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 (25 page)
Some of them lost heart in the course of the night. When the Maryland officer, Captain Sinn, brought a surgeon to the engine house, he also delivered the news that U.S. troops had arrived and occupied the armory yard. This prompted one of Brown’s men to ask if he would be committing “treason against his country in resisting” federal soldiers. Upon
being told that this would be so, “the man then said, ‘I’ll fight no longer,’” one of the hostages testified. “He thought he was merely fighting to liberate slaves.” At least one of the other men also wanted to give up.
being told that this would be so, “the man then said, ‘I’ll fight no longer,’” one of the hostages testified. “He thought he was merely fighting to liberate slaves.” At least one of the other men also wanted to give up.
But Brown refused to surrender. At one point late that night, Captain Sinn promised to provide the insurgents safe conduct to jail if they laid down their arms. Brown scorned the offer, the officer reported, “saying he knew his fate, and he preferred meeting it with his rifle in his hands to dying for the amusement of a crowd.” The machinist Armistead Ball also appealed to Brown, on grounds of humanity, to surrender rather than risk more bloodshed. Brown replied that he had already been “proclaimed an outlaw,” had a reward on his head, and knew the consequences of his actions.
As he awaited daylight, Brown paced the brick floor carrying George Washington’s sword, which his men had taken from the president’s great-grandnephew. The sword’s owner, still hostage in the engine house, hated everything Brown stood for. But even Lewis Washington admired the abolitionist’s “extraordinary nerve,” he later acknowledged. Brown never quailed, Washington said, “though he admitted during the night that escape was impossible and he would have to die.”
I Am Nearly Disposed of Now
W
hen word of trouble in Harpers Ferry first spread on the morning of October 17, the response of white Virginians nearby was swift and instinctive. Their neighbors were under attack, blacks were rumored to be rising up, and that was all any able-bodied man needed to know before grabbing a gun and rushing to the scene.
hen word of trouble in Harpers Ferry first spread on the morning of October 17, the response of white Virginians nearby was swift and instinctive. Their neighbors were under attack, blacks were rumored to be rising up, and that was all any able-bodied man needed to know before grabbing a gun and rushing to the scene.
But this wasn’t true of parties more distant from the fight. When Andrew Phelps telegraphed the B & O office in Baltimore at 7:05 and reported that “armed abolitionists” had seized the armory and the Potomac bridge, stopped his train, shot a railroad porter, and pledged to free the slaves “at all hazards,” the response was skeptical.
“Your dispatch is evidently exaggerated and written under excitement,” the B & O master of transportation, W. P. Smith, wired Phelps two hours later. “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.”
Phelps shot back: “My dispatch was not exaggerated, neither was it written under excitement as you suppose. I have not made it half as bad as it is.”
Smith, whose sole concern was keeping trains running, remained unconvinced. He wired a railroad official in Wheeling, where Phelps had
started his trip, to keep sending trains east. “Matter is probably much exaggerated and we fear it may injure us if prematurely published.”
started his trip, to keep sending trains east. “Matter is probably much exaggerated and we fear it may injure us if prematurely published.”
But Smith did inform his own superior of Phelps’s warning, and the B & O president began to notify state and federal authorities. He telegraphed a Maryland commander, the governor of Virginia, the U.S. secretary of war, and, finally, “
His Excellency, James Buchanan,
Pres’t U.S.,” informing him that the armory was “in the possession of rioters” and troops were needed “for the safety of Government property, and of the mails.”
His Excellency, James Buchanan,
Pres’t U.S.,” informing him that the armory was “in the possession of rioters” and troops were needed “for the safety of Government property, and of the mails.”
This message was sent at ten thirty A.M., more than three hours after the conductor’s first alert. The secretary of war responded by calling out three companies of federal artillery. These units, however, were posted at a coastal fort in the southeast corner of Virginia, hundreds of miles from Harpers Ferry. The only U.S. troops readily available were ninety marines barracked at the Navy Yard in Washington—a small, inexperienced force that hardly seemed adequate to quell an uprising by insurgents now rumored to number more than seven hundred.
But the War Department was lucky: it so happened that two extraordinary soldiers were close at hand. One of them was a lieutenant from Virginia named James Ewell Brown Stuart, better known as Jeb, a fast-rising young cavalryman on leave from service in Kansas. On October 17, he was visiting the War Department, trying to sell it on a scabbard strap he’d designed. Overhearing talk of trouble at Harpers Ferry, he volunteered his services and was promptly sent with a summons for one of the Army’s best officers, Colonel Robert E. Lee, whose son was a close friend of Stuart’s.
Lee, an acclaimed military engineer and Mexican War veteran, was living at his family’s mansion in Arlington, Virginia, directly across the Potomac from Washington. Stuart quickly located the colonel at an Arlington apothecary shop and hurried him back to the capital.
Then fifty-two, Lee was in the midst of an unwelcome hiatus in his military career, having returned from the field upon the death of his father-in-law, George Washington Custis. The grandson of Martha Washington by her first marriage, Custis had been raised at Mount Vernon and inherited tremendous wealth, but he wasn’t an attentive manager. As his father-in-law’s executor, Lee found himself mired in the tedious business of
untangling a vast and ill-run estate that included three plantations and two hundred slaves.
untangling a vast and ill-run estate that included three plantations and two hundred slaves.
“He has left me an unpleasant legacy,” Lee wrote his son in the summer of 1859, reporting on the capture of two escaped slaves from one of the Custis properties. This incident brought the colonel unwanted attention when northern newspapers claimed he had whipped the runaways.
Lee regarded slavery with distaste, but he staunchly defended Southerners’ right to maintain their peculiar institution. He abhorred abolitionists and believed emancipation should be left to “a wise Merciful Providence.” He also didn’t hasten to carry out the instruction in his father-in-law’s will to free the Custis slaves, a number of whom expressed their displeasure by running away or otherwise rebelling. Lee finally freed his father-in-law’s slaves in 1862, by which time he was commanding a Confederate army, with Jeb Stuart at his side.
In 1859, however, the two future secessionists were loyal U.S. soldiers, and now they were charged with putting down rebels who had seized a federal armory. Lee was put in command of the ninety marines from the Navy Yard, with Stuart accompanying him as an aide. On Monday afternoon, the two men boarded a special locomotive to catch up with the marines, who were already en route to “the scene of difficulty,” as Stuart called it. “I had barely time to borrow a un.’f. coat and a saber.” Lee wore only his civilian clothes.
J.E.B. Stuart
Robert E. Lee
At about eleven P.M., they reached the depot at Sandy Hook, Maryland, just across the Potomac from Harpers Ferry. This station was now a crowded staging area for soldiers and others who had converged on the scene, including the aggrieved B & O official W. P. Smith. “Have given telegraph up to reporters, who are in force strong as military,” he wired his superiors on Monday night.
Taking command of the ninety marines, Lee marched them into Harpers Ferry in a light rain, reaching the town about midnight. He coolly assessed the situation and immediately grasped that rumors of a mass uprising were wildly overblown. There was only “a party of Banditti” holed up in the armory, he wrote. After sending word that no further troops were needed, he posted the marines around the engine house, choosing not to endanger the hostages with a nighttime attack.
Lee also drafted a formal message to “the persons” inside the engine house, to be delivered at daybreak. “If they will peaceably surrender themselves and restore the pillaged property, they shall be kept in safety to await the orders of the President,” the document read. “Colonel Lee represents to them, in all frankness, that it is impossible for them to escape; that the armory is surrounded on all sides by troops; and that if he is compelled to take them by force he cannot answer for their safety.”
Lee expected that his demand for surrender would be refused. In that event, he planned to launch an immediate attack so the gunmen in the engine house wouldn’t have additional time to prepare, or to harm the hostages. To further guard the captives’ safety, Lee ordered his men to attack with bayonets and “cautioned the stormers particularly to discriminate between the insurgents & their prisoners.”
This may have sounded straightforward in theory, but it presented considerable challenges in practice. Few of the marines had seen combat. The engine house was small and crowded. And its defenders had already shown themselves resolute fighters, prepared to die if necessary.
The mob surrounding the armory yard also posed a problem. “The people are terribly excited and threats are made of killing all in the morning,” a railroad official telegraphed late that night. By daybreak, a throng of about two thousand people had crowded every window, doorway,
and other vantage point within sight of the engine house. “All eyes were directed to one spot,” wrote Edward White, a young teacher in Harpers Ferry. “All were awaiting the final act of the drama.”
and other vantage point within sight of the engine house. “All eyes were directed to one spot,” wrote Edward White, a young teacher in Harpers Ferry. “All were awaiting the final act of the drama.”
SOON AFTER SUNRISE ON Tuesday, October 18, Jeb Stuart approached the engine house under a flag of truce and announced that he had a message from Colonel Lee. A gunman “opened the door about four inches,” Stuart wrote, “and placed his body against the crack with a cocked carbine in his hand.” Stuart recognized the man, having encountered him while serving in the U.S. cavalry out west.
“You are Osawatomie Brown, of Kansas?” Stuart asked.
“Well, they do call me that sometimes, Lieutenant.”
Brown’s presence in Harpers Ferry had been widely rumored for the past twenty-four hours, but Stuart was the first Virginian able to positively identify him.
“This is a bad business you are engaged in, Captain,” Stuart said. “The United States troops have arrived, and I am sent to demand your surrender.”
“Upon what terms?” Brown asked.
Stuart then delivered Lee’s message, promising protection to Brown and his men until the president determined their fate. Brown countered with his own now-familiar proposition—that he and his men be granted a chance to escape across the river.
“I have no authority to agree to such an arrangement,” Stuart said, “my orders being to demand your surrender on the terms I have stated.”
This Brown refused to do. Knowing “he could expect no leniency,” Brown told Stuart, he preferred to die fighting and “would sell his life as dearly as possible.”
The exchange at the door greatly alarmed the hostages. Some of them begged Stuart to bring Colonel Lee into the parley. But Stuart’s orders were to avoid negotiations, and to signal any refusal to surrender as quickly as possible.
“Is that your final answer, Captain?” Stuart asked Brown.
“Yes.”
Stepping away from the door, Stuart waved his cap—the sign agreed
upon for the marines to attack. A storming party of twelve men stood ready against the side wall of the engine house. Three of them now sprang to the front of the building and battered the heavy wooden doors with sledgehammers.
upon for the marines to attack. A storming party of twelve men stood ready against the side wall of the engine house. Three of them now sprang to the front of the building and battered the heavy wooden doors with sledgehammers.
As Lee had hoped, the swiftness of the assault caught Brown by surprise. “It was evident he did not expect an attack so soon,” Lewis Washington said. But the previous day’s siege had given the engine-house defenders ample time to fortify their position. They’d placed the two fire carts against the entrance as a brace, and fastened the double doors with ropes. This gave the doors spring, so that each blow of the sledgehammers pushed the heavy wood in without shattering it.
The marines’ pounding “reechoed from the rocky sides of the lofty mountains,” one spectator said. Finally, after several minutes, the marines stopped their futile hammering and withdrew; there followed “a brief pause of oppressive silence” for those crowded around the armory.
Though the initial assault had failed, the thunderous banging terrified the men inside the engine house, who couldn’t see out and had no clear idea what was happening. “There was a cessation for a moment or two,” Terence Byrne later testified, “and during this time one of Brown’s men turned round to him and said, ‘Captain, I believe I will surrender.’”
“Sir, you can do as you please,” Brown replied.
A few of the hostages began shouting, “One man surrenders!” But they couldn’t be heard in the confusion, and, moments later, there was another awful thud at the door.
The marines had tossed aside their sledgehammers and taken hold of a heavy ladder in the armory yard, deploying it as a battering ram. A dozen soldiers clutched the ladder and rushed at the engine house. Their first charge did not so much as dent the doors. With Brown’s men now firing from inside, the marines stepped back, hoisted the ladder, and rushed forward a second time. Again, nothing happened. Then, on their third charge, the attackers stove in one of the doors, splintering open a breach just large enough to charge through, one man at a time.
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