Of the five colored men who were with the hero at the attack on Harper’s Ferry, only two, Shields Green and John A. Copeland, were captured alive. The first of these was a native of South Carolina, having been born in the city of Charleston, in the year 1832. Escaping to the North in 1857, he resided in Rochester, New York, until attracted by the unadorned eloquence and native magnetism of John Brown.
Shields Green was of unmixed blood, good countenance, bright eye, and small in figure. One of his companions in the Harper’s Ferry fight, says of Green, “He was the most inexorable of all our party; a very Turco in his hatred against the stealers of men. Wiser and better men no doubt there were, but a braver man never lived than Shields Green.”[53]
He behaved with becoming coolness and heroism at his execution, ascending the scaffold with a firm, unwavering step, and died as he had lived, a brave man, expressing to the last his eternal hatred to human bondage, prophesying that slavery would soon come to a bloody end.
John A. Copeland was from North Carolina, and was a mulatto of superior abilities, and a genuine lover of liberty and justice. He died as became one who had linked his fate with that of the hero of Harper’s Ferry.
FOOTNOTE:
[53] “A Voice from Harper’s Ferry.” O. P. Anderson.
CHAPTER XLIII. LOYALTY AND BRAVERY OF THE BLACKS.
The assault on Fort Sumter on the 12th of April, 1861, was the dawn of a new era for the Negro. The proclamation of President Lincoln, calling for the first seventy-five thousand men to put down the Rebellion, was responded to by the colored people throughout the country. In Boston, at a public meeting of the blacks a large number came forward, put their names to an agreement to form a brigade, and march at once to the seat of war. A committee waited on the Governor three days later, and offered the services of these men. His Excellency replied that he had no power to receive them. This was the first wet blanket thrown over the negro’s enthusiasm. “This is a white man’s war,” said most of the public journals. “I will never fight by the side of a nigger,” was heard in every quarter where men were seen in Uncle Sam’s uniform.