Harper’s Ferry

Detail of John Brown from “Tragic Prelude,” a mural painted by Kansan John Steuart Curry for the Kansas State Capitol building. This is how I remember Brown from my history classes.

Let’s talk about Harper’s Ferry, and in particular, John Brown. If there is a place in the United States where our industrial might began, it could be Harper’s Ferry, a small town at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. The fast-moving waters of the Potomac were used to power factories where tens of thousands of guns and other weapons were built. Harper’s Ferry was the center of the American military-industrial complex, such as it was, in the years before the Civil War. If you wanted to get your hands on a lot of guns, the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry is where you would go. And that is exactly what brought John Brown to Harper’s Ferry: He wanted to acquire thousands of guns to arm a slave rebellion that would end slavery in the United States. If there is a place where the Civil War first seemed possible, it was in Harper’s Ferry.

John Brown looking less crazy, about a decade before the Harper’s Ferry raid.

John Brown was already a partisan who had fought against pro-slavery forces in Kansas. “Bleeding Kansas,” a period of skirmishes and terrorism between pro- and anti-slavery settlers in Kansas from 1854–1859 in which up to 200 Americans may be been killed, happened when Congress decided to allow territorial residents to decide if Kansas would be a free or slave state. Brown was a fervent abolitionist who viewed slavery as evil and against the will of God, and went to Kansas with a small band of followers and joined his sons who had already settled there. He was involved in several battles and killed at least five pro-slavery supporters; one of his sons was killed in the violence. The violence in Kansas, and the loss of a son, only served to harden his outlook. He was dissatisfied with abolitionist pacifism, saying of pacifists, “These men are all talk. What we need is action — action!”

Harper’s Ferry, from near the river confluence.

What Brown wanted to do was start a slave rebellion. By raiding the armory, he would take thousands of guns and ammunition to go with them, sweep through the South with enslaved people joining his army, and establish a new United States government in which slavery was outlawed. On the evening of October 16, 1859, Brown and a team of 21 men including five Black men crossed a railroad bridge over the Potomac into Harper’s Ferry, quickly seized the Arsenal from the night watchman, and took up positions in the town. They took hostages from farms around the area, including the great-grandnephew of George Washington, Col. Lewis Washington.

Harper’s Ferry, from near where the Armory buildings used to be. The grey obelisk marks where the firehouse originally stood; there is now a long hill that was built up for a railroad line.

But things went downhill very quickly for Brown and his men. While no enslaved people joined him, local townspeople and militia quickly responded, firing on Brown’s men and driving them back to the armory, and then took up positions on the bridge, trapping Brown and his men in the town. Brown moved his diminished force to a small firehouse next to the main arsenal buildings, where they remained until a detachment of Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee arrived that evening; the following morning the Marines quickly broke down the firehouse doors and captured the remaining men including a wounded John Brown.

Brown’s firehouse; he and his remaining men holed up here for about 18 hours.

Brown was charged not for Federal crimes despite attacking Federal property but rather faced Virginia charges of treason against Virginia, inciting slave insurrection, and murder. Quickly found guilty of all charges, he was hanged on December 2, 1859. His last words, written down on a slip of paper and handed to his jailer, were prophetic: “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.”

The firehouse was moved in the early 1900s to this current spot, a couple hundred yards from the original location marked by the obelisk.

John Brown’s raid was a catalyst, among several, that led directly to the southern states seceding and the Civil War. Brown himself, in his own times, was polarizing; reviled in the South, he was viewed as a hero and martyr by Northern abolitionists. Republican politicians sought to distance themselves from him; Lincoln himself referred to Brown as a “madman.” In more recent times, he’s been viewed as an idealist who sought to purge his country of a practice he viewed as evil, and by others as a terrorist and radical zealot.

A large open lawn is all that remains of the original armory and buildings where nearly all the guns in the young United States were manufactured. The buildings were burned in 1861 when Union troops abandoned the town; Confederate forces carried off what little survived. The armory and factories were never rebuilt.

As we’ve lived through our own political violence and the first-ever insurrection against our Federal government, I’ve often thought about John Brown. While some of these militant groups talk about a “second Civil War,” I am really worried about is the sort of irregular partisan conflict that Brown took part in during the “Bleeding Kansas” period, with isolated but intense violence in specific areas.

The confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers; the Potomac is on the left. The modern railroad bridge is there on the left; the structure in the foreground is part of the remnants of the old bridge that Brown and his men used to cross over the river into the town.

But my broader question about Brown is, “When is violence against the state justified?” In terms of his own time, Brown was a violent criminal and insurrectionist. His cause, however — the abolition of slavery — was just, so does that forgive the violence of his methods? And because he thought his cause was just, does that make it right? Pertaining to the January 6, 2021 attack on our Capitol, nearly 1,000 people have been charged with crimes, and nearly 200 convicted and sentenced to prison. Many believed their cause was just. The fact is they were acting on a lie, or many lies, told to them repeatedly by people they trusted, including the then-President and other elected officials, some of whom remain in office. These people all could have easily found information that showed that they were being lied to, but chose instead to believe what they wanted to believe.

But John Brown saw the evil in front of him. He was a rarity among his peers at that time in that not only did he revile chattel slavery but he also viewed Blacks as equals, as no different from him. He worked closely with many prominent Blacks at the time, including Frederick Douglass and Harriett Tubman, who he referred to as “General Tubman.” He took actions to directly attack a truly evil aspect of our own country, and in so doing, gave his life for the cause.

Brown’s plan, of course, had no chance of success, but he thought he could pull it off. As I stood in the firehouse where he and his men made their last stand (it is still there in Harper’s Ferry, though it was moved a couple hundred yards from the original location), I marveled at the audacity and courage of Brown, thinking he could take 20 men into the town and start a revolution that would end slavery.

(Included images are my own personal photographs except for the two of John Brown, which are taken from Wikimedia Commons)