Marine Corps, sprang, followed by the enlisted men.[386] Rising to his feet, Green ran back of the engine to the rear of the room, where he saw Colonel Washington, who, pointing to Brown said, "this is Osawatomie." Lieutenant Green states:

Of Brown's eleven prisoners, whom he was holding as hostages, Lieutenant Green says:

The scrimmage being over, Green and Coppoc were taken into custody, and the dead and wounded were carried from the engine-house and laid upon the armory lawn, where they were protected from violence by a guard detailed from the company of marines. Later, Mr. Villard states, Brown was carried to the office of the pay-master of the armory and there given medical attention, when it was found that his wounds were far less serious than they were at first supposed to be.

Of the twenty-two ambitious men who courageously undertook to organize the "Provisional Army," ten had been killed: Kagi, Oliver Brown, Watson Brown, William Thompson, Dauphin Thompson, Jeremiah G. Anderson, Leeman, Newby, Leary, and Taylor. Five were prisoners: Brown, Stevens, E. Coppoc, Green, and Copeland. Seven had got away: Cook, Hazlett, Tidd, Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, Osborn P. Anderson, and Merriam.

Those killed and wounded by the insurgents were as follows: Killed: G. W. Turner, Thomas Boerley, Fontane Beckham, Heywood Shepherd, and Private Quinn. Wounded: Mr. Murphy, Mr. Young, Mr. Richardson, Mr. Hammond, Mr. McCabe, Mr. Dorsey, Mr. Hooper, Mr. Woolet, and Private Rupert.[388]

About noon, on the 18th, some notable persons of that period arrived at Harper's Ferry, anxious to know the facts relating to the alarming events which had taken place. An interview with Brown was accordingly arranged, which was held at the office of the armory pay-master. The wounded Stevens had, in the meantime, been carried into the office and laid upon a mattress on the floor beside Brown. Those present were Governor Wise, of Virginia, Colonel Robert E. Lee, Lieutenant Stuart, Senator Mason of Virginia, Congressmen Vallandigham of Ohio and Faulkner of Virginia, Colonel Lewis Washington, Andrew Hunter, special counsel for the State of Virginia, and a half dozen citizens of the town and vicinity. Brown was able to answer freely, and seemed anxious for an opportunity to present his version of the situation to the public. He was "glad," he said, "to make himself and his motives clearly understood." Extracts from this interview are as follows:[389]

Mr. Sanborn publishes a conversation that Brown had with his jailer concerning his interview with Governor Wise.[390]

"'A Virginian,'" he says, "gives me this addition to Brown's conversation with Wise":

A reporter for the New York Herald who was present said of Brown:[391] "He converses freely, fluently and cheerfully, without the slightest manifestation of fear or uneasiness, evidently weighing well his words, and possessing a good command of language. His manner is courteous and affable, while he appears to be making a favorable impression upon his auditory."

A reporter for the Baltimore American who was present at the interview said:[392] "No sign of weakness was exhibited by John Brown. In the midst of his enemies, whose homes he had invaded; wounded and a prisoner, surrounded by a small army of officials, and a more desperate army of angry men; with the gallows staring him full in the face, he lay on the floor, and, in reply to every question, gave answers that betokened the spirit that animated him. The language of Gov. Wise well expresses his boldness when he said, 'He is the gamest man I ever saw.'"

During the afternoon of the 18th, while the interview with Brown was in progress, Mr. John C. Unseld accompanied Lieutenant Green, with a detachment of marines, to Brown's recent headquarters at the Kennedy farm, where a quantity of war material was found, including bed clothing, canvas for tents, some axes, two cast-iron hominy mills, a good deal of clothing boxed up—new clothing for men, and some boots. Here also they found Brown's trunk containing his official papers and correspondence; copies of the constitution for the Provisional Government and other important documents; also maps of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, and Georgia. Each map had a slip pasted on the side, evidently cut from the census report of 1850, showing the number and kind of inhabitants (whether free or slave, white or black, male or female) in each county of the State or States which it represented. On the maps of South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, there were various ink-marks in the shape of crosses at different points.[393] With the consent of Brown, John E. Cook had taken a similar census of the inhabitants living in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry.[394]

On the morning of the 19th the military stores that had been transferred to the school-house, on Monday, from the Kennedy farm, were taken possession of by the "Baltimore Greys," a company belonging to the Maryland regiment present, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Mills. Among them were the following articles:[395]

On Wednesday morning, October 19th, the prisoners were safely transferred to Charlestown, under an escort of marines commanded by Lieutenant Green. Upon their arrival there they were delivered into the custody of the sheriff of Jefferson County and the United States marshal for the Western District of Virginia, and by them placed in the county jail. Brown and Stevens, being unable to walk, were transferred to and from the train, in a wagon.

The comments of the press of the country, upon the occurrences herein, however interesting they may be, are not especially valuable. The writers of the time had but little correct information upon which to base their opinion as to the scope of the undertaking. Even at the present time, after the lapse of more than fifty years, opinion is divided as to whether this incident in our history was just an altruistic "Foray into Virginia"; or whether it was, practically, a harmless and utterly senseless "raid," or whether it was an organized reality—an invasion of the State of Virginia by Brown and his captains, having for their object, the conquest of the Southern States.

CHAPTER XIV

A PERVERSION OF HISTORY

But many a man has committed his greatest blunder when
attempting to write a book.

—John Brown, Jr.

Concerning the things which Brown intended to do, and the plans which he made in pursuance thereof Mr. Redpath says:[396]

This is the conception of the Harper's Ferry episode that Brown's family, and his partisans, decided should be put forth concerning an incident which was to have been written in streams of blood, such as never flowed upon the continent. That anything so irrational should have been published, or should have been seriously considered by any one, is beyond the comprehension of thoughtful persons; and yet, the foolish fictions therein suggested were accepted as the truth in the Northern States, and, with some modifications of the more grotesque absurdities therein contained, have been approved by subsequent writers and biographers and have been incorporated with the history of our country.

Why Brown should have intended to abandon Harper's Ferry without a struggle to retain it after having taken formal possession of the place and of the war material stored there, if the position was admirably chosen as the spot at which to begin a war of liberation; or how a voluntary retreat into the mountains by a band of twenty-two men could be regarded as a "blow" of any kind; or where the inaccessible fastness which he intended to retreat to was located: or how he intended to shelter and subsist his men and prisoners in an inaccessible fastness that had not been supplied with subsistence stores or with camp and garrison equipage of any description; or how he would be able to find his way, if the night happened to be a dark night, up and through the tangled obstructions upon which the fastness relied for its inaccessibility; or how he intended to transport the military equipment stored at Harper's Perry, to the fastness, without means of transportation, or roads to travel on; or how he intended to prevent his fastness from being surrounded and his communications with the world cut off while the altruistic negotiations for the "exchange of the wealthier citizen prisoners for an equal number of slaves," were progressing, appear to have been matters of no concern to this biographer. It was sufficient for his purpose to assume that these things, however inconsistent they might be, were the things which Brown intended to do, and that they constituted the blow which he had promised to strike. Mr. Redpath, personally, knew what Brown intended to do. He knew that Brown, pursuant to his pledges, planned to strike a blow that would shake the center of the slave system; that he planned to precipitate a war of surpassing atrocity; a war that was to begin with a carnival of assassinations; that he intended "to assail slavery with the only weapon that it fears":[397] a servile insurrection.

Mr. Sanborn had been a valuable instrument in Brown's hands for the practice of his Eastern impositions. Taking his cue from Mr. Redpath, after describing what occurred on the night of the 16th of October, he rises to the full height of his conception of the occasion to inquire:

It was to this Mr. Sanborn, that Brown first suggested his scheme to raise $30,000 cash, to arm and equip a company of "fifty volunteer-regulars" for the defense of Kansas settlers. Mr. Sanborn was impressed, deeply so, and undertook to promote the proposition. Also, he undertook to promote Brown's scheme to have the Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York appropriate $100,000 each, to reimburse the Brown family for losses its members had sustained while "fighting" in Kansas; and ever thereafter had been Brown's faithful and efficient servant. He was a member of the "Secret War Committee" of six, and had reason to think, and probably did think, that Brown had taken him into his full confidence. He says:

Thus Mr. Sanborn acknowledges that Brown had not entrusted to him the secret of his intentions, and thereby disqualifies himself as an authority upon Brown's plans, or as having correct information concerning what he intended to do in Virginia. It is more than probable that upon the occasion to which Mr. Sanborn refers, Brown contemplated confiding to him his plans for the conquest of the South by means of an insurrection of the slaves and the massacre of the slave-holding population, and intended to offer him a position upon his staff. Brown and Forbes had laid plans for their campaign, with Harper's Ferry as the base of operations, as early as January, 1857, and in pursuance thereof had ordered the thousand spears with which to arm the blacks for the opening horror.

Sitting beside his coal fire in the American House, his thoughts upon his plans, and the hopes of his mighty conquest surging in his brain, John Brown, the grim Soldier of Fortune, drew out his young companion by indirection, and took the measure of his capacity for heroic undertakings. Had the young man, at the close of that interview, appealed for an omen "from that shrine whose oracles may destroy but can never deceive," he might, in a spiritual vision, have seen upon the invisible tablets, where Brown's mental records were kept, an inscription, or word, similar to that which Belshazzar saw traced upon the wall by the finger of an invisible hand. The man of "blood and iron" had invited the interview in his letter to Mr. Sanborn of February 24th.[400] Brown's decision was adverse to Mr. Sanborn. The latter did not suspect that he had passed through the fire of an examination, and had been found deficient. The subject was never again taken up; the door of opportunity closed against Mr. Sanborn.

Following the trail blazed by a discredited predecessor, the writer of Fifty Years After abandons the teachings which the record discloses concerning this episode, and, concurring with Mr. Redpath, tries to confirm in our history that author's perversion of the facts relating to it. He assumes to believe, and seeks to teach the public to believe, that Brown's plans were, comparatively, crude, and that his movement in execution of them was of a harmless nature: that he merely intended to attempt to carry on a guerrilla warfare from some point in the nearby mountains, and that his entrance to Harper's Ferry was not an occupation of the place but a "raid" upon it, undertaken for the purpose of advertising, in a spectacular way, the guerrilla warfare which he intended to engage in. He says:[401]

By the gratuitous and irrelevant assumptions herein, this biographer discredits Brown's intelligence; and by unjust, unfair, and illogical criticisms of his conduct, seeks to conceal and to emasculate his intentions. Authenticated facts place limitations upon the presumptions of historians, which challenge the consistency of reckless statements, and the logic of their conclusions concerning them. There is not an authenticated line in this history which justifies a belief that Brown contemplated doing the things which this author assumes that he intended to do. His theory that the occupation of Harper's Ferry was merely an incident in a raid, the first one of a series of undertakings in guerrilla warfare, which he represents Brown as intending to execute from a location within walking distance of the town, is a reflection upon the sanity of every person connected with the movement. It is an assumption that Brown and his men believed that they could maintain a headquarters for such warfare in the Maryland hills—at a "hill-top fastness," if you please—and not be "run to earth at once," as the author states Cook would have been, if he had attempted to hide in these inhospitable hills.[402] It is also a general denial of the historical truth that Brown intended to invade Virginia and the Southern States, and to establish over them the jurisdiction of a provisional government. Moreover, it is so divergent from the lessons taught by the vast accumulation of authenticated facts which relate to the matter, that it constitutes a contradiction of the facts, and raises a question as to the integrity of the author's purpose in putting it forth.

There is no room in historical literature for the indulgence of poetic license. If Brown was a man of "blood and iron" and his men "hard-headed Americans" one day, they must be regarded as being such the next day, and every day. It may be said, upon the authority of this author, that Brown and his men were not the stupids which they are, in this instance, represented as being. "Captains John H. Kagi and A. D. Stevens, bravest of the brave"[403] were not words idly spoken. "The hard-headed able Americans like Stevens, Kagi, Cook, and Gill, who lived with John Brown month in and month out worshipped no lunatic."[404] Grafter! Hypocrite! Fiend! Monster! Brown was, but never a trifler. If he ever engaged in a trifling enterprise or attempted to do anything in a trifling manner or upon a trifling scale, it has not been recorded. First, last, and all the time he played the limit of his resources. And in the execution of this venture—the climax of all his undertakings—he was neither trifling nor juggling with its details, as his biographers have persisted in doing with his motives, and with what his intentions and his plans were, in these premises.

Brown was not advertising his revolution when he secretly entered Harper's Ferry. These men were not baiting Death for spectacular effect. They had a well defined purpose in view, but it was not to "capture a few slave-holders and release some slaves." To Daniel Wheelan, Brown stated the purpose of his coming: "I want to free all the Negroes in this State; I have possession now of the United States Armory, and if the citizens interfere with me I must only burn the town and have blood." Conductor Phelps said: "They say they have come to free the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards." Mr. W. H. Seibert states that Kagi told him personally, that their purpose was "not the expatriation of one slave or a thousand slaves, but their liberation in the states wherein they were born and were now held in bondage."[405]

To Governor Wise and others, on the afternoon of October 18th, Brown stated that his purpose in being at Harper's Ferry Would be found in the constitution for the Provisional Government. A copy of the document being produced, he requested Governor Wise to read it, and said that "within a fortnight he intended to have it published at large and distributed": an act which he could not have intended to execute from a location in any "hill-top fastness." In reply to questions, he stated that he intended to put the Provisional Government into operation "here, in Virginia, where I commenced operations": that he expected to have "three or five thousand" men or as many as he wanted to assist him. He stated "distinctly" that he did not intend to run off any slaves, but that he "designed to put arms in their hands to defend themselves against their masters, and to maintain their position in Virginia and in the South." That in the first instance he expected they and non-slave holding whites would flock to his standard as soon as he got a footing there at Harper's Ferry: and, as his strength increased, he would gradually enlarge the area under his control, "furnishing a refuge for the slaves and a rendezvous for all whites who were disposed to aid him, until eventually he over-ran the whole South."[406]

January 5, 1860, Mr. John C. Unseld, one of Brown's prisoners testified: