Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War Hardcover – Bargain Price (15 page)
Authors: Tony Horwitz
Tags: #John Brown, #Abolition, #Civil War Period (1850-1877)
BOOK: Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War Hardcover – Bargain Price
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When Brown caught wind of his men’s indiscretions, he was furious.
“I do hope all corresponding except on business
of the Co
:
will be droped for the present
,” he wrote in a mid-August memorandum to Kagi, who acted as postmaster. “If every one must write some
girl
; or some other extra friend telling, or showing our location; & telling (
as some have done
) all about our matters; we might as well get the whole published
at once
, in the New York Herald. Any person is a
stupid fool
who expects his
friends
to keep for
him
; that which he cannot keep himself. All our friends have each got their
special friends
; and they
again have theirs
; and it would not be right to lay the burden of keeping a secret on any one; at the end of a long string.”
“I do hope all corresponding except on business
of the Co
:
will be droped for the present
,” he wrote in a mid-August memorandum to Kagi, who acted as postmaster. “If every one must write some
girl
; or some other extra friend telling, or showing our location; & telling (
as some have done
) all about our matters; we might as well get the whole published
at once
, in the New York Herald. Any person is a
stupid fool
who expects his
friends
to keep for
him
; that which he cannot keep himself. All our friends have each got their
special friends
; and they
again have theirs
; and it would not be right to lay the burden of keeping a secret on any one; at the end of a long string.”
Brown had reason to be fearful. There was indeed a lengthening string of people aware of his plans, at least in general terms, and several were about to reveal what they knew. But the “fool” who had set this disclosure in motion was Brown himself.
In Springdale, Iowa, he’d confided in several Quakers who aided his band in the winter of 1857–58 and again the next year when Brown passed through with the slaves he’d freed from Missouri. These Quaker confidants, in turn, talked to other Friends. Though fiercely opposed to slavery, they feared Brown’s mission would end in disaster and the death of him and his men. To forestall this tragedy, a few of them decided to compose an anonymous letter to the U.S. secretary of war, John Floyd.
“I have discovered the existence of a secret association, having for its object the liberation of the slaves at the South by a general insurrection. The leader of the movement is ‘
old John Brown,
’ late of Kansas.” The letter stated that small companies of men would “pass down through Pennsylvania and Maryland, and enter Virginia at Harper’s Ferry.” It also warned of a mountain rendezvous in Virginia and a spy placed at an armory in Maryland.
old John Brown,
’ late of Kansas.” The letter stated that small companies of men would “pass down through Pennsylvania and Maryland, and enter Virginia at Harper’s Ferry.” It also warned of a mountain rendezvous in Virginia and a spy placed at an armory in Maryland.
The letter reached the secretary of war in late August 1859, when Floyd had fled the Washington summer for Red Sweet Springs, a mountain spa in Virginia. He knew there was no armory in Maryland, and this small mistake in the letter led him to regard it as a hoax. “Besides, I was satisfied in my own mind that a scheme of such wickedness and outrage could not be entertained by any citizens of the United States,” Floyd later stated, in testimony before a Senate committee. “I put the letter away, and thought no more of it.”
THOUGH BROWN HAD NARROWLY avoided exposure thanks to an error of geography and the inattention of a vacationing official, he faced a number of other threats to his mission that August. The thousand pikes he’d ordered from Connecticut had yet to be shipped because of a problem finding parts. His other “freight” had begun arriving from Ohio, but the shipping bills were much higher than anticipated. This, and the cost of sustaining his men during the delay, had almost exhausted the money he’d raised that spring in expectation of quickly launching his campaign.
“I begin to be apprehensive of getting into a tight spot for want of a little more funds,” he wrote John junior, sounding very much like the cash-strapped businessman of old. He told his son that he had only $180 still on hand, and wondered “how I can keep my little wheels in motion for a few days more.” Though Brown found it “terribly humiliating” to seek funds yet again, he asked John junior to “solicit for me a little more assistance while attending to your other business.”
This “other business” referred to Brown’s continuing effort to make up his shortfall of men. And so, having at last shipped the stored weapons, the hapless John junior embarked on a final recruitment and fund-raising drive that was notable mainly for its self-congratulation. In Boston he called on members of the Secret Six and crowed in a letter to Kagi: “They were all in short,
very much
gratified, and have had their Faith & Hopes much strengthened.” His solicitations, however, yielded only $50 from Brown’s increasingly anxious backers.
very much
gratified, and have had their Faith & Hopes much strengthened.” His solicitations, however, yielded only $50 from Brown’s increasingly anxious backers.
John junior went on to Canada, where he attempted to mobilize troops with the assistance of a black recruiter, who, he wrote, was “too fat” to be of much use. He nonetheless boasted of forming “associations” in several Canadian towns, to “
hunt up good workmen
.” At Chatham, site of Brown’s constitutional convention, “I met with a hearty response,” John junior said. But only one workman proved willing to set off for Chambersburg—Osborne Anderson, whom Brown had recruited the year before.
hunt up good workmen
.” At Chatham, site of Brown’s constitutional convention, “I met with a hearty response,” John junior said. But only one workman proved willing to set off for Chambersburg—Osborne Anderson, whom Brown had recruited the year before.
John junior forged on to Detroit, where he met with even less success and shed his fat companion, regretting that “I spent so much money in transporting so much
inert
adipose matter.” Turning toward his home in
Ohio, he wrote Kagi that he was still eager “to devote my whole time if I can to the work,” adding, however: “If friend ‘Isaac’ wishes me to go any where else, I shall need more means, as I have only enough to get back with.”
inert
adipose matter.” Turning toward his home in
Ohio, he wrote Kagi that he was still eager “to devote my whole time if I can to the work,” adding, however: “If friend ‘Isaac’ wishes me to go any where else, I shall need more means, as I have only enough to get back with.”
WHILE JOHN JUNIOR CONDUCTED his futile and expensive “Northern tour,” Brown confronted a near mutiny at his Maryland hideout. The crisis, this time, wasn’t precipitated by money or delays or the danger of exposure; it was ignited by the nature of the mission itself.
Most of the men gathered at the Kennedy farm were well acquainted with Brown; five were his sons or neighbors, and the others had joined him in Kansas or Iowa. They were accustomed to his secretive ways and had come south with dedication and few questions asked. “It is my chief desire to add fuel to the fire,” a recruit named Steward Taylor wrote, upon receiving the summons in early July at the wheat farm where he worked in Illinois. “My ardent passion for the gold field is my thoughts by day and my dreams by night.”
Apart from Kagi, none of the members of Brown’s band knew exactly what he planned, and the clues the men had received were mixed. In the summer of 1858, Kagi had told one Kansas fighter that the Virginia mission would start small and “seem a slave stampede, or local outbreak at most,” with the guerrillas pulling back to the mountains, accompanied by freed slaves. “Harper’s Ferry was mentioned as a point to be seized—but not held.” A few months after this parley, Brown launched his Missouri raid. “It seemed to be the impression of most of the men,” Annie Brown wrote of the Kennedy farm tenants, “that they had come there to make another such a raid, only on a larger scale.”
Instead, in late summer, Brown revealed that Harpers Ferry itself would be the first and primary target. Only after seizing the town and its sprawling weapons works would the raiders begin freeing slaves and moving through the mountains.
This news did not go over well. Almost “all of our men,” Owen Brown said of those present, “were opposed to striking the first blow” at Harpers Ferry. Brown’s sons were among the loudest critics. Owen, Oliver, and Watson were known locally as the offspring of “Mr. Smith,” and they
were freer than the others to move about and see the challenges Harpers Ferry presented as a target. Owen at one point likened his father’s plan to Napoleon’s disastrous march on Moscow.
were freer than the others to move about and see the challenges Harpers Ferry presented as a target. Owen at one point likened his father’s plan to Napoleon’s disastrous march on Moscow.
Charles Tidd was another determined foe. A hotheaded Kansas veteran, he’d once smashed the tobacco pipes of his fellow recruits while he was trying to quit smoking in the cramped quarters the band shared in Iowa. Now, he expressed his ire by storming out of the farmhouse and going to stay with John Cook, who lived with his wife in Harpers Ferry. “It nearly broke up the camp,” Tidd later said of the dissent over Brown’s plan.
In the third week of August, Brown convened an emergency meeting at the Kennedy farm, with Kagi coming down from Chambersburg and Cook from Harpers Ferry. Kagi stood by his commander’s plan, as did Cook (who further bolstered Brown’s confidence with optimistic reports on his contacts with locals). Brown also turned the debate into a test of loyalty: since so many opposed him, he insisted on resigning as commander so the men could choose another.
Within five minutes, he was reinstated as leader. Shortly thereafter, the dissidents reluctantly consented to his plan—on condition, Tidd later said, that railroad bridges near the town would be burned, making it much more difficult for anyone to come to its defense. On August 18, Owen, who often acted as intermediary between his father and the other men, drafted a formal if rather strained endorsement of Brown’s continued leadership.
Dear Sir,
We have all agreed to sustain your decisions, untill you have
proved incompetent
, & many of us will adhere to your decisions as long as you will.
proved incompetent
, & many of us will adhere to your decisions as long as you will.
Your Friend,
OWEN SMITH.
BY THE NEXT DAY, Brown was in Chambersburg, wooing another reluctant ally. Ever since conceiving his war on slavery, Brown had courted black support, believing it both critical to his success and morally imperative.
Though the sin of slavery weighed heavily on white Americans, it could be expunged only if blacks took part in their own liberation. “Give a slave a pike and you make him a man,” he said. “Deprive him of the means of resistance, and you keep him down.”
Though the sin of slavery weighed heavily on white Americans, it could be expunged only if blacks took part in their own liberation. “Give a slave a pike and you make him a man,” he said. “Deprive him of the means of resistance, and you keep him down.”
This belief had always set Brown apart from the mainstream of white abolitionists, many of whom regarded blacks as too pitiable and submissive to fight. He was also exceptional in practicing what he preached. Brown took blacks into his home and stayed at theirs; sought blacks’ financial and logistical support; recruited them into his army; and communicated his egalitarian and tough-minded ethos to all those under his command.
“There was no milk and water sentimentality—no offensive contempt for the negro, while working in his cause,” wrote Osborne Anderson, the black printer who attended the Chatham Convention and made his way to the Kennedy farm in the fall of 1859. “In John Brown’s house, and in John Brown’s presence, men from widely different parts of the continent met and united in one company, wherein no hateful prejudice dared intrude its ugly self—no ghost of a distinction found space to enter.”
Brown’s ardor in the cause of racial justice was a powerful source of his ability to inspire others. But it may have clouded his strategic judgment. As a fiery crusader, he naturally appealed to black militants such as Charles Langston, an Oberlin-educated abolitionist who forcibly freed a fugitive slave from a federal marshal and hailed Brown for trying to “put to death” those “who steal men and sell them.” He also drew support from a shadowy self-defense group in Detroit called African Mysteries and an allied organization in Ohio whose leader showed one of Brown’s men an impressive arsenal and claimed, “they were only waiting for Brown or someone else to make a successful initiative move when their forces would be put in motion.”
This was the message Brown most wanted to hear: blacks were not only desperate for freedom but ready and able to fight. All they needed was a spark. But the militants who urged him on weren’t much more representative of blacks than Brown was of whites. Brown’s limited experience of the slaveholding South wasn’t a reliable guide, either. He’d visited only the region’s borderlands while working as a surveyor and wool merchant in far western Virginia—where many whites had little stake in the institution—and along the raw frontier of Missouri and Kansas. The whites he’d battled there were minimally trained and loosely organized.
Brown, in short, was ill equipped to gauge how either blacks or whites might react to a full-scale assault on a system of property and social control that had been entrenched and brutally enforced for generations. “He thought the slaves would flock to him,” Annie Brown wrote, “and that the masters would be so paralyzed with fear that they would make no resistance.”
Her father had also convinced himself that black leaders would join him in Virginia and be there to guide the liberated slaves. Throughout the summer of 1859, he and his backers tried to contact Harriet Tubman and bring her south. When she was finally located, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, she was evidently too ill to travel.
Frederick Douglass, however, responded to an August summons from Brown and traveled to southern Pennsylvania, accompanied by Shields Green, a fugitive slave he’d taken into his home and introduced to the white abolitionist. Reaching Chambersburg on August 19, Douglass contacted one of John Kagi’s local “friends,” a black barber who directed him to a secret meeting place: an abandoned stone quarry at the edge of town. Approaching the quarry, Douglass spotted Brown in an old hat, carrying a fishing rod as camouflage. “His face wore an anxious expression, and he was much worn by thought and exposure,” Douglass later wrote. The two men “sat down among the rocks” and resumed the debate they’d inaugurated a dozen years before, at their first meeting in Springfield.
Frederick Douglass
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