The little town of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, stretches along a steep hillside where the Shenandoah River flows into the Potomac, where Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia come together. The Potomac is shallow there, with numerous small rapids rushing and gurgling around tumbled boulders between its banks. On the Maryland side, sheer rock faces intrude themselves among the maples on the mountainside, their grays and blacks and browns accenting the thick autumn foliage on a sunny afternoon. Swallowtail butterflies flutter among zinnias and flowering shrubs. Apart from throngs of tourists clogging its streets and quaint shops, the little burg between the rivers is the very essence of the small-town idyll.
Hard to believe that 150 years ago this month, it was the site of an attempted uprising that marked a turning point in North-South relations, an unextenguishable match held to the smoldering fuse of a powder keg that in less than two years would explode in savage fratricidal warfare.
A century and a half later, Americans are still intensely divided over what place the man behind the thwarted uprising should occupy in our nation’s history.
On the night of Sunday, October 16, 1859, a virulent opponent of slavery named John Brown marched a small band of followers, white and black, into the idyllic town and seized the U.S. arsenal there. They seized it, but local militia trapped them inside, beginning a standoff that saw casualties on both sides, including the death of Harpers Ferry’s mayor.
On October 18, U.S. Marines under the command of Army Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee broke down the armory’s door and in less than five minutes, Brown’s rebellion was over. Five days later, he and his surviving followers were found guilty of treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, and on December 2, Brown exited into eternity via a gallows erected in a stubble-strewn field.
It is almost universally agreed that Brown wanted the arsenal’s weapons in order to instigate and arm a slave uprising. He himself, while awaiting execution, wrote, “I never did intend murder or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite the slaves to rebellion or to make insurrection.” He only wanted to help slaves escape to Canada, he claimed (”The Life, Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown,” compiled by Robert M. Dewitt; reprinted in A Documentary History of West Virginia, by Elizabeth Cometti and Festus P. Summers, McClain Printing Co., 1966). Exactly why he needed to accumulate several hundred firearms and 950 pikes, even before attacking the arsenal, in order to lead escaping slaves to Canada, he did not explain.
While many Southerners raged that Brown’s actions were the inevitable outcome of Northern Abolitionist agitation, other Southerners saw him as an aberrant fanatic and were willing to let the matter die with him – until Northern newspapers painted him as a martyr and word leaked out that a number of prominent Northerners had given him financial aid and some had known at least something of his plans. Brown and his Northern supporters seemed to prove the widespread Southern belief that Abolitionists wanted a war of extermination against slave owners (A History of the South, Vol. VI: The Growth of Southern Nationalism, 1848–1861, by Avery O. Craven, LSU Press, 1953).
The Fall 2009 issue of Hallowed Ground, the magazine of the Civil War Preservation Trust, carries a couple of interesting stories about Brown and the lingering controversy surrounding his actions. One of those articles, “John Brown’s Smoldering Spark,” by Dennis E. Frye, tells of the controversy in 1959 when Harpers Ferry and the National Park Service (NPS), which preserves the only remaining building of the old arsenal, wanted to observe the centennial of the pivotal event. Southern outrage over such a “celebration” threatened to disrupt the nation’s grandiose plans for a five-year observance of the Civil War centennial to begin in 1961.
To this day, Americans are divided on on the question: Was John Brown a martyr to be admired or a terrorist to be condemned? And that raises a larger question – is a martyr a martyr, a terrorist a terrorist only because we agree or disagree with that person’s goals, no matter his or her actions?
What do you think?About the Author: I regard historic research as a never-ending Easter egg hunt: You never know where you'll find a hidden treasure. Growing up with parents who told stories of family history probably had a lot to do with that. I realized early on that history is about lives already lived. I've met war veterans, early aviators, friends of Abraham Lincoln's in-laws, and a host of others who shared their histories with me – and it was never boring!