A PERVERSION OF HISTORY

But many a man has committed his greatest blunder when
attempting to write a book.
—John Brown, Jr.

Concerning the things which Brown intended to do, and the plans which he made in pursuance thereof Mr. Redpath says:[396]

This is the conception of the Harper's Ferry episode that Brown's family, and his partisans, decided should be put forth concerning an incident which was to have been written in streams of blood, such as never flowed upon the continent. That anything so irrational should have been published, or should have been seriously considered by any one, is beyond the comprehension of thoughtful persons; and yet, the foolish fictions therein suggested were accepted as the truth in the Northern States, and, with some modifications of the more grotesque absurdities therein contained, have been approved by subsequent writers and biographers and have been incorporated with the history of our country.

Why Brown should have intended to abandon Harper's Ferry without a struggle to retain it after having taken formal possession of the place and of the war material stored there, if the position was admirably chosen as the spot at which to begin a war of liberation; or how a voluntary retreat into the mountains by a band of twenty-two men could be regarded as a "blow" of any kind; or where the inaccessible fastness which he intended to retreat to was located: or how he intended to shelter and subsist his men and prisoners in an inaccessible fastness that had not been supplied with subsistence stores or with camp and garrison equipage of any description; or how he would be able to find his way, if the night happened to be a dark night, up and through the tangled obstructions upon which the fastness relied for its inaccessibility; or how he intended to transport the military equipment stored at Harper's Perry, to the fastness, without means of transportation, or roads to travel on; or how he intended to prevent his fastness from being surrounded and his communications with the world cut off while the altruistic negotiations for the "exchange of the wealthier citizen prisoners for an equal number of slaves," were progressing, appear to have been matters of no concern to this biographer. It was sufficient for his purpose to assume that these things, however inconsistent they might be, were the things which Brown intended to do, and that they constituted the blow which he had promised to strike. Mr. Redpath, personally, knew what Brown intended to do. He knew that Brown, pursuant to his pledges, planned to strike a blow that would shake the center of the slave system; that he planned to precipitate a war of surpassing atrocity; a war that was to begin with a carnival of assassinations; that he intended "to assail slavery with the only weapon that it fears":[397] a servile insurrection.

Mr. Sanborn had been a valuable instrument in Brown's hands for the practice of his Eastern impositions. Taking his cue from Mr. Redpath, after describing what occurred on the night of the 16th of October, he rises to the full height of his conception of the occasion to inquire:

It was to this Mr. Sanborn, that Brown first suggested his scheme to raise $30,000 cash, to arm and equip a company of "fifty volunteer-regulars" for the defense of Kansas settlers. Mr. Sanborn was impressed, deeply so, and undertook to promote the proposition. Also, he undertook to promote Brown's scheme to have the Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York appropriate $100,000 each, to reimburse the Brown family for losses its members had sustained while "fighting" in Kansas; and ever thereafter had been Brown's faithful and efficient servant. He was a member of the "Secret War Committee" of six, and had reason to think, and probably did think, that Brown had taken him into his full confidence. He says:

Thus Mr. Sanborn acknowledges that Brown had not entrusted to him the secret of his intentions, and thereby disqualifies himself as an authority upon Brown's plans, or as having correct information concerning what he intended to do in Virginia. It is more than probable that upon the occasion to which Mr. Sanborn refers, Brown contemplated confiding to him his plans for the conquest of the South by means of an insurrection of the slaves and the massacre of the slave-holding population, and intended to offer him a position upon his staff. Brown and Forbes had laid plans for their campaign, with Harper's Ferry as the base of operations, as early as January, 1857, and in pursuance thereof had ordered the thousand spears with which to arm the blacks for the opening horror.

Sitting beside his coal fire in the American House, his thoughts upon his plans, and the hopes of his mighty conquest surging in his brain, John Brown, the grim Soldier of Fortune, drew out his young companion by indirection, and took the measure of his capacity for heroic undertakings. Had the young man, at the close of that interview, appealed for an omen "from that shrine whose oracles may destroy but can never deceive," he might, in a spiritual vision, have seen upon the invisible tablets, where Brown's mental records were kept, an inscription, or word, similar to that which Belshazzar saw traced upon the wall by the finger of an invisible hand. The man of "blood and iron" had invited the interview in his letter to Mr. Sanborn of February 24th.[400] Brown's decision was adverse to Mr. Sanborn. The latter did not suspect that he had passed through the fire of an examination, and had been found deficient. The subject was never again taken up; the door of opportunity closed against Mr. Sanborn.

Following the trail blazed by a discredited predecessor, the writer of Fifty Years After abandons the teachings which the record discloses concerning this episode, and, concurring with Mr. Redpath, tries to confirm in our history that author's perversion of the facts relating to it. He assumes to believe, and seeks to teach the public to believe, that Brown's plans were, comparatively, crude, and that his movement in execution of them was of a harmless nature: that he merely intended to attempt to carry on a guerrilla warfare from some point in the nearby mountains, and that his entrance to Harper's Ferry was not an occupation of the place but a "raid" upon it, undertaken for the purpose of advertising, in a spectacular way, the guerrilla warfare which he intended to engage in. He says:[401]

By the gratuitous and irrelevant assumptions herein, this biographer discredits Brown's intelligence; and by unjust, unfair, and illogical criticisms of his conduct, seeks to conceal and to emasculate his intentions. Authenticated facts place limitations upon the presumptions of historians, which challenge the consistency of reckless statements, and the logic of their conclusions concerning them. There is not an authenticated line in this history which justifies a belief that Brown contemplated doing the things which this author assumes that he intended to do. His theory that the occupation of Harper's Ferry was merely an incident in a raid, the first one of a series of undertakings in guerrilla warfare, which he represents Brown as intending to execute from a location within walking distance of the town, is a reflection upon the sanity of every person connected with the movement. It is an assumption that Brown and his men believed that they could maintain a headquarters for such warfare in the Maryland hills—at a "hill-top fastness," if you please—and not be "run to earth at once," as the author states Cook would have been, if he had attempted to hide in these inhospitable hills.[402] It is also a general denial of the historical truth that Brown intended to invade Virginia and the Southern States, and to establish over them the jurisdiction of a provisional government. Moreover, it is so divergent from the lessons taught by the vast accumulation of authenticated facts which relate to the matter, that it constitutes a contradiction of the facts, and raises a question as to the integrity of the author's purpose in putting it forth.

There is no room in historical literature for the indulgence of poetic license. If Brown was a man of "blood and iron" and his men "hard-headed Americans" one day, they must be regarded as being such the next day, and every day. It may be said, upon the authority of this author, that Brown and his men were not the stupids which they are, in this instance, represented as being. "Captains John H. Kagi and A. D. Stevens, bravest of the brave"[403] were not words idly spoken. "The hard-headed able Americans like Stevens, Kagi, Cook, and Gill, who lived with John Brown month in and month out worshipped no lunatic."[404] Grafter! Hypocrite! Fiend! Monster! Brown was, but never a trifler. If he ever engaged in a trifling enterprise or attempted to do anything in a trifling manner or upon a trifling scale, it has not been recorded. First, last, and all the time he played the limit of his resources. And in the execution of this venture—the climax of all his undertakings—he was neither trifling nor juggling with its details, as his biographers have persisted in doing with his motives, and with what his intentions and his plans were, in these premises.

Brown was not advertising his revolution when he secretly entered Harper's Ferry. These men were not baiting Death for spectacular effect. They had a well defined purpose in view, but it was not to "capture a few slave-holders and release some slaves." To Daniel Wheelan, Brown stated the purpose of his coming: "I want to free all the Negroes in this State; I have possession now of the United States Armory, and if the citizens interfere with me I must only burn the town and have blood." Conductor Phelps said: "They say they have come to free the slaves and intend to do it at all hazards." Mr. W. H. Seibert states that Kagi told him personally, that their purpose was "not the expatriation of one slave or a thousand slaves, but their liberation in the states wherein they were born and were now held in bondage."[405]

To Governor Wise and others, on the afternoon of October 18th, Brown stated that his purpose in being at Harper's Ferry Would be found in the constitution for the Provisional Government. A copy of the document being produced, he requested Governor Wise to read it, and said that "within a fortnight he intended to have it published at large and distributed": an act which he could not have intended to execute from a location in any "hill-top fastness." In reply to questions, he stated that he intended to put the Provisional Government into operation "here, in Virginia, where I commenced operations": that he expected to have "three or five thousand" men or as many as he wanted to assist him. He stated "distinctly" that he did not intend to run off any slaves, but that he "designed to put arms in their hands to defend themselves against their masters, and to maintain their position in Virginia and in the South." That in the first instance he expected they and non-slave holding whites would flock to his standard as soon as he got a footing there at Harper's Ferry: and, as his strength increased, he would gradually enlarge the area under his control, "furnishing a refuge for the slaves and a rendezvous for all whites who were disposed to aid him, until eventually he over-ran the whole South."[406]

January 5, 1860, Mr. John C. Unseld, one of Brown's prisoners testified:

Brown abandoned the Kennedy farm on October 16th and gave orders to Cook to remove the supplies to a school-house which was located within about a mile of Harper's Ferry. On the morning of the 17th the latter peremptorily dismissed the school and took possession of the building. To the teacher, Mr. L. F. Currie, Cook explained what they were doing and how they intended to do it. Mr. Currie, in his testimony before the Mason Committee stated that Cook, Tidd, and Leeman, having a Mr. Byrne in charge as a prisoner, came to the school-house about 10 o'clock and demanded possession of it. They then with the aid of some negroes unloaded several boxes and a large black trunk from a wagon and carried them into the school-house. Continuing he said:

Currie remained at the school-house until evening. Between 2 and 3 o'clock the firing at Harper's Ferry became "very rapid and continuous," and Currie asked Cook what it meant; to which he replied: "Well it simply means that those people down there are resisting our men, and we are shooting them down." In answer to a question as to how many men were engaged down there Cook replied: "I do not know how many men are there now; there may be 5,000 or there may be 10,000 for aught I know."[408]

These exhibits are but a trifling fraction of the direct testimony relating to the subject; yet Mr. Villard, in wanton disregard of such testimony, and of the overwhelming preponderance of historical facts which corroborate it, puts forth his violent assumptions as to the truth; and asks the public to believe this great undertaking to have been merely a poorly planned raid which another general with the same purpose in view would have conducted differently: "established his mountain camp first; swooped down upon the town in order to spread terror throughout the state, and in an hour or two at most, have started back to his hill-top fastness."

"First a soldier then a citizen was Brown's plan" for the uplift of the "emancipated blacks." "There is no doubt," says this author,[409] "that he still expected the negroes to rise and swell his force to irresistible proportions." Numbers are not irresistible unless they be armed and organized. Why should "the leader of a new revolution," with the sword of Frederick the Great in his hand, plan "to take to the hills" in a trifling retreat, and abandon the military stores at Harper's Ferry—the stores that were necessary to equip the irresistible numbers for irresistible operations? The assumption that he intended to do so is not only illogical; it is absurd.

The declaration that Brown was the sole member of the "attacking" force to believe in the assault upon the property of the United States at Harper's Ferry is contradicted by competent testimony, and by the significance of the general order that provided for the occupation of the town, and that designated the officers and men who were to take charge of this same property. As to the unanimity of sentiment that prevailed in relation to the matter, Mr. Redpath says:[410] "On Saturday a meeting of the Liberators was held and the plan of operations discussed. On Sunday evening a council was again convened and the programme of the Captain unanimously approved."

Other documents disclose the facts that the "Captain" and his men not only intended to seize this United States property—the arms in the arsenal and in the rifle works—but that they intended to keep them and to use them. A general order issued from the headquarters of their war department provided for the organization of an army.

Jeremiah G. Anderson was one of Brown's veterans, who, with full confidence in the final success of their venture, approved of this movement. Late in September, writing from "near Harper's Ferry" he said:[411]

A victor is one who conquers—who defeats an enemy. In its relation to war, victory means the defeat of the enemy in battle. Anderson had an army in his mind, and battles and conquest, and the establishment of the Provisional Government, when he referred to victory, and used the word advisedly. A "raid" upon a place may be successfully executed but it cannot be, properly, called a victory over anything. John E. Cook believed the arms would be used and approved of the use of them. "But ere that day arrives," he said, "I fear that we shall hear the crash of the battle shock and see the red gleaming of the cannon's lightning."[412]

Brown leased the Kennedy farm because the location was suitable for his purposes in the furtherance of his plans. From there he conducted his secret negotiations, with the slaves, for the insurrection, and distributed the pikes, probably 500, which his co-conspirators were to use in their secret assassinations; but when he launched the invasion, and debouched his command, he abandoned it. Therefore, it was not necessary for him to leave a force "adequate" or inadequate "on the river bank to insure his being able to fall back to that base," or to cover a retreat still more illogical: a retreat of his little band, with a lot of slaves, and prisoners as hostages, "to the hills" where barren rocks afforded no shelter and "where starvation would have met him at the threshold of his eyrie."[413]

Aside from what the record contains relating to the subject, it is illogical to assume that the veterans of Brown's band would imperil their lives in a scheme so dangerous—a scheme involving death upon the gallows for every one of them if they failed—unless they approved of it with the fullest possible degree of confidence; only absolute confidence in the feasibility of their plans, and the hope of reward without a parallel, could have induced these men "with soiled lives behind them."[414] to undertake this conquest. Their arrogance upon entering the town is evidence of their enthusiasm, and confidence in the success of what they were doing, and of their approval of it. Their conduct was of the swaggering, domineering kind. It was of the: Halt! or I'll kill you! kind; conduct bred by contamination in an environment supercharged with the scheming for murderous deeds, reeking with the planning for assassinations, and nourished by the belief that they were not accountable to any power upon earth for their actions. Men do not shoot down their fellows-men for trivial causes, unless they believe they are in control of the situation, and are immune from punishment. These men were expecting trouble. They had come to Harper's Ferry believing they were about to write the bloodiest chapter in history; that the most desperate struggle in all history was imminent, and they were impatient to have it begin. They cut the telegraph wires; made prisoners of whomever they met; stopped the railway train carrying passengers and mails: shot at Watchman Higgins; shot and killed the baggage-porter, Hayward, because he did not obey the command to halt; and killed Mr. Boerly without any apparent provocation. Men who have no confidence in their supremacy; who do not believe they will succeed in what they are doing, but intend to run away, and laboriously "take to the hills" and act upon the defensive without facilities for defense, do not thus demean themselves. The logic of Mr. Villard's theory of Brown's plans is: That this score of "hard-headed Americans" believed they could shoot down and kill their fellow-citizens upon the streets of Harper's Ferry with impunity; that they could rob the homes of that neighborhood and not be held accountable therefor; that they could carry off property: watches, money, horses, carriages, wagons, and slaves, into the hills adjoining the town, and not be pursued by the local authorities; that they could take citizens of the United States into custody as prisoners, and carry them to a "hill-top fastness," and maintain themselves there without supplies of either food, water, shelter, or munitions of war, other than what they carried upon their persons.

They know little of Brown's plans and of his intentions, who criticize his strategy, in occupying Harper's Ferry, and his tenacious defense of the position. And they know nothing of the agreements at which he had arrived, and the engagements which he had entered into with the slaves of that section, whom he had taken into his confidence, during the preceding three months, and who were to launch the insurrection he had planned, and who were to constitute the rank and file of his army of invasion. The author of Fifty Years After seems to have no clearer conception of the subject herein, than the author of fifty years before assumed to have. Accepting, almost at par, Mr. Redpath's deceptive vagaries, he formulates a plan of campaign to conform with the conditions of his absurd conclusions; and then criticizes Brown because he did not execute his conceptions. The plans for their operations, whatever they may have been, were satisfactory to Brown and to the veteran adventurers who followed his flag. "The man of blood and iron" and the "hard-headed Americans" had the plans under consideration during the two years preceding, and had placed the seal of their approval upon them. If they were satisfactory to those who made them, and understood them, and staked their lives upon the successful execution of them, they should not be denounced too confidently, not to say flippantly, by those who do not know, or who assume not to know, what the plans were.

The details which Brown made from his command were not to "garrison various parts of the town" and "hold the bridges"; the assignments were made in pursuance of his well defined plan to organize and equip there the army which was to garrison the town and which was thereafter to burn the bridges and hold the approaches to it; the army that was to invade the Southern States; the army that was to "start from here" (Harper's Ferry) "and go through the State of Virginia and on South," conquering and to conquer.

The dispositions that he made of his forces were in harmony with the theory of the insurrection, which was the key-note of the invasion. The slaves from the east side of the Potomac—the neighborhoods of Sharpsburg, Boonsboro, and Hagerstown—after declaring their right to freedom, by assassinating their owners, were to report to Owen Brown at the "school-house," there to be organized into a battalion under his command, and, be armed with the rifles and supplied with the ammunition that were to be deposited there for that purpose. In the same way the slaves who were to arrive from the Middletown Valley, and from the Frederick country, through Pleasant Valley and Sandy Hook, were to report to Watson Brown at the Potomac bridge and by him, or by Taylor who was stationed there with him, taken to the arsenal, where Hazlett was in charge as quartermaster and ordnance officer, and there be armed and equipped from the "precious tools stored there," belonging to the United States, which were to be seized for this purpose. In a similar manner, the slaves from Loudoun Valley and the west side of the Shenandoah were to report to Oliver Brown and William Thompson and Newby at the Shenandoah bridge; while the slaves coming from the country lying between the Shenandoah and the Potomac were to report to Kagi, at the rifle-works, and by him and his assistants—Copeland and Leary—taken to the arsenal for their equipment. Brown had said to his friend Douglass: "When I strike the bees will swarm and I shall want you to help me hive them." In this manner they were to be hived, and furnished with stings.

This being true, Brown defied no canons when he crossed the Potomac nor did he thereby place a river between himself and his base of supplies. He had, in general orders, designated Harper's Ferry as his headquarters. Harper's Ferry, with its millions of dollars' worth of military stores, was thenceforth to be his base of supplies, and the State of Virginia and the South the field of his operations. Having paralyzed the South with the insurrection, the Potomac was to be his front, and behind its banks he intended to entrench his army. He appointed no place for his men to retreat to, nor made any provisions for retreating, for the word had no place in his vocabulary. He fixed no hour for his withdrawal from the town, because he did not intend to withdraw from it. He was not executing a raid. Why should his captains proudly march to Harper's Ferry; "their Sharp's rifles hung from their shoulders, their commissions duly signed and officially sealed in their pockets," if they were to trudge back again to the Kennedy farm in demoralizing retreat, with no booty, and without having seen an enemy, and before a hostile shot had been fired; and then "take to the hills," there to be hunted by dogs and men, as wild beasts are hunted, and be shot down as wild beasts are shot, by slave-catchers, patrols, and marshals. Their campaign was serious, heroic, and desperate beyond the comprehension of Brown's biographers. Rarely in history have men voluntarily stood to win or die as these men stood at Harper's Ferry. There was no place on the earth where they could retreat to and live. When Brown and his captains crossed the Potomac, the die was cast; the invasion was on. Thenceforth they might advance but not retreat; they might fight but not run. If they came back, it would have to be "with their shields or upon them."

There was no violation of military principles in Brown's occupation of Harper's Ferry, or in the dispositions which he made of his men, nor in his tenacious defense of his position. The military principles which he violated are not referred to in the charges and specifications preferred against him by this recent biographer. These violations were fatal to his enterprise, but they all antedate the night of October 16, 1859. If the hundreds of slaves whom Brown secretly armed with the Collinsville spears, with which to assassinate their masters and their masters' families, had done their bloody work as they had promised to do; then the fifteen hundred men that Brown believed would report to him for duty by 12 o'clock on the 17th,[415] and the 5,000 men whom Cook, at 4 o'clock, thought had already reported and were in action, would have arrived, and the story of Harper's Ferry would have been different. There would have been no violations of military principles then in Brown's tactics and strategy, to criticise by any authority whatever. "Another general, with the same purpose in view," and with the same forces at his disposal, would not have improved very much upon Brown's plans.

The hint at a hill-top fastness, where another general would have established his camp before he "swooped" down upon the town, is a modification of Mr. Redpath's invention of an "inaccessible fastness." It is a delusion none the less, a delusion that was shot to pieces within two years after Mr. Redpath framed it. Such a position has no existence, except it be in authors' imaginations. There is not now, and there never was a position upon either Maryland Heights or Loudoun Heights that cannot be "stormed at with shot and shell."

During the war between the States, the Union generals fortified Mr. Redpath's inaccessible fastness. Half way up the tangled steeps of Maryland Heights, on a small bit of plateau—less than an acre—they placed a battery of siege guns: two 9-inch Columbiads, a 50-pounder Parrott, and two or three field pieces. Also, they reËnforced the natural defenses of the "hill-top fastness" by formidable breastworks, built of rocks and trunks of trees, and protected them by abatis. On the 12th of September, 1862, the Confederate infantry swarmed all over these inacessible fastnesses. During the 13th and 14th, the front of the "hill-top fastness," on the summit of Maryland Heights, was a sheet of flame and lead, enveloped in clouds of smoke. The rifle fire from the opposing lines stripped the bark from the trunks of all the trees, within a hundred and fifty yards of the front of these breastworks, as clean as though they had been girdled with an ax. Not only did Jackson's infantry penetrate these fastnesses, but during the morning of the 14th they took two pieces of artillery to the top of these "inaccessible" heights and "turned loose" with shot and shell upon the hill-top fastness. During the night of the 14th, the Union commander abandoned the inaccessible fastness, dismounted and spiked the guns on the mountain side, and joined the forces at Harper's Ferry, on Bolivar Heights.

On the 20th, a detachment from what had been Mansfield's Corps, of McClellan's Army—Crawford's Brigade[416]—then in command of Col. Joseph F. Knipe of the Forty-sixth Pennsylvania, with a section of artillery, also climbed these inaccessible heights to drive the Confederates from the position.[417]

There are many persons living who remember having marched or "tramped" or "climbed" or "trudged" or "stumbled" or "hoofed it" up and down and over these mountains, on campaign and on picket duty, during the years of the great war; but it is doubtful if any of them ever heard of a detachment that executed such maneuvers by "swooping." The real movement is different, especially so if it be executed at night.

In behalf of a patient public that has long been grievously imposed upon by partisan biographers, the writer asks unanimous consent that references to "fastnesses," with which Brown is said to have been "familiar for seventeen years" be barred, henceforth, from the literature of this subject; the inhibition to include all the patterns of fastnesses which have been exploited; from the inaccessible kind of 1859 down through the intervening years, ending with the hill-top variety of fifty years after.