by Herb Karl
“They hollered at me to halt, Captain. Didn’t know what halt meant anymore than a hog knows about holiday. Then one of ’em grabbed me arm, said I was his prisoner. Well, I give the lad me Sunday punch and took off. That’s when they shot me in the head.” Higgins pointed to his bandage. “Nothin’ serious, Jesus be praised.” He gestured toward the village’s terraced hillside. “Just now come from Bill’s house, and his old lady says he ain’t showed up. Come close to runnin’ into another of them desperados on me way back to the hotel. Armed to the teeth he was.” The watchman let out a sigh. “Somethin’ needs to be done, Captain.”
“You are quite right, Patrick,” Phelps replied. “We need to find out what’s amiss before the situation gets out of hand.” He told Higgins to go back to the Wager House and tend to his injury. Phelps, meanwhile, would have a look for himself. With his baggage master following, he disappeared into the covered railroad bridge’s cavernous interior. As he neared the spot where the B&O and Winchester and Potomac tracks merged, his lantern picked up the glint of gun barrels. From the shadows came a shout, but the conductor chose not to respond. He beat a hasty retreat, nearly colliding with the baggage master. Phelps went straight to the engineer and ordered the train to be backed up to a point near the water tower on the grounds of the musket factory. The conductor barely finished giving his instructions when he heard the loud explosion of a gunshot. It came from the railroad bridge.
Nervous chatter arose in the coaches.
Then came a cry of pain from the Winchester and Potomac tracks, a good fifty paces from where Phelps stood with the baggage master and engineer.
Passengers were beginning to evacuate the train as Phelps scrambled onto the railway platform. He cautiously made his way to the Winchester and Potomac trestle, where he found a man staggering in the roadway beside the tracks. Heyward Shepherd—the night porter for the B&O—was bleeding from a wound in his chest.
In the light of Phelps’s lantern, Shepherd recognized the conductor. “Captain,” he groaned, “I been shot.”
Conductor A. J. Phelps and bridge watchman Patrick Higgins were not alone in their concern about what was transpiring in the lower village of Harpers Ferry. From the veranda of his bachelor’s quarters—a second-floor dwelling above a tobacco shop on Potomac Street—thirty-four-year-old John Starry, a local physician, had an unobstructed view during daylight hours of both entrances to the covered bridge, as well as the short span of Potomac Street that made an abrupt turn in front of the main gate to the musket factory. However, at 1:25 AM—because of the darkness and fog—he could see virtually nothing.
Starry was a light sleeper and had been awakened earlier by a noise he wasn’t able to identify. After more than an hour tossing in bed, unable to sleep, he got up and put on his robe. He stepped onto his veranda as the B&O express squealed to a stop. Minutes later he was startled by the same gunshot and cry that had captured the attention of Conductor Phelps. It didn’t require the light of day for Starry to realize that extraordinary events were taking place a few hundred feet from where he stood. He gazed down on a murky scene, the only illumination coming from the Wager House, the nearby Galt saloon, and a solitary lantern that bobbed in the dark like an enormous lightning bug.
He was about to go back inside and get dressed when he heard voices below. He bent over the veranda and saw three men, one holding a torch aloft. He noticed the broad-brimmed hats worn by two of the men. The hats were made of a glossy material that reflected the torch’s flames. The doctor listened as harsh words were spoken.
As the men walked off in the direction of the musket factory, Starry quickly dressed. He picked up his medical bag and raced down the flight of stairs to the flagstone walkway on Potomac Street. When he reached the Winchester and Potomac trestle, he saw Conductor Phelps and the baggage master. He identified himself and said he heard a gunshot followed by someone crying out in pain.
“Over there,” Phelps said, pointing to a squat building—the office of Fontaine Beckham, the stationmaster who also served as the village’s mayor.
More shots rang out.
“I must return to my passengers,” said the agitated conductor. As he and the baggage master hurried away, Phelps shouted over his shoulder, “Be forewarned, Doctor, enemies are in our midst.”
Starry found Heyward Shepherd inside the stationmaster’s office lying on a bench. Blood was leaking from his chest and spilling onto the floor. While Starry examined the wound, the porter remained conscious and spoke haltingly. It was his job to be on hand for the arrival of evening trains, and he was on his way to work when he met an injured Patrick Higgins returning from Bill Williams’s house. When he learned Williams was missing, he was determined to look for the watchman—despite Higgins’s warning that armed men were roaming the streets. He heard the screeching brakes, knew the express train had arrived, and decided to temporarily abandon his duties. He walked to the covered bridge, noticed that the telegraph wire that ran from the bridge to the B&O office had been cut. He entered the bridge but couldn’t see anything in the pitch blackness and had to feel his way along the railing separating the tracks from the plank roadway. There was a hostile shout and he started to turn back, then suddenly felt like he’d been stabbed with a red-hot poker.
Shepherd struggled to take a breath. He asked the doctor for water.
Starry, meanwhile, had assessed the seriousness of the wound. The bullet entered Shepherd’s lower back and passed through soft tissue, exiting on the right side of his chest. The doctor judged there was little he could do. “I’ll have someone bring you a blanket and water,” he said. “Try to lie as still as you can.”
John Starry would spend the next twenty-four hours trying to find out why a band of strangers had disturbed the peace of his village.
Brown was pacing outside the firehouse when he heard the rumbling of the B&O express approaching the Ferry. He listened to the piercing shrill of the locomotive’s brakes as the train rolled to a stop opposite the Wager House.
From where Brown stood he could make out the fuzzy glow of a lantern. He heard voices and moved to the fence, his eyes straining to penetrate the darkness and fog. Why wasn’t the train moving on? It was supposed to stop only briefly.
Then came a gunshot, a loud crack—not at all like the muffled explosion Brown had heard earlier, the explosion he now knew was from a pistol that had been fired at the fleeing relief watchman. No—this was the distinctive crack of a Sharps carbine, and it was followed by a cry of pain.
Though Brown had experienced the uncertainty of warfare at Black Jack, this was different. He was literally blind to what was going on around him. He went to the wagon, reached into the bed, and lifted out one of the pine-knot torches and struck a match. The torch flared.
The voices coming from the railway platform grew louder. He was unaware passengers were disembarking from the train and seeking refuge in the Wager House. He moved to the gate, nodded to Jerry Anderson, then marched down Potomac Street, heedless of the commotion.
Two men were walking toward him, their glossy broad-brimmed hats reflecting the torch’s flames. His sons—Watson and a hobbling Oliver—met him at the tobacco shop, beneath the veranda of Dr. John Starry. Watson spoke excitedly of someone who had entered the covered bridge from the Winchester and Potomac trestle.
Oliver: “We shouted a warning, Father.”
Watson: “There was confusion.”
Oliver: “We couldn’t see.”
Brown: “You were not to shoot unless your lives were threatened. Those were my orders.”
Watson wanted to tell his father that he and Oliver did what they thought was right, but Brown had already turned around and was headed back to the musket factory. Watson and Oliver fell in behind, the latter struggling to keep up.
As they passed the Wager House, the light from the torch exposed a man brandishing a pistol.
“You had better go back where you came from,” Brown snapped. The man glanced at Watson and Oliver,
saw the carbines, and disappeared into the darkness.
The old man wasn’t ready to make any radical changes to his plan just yet. If the underground wires were carrying news of the invasion to northern Virginia and western Maryland, as he hoped, there was still time for runaway slaves to come to the Ferry. In the meantime, he was impatient for the return of Stevens and the hostages.
Brown, of course, didn’t know that Dr. John Starry had been observing perplexing activities from a veranda overlooking Potomac Street and that he’d soon head into the night to prowl the railroad platform behind the Wager House. The doctor was trying to gather information that would help him understand why his village was under siege and who would mortally wound the porter Heyward Shepherd for no apparent reason. Inexplicably, Starry managed to evade capture.
It would not be until later, however, with the first hazy sign of daylight, that the doctor would decide to act. He began by sending a messenger to nearby Charles Town. The messenger was to tell the authorities to muster the Jefferson County militia and come quickly. Starry then sent a man to arouse citizens in neighboring communities, and yet another to stop all eastbound trains from coming to the Ferry. Then he saddled his horse and rode up the hillside to warn the armory’s acting superintendent, stopping first to alert the watchman at the rifle works. When he discovered the watchman wasn’t on duty, he assumed the deeds he witnessed earlier had spread beyond the railroad platform and the covered bridge. After warning the acting superintendent, Starry decided to set out for Charles Town himself—just in case the messenger he sent hadn’t been able to convince the town’s leaders of the gravity of the situation. Before leaving the Ferry, he made a final stop at the home of the Lutheran minister, where he asked that the bell in the church’s steeple be rung as a signal the village was in peril.
Meanwhile, with dawn still hours away, Brown continued to pace outside the firehouse, unaware he was a victim of the fog of war.
16
One Hour Later
October 17, 1859
Harpers Ferry, Virginia
By 3 AM the railroad platform behind the Wager House was a netherworld of darkness and fog. Passengers from the B&O express milled about, occasionally running into one of Brown’s soldiers, exchanging a few words before moving on.
On the grounds of the musket factory there was a sense of relief as Aaron Stevens pulled up to the main gate in Colonel Lewis Washington’s four-horse farm wagon. The wagon was packed with male slaves, four owned by Washington, six by his neighbor John Allstadt. Close behind was the colonel’s carriage with John Cook driving; seated in the carriage were Washington, Allstadt, and Allstadt’s teenage son. The rest of Stevens’s detachment—Lewis Leary, Osborne Anderson, Charlie Tidd, and Shields Green—trailed on foot, as did a knot of six young black men who had joined the procession from farms south of the Charles Town Turnpike. They knew the invasion was coming but hadn’t expected it so soon.
Brown met Stevens at the firehouse. In the amber glow of a coal oil lantern, Brown saw that Osborne Anderson already had begun distributing arms to the amalgam of runaways and liberated slaves. A few stood to one side, seemed tentative handling the pikes. Others were eager for an assignment.
Stevens reached under the wagon’s seat and removed the “relics” he’d taken from Colonel Washington—the sword and flintlock horse pistols presented to the colonel’s famous ancestor. Before handing the sword to Brown, Stevens announced with mock formality, “As you ordered, Captain, this sword—once the property of the leader of the American Revolution—was surrendered to our man from Canada.” An embarrassed Osborne Anderson glanced at Brown and forced a grin.
The old man acted like he hadn’t heard. He took the sword, removed it from its scabbard, and studied it for a moment, trying to imagine it in the hands of General Washington. Just as Washington had fought for the freedom of his countrymen, so too was Brown willing to fight for the freedom of the slaves, shedding his blood if necessary. With the sword at his side he’d be connected to a revolution begun decades ago—a revolution he felt wouldn’t be completed until the nation purged itself of chattel slavery. He gave the pistols a cursory inspection, then returned the sword to Stevens and headed for the firehouse.
While Stevens and his detachment had been gathering hostages, several more villagers were captured and confined to the watch room, including the bartender of the Wager House, who had walked up to the front gate waving a pistol.
When Brown entered the watch room, it contained more than a dozen prisoners. He took Colonel Washington aside and introduced himself, then repeated what he’d told the others earlier, that his intention was to do him and the Allstadts no harm, that he came to Virginia to free the slaves and that he selected the colonel for the “effect it would give our cause having one of your name as a prisoner.” He assured Washington that the sword and pistols would be returned in due course. Before leaving, he apologized for any inconvenience the colonel might suffer during his confinement.
Though the comfort of his prisoners was a concern, Brown was facing more pressing issues. He needed to dispatch the colonel’s wagon to the Kennedy farm to pick up the arms and supplies and transport them to the schoolhouse—the staging area for his escape to the Blue Ridge and a destination for slaves seeking to join him.
While the farm wagon’s horses were being watered and fed, Brown shifted his attention to the stalled B&O express. He sent one of the prisoners with a message for the conductor: the train would be allowed to continue to Baltimore unmolested.
Conductor Phelps, however, was worried the invaders had sabotaged the railroad bridge. The messenger returned with Phelps’s response: “I’ll not cross the bridge until daylight that I might see whether it is safe.”
Brown shrugged. He’d get back to the conductor later.
He summoned Cook and Tidd, assigned them the task of driving the wagon to the Kennedy farm. He wanted some of the newly arrived blacks to go along, to help with moving the crates of guns and to provide security. Choosing who was fit for such duty was more difficult than he anticipated. Several of the slaves taken from Colonel Washington and John Allstadt appeared hesitant, so Brown left it to Osborne Anderson to determine those likely to be reliable soldiers.
Aside from overseeing the transfer of arms from the farm to the schoolhouse, Cook and Tidd were to seize another prominent hostage: a slaveholder named Terence Byrne whose estate was located near the Kennedy farm.
Before sending the wagon on its way, Brown told Dauphin Thompson to fetch Billy Leeman and bring him back to the firehouse. Even though it meant Dangerfield Newby would now be patrolling Shenandoah Street alone, the old man was worried about Leeman and thought it better that he accompany Tidd and Cook, both of whom knew about the young man’s sometimes erratic behavior.
The farm wagon—with a contingent of the new arrivals on board—departed at 4 AM, after which an uneasy quiet set in, though muffled voices could still be heard coming from the railroad platform.
It was during this period of relative calm that an excited Jerry Anderson brought news. “Captain,” he said, “they are coming.”
In groups of two or three, noiseless on bare feet, black men were approaching the musket factory’s main gate. Brown never was able to determine the exact number; the most accurate count would have to come from Osborne Anderson, who continued arming them with pikes. He even gave Sharps carbines to the few he judged capable of using them.
The old man had wanted to express his gratitude to each new volunteer, but dawn was approaching and his duties as commander in chief were mounting. He hadn’t forgotten his promise to reinforce John Kagi’s position. He called up Lewis Leary, told him to take five of the runaways and join Kagi and John Copeland at the rifle works. The rest of the new arrivals were sent either to assist Newby on Shenandoah Street or to serve as rotating replacements for the sentries on the covered railroad bridge.
Brown thought about having runaways relieve Albert Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc, both of whom
had been standing guard inside the arsenal since before midnight. But he settled on two of his regulars, Osborne Anderson and Shields Green.
The first rays of sunlight were piercing the clouds that sagged over the lower village when Jerry Anderson came forward holding a Sharps carbine in one hand and the arm of Conductor Phelps in the other. Brown and Stevens were engaged in a heated exchange outside the watch room, and Anderson was reluctant to interrupt. He looked to Brown and said tentatively, “Sir, there is someone who wishes to speak with you.”
Anderson released Phelps’s arm.
“Oh, yes,” Brown said, “you are the one I told some time ago to leave the Ferry.”
An irritated Phelps replied, “I was stopped by armed men on the bridge and wouldn’t allow the train to pass under such conditions. The safety of the passengers is my responsibility.”
“You needn’t worry about the safety of your passengers,” Brown said. “It is not my intention to harm anyone. I have not come to spill blood.”
Phelps, however, had firsthand knowledge that proved otherwise. He said, “I don’t know who you are and why you are here, but if I can inspect the bridge to make sure it is safe for the train to cross, I’ll gladly depart at once.”
“I am Osawatomie Brown of Kansas,” the old man said matter-of-factly, “and I have come to free the slaves of Virginia.” He turned to Stevens. “Come, Aaron—we shall escort the conductor and his train across the bridge.”
