Oliver Brown, William Thompson, and Dangerfield Newby were forced to abandon their post at the Maryland end of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad bridge when they were attacked by the Jefferson Guards. Brown and Thompson reached the armory grounds safely, but Newby (below) was shot and killed as he came off the bridge.
When a raider shot and killed George W. Turner about 2 p.m., the crowd grew ugly. Turner, a West Point graduate, was a prominent and highly respected area planter. When Fontaine Beckham, the mayor of Harpers Ferry and agent for the B & O Railroad, was killed, the townspeople turned into a howling, raging mob.
Beckham, a well-liked man of somewhat high-strung temperament, had been greatly disturbed by the earlier shooting of Hayward Shepherd, his friend and faithful helper at the depot. Despite warnings from friends to keep away, Beckham, unarmed, walked out on the railroad to see what was going on. He paced up and down the B & O trestle bordering the armory yard about 30 yards from the enginehouse. Several raiders spotted him peering around the water tower in front of their stronghold and thought that he was placing himself in position to fire through the doors. Edwin Coppoc, posted at the doorway of the enginehouse, leveled his rifle at the mayor.
“Don’t fire, man, for God’s sake!” screamed one of the hostages. “They’ll shoot in here and kill us all.”
Coppoc ignored the warning and pulled the trigger. Beckham fell, a bullet through his heart. Oliver Brown, standing beside Coppoc in the partly opened doorway, aimed his rifle at another man on the trestle, but before he could fire he keeled over with “a mortal wound that gave horrible pain.” Both of Brown’s sons now lay dying at their father’s feet.
Enraged by the shooting of Beckham, the townspeople turned on prisoner William Thompson. Led by Harry Hunter, a young Charles Town volunteer and the grandnephew of the murdered mayor, a group of men stormed into the Wager House, grabbed Thompson, and dragged him out onto the B & O bridge. “You may kill me but it will be revenged,” Thompson yelled; “there are eighty thousand persons sworn to carry out this work.” These were his last words. The mob shot him several times and tossed his body into the Potomac to serve, like Leeman’s, as a target for the remainder of the day.
While Brown’s situation at the fire enginehouse was growing progressively worse, his three-man detachment holding the rifle works came under fire. Under Kagi’s leadership these men had held the works uncontested during the morning and early afternoon. About 2:30 p.m. Dr. Starry organized a party of “citizens and neighbors” and launched an attack against the raiders from Shenandoah Street. After a brief exchange of shots, Kagi, Lewis Leary, and John Copeland dashed out the back of the building, scrambled across the Winchester and Potomac Railroad tracks, and waded into the shallow Shenandoah River. Some townspeople posted on the opposite bank spotted the fleeing men and opened fire. The raiders, caught in a crossfire, made for a large flat rock in the middle of the river. Kagi, Brown’s most trusted and able lieutenant, was killed in the attempt and Leary was mortally wounded. Copeland reached the rock only to be dragged ashore, where the excited crowd screamed “Lynch him! Lynch him!” But Dr. Starry intervened, and the frightened Negro was hustled off to jail.
At the enginehouse, the raiders continued to exchange occasional shots with the Charles Town militia and the townspeople. By now Brown had separated his prisoners. Eleven of the more important hostages who might be used for bargaining purposes were moved into the engineroom with his dwindling band, while the others remained crowded into the tiny guardroom. The two rooms were separated by a solid brick wall.