John Brown anniversary opens Civil War sesquicentennial

HARPERS FERRY, W. Va. - Three hours after darkness fell, John Brown and his band of armed men approached the bridge leading over the Potomac River to the dozing town. They aimed to seize the U.S. armory, grab its thousands of rifles, and start a slave revolt that would spread across the South.

It was 150 years ago today, Oct. 16, 1859. The long-haired, wild-eyed Brown was about to launch a raid that would hasten the Civil War and make him the most notorious man in America, a figure who still ignites controversy a century and a half later. Some see him as an Osama bin Laden; others, as a Christian soldier who gave his life to end human bondage.

"You could ask 100 people about John Brown and still get 100 opinions," said Jeff Bowers, a ranger at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, which plans three days of activities this weekend to commemorate Brown's raid.

The events help lift the curtain on the coming 150th anniversary, starting in April 2011, of the Civil War.

John Brown's raid

The old center of Harpers Ferry looks much as in 1859. The hunched shoulders of the Blue Ridge Mountains have kept development at bay. Two strong rivers, the Shenandoah and the Potomac, squeeze the town into a triangle. This was Virginia then; it became part of West Virginia in 1863.

A railroad bridge still spans the Potomac at the spot where Brown and his men - a dozen whites and a half-dozen free blacks - crept into town about 10:30 on a chilly, damp night.

The armory watchman, hearing muffled feet, went out with a lantern and was captured. When he refused to open the gate, one of Brown's men used a crowbar to twist off the chain.

Brown was in, and not a shot had been fired - not yet.

At 59, he cast a striking pose. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass, whom Brown had tried to recruit to lead a republic of freed slaves, had met with him that summer near Chambersburg, Pa., where the raid had been plotted. Douglass recalled Brown as "straight and symmetrical as a mountain pine." His eyes, he later wrote, were "full of light and fire."

Brown knew violence. He had joined a guerrilla war in Kansas over expansion of slavery. In what became known as the Pottawatomie Massacre, Brown and several men, including four of his sons, dragged five pro-slavers from cabins and killed them, some with broadswords.

A guidebook printed by the National Park Service says Brown "deliberately murdered" the men. But Paul Finkelman, a Brown scholar at Albany Law School, says the story is complex. Pro-slavery forces had threatened to kill Brown and his family.

"My own view of Brown is that he's not a terrorist in the modern sense of the word," Finkelman said. "He is not a stone-cold killer."

Having gained the armory, Brown dispersed his men to capture outposts in town and take hostages. They briefly seized a passing train.

Howard Shepherd, a freed slave who worked at the train depot, became the raid's first casualty when he ran into one of Brown's men in the dark and was fatally shot.

At daylight, the townspeople finally picked up on something amiss. Citizens began to take potshots at the raiders. A local grocer was killed by the return fire.

Militiamen from Virginia and Maryland were called. As day wore on, several of Brown's men were shot, or fled, or were captured.

By now, the government in Washington had been alerted. A force of 86 U.S. Marines arrived at Sandy Hook, Md. About 10:30 p.m., Army Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee - the same Lee who later would lead a Confederate army - took command.

A present-day Marine, Gunnery Sgt. Thomas E. Williams of Frederick, Md., picked up the story in a dramatic presentation to visitors at Harpers Ferry on Monday.

Williams, a member of the Marine Corps Historical Company, was dressed in the blue Marine uniform of the 1850s as he stood in front of the firehouse where Brown and his remaining men had holed up with their hostages.