U.S. History Graybill
THE TRIAL AND EXECUTION OF JOHN BROWN
A Documentary Source Problem
On the evening of October 16, 1859, eighteen men left a farmhouse in Maryland bound for a small village just a few miles away, across the Potomac River, in Virginia. Their objective was the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, a large complex of workshops and buildings stocked with over 100,000 firearms and munitions. This little force boldly intended to seize the armory and the weapons there and distribute them to slaves.
As the group came closer to Harper’s Ferry, they cut telegraph wires, interrupting communications between the town the outside world. Then they seized the railroad and wagon bridges that controlled access into, and passage out of, the town. Within minutes they accomplished the first part of their plan: they had swiftly seized both the armory and arsenal. These objectives were easily achieved, since the entire complex was defended by just a single, lonely guard! The second part of their plan, however, would be much more difficult to pull off.
The little party of men was led by one of the most controversial figures in American history, John Brown. He was born in Connecticut in 1800, and over the next fifty odd years he lived in a variety of Northern states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and the Western territory of Kansas. Like some other Americans of his era - William Lloyd Garrison for example - Brown was a deeply religious man, and his religious beliefs inculcated in him a fervent hostility to slavery. When he was thirty-seven years old, he solemnly vowed to “consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.” In the middle decades of the 19th century, such individuals were labeled “abolitionists,” for they hoped to abolish slavery immediately. The vast majority of abolitionists, men and women like Garrison, were pacifists who believed that non-violent means could abolish slavery. But John Brown was unusual, for an abolitionist. Like others in the movement, he regarded the enslavement of Africans as an individual, and a national sin. But unlike other abolitionists, he believed this particular sin justified the use of violence, righteous violence blessed by the Lord, to put an end to it. He was a man of action, and indirect methods, such as moral persuasion and sermons, he thought, could not kill the “peculiar institution.” There was only one sure method of abolition, he adamantly maintained; “slavery will never be purged away,” he once declared,” but with Blood.”
John Brown had spent years devising a plan to attack slavery, directly, in the South. The armory and arsenal at Harper’s Ferry would supply the weapons. But who would wield them? Brown told his associates that large numbers of slaves would spontaneously flock to him once they learned that he could provide them with the weapons they needed to defend their freedom. “When I strike,” he told one of his followers, “the bees will swarm.”
But the expected swarm never materialized. Instead, in the early morning hours of October 17, 1859, the alarm spread swiftly across the Maryland and Virginia countryside, and Federal, state, and local officials hurriedly assembled forces to defeat the raiders. By mid-morning, it was clear that Brown’s plan was doomed. Armed townsmen, local farmers, and state militia had surrounded his pathetic little force and trapped them in the armory buildings.
Late that night, Federal troops and Marines, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, arrived to take control of the situation. The next morning, October 18, 1859, Lee ordered an assault on the armory buildings, and within a few minutes Brown’s little band was utterly crushed. Less than two days after it began, Brown’s audacious attempt to destroy slavery had been snuffed out in bloody defeat.
Terror, and rage, spread swiftly across the white South. Less than thirty years earlier, in 1831, Nat Turner, a slave, had led a merciless slave rebellion in Southeastern Virginia that was notorious among white Southerners for its grisly violence against whites. Turner’s rebels killed any white person they came across; they even butchered babies in their beds. After he was defeated and captured, Virginia authorities asked him why he and his followers committed such seemingly senseless, brutal acts; Turner answered simply, “nits breed lice.” From that date forward, Nat Turner’s rebellion was the “boogey-man” in the imagination of the white South, for it conjured mental images of the most horrifying thing that could happen in the South – a monstrously violent, vicious race war. It was an image so terrifying, so traumatizing to the white psyche that it prevented many slave masters, and many whites generally, from sleeping soundly in their beds on cold, dark nights.
But Turner, after all, was a black man, and all his followers were black slaves. But Brown was a Northern white man, and most of his followers were also Northern white men.
Everything was different now. The South had a new “bogey-man.”
Instructions for Reading and Studying the Documents:
The documents that follow are primary sources for the events and consequences of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. The documents are arranged in two major sections:
1) letters, newspaper accounts and trial transcripts covering the period of John Brown's capture, trial, execution and the press response from October 1859 to February 1860, arranged chronologically.
2) miscellaneous materials, including letters, memoirs, Senate committee hearing transripts and secondary accounts of John Brown's earlier career, his relations with his backers and associates, his personality, and his plans and motives.
Assume that you are writing a history of the historical significance of the trial and execution of John Brown. You have allotted yourself a maximum of five double-spaced, typed pages (1,200-1,500 words) in which to present a valid, plausible, and readable account of this episode in American history.
In a 5 page, typed essay, double spaced, 1" margins, write an interpretive account of the trial and execution of John Brown, based on your analysis and interpretation of the documents in this collection. You may also consult the textbook (and other sources, if you like) for insight into this episode, BUT YOUR GRADE ON THIS ASSIGNMENT WILL DEPEND ON HOW WELL YOU CREATE YOUR INTERPRETATION BASED ON THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS (You may also quote from the introduction to this document collection and the textbook). Since there are many more issues and facts in these documents than you can possibly include in a 5 page paper, do not attempt to discuss all of them. Concentrate on writing a coherent interpretation of the major origins, motivations, and events, supporting your conclusions with relevant facts and examples from the documents.
Begin by reading through the documents several times. After you gain a good general command of the documents, you might construct an annotated timeline of the events. This will help you understand the chronology of events before you begin writing. Then consider how to reconstruct what you feel are the crucial elements of this story that will help the reader of your essay gain an understanding of the significance of this episode in American history.
It may help to consider the documents in this packet as a kind of puzzle. In the broadest sense, your task in this paper assignment is to arrange the pieces of the puzzle so that they make sense - that is, so that they help you explain WHAT happened, WHY it happened, WHO were the important figures in this event, WHERE the events took place, and WHEN the most significant events occurred. Above all, be sure to make the SIGNIFICANC of this incident clear!
ESSAYS MUST CONTAIN EVIDENCE DRAWN FROM THE DOCUMENTS, THOUGHTFULLY COMPOSED AND ORGANIZED, IN ORDER TO SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETE THIS ASSIGNMENT!
In short, construct an account that makes the most sense to you based on the available evidence.
Questions to consider that may help you organize your thoughts.
1) Did John Brown accomplish his purpose? If so, in what sense? If not, in what respects?
2) Was John Brown consistent in his accounts of his intentions and purposes?
3) What appear to have been the major strengths and weaknesses in John Brown's character?
4) What were the various press reactions to Brown's raid. What is the significance of the press reaction to John Brown's raid and his subsequent execution? What is the significance, if any, of the fact that the Senate Select Committee could not agree on a single report?
5) Was the prosecution justified in charging Brown with attempting to foment an insurrection? Brown denied the charge. Who are we to believe on this question?
6) What do you think of the way in which the Virginia authorities dealt with Brown? What were the implications of the disposition of the legal insanity issue?
7) How would you assess John Brown’s credibility during his incarceration and trial?
8) How did the Harper's Ferry raid influence popular impressions of the Republican Party?
9) John Brown's financial backers raised numerous Southern "suspicions." What were those suspicions, and were they justified?
10) What is the historical significance of Brown's raid and his execution?
The questions above are only intended as a guide – not commands – in your efforts to understand important historical issues.
Your main concern should be to construct an eloquent, fluid narrative and interpretation. Do not interrupt the narrative at inappropriate points merely to answer one of the questions above. Your account should be as flawlessly and gracefully written as you can make it. Finally, the great bulk of your essay should consist of an analysis of the following documents, not some other source.
DOCUMENTS, PART I
Letters, Newspaper Accounts and Trial Transcripts
DOCUMENT #1
The following documents (#’s 1A-1E) are excerpts from an account by an unidentified reporter for The New York Herald of an interview by several Virginia and U.S. officials with John Brown on October 19, 1859, the day after his capture, as he lay in the office of the Armory.
"Old Brown," or "Ossawattomie Brown," as he is often called, the hero of a dozen fights or so with the "border ruffians" of Missouri, in the days of "bleeding Kansas," is the heart and front of this offending -- the commander of the abolition filibuster army. His wounds, which at first were supposed to be mortal, turn out to be mere flesh wounds and scratches, not at all dangerous in their character. He has been removed, together with Stephens, the other wounded prisoner, from the engine room to the office of the armory, and they now lie on the floor, upon miserable shake-downs, covered with some old bedding.
Brown is fifty-five years of age, rather small sized, with keen and restless gray eyes, and a grizzly beard and hair. His hair is matted and tangled, and his face, hands and clothes all smouched and smeared with blood. Colonel Lee [Robert E. Lee] stated that he would exclude all visitors from the room if the wounded men were annoyed or pained by them, but Brown said he was by no means annoyed; on the contrary he was glad to be able to make himself and his motives clearly understood. He converses freely, fluently and cheerfully, without the slightest manifestation of fear or uneasiness, evidently weighing well his words.
When I arrived in the armory at Harper's Ferry, in the afternoon of October 19, Brown was answering questions put to him by Senator Mason [James Mason of Virginia]; Colonel Faulkner [local member of Congress], Mr. Vallandigham, member of Congress from Ohio, and several other distinguished gentlemen. The following is a verbatim report of the conversation:
DOCUMENT #1A
Mr. Vallandigham: Mr. Brown, who sent you here?
Brown: No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker, or that of the Devil, whichever you please to ascribe it to. I acknowledge no master in human form.
Vallandigham: Did you get up the expedition yourself?
Brown: I did.
Vallandigham: Did you get up this document that is called a Constitution?
[the Chatham Constitution, see DOCUMENT #33 below]
Brown: I did. They are a constitution, and ordinance of my own contriving and getting up.
Villandigham: How long have you been engaged in this business?
Brown: From the breaking out of the difficulties in Kansas. Four of my sons had gone there to settle, and they induced me to go. I did not go there to settle, but because of the difficulties.
Mason: What was your object in coming?
Brown: We came to free the slaves, and only that.
A Young Man (in the uniform of a volunteer company): How many men, in all, had you?
Brown: I came to Virginia with eighteen men only, besides myself.
DOCUMENT #1B
Mason: How do you justify your acts?
Brown: I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity, - I say it without wishing to be offensive, - and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I do not say this insultingly.
Mason: I understand that.
Brown: I think I did right, and that others will do right who interfere with you at any time and at all times. I hold that the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as ye would that others should do unto you," applies to all who would help others to gain their liberty.
Lieutenant Stuart: But don't you believe in the Bible? [J.E.B. Stuart, one of the U.S. Army officers that captured Brown, later a prominent General in the Confederate States Army]