#29 Harpers Ferry
Excerpts from "passage to armageddon" by Adrian hall (1)
October 15th, 1859
The 19 men and 2 women in the Kennedy farmhouse are gathered in a circle their heads bent as John Brown's hypnotic voice leads them in prayer.
Omnipotent and steadfast God,
Who, in Thy mercy, hath
Upheaved in me Jehovah's rod
And his chastising wrath,
For fifty-nine unsparing years
Thy Grace hath worked apart
To mould a man of iron tears
With a bullet for a heart.
Yet, since this body may be weak
With all it has to bear,
Once more, before Thy thunders speak,
Almighty, hear my prayer.
I saw Thee when Thou did display
The black man and his lord
To bid me free the one, and slay
The other with the sword.
I heard Thee when Thou bade me spurn
Destruction from my hand
And, though all Kansas bleed and burn,
It was at Thy command.
I hear the rolling of the wheels,
The chariots of war!
I hear the breaking of the seals
And the opening of the door!
The glorious beasts with many eyes
Exult before the Crowned.
The buried saints arise, arise
Like incense from the ground!
Before them march the martyr-kings,
In bloody sunsets drest,
O, Kansas, bleeding Kansas,
You will not let me rest!
I hear your sighing corn again,
I smell your prairie-sky,
And I remember five dead men
By Pottawattamie.
Lord God it was a work of Thine,
And how might I refrain?
But Kansas, bleeding Kansas,
I hear her in her pain.
Her corn is rustling in the ground,
An arrow in my flesh.
And all night long I staunch a wound
That ever bleeds afresh.
Get up, get up, my hardy sons,
From this time forth we are
No longer men, but pikes and guns
In God's advancing war.
And if we live, we free the slave,
And if we die, we die.
But God has digged His saints a grave
Beyond the western sky.
Oh, fairer than the bugle-call
Its walls of jasper shine!
And Joshua's sword is on the wall
With space beside for mine.
And should the Philistine defend
His strength against our blows,
The God who doth not spare His friend,
Will not forget His foes (1).
John brown and his followers are no Quakers, no pacifist sheep of the lord. They are his sword and his vengenance. But yet in some particulars they have adopted their customs. And so it is that in the silence following the prayer each speaks, in no particular order, as they feel the spirit come upon them.
It is Lieutinant Watson Brown, steady as a rock who speaks first "I… I miss my Bell. When we prayed it is her I thought of, and of how much I wish to be with her. And I fear. I fear that come tomorrow or the next day I might die and never again see her. But then I thought of all those who are cut off from their families. Those who will never again see their wives or sons because of the evil that is being done by wicked men" Here, he glances at Dangerfield Newby, colored and born a slave, Freeman now, but married to one not free Who, with their seven children, waited him South, The youngest baby just beginning to crawl;" I have written to Bell yesterday. And I should like to read you all my letter though it touches on matters of the heart between man and wife. "Oh, Bell, I want to see you And the little fellow very much but must wait. There was a slave near here whose wife was sold South. They found him hanging in Kennedy's orchard next morning. I cannot come home as long as such things are done here."
Oliver Brown speaks next, his youngish his beautiful masculine face standing out amongst the rough band. Newly wed, at only nineteen, His words are the pure music of the fanatic. "The good book says that in war both man and wife must leave their marriage bed though it be on the very hour of their nuptials. As long as a single human soul is in bondage then war it is"
Kagi, the self-taught scholar, quiet and cool,
Stevens, the cashiered soldier, Puritan-fathered, A singing giant, gunpowder-tempered and rash.
Dauphin Thompson, the pippin-cheeked country-boy,
More like a girl than a warrior;
They, and the others, speak as the spirit directs them. Some remain silent. Others speak but a single word.
"Freedom" says Dangefield newby, still uncomfortable at speaking amongst whites, even with all that they have experienced and will suffer together.
But it is John Brown's daughter annie who speaks the final words. "I pray you all come back. But more so I pray you all come back with your shields- or upon them".
And then they leave, on the march to Harper's ferry, and even today, with all the blood and tears shed in the cause of freedom one may yet hear the echo of their steps.
The bearded faces look strange In the old daguerreotypes: they should be the faces
Of prosperous, small-town people, good sons and fathers, Good horse-shoe pitchers, good at plowing a field, Good at swapping stories and good at praying,
American wheat, firm-rooted, good in the ear. They are all strong men.
They tied up the watchmen and took the rifle-works. Then John Brown sent a raiding party away to fetch in Colonel Washington from his farm. The Colonel was George Washington's great-grand-nephew, Slave-owner, gentleman-farmer, but, more than these, Possessor of a certain fabulous sword given to Washington by Frederick the Great and of a pair of pistols given to him by Lafayette, father of freedom. True, to revere mere objects was but a form of idolatory. But are not men embarked upon near certain death entitled to some leeway? And do not soldiers, even soldiers of the lord, require talisman to bolster their courage?
They captured him and his sword and brought them along processionally. The act has a touch of drama, Half costume-romance, half unmerited farce. On the way, they told the Washington slaves they were free, Or free to fight for their freedom. The slaves heard the news with the dazed, scared eyes of cattle before a storm.
A few came back with the band and were given pikes, And, when John Brown was watching, pretended to mount A slipshod guard over the prisoners. But, when he had walked away, they put down their pikes And huddled together, talking in mourning voices. It didn't seem right to play at guarding the Colonel but they were afraid of the bearded patriarch with the Old Testament eyes.
A little later It was Patrick Higgins' turn. He was the night-watchman of the Maryland bridge, a tough little Irishman with a canny, humorous face, and a twist in his speech.
He came humming his way to his job. "Halt!" ordered a voice. He stopped a minute, perplexed. As he told men later, "Now I didn't know what 'Halt!' mint, any more than a hog knows about a holiday."
There was a scuffle.
He got away with a bullet-crease in his scalp and warned the incoming train. It was half-past-one. A moment later, a man named Shepherd Heyward, free negro, baggage-master of the small station, Well-known in the town, hardworking, thrifty and fated,
Came looking for Higgins.
"Halt!" called the voice again, But he kept on, not hearing or understanding, whichever it may have been.
A rifle cracked. He fell by the station-platform, gripping his belly, And lay for twelve hours of torment, asking for water Until he was able to die.
There is no stone, No image of bronze or marble green with the rain
To Shepherd Heyward, free negro of Harper's Ferry, And even the books, the careful, ponderous histories, That turn live men into dummies with smiles of wax Thoughtfully posed against a photographer's background In the act of signing a treaty or drawing a sword,
Tell little of what he was.
And yet his face Grey with pain and puzzled at sudden death Stares out at us through the bookworm-dust of the years With an uncomprehending wonder, a blind surprise.
"I was getting along," it says, "I was doing well.
I had six thousand dollars saved in the bank.
It was a good town, a nice town, I liked the folks
And they liked me. I had a good job there, too.
On Sundays I used to dress myself up slick enough
To pass the plate in church, but I wasn't proud
Not even when trashy niggers called me Mister,
Though I could hear the old grannies over their snuff
Mumbling along, 'Look, chile, there goes Shepherd Heyward.
Ain't him fine in he Sunday clo'es--ain't him sassy and fine?
You grow up decent and don't play ball in the street,
And maybe you'll get like him, with a gold watch and chain.'
And then, suddenly--and what was it all about?
Why should anyone want to kill me? Why was it done?"
So the grey lips. And so the hurt in the eyes.
A hurt like a child's, at punishment unexplained
That makes the whole child-universe fall to pieces.
At the time of death, most men turn back toward the child.
Brown did not know at first that the first man dead
By the sword he thought of so often as Gideon's sword
Was one of the race he had drawn that sword to free.
It had been dark on the bridge. A man had come
And had not halted when ordered. Then the shot
And the scrape of the hurt man dragging himself away.
That was all. The next man ordered to halt would halt.
His mind was too full of the burning judgments of God
To wonder who it had been. He was cool and at peace.
He dreamt of a lamb, lying down by a rushing stream.
Meanwhile, the train Passed over the bridge to carry its wild news
Of abolition-devils sprung from the ground
A hundred and fifty, three hundred, a thousand strong
To pillage Harper's Ferry, with fire and sword.
Meanwhile the whole countryside was springing to arms.
The alarm-bell in Charlestown clanged "Nat Turner has come.'
Nat Turner has come again, all smoky from Hell,
Setting the slave to murder and massacre!"
The Jefferson Guards fell in. There were boys and men.
They had no uniforms but they had weapons.
Old squirrel-rifles, taken down from the wall,
Shot guns loaded with spikes and scraps of iron.
A boy dragged a blunderbuss as big as himself.
They started for the Ferry.In a dozen
A score of other sleepy, neighboring towns
The same bell clanged, the same militia assembled.
But when they arrived at the ferry they found the abolitionists gone. For as they sought to storm the arsenal at night they were confronted, not by confused townsmen or scattered militia but by nearly thirty federal army engineers, commanded by stern Robert E.Lee of famous repute. Recalled from leave to oversee the transport of the Armories contents (2) to the grim boreal forests of the North, alarmed at the sound of gunfire and quickly sending out eager Jeb.E.Stuart to reccointer the area he understood, all too quickly what was occurring. he had organized his men in Ambush, killing over half of the force when they entered the armory, including John Brown. Five of the survivors, without their prophet, scattered and were all, save for Oliver Brown, hunted down by the vengeful men of the town. Stevens however managed to organize five of the other survivors and fortify the station house where Washington was being held by his terrified slaves.
As dawn rose over the town Colonel Lee attempted to achieve the release of Colonel Washington. Had he been dealing with John Brown, confidant in both his destiny and his moral scruples then he may indeed have proven successful. As it was, Stevens, his command over the survivors less sure had posted two of the men to shoot the hostages at the first sign of assault. With few men to choose one of the grim guardsmen was, according to the testimony of Washington's tearful bondsmen, Dauphne Thomsphon.
His finger slipped. From sweat or fate? Panic or purity of purpose? Either way, the blood of the father of our once great nation was spilled and Lee led his men in furious assault upon the station house. When Washington's body was discovered the fury of the townsmen was unbound. Had he not been wounded in storming the station house Lee might have made some effort to maintain civilized standards of behavior. But as it was, no prisoners were taken and the bodies of the abolitionists were mutiliated and then thrown into the Potomac. John Brown's body was never recovered.
Dry eyed, Oliver Brown, disguised as a citizen of the town, watched the savage mutiliation of his father's body by the townsfolk. Slipping away, like a ghost amongst the living, he made his way north, not knowing whether his brother Owen and the other men left to guard the Bridge, lived or died.
And as Old John Brown's remains made their way down to the Atlantic His Son Marched on to the North. In his belt were the pistols of Lafayette. Both were loaded.
(1) I basically Plagarized most of this and made changes based on changes to the time line and my own artistic license- but I'm not disclosing my sources.
(2) Harpers ferry is the central Federal armory and contains nearly 100,000 muskets (!!) in 1859. The fact that it was left practically unguarded OTL just goes to demonstrate how unmilitarized the U.S was before the civil war. TTL Winfield is reluctantly shifting regular army troops to the Canadian border and calling out for recruits to the Maine and Vermont Militia. That means he needs to arm them and he also want to stockpile weapons and supplies near the border and make sure his current stockpiles are in good condition.
Please.