Historic Adventures: Tales from American History

by Rupert Sargent Holland

The leader realized the danger of the situation, and decided that his best chance of escape lay in using the prisoners he had captured as hostages for his band's safe retreat. He moved his men, and the more important of the prisoners, to a small brick building called the engine-house. There he said to his captives, "Gentlemen, perhaps you wonder why I have selected you from the others. It is because I believe you to be the most influential; and I have only to say now that you will have to share precisely the same fate that your friends extend to my men." He ordered the doors and windows barricaded, and port-holes cut in the walls.

The engine-house now became the raiders' citadel, and the militia and bands of farmers who were arriving at Harper's Ferry released the prisoners who were still in the arsenal, and concentrated all their fire on the band in the small brick house.

As the sun set the town filled with troops, and it was evident that the men in the fort would have to surrender. They kept up their firing, however, from the port-holes, and were answered with a rain of bullets aimed at the doors and windows. Both sides lost a number of men. Two of John Brown's sons had been shot during the day. Finally the leader asked if one of his prisoners would volunteer to go out among the citizens and induce them to cease firing on the fort, as they were endangering the lives of their friends, the other captives. He promised that if they would stop firing his men would do the same. One of the prisoners agreed to try this, and the firing ceased for a time.

More troops poured into Harper's Ferry, and presently Colonel Robert E. Lee arrived with a force of United States marines. Guards were set about the engine-house to see that John Brown and his men did not escape. Then Colonel Lee sent a flag of truce to the engine-house, and in the name of the United States demanded that Brown surrender, advising him to throw himself on the clemency of the government. John Brown answered that he knew what that meant, and added, "I prefer to die just here." Again in the morning Lee sent his aide to the fort. The officer asked, "Are you ready to surrender, and trust to the mercy of the government?" Brown answered, "No, I prefer to die here." Then the soldiers attacked, not with guns this time, but with sledge-hammers, intending to break down the doors. This did not succeed, and seizing a long ladder they used it as a battering-ram, and finally broke the fastenings of the main door. Lieutenant Green pushed his way in, and, jumping on top of the engine, looked about for John Brown. Amid a storm of bullets, he saw the white-haired leader, and sprang at him, at the same time striking at him with his sword. John Brown fell forward, with his head between his knees. In a few minutes all of the raiders who were left in the engine-house had surrendered to the government troops.

Of the band that had left the farm on Sunday night seven were taken prisoners, ten had been killed in the fighting, and six others had managed to make their escape. By noon of Tuesday, October 18th, the raid was over. John Brown, wounded in half a dozen places, lay on the floor of the engine-house; and the governor of Virginia bent over him. "Who are you?" asked the governor. The old man answered, "My name is John Brown; I have been well known as old John Brown of Kansas. Two of my sons were killed here to-day, and I'm dying too. I came here to liberate slaves, and was to receive no reward. I have acted from a sense of duty, and am content to await my fate; but I think the crowd have treated me badly. I am an old man. Yesterday I could have killed whom I chose; but I had no desire to kill any person, and would not have killed a man had they not tried to kill me and my men. I could have sacked and burned the town, but did not; I have treated the persons whom I took as hostages kindly, and I appeal to them for the truth of what I say. If I had succeeded in running off slaves this time, I could have raised twenty times as many men as I have now for a similar expedition. But I have failed."

The news of John Brown's raid spread through the country, and the people North and South were amazed and bewildered. They had grown used to hearing of warfare in the distant borderland of Kansas, but this was a battle that had taken place in the very heart of the Union. Men did not know what to think of it. John Brown appeared to many of them as a monstrous figure, a firebrand who would touch his torch to the tinder of slavery, and set the whole nation in a blaze. Newspapers and public speakers denounced him. They said he was attacking the foundations of the country when he seized the arsenal and freed slaves from their lawful owners. Only a handful of men had any good to say for him, and that handful were looked upon as madmen by their neighbors. Only a few could read the handwriting on the wall, and realize that John Brown was merely a year or two in advance of the times.

We who know the story of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery think of John Brown as a hero. We forget the outlaw and remember the martyr. If he was setting the laws of men at defiance he was also following the law that he felt was given him by God. His faith and his simplicity have made him a great figure in history. A man who met him riding across the plains of Kansas in the days of the border warfare drew a vivid picture of him. He said that a tall man on horseback stopped and asked him a question. "It was on a late July day, and in its hottest hours. I had been idly watching a wagon and one horse toiling slowly northward across the prairie, along the emigrant trail that had been marked out by free-state men.... John Brown, whose name the young and ardent had begun to conjure with and swear by, had been described to me. So, as I heard the question, I looked up and met the full, strong gaze of a pair of luminous, questioning eyes. Somehow I instinctively knew this was John Brown, and with that name I replied.... It was a long, rugged-featured face I saw. A tall, sinewy figure, too (he had dismounted), five feet eleven, I estimated, with square shoulders, narrow flank, sinewy and deep-chested. A frame full of nervous power, but not impressing one especially with muscular vigor. The impression left by the pose and the figure was that of reserve, endurance, and quiet strength. The questioning voice-tones were mellow, magnetic, and grave. On the weatherworn face was a stubby, short, gray beard.... This figure,—unarmed, poorly clad, with coarse linen trousers tucked into high, heavy cowhide boots, with heavy spurs on their heels, a cotton shirt opened at the throat, a long torn linen duster, and a bewrayed chip straw hat ... made up the outward garb and appearance of John Brown when I first met him. In ten minutes his mounted figure disappeared over the north horizon."

But John Brown had seized the government's arsenal, and put arms in the hands of negro slaves, and therefore the law must take its course with him. Its officers came to him where he lay on the floor of his fort, a badly-wounded man, who had fought for fifty-five long hours, who had seen two sons and eight of his comrades shot in the battle, and who felt that his cause was lost.

When men who owned slaves asked the reason for his raid, he answered, "You are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage.... I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them. That is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit."

A number of Virginians had been killed in the fight, and it was difficult to secure a fair trial for the raiders. The state did its best to hold the scales of justice even. The formal trial began on October 27, 1859. Friends from the North came to his aid, and a Massachusetts lawyer acted as his counsel. John Brown heard the charges against him lying on a straw pallet, and four days later he heard the jury declare him guilty of treason. December 2, 1859, the sentence of the court was carried out, and John Brown was hanged as a traitor. His last written words were, "I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."