As the train pulled out Shepherd Haywood, a freedman, the baggage master of the station, walked toward the bridge to find the missing watchman.
The raiders shot him through the breast and he fell mortally wounded.
The first victim was a faithful colored employee of Mayor Beekham, the station master of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company.
The shot that killed him roused a man of action. Dr. John D. Starry lived but a stone"s throw from the spot where Haywood had fallen.
Hearing the shot and the groans of the wounded man, the doctor hastened to his rescue and carried him into the station. He could give no coherent account of what had happened and was already in a dying condition.
The doctor investigated. He approached two groups of the raiders, was challenged and retreated. Satisfied of the seriousness of the attack when he saw two armed white men lead three negroes holding pikes in their hands into the Armory gate, he saddled his horse and rode to his neighbors in town and country and gave the alarm.
While this dangerous messenger was on his foam-flecked horse, Brown, true to his quixotic sense of the dramatic, sent a raiding party of picked men to capture Colonel Washington and bring to his headquarters in the a.r.s.enal the sword and pistols. On this foolish mission he despatched Captains Stevens, Cook and Tidd, with three negro privates, Leary, Anderson and Green. He gave positive orders that Colonel Washington should be forced to surrender the sword of the first President into the hands of a negro.
Day was dawning as the strange procession on its return pa.s.sed through the Armory gate. In his own carriage was seated Colonel Washington and his neighbor, John H. Allstead. Their slaves and valuables were packed in the stolen wagons drawn by stolen horses.
Brown stood rifle in hand to receive them.
"This," said Stevens to Washington, "is John Brown."
"Osawatomie Brown of Kansas," the old man added with a stiffening of his figure.
He then handed a pike to each of the slaves captured at Bellair and Allstead"s:
"Stand guard over these white men."
The negroes took the pikes and held them gingerly.
At sunrise Kagi sent an urgent message to his Chief advising him that the Rifle Works could not be held in the face of an a.s.sault. He begged him to retreat across the Potomac at the earliest possible moment.
Retreat was a word not in the old man"s vocabulary. He sent Leary to reinforce him, with orders to hold the works.
He buckled the sword and pistols of Washington about his gaunt waist and counted his prisoners. He had forty whites within the enclosure. He counted the slaves whom he had armed with pikes. He had enrolled under his banner less than fifty. They stood in huddled groups of wonder and fear.
The black bees had failed to swarm.
He scanned the horizon and not a single burning home lighted the skies.
It had begun to drizzle rain. Not a torch had been used.
He had lost four precious hours in his quixotic expedition to capture Colonel Washington, his sword and slaves. He could not believe this a mistake. G.o.d had shown him the dramatic power of the act. He held a Washington in his possession. He was being guarded by his own slaves, armed. The scene would make him famous. It would stir the millions of the North. It would drive the South to desperation.
The thing that stunned him was the failure of the black legions to mobilize under the Captains whom he had appointed to lead them.
It was incredible.
He paced the enclosure, feverishly recalling the histories of mobs which he had studied, especially the fury of the French populace when the restraints of Law and Tradition had been lifted by the tocsin of the Revolution. The moment the beast beneath the skin of religion and culture was unchained, the ma.s.sacres began. Every cruelty known to man had been their pastime.
And these beasts were white men. How much more should he expect of the Blacks? Haiti had given him a.s.surance of darker deeds. The world was shivering with the horrors of the Black uprising in Haiti when he was born. He had drunk the story from his Puritan mother"s breast. From childhood he had brooded with secret joy over its b.l.o.o.d.y details.
The Black Bees had swarmed there and Toussaint L"Overture had hived them as he had asked Frederick Douglas to hive them here. They seized the rudest weapons and wiped out the white population. They butchered ten thousand French men, women and children. And not a cry of pity or mercy found an echo in a savage breast.
What was wrong here?
He had proclaimed the slave a freeman. He had placed an iron pike in his right hand and a torch in his left. Why had they not answered with a shout of triumph?
His somber mind refused to believe that they would not rise. Even now he was sure they were mobilizing in a sheltered mountain gorge. Before noon he would hear the roar of their coming and see the terror-stricken faces of the whites fleeing before their rush.
He had repeated to his Northern crowds the fable of negro suffering in the South until he believed the lie himself. He believed it with every beat of his stern Puritan heart. And he had repeated and shouted it until the gathering Abolitionist mob believed it as a message from G.o.d.
The fact that the system of African slavery, as actually practiced in the South, was the mildest and most humane form of labor ever fixed by the masters of men, they refused to consider. The mob leader never allows his followers to consider facts.
He knows that his crowd prefers dreams to facts. Dreams are the motives of crowd action. The dream, the illusion, the unreality have ever been the forces that have shaped human history in its hours of crisis when Fate has placed the future in the hands of the mob.
The fact that Slavery in the South had lifted millions of black savages--half of them from cannibal tribes--into the light of human civilization--that it had been their school, their teacher, their church, their inspiration--did not exist, because it was a fact. They did not deal in facts.
And so again Brown lifted his burning eyes toward the hills reflected in the mirror of the rivers. Down one of those rocky slopes the Black Legion would sweep before the day was done!
He had boldly despatched Cook across the Potomac bridge with the wagons, horses and treasures stolen from Colonel Washington"s house to be stored at headquarters. There was still no doubt or shadow of turning in his imperious soul.
With each pa.s.sing moment the swift feet of the avengers were closing the trap into which he had walked.
By ten o"clock the terror-stricken people of the town and county had seized their weapons and the fight began. Bullets were whistling from every street corner and every window commanding a glimpse of the a.r.s.enal and Armory.
Brown"s handful of men began to fall. The Rifle Works surrendered first and his guard of three men were all dead or wounded. By three o"clock his forces had been cut to pieces and he had taken refuge in the Engine House of the Armory. The bridges were held by the people. Owen, Cook and his guard at the old log house on the Maryland side were cut off and could not come to his rescue.
The amazing news of an Abolition invasion of Virginia and the capture of the United States a.r.s.enal and Rifle Works had shaken the nation.
President Buchanan hastily summoned from Arlington the foremost soldier of the Republic and despatched Colonel Robert E. Lee to the scene with the only troops available at the Capital, a company of marines.
Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart volunteered to act as his aide. The young cavalier was in the East celebrating the birth of a baby boy.
CHAPTER x.x.x
When the marines arrived from Washington it was past midnight. The town swarmed with armed men from every farm and fireside. Five companies of militia from Maryland and Virginia were on the ground and Henry Wise, the Governor of Virginia, was hurrying to take command.
Stuart had established Colonel Lee"s headquarters behind the brick wall of the a.r.s.enal enclosure. Not more than fifty yards from the gate stood the Engine House in which Brown had barricaded himself with his two sons, Oliver and Watson, and four of his men. He held forty white hostages.
A sentinel of marines covered the entrance to the enclosure. The militia had yielded command to the United States troops.
As Stuart stood awaiting Colonel Lee"s arrival, Lieutenant Green, in command of the marines, stepped briskly to the aide"s side to report the preliminary work.
As yet no one in the excited town knew the ident.i.ty of the mysterious commander "John Smith" who led the invasion. No one could guess the number of men he had in his army nor how many he held in reserve on the Maryland hills.
Stuart"s blue eyes flashed with excitement.
"The marines have the a.r.s.enal completely surrounded?" he asked.
"A rat couldn"t get through, Lieutenant Stuart."
"The bridges leading into Harper"s Ferry guarded?"
"Three picked men at each end, sir."