HARPERS FERRY RAID

Kramer, Victor. The Harlem Renaissance Re-Examined. New York: AMS, 1987. A large volume of scholarly essays on a wide range of topics within the movement. Perry, Margaret. The Harlem Renaissance: An Annotated Bibliog- raphy and Commentary. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1982. A wonderful research tool on nineteen influ- ential period authors, complete with citations of published works. Singh, Amritjit. The Novels of the Harlem Renaissance: TwelveBlack Writers, 1923–1933. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976. Literary study of wide cross- section of black authors. Waldron, Edward E. Walter White and the Harlem Renaissance. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1978. A mono- graph on the influential civic leader’s role during the period. R. A. Lawson

HARPERS FERRY, CAPTURE OF. On 9 Septem- ber 1862, in Frederick, Maryland, General Robert E. Lee issued his famous “lost order.” To clear the enemy from his rear, Lee directed General Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson to capture the garrison at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia), and then hurry northward to rejoin the main army. The combined forces would then move through Hagerstown into Pennsylvania. But the “lost or- Countee Cullen. The prolific poet and one of the most der” had come into the Union general George B. Mc- prominent figures of the Harlem Renaissance. AP/Wide World Clellan’s possession. The defenders of Harpers Ferry put Photos up unexpected resistance against Jackson’s siege on Sep- tember 14 and did not surrender until the following day. Jackson rejoined Lee at Sharpsburg twenty-four hours The Harlem Renaissance as a movement represented late, a delay that nearly led to disaster at the Battle of a rebirth of African American culture in the United States. Antietam. As a product of black urban migration and black Ameri- cans’ disappointment with racism in the United States, BIBLIOGRAPHY the renaissance was aimed at revitalizing black culture Gallagher, Gary W., ed. The Antietam Campaign. Chapel Hill: with pride. In political life, literature, music, visual art, University of North Carolina Press, 1999. and other cultural areas, African Americans in the 1920s Teetor, Paul R. A Matter of Hours: Treason at Harper’s Ferry. put forth their individual and collective sense of dignity Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, in the face of an American culture that often considered 1982. them second-class citizens. Thomas Robson Hay/a. r.

BIBLIOGRAPHY See also Antietam, Battle of; Maryland, Invasion of. Franklin, John Hope, and Alfred A. Moss Jr. From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans. 8th ed. : McGraw-Hill, 2000. See chapter eighteen, 400–417. Clas- sic, and still excellent, account of the Harlem Renaissance, HARPERS FERRY RAID. The Harpers Ferry raid balancing narrative with interpretation of primary evidence. from 16 to 18 October 1859 was led by the abolitionist Huggins, Nathan Irvin. Harlem Renaissance. New York: Oxford . Brown captured the U.S. arsenal at Harpers University Press, 1971. Standard monograph on the Ferry, Virginia (subsequently West Virginia), at the con- movement. fluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. With the ———, ed. Voices from the Harlem Renaissance. New York:Oxford weapons seized there, he intended to arm the great num- University Press, 1976. Vast collection of primary docu- ber of slaves he thought would join him. But the plot was ments from the period. a failure, and Brown and most of his followers were either Kellner, Bruce, ed. The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictio- killed outright or captured and later executed. Neverthe- nary for the Era. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984. less, the raid, and the myth of John Brown it created, A useful reference tool on people, places, and a variety of accelerated the sectional divide over slavery and indirectly other subjects pertaining to the movement. helped achieve Brown’s agenda.

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John Brown. The wounded abolitionist lies down among his captors after his failed attempt to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Va., and provoke a mass insurrection by slaves; his raid was a contributing factor leading to the Civil War, and many Northerners came to regard him as a beloved martyr.

Background viewed Virginia, a slave state, as ready for black revolt. John Brown was born in Connecticut in 1800. He was a Brown consulted with , , deceitful businessman, a defendant in litigation in twenty- George Stearns, Franklin Sanborn, Thomas Wentworth one separate cases. However, he was able to inspire loyalty Higginson, , and Samuel Gridley Howe. among low and influential men alike. He had become an Several tried to dissuade Brown, but all except Douglass ardent sympathizer of the slaves by the 1830s. In 1855 he ended up agreeing to provide him with the money nec- moved with five of his sons to Kansas, where the slavery essary to launch the Harpers Ferry raid. They became issue was bitterly contested. On 24 May 1856, Brown led known as the . a party on a raid of Pottawatomie Creek, a frontier com- munity near Lawrence. In what has become known as the John Brown’s intentions at Harpers Ferry are mys- , Brown and his followers killed terious. After his capture he asserted that freeing slaves five proslavery men. The massacre exacerbated national was his only object, not killing slaveholders. On the other tensions over slavery by suggesting that antislavery forces hand, on 8 May 1858 in , Canada, he shared with were willing to commit violence. It also suggested that several dozen Negroes and white men a “provisional con- Brown saw himself as an agent of God. Murky evidence stitution” that provided for confiscating all the personal about Pottawatomie allowed Brown to avoid arrest. From and real property of slave owners and for maintaining a 1856 to 1859 he traveled between Kansas and New En- government throughout a large area. Since Brown did not gland, organizing antislavery raiding parties. In early 1858 expect to have more than a hundred men in his striking he began seeking support for the Harpers Ferry raid. force, the large army necessary for this operation would have to be composed of liberated slaves. Moreover, Brown’s The Plot little band already had plenty of guns at its disposal. By 1858 Brown had cultivated support among leading Therefore, the only thing to be gained by attacking the northern antislavery and literary figures. That year he ap- federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry was weapons, presumably proached his contacts with a plan to take an armed force to arm thousands of slaves. We can conclude that Brown into Virginia to rally the slaves, and resist by force any did not intend to kill people in the Harpers Ferry raid effort to prevent their being freed. Evidently Brown unless they got in his way. But he also intended to en-

98 HARPERS FERRY RAID courage a great many slaves to defend their freedom and were killed. Brown himself was wounded but was saved to give them the means to do so. from death because his assailant, in command of the as- sault team, had only a dress sword. Altogether, Brown’s Brown planned to strike at Harpers Ferry in the sum- force had killed four civilians and wounded nine. Of his mer of 1858, but his plans were interrupted by Hugh own men, ten were dead or dying, five had escaped the Forbes, an English soldier of fortune he had hired to train previous day, and seven were captured. troops. Disenchanted by Brown’s reneging on his wages, Forbes publicized the plot by describing it to U.S. sena- Brown’s scheme—leading an army of twenty-two tors Henry Wilson and William Seward. Wilson chastised men against a federal arsenal and the entire state of Vir- the Secret Six, warning them that Brown’s scheme would ginia—was amazingly amateurish. He left behind at his compromise the antislavery cause. The Secret Six told Maryland farm many letters that revealed his plans and Brown that he must go back to Kansas, which he did in exposed all of his confederates. He seized Harpers Ferry June 1858. In December he led a raid into Missouri, without taking food for his soldiers’ next meal. Most bi- where his band killed a slaveholder and liberated eleven zarrely, Brown tried to lead a slave insurrection without slaves whom they carried (in midwinter) all the way to notifying the slaves. As an abolitionist, he took it as an Ontario. This was Brown’s most successful operation ever. article of faith that slaves were seething with discontent It could have capped his antislavery career and gained him and only awaited a signal to throw off their chains. But a solid footnote in Civil War history books. But Brown the Harpers Ferry raid was so poorly planned and exe- saw his destiny in Virginia. cuted that slaves, even had they been as restive as Brown assumed, could not participate. The Raid In the summer of 1859, Brown went to Maryland and The Consequences rented a farm five miles from Harpers Ferry. There he In the six weeks that followed the raid, Republican and waited, mostly in vain, for additional men and money. By Democratic leaders denounced Brown’s act. But he had mid-October 1859 he had twenty-two followers and prob- shown a courage that won him grudging admiration in ably recognized that his force never would be any stronger. the South and legendary status in the North. Brown rec- On the night of 16 October, he and his band marched ognized that the manner of his death might be a great toward the Potomac with a wagonload of arms, cut the service to the antislavery cause. After a one-week trial, telegraph wires, crossed and captured the bridge, and during which he lay wounded on a pallet, he was con- moved into Harpers Ferry. Brown quickly seized the ar- victed of murder, treason, and insurrection. When he re- mory and its rifle works. He then sent out a detail to ceived his death sentence, he uttered words that became capture two local slaveholders along with their slaves. oratory of legend: This mission was accomplished. Meanwhile, Brown’smen Had I interfered in behalf of the rich, the pow- had stopped a Baltimore and Ohio train, inadvertently erful, the intelligent, the so-called great . . . every man killing the African American baggage master, but then al- in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of lowed the train to go on its way. On the morning of 17 reward rather than punishment....Now,ifitis October, Brown took a number of the armory’s employees deemed necessary that I should...mingle my blood hostage as they came in for work. Otherwise he remained . . . with the blood of millions in this slave country in the engine works of the arsenal, perhaps waiting, in his whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and un- mind, for the slaves to rise. By mid-morning, Maryland just enactments, I say, let it be done. and Virginia militia were on their way to Harpers Ferry, When Brown was hung at nearby Charles Town, on and the president of the Baltimore and Ohio railroad re- 2 December 1859, church bells tolled in many northern ported to Washington that some sort of insurrection was towns, cannons fired salutes, and prayer meetings adopted in progress. By the afternoon of the 17th, the militia had memorial resolutions. The execution dramatically deep- gained control of the bridges, driving off or killing Brown’s ened moral hostility to slavery. Such expressions of grief outposts. By 10 p.m., Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee, turned southern enchantment with Brown into panic. U.S. Cavalry, with his aide Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart, had Southerners identified Brown with the abolitionists, the arrived to take charge. abolitionists with Republicans, and Republicans with the Lee followed military protocol for the situation. He whole North. Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 fed ru- offered the Virginia militia a chance to capture the engine mors that the Republicans were letting loose dozens of works (which they declined), gave the insurrectionists a John Browns on the South. Radical southern newspapers chance to surrender, and was careful to avoid shooting claimed Harpers Ferry showed that the South could have Brown’s prisoners. On 18 October, Lee sent Stuart to ne- no peace as a part of the Union. John Brown’s raid moved gotiate with the leader of the raid. A veteran of Kansas, southern sentiments from mediation toward revolution. Stuart was astonished to recognize Brown. Once Brown Once the Civil War erupted, the ghost of John refused to surrender, Stuart waved in a dozen marines Brown inspired the Northern armies through the popular who charged with bayonets. It was all over in moments, song “John Brown’s Body.” Its best-known version spoke without a shot fired. One marine and two of Brown’s men of John Brown’s body moldering in the grave, of his de-

99 HARRIS V. McRAE parture to become a soldier in the army of the Lord, and the Hyde Amendment amended (rather than violated) of hanging the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, on Title XIX, it nevertheless did violate both the Fifth and a sour apple tree. In November 1861, , First Amendments. the wife of Secret Six member Samuel Gridley Howe, In 1977, however, the Supreme Court upheld state visited an army camp and heard the song. She awoke in laws similar to the Hyde Amendment, suggesting that the middle of the night with a creative urge to write down abortion would not be treated like other rights. Harris v. the words of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Upon McRae applied the same reasoning to the national gov- publication, this version of the John Brown song became ernment, reversing and remanding the district court rul- exalted. The words of the “Battle Hymn” have come ing while holding the Hyde Amendment constitutional. down through the years as the noblest expression of what “Although government may not place obstacles in the the North was fighting for in the Civil War. path of a woman’s exercise of her freedom of choice,” wrote Justice Potter Stewart, “it need not remove those BIBLIOGRAPHY of its own creation. Indigency falls in the latter category.” Oates, Stephen B. To Purge This Land with Blood: A Biography of The dissenters, especially Thurgood Marshall, argued John Brown. New York: Harper and Row, 1970. The best that the decision ignored “another world ‘out there’ ” in overall work among many. which poor women could not get abortions without as- Rossbach, Jeffery. Ambivalent Conspirators: John Brown, the Secret sistance from Medicaid. The Hyde Amendment fore- Six, and a Theory ofSlave Violence. Philadelphia: University shadowed a number of attacks on abortion rights after of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Evaluates Brown’s and his sup- 1989, both in individual state legislatures and, in 1995, in porters’ assumptions about the slaves’ responsiveness. a federal ban on abortions in military hospitals and for United States National Park Service. John Brown’s Raid. Wash- those covered by federal health plans. The Hyde Amend- ington, D.C.: Office of Publications, National Park Service, ment was still in effect in the early 2000s, although states 1974. Good visual representation of key locations at Har- retained the right to subsidize abortions with their own pers Ferry at the time of the raid. funds.

Timothy M. Roberts BIBLIOGRAPHY Baer, Judith A. Women in American Law. New York: Holmes and See also Antislavery; “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Meier, 1991. Bingham, Marjorie. Women and the Constitution. St. Paul, Minn.: The Upper Midwest Women’s History Center, 1990. HARRIS V. McRAE, 448 U.S. 297 (1980), a case in Hoff-Wilson, Joan. Law, Gender, and Injustice. New York: New which the Supreme Court upheld by a 5 to 4 vote the York University Press, 1991. power of Congress to exclude elective abortions from cov- erage under the Medicaid program. The Hyde Amend- Judith A. Baer/a. r. ment, named after Representative Henry Hyde and passed See also Abortion; Medicare and Medicaid; Pro-Choice in several versions since 1976, barred the use of federal Movement; Pro-Life Movement; Women’s Health. funds for abortions except when the mother’s life was in danger or when the pregnancy resulted from rape or in- cest (the latter clause was later repealed). Although a Re- HARRISBURG CONVENTION. After the Tariff publican, Hyde received enough bipartisan support for of 1824 proved unsatisfactory to the woolen interests and the bill to be enacted by a Democratic Congress and following the defeat of the Woolens Bill of 1827, the president. friends of protection called a convention at Harrisburg, Cora McRae was one of several pregnant Medicaid Pennsylvania, to agree on a new bill. Protectionist advo- recipients who brought suit, alleging that the Hyde Amend- cates held meetings throughout the northern states and ment violated the due process clause of the Fifth Amend- sent 100 delegates from thirteen states to the convention ment and the religion clauses of the First Amendment. At at Harrisburg, from 30 July to 3 August 1827. The con- the time, the plaintiffs had reason for optimism because vention produced a memorandum to Congress that set the Supreme Court had held that the government must forth the special needs of the woolens manufacturers and subsidize other rights, such as the right to counsel, for the the general value of protection. Because the tariff bill of indigent. In addition, Congress had established the Med- 1828 was drafted and passed for political ends, the de- icaid program in 1965 under Title XIX of the Social Se- mands of the memorandum were ignored. curity Act specifically to give federal aid to states choosing to reimburse the indigent for medical treatments they BIBLIOGRAPHY could not afford. McRae contended that Title XIX obli- Stanwood, Edward. American Tariff Controversies in the Nine- gated states receiving Medicaid funds to fund medically teenth Century. New York: Russell and Russell, 1967. necessary abortions despite the Hyde Amendment’s pro- Robert Fortenbaugh/c. w. visions. Indeed the federal district court granted McRae injunctive relief, ruling (491 F. Supp. 630) that although See also Tariff; Textiles; Wool Growing and Manufacture.

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