Slavery and Four Years of War Part 17

Justice Catron, especially, claimed that Napoleon I., by the insertion of the third article of the treaty of cession of the Louisiana Province, had forever fastened slavery on it. But of this we have already spoken.(96)

It was slavery's last triumph. Dred Scott, his wife, and two little girls were remanded to slavery, to be freed by the irresistible might of divine justice, worked out through the expiating blood of the long-offending white race, commingled on many fields with the blood of their own race.

(92) 19th Howard (_U. S._), pp. 393-633.

(93) Con., Art. IV., Sec. 3, Par. 2.

(94) Con., Art. III., Sec. 2.

(95) Robert Toombs of Georgia in extravagant exuberance is reported to have said: "I expect to call the roll of my slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill."

(96) _Ante_, p. 43-5.

XX JOHN BROWN RAID--1859

John Brown, of Kansas fame, eccentric, misguided, and intense in his hatred of slavery, and of martyr stuff, encouraged by some of the most influential anti-slavery men of the North, who were goaded on by slavery's perennial aggressions, with a "_pike-pole_" at Harper's Ferry (October 16, 1859) p.r.i.c.ked the fetid pit of slavery, causing a tremor to run through the whole body of it. He had with him an _army of eighteen_, five of whom were free negroes.(97) They had rifles and pistols for themselves, and a few pikes for the slaves they hoped to free.

Brown had a.s.sembled his band at the Kennedy farm in Maryland, a few miles distant from Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

He professed to believe he might succeed if he could take the latter place, as it "would serve as a notice to the slaves that their friends had come, and as a trumpet to rally them to his standard."

This he stated to Frederick Dougla.s.s, whom he urged in vain to join his expedition.(98) His object was to free slaves, not to take life.

This daring body seized the United States armory, a.r.s.enal, and the rifle-works, all government property. By midnight Brown was in full possession of Harper's Ferry. Before morning he caused the arrest of two prominent slave owners, one of whom was Colonel Lewis Washington, the great grandson of a brother of George Washington, capturing of him the sword of Frederick the Great, and a brace of pistols of Lafayette, presents from them, respectively, to General Washington. It was Brown's special ambition to free the Washington slaves. Fighting began at daybreak of the 17th. The Mayor of Harper's Ferry and another fell mortally wounded.

Brown and his party by noon were driven into an engine-house near the armory, where they had barred the doors and windows, and made port-holes for their rifles. There they were besieged and fired on by their a.s.sailants.

Colonel Washington and others of their captives were held by Brown in the engine-house. Shots were returned by Brown and his men.

Some idea of Brown's character and bravery can be formed from Colonel Washington's description of his conduct in the engine-house fort:

"Brown was the coolest and firmest man I ever saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead by his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm and sell their lives as dearly as they could."

He wreaked no vengeance on his prisoners. Though his sons and friends were dead and dying around him, and himself, near the end of the fight, cleaved down with a sword, and bayonets were thrust in his body, he sheltered his prisoners so that not one of them was harmed. And non-combatants were not fired on by his band.

When Brown's party in the _fort_ were reduced to himself and six men, two or more of these being wounded, Colonel Robert E. Lee, _then of the United States Army_, arrived with a company of marines.

After Lee's demand to surrender was refused by Brown, an entrance was forced, and, bleeding, some dying, he and those left were taken.

Of the nineteen, ten were killed, five taken prisoners, and four had succeeded in escaping, two of the four being afterwards captured in Pennsylvania. They had killed five and wounded nine of the inhabitants and of their besiegers.

Not only was all the vicinity wildly excited, but the whole South was in an uproar. Slavery had been physically a.s.saulted in its home. The North partook of the excitement, generally condemning the rash proceeding, though many deeply sympathized with the purpose of Brown's movement, and his heroic conduct and life caused many to admire him. He was a devout believer in the literal reading of the Holy Bible, and of the special judgments of G.o.d, as he interpreted them in the Old Testament. His attack on slavery he regarded as more rational than and as likely to triumph as Joshua's attack on a walled city with trumpets and shouts, and as Gideon's band of three hundred, armed only with trumpets, lamps, and pitchers in its encounter with a great army. As Jericho's walls had fallen, and Gideon's band had put to flight Midianites and Amalekites in countless mult.i.tudes like gra.s.shoppers, so, Brown expected, at least fondly hoped and devoutly prayed, to see the myriads of human slaves go free in America. He did not, however, expect a general rising of the slaves.

He did not seek to San Domingoize the South, and against this he provided penalties in his prepared provisional const.i.tution.(99)

Brown had been encouraged and materially aided by Gerritt Smith, Dr. Howe of Boston, Stearns, Sanborn, Frederick Dougla.s.s, Higginson, Emerson, Parker, Phillips, and others of less renown; some, if not all, of whom had neither understood nor approved of his plan of attack.

The slaves did not rise, not did they in any considerable number even know at the time the real purpose of their would-be liberator.

During the excitement of the first news Greeley prophetically wrote:

"We deeply regret this outbreak; but remembering if their fault was grievous, grieviously have they answered for it, we will not by one reproachful word disturb the b.l.o.o.d.y shrouds wherein John Brown and his compatriots are sleeping. They dared and died for what they felt to be right, though in a manner which seems to us to be fatally wrong. Let their epitaphs remain unwritten until the _not distant day_ when no slave shall clank his chains in the shades of Monticello or by the graves of Mount Vernon."(100)

Brown's raid did not seriously, as was then expected, affect the November elections of that year, and they were favorable to the young, aggressive Republican party, formed to stay the extension of slavery.

It is not the purpose here to write a detailed history of particular events, only to name such as had a substantial effect on slavery; yet John Brown's _fate_ should be recorded. He was captured October 18th; indicted on October 20th; arraigned and put on his trial at Charlestown, in Jefferson County, Virginia, though his open wounds were still bleeding; and on October 31, 1859, a jury brought in a verdict finding him "Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel; and murder in the first degree."

Save in the matter of precipitation, his trial was fair, under all the circ.u.mstances, and no other result could have been expected.

November 2 he was sentenced to be hung on December 2, 1859.

When arraigned for sentence, among other things he said:

"If it is deemed necessary I should forfeit my life in furtherance of the end of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust exactments, I say, let it be done."

A little later he wrote:

"I can leave to G.o.d the time and manner of my death, for I believe now that the sealing of my testimony before G.o.d and man with my blood will do far more to further the cause to which I have earnestly devoted myself than anything I have done in my life ... I am quite cheerful concerning my approaching end, since I am convinced I am worth infinitely more on the gallows than I could be anywhere else."

On his way from the prison to the scaffold he handed to a guard a paper on which were written his last words.

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done."

Emerson, Parker, and the Abolition press of the North eulogized Brown and his followers.

His raid was made another pretence for uniting the South.

The American Anti-Slavery Society in its calendar of events designated _1859_ as "The John Brown Year."

John Brown was immortalized in a song written and sung first in 1861, and thereafter by the Union army wherever it marched. On the spot where he was hanged a Ma.s.sachusetts regiment (1862) sung:

"John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, But his soul goes marching on," etc.

The significance of John Brown's attack, small as it was in the point of numbers engaged in it, lies in the fact that it is the only one of its character openly made on slavery in the history of the United States, and in the further fact that it was at the threshold of _Secession--War_, ending in _universal emanc.i.p.ation_.

(97) _Hist. of the U. S._ (Rhodes), vol. ii., p. 393.

(98) _Ibid_., p. 392.

(99) Mason's _Report_, p. 57.

(100) _Hist. of U. S._ (Rhodes), vol. ii., p. 403; New York _Tribune_, Oct. 19th.

XXI PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1856-1860

The political campaign of 1856 has thus far been pa.s.sed by, as it more appropriately belongs to a history of the political movements leading up to secession.

Between the two great parties--Republican and Democratic--the most important issue was the slavery question.

The Republican party, born of the slavery agitation, in its platform (1856) denied

"The authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, of any individual or a.s.sociation of individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.