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Chapter
I
Pictures included in
this chapter are Edwin and Barclay Coppoc.
On the 3d of July, 1859, John Brown,
his sons Owen and Oliver, and John E. Cook were at Harper's Ferry
carefully making observations and plans for the attack. The men
enlisted for the enterprise were assembling at the Kennedy farm, a
few miles distant on the Maryland side of the Potomac. Here the
arms, including a large number of pikes, were selected. The
appearance of a party of strange men at the farm had aroused
suspicion in the neighborhood and warrants had been taken out for
searching the premises. As soon as Brown was informed of this danger
he issued orders for the attack at once, eight days in advance of
the time that had been originally fixed, and several men who were on
the way failed to reach the rendezvous in time to participate in the
desperate conflict.
On the 16th day of October there was
assembled at the Kennedy farm a remarkable group of men, twenty-two
in number. As the roll was called on that eventful morning, the
following persons responded “here”: John Brown, Owen Brown, Watson
Brown, Oliver Brown, A. D. Stevens, John E. Cook, J. H. Kagi, Chas.
P. Tidd, Edwin Coppoc, Barclay Coppoc, J. G. Anderson, Steward
Taylor, Albert Hazlett, Francis J. Merriam, Wm. Thompson, Dauphin A.
Thompson, Wm. H. Leeman, Oliver P. Anderson, John A. Copeland, Lewis
S. Leary, Dangerfield Newby and John Anderson. The last five were
colored men. Brown now issued his written orders, eleven in number,
assigning to each man his part in the attack. Thirteen of the number
had proved their valor on the battle-fields of Kansas.
Iowa furnished more actors in the last great tragedy,
leading to the martyrdom of John Brown and most of his youthful
followers, than any other State. It was in Iowa that he had
established his chain of stations on the “Underground Railroad,”
leading from the Missouri slave plantations to freedom. It was at
Springdale that his men had been drilled for the desperate assault
upon slavery. Of the twenty-sic volunteers who enlisted in this
“forlorn hope,” Edwin Coppoc, Barclay Coppoc, Steward Taylor,
Jeremiah G. Anderson, George B. Gill and Charles W. Moffat were Iowa
men. It was in Iowa that the rifles and revolvers were collected and
secreted for arming the volunteers who were expected to join the
expedition at Harper’s Ferry. It was from West Liberty, Iowa, that
they were shipped as “carpenters’ tools,” by John H. Painter to a
fictitious consignee near Harper’s Ferry. It was from Iowa that the
mysterious letter of warning was written to the Secretary of War two
months before the attack. It was an Iowa Governor who saved from the
Virginia gallows the Iowa boy who escaped capture and slaughter in
the bloody conflict.
When the true story of the tragic affair came it was
learned that twenty men captured Harper’s Ferry and seventeen of
them held it for two days and three nights against Virginia citizens
and militia, from one to two thousand strong. One by one the members
of the heroic little band fell. Not a man flinched. When the third
night came, John Brown, Edwin Coppoc, Shields Green, Jeremiah G.
Anderson, Watson Brown and Dauphin A. Thompson were the only
survivors cooped in the engine house. Ten had been killed and
several more severely wounded; still Brown sternly refused to
surrender. It required a reinforcement of one hundred United States
Marines, commanded by Robert E. Lee, and an assault led by J. E. B.
Stuart, to enable the army to capture or slay the six unyielding
emancipators. Of the Iowa members of the little army, Steward Taylor
was killed at the engine house; Jeremiah G. Anderson was pierced
through by bayonets in the last assault; Edwin Coppoc, who fought to
the end, was disarmed and captured unhurt. Owen Brown, Barclay
Coppoc and F. J. Merriam had been left on the Maryland side to guard
the arms there stored, while John E. Cook and C. P. Tidd were sent
over Tuesday morning to take some prisoners to the schoolhouse. More
than a thousand armed men were now between them and the spot were
their leader and six survivors were making their last desperate
fight. To join them was impossible. Lieutenant Hazlett, with O. P.
Anderson and Shields Green, had been detailed to hold the arsenal,
which they did until cut off from their comrades by a great body of
militia. Brown and the other survivors, now surrounded, had
retreated to the engine house shelter. Green, who went as a
substitute for Frederick Douglass, was a very black negro slave, who
had escaped from South Carolina, leaving his only boy in slavery. He
fought like a tiger all through. Now, when Anderson and Hazlett saw
that all was lost, and there was a bare possibility for them to
escape, they urged Green to go with them. He turned and looked
toward Brown and the remnant of his command fighting at the door of
the engine house, and pointing toward them, said: “You tink der’s no
chance?”
“Not one,” said Anderson.
“An’ de ole Captain can’t get away?”
“No,” said both men.
“Well,” said the loyal negro, “guess I’ll go back to de ole man.”
And he marched calmly to certain death.
Anderson and Hazlett escaped across the river in the
gathering darkness, the latter only to be captured and hung. The men
on the Maryland side would not abandon their companions as long as
there was a ray of hope. Led by Owen Brown they approached as near
as possible to the Ferry and saw more than a thousand armed men
between them and their comrades. Their rescue was hopeless, but the
chivalrous Cook crept still closer, and climbing among the limbs of
a huge oak, opened fire on the enemy. Twenty or thirty men in range
of his rifle fled to shelter, while a hundred guns were turned upon
him. The balls severed the limb upon which he was resting and he
fell to the ground. With a parting shot he turned sadly away and
joined his companions in retreat to the mountains.
Volumes have been written in this country and Europe
on John Brown the liberator and martyr, who gave his life without a
murmur to free the slaves. The noblest men and women of his
generation have paid tributes to his unselfish life and his fidelity
to duty as he saw it—a fidelity which led him to the scaffold. His
name will live in history for all time. But little is known of his
twenty-two followers who, in the early morning of their lives,
actuated by the same spirit of self-sacrifice, enlisted in his
“forlorn hope” and bravely marched to heroic deeds and almost
certain death. In the world’s history no more desperate and
apparently hopeless undertaking has ever been entered upon by sane
men. The chances for success were not one in a thousand and yet
these young men were so imbued with their leader’s abhorrence of
slavery, a fierce and fearless determination to devote their lives
to its destruction, that they stopped not to count the cost or to
calmly consider the chances of success. They had such confidence in
the wisdom, courage and invincibility of their leader, that, where
he commanded, they marched without a murmur; where he led, they
hesitated not to follow.
Not one of them could have been actuated by selfish
motives. There was no hope of reward, even in case of success. There
were no honors to be won; there was no glory to be achieved. They
fully realized that death was far more likely to meet them than was
success. And yet twenty-two men in the fervor of youth, freely
offered their services and their lives, if need be, to strike a blow
at American slavery, which, they firmly believed would, in some way
not clearly developed, result in its final overthrow. As unlikely as
it appeared to all the world besides, they were not mistaken. They
sacrificed their own lives, but the sacrifice proved to be the fire
brand that, in less than five years, melted with the red glare of a
hundred battle-fields, the shackles from four millions of slaves.
Justice to the memory of the four young men from
Iowa, who fought at Harper’s Ferry in John Brown’s band, requires a
permanent record of what is known of their brief lives and heroic
deaths.
Steward Taylor was born at Uxbridge, Canada, October
29th, 1836. He came to Iowa when but seventeen years old
and learned the wagon maker’s trade at West Liberty. Here he became
acquainted with George B. Gill who took him to Springdale in the
winter of 1858, and at John H. Painter’s house they met John Brown.
Young Taylor was greatly impressed with the fervor of the old “hero
of Osawatomie,” and listened eagerly to his recitals of the horrors
of American slavery. He mad the acquaintance, also, of the young men
who were drilling under Stevens at the Maxson farm for the Harper’s
Ferry campaign and soon after enlisted with them. When the Chatham
Convention was held he went to Canada to attend it. While waiting
for the leader to complete his plans for the invasion, Taylor found
work at his trade in Illinois. He waited impatiently for many months
for notice to join the expedition. At times he feared that he was
not to be included in the select band that was to strike the blow
and he wrote to an Iowa friend: “My hopes were crushed and I felt as
though I was deprived of my chief object in life. I believe that
fate has decreed me for this undertaking, although at one time I had
given up being wanted.” But early in July, 1859, a letter came from
Kagi telling him to “come on.” He wrote back: “It is my chief desire
to add fuel to the flame. My ardent passion for the work is my
thought by day and my dream by night.” He raised what money was due
him and at once started for the rendezvous at Chambersburg,
Pennsylvania, paying his own expenses. He was now twenty-one years
of age and is described as of medium height, rather heavy in build,
strong and capable of great endurance. His complexion was dark, his
hair reddish-brown, his eyes dark brown, large and full. He was
smooth-faced and boyish looking. He was a constant student, always
carrying books with him. He was a stenographer, and played the
violin. He was quiet but persistent in his purposes, faithful,
courageous and loyal. When John Brown issued his eleven orders, just
before the night of the attack, No. 6 required Captain Watson Brown
and Steward Taylor to “hold the covered bridge over the Potomac and
arrest anyone attempting to cross, using pikes, if resistance is
offered, instead of Sharpe’s rifles.” Taylor was cool and fearless
through out the conflict. He escorted one of Brown’s prisoners to
his home, to let his family know of his safety, and brought him back
through crowds of armed, excited, desperate, drunken men. Later on
in the day, while bravely fighting near the engine house, he
received a mortal wound. He fell in the thickest of the fight and
suffered great agony for three hours, when death came to his relief.
The day before the attack he remarked to his comrades that he felt
he would be one of the first killed. He was so impressed with the
presentiment that he wrote farewell letters to his friends at home
and then calmly marched to his death. Anne Brown, who kept house for
her father, brothers and their comrades at the Kennedy farm, says of
Steward Taylor: “He was one who could never have betrayed a friend
or deserted a post.”
Jeremiah G. Anderson was the grandson of an officer
of the American Revolution. His father, John Anderson, left the
slave State of Virginia soon after his marriage and settled in
Putnam County, Indiana, where Jeremiah was born on the 17th
of April, 1833. After his father’s death, his mother moved with her
family to Des Moines, Iowa. Jeremiah was well educated. He was sent
by his mother to a Presbyterian Academy at Kossuth, in 1854, to
prepare for the ministry. Hon. James W. McDill, afterwards Judge,
and United States Senator, was one of his instructors. Judge McDill
said “he was an eccentric young man, quiet and very studious.” But
he had no taste for the orthodox ministry. In an essay he declared
his belief in universal salvation and soon after became a
Spiritualist. In 1857, Jeremiah went to Kansas and took a claim on
the Little Osage. He joined Colonel Montgomery’s army and fought
with him to make Kansas a free State. He afterward served under John
Brown and was with him in one of his successful incursions for the
liberation of Missouri slaves. He again joined his old commander in
New York, where he was organizing the Harper’s Ferry campaign and
was one of his most trusted and faithful friends. John Brown told
Gerrit Smith that “Anderson was more than a friend; he was as a
brother and a son.” Three days before his execution Captain Brown
said: “My brother Jeremiah was fighting bravely by my side at
Harper’s Ferry up to the moment when I was struck down.” When
Colonel Lee’s marines broke through the barricade and charge on its
five defenders, Anderson was pierced with three bayonets as his
smoking rifle fell from his grasp. Mortally wounded he was dragged
out by his captors, thrown down on the stone flagging and left to
the mercy of the brutal crowd. He lingered there in great agony for
three hours, subjected to the most fiendish tortures. A gang of
Virginia “chivalry” now mustered courage to approach the disarmed
and dying man, kicking his face with their heavy boots, then opening
his eyes, they spat tobacco juice into them, while others forced
their filthy quids into his mouth amid laughter, jeers and horrid
oaths. When death finally ended his sufferings, two village doctors
came and crowded his mutilated body into a salt barrel, stamping it
down with their feet. They carted their prey toward their office and
that was the last seen of Jeremiah G. Anderson, the close friend of
John Browns and one of the bravest Iowa soldiers who ever marched to
the field of death.
Edwin Coppoc was born near Salem, Ohio, June 30,
1835. His father died when he was a child. He lived many years with
his grandfather, going to district school and working on a farm. He
is described as a studious, industrious boy of cheerful disposition.
His eyes and hair were brown and his skin fair. His head was large
and well formed; he was fond of athletic sports and a genial
companion. As a young man he was intelligent, active, brave, loyal
and the soul of honor. He had winning manners, was amiable, generous
and kind. Anne Brown says of Edwin: “He was a rare young fellow,
fearing nothing, yet possessed of great social traits, and no better
comrade have I ever met.” His mother was a woman of unusual
intelligence and force of character. She strongly opposed the
determination of her sons to enlist in the desperate enterprise. She
had married again and her sons were living with her at Springdale
when John Brown and his men came there to prepare for the Virginia
invasion. Her boys eagerly listened to the story of the wrongs and
cruelties inflicted upon the helpless slaves, as eloquently told by
John Brown, and longed to help them to freedom. Edwin and his
younger brother, Barclay, at last determined to join the young men
who were drilling at the Maxson farm and to follow wherever the old
liberator should strike the next blow for emancipation. On the 15th
of July a letter came from John Brown requesting them to come on the
Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. On the 25th they bade their
mother good-by and started ostensibly for Ohio. But their mother was
not deceived; she knew too well their destination and expected never
to see them again. Order No. 9, made out by Captain Brown the day of
the attack, details “lieut. Albert Hazlett and Edwin Coppoc to hold
the armory opposite the engine house after it is taken, remaining
there until morning, when further orders will be given.” The fight
began early in the forenoon and Brown was so hotly engaged that his
usual good judgment failed him and he did not realize the great
peril until his little band was hemmed in on all sides by
overwhelming numbers and retreat to the mountains was impossible.
His detachments, widely separated, stood at their posts with a
courage never surpassed in the annals of warfare. One by one they
fell before the volleys pouring in upon them from every side. We
hear of Edwin Coppoc standing at his post at the armory gates, while
balls rained around him like hailstones. Soon after he joined Brown
at the engine house and the siege began. Watson and Oliver, sons of
the leader, were mortally wounded, but the heroic Watson fought on
to the last. John Brown, his son Watson, Jerry Anderson, Edwin
Coppoc, Dauphin A. Thompson, Steward Taylor and Shields Green were
now the only survivors left on the Virginia side. Escape was
impossible, and they determined to die fighting, knowing that no
mercy would be shown them as prisoners. Col. Robert E. Lee, who was
now in command of their assailants, sent a message to Brown
demanding his surrender.
“No!” said Brown, “we prefer to die here.”
Firing began again on both sides, while Lee formed a
column for assault.
Few know how near the coming Southern Confederacy
came to losing its greatest military leader at this moment at the
hands of an Iowa boy. Edwin Coppoc saw from his port-hole the blue
uniform of the commander and instantly drew a deadly bead on Lee at
close range. Jesse W. Graham, one of Brown’s prisoners, who was
watching Coppoc, knew Lee and saw his danger. Instantly springing
forward he caught the rifle before Coppoc could fire and during the
struggle Lee stepped out of range, and so lived to strike the
deadliest blow against his country that it ever encountered. Had
Coppoc’s bullet gone to its brilliant mark, a hundred thousand lives
of American soldiers might have been spared.
When the shock of the final charge came Brown,
Anderson, and Thompson went down beneath the thrusts of sabers and
bayonets. Edwin Coppoc fired the last shot and he and Green alone
were left unhurt to surrender. The fight was ended. Ten of the
little band were slain. Brown and Stevens were desperately wounded
and with Coppoc, Green and Copeland, were prisoners. William
Thompson and W. H. Leeman, who had before surrendered, were
butchered in cold blood by the Virginia “chivalry.” Harper’s Ferry
had been held fifty-eight hours by seventeen men against the
assaults of from five hundred to 1,500 armed citizens and militia
from Maryland and Virginia.*
Nowhere in modern warfare is there recorded such an
unequal contest of similar duration. Of the immortal seventeen three
were Iowa boys under twenty-four years of age. On the 22d of
November Edwin Coppoc wrote home an account of the battle in which
he says:
“Eleven of our little band are now sleeping in
their bloody garments with the cold earth above them. Braver men
never lived; truer men to their plighted word never banded together…
As our comrades fell we could not minister to their wants as they
deserved, for we were surrounded by troops firing volley after
volley, and we had to keep up a brisk fire in return to keep them
from charging upon us. Watson Brown was wounded on Monday, at the
same time Stevens was, while carrying a flag of truce; but he got
back to the engine house. He fought as bravely as any man. When the
fight was over he got worse. He and Green and myself were put in the
watch-house. Watson kept getting worse until Wednesday morning, and
begged hard for a bed, but could not get one. I pulled off my coat
and put it under him and placed his head in my lap, and in that
position he died… Whatever may be our fate, rest assured we shall
not shame our dead companions by a shrinking fear. They lived and
died like brave men; we, I trust shall do the same.”
On the 19th Edwin Coppoc, Green and
Copeland were taken to Charleston jail, which was guarded by State
militia with two cannon trained on it. Edwin’s trial began on the
afternoon of November 1st and ended the following day
with conviction. He was sentenced to be hung on the 16th
of December. He bore himself bravely through the ordeal and calmly
awaited his doom. He and Cook were confined in the same cell and
were very warm friends. Great sympathy was felt for Edwin Coppoc and
it was not confined to his Ohio and Iowa friends. Even Governor Wise
could not refrain from expressing his admiration for his noble
bearing through all the trying scenes of the battle, surrender,
trial and conviction. He asked no favors, made no complaints, but
calmly accepted the consequences of his heroic effort to free the
slaves. He asked no favors, made no complaints, but calmly accepted
the consequences of his heroic effort to free the slaves. He faced
his awful doom without a murmur. His grandfather and uncle from
Salem, Ohio and Thomas Gwynn, of Cedar County, Iowa, went to
Virginia to appeal to Governor Wise for a commutation of his
sentence to imprisonment, and to his credit let it be known that the
Governor made such a recommendation to the Legislature, as, in cases
of treason, he had not the power to interfere. A committee of that
body recommended the commutation, but the Virginia Legislature
demanded his death. Shields Green, the faithful negro, managed to
secrete an old knife when captured, which he now gave to Coppoc.
Edwin contrived to notch the blade into a rude saw. With this he and
cook sawed the shackles from their limbs and digging a hole through
the brick wall of their cell the night before execution, made a bold
strike for freedom. But the guards discovered them as they crept out
and they were returned to their cell.
The few remaining hours of their lives were spent in
writing farewell letters to their friends. The morning of their last
day dawned upon Cook and Coppoc. They were as calm and brave in
death as they had been through the two days of fierce battle. Their
comrades, Green and Copeland, were executed at 10:30 a. m., December
16th, and at half-past twelve Cook and Coppoc were taken
from their cells. They were permitted to bid Hazlett and Stevens
goodby on their way to the scaffold. When the black caps were drawn
over their heads they clasped each other’s hands in a last farewell
and calmly met their doom. Edwin’s body was taken by his friends to
his boyhood home at Salem, and there laid to rest among his kindred.
Barclay Coppoc, Edwin’s younger brother, was born
January 4, 1839. He was somewhat taller than Edwin, of slender
build, brown hair, bold, large eyes, and a determined expression. He
was threatened with consumption from boyhood. When nineteen years of
age he joined a party going to Kansas. Emigrant life improved his
health and he enjoyed the stirring events of the Free-State conflict
with the Missouri invaders.
Here he met Aaron D. Stevens, Richard Realf and John
Brown, and enlisted in a number of their expeditions. When his old
leader came to Springdale, a year later, Barclay was ready to again
take up arms against slavery. As we have seen, he was not in the
desperate fight at Harper’s Ferry, from the fact that he was sent
with Owen Brown’s party to guard their arms on Maryland side. After
all was lost and they escaped to the mountains, Owen Brown was by
common consent made their leader. A large reward was offered by
Governor Wise for their arrest and delivery to the jail of Jefferson
County. The country was soon alive with armed men hunting for the
fugitives. Governor wise described Barclay Coppoc as follows:
“He is about twenty years of age; is about five
feet seven and a half inches in height, with hazel eyes and brown
hair, wears a light mustache, and has a consumptive look.”
Each member of the party was as minutely described.
Cook was so well known at Harper’s Ferry that a perfect description
was given of him and reward of $1,000 was offered for his capture.
As the men passed near Chambersburg, in the mountains, Cook could
not resist the temptation to venture into town in the darkness of
night to see his young wife and say goodby before going on to
Canada. His companions protested most earnestly but he started on,
after appointing a place to meet them before morning. They waited at
the meeting place long and anxiously but never saw him again.
The story of the fearful sufferings of these men as
they wandered for thirty-six days through the wilds of the Maryland
and Pennsylvania mountains would fill a volume subsisting on
un-ground field corn, occasional fruit, raw chicken now and then,
without shelter or fire, huddling together when sleeping amid
chilling rains, sleet and snow, with feet lacerated by sharp rocks
and thorns, always nearly perishing from hunger, human suffering
reached its limit. They were pursued by human and brute
bloodhounds—the first eager for blood money and the latter thirsting
for their life blood. Merriam soon gave out. He was left on a
railroad track, entered an obscure station and, at a great risk,
took a train and escaped.
After reaching northern Pennsylvania, starving and
utterly exhausted, the others at last ventured to seek shelter at a
farmhouse. Weeks had elapsed since they had escaped and not a word
had reached them of the fate of their comrades. A paper was lying on
the table. Tidd took it up and began to read. His face paled as he
read on. Owen and Barclay were watching him intently. With a forced
calmness Tidd then began to read aloud the story of the trial and
death sentence of John Brown and Edwin Coppoc and the capture of
Cook and Hazlett. Tears rolled down Barclay’s cheeks as the fate of
his brother, the old captain and the gallant Cook was read; but not
a word dared they utter. After leaving them, it seems that Cook had
suddenly come to a clearing in the woods before dark, and found
himself face to face with three wood choppers. Two of them were
stalwart brothers named Logan, professional slave-catchers. They had
seen the description of Cook and knew of the $1,000 reward. They
recognized and seized him at once, and binding his arms, delivered
him over to the Virginia officers and obtained the reward. One of
the Logans joined the rebel army two years later and was killed by a
Union bullet. The other lived many years, always suffering remorse
for the infamous sale of the gallant Cook to the Virginia hangman.
He was finally crushed to death beneath the wheels of a railroad
train.
The three famished men traveled on, after a night’s
rest for the first time in a month under a roof, and after a few
days more felt reasonably safe to travel by daylight. Coppoc soon
after took a train for Iowa, which he safely reached, worn almost to
a skeleton by starvation and exposure. He appeared suddenly in his
old home on the 17th of December and met a warm and
tearful welcome. His brother Edwin and his comrade cook had died on
a Virginia scaffold the day before. Barclay was so near death from
his terrible sufferings that his Springdale friends determined to
defend him in his own home from surrender to the Virginia hangman.
Armed and drilled, the guard kept nightly watch over him for many
weeks. F. C. Galbraith, of Springdale, thus describes the plans of
his defenders:
“Springdale is in arms, and is prepared at a
half-hour’s notice to give his pursuers a reception of two hundred
shots. There are three of our number who always know his
whereabouts, and nobody else knows anything of him. He is never seen
at night where he was during the day, and there are men on watch at
Davenport, Muscatine, Iowa City, West Liberty and Tipton. It is
intended to baffle them in every possible way without bloodshed.” |
