Month: February 2020

To prepare for the Raid on Harpers Ferry, we know John Brown had rented out a cabin on the edge of town at the Kennedy Farm. For almost a month, around twenty men covertly lived here. John Brown, a 15-year-old daughter, Annie, also joined the men there as part of the cover story. She was also joined by her brother Oliver’s wife, Martha. They would often run interference with nosey neighbors and cook for the men staying at the cabin. The men had to hide from the neighbors and could only come out at night to not raise suspicion amongst the townsmen. This was proved difficult as people become curious about their neighbors when they live in a small town. However, they were able to evade suspicion.

The raid officially started on October 16th, 1859. The plan was first to kidnap prominent figures of the community and to use them as a bargaining chip in case. One of these people was Colonel Lewis Washington, who happened to be George Washington’s great-grand-nephew. They took the hostages to the federal armory, where all the weapons were stored. At the same time, another group went to cut the telegraph lines, and a train came through the station. However, this is where one of Brown’s men made a grave mistake. They shot and killed Heyward Sheppard, a black freeman who was the train conductor. He was the first causality of the raid. But then they let proceed to let the train continue, with all the passengers, and as soon as the train made their next stop the story of old John Brown with hundreds of men were sacking a federal armory began to spread. The townspeople learned what was happening later that night and started to fight back against Brown, but he had already taken the armory.

The next day, the townspeople created a local militia and surrounded the armory. They also cut off the bridge across the Potomac River, so there was no way Brown and his men could escape. Four townspeople died while they were exchanging gunfire with Brown and his men. Brown eventually moved from the armory to the engine house, which is now known as the John Brown fort. Some of Brown’s men were also killed, including two of his sons Watson and Oliver. Allegedly, when Watson was dying from a gunshot to the stomach, he was asking Brown to put him out of his misery, and Brown responded with some harsh words, to say the least. He said to Watson that he should basically “die like a man.” Now, I doubt the veracity of the story, but I think it is interesting how people wanted to portray Brown.

The raid ended on October 18th, when Robert E. Lee arrived from texas with Marines. They were able to barge down the doors and capture the rest of Brown’s men that were still alive. Brown was wounded in his capture, but he would live for a few more months before being sentenced to die by hanging.

The raid itself was not successful, they did not succeed in stealing weapons or destroying them, but what was more important is what happened after the Raid on Harpers Ferry and the response to it.

I think for the first time, I am at a loss on how to approach this part of John Brown’s life. I find it quite comical that over ten blogs later, and I am just now getting to arguably the most important part of Brown’s life. To be honest, if you know nothing of Harpers Ferry or have never been, it is difficult to understand the story of  John Brown’s raid. Harpers Ferry’s role in American history starts long before John Brown was ever born, and continued to shape history after he died. It is one of those few places in the United States that seems like a magnet for dramatic events. In this blog, I will do my best to explain the history of Harpers Ferry before John Brown’s raid so that you will be able to understand better why Brown may have chosen this spot.

Geographically, it is quite a fantastic spot to see. It is the halfway point in the Appalachian trail and seems encased by the Blue Ridge Mountains. It sits at the intersection of the Potomac and Shenandoah river in West Virginia. Robert Harper recognized the potential for a business ferrying people from Virginia to Maryland, so he purchased some of the lands and was granted the right to operate a ferry in 1761. A town was then settled here called “Shenandoah Falls at Mr. Harper’s Ferry”, and was eventually shortened to Harpers Ferry [1].

George Washington passed through Harpers Ferry in 1785, and because of his familiarity with the spot, he chose it as a place to build a federal armory in 1794. With the armory being built, this brought gun manufacturing industry to Harpers Ferry. The town turned into a hub for mass production of military arms. Over a 60 year period, over 600,000 firearms were produced. They started out producing just muskets in 1802, but over the course of eight years, they were producing thousands of pistols and rifles [2].

In 1811, Captain John H. Hall created a .69 caliber breech-loading rifle called the Hall Rifle. This rifle was fearsome for its time because it could shoot up to 1500 yards away, and if you were a skilled marksman could shoot ten rounds a minute. Breechloader means that you insert the shell into the chamber, rather than in the muzzle. However, what was truly revolutionary about the rifle was not the type, but how it was made. Captain Hall designed it so that non-skilled workers could make it. He developed what he called the “uniformity principle,” what we would call today as interchangeable parts or machine precision. The US government agreed to purchase thousands of his rifles in 1819, and most of them were manufactured there at Harpers Ferry (3).

John Brown chose this spot for the strategic location of the federal armory, but also because of the Mountains. He thought that the Allegheny Mountains range was a gift from God, and he would be able to retreat into them and engage slave-holders in guerilla warfare. He also chose it because of the insane amount of weapons and ammunition that were stored there. In my next blog, I will talk about the John Brown raid there at Harpers Ferry.

[1] http://www.wvculture.org/history/archives/jnobrown.html

[2] https://www.nps.gov/hafe/learn/historyculture/harpers-ferry-armory-and-arsenal.htm

[3] https://www.guns.com/news/2011/02/08/harpers-ferry-america-begins-with-a-bang

I am sure you have heard of Fredrick Douglass before. In this blog, however, I plan to dig into his role with John Brown and his role in Harpers Ferry. In a quick summary of his life, Fredrick Douglass was born into slavery in 1818. He was taught to read and write by the people who enslaved him. He then eventually taught other enslaved people to read the New Testament. He tried to escape slavery twice and succeeded on the second attempt. He became an anti-slavery lecturer finally after demonstrating his skill as an orator. He even established newspapers to write about his own experience, the horrors of slavery, and abolitionism. He was also a supporter of women’s rights and attended the Seneca Falls Convention.

Fredrick Douglass first crossed paths with John Brown at a meeting in Springfield, MA, in 1847. At this meeting, John Brown outlined his plan to Douglass to raid Harpers Ferry armory. Douglass had objections to the strategy of the plan to raid the armory. He did not think it would work, but he did respect Brown’s dedication and commitment to end slavery.

That meeting in 1847, Douglass writes about in his autobiography Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. He says John Brown did not want to plan a general uprising among slaves or mass slaughter of slave owners. Instead, he wanted to “destroy the money value of slave property” by freeing slaves and helping them cross through the Allegheny mountains (link). Douglass does not go into how this would cause slavery to decrease in monetary value. Still, I believe John Brown thought by freeing slaves and fighting slaveholders in the mountain, he would create instability in the slave market, and people would deem it too risky to hold slaves.

Douglass became good friends with Brown and his family. Brown stayed at Douglass’s home in Rochester, New York, for a month in 1858. Brown wrote his provisional constitution for the state of Virginia, which I talked about in my last blog, during this time. Likely, Douglass knew much about the raid on Harpers Ferry, but it is hard to know what his level of involvement was. We do know that Douglass was not in favor of a violent end to slavery, and wanted to end slavery through the already existing legal system. The only letter we have surviving during Brown’s stay is a note Douglass wrote saying, “John, come down for dinner,” which I find quite amusing (link).

Like Harriet Tubman, Brown tried to convince Douglass to join his raid. Douglass declined (this fact is disputed). He did meet with Brown before the raid in Chambersburg, PA. Brown asks him to go, but Douglass says: “I can’t do it. You’re going to be surrounded in a trap of steel. You will never get out. But if you must go, go.” (link).

The full extent of support he gave to Brown may never be known, but we can say that Douglass was a friend to Brown and fighter for the cause of equality.

Also before you go, I would like to remind everyone that a show about John Brown’s life will be airing on Showtime this Friday. It is called The Good Lord Bird!

When you hear Harriet Tubman’s name, you think of the stories you were told of her helping slaves escape. She was an integral part of the underground railroad, but her story is often whitewashed to exclude her armed resistance against slavery purposely. Harriet Tubman led over 300 people out of bondage through the underground railroad, with over 19 missions to the south. She showed unbelievable courage, and John Brown even called her General Tubman. John Brown had tremendous respect for Tubman because of her strategic thinking, connections, and dedication to the cause, which is why he called her General Tubman. Tubman met John Brown in Canada during a constitution convention where John Brown introduced the provisional constitution that he had created as an alternative to the US constitution. In John Brown’s constitution, he planned to have everyone, regardless of race and gender, be able to vote and carry arms. This was an extremely radical idea at the time.

Tubman offered her advice to Brown and even helped him gain support for his raid on harper ferry. She also agreed to join him at harpers ferry, but she never joined him because she fell ill at the time of the raid. However, her struggle to end slavery did not end there. She joined the Union Army once the civil war began as a nurse first. However, she soon got orders to form a spy ring because of the skills she showed while conducting the underground railroad. She teamed up with Colonel James Montgomery to raid and destroy wealth rice plantations in South Carolina, to free slaves, and to recruit soldiers.

Tubman and Montgomery planned to raid at night by ship. Tubman beforehand, with a handful of others, scouted the area beforehand and committed to memory all the strategic points because she was unable to write. These points were where Slaves were waiting and at important docking locations for the mission. Tubman led 150 men on a mission toward the fugitive slaves. She saw people running from the slavemasters and being shot at while they ran. The raid resulted in over 700 people and an embarrassing defeat for the confederacy.

Despite Harriet Tubman’s service in the military, she was barely recognized as a hero, and she was never paid for her service, reportedly because she was a woman (link).  Her past has often been portrayed as someone who was for nonviolent protest. Still, some modern historians, such as Cathrine Clinton, disagree with this narrative and say it is a result of romanticizing her role in the underground railroad. Her role in John Brown’s raid and her career in the military is often forgotten or deliberately left out. These watered-down stories of her do portray her as courageous, but they leave out the rest of the story on who Tubman was (link).