Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0109/01098.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 13KB | 220 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01098}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{John Brown's Raid
Chapter 4: The Tiger Caged}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Various}
$Affiliation{U.S. Department Of The Interior}
$Subject{brown
town
enginehouse
raiders
ferry
harpers
militia
fire
charles
off}
$Date{1973}
$Log{}
Title:       John Brown's Raid
Author:      Various
Affiliation: U.S. Department Of The Interior
Date:        1973

Chapter 4: The Tiger Caged

     The Charles Town militia, consisting of the regular company of the
Jefferson Guards and a specially formed volunteer company, was armed and on
its way by train to Harpers Ferry by 10 a.m.  The militia commander, Col. John
T. Gibson, had not waited for orders from Richmond but had set out as soon as
the men could be gotten ready.  Arriving at Hall town, about midway between
Charles Town and Harpers Ferry, Gibson, fearing the track ahead might be torn
up, took the militia off the train and marched by road to Allstadt's
Crossroads west of Bolivar Heights.

     At Allstadt's Gibson divided his force.  He sent Mexican War veteran
Capt. J. W. Rowan with the Jefferson Guards in a wide sweep to the west of
Harpers Ferry to capture the B & O bridge.  Gibson himself would take the
volunteer company on into town.  Rowan's men crossed the Potomac about a mile
above Harpers Ferry and, advancing along the towpath of the Chesapeake and
Ohio Canal, arrived at the Maryland end of the bridge by noon.  With little
difficulty they drove its defenders - Oliver Brown, William Thompson, and
Dangerfield Newby - back toward the armory yard.  Only Brown and Thompson made
it.  Newby, the ex-slave who had joined John Brown to free his wife and
children, was killed by a 6-inch spike fired from a smoothbore musket.  He was
the first of the raiders to die.

     In the meantime, Colonel Gibson's force had arrived in Harpers Ferry and
he sent a detachment of citizens under Capt. Lawson Botts, a Charles Town
attorney, to secure the Gault House Saloon at the rear of the arsenal and
commanding the Shenandoah bridge and the entrance to the armory yard.  Another
detachment under Capt. John Avis, the Charles Town jailer, took up positions
in houses along Shenandoah Street from which to fire into the arsenal grounds.

     The attack of the Charles Town militia cut off Brown's escape route and
separated him from his men in Maryland and those still holding the rifle
factory.  At last, perhaps realizing the hopelessness of his situation, Brown
sought a truce.  But when hostage Rezin Cross and raider William Thompson
emerged from the enginehouse under a white flag, the townspeople ignored the
flag, seized Thompson, and dragged him off to the Wager House where he was
kept under guard.

     Still not convinced, Brown tried again.  This time he sent his son Watson
and Aaron Stevens with Acting Armory Superintendent Kitzmiller, taken hostage
earlier in the day.  As the trio marched onto the street and came opposite the
Galt House, several shots rang out and both raiders fell.  Stevens, severely
wounded, lay bleeding in the street; Watson Brown, mortally wounded, dragged
himself back to the enginehouse.  Joseph Brua, one of the hostages,
volunteered to aid the wounded Stevens.  As bullets richocheted off the
flagstone walk, Brua walked out, lifted up the wounded raider, and carried him
to the Wager House for medical attention.  Then, incredibly, he strolled back
to the enginehouse and again took his place among Brown's prisoners.
Kitzmiller escaped.

     About the time Stevens and Watson Brown were shot, raider William Leeman
attempted to escape.  Dashing through the upper end of the armory yard, he
plunged into the frigid Potomac, comparatively shallow at this point, and made
for the Maryland shore.  Soon spotted, a shower of bullets hit the water
around him and he was forced to take refuge on an islet in the river.  G. A.
Schoppert, a Harpers Ferry resident, waded out to where Leeman lay marooned,
pointed a pistol at his head, and pulled the trigger.  For the rest of the day
Leeman's body was a target for the undisciplined militia and townspeople.

     When a raider shot and killed George W. Turner about 2 p.m., the crowd
grew ugly.  Turner, a West Point graduate, was a prominent and highly
respected area planter.  When Fontaine Beckham, the mayor of Harpers Ferry and
agent for the B & O Railroad, was killed, the townspeople turned into a
howling, raging mob.

     Beckham, a well-liked man of somewhat high-strung temperament, had been
greatly disturbed by the earlier shooting of Hayward Shepherd, his friend and
faithful helper at the depot.  Despite warnings from friends to keep away,
Beckham, unarmed, walked out on the railroad to see what was going on.  He
paced up and down the B & O trestle bordering the armory yard about 30 yards
from the enginehouse.  Several raiders spotted him peering around the water
tower in front of their stronghold and thought that he was placing himself in
position to fire through the doors.  Edwin Coppoc, posted at the doorway of
the enginehouse, leveled his rifle at the mayor.

     "Don't fire, man, for God's sake!" screamed one of the hostages. "They'll
shoot in here and kill us all."

     Coppoc ignored the warning and pulled the trigger.  Beckham fell, a
bullet through his heart.  Oliver Brown, standing beside Coppoc in the partly
opened doorway, aimed his rifle at another man on the trestle, but before he
could fire he keeled over with "a mortal wound that gave horrible pain."  Both
of Brown's sons now lay dying at their father's feet.

     Enraged by the shooting of Beckham, the townspeople turned on prisoner
William Thompson.  Led by Harry Hunter, a young Charles Town volunteer and the
grandnephew of the murdered mayor, a group of men stormed into the Wager
House, grabbed Thompson, and dragged him out onto the B & O bridge. "You may
kill me but it will be revenged," Thompson yelled; "there are eighty thousand
persons sworn to carry out this work."  These were his last words.  The mob
shot him several times and tossed his body into the Potomac to serve, like
Leeman's, as a target for the remainder of the day.

     While Brown's situation at the fire enginehouse was growing progressively
worse, his three-man detachment holding the rifle works came under fire.
Under Kagi's leadership these men had held the works uncontested during the
morning and early afternoon.  About 2:30 p.m. Dr. Starry organized a party of
"citizens and neighbors" and launched an attack against the raiders from
Shenandoah Street.  After a brief exchange of shots, Kagi, Lewis Leary, and
John Copeland dashed out the back of the building, scrambled across the
Winchester and Potomac Railroad tracks, and waded into the shallow Shenandoah
River.  Some townspeople posted on the opposite bank spotted the fleeing men
and opened fire.  The raiders, caught in a crossfire, made for a large flat
rock in the middle of the river.  Kagi, Brown's most trusted and able
lieutenant, was killed in the attempt and Leary was mortally wounded.
Copeland reached the rock only to be dragged ashore, where the excited crowd
screamed "Lynch him!  Lynch him!" But Dr. Starry intervened, frightened Negro
as hustled off to jail.

     At the enginehouse, the raiders continued to exchange occasional shots
with the Charles Town militia and the townspeople.  By now Brown had separated
his prisoners.  Eleven of the more important hostages who might be used for
bargaining purposes were moved into the engineroom with his dwindling band,
while the others remained crowded into the tiny guardroom.  The two rooms were
separated by a solid brick wall.

     About 3 p.m., shortly after the raiders were driven out of the rifle
works, a militia company arrived by train from Martinsburg, Va.  Headed by
Capt. E. G. Alburtis and comprised mostly of B & O Railroad employees, this
company marched on the enginehouse from the upper end of the armory yard and
came close to ending the raid.  Brown positioned his men in front of the
building to meet the attack.  Alburtis' contingent, advancing briskly and
maintaining a steady fire, forced the raiders back inside.  Smashing the
windows of the guardroom, the militiamen freed the prisoners but were forced
to withdraw after eight of their number were wounded from the constant fire
pouring from the partly opened enginehouse door.  Alburtis later complained
that had his men been supported by the other militia companies present, John
Brown's raid would have been ended.

     Other militia units now began to arrive.  Between 3 and 4 p.m. the
Hamtramck Guards and the Shepherdstown Troop, both from Shepherdstown, Va.,
came in.  At dusk three uniformed companies from Frederick, Md., appeared,
followed later in the evening by a Winchester, Va., company under R. B.
Washington, and five companies of the Maryland Volunteers under General
Stewart from Baltimore.  None of them made any attempt to dislodge Brown and
his men from the enginehouse, but all added to the general confusion and
hysteria gripping the town.

     On the other side of the Potomac, Cook, Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc,
Meriam, Tidd, and several Negroes had been transferring weapons to a tiny
schoolhouse midway between Harpers Ferry and the Kennedy farm.  As the day
wore on and the firing from town became heavier, they began to suspect that
something might have gone wrong.  At about 4 p.m. Cook headed for the B & O
bridge to see what was happening.  To get a better vantage point, he climbed
the craggy face of Maryland Heights where he could look directly into the
center of the town.  Seeing that his compatriots were "completely surrounded,"
he decided to try to take some of the pressure off by firing across the river
at men posted in the houses along High Street overlooking the armory.  His
shot was instantly answered by a volley of bullets that severed a branch he
was clutching for support and sent him tumbling down the rocky cliff.  Badly
cut and bruised from the fall, he limped back to the schoolhouse and joined
the others.  Realizing there was nothing they could do to aid their comrades
trapped in the enginehouse, they reluctantly gathered their belongings,
climbed the mountain and headed north.

     Time was quickly running out for John Brown.  As resistance became
partially organized at Harpers Ferry, steps were taken to seal off any
possibility of support reaching the raiders.  Fearing that Brown's raid might
be part of a general uprising, all approaches to the town were guarded, and
all travelers not familiar to residents of the area were immediately arrested
and shipped off to the county jail at Charles Town.

     As night approached, the firing sputtered out.  Brown, knowing escape was
impossible, again attempted to bargain for freedom.  In verbal and written
pleas he offered to release his hostages if he and his men were allowed to
leave unmolested.  Col. Robert W. Taylor, now commanding the Virginia militia
units at Harpers Ferry, rejected the offers, sending back word that if the
prisoners were immediately released he would let the Government deal with
Brown and his men.  But the old abolitionist would not yield, and prisoners,
slaves, and raiders alike settled down, as best they could, to what would be a
long and depressing night.

     Brown paced up and down like a caged tiger.  It had been hours since he
or any of them had tasted food or drink.  The cold night air chilled their
bones and the pungent odor of gunpowder stung their nostrils.  The large-scale
slave support that he had counted upon and for which the pikes were intended
had not materialized.  This was largely his own doing, however, for in his
desire for absolute secrecy he had given no advance word that he was coming.
The slaves had no idea that a raid was in progress.  The few his men had
picked up at the Washington and Allstadt farms were of no use to him.  They
were frightened and preferred to remain with the white hostages rather than
take an active part in their own salvation.  Most likely they would not have
joined him at all had they not been taken from their homes at gunpoint.

     From time to time Brown called out, "Men, are you awake?"  Only five of
the raiders were still unwounded and able to hold a rifle:  Brown himself,
Edwin Coppoc, J. G. Anderson, Dauphin Thompson, and Shields Green.  Stewart
Taylor, the Canadian soldier of fortune, lay dead in a corner, his
presentiment of death come true.  He had been shot like Oliver Brown while
standing at the enginehouse doorway.  Oliver himself, writhing in pain, begged
to be killed and put out of his misery.  "If you must die, then die like a
man," snapped his father.  After awhile Oliver was quiet.  "I guess he is
dead," Brown said.  Nearby, Watson Brown lay quietly breathing his last.
The attack that had begun but 24 hours before was fast coming to an end.