The Insurrectionist

by Herb Karl

  The old man had planned to strike within a few days, but it was beginning to look more like weeks. He picked up his pencil, forced himself to complete the letter he’d been working on, though his thoughts were elsewhere. He looked up as Kagi turned to leave. Kagi was a loyal and able follower—the person he designated second in command of his army of liberation. The old man felt he needed to say something reassuring. He was aware of Kagi’s skepticism when it came to matters of religion, that he claimed it was impossible to know of the existence of a deity. Still, Brown chose words that mirrored his own faith.

  “We must remember,” he said, “God reigns in the best possible manner. Our destiny is in his hands.”

  Kagi gave a nod, and Brown resumed writing.

  12

  Two Months Later

  October 15, 1859

  Kennedy Farm, Western Maryland

  The air was heavy with the threat of rain as Brown guided a one-horse covered wagon onto the lane leading to the farmhouse in the hills of western Maryland. Since mid-July the wagon had been transporting men and freight from Chambersburg. This time the only passenger was twenty-two-year-old Francis Jackson Merriam, frail and blind in one eye. The wagon’s arrival at dusk brought to a close the endless waiting for volunteers to show up at the Kennedy farm.

  Merriam was the grandson of the president of the American Anti-Slavery Society and had traveled with James Redpath on a fact-finding tour of Haiti and the slaveholding states. What Merriam witnessed appalled him, and he was eager to convert his abolitionist zeal into action. Redpath, the journalist who accidentally stumbled onto Brown’s camp in Kansas, was by now an unapologetic promoter of the old man. Merriam had listened as Redpath spoke enthusiastically of Brown and his cause, disclosing what he knew of the plan to invade Virginia. When Merriam learned he might be able to join Brown’s company, he collected some money—$600 in gold—and boarded a train in Boston bound for Chambersburg.

  “The good Lord in heaven who furnishes our daily bread sent him to Father with his money just at the moment it was needed,” said Brown’s daughter Annie when she heard about Merriam’s decision.

  As Merriam handed Brown a fistful of double eagles, the old man breathed easier. He would soon dispatch his new recruit to Baltimore to make some emergency purchases. Even though there was a tidy sum left over, Brown intended to live off the spoils of war for the foreseeable future.

  The wagon carrying Brown and Merriam to the small split-log farmhouse was transporting more than the two men. Concealed under a canvas tarpaulin were much-needed tools and munitions: a sledgehammer, a crowbar, a pair of wire-cutting pliers, a large quantity of percussion caps, and a case of .52 caliber paper cartridges.

  The farmhouse rested on an elevated stone basement. A flight of stairs led to a porch that opened into a living room and a kitchen. A narrow staircase in the living room provided access to an attic that served as sleeping space for some of the volunteers, the log outbuilding across the road accommodating the rest.

  Brown and Merriam climbed the porch stairs and entered a room filled to capacity. Among crates of weapons and ammunition stood twenty men, many of them bearded, some wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed since Annie and Martha returned to North Elba. The reception was restrained, the men having been told by Brown to avoid any commotion that might draw the attention of suspicious neighbors. The warning became so ingrained in the men that Annie, during her stay at the farm, had taken to calling them her “invisibles.”

  Brown interrupted the amenities with a speech, brief and to the point: “Men . . . tomorrow we begin our war against chattel slavery. It shall take place five miles distant from where we are presently gathered. Look to the man next to you and know that he, like you, has come here for one reason: to free the slave—the slave who has been denied what is promised in the Declaration of Independence. You shall be armed with the weapons of war, but you also shall be armed with the knowledge that what you are doing is right.”

  For the newcomers, the words triggered a rush of blood that warmed them on the damp and chilly October evening. For the rest of them it brought to mind an earlier meeting at the farmhouse, prior to the old man’s rendezvous with Frederick Douglass at the quarry near Chambersburg.

  The company then was composed of sixteen men, and Brown had decided to gather them together and announce his decision to invade Harpers Ferry. It had been his habit to remain circumspect about such matters, disclosing information only when he felt it necessary. When the men heard that the invasion would begin with a raid on the armory, those who had no knowledge of the plan were shocked. An argument erupted that threatened to disrupt the whole operation.

  “We came to free slaves from the plantations,” complained a disgruntled Charlie Tidd. He spoke for all who had doubts about the wisdom of striking a federal installation. Tidd had participated in the liberation of the eleven slaves from Missouri, and though he was a trusted and reliable soldier, he wasn’t easily intimidated—by Brown or anyone else.

  “And we shall do that,” the old man retorted. “But only after we have taken the armory.” He paused to read the faces of the men before adding, “When the citizens of Harpers Ferry find their town has been invaded by armed men—men of color as well as white men—the news will spread quickly. And when we break down the armory doors, the worst fears of the slaveholder will have been realized: his slaves in rebellion and fully armed.”

  The words didn’t satisfy Tidd. His grumbling stirred others—including two of the old man’s sons, Oliver and Watson.

  Brown responded by offering to resign his post. Someone else could assume the role of commander in chief. He was willing to follow whoever wanted to lead.

  His strongest supporters were John Kagi, Aaron Stevens, and John Cook, each having been privy to a more complete picture of the old man’s plan, each willing to commit fully to a raid on the armory. The men deliberated briefly, then all of them reaffirmed their faith in Brown. Oliver, remembering Salmon’s words of warning, turned to brothers Owen and Watson and whispered, “We must not let our father die alone.”

  Tidd, however, still sulked. He stormed out of the farmhouse and stayed three days at Cook’s rented rooms in Harpers Ferry “to let his wrath cool off.”

  Brown blamed the blowup on the fact that his volunteers were impatient young men. All but two were in their twenties. Some had been living at the farm for three months and were tired of being cooped up. They were bored with breaking down and cleaning their weapons, honing their aiming skills, making leather slings, holsters, and ammunition pouches—all done within the cramped quarters of a small living room and an even smaller attic. When the boxes containing the thousand pikes reached the farm—unassembled—the men were grateful to be doing something different. But it didn’t take long for the boredom to return. Using an auger and hammer to rivet metal blades to six-foot ash poles became another tedious, repetitive task.

  They relieved the tedium by playing cards and checkers, and they amused themselves bantering with Annie and Martha. But by far the most pleasurable diversion was the debating—contrived by Brown as a means to challenge the men’s thinking. On days when he wasn’t scouring the countryside for recruits, the old man showed up at the farm—usually with Kagi and a wagonload of supplies. The men would gather in the living room and the contest would begin, often with a topic taken from Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason. Stevens owned a dog-eared copy of the pamphlet, and at Brown’s request he’d read a passage aloud. At the end of the reading, the men responded, arguing for or against the meaning of the passage as they understood it.

  It didn’t seem to bother Brown that Paine repudiated organized religion and sought to debunk the Bible. While the men argued whether the Bible could ever be viewed as the literal word of God or if an organized religion was necessary to a moral and happy life, Brown listened, occasionally raising a question that would prompt closer examination of the text.

  Annie was amazed at the depth of insight displayed during
the debates. “Father,” she said as she and Brown sat on the porch keeping an eye out for strangers, “it would be most unfortunate if your soldiers were one day made out to be a wild, ignorant, fanatical, and adventurous lot of rough men. This is not so.”

  Brown responded with a rare smile, imperceptible beneath the beard that had begun to grow back to its former length. He couldn’t hide his eyes though; they took on the familiar glow as he let his mind drift, contemplating those who chose to share his destiny.

  He was especially pleased with the two men who formed his inner circle—Kagi, the journalist who practiced law, and Stevens, the former cavalry soldier who escaped from the military prison at Leavenworth. They understood his mission and were ready to follow him anywhere—to their deaths if necessary. They had been with him during the marches across Iowa and had participated in the Chatham convention; they were key figures in the Missouri raid and the transporting of the freed slaves to Canada.

  Twenty-four-year-old Kagi, of course, was Brown’s choice to take his place should he fall in battle. The old man found him to be intelligent, knowledgeable, and serious about his duties. Kagi had no use for trivial matters, especially his appearance. His hair was in permanent disarray, and he often could be seen with one pant leg tucked in his boot, the other bunched around his ankle. When he wasn’t making a modest living as an antislavery journalist, he rode the Kansas prairies with Stevens and the Second Kansas Militia.

  During the first winter journey across Iowa from Tabor to Springdale, as the men talked of their Kansas experiences around a campfire, Brown heard Stevens tell of Kagi’s encounter with Rush Elmore, a proslavery territorial judge from Alabama who possessed a strong sense of personal honor. Kagi had retired to his blanket early, so Stevens was able to recite the story without causing his friend any embarrassment. It seems Elmore was offended by a newspaper article written by Kagi that accused the judge of a fraudulent ruling in a case involving a Free State settler. With a revolver in one hand and a club in the other, Elmore ambushed Kagi, first hitting him on the head with the club, then firing at him from behind a stone pillar. One of Elmore’s shots struck Kagi in the chest, but a thick notepad absorbed the bullet. With blood streaming down his face, Kagi drew his own pistol. Elmore continued to shoot while circling the pillar. The confrontation came to an end when Kagi’s only shot penetrated the judge’s groin.

  Stevens concluded the story with “The judge lived, but the House of Elmore was no more.”

  Though it brought a smile to faces numb from the Iowa cold, Stevens’s story was a testament to Kagi’s physical courage. There were other qualities that drew him to Brown. The son of an Ohio blacksmith, Kagi appreciated the dignity of those who labored in the trades—something that Brown, who spent his early life as a tanner, was pleased to learn. As a boy Kagi excelled in school and was sent to a Virginia academy to continue his education. While immersed in his studies he observed the institution of slavery up close—and came to detest it. Still, his proficiency in mathematics, English, Latin, and French, afforded him an opportunity, at seventeen, to take a teaching position at one of the local schools. But because he allowed his antislavery feelings to creep into his lessons, he was branded a subversive and forced to leave—first his teaching job, then Virginia.

  The old man saw in Kagi a reflection of himself, someone who loved freedom so much he couldn’t abide slavery from the very first time he witnessed it. What Kagi felt as a young student in Virginia, Brown had experienced as a twelve-year-old watching that slave boy being beaten with an iron shovel. Brown and Kagi had seen slavery drain the humanity from its victims—both the slave and the slaveholder.

  In twenty-eight-year-old Aaron Stevens, Brown found something different but equally worthy. Stevens had the physical stature that commanded attention. At six-feet-two, weighing over two hundred pounds, he was the tallest and sturdiest of Brown’s volunteers. His piercing dark eyes had the power to induce palpitations in the heart of an ordinary private or a superior officer. Stevens’s experience as a sixteen-year-old enlistee in the Mexican War, as a cavalry officer in the Far West, and as a commander of a Free State regiment in Kansas, had made him well qualified to run Brown’s military school in Springdale.

  In Nebraska City, where he was first introduced to Stevens by Jim Lane, the old man had sensed an aura of confidence and tenacity. And when he learned the details of the young officer’s court martial offense and subsequent imprisonment, he knew Stevens was someone he wanted with him. The incident that resulted in Stevens’s arrest occurred while his regiment was fighting Apaches in New Mexico. His regimental commander, coincidentally, was Colonel E. V. Sumner—the same Colonel Sumner whom Brown faced outside Topeka after the battle at Black Jack Springs. Stevens was accused of assaulting the regimental major, who had ordered a soldier to be severely punished for a minor infraction. Stevens felt the punishment was barbaric, so he attacked the major, chastising him verbally as he beat him with a bugle. At his trial, Stevens was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. However, a number of his fellow soldiers made a plea to President Pierce for clemency—resulting in a commutation of the sentence to three years’ hard labor in the army’s prison at Leavenworth. He escaped, joined Jim Lane’s Free State militia, and adopted the alias “Whipple.”

  Brown viewed Stevens as a soldier who witnessed absolute power exercised unjustly on a helpless victim. The regimental major’s action was immoral and unfair, and Stevens could neither accept nor ignore it. His act of insubordination—though extreme—risked everything: his rank, his good name, his career, his life. Yet it was an act that was to gain him Brown’s respect and admiration.

  In the old man’s eyes, Stevens stood among those who subscribed to a higher law—a law that transcended the laws of man and, in Stevens’s case, the laws of the US Army. He’d entered the pantheon that included Emerson, Thoreau, Higginson, and Brown himself. Stevens fought for a cause he believed was morally defensible, and he felt it was his duty to willingly sacrifice his life for that cause. Brown knew he would lead by example.

  Curiously, the religious beliefs of Kagi and Stevens differed radically from Brown’s own. Kagi would have been labeled an agnostic in a later century; Stevens claimed to be a Spiritualist, someone who found God in nature rather than in the Bible and believed one’s spirit survived the death of the body. Brown made no attempt to convert either man to his Christian faith. He appreciated the religious freedom guaranteed every American in the US Constitution.

  Annie, in her innocence, told her father, “If the term Christian means a follower of Christ’s example, Kagi and Stevens are uncommonly good and sincere Christians.”

  In fact, during her stay in Maryland, Annie made other observations concerning matters of religion. She heard her father’s response to a question about his financial backers: Did the money for expenses come from conservative or liberal Christians? Brown confessed it came from the liberal ones—to which Charlie Tidd responded, “I thought so. The conservative ones do not often do such things.”

  When volunteers stopped arriving at the farmhouse, Annie and Martha returned to North Elba. They had done what Brown asked—having stayed at the Maryland farm for nearly three months, attending to the housekeeping, the cooking, washing the men’s clothes. Their principal task had been to create the illusion the Kennedy farm was inhabited by a family, albeit a large family, ruled by the patriarch Isaac Smith, a.k.a. John Brown.

  With the arrival of Francis Jackson Merriam and the supplies purchased with his $600 in gold, Brown’s confidence was renewed as he delivered his brief speech on the eve of the invasion. After finishing, he stood back, observing the men he’d soon be leading into Virginia. They chatted amiably amid the crates of carbines and pistols, the kegs of black powder, the boxes of cartridges and percussion caps, the piles of leather slings and ammunition pouches.

  He was especially gratified that the five men of color—whom he regarded as indispensable to the mission—had quickly blended into the gro
up. John Copeland and Lewis Leary, enlisted by Kagi during the protest against the capture of the fugitive slave in Ohio, reached the farm only hours before Brown drove up with Merriam. Yet they moved with ease among their new comrades. The same was true of both Shields Green—the runaway who had worked for Frederick Douglass—and Osborne P. Anderson, the sole black delegate from the Chatham convention to reach Maryland. They had been at the farm just three weeks and were welcomed into what Anderson, a printer from Canada, described to Brown as “a true brotherhood of freedom fighters.” Anderson beamed as he told the old man he was thankful to be part of an antislavery family that had an “inflexibility of purpose without a hint of milk and water sentimentality.” “Your house,” he told Brown, “is a place where no hateful prejudice dare intrude its ugly self, no ghost of intolerance dare seek a space to enter.” The men called him “Chatham,” partly because of his involvement in the convention, but also because it enabled them to make a distinction when speaking about the other Anderson—Jerry.

  The last of the five blacks was Dangerfield Newby. At forty-four, he was the eldest of the volunteers—tall and sinewy, a physical specimen who despite his age was the envy of the younger men. He had a personal stake in Brown’s war on slavery; his wife and children were still held in bondage in a Virginia community located at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains south of Harpers Ferry. Though he was committed to Brown’s mission, Newby harbored some hope of rescuing his family. Brown told him that the provisional army would be moving south along the Blue Ridge, launching raids on plantations from mountain strongholds, and that a rescue attempt was a real possibility. Newby showed the old man a letter he carried in his shirt pocket. It was the last letter he received from his wife before he left Ohio for the Maryland farm: