Once inside, they were to attack with bayonets, lest stray bullets hit some of the hostages. Lee explained to the Marines how they could distinguish the insurgents from the captives and ordered the storming party "not to injure the blacks detained in custody unless they resisted. In his report to the Secretary of War the following day, Lee described the action of the storming party:.
The fire-engines within the house had been placed by the besieged close to the doors. The doors were fastened by ropes, the spring of which prevented their being broken by the blows of the hammers.
The men were therefore ordered to drop the hammers, and, with a portion of the reserve, to use as a battering-ram a heavy ladder, with which they dashed in a part of the door and gave admittance to the storming party. At the threshold one marine fell mortally wounded. The rest, led by Lieutenant Green and Major Russell, quickly ended the contest. Their leader, John Brown, was cut down by the sword of Lieutenant Green, and our citizens were protected by both officers and men.
The whole was over in a few minutes. The Marine killed was Private Luke Quinn, the third man through the door, shot through the abdomen. The man behind him, Pvt. Mathew Ruppert, suffered a slight facial wound. No captives were harmed, and there were no further deaths among the townspeople.
Among the raiders, two were bayoneted to death in the fire house. Six more were hanged, and five escaped, several of them later serving in Union regiments during the Civil War. Stuart, with a few Marines, was sent to the farm Brown had rented. Of Brown, Lee wrote, "He avows that his object was the liberation of the slaves of Virginia, and of the whole South; and acknowledges that he has been disappointed in his expectations of aid from the black as well as white population, both in the Southern and Northern States.
The blacks, whom he forced from their homes in this neighborhood, as far as I could learn, gave him no voluntary assistance. The servants of Messrs. Washington and Allstadt, retained at the armory, took no part in the conflict, and those carried to Maryland returned to their homes as soon as released. That evening, a false rumor that a band of men had attacked a home in Pleasant Valley, Maryland, sent a number of families scurrying to Harpers Ferry for protection.
He warned Brown that he was "going into a perfect steel trap, and that he would not get out alive. Sixty-one miles northwest of Washington, D.
But more than 18, slaves—the "bees" Brown expected to swarm—lived in the surrounding counties. As his men stepped off the railway bridge into town that October night in , Brown dispatched contingents to seize the musket factory, rifle works, arsenal and adjacent brick fire-engine house. Three men remained in Maryland to guard weapons that Brown hoped to distribute to slaves who joined him.
Telegraph lines were cut. The railroad station was seized. It was there that the raid's first casualty occurred, when a porter, a free black man named Hayward Shepherd, challenged Brown's men and was shot dead in the dark. Once key locations had been secured, Brown sent a detachment to seize several prominent local slave owners, including Col. Lewis W.
Washington, a great-grandnephew of the first president. Early reports claimed that Harpers Ferry had been taken by 50, then , then white "insurrectionists" and "six hundred runaway negroes. He later said he believed that he would eventually have armed as many as 5, slaves. But the bees did not swarm. Only a handful of slaves lent Brown assistance. Instead, as Brown's band watched dawn break over the craggy ridges enclosing Harpers Ferry, local white militias—similar to today's National Guard—were hastening to arms.
First to arrive were the Jefferson Guards, from nearby Charles Town. Uniformed in blue, with tall black Mexican War-era shakos on their heads and brandishing. Newby had gone north in a failed attempt to earn enough money to buy freedom for his wife and six children. In his pocket was a letter from his wife: "It is said Master is in want of money," she had written. As the day progressed, armed units poured in from Frederick, Maryland; Martinsburg and Shepherdstown, Virginia; and elsewhere.
Brown and his raiders were soon surrounded. He and a dozen of his men held out in the engine house, a small but formidable brick building, with stout oak doors in front. Other small groups remained holed up in the musket factory and rifle works. Acknowledging their increasingly dire predicament, Brown sent out New Yorker William Thompson, bearing a white flag, to propose a cease-fire.
But Thompson was captured and held in the Galt House, a local hotel. Brown then dispatched his son, Watson, 24, and ex-cavalryman Aaron Stevens, also under a white flag, but the militiamen shot them down in the street. Watson, although fatally wounded, managed to crawl back to the engine house. Stevens, shot four times, was arrested.
When the militia stormed the rifle works, the three men inside dashed for the shallow Shenandoah, hoping to wade across. Two of them—John Kagi, vice president of Brown's provisional government, and Lewis Leary, an African-American—were shot dead in the water. The black Oberlin student, John Copeland, reached a rock in the middle of the river, where he threw down his gun and surrendered.
Twenty-year-old William Leeman slipped out of the engine house, hoping to make contact with the three men Brown had left as backup in Maryland. Leeman plunged into the Potomac and swam for his life. Trapped on an islet, he was shot dead as he tried to surrender.
Throughout the afternoon, bystanders took potshots at his body. Through loopholes—small openings through which guns could be fired—that they had drilled in the engine house's thick doors, Brown's men tried to pick off their attackers, without much success.
One of their shots, however, killed the town's mayor, Fontaine Beckham, enraging the local citizenry. They dragged him onto the railroad trestle, shot him in the head as he begged for his life and tossed him over the railing into the Potomac.
By nightfall, conditions inside the engine house had grown desperate. Brown's men had not eaten for more than 24 hours. Only four remained unwounded. The bloody corpses of slain raiders, including Brown's year-old son, Oliver, lay at their feet. They knew there was no hope of escape. Eleven white hostages and two or three of their slaves were pressed against the back wall, utterly terrified.
Two pumpers and hose carts were pushed against the doors, to brace against an assault expected at any moment. Yet if Brown felt defeated, he didn't show it. As his son Watson writhed in agony, Brown told him to die "as becomes a man. Soon perhaps a thousand men—many uniformed and disciplined, others drunk and brandishing weapons from shotguns to old muskets—would fill the narrow lanes of Harpers Ferry, surrounding Brown's tiny band.
President James Buchanan had dispatched a company of Marines from Washington, under the command of one of the Army's most promising officers: Lt. Robert E. Himself a slave owner, Lee had only disdain for abolitionists, who "he believed were exacerbating tensions by agitating among slaves and angering masters," says Elizabeth Brown Pryor, author of Reading the Man: A Portrait of Robert E.
Lee Through His Private Letters. He gathered the 90 Marines behind a nearby warehouse and worked out a plan of attack. In the predawn darkness, Lee's aide, a flamboyant young cavalry lieutenant, boldly approached the engine house, carrying a white flag.
He was met at the door by Brown, who asked that he and his men be allowed to retreat across the river to Maryland, where they would free their hostages. The soldier promised only that the raiders would be protected from the mob and put on trial.
The lieutenant stepped aside, and with his hand gave a prearranged signal to attack. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded.
A company of U. Lee and Lieutenant J. On the morning of October 19, the soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons. The wounded Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and he was found guilty on November 2. The year-old abolitionist went to the gallows on December 2, Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the stakes for the presidential election.
But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! An enormous crowd consisting mostly of African American men demonstrates on the National Mall on October 16, , an event known as the Million Man March. Driven by their desire to see Congress act in the interests of African Americans, and to combat negative stereotypes of The studio, now known as the Walt Disney Company, has had an oversized impact on the entertainment industry and is now one of the largest media companies in the A stampede of soccer fans before a World Cup qualifying match in Guatemala City kills 84 people and seriously injures more than on October 16, Approximately 60, On October 16, , in an event that had viewers around the world glued to their televisions, month-old Jessica McClure is rescued after being trapped for 58 hours in an abandoned water well in Midland, Texas.
The drama unfolded on the morning of October 14, , when At Nuremberg, Germany, 10 high-ranking Nazi officials are executed by hanging for their crimes against humanity, crimes against peace, and war crimes during World War II.
Two weeks earlier, the 10 were found guilty by the International War Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to death
0コメント