John brown

In 1859, John Brown led a raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia in an attempt to strike a blow against slavery. The raid was covered by the press, and the news spread quickly through the new electric telegraph. Brown's plan was to free slaves and seize important relics, but the raid did not go as planned. Few slaves were aware of the raid and did not rise up to support it. The raid resulted in the death of a free black man and ultimately failed. Brown and his men attempted to escape by train but were detained and eventually captured. The raid caused excitement and anxiety in both the North and the South, with the South seeing it as a threat to slavery and the North as a bold abolitionist action. Hello, everybody. This is your mama cat calling out to all her kittens in the trailer park. I told you I would give you your history, and here it is. We can't be outside by the picnic tables because it's just too doggone cold. But I tell you what, kids, I know y'all have some computers. So this is your mama cat, and I'm here to tell you what's going on. All righty. Today we are going to talk about John Brown. I know you're all like, John Brown? Isn't John Brown, they got that kind of sick song? John Brown's body lays a bowler in the grave. Yeah, that's him. That's our boy. So imagine it's October the 16th through the 18th, 1859, and you are in Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Okay? Now, we got the Civil War on the horizon. Things are not happy, not even slightly, y'all. And it ended up where Brown had a party of 22 and was defeated by a company of U.S. Marines led by First Lieutenant Israel Green. Now, y'all are like, he had a party? Well, that's just being nice. He just had a bunch of men that was helping him with his little fight here. So John Brown decided that he was going to be upstanding and strike a blow, because he had originally asked Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, who he had met in his years as an abolitionist in Springfield, Massachusetts, to join him on this raid. Now, Ms. Tubman, she was prevented by illness and Douglass declined, as he thought that Brown's plan was suicidal. So this raid, which was covered by the press of its time, and, you know, they didn't have no TMZ, there wasn't any, you know, choppers coming down, making sure that, you know, they could cover it. But there was the new electric telegraph. And y'all have seen that, where the guy sits in the Westerns and he's tapping that thing, it's like... Well, that's how information got so quick about the news of the raid. And it was received on 4 p.m. Monday, October 17th. Now, prior to that, the only way anything got out was word of mouth, or a paper would have to set up the print on the press, stamp it on the paper, and then go run around and sell it. So it could literally be days before the telegraph, before anybody would know what's going on. Anyhoo, so the Harper's Ferry Raid was basically a few official messages were sent, received. The telegraph was carried to the next train and connected to the telegraph wires. So basically, that's how they got the information out there. The label raid was not used at the time. It was more of the terms insurrection, rebellion, treason, crusade. Raid wasn't the original title of this. Now, Brown's Raid caused so much excitement and anxiety through the United States, that the South was seeing it as a threat to slavery and their way of life. And the North saw it as a bold abolitionist action. Let me break it down. America, during this ugly part of our history, got it in their head that the color of your skin determined whether you could live free, or if you had to live as a slave. Now, the North likes to front that they weren't all about this slavery thing, but we all got to be honest here. First slaves that entered America came up North. Anyway. So, as the North was industrialized, and they did not have to rely on free slave labor to run their cotton mills and to the weaving sheds, things like that. They were not troubled by the idea of losing their slaves. However, the South had built their economy on free labor. These big old plantations, you know, they just couldn't function unless people were working for free. And don't nobody want to work for free. So, what ended up happening is that Brown decided that he needed to have himself a bold move that would delineate, that's a big old word, means that would set his mark on his protests concerning slavery in the South. So, about 11 p.m., Brown left three of his men behind as a rear guard in charge of some weapons that they had set aside. His son, Owen Brown, his friend Barclay Coppock, and Francis Jackson Marion, they went across the bridge into the town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Brown detached a party under the leadership of John Cook, Jr. to capture Colonel Lewis Washington, the great-grandnephew of George Washington, at his nearby Bel Air estate. They were going to free his slaves and seize two relics of George Washington. A sword that was said to have been presented to Washington by Frederick the Great and two pistols given by the Marquis de Lafayette, which Brown considered to be talismans. Now, I'd like to point out here that he seems to be awfully into this whole talismans thing because Washington had slaves. So, I don't think that was some good thinking. Anyways, so Brown's men needed to capture the armory and escape before word could be sent to Washington. The raid was going well for a time. They had cut the telegraph line twice to prevent communication. First, on the Maryland side of the bridge. Slightly later, they did it on the Virginia side. Some of Brown's men were posted to control the Potomac and the Shenandoah bridges. Others went into town in the middle of the night and a single watchman was the only person at the armory and he was forced to give up his keys. I've got to tell you all something. If you leave one guy to take care of all your guns and your ammo, that just doesn't seem like a good plan to me. But that's how it was. They left one guy. Well, Brown had thought that by doing this brave, bold move, that all the slaves would rise up and support him. That they would be ready to rebel. John Brown did not have a way to inform those slaves. They did not arrive and Brown waited too long for them. The South, starting with Governor Wise, whose speech after the Harper's Prairie was reprinted widely, proclaimed that this showed the truth of the old allegation that the slaves were happy and did not want freedom. We've got to give a moment of silence for something that's dumb. Crickets. Okay. Nobody believed that but the Southern slave owners. So, Osborne Anderson, the only raider to leave a memoir and the only black survivor, put that lie to rest by saying, Sunday evening of the outbreak, when we visited the plantations acquainted with the slaves of our purpose to affect their liberation with the greatest enthusiasm, was manifested by them with joy and hilarity beaming from every continent. The old mother, the white haired from age and born down from years of labor. Many years in bonds was told that the work in hand. She replied, God bless you. God bless you. She kissed the party at her house and requested all to kneel, which we did. And she offered a prayer to God for his blessing on our enterprise and our success. At the slave quarters, there was jubilee and they stepped forward manfully without any impressing or coaxing. So, let me break it down. Because they didn't plan ahead and let everybody know, we're going to rise up and have ourselves, you know, a little raid down here at the Harpers Ferry and free y'all. What few slaves kind of knew about it were down. But a majority didn't know this was happening. So John Brown, maybe it was a party. Because he didn't send out the invites and not a lot of people showed. So, a free black man was the first fatality of this raid. Hayward Shepherd was a baggage handler at the Harpers Ferry train station. And when he ventured out to the bridge to look for the watchman and see what was going on out there, he was shot from behind when he chance encountered the raiders. Refused to freeze and headed back to the station. So, let's point out the irony of this. Y'all say you're having this little hootenanny because you want to free everybody who's black and, you know, you're with this abolitionist thinking, no more slavery. First person you shoot is a free black man who was checking things out. Mr. Brown had issues. So, he became the hero of this lost cause pro-Confederacy movement which pointed out and used that whole thing that the first person that got shot was a poor black man. And it basically turned into what they call a turkey shoot. Once they realized that nobody was coming and that they had put themselves up against a wall, so to speak, they had to figure out right quick what they wanted to do. So, Brown says, we're going to get on the train, the eastbound Baltimore-Ohio Express from Wheeling. We're going to get on that thing and it's going to pass to Baltimore and that is what we are going to do. So, Brown gets on the train and he's talking to the passengers for over an hour, not concealing who the heck he was because you wouldn't want to be on the down low when you just, you know, had a massacre in your backyard. And he was what they called a notorious celebrity for his abolitionist work in Kansas. So, he told train crew they could continue on, they were just going to go for a ride with him. Now, according to the conductor's telegram, they were detained for about five hours. But according to sources that the conductor didn't think it would be prudent to proceed until sunrise. So, they tricked him and said, you know, we shouldn't really go till sunrise. Now, mind you, this is a train and it's on rails. What do you really need to see? Train is going to follow those rails. I digress. So, they had shut the engine down on that train. They let it go cold. And they knew that would take even more time to build up enough heat because everything was steam powered, guys. And that just wasted more and more time. Brown later called this incident his one mistake. Not detaining the train on Sunday night and not saying, oh no, we're running this thing. Go. So, the train departs at dawn. Brown is now on foot, escorting the train across the bridge. And it's about 7 a.m. Now, at the first station with a working telegraph, near Montesey, near Frederick, Maryland, which is about 23 miles east of Harpers Ferry, the conductor managed to get a telegram to W.P. Smith, Master of Transportation at the B&O headquarters. Now, just between you and me, B&O headquarters, B-O, yeah. So, and Smith's reply to the conductor who rejected his report was exaggerated. So, you got this conductor who's like, we sent a message and Smith is like, well, don't believe everything you read. Well, don't believe everything you read there. They exaggerate. When the truth of the matter is, he shot up the town and, you know, got shot up his own self, too. So, what ended up happening is that there were no westbound trains arriving. Three eastbound trains were backed up on the Virginia side. And because the cut telegraph line, it had taken the message so long in a roundabout route that it had caused a delay. And that meant that the railroad president, John W. Barrett, who sent the telegrams to Major General George H. Stewart of the First Light Division of the Maryland Volunteers, and the governor, Henry Wise, and the Secretary of War, everybody's getting in on this. And then the president, James Buchanan, he was like, okay, John Brown and his homies are up in my train. What are we going to do? Well, at about the time the armory employees began arriving for work, they were taken as hostages by Brown's party. Reports differ on how many there were, but there were many more than could fit in the small engine house. So, Brown divided them up into two groups, keeping ten of the most important ones to the engine house, and the others were held in a different armory building, according to the report given by Robert E. Lee. Now, Brown at this point is just dog paddling, trying to keep up. He can't think of any way to get the heck out of this dilemma. So, he compounds his problem by taking hostages. Well, what ended up happening is armed citizens decided that it was time for them to deal with this. Military companies from neighboring towns began to arrive late Monday morning. Among them was Captain John Avis, who would soon be Brown's jailer. He arrived with a company of militia from Charlestown. And according to the report of Lee, who does not mention Avis, the following volunteer militia groups also showed up for the party. The Jefferson Guards and Volunteers from Charlestown. The Hamtrak Guards from Jefferson County. The Shepherdstown Troop under Captain Jacob Renard. Captain Ephraim G. Albertus Company from Martinsburg. I'm telling you, they really liked to name their troops. And the Captain B.B. Washington Company from Winchester. The three companies from Frederictstown, Maryland. And the companies from Baltimore under General C. Edgerton, the Second Light Brigade. So, all of these thousands of slaves didn't show up. Brown stayed too long in Harper's Ferry. Harper's Ferry is on a narrow peninsula, almost an island. So, he's bottlenecked. He's trapped. And by noon, all hopes of escape were gone. His men had lost control of the bridges. And there were just no practical escape routes. So, the militia companies under the direction of Colonel R.W. Baylor and John T. Gibson forced the insurgents to abandon their positions since escape was impossible. And they had to fortify themselves in a sturdy stone building, the most defensible in the armory. Well, there's one problem when you hole up in a big old stone building. One, you all got to go to the bathroom sometime. And two, when are you going to get lunch? Anyway. So, they blocked the windows. And they blocked the heavy doors with a hose cart. And they made small holes in the wall so that they could trade sporadic gunfire with the surrounding militia. And then during the day, four townspeople were killed, including the mayor who managed the Harper's Ferry Station, the former county sheriff, and the militia. And due to the poor quality of their weapons, the militia men were highly unreliable in their shooting. And some of them got roaring drunk. So, Robert E. Lee and the U.S. Marines show up on a Tuesday, October the 18th, and called it a broad and pathetic farce. And according to reports, Governor Wise was outraged at the poor performance of the local militia. Now, what you got to realize about a militia, my friends, is that they are not the real army, okay? During the Revolutionary War, we needed to have militias. Because the British had the army, and we just needed everybody who wanted to live independently from England to get whatever weapons they had and fight for us. And that's where militias originally came from. Now, in this whole Harper's Ferry's mess, these militias really hadn't done anything since Jesus was a boy. The Revolutionary War, that had gone on a while ago. But they had some crappy guns from way back when, and occasionally they'd get together to drink and, I guess, shoot cans. Now they had something they actually had to do, and they completely messed it up. So, at one point, Brown sends his son out, Watson, and Aaron Dwight Stevens, a friend of his, with a white flag. Watson is mortally wounded with a shot by a town man. I got to tell you, these militia boys are just, they're screwing up in monumental ways. I mean, who doesn't know that the white hanky that you're dangling around is, we give up. So, Stevens is shot, taken prisoner, the raid is clearly failing, and one of Brown's men, William H. Lehman, panicked and tried to attempt and flee by swimming across the Potomac River. He was shot and killed. During intermittent shooting, another son of Brown, whose name was Oliver, he was hit. He died next to his father. And Brown's third participating son escaped with great difficulty to the relative safety of his brother, John Jr.'s house in Ashtabula County in Ohio. So, it's all gone to you know what, and what ends up happening is that they finally attack the engine house with the actual army and the Marines and they get John Brown the opportunity to surrender. They're like, look, we're going to give you a chance to give up. And if you do that, then, you know, your men will be spared, but Brown, I'm sorry, your hides get nailed to a wall. Well, Brown refused. And as Stewart walked away, he did a prearranged signal of waving his hat to Lieutenant Green and his men that were standing by. Green's men tried to break in using sledgehammers, but their efforts were unsuccessful. They found a ladder nearby. He and about 12 Marines used it as a battering ram to break down the sturdy doors. Green was the first one through the door and with the assistance of Lewis Washington, they identified and singled out John Brown. The accounting of what happened next was this. Quicker than I thought, I brought my saber down with all my strength upon John Brown's head. He was moving as the blow fell, and I suppose I did not strike him where I intended, for he received a deep saber cut on the back of the neck. He fell senseless on his side, and when he rolled over to his back, he had in hand a short, sharp, cavalry carbine. It's a type of gun. I think he had just fired it as I reached Colonel Washington for the Marine who followed me into the aperture made by the ladder received a bullet in the abdomen to which he died a few minutes later. The shot might have been fired by somebody else in the insurgent party, but I believe it was from Brown. Instinctively, as Brown fell, I gave him a saber thrust in the left breast. The sword I carried was a light uniform weapon and was either not having a point or used to strike hard in Brown's accoutrements and did not penetrate the blade-bent double. So, he's basically using his dress sword. It's all shiny, and it's made to look good, but it ain't really meant to go out there and make with the stabbity-stabbities. Now, Brown is wounded, and they finally got their hands on all of this. They've broken in. They've identified Brown. They've got people who are dead and dying and scared. And the thing is, is that the Army at that point is trying like heck to make sure that John Brown gets dragged in to pay for his crimes. Even though he had like a really good reason for what he did, unfortunately, it was not, you know, you still can't have an insurrection. So, what ended up happening is Brown is carried out of the engine house, and a Catholic priest did stop by to see if Brown might want some, you know, absolution. And he told the Catholic priest to leave. Five people, in addition to several reporters, came immediately to Harper's Ferry to interview Brown. He was interviewed at length as he lay over 24 hours without food or sleep. Brown carried no provisions on the expectation as if God would rain manna down from the skies as he did for the Israelites in the wilderness. Brown is not a good planner. We just need to establish that right now. And what happens to poor Brown, who was a bad planner and unfortunately exercised his beliefs in a drastic and not well thought out way? He ends up. I dropped my phone. Darn it. So, he ends up being interviewed while he's laying on the floor of this place, starving, bleeding, and everything else. And the paymaster's clerk of the arsenal and all these other people are like, y'all going to take Brown somewhere? And what ended up happening to John Brown is he ends up in Jefferson County Jail. And John Brown is held. And it's, you know, 1859, so it's not the Taj Mahal or anything. It's just, you know, bars, windows, bricks, cold. So, Yale University has the provisional constitution that Brown had penned because he thought that this was going to work. And he basically thought he was going to reform America, that he was going to do this great thing and free all the black people. And he was going to also redo the constitution and reset America. Now, the road to H.E. Double Toothpicks is led by good intentions. And John Brown, while he may have been under the best of intentions, how he executed that plan, that was his problem, folks. So, what ended up happening is that John Brown was hastily processed by the legal system. He was charged with grand jury. He was charged by the grand jury with treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, murder, inciting slave insurrection. The jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to death on November the 2nd after legally required 30 days. So, he didn't actually get hung until December the 2nd. And no, I don't know why they made him wait around 30 days to get hung. John Brown's last words were, 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 without very much bloodshed this could be done. So, they hung him. And the consequences of this man's hubris, which I hope you all remember back when it was still summer and I told you what hubris is. Hubris is that belief that you know what's best and you can't fail. Well, John Brown had so much hubris it was coming out of his ears. Now, what happened because he did this is that it fueled this notion that the North was out to get the South and that Lincoln was going to free the slaves. Okay. And the thing is, it didn't ignite slave uprisings. In fact, it had an immense impact on the way that slavery was perceived and that it energized the abolitionists in the North and it really got the pro-slavery people in the South going. And with the public meetings and with what was going on in the Senate, people came to blows. And this is pretty much the start of the Civil War. Now, I already know you all are going to say to me, that was the most boring thing you ever told us, Mama Cat. Why? I am telling you this because we are coming up on Black History Month and I promised you all that I would not tell you any boring stories. Think about it. This is the story of the one white guy who thought he had a plan and got the cheese whiz stomped out of him because he didn't think through the consequences of what he did and ignited the powder keg. Now, before you go, Miss Cat, we all had to be free somehow. What do you mean he didn't think the consequences? Well, I hear you. And yes, the freedom had to come. But John Brown is the picture of action without thinking through the consequences and listening to people around you. So, that is John Brown. Now, will I be telling you more Civil War stuff in my next feature here for you all? I don't know. The thing about history is that it's a collection of stories that is there for us to think about what the people who came before us did, did not do, how they did it, all these things. And we can either learn from it, we can ignore it and repeat it, or we can make a podcast and talk about it. Anyways, y'all have yourself a really good night. And now a word from our sponsors. Hi there. Have you taken out a scroll from the Library of Alexandria? Is it past due? Well, fear no more. It's Amnesty Week at the Library of Alexandria. You have seven days to get back our scrolls, our books, our illuminated manuscripts, and anything else that you might have borrowed. Don't make us send Enoch the eunuch down to your house to rough you up and get back our books. That's it. Have a great night.