Harpers Ferry: John Brown’s Raid Made Him a Martyr, Foreshadowing Trump’s Insurrection

A view of the Potomac River where it intersects the Shenandoah and the railroad bridge and tunnel on the AT from Harpers Ferry National Historical Park: Glynn Wilson

Secret Vistas –
By Glynn Wilson –

HARPERS FERRY, WV — John Brown was hanged for his insurrection against slavery in 1859 and is blamed by some for helping to start the Civil War. Donald Trump still walks free to play golf and run for office again after his insurrection to overthrow the United States government and establish America’s first dictatorship on these shores.

And in his famous statement at trial, Brown actually predicted a Trump getting away with his insurrection, and this is a worthy reminder of that. Think about this in a moment of silence (see below).

The 286 people who live in the historic little town of Harpers Ferry in Jefferson County, West Virginia — and that includes several National Park Service rangers — may know the historic and geographic significance of the place in the lower Shenandoah Valley at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, where the states of Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia meet. It’s also considered the philosophical heart of the Appalachian Trail and home to its headquarters, even though the mid-point on the trail from Georgia to Maine is further north in Pennsylvania.

But I’m willing to bet that not one of them has considered it as the mid-point between two of the most significant places to escape global warming and climate change in the Eastern U.S., the Blue Ridge mountains in and around Shenandoah National Park in Virginia and Catoctin Mountain in Maryland. This is the heart of the Appalachians, a 480 million year old mountain chain that runs roughly from the vicinity of Cheaha Mountain in northeast Alabama to the Green Mountains in Vermont, a region that author John McPhee described as Suspect Terrain.

But I believe this mid-Atlantic region will become far more important in the very near future as the droughts and wildfires in the West and hurricanes and floods in the South make those regions far less coveted as places for people to inhabit.

If you drive north from Front Royal, Virginia on U.S. Highway 340 to U.S. Route 15 in Thurmont, Maryland, as I’ve been doing for years on my quest to escape global warming in the summertime and especially this year, you will drive right by the entrance to Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Once you pass the entrance, you cross the bridge over the Shenandoah River and enter the state of Virginia for less than a mile, then cross the bridge over the Potomac River into Maryland.

If you take the time to stop and turn in, you will learn all about the place’s strategic significance during the Civll War, which may be why most tourists come here. But haven’t we heard just about enough of that history of late?

The history of the town goes back much further than that.

Thomas Jefferson/George Washington

Thomas Jefferson was enamored of the place, and this is where the Lewis and Clark Expedition began, no matter how controversial that may be these days.

In his Notes on the State of Virginia published in 1785, Jefferson stood on a high rock that now bears his name on October 25, 1783, and described the place.

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Sunrise view from Jefferson Rock, NPS/Cook

“The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature,” Jefferson wrote. “You stand on a very high point of land. On your right comes up the Shenandoah, having ranged along the foot of the mountain a hundred miles to seek a vent. On your left approaches the Patowmac in quest of a passage also. In the moment of their junction they rush together against the mountain, rend it asunder and pass off to the sea. The first glance of this scene hurries our senses into the opinion that this earth has been created in time, that the mountains were formed first, that the rivers began to flow afterwards, that in this place particularly they have been so dammed up by the Blue Ridge of mountains as to have formed an ocean which filled the whole valley; that, continuing to rise, they have at last broken over at this spot and have torn the mountain down from its summit to its base. The piles of rock on each hand, but particularly on the Shenandoah, the evident marks of their disruptions and avulsions from their beds by the most powerful agents in nature, corroborate the impression.

“But the distant finishing which nature has given the picture is of a very different character. It is a true contrast to the former. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous. For the mountains being cloven asunder, she presents to your eye, through the cleft, a small catch of smooth blue horizon, at an infinite distance in that plain country, inviting you, as it were, from the riot and tumult roaring around to pass through the breach and participate in the calm below. Here the eye ultimately composes itself; and that way, too, the road happens actually to lead. You cross the Patowmac above the junction, pass along its side through the base of the mountain for three miles, the terrible precipice hanging in fragments over you, and within about 20 miles reach Frederictown and the fine country around that. This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic.”

George Washington first recognized the strategic significance of the place, and helped establish an armory here.

John Brown

But the National Park Service and even Wikipedia say the town is most famous for John Brown’s raid on the Southern fort here, even though his siege failed to lead to a slave uprising. His speech at the end of his trial became so famous it made him a martyr for the cause of ending slavery in the United States.

His statement was published in full in hundreds of newspapers, and some historians have compared it in historical oratory to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

It was the top story in James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald in 1859.

“It is a mistake to call him an insurrectionist,” the author wrote. “He opposed the authority of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia! — there is no such thing. There is no civil society, no government; nor can such exist except on the basis of impartial equal submission of its citizens — by a performance of the duty of rendering justice between God and man. The government that refuses this is none but a pirate ship. Virginia herself is to-day only a chronic insurrection. I mean exactly what I say — I consider well my words — and she is a pirate ship. John Brown sails with letters of marque from God and Justice against every pirate he meets. He has twice as much right to hang Governor Wise as Governor Wise has to hang him.”

The harper’s Ferry Affair. John Brown, Wendell Phillips

In his statement, he could have been talking about Trump 162 years later.

“… had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.”

John Brown’s speech in full.

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GLC 5508.51 p.1. John Brown. Broadside: Address of John Brown to the Virginia Court, when about to receive the sentence of death, for his heroic attempt at Harper’s Ferry…, December 1859: The Gilder Lehrman Collection, courtesy of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.

In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, the design on my part to free the slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter, when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moved them through the country, and finally left them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again, on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.

I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case), had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that “all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them” [Matthew 7:12]. It teaches me, further, to “remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them” [Hebrews 13:3]. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit; so let it be done!

Let me say one word further.

I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances and animosity toward me, it has been fair and more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first [day] what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason, or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that kind.

Let me say, also, a word in regard to the statements made by some of those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was for the purpose I have stated.

Now I have done.

The story recently inspired a series on Showtime called “The Good Lord Bird,” a 2020 American historical drama based on the 2013 novel of the same name by James McBride. Focusing on John Brown’s attack on American slavery, the series was created and produced by Jason Blum with executive producers Ethan Hawke and Mark Richard.

THE GOOD LORD BIRD

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