CIVIL WAR's ORIGINS - JOHN BROWN

[Part of Constituting America’s 90 Day Study - Days that Shaped America]

On the evening of Oct. 16, 1859, John Brown and his raiders unleashed 36 hours of terror on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia).

Brown's raid marked a cataclysmic moment of change for America and the world. It ranks up there with Sept. 11, the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and the shots fired on Lexington Common and Concord Bridge during the momentous day of April 19, 1775. Each of these days marked a point when there was no turning back. Contributing events may have been prologue, but once these fateful days took place, America was forever changed.

Americans at the time knew that the raid was not the isolated work of a madman. Brown was the well financed and supported "point of the lance" for the abolition movement.

He was a major figure among the leading abolitionists and intellectuals of the time. This included Gerrit Smith, the second wealthiest man in America and business partner of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Among other ventures, Smith was a patron of Oberlin College, where Brown's father served as a trustee. Thus was born a 20-year friendship.

Through Smith, Brown moved among America's elite, conversing with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, journalists, religious leaders and politicians.

Early on, Brown deeply believed that the only way to end slavery was through armed rebellion. His vision was to create a southern portal for the Underground Railway in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The plan was to raise a small force and attack the armory in Harpers Ferry. There Brown would obtain additional weapons and then move into the Blue Ridge to establish his mountain sanctuary for escaping slaves.

Brown anticipated having escaped slaves swell his rebellious ranks and protect his sanctuary. He planned to acquire hundreds of metal tipped pikes as the weapon of choice.

The idea of openly rebelling against slavery was an extreme position in the 1850s. Abolitionist leaders felt slavery would either become economically obsolete or had faith that their editorials would shame the federal government to end the practice.

For years Brown remained the lone radical voice in the elite salons of New York and Boston. He looked destined to remain on the fringes of the anti-slavery movement when a series of events shook the activists' trust in working within the system and shifted sentiment toward Brown's solution.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 forced local public officials in free states to help recover escaped slaves. The federally sanctioned intrusion of slavery into the North began tipping the scales in favor of Brown's agenda.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 destroyed decades of carefully crafted compromises that limited slavery’s westward expansion.  The Act ignited a regional civil war as pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers fought each other prior to a referendum on the state’s status – slave or free.  Smith enlisted the help of several of the more active abolitionists to underwrite Brown's guerilla war against slavery in Kansas in 1856-57. This group, including some of America’s leading intellectuals, went on to become the Secret Six, who pledged to help Brown with his raid.

The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision in 1857, and its striking down of Wisconsin's opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act in March 1859, set the Secret Six and Brown on their collision course with Harpers Ferry.

Today, Harpers Ferry is a scenic town of 300 people, but in 1859 it was one of the largest industrial complexes south of the Mason Dixon Line. The Federal Armory and Rifle Works were global centers of industrial innovation and invention. The mass production of interchangeable parts, the foundation of the modern industrial era, was perfected along the banks of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.

Brown moved into the Harpers Ferry area on July 3, 1859, establishing his base at the Kennedy Farm a few miles north in Maryland. The broader abolitionist movement remained divided about an armed struggle. During August 19-21, 1859, a unique debate occurred. At a quarry outside Chambersburg, Pa., Frederick Douglass and Brown spent hours debating whether anyone had a moral obligation to take up arms against slavery. Douglass refused to join Brown but remained silent about the raid. Douglass’ aide, Shields Green, was so moved by Brown’s argument, he joined Brown on the raid, was captured, tried, and executed.

The American Civil War began the moment Brown and his men walked across the B&O railroad bridge and entered Harpers Ferry late on the evening of Oct. 16, 1859. Brown's raiders secured the bridges and the armories as planned. Hostages were collected from surrounding plantations, including Col. Lewis W. Washington, great grandnephew of George Washington. A wagon filled with “slave pikes” was brought into town.  Brown planned to arm freed slaves with the pikes assuming they had little experience with firearms. 

As Brown and his small force waited for additional raiders with wagons to remove the federal weapons, local militia units arrived and blocked their escape. Militia soldiers and armed townspeople methodically killed Brown’s raiders, who were arrayed throughout the industrial complexes. 

Eventually, the surviving raiders and their hostages retreated into the Armory’s Fire Engine House for their last stand.  Robert E. Lee and a detachment of U.S. Marines from Washington, DC arrived on Oct. 18.  The Marines stormed the Engine House, killing or capturing Brown and his remaining men, and freeing the hostages.  The raid was over.

Brown survived the raid. His trial became a national sensation as he chose to save his cause instead of himself. Brown rejected an insanity plea in favor of placing slavery on trial. His testimony, and subsequent newspaper interviews while awaiting execution on Dec. 2, 1859, created a fundamental emotional and political divide across America that made civil war inevitable.

Fearing that abolitionists were planning additional raids or slave revolts, communities across the South formed their own militias and readied for war. There was no going back to pre-October America.

Edmund Ruffin, one of Virginia's most vocal pro-slavery and pro-secession leaders, acquired several of Brown's "slave pikes." He sent them to the governors of slave-holding states, each labeled "Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren."  Many of the slave pikes were publicly displayed in southern state capitols, further inflaming regional emotions. 

On April 12, 1861, Ruffin lit the fuse on the first cannon fired at Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.  The real fuse had been lit months earlier by Brown at Harpers Ferry.

CIVIL WAR's ORIGINS - KANSAS

[Part of Constituting America’s 90 Day Study - Days that Shaped America]

The cascade of events leading to John Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid, and 700,000 dead on countless Civil War battlefields, began with a cynical ploy by Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas to help land speculators and political donors.

America’s founding was an intricately crafted series of compromises and rules of engagement to balance regional interests.  One of the fundamental points of conflict was slavery. 

Slavery was integral to the economic vitality and culture of southern states. As America expanded westward, increasingly complex arrangements maintained the North/South regional political balance.  Western settlers quickly became a third regional interest. 

For decades, three titans of the U.S. Senate: Daniel Webster representing Northern interests, John Calhoun representing Southern interests, and Henry Clay representing the West debated and compromised to keep America united.  Their agreements were tested as the Louisiana Purchase, and then the Mexican War, created vast land masses for settlement, economic development, and political power.

Slavery became the epicenter of regional rivalries. The South wanted to maintain parity in the Senate, balancing adding a new free state with a slave state.  The Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850 maintained the political balance while avoiding confronting slavery.  Most Americans, even Southerners, hated the institution.  They hoped that slavery, if left alone, would somehow fade away over decades to come.

In the minority were Northern abolitionists, who wanted to end slavery in their lifetime.  There were also Southern slavery advocates, who hoped to expand slavery westward and even southward by annexing Caribbean and Central American lands to bolster their power.  The moderates held off both factions until the lure of land speculation, government contracts, and quick profits were added into the mix.

It began with the proposed trans-continental railroad to California. Southerners wanted the rail line to take a southern route. James Gadsden, President Franklin Pierce’s Ambassador to Mexico, negotiated the purchase of Mexican lands in what is now the southern border of Arizona and New Mexico on December 30, 1853 to assure sufficient railroad rights-of-way through less mountainous terrain.

The North wanted a northern route that began at St. Louis, Missouri and linked to Chicago, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. Most northern business leaders favored the northern route and felt that organization of the Nebraska Territory would facilitate this decision. However, rival business factions within Missouri wanted control of the route and the potential fortunes to be made from land speculation. Pro-slave forces threatened to block any efforts to organize Nebraska because Missouri would then be surrounded on its west, east, and north by free states.

Senator Stephen Douglas was a key architect of the Compromise of 1850 and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories.  Douglas already had presidential aspirations, having lost the 1852 Democratic Party nomination to Franklin Pierce.  He was preparing for another run in 1856.  He wanted to help his Missouri-based political and financial allies, while avoiding a confrontation with Southerners. [1]

On January 4, 1854, Douglas introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850.  It opened the entire territory to popular or “squatter” sovereignty for determining whether the territories would be free or slave. At this time the Nebraska Territory encompassed the entire Louisiana Purchase from the Missouri Compromise line to the Canadian Border. Indiana Representative George Washington Julian, who would serve as the Chairman of the Committee on Organization for the 1856 Republican Convention, commented, “The whole question of slavery was thus re-opened.” [2]

The Congressional debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Act was tumultuous. Ohio Senator, Salmon Chase, published, "The Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States", in the New York Times on January 24, 1854. He declared the abandonment of the Missouri Compromise a, “gross violation of a sacred pledge” and an “atrocious plot” to convert free territory into a “dreary region of despotism, inhabited by masters and slaves.” [3]

Northerners, and many Westerners, felt Southern politicians were dealing in bad faith.  The “Nebraska Act” was viewed as a bold Southern power grab that threatened the nation’s future. Protests against the “Nebraska Act” spread throughout the North.  Highly charged emotions fractured the Democratic Party, destroyed the Whig Party, and launched the Republican Party. Sixty-seven-years of America’s civic culture was falling apart.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed the Senate in March and the House of Representatives in early May. President Pierce signed the bill into law on May 30, 1854.

New York Senator William H. Seward responded to victorious Southern Senators by stating, “Since there is no escaping your challenge, I accept it in behalf of the cause of freedom. We will engage in a competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right.” [4]

Both pro-slavery and anti-slave forces moved into the Kansas territory engaging in brutal guerilla warfare over the next five years. This sporadic civil war became known as “Bleeding Kansas”.  It even spilled into the U.S. Senate Chamber. On May 22, 1856, South Carolina Representative, Preston Brooks assaulted Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner in the Senate Chamber, bludgeoning him into unconsciousness. [5]

The regional civil war that erupted among Kansas settlers attracted the attention of John Brown, a key leader within the abolitionist movement.  Wealthy and politically connected abolitionists funded and armed Brown, his many sons, and a growing number of paramilitary units, to enter the Kansas maelstrom.

Kansas became a killing ground, and a proving ground for Brown’s violent approach to ending slavery.  The nation had embarked on a path leading to the most cataclysmic event in American history

REFERENCES

[1] Mayer, George H., The Republican Party 1854-1966 Second Edition (Oxford University Press, New York, 1966) page 25.

[2] Julian, George Washington, Political Recollections; Anthology - America; Great Crises in Our History Told by its Makers; Vol. VII (Veterans of Foreign Wars, Chicago, 1925) page 212.

[3] McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom (Oxford University Press, New York, 1988) page 124.

[4] Ibid., page 145.

[5] Ibid., page 150.

COMMEMORATION CONUMDRUM

This has also appeared in: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/may/31/scot-faulkner-commemoration-conundrum/   

 

Harpers Ferry National Historical Park is being celebrated with a Quarter featuring the fire house used by John Brown during his history changing October 1859 raid.

 

The image on the coin is an accurate depiction of the current fire house and its location in the lower town of Harpers Ferry.  However, the fire house and its location are very different from the actual building and setting that ignited America’s Civil War.

 

This is the challenge for historians and Park personnel.  In his famous book, “Sacred Ground; Americans and their Battlefields”, Edward Tabor Linenthal, provides examples of how we change our history by the ways we preserve and honor it.

 

Linenthal discusses placing monuments on the Gettysburg Battlefield, and removing the upper decks of the Battleship Arizona to create the iconic memorial at Pearl Harbor.  In these and other cases, our desire to honor the touch stones of America ends their purity.  These changes turn history into icons that become more relatable and impactful to future generations.

 

John Brown’s fire house is the perfect example of turning history into iconography. 

 

The fire house John Brown and his followers retreated to on the Harpers Ferry Armory grounds was a very different building than the one we honor.

 

The belfry, the most iconic aspect of the fire house, did not exist at the time of the raid.  Drawings and lithographs from the period show no belfry or bell.  The cupola was added after the raid.  No bell was ever placed in the tower.  Civil War era photos show the tower, but never the bell.  Without the cupola, the fire house was more a shed for fire engines. It was referred to as the “engine house” prior to the raid.

 

The bell was promoted as the “second most famous bell in America” by Union veterans and early 20^th Century historians as they assumed John Brown was going to ring the bell to summon rebelling slaves to his cause. Therefore, the Fire House Bell was tied to ushering in Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” linking it to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

 

The bell only rang for work shifts in a tower at the Hall Rifle Works, along the Shenandoah River near the current Route 340 Bridge.  Markings on the bell reference 1841. This was the bell the 13^th Massachusetts Regiment removed and hid near Williamsport, Maryland after the Battle of Antietam in September 1862.  In 1892, these veterans recovered the bell from its hiding place while attending an encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR).  They brought it to their GAR Club House in Marlborough, Massachusetts.  Eventually, the bell ended its travels by being installed in its own bell tower in Marlborough’s town park.  The town reveres the bell to this day.

 

The fire house itself witnessed extensive travels and changes.  The Federal Armory was destroyed during the Civil War.  The Fire House, nicked named “John Brown’s Fort”, became just another derelict building on the Armory grounds.

 

In 1891 the “Fort” was sold for display at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.  It was taken apart and transported to the World’s Fair.  In the process, many bricks were removed as mementos.  The result was shrinking the building’s size by a third.  The Fort was then rebuilt backwards. The office was originally on the right side.  It is now on the left.

 

After the Fair, the Fort remained in Chicago because there was no home for it. The B&O Railroad had built a new set of tracks across the Armory grounds.  The Fort’s original site was now under a twenty-foot high embankment. 

 

Eventually, the Murphy Family arranged for the Fort to be relocated on their farm in Harpers Ferry.  The farm was known as the Chambers Farm, which was the site of A.P. Hill’s nighttime flank march that forced the surrender of the Union garrison on September 15, 1862. 

 

The Fort sat on the Murphy/Chambers field.  Commemorative plaques were installed on the walls inside the fire engine garage. 

 

On August 17, 1906, the Fort was the site of another historic moment.  It was visited as a pilgrimage by Delegates from the Second Niagara Movement, the early version of the NAACP, to honor its role in Emancipation.  Additional plaques were added to its walls.

 

Three years later, Storer College , the first African American school for higher learning, bought the Fort and moved it to their campus on Camp Hill.  There it remained a campus focal point until the College’s closure and acquisition by the National Park Service.  In 1968, the Fort was moved to its present location just a hundred feet from its original foundation, marked by a small obelisk atop the B&O railroad embankment.

 WikiMiniAtlas

 

Buy the coin. Visit the Fort.  Honor its role in America’s industrial revolution, abolitionist movement, Civil War, and African American history.  Also, ponder the building’s journey from fact to legend, function to icon.

 

[Scot Faulkner is President of Friends of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park]

 

Brown’s Raid Changed World

Published in The Washington Times

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/15/browns-raid-changed-world/print/#ixzz2IqfFwNdv

America is about to commemorate one of the most important events of the 19th century. On the evening of Oct. 16, 1859, John Brown and his raiders unleashed 36 hours of terror on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Va.

Brown's raid marked a cataclysmic moment of change for America and the world. It ranks up there with Sept. 11, the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, and the shots fired on Lexington Common and Concord Bridge during the momentous day of April 19, 1775. Each of these days marked a point when there was no turning back. Contributing events may have been prologue, but once these fateful days took place, America was forever changed.

Americans at the time knew that the raid was not the isolated work of a madman. Brown was the well financed and supported "point of the lance" for the abolition movement.

He was a major figure among the leading abolitionists and intellectuals of the time. This included Gerrit Smith, the second wealthiest man in America and business partner of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Among other ventures, Smith was a patron of Oberlin College, where Brown's father served as a trustee. Thus was born a 20-year friendship.

Through Smith, Brown moved among America's elite, conversing with Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, journalists, religious leaders and politicians.

Early on, Brown deeply believed that the only way to end slavery was through armed rebellion. His vision was to create a southern portal for the Underground Railway in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The plan was to raise a small force and attack the armory in Harpers Ferry. There Brown would obtain additional weapons and then move into the Blue Ridge to establish his mountain sanctuary for escaping slaves.

Brown anticipated having escaped slaves swell his rebellious ranks and protect his sanctuary. He planned to acquire hundreds of metal tipped pikes as the weapon of choice.

The idea of openly rebelling against slavery was an extreme position in the 1840s. Abolitionist leaders felt slavery would either become economically obsolete or had faith that their editorials would shame the federal government to end the practice.

For years Brown remained the lone radical voice in the elite salons of New York and Boston. He looked destined to remain on the fringes of the anti-slavery movement when a series of events shook the activists' trust in working within the system and shifted sentiment toward Brown's solution.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 forced local public officials in free states to help recover escaped slaves. The federally sanctioned intrusion of slavery into the North began tipping the scales in favor of Brown's agenda.

Smith enlisted the help of several of the more active abolitionists to underwrite Brown's guerilla war against slavery in Kansas in 1856-57. This group went on to formally become the Secret Six, who pledged to help Brown with his raid.

The Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision in 1857, and its striking down of Wisconsin's opposition to the Fugitive Slave Act in March 1859, set the Secret Six and Brown on their collision course with Harpers Ferry.

Today, Harpers Ferry is a scenic town of 310 people, but in 1859 it was one of the largest industrial complexes south of the Mason Dixon Line. The Federal Armory and Rifle Works were global centers of industrial innovation and invention. The mass production of interchangeable parts, the foundation of the modern industrial era, was perfected along the banks of the Shenandoah River.

Brown moved into the Harpers Ferry area on July 3, 1859, establishing his base at the Kennedy Farm a few miles north in Maryland. The broader abolitionist movement remained divided about an armed struggle. During Aug. 19-21, 1859, a unique debate occurred. At a quarry outside Chambersburg, Pa., Frederick Douglass and Brown debated whether they had a moral imperative to take up arms against evil. Douglass refused to join Brown, but remained silent about the raid.

The American Civil War began the moment Brown and his men walked across the B&O railroad bridge and entered Harpers Ferry late on the evening of Oct. 16, 1859. Brown's raiders secured the bridges and the armories as planned. However, as they waited for additional wagons to remove the federal weapons, local militia units arrived and blocked their escape. Robert E. Lee and a detachment of U.S. Marines arrived on Oct. 18 and ended the raid.

Brown survived the raid. His trial became a sensation as he chose to save his cause instead of himself. Brown rejected an insanity plea in favor of placing slavery on trial. His testimony, and subsequent letters and interviews while awaiting execution on Dec. 2, 1859, created a nationwide emotional and political divide that made civil war inevitable.

Fearing that abolitionists were planning additional raids or slave revolts, communities across the South formed their own militias and readied for war. There was no going back to pre-October America.

Edmund Ruffin, one of Virginia's most vocal pro-slavery and pro-secession leaders, acquired a number of Brown's "slave pikes." He sent them to the governors of slave-holding states, each labeled "Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren."

Many pikes were displayed in state capitols. On April 12, 1861, Ruffin lit the fuse on the first cannon fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, but the real fuse had been lit months earlier by Brown at Harpers Ferry.