The Insurrectionist

by Herb Karl

  My dear husband,

  You cannot imagine how much I want to see you. I want you to buy me as soon as possible, for if you do not get me, somebody else will. It is said Master is in want of money. If so, I know not what time he may sell me and then all my bright hopes of the future are blasted, for there has been one bright hope to cheer me in all my troubles, and that is to be with you. If I thought I would never see you, this earth would have no charms for me.

  Oh dear Dangerfield, come this fall without fail, money or no money. I want to see you so much. The baby has just commenced to crawl.

  Your affectionate wife, Harriet

  Brown watched as Newby introduced Copeland and Leary to a Sharps carbine. The new recruits were getting a crash course in the use of a potent weapon.

  There was other work to be done. The outbuilding across the road from the farmhouse contained the pikes, and Brown wanted them moved to a hiding place in back of the house. The sun had set and it was safe for the men to go outside. They were forbidden to leave their quarters during the daytime, so a temporary escape from confinement was a welcome relief. Brown gave the order to transfer the pikes, and the men filed out of the living room onto the porch and down the flight of stairs. A cold, drizzling rain started to fall as they headed toward the outbuilding.

  Brown, meanwhile, pulled Kagi and Stevens aside, motioning for them to follow him into the kitchen. The few embers that still burned in the stove warmed the room. The old man took a candle from a shelf, opened the door to the stove’s firebox, held the wick against the coals until it ignited, then placed the candle on a tin plate in the middle of the kitchen table. Kagi and Stevens took a seat as Brown reached under the table and dragged out the carpetbag that served as his portable file drawer. He reached into it and removed a sheet of stationery, placing it on the table.

  He’d drawn a map of the part of Harpers Ferry known as the lower village, a strip of level ground that came to a point at the juncture of the two rivers—the Potomac and the Shenandoah. The lower village was where the main buildings of the armory were located, and he’d made crude images depicting each facility: the musket factory with its mills and machine shops, the arsenal across the street from the factory’s main gate, where the finished muskets were stored, and the rifle works, which stood several hundred yards west of the arsenal on an island in the Shenandoah.

  He tapped his finger successively on each of the facilities, marked I, II and III. “These are the places I wish to occupy.” He raised his head and declared emphatically, “When we establish a presence in each location, we will have seized the armory at Harpers Ferry.”

  Brown again looked to the map, dragged a finger between images of the two bridges—the covered railroad bridge that linked Harpers Ferry to Maryland and points east, and the wagon bridge that crossed the Shenandoah and led to a road running south along the Blue Ridge.

  He said, “We shall station sentries at the bridges to make sure our paths of egress remain open.”

  Then he said to Stevens, “Aaron, you shall be collecting the hostages. The great-grandnephew of General Washington may prove a boon to our cause.”

  The old man was referring to Colonel Lewis Washington, a slaveholding gentleman farmer whose home was located five miles west of Harpers Ferry, just off the newly resurfaced macadam turnpike that ran to the county seat in Charles Town. As a descendant of the leader of the American Revolution, Colonel Washington would be an ideal hostage.

  Brown had learned about the colonel—as well as other slaveholders who lived close to Harpers Ferry—through the undercover work of the effusive twenty-nine-year-old John Cook. He’d managed to ingratiate himself with the locals—one of whom was Colonel Washington. It was during a visit to the colonel’s plantation that Cook was invited to view some gifts presented to the nation’s first president: a pair of flintlock pistols from France’s Marquis de Lafayette and a sword alleged to have belonged to Frederick the Great of Prussia. Cook also made note of the fact the colonel owned a large, four-horse farm wagon.

  Even though Cook was a capable soldier—the most proficient marksman in the company—he was a source of consternation to Brown. In some ways Cook was the opposite of Kagi. Personal appearance meant nothing to Kagi, whereas it mattered much to Cook. His long blond hair seemed to get an excessive amount of care; his face with its intense blue eyes was almost always clean-shaven, and his attire was too flamboyant for Brown’s simple tastes. As to his motives, the old man always worried that they were misplaced. Was he truly committed to the cause? Or was he seduced by the lure of adventure and personal notoriety? And he talked too much. It was Cook whom Brown was complaining about when he wrote to Kagi in Chambersburg, “If someone must write some girl or some friend, telling (as some have done) all about our matters, then we might as well get the whole published at once in The New York Herald. Anyone is a stupid fool who expects his friends to keep for him that which he cannot keep to himself.” That Cook had been compelled to marry a local girl he impregnated further justified Brown’s concerns about motives and commitment. Still, the work Cook had done over the past year should have entitled him to a seat alongside Kagi and Stevens. But because of Brown’s doubts about Cook’s character, he was excluded. His intelligence-gathering, however, wasn’t unappreciated, especially the news about Colonel Washington’s farm wagon. Brown had plans for its use.

  Now, at the kitchen table, Brown leaned forward, his gaze moving from Kagi to Stevens. “Cook has spoken of relics the colonel has in his possession. Some pistols, I believe, and a sword presented to General Washington by the King of Prussia.” He paused. “I think it would be useful for us to acquire these relics.”

  Stevens’s response was immediate, almost reflexive: “And you shall have them, Captain.”

  Kagi, however, tilted back in his chair. He’d been with the old man for two years, had studied him, observed his talent for the dramatic and how he sometimes resorted to actions that were as symbolic as they were practical. He knew that Brown had something in mind for the relics; they weren’t going to become plundered souvenirs. At the Chatham convention, Kagi had watched as the old man presented his constitution, a document that was more than an instrument intended to create order and discipline among newly freed slaves; it was also something tangible that would justify Brown’s war on slavery to future generations. Perhaps if Kagi had been at Pottawatomie, he would have felt that he’d once more witnessed the old man’s inclination toward the dramatic and the symbolic.

  Brown said, “I want Colonel Washington to present these relics to our man Osborne Anderson. Anderson being a person of color, and persons of color being only things in the South, it is proper the South be taught a lesson on this point.”

  Kagi raised an eyebrow.

  Brown didn’t notice. His eyes were focused on the map. He pointed to where he’d drawn an X representing the log schoolhouse that stood on the Maryland hillside above the Potomac a little more than a mile from the covered railroad bridge. After the hostages were taken, Brown explained, the colonel’s wagon would be used to transfer arms from the Kennedy farm to the schoolhouse, a location more accessible to the Blue Ridge. From there—after the armory had fallen—the weapons would be taken across the Shenandoah River as the company moved south along the Blue Ridge. In the meantime the schoolhouse was to serve as a rallying point for the others.

  The others.

  Brown had been in contact with slaves in neighboring settlements—both in Maryland and Virginia—since he first arrived at the Kennedy farm. If and when they came to him, the arms would be waiting at the schoolhouse—a place out of harm’s way, yet close enough to the armory to allow the runaways to judge whether the invasion was successful. Brown worried that his decision to begin the operation so precipitously might not allow enough time for them to respond. But he couldn’t delay any longer. Rumors were circulating that he’d been betrayed, that lawmen were about to descend on the farm. To spread the word that the invasion was in progress, Brown ha
d to trust the “underground wires”—the system of word-of-mouth communication that worked so efficiently for the slaves.

  In the dim candlelight, Kagi and Stevens waited for the old man to continue. He hadn’t spoken about a strategy for exiting the Ferry. Maybe he wasn’t sure it was the right time to do so. Maybe he felt his exit plan was contingent on the response of the slaves. If so, a decision would have to wait until he and his men were occupying the village. Or maybe the old man had no plan for evacuating Harpers Ferry—he’d let his God make the decision for him.

  Kagi and Stevens were reluctant to raise the question themselves. They had given Brown their trust and, like the rest of the men, they were imbued with a higher purpose, aptly expressed by one of his soldiers in a letter home: “Yes, Mother, I am warring with slavery—the greatest curse that ever infested America.” The problem with having a sense of higher purpose was that it had a way of obscuring matters that otherwise would be essential to an undertaking as ambitious as the capture of a federal armory.

  So it was with some hesitation that Kagi finally offered, “We must not be tardy in our retreat from the Ferry, Captain.”

  Brown moved to the stove. He opened the door to the firebox, tossed in the map. As he watched the flames rise from the smoldering coals, he said, “I shall convene a general council tomorrow morning for the purpose of giving the men their assignments. Since we’ll not depart until nightfall, they will have only the daylight hours to prepare themselves.”

  The old man’s failure to acknowledge Kagi’s word of caution was forgotten when Stevens laughed. “Don’t worry, Captain,” he said. “There’ll be enough time for me to make sure the new ones don’t shoot themselves in the foot.”

  The briefing was over.

  It was time for the two men Brown considered his consummate freedom fighters to rejoin their comrades. Kagi and Stevens would make sure the men got a good night’s rest. Once the invasion began, they would be expected to remain awake and vigilant into the early morning hours.

  Brown would remain in the kitchen overnight. He would sleep in a chair—as he had many times in the past. The warmth of the stove would be a comfort should his chronic illness make an untimely visit.

  He returned to the table, sat down, reached into the carpetbag for a clean sheet of paper. He wanted to share his thoughts with Mary and his daughters on this, the eve of an event that would forever define his life and the lives of those in the adjacent room. Before he began to write, he peered into the carpetbag. It was filled with papers—printed copies of his constitution, some certificates he’d made for the men he intended to commission as officers, other documents he’d been working on since Kansas. The bulk of the bag’s contents, however, consisted of letters, many from family and friends and a fair number from his financial backers, including the members of the secret committee.

  For a moment he thought about tossing the letters from his most prominent benefactors into the stove’s firebox; thus the letters would yield to the same fate as the map he’d drawn of Harpers Ferry. But he didn’t. Instead, he shoved the carpetbag under the kitchen table, picked up a pencil, and began to write.

  13

  Eight Hours Later

  October 16, 1859

  Kennedy Farm, Western Maryland

  It was well before daybreak when Brown started preparing breakfast for his twenty-one soldiers. He’d emptied the basement larder of eggs, cornmeal, and a slab of salted pork. The aroma of bacon frying in an iron skillet drifted through the house, and a pot of corn coffee simmered on the stove.

  The men straggled into the kitchen and filled tin plates. It would be their last hot meal before setting out for Harpers Ferry.

  Brown gave them time to finish eating before he entered the cramped living room with Kagi and Stevens. The room was gray and damp, and sunlight bled feebly through two small windows. Plates were pushed aside as Brown called the meeting to order.

  The men had seated themselves among the clutter of gun crates, powder kegs, and blankets scattered on the floor. Kagi and Stevens remained standing, the old man inserting himself between them.

  To give the proceedings a tone of formality, Kagi called the roll. Then Brown held up his tattered Bible and read a chapter on the obligations of free men toward those held in bondage. After reciting a brief prayer, he turned to Osborne Anderson and asked him to come forward and take charge of the meeting. It was important to Brown that a black man assume a leadership role in a council whose purpose was to wage war on slavery.

  The first order of business was Brown’s presentation of the provisional army’s table of organization. In addition to naming a commander in chief (himself), an adjutant (Kagi), and a battalion commander (Stevens), he announced that their force would be divided into companies, each commanded by a captain, with lieutenants underneath them to lead smaller groups of men. Each of the four companies in the First Battalion would consist of 72 officers and men, a total of 228 soldiers.

  “Of course,” Brown noted, “we are now only a small part of what we shall become.” He said he eventually expected to be joined by slaves and free blacks from the settlements in Virginia and Maryland that he’d been visiting since early August. “In the meantime we shall be a company with a disproportionate number of officers to privates.”

  Next came the marching orders—the tactical scheme Brown devised and the duties of each soldier. “We shall depart for the Ferry tonight at eight o’clock,” he said, adding that Francis Merriam and twenty-year-old Barclay Coppoc, the younger of the two Quaker brothers, would remain at the farm under the supervision of Owen. They were to guard the munitions and supplies that would be moved later to the schoolhouse, a destination for runaway slaves and a location closer to the path Brown intended to take when he headed south to occupy mountain refuges in the Blue Ridge.

  The purpose of launching the invasion at night, he said, was to take advantage of the element of surprise and reduce the possibility of encountering anyone during the march. “We must make as little noise as possible so as not to attract attention,” he cautioned. “And we must keep our arms secreted.”

  He’d already spoken with Stevens about concealing the Sharps carbines. Each man was to take one of the gray wool blankets and make a slit large enough for his head to pass through—thus creating an improvised poncho. Draped over them, the garments would hide the carbines, as well as the pistols and ammunition pouches, and would insulate the men from the weather.

  The five-mile march to the Ferry was to be made in a column of twos, each pair of men maintaining a suitable distance from those in front and behind.

  John Cook and Charlie Tidd were to cut the telegraph lines attached to the covered bridge that crossed the Potomac. The bridge not only accommodated the railroad but also had a plank roadway for vehicular and foot traffic. Cook and Tidd would lead the column, Brown to follow in the covered wagon, its bed filled with a stack of pikes, two dozen carbines, some pine-knot torches, tools, a box containing bandages and medicine, and a basket of oats for the horse.

  It was the task of Stevens and Kagi to seize the night watchmen—the first of whom was stationed at the railroad bridge, the second inside the main gate of the musket factory.

  After the railroad bridge watchman was taken, Brown’s son Watson—along with twenty-two-year-old Stewart Taylor—would be posted as sentries. Taylor was a late addition to Brown’s army, a short and stocky Canadian who saw no action in Kansas but was at Springdale for military training under Stevens. Taylor attended the Chatham convention, afterward taking a temporary job in Illinois, where he lost track of Brown and worried he’d be left out of the invasion. When he finally received a letter from Kagi, he immediately reported to the Maryland farm. He was passionate about the abolition of slavery and claimed “fate had decreed him for this undertaking.” He told Annie he felt he’d be killed in action, but according to her, “It didn’t cause him to behave the least bit cowardly.” Like Stevens, he was a Spiritualist who believed in the immortali
ty of the soul.

  While Watson and Taylor guarded the covered railroad bridge, Oliver and twenty-six-year-old Will Thompson, the brother of Watson’s wife, Isabella, would occupy the bridge over the Shenandoah.

  Taking possession of the arsenal—the walled compound across from the musket factory’s main gate—fell to Edwin Coppoc, Barclay’s older brother, and twenty-two-year-old Albert Hazlett. Hazlett, who served with James Montgomery’s Jayhawkers in Kansas before joining Brown for the Missouri raid, was one of the men who helped shepherd the liberated slaves to Canada.

  Brown himself would take charge of breaching the gate to the musket factory. He wanted to set up headquarters in the firehouse, a sturdy brick building with a large cupola that housed a brass bell used to summon villagers in the event of fire. The firehouse was located just inside the gate and featured three sets of double doors. Behind two adjacent double doors stood the fire wagons—one a bucket carrier, the other a suction engine. The third double door opened to a watch room separated from the fire wagons by an interior brick wall. The watch room with its iron stove would be reserved for Brown and the people he intended to take as hostages. Jerry Anderson and Will Thompson’s younger brother Dauphin were to be stationed at the firehouse to guard the hostages and the captive watchmen and anybody else rounded up during the operation.

  Brown said he’d wait until the musket factory and arsenal were secured before taking the rifle works and capturing hostages from plantations near the Charles Town Turnpike. Soldiers not given specific duties were to wait for further orders.