by Tim Black
Inside Clarkson Hall, Harriet Tubman was awaiting their arrival. When the group approached, she handed Samuel a bundle of clothes. “I want you to change into these clothes. You will fit in better. Your clothes are too fancy for this trip.”
Two black women and a light-skinned African American girl of ten or eleven, who the great Underground Railroad conductor introduced as her niece Margaret and who bore an uncanny resemblance to Mrs. Tubman, stood between the two women, shyly making eye contact with Heather. Harriet Tubman was plainly dressed, in a brown dress, with a typical brown head scarf and a shawl. The head scarf was the iconic image of Harriet Tubman, Samuel thought. Mrs. Tubman looked at Heather. “She’s fine. She is going to play a rich white woman.” Harriet Tubman handed Heather a small leather bag with drawstrings. “There is three hundred dollars in your purse,” she explained. “You will have to buy the tickets and other things as we go. We are going to pretend to be your servants. I am your maid and body servant and Samuel your bodyguard that your daddy sent along to protect you. Sorry, Samuel, but for this trip you have to pretend to be a slave.”
"Okay, Mrs. Tubman, I understand,” Samuel replied. “But what is our cover story? Why were we in Philadelphia in the first place?”
“Well,” Mrs. Tubman replied, thinking. “We can say Heather had to come to Philadelphia for medical treatment.”
“For what?”
Harriet Tubman smiled. “You just say, ‘lady issues,’ and no one will ask another question. Believe me. No man, anyway. And any lady who is a lady will not pry. If she is a lady,” she added with a bit of a smile.
“I see,” Heather said. “Thank you, for the advice, Mrs. Tubman.”
Samuel retired to a nearby “water closet” to change his clothes. Returning, he now appeared dressed like a plantation field hand, complete with a rumpled hat, loose-fitting trousers with buttons in lieu of zippers, and a vest and a well-worn coat, which suggested it had once belonged to white man who had tossed it away as it became worn.
“Now you look more like a slave than a young gentleman,” Harriet Tubman said, nodding her head in appreciation at Samuel’s transformation. “Samuel, please understand. You are so tall that you will be noticed and if you are well-dressed it would be too suspicious.”
“It is a matter of subterfuge,” Mr. Greene explained.
Harriet Tubman looked at the teacher blankly.
“A fancy word for disguises, Mrs. Tubman,” Mr. Greene explained. “Well, I will be off then,” Mr. Greene added, and after goodbyes took his leave, save for a thext to Professor Bridenbaugh.
We will be in Harper’s Ferry, if any emergency occurs, Professor Bridenbaugh. Look after the kids.
“I will,” the professor replied.
As Mr. Greene walked through Fairmount Park back to the classroom, he had second thoughts. Should he have let Heather and Samuel go off on a rescue with Harriet Tubman? He was responsible for his students after all. A feeling of ambivalence overcame him as well as a sense of foreboding. If anything happened…perhaps they should go back to Clarkson Hall before they left for Maryland and prevent the trip.
Victor was at the computer when Mr. Greene walked in. “Are you ready, Victor?” the teacher asked.
“Yes sir… Harper’s Ferry?”
“Yes.”
“Buckle up ladies,” Victor said.
“Hold on a minute, Victor,” Mr. Greene said, stopping the time jump. “I want to find a reading in my files for you. It is Robert E. Lee’s written report of his actions at Harper’s Ferry.”
The teacher went to his row of file cabinets and rifled through some folders shouting “Eureka!” when he found what he was seeking. He passed a copy of Lee’s report to each of the students and to Professor Bridenbaugh as well. “Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee led the troops who stormed the engine house and ended the Harper’s Ferry raid,” explained Mr. Greene. “The raid was an initial success and it commenced late at night on October 16, 1859. Brown’s men cut the telegraph wires, effectively cutting off Harper’s Ferry from the outside world. They rounded up sixty hostages. But they did one really, really, stupid thing. They allowed a train to proceed after they had stopped it. The conductor on the train stopped at the next station and telegraphed Washington City informing the United States government of the raid.”
Victor began reading Lee’s report.
...On arriving here on the night of the 17th, I learned that a party of insurgents, about 11pm on the 16th, had seized the watchmen stationed at the armory, arsenal, rifle factory, and bridge across the Potomac, and taken possession of those points.
They then dispatched six men, under one of their party, called Captain Aaron C.V. Stevens, to arrest the principal citizens in the neighborhood and incite the Negroes to join in the insurrection. The party took Colonel L. W. Washington (descendant of the first president) from his bed about 1 1/2 am on the 17th, and brought him, with four of his servants, to this place. Mr. J. H. Allstadt and six of his servants were in the same manner seized about 3 am, and arms placed in the hands of the Negroes.
Upon their return here, John E. Cook, one of the party sent to Mr. Washington's, was dispatched to Maryland, with Mr. Washington's wagon, two of his servants, and three of Mr. Allstadt’s, for arms and ammunition, &c. As day advanced, and the citizens of Harper's Ferry commenced their usual avocations, they were separately captured, to the number of forty, as well as I could learn, and confined in one room of the fire-engine-house of the armory, which seems early to have been selected as a point of defense... These companies forced the insurgents to abandon their positions at the bridge and in the village, and to withdraw within the armory enclosure, where they fortified themselves in the fire-engine-house, and carried ten of their prisoners for the purpose of insuring their safety and facilitating their escape, whom they termed hostages...
I determined to summon the insurgents to surrender. As soon after daylight as the arrangements were made Lieutenant J. E. B. Stewart, 1st cavalry, who had accompanied me from Washington as staff officer, was dispatched, under a flag, with a written summons... Knowing the character of the leader of the insurgents, I did not expect it would be accepted. I had therefore directed that the volunteer troops, under their respective commanders, should be paraded on the lines assigned them outside the armory, and had prepared a storming party of twelve marines, under their commander, Lieutenant Green, and had placed them close to the engine-house, and secure from its fire. Three marines were furnished with sledge-hammers to break in the doors, and the men were instructed how to distinguish our citizens from the insurgents; to attack with the bayonet and not to injure the blacks detained in custody unless they resisted.
Lieutenant Stewart was also directed not to receive from the insurgents any counter propositions. If they accepted the terms offered, they must immediately deliver up their arms and release their prisoners. If they did not, he must, on leaving the engine-house, give me the signal. My object was, with a view of saving our citizens, to have as short an interval as possible between the summons and attack. The summons, as I had anticipated, was rejected. At the concerted signal the storming party moved quickly to the door and commenced the attack. The fire engines within the house had been placed by the besieged close to the doors. The doors were fastened by ropes, the spring of which prevented their being broken by the blows of the hammers. The men were therefore ordered to drop the hammers, and, with a portion of the reserve, to use as a battering-ram a heavy ladder, with which they dashed in a part of the door and gave admittance to the storming party.
The fire of the insurgents up to this time had been harmless. At the threshold one marine fell mortally wounded. The rest, led by Lieutenant Green and Major Russell, quickly ended the contest. The insurgents that resisted were bayoneted. Their leader, John Brown, was cut down by the sword of Lieutenant Green, and our citizens were protected by both officers and men. The whole was over in a few minutes...
From the information derived from the papers found
upon the persons and among the baggage of the insurgents, and the statement of those now in custody, it appears that the party consisted of nineteen men - fourteen white and five black. That they were headed by John Brown, of some notoriety in Kansas, who in June last located himself in Maryland, at the Kennedy farm, where he has been engaged in preparing to capture the United States works at Harper's Ferry.
He avows that his object was the liberation of the slaves of Virginia, and of the whole South; and acknowledges that he has been disappointed in his expectations of aid from the black as well as white population, both in the Southern and Northern States. The blacks whom he forced from their homes in this neighborhood, as far as I could learn, gave him no voluntary assistance… The result proves that the plan was the attempt of a fanatic or madman, which could only end in failure; and its temporary success was owing to the panic and confusion he succeeded in creating by magnifying his numbers.
Victor raised his hand.
“Yes, Victor?”
“Is Lieutenant Green one of your ancestors?” Victor asked his teacher.
“No, Victor he is not. Notice the difference in spelling?”
Victor hadn’t. He scanned the paper again and saw “Green” not “Greene.” “Oh,” he said. “My bad.”
Bette asked, “Is that the same J.E.B. Stuart who got lost at Gettysburg?”
“Yes, but Lee spelled his surname incorrectly. He spelled it ‘Stewart’ instead of ‘Stuart’,” Mr. Greene said.
Bette smiled and looked at Victor. “Are you related to Robert E. Lee, Victor,” she teased. “You seem to have inherited his spelling gene.”
When Mr. Greene was distracted, Victor slipped Bette Kromer her favorite finger gesture.
“Well, now, let’s set sail for Harper’s Ferry on the night of October 16, 1859, say about 10 P.M., before John Brown and his group arrive on the scene. According to the Moon Almanac, there should be a three-quarter moon, which may aid in visibility. I think it will, anyway. By the way, you will notice that John Brown now has a long white beard. He might remind you of an Old Testament patriarch. Heck, he used an alias to rent a farm in Maryland across the Potomac River from Harper’s Ferry. He called himself Isaac Smith. Isaac was an Old Testament patriarch.”
“I don’t know any Old Testament patriarchs,” Victor said.
“Mr. Greene means that artists have often depicted the Hebrew patriarchs as long-bearded, Victor. We don’t have any actual paintings of them. At least as far as I know.”
“Okay, our cover story,” Mr. Greene began. He scratched his chin for inspiration. “We will be Quakers again. Victor, I want you to go out first and check out the area to make sure that Brown and his men have not arrived yet. We will wait here until your return. Just to be safe. Brown’s men could be trigger happy and might shoot anything moving in the dark.”
“Got it, Mr. Greene,” Victor said.
Victor brought the classroom down into a vacant lot in the town of Harper’s Ferry and quickly applied the cloaking device. A dog began to bark, no doubt sensing the presence of unseen humans. “You go as planned, Victor,” Mr. Greene instructed.
Victor exited the portable and descended the handicap ramp. He headed toward a streetlamp and soon found himself on a high point in town. On his right was the Shenandoah River. In fact, a street sign indicated he was walking downhill on Shenandoah Street. Below, at the bottom of the hill, he saw a group of buildings, which he judged to be the armory grounds, including the arsenal with its estimated one hundred thousand rifles, and the engine-house, where John Brown would hold his last stand, but Victor wasn’t certain. Behind the buildings lay the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Potomac River. He knew that Harper’s Ferry was at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.
Victor looked off to the Maryland side of the Potomac River, and with the aid of moonlight, made out the silhouette of a horse-drawn wagon crossing the bridge across the waterway; the clopping of the horses was audible in the night air. John Brown! The bridge, Victor realized, had railroad tracks and a wagon road. It appeared in the darkness that two men were ahead of the wagon and several more were following behind. A watchman on the Virginia side of the bridge approached him and Victor watched as the watchman was captured. A few of the men stayed behind. Guarding the bridge, Victor realized. Momentarily forgetting Mr. Greene and his classmates back at the portable, Victor ran down the street to get close to the armory to observe the action, and arrived a moment before John Brown pulled up in the wagon. A watchman had already been captured and Brown ordered the watchman to open the armory. He refused. One of Brown’s men took a crowbar to the chain and snapped it and forced open the lock. The arsenal was unguarded and was soon in the invaders’ hands.
Victor heard one of Brown’s men warn the watchman. “Be quiet or be dead!”
Brown’s voice carried in the night as he proclaimed to the watchman and anyone in Harper’s Ferry who could hear him, “I came from Kansas, and this is a slave state; I want to free all the Negroes in this state, and if the citizens interfere with me I must only burn the town and have blood.”
Suddenly, Victor saw several men being led into the armory at gunpoint by a few of John Brown’s men. Hostages! He decided it was best to return to the portable and report in. He turned around, only to be met by the barrel of a breech loading rifle, which Victor realized was a Beecher’s Bible, a weapon named for Henry Ward Beecher, the preacher brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
“Not so fast, boy, you are going with us.”
“But…”
The invader pushed the rifle into Victor’s stomach. “Don’t make me kill you,” the invader cautioned.
By instinct, Victor Bridges raised his hands. He felt his heart beating faster as he was shoved along the street to join a group of other men taken hostage. He hadn’t been this frightened since the Confederates captured him after the Battle of Gettysburg. His mind tried to remember something about the hostages at Harper’s Ferry, but he drew a blank trying to recall how many of the hostages had wound up as casualties. And how would he get word to Mr. Greene that he was taken hostage?
He felt the nudge of a rifle barrel in his back. “Move along,” the invader commanded.
When the invaders and their hostages reached the armory, Victor spotted John Brown giving orders to his men. Three whites and three blacks were listening intently at what the abolitionist said to them.
“I chose you three white men and three black men for a special reason. Together you will go into the countryside and liberate the slaves and take their masters captives…”
Suddenly, Victor recalled their names. The whites were Aaron Stevens, John Cook and Charles Tidd and the blacks were Shields Green, Lewis Leary and Osborne Anderson. Shields Green, Victor remembered, would be hanged after John Brown was executed.
“…And I want you to go to the farm of Colonel Lewis Washington, the great-grandnephew of President Washington, and bring him back as hostage. Get him to surrender the pistol that Lafayette gave to Washington and the sword of Frederick the Great.”
Victor was impressed with John Brown’s meticulous planning. He knew that he had scouts in the area providing him with reconnaissance information.
Next, John Brown addressed the hostages, saying, “If you do as you are instructed no harm will come to you,” he promised. “My name is John Brown and some people call me Osawatomie Brown of Kansas. I have come here to liberate the slaves. At this very moment men are freeing slaves throughout the area and many other slaves will join us in liberating all the slaves of Virginia. And then we shall liberate the rest of the South. We shall set up an independent state in the mountains,” he proclaimed.
Victor noticed doubtful faces among the white hostages, but no one spoke up. From reading about the Harper’s Ferry raid, Victor knew that the slave uprising was John Brown’s pipe dream. This would not be another Nat Turner’s rebellion. Slaves did not trust white men, especially a white stranger. Mr. Greene had emphasi
zed that Turner’s rebellion had some initial success because it had been launched by slaves, not white men helping. And every slave in Virginia knew what had happened to the slaves after Nat Turner. Many innocent slaves were executed. Virginia would not tolerate another slave rebellion, and most slaves feared that if they joined Brown they would be signing their own death warrant. But some did join, and died fighting with John Brown, including one of Colonel Washington’s slaves.
*
“Victor should have been back a long time ago,” Mr. Greene said to Minerva and Bette. “Something must have happened to him.”
“What, Mr. Greene?” said an anxious Minerva Messinger. Good Lord, she prayed silently, please keep Victor safe.
“I bet he is a hostage,” Bette said.
“Why, Bette?” Mr. Greene asked.
“Victor Bridges is the curious cat; he probably noticed John Brown’s men and got too close and was nabbed.”
“If so, he should be alright then, because none of the hostages were killed or wounded in the fighting,” the teacher said.
“Unless Victor changed history, Mr. Greene,” said Bette Kromer.
“Don’t say that, Bette!” Minerva shouted. She began to cry. “Victor, you better come back to me.”
Minerva’s emotion unnerved Mr. Greene. “I had no idea you felt that…”
Bette Kromer intervened. “Of course, you didn’t, Mr. Greene. Minerva surprised me, too. I thought she was over the charming Mr. Bridges,” she added as she handed Minerva a hanky. “Blow,” she advised her friend. “It looks like we will have to rescue Romeo again. I am getting tired of rescuing dumb boys in distress.”
Minerva blew her nose and laughed.
“Well, we better go see if Bette is correct.”
Outside the cloaked classroom, the trio felt the soft chill of autumn, and even in the moonlight, the changing foliage on the trees was apparent. They had parked the classroom on a high point of hilly Harper’s Ferry, and in the distance they could see hostages being paraded into the compound of the armory. Several inhabitants of the town had wandered from their domiciles, awakened by the unusual commotion in the air at the midnight hour.
