Beecher Stowe / The Library of Congress / Public Domain
The results of the Dred Scott decision
The Dred Scott decision was a disaster for the South. Rather than protecting slavery, it brought many Northerners to the Republican Party, who now saw the party as the only bulwark against a Southern legal and political conspiracy to open the entire nation to slavery. The Court’s decision also unwittingly dealt a deathblow to the Democratic Party’s chances to maintain an intersectional political organization. Stephen Douglas’s popular sovereignty, whatever its merits, was the one issue that brought Northern and Southern Democrats together. It had allowed the party to win the presidency in 1856. Now that the Dred Scott decision declared popular sovereignty invalid, the party had no hope of winning the 1860 presidential election against a united and powerful Republican Party.
The Underground Railroad
Some common citizens, angered by the government’s policy and spurred by strong moral convictions, turned to clandestine methods. This loose organization, called the Underground Railroad, sought to move escaped slaves and free Blacks to Canada, beyond the ability of the U.S. government to touch them. The Underground Railroad’s effectiveness as an organization has grown to mythical proportions over the years. While many noble and courageous people were involved in this act of defiance, many others took advantage of such altruism. Unscrupulous groups would entice escaped slaves by pretending to be part of the Underground Railroad. Instead of guiding them to freedom, however, they would turn the slaves over to federal authorities and collect the reward money.
John Brown’s Raid
Tensions between North and South in 1859 were very great; for years, emotions never seemed to reach a peak. Every new incident drove emotions to new heights, but there never seemed to be a limit to how high they could go, or where they would take the antagonists. In this overwrought atmosphere of crisis and tension, John Brown reenters our story.
As mentioned earlier in this chapter, John Brown and his followers had murdered several suspected pro-slavery Kansas settlers. After this attack, Brown and his group spent some time in Canada until the heat was off. By 1859, he had concocted a new and more ambitious scheme than simple nighttime murder and terror. He had become impatient with the lack of action in the country over slavery. What was needed, he kept saying, was action — do something, once and for all, to bring about the destruction of slavery in fire and blood.
His fanatic dedication to ending slavery led him to believe that he could be a one-man instrument of its destruction. His plan to do this called for nothing less than instigating and leading a nationwide slave revolt and race war. Supported with money and arms from wealthy antislavery sponsors who wished to remain anonymous, Brown prepared to carry out his plan.
Harpers Ferry
Brown selected Harpers Ferry, Virginia — the site of a federal arsenal located at the junction of a key transportation intersection only a few miles from Washington, D.C. — as his target. After he captured the arsenal and its weapons, he planned to use the town as his base of operations to receive the thousands upon thousands of slaves who would escape and join him. He would then arm the slaves as they arrived and create a stronghold. As more slaves arrived, he would expand the area under his control through violent action until he had created a free Black nation. On the night of October 16, Brown and his 18 followers entered Harpers Ferry and had no trouble gaining control of the arsenal and its production facility. Brown was so focused on the first phase of the operation — capturing the arsenal — that he had not thought through exactly how all the slaves in Virginia and the rest of the South would be notified that Brown and his conspirators were waiting at Harpers Ferry to arm them for a race war. Faced with this daunting reality, he did what terrorists usually do: He took hostages, swore he’d never be taken alive, and waited for the inevitable.
Sending in the Marines
The inevitable made its appearance soon in the form of a detachment of U.S. Marines hastily gathered from the Washington Navy Yard and sent by train to Harpers Ferry. This ad hoc force had an army colonel as its leader. This colonel just happened to be available when the news arrived at the War Department in Washington. His second in command was an army cavalry lieutenant, who just happened to be visiting the colonel and decided to come along. Arriving soon after the Marines at Harpers Ferry, the colonel conducted a reconnaissance, made an assessment of the situation, and gave orders for his force to prepare for a direct assault on the building where Brown and his group were holding their hostages. As you can always expect when Marines are given such orders, the battle was both fierce and over in a few minutes. John Brown was wounded and captured. The calm and decisive colonel was Robert E. Lee, one of the U.S. Army’s most capable officers. His lieutenant friend was a cadet at West Point when Lee was superintendent and a frequent guest at his quarters. His name was James E. B. (Jeb) Stuart. Both Lee and Stuart play important roles in the upcoming war.
The results of John Brown’s raid
If this foolish act of a misguided fanatic had transpired ten years earlier, it would have certainly raised little attention outside of Virginia. In 1859, however, after all that had already occurred in the troubled decade, John Brown’s raid (as the incident became known) lost all proportion and became a national calamity. The truth is that many Northerners shared the Southern outrage at Brown’s insane act. The voices of reason were largely drowned out, however, as everyone heard only what he or she wanted to hear. Today, a common expression states that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. So it was in 1859 with sectional reaction to the incident at Harpers Ferry. Southerners viewed Brown as a tool of abolitionist Republicans and a murderer; Northerners hailed him as a martyr who was willing to sacrifice himself for the holy cause of freedom. These extreme opinions only hardened hearts further, and raised emotions to a fever pitch. By now, both sides were ready to jump at the least provocation, if only to release those long pent-up emotions in some grand violent act of retribution against the perceived enemy.
John Brown’s end
Just two weeks after his raid, John Brown was tried and executed by the state of Virginia. On the day of his execution, the governor ordered militia and the Corps of Cadets from the Virginia Military Institute to guard the execution site against a possible abolitionist rescue attempt. The units formed a hollow square around the scaffold. Brown was hanged without incident. He faced death impassively, without any sign of fear. Another impassive and fearless man, the commander of the VMI detachment, watched Brown’s death. His name was Major Thomas J. Jackson, a Mexican-American War veteran and a quirky instructor at the school. Jackson, who appeared to be a very unlikely hero, would be heard of again very soon.
“JOHN BROWN’S BODY”
At the beginning of the war, Union volunteers marched off to war singing a song called “John Brown’s Body.” The first line of the song reflected how Brown had become a prophetic figure to many in the North:
“John Brown’s body lies a’moulderin’ in the grave! But his soul goes marching on!”
Julia Ward Howe heard soldiers singing the song as they marched below her hotel window in Washington, D.C. Filled with inspiration by the massed voices, she immediately sat down and composed new, more strident, words to the tune she heard. That tune and her lyrics became more famous than the original as “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a song that still
