The Harper’s Ferry Raid
1859— John Brown starts with fugitives for Canada, January 20th. He arrives in Canada, March 12th. He speaks in Cleveland, March 23d. Last visit of John Brown to the East, April and May. He starts for Harper’s Ferry, June. He and three companions arrive at Harper’s Ferry, July 3d. He gathers twenty-two men and munitions, June-October. He starts on the foray, Sunday, October 16th at 8 P. M. The town and arsenal are captured, Monday, October 17th at 4 A. M. Gathering of the militia, Monday, October 17th at 7 A. M. to 12 M. Brown’s party is hemmed in, Monday, October 17th at 12 M. He withdraws to the engine-house, Monday, October 17th at 12 M. Kagi’s party is killed and captured, Monday, October 17th at 3 P. M. Lee and 100 marines arrive, Monday, October 17th at 12 P. M. Brown is captured, Tuesday, October 18th at 8 A. M. 1859— Preliminary examination, October 25th. Trial at Charleston (then Virginia, now West Virginia), October 27th-November 4th. Forty days in prison, October 16th-December 2d. Execution of John Brown at Charleston, December 2d. Burial of John Brown at North Elba, N. Y., December 8th.
JOHN BROWN
CHAPTER I
AFRICA AND AMERICA
“That it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet saying, ‘Out of Egypt have I called My son.’”
The mystic spell of Africa is and ever was over all America. It has guided her hardest work, inspired her finest literature, and sung her sweetest songs. Her greatest destiny—unsensed and despised though it be,—is to give back to the first of continents the gifts which Africa of old gave to America’s fathers’ fathers.
Of all inspiration which America owes to Africa, however, the greatest by far is the score of heroic, men whom the sorrows of these dark children called to unselfish devotion and heroic self-realization: Benezet, Garrison and Harriet Stowe; Sumner, Douglass and Lincoln—these and others, but above all, John Brown.
John Brown was a stalwart, rough-hewn man, mightily yet tenderly carven. To his making went the stern justice of a Cromwellian “Ironside,” the freedom-loving fire of a Welsh Celt, and the thrift of a Dutch housewife. And these very things it was—thrift, freedom, and justice—that early crossed the unknown seas to find asylum in America. Yet they came late, for before they came greed, and greed brought black slaves from Africa.
The Negroes came on the heels, if not on the very ships of Columbus. They followed De Soto to the Mississippi; saw Virginia with D’Ayllon, Mexico with Cortez, Peru with Pizarro; and led the western wanderings of Coronado in his search for the Seven Cities of Cibola. Something more than a a decade after the Cavaliers, and a year before the Pilgrims, they set lasting foot on the North American continent.
These black men came not of their willing, but because of the hasty greed of new America selfishly and half thoughtlessly sought to revive in the New World the dying but unforgotten custom of enslaving the world’s workers. So with the birth of wealth and liberty west of the seas, came slavery, and slavery all the more cruel and hideous because it gradually built itself on a caste of race and color, thus breaking the common bonds of human fellowship and weaving artificial barriers of birth and appearance.