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13 - “The Black Mecca”
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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JOHN ANTHONY COPELAND “was in the habit of going up to Canada” even before the rescue in Wellington. He was among the many Oberliners who traveled back and forth between the colonies of freedmen and escaped slaves who had settled in what is now Ontario. Some such visits were social and some were commercial, but others were for the purpose of escorting or settling fugitives. In 1836, Reverend Finney had dispatched Hiram Wilson, a recent graduate of the theology department, as an emissary to Canada West for the purpose of reporting on the circumstances of runaway slaves. Five years later, Wilson helped establish the British-American Institute on the outskirts of Chatham, where fugitives could be taught productive trades. Oberlin contributed Bibles and teachers for the institute, as well as assisting with the arrival of a steady stream of newly escaped slaves. As Wilson himself wrote to a colleague at the college, “Those six fugitives who were in Oberlin when we left all got over safe into Canada by the next Monday.” They were far from the only ones.
John Anthony's earlier involvement in the northward traffic made him a logical candidate to shepherd John Price across the border. Conducting fugitives was no longer a lighthearted matter, as Oberliners had regarded it for so many years. It was one thing to deflect the attentions of amateur slave hunters but quite another to flout a valid federal warrant, not to mention abusing a deputy U.S. marshal in the process. Only one week earlier, Professor James Monroe had been nonchalant about receiving five slaves who were en route from Medina to the Sandusky harbor, but now the ground had clearly shifted. John Anthony had shown aggressiveness in confronting Marshal Dayton, and courage in breaking through the door at Wadsworth's Hotel, but he was also known for his Christian faith, which was no small matter to the Oberlin theologians who had taken charge of John Price's deliverance.
1 - The Frozen River
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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JOHN PRICE WAS ONE OF THE FEW KENTUCKIANS who welcomed the exceptionally cold winter of 1855–56. As a slave, he was pleased that the frigid weather would slow local work to a standstill, requiring masters and servants alike to remain indoors as much as possible. But even more than that, John realized that the enforced idleness and isolation in the area – with the country roads deserted and even village shops empty of customers – would afford him the long-awaited chance to bolt for freedom. And so he did, eventually reaching the abolitionist stronghold of Oberlin, Ohio. In Oberlin, Price fatefully crossed paths with John Anthony Copeland. Together, they set in motion a series of events that would culminate at John Brown's 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia. It is likely that John Price never learned of his unintended impact on Brown's plans. He only knew that he wanted to be free. As it turned out, that would be enough to shake the nation.
The winters in northern Kentucky tend to be mild, but temperatures fell below freezing in mid-December 1855 and remained locked in place – even on sunny days – for weeks without letup. The landscape soon came to resemble New England more than the border South, as snow covered the fields and streams and ponds iced over. Even the Ohio River froze solid, blocking the riparian commerce that was usually the region's main activity in the winter months. With farming at an end until spring, and trade at a near standstill, humble families simply huddled for warmth around their fireplaces and stoves as they waited out the unaccustomed cold. More prosperous families traveled by sleigh to visit relatives, where they, too, huddled for warmth around their more substantial hearths.
There was one group of Kentuckians, however, for whom the uncommon weather promised much more than days of dull seclusion. Kentucky was slave country, as it always had been since Daniel Boone led the first colonial settlers from Virginia through the Cumberland Gap.
Index
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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Dedication
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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8 - The New Marshal
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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FROM THE INCEPTION OF THE OFFICE, every new president had been besieged by office seekers, virtually all of whom appealed for jobs by virtue of political loyalty. James Buchanan was more attuned to such claims than most. He had devoted his life to the Democratic Party – or “The Democracy,” as its adherents preferred to call it – serving in the House of Representatives, the Senate, the Cabinet (as secretary of state), and as ambassador to Russia and Great Britain. Finally elected president at age 65, Buchanan's friends called him “Old Buck,” although he was known to his detractors as “Old Public Functionary.” Given his background, no president had ever been more familiar with the time-tested approach to distributing rewards and emoluments. Regional political leaders would assign major offices, lesser posts would be dispensed at the state level, and so on down the line – with favors allotted in proportion to electoral debts.
On inauguration day in 1857, no person appeared to have a greater claim on Buchanan's largesse than Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Douglas had been Buchanan's most significant rival for the Democratic nomination in 1856, but he was not a resentful loser. Instead, he had thrown himself into the campaign and had played a leading role in defeating the Republican, John Fremont. After the election, Douglas expected that he or his friends would have considerable control over offices in what were then known as the western states, from Ohio to Wisconsin. The marshal's position in the Northern District of Ohio therefore would ordinarily have gone to someone from the Douglas wing of the party, to be chosen by his ally Ohio Senator George Pugh, if not by Douglas himself.
The relationship between Buchanan and Douglas had never been easy, however, and it was not helped by the president's failure to provide the Illinois senator with a “just proportion of the federal patronage,” as Douglas frankly put it.
11 - A Brace of Pistols
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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ANSON DAYTON HAD NOT MANAGED TO CATCH ANY SLAVES, but his efforts had certainly succeeded in putting the entire town of Oberlin on edge. Tensions only mounted when several rowdy strangers showed up on the front porch of Wack's tavern in late August, laughing loudly and speaking in the immediately recognizable accent of rural Kentucky. Even children realized that the roughlooking men were out of place in Oberlin. Ten-year-old William Cochran learned what they were up to when he accompanied his uncle, a farmer named Stephen Cole, on a visit to the forge of Augustus Chambers, an African-American blacksmith.
Between the hissing of the fire and the crash of the hammer, William at first had to strain to hear the conversation between Chambers and his uncle. Soon, however, the blacksmith raised his voice, almost to an excited shout. “How long are you going to let these man stealers lie around Oberlin? I don't call them slave-catchers; there are mighty few slaves around here. I call them man-stealers – devilish thieves!” In fact, there were nearly always slaves in the area, hiding in the forest and swampland that stretched between Oberlin and Elyria. Chambers was in touch with the fugitives, whom he would often bring to Cole's farm for a brief respite before they continued onward to Canada. Now, however, Cole was concerned that Chambers was in danger, and he suggested that the blacksmith himself “go into hiding for a few days.”
“No, Sir!” the black man thundered, “I stay right here. And if any of those men darkens my door, he is a dead man.” Chambers showed the astonished boy and his uncle an array of weapons that he held at the ready – a hammer, a sharpened poker, a “double-barrel shotgun loaded with buck,” several knives, and “a pistol hung on the siding near his bed.”
Prologue
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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LOOKING OUT FROM THE BARRED WINDOW of his jail cell, John Anthony Copeland could easily see the rolling hills and agricultural lands that surrounded Charlestown, Virginia. There had been no opportunity for him to appreciate the beauty of the countryside since his arrival in the state only a little more than one week earlier. Now, in late October 1859, most of the abundant crops had been harvested, leaving the fields brown with rolls of hay and a few standing stalks of corn. The leaves on the native beech, oak, and ash trees, however, had already begun to turn red and gold, and the vivid colors might have cheered Copeland's spirit if he had not been facing death by hanging.
Copeland's home was in Oberlin, Ohio, over 400 miles to the northwest, where leaves had already fallen and his mother and father longed for news of their imprisoned son. In time, he would write to his parents, assuring them of his belief that “God wills everything for the best good.” But for now, he had no words to calm himself or to bring them comfort. There was little hope for a black man charged with murder in Virginia, and even less for one accused of inciting slaves to rebellion.
A mob had gathered outside the jailhouse, calling loudly for the blood of John Brown, whose abortive invasion of Harper's Ferry had lasted only three days – October 16–18 – while taking the lives of four Virginians and a U.S. marine. Brown was already notorious from his days on the battlefields of “Bleeding Kansas,” but the four men captured with him – Copeland and three others – were unknown. That made no difference to the lynch mob, which wanted all of them dead. Nor did it matter to the Southern press, which dismissed all of Brown's raiders as “reckless fanatics” and “wanton, malicious, unprovoked felons.” In fact, Copeland's decision to join John Brown had been neither reckless nor unprovoked.
16 - “The Bravest Negroes”
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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JOHN BROWN AND SOME OF HIS COMRADES arrived in Cleveland in March 1858, just as the proceedings in the Oberlin trials were set to begin. Brown and his men took rooms at the City Hotel, located only a few blocks from the courthouse, and placed their animals in the adjacent stable. The trek across the Midwest had depleted Brown's always meager funds – he arrived in Cleveland looking as disheveled as “a melancholy brigand” – and he hoped to raise money by selling the remaining Missouri livestock, as well as by charging admission for a public lecture. As he had done throughout his travels from Missouri, Brown made no secret of his presence in Cleveland. He advertised the mule and horses in a local newspaper, promising potential buyers that they were “Southern animals with northern Principles; once pro-slavery Democrats they are now out and out abolitionists.” He was even more brazen about his lecture, announcing that “Old Brown, of Kansas, the terror of Border-Ruffiandom, with a number of his men, will be in Cleveland [to] give a true account of the recent troubles in Kansas, and of the late ‘invasion’ of Missouri and rescue of eleven slaves.”
Marshal Matthew Johnson responded with his usual combination of bluster and inaction. He mounted huge posters around the city announcing that rewards for Brown had been offered by President Buchanan and Missouri Governor Stewart. “In great, black lines of display type,” Johnson emphasized the total of $3250 that “might be gotten … for Brown's arrest and detention.” Johnson himself, however, “never took one step toward arresting Brown,” even though the fugitive boldly walked directly past the marshal's office on a daily basis. Such audacity did not escape notice. Humorist Charles Farrar Browne, then an editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and writing under the pen name Artemus Ward, observed that Brown was cool enough to “make his jolly fortune by letting himself out as an Ice Cream Freezer.” Brown indeed had little reason to fear the federal marshal.
Frontmatter
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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4 - “A Most Well Disposed Boy”
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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JOHN A. COPELAND, SR., was born into slavery near Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, the son of a white man who was also his owner. Nothing is known of Copeland's mother other than that she was a slave whose pregnancy was likely the consequence of implicit coercion if not outright brutality. Little more is known about the elder Copeland's interactions with his father, although the relationship was common knowledge in their community. There must have been at least some bond between them, because Copeland was emancipated in his master's will, which set him free at the age of seven or eight. The slave owner left his mulatto son no additional funds or property, however, so the young boy was placed in the care of a prominent neighbor named Gavin Hogg, who owned a large home in Raleigh and extensive lands in Bertie County, as well as at least seventeen slaves. As a free Negro, John was not allowed to attend school, so Hogg apprenticed him to a carpenter. The young man became adept at his trade – earning a reputation as a “most well disposed boy” – and he attracted regular work from both blacks and whites.
On August 15, 1831, Copeland married Delilah Evans, a “most respectable woman of color” who had been born in Hillsborough, North Carolina, in 1809. Delilah was from a well-established family of unusually mixed background, none of whom had ever been slaves. She and her two younger brothers, Wilson and Henry, were extremely light skinned – so much so that photographs of Wilson, in later years, were often mistaken for Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – and they claimed descent from General Nathanael Greene of Revolutionary War fame.
Delilah was employed as a domestic for members of the wealthy Devereux family – related by marriage to the Hoggs – who considered themselves enlightened on race issues.
Acknowledgments
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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Author's Note
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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Notes
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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2 - A Good Abolition Convention
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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LIKE JOHN PRICE, JOHN BROWN was freezing during the winter of 1855–56, which he spent huddled with family members on the plains of Kansas. He had arrived in October, just a few months ahead of the “bitterly cold and cutting winds” that would keep everyone “shivering over their little fires” until spring. Five of Brown's sons had arrived earlier that year, among the thousands of Free-state emigrants who moved to Kansas in order to resist the imposition of slavery on the newly created territory. Once the brothers had established themselves in a settlement dubbed Brown's Station, not far from the town of Osawatomie, John Brown, Jr., wrote to his father about the virtues and challenges of life in Kansas, emphasizing both the beauty of the prairie and the depredations of the Missourians who were determined to spread slavery by violent means. John, Jr., was discouraged by the passivity of the other Free-staters, calling them “abject and cowardly.” He asked his father to provide the five brothers with arms, including two revolvers, a rifle, and a bayonet for each man. “Every day strengthens my belief that the sword … will soon be called upon to give its verdict,” he wrote.
In the words of biographer Oswald Garrison Villard, the appeal for arms was one that “Brown could not have resisted had he desired to.” In the company of another son and a son-in-law, he headed west with, as he put it, a wagon load of “Guns[,] Revolvers, Swords, Powder [and] Caps” that he obtained from supporters in Ohio. The overland journey took the better part of two months, much of it covered on foot in order not to overtax his “nice young horse.” In Kansas, he found his sons and their families sick with fever and nearly destitute, living in tents and makeshift cabins. Of the eight adult men in the settlement, only one was in good health.
6 - “My Object in Coming to Oberlin”
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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- The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry
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FUGITIVE SLAVES AND FREE BLACKS MADE THEIR WAY to Oberlin throughout the antebellum era, engendering great pride in the colony while drawing the wrath of many pro-slavery Ohioans. Pro-southern Democrats in the state legislature made four attempts to revoke Oberlin's charter between 1837 and 1843 as undisguised retribution for the school's opposition to slavery. As one antagonistic state senator put it, Oberlin had become “the great national manufactory of ultra-abolitionists” who lured slaves from the South for the purpose of “secretly conveying them through the state of Ohio, and transporting them to Canada.” The charge was true, if exaggerated on all sides. According to Professor James Harris Fairchild, the proposed revocations were based on “a thousand unfavorable rumors in relation to amalgamation, fanaticism, harboring fugitive slaves … without any evidence of their truth before the legislature.”
In fact, the number of fugitives was never as great as the Oberliners boasted or their adversaries feared, but it was sufficient to draw the attention of slave hunters, both Southern and domestic. The “manstealers” had a relatively free hand elsewhere in Ohio, seizing uncounted victims annually in reliance on Prigg v. Pennsylvania, a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that gave slave owners the “positive, unqualified right” to recapture their slaves anywhere in the Union. Although the Supreme Court had been unequivocal that no one could “be permitted to interfere with, or to obstruct, the just rights of the owner to reclaim his slave,” people in Oberlin saw things differently. And although a steady stream of slave catchers did attempt to ply their trade in Oberlin, they were always rebuffed, to the great delight of the collegians and townsfolk.
17 - The Invisibles
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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ON A SINGLE SUMMER AFTERNOON IN Oberlin, John Brown, Jr., had enlisted more black volunteers than his father was able to attract on any other occasion during the entire eighteen months that he was actively seeking troops for the Harper's Ferry operation. For the most part, the elder Brown failed badly in his efforts to recruit African-Americans. Both Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass declined to join him, and only one of the thirty-four black signatories of the Chatham Constitution eventually showed up at Harper's Ferry. Even Richard Richardson, a runaway slave who had joined Brown in Kansas and had participated in the Missouri rescue, remained in Canada rather than participate in the invasion of Virginia.
Brown had figured heavily on the availability of black troops, depending on them to inspire local slaves to join his rebellion. As he proposed to Frederick Douglass, Brown had a “special purpose” in mind for his black comrades. “When I strike, the bees will begin to swarm, and I shall want you to help hive them.” Douglass demurred, later explaining that either “my discretion or my cowardice made me proof against the dear old man's eloquence.” But even without Douglass or another famous African-American, Brown was hopeful that ordinary black foot soldiers would guide an anticipated “swarm” of slaves to his emancipatory banner. Apart from Copeland and Leary, however, there would be only three blacks in Brown's small army.
Why was the younger Brown so much more successful than his father at enrolling black men in their cause? Why did Copeland and Leary respond so readily when so many others equivocated or balked? Of course, we can only speculate – although we can surely assume that it was not a matter of superior persuasiveness, given the old man's renowned eloquence and charisma – but some tentative answers do suggest themselves. Oberlin, as we know, was a unique environment in the ante- bellum United States, combining an ideology of racial egalitarianism with an exceptional reverence for the rescue of slaves.
14 - The Felons' Feast
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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JOHN ANTHONY COPELAND WOULD NEVER BE APPREHENDED for his involvement in the Oberlin Rescue, but most of his code-fendants had no interest in eluding the law. Quite the contrary, they saw their indictment as an opportunity to place slavery itself on trial, and thus very nearly a cause for celebration. Such politicized trials – where the defendants take the offensive – have now become commonplace, but the tactic was novel and untested in the late 1850s. As with many other aspects of the anti-slavery movement, Oberlin was destined to play a leading role. Resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act would not be denied, but rather extolled in the name of “higher law.”
The leading defendants therefore did not hesitate to turn themselves in as they had promised Marshal Johnson. On the morning of Wednesday, December 8, ten of the indicted rescuers departed Oberlin by train, amid the cheers of their supporters. By 2:00 that afternoon, they were in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Hiram Willson, who had earlier castigated their motives in his charge to the grand jury. The prosecutor, U.S. Attorney George Belden, was there to receive the defendants, who were represented by three prominent lawyers, all of whom were devoted abolitionists who had volunteered their services. The chief attorney for the defendants was Rufus Spalding, a former justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, who was assisted that day by Albert Gallatin Riddle, a former state legislator, and Seneca Griswold, a young Oberlin graduate.
The defense strategy quickly became apparent when Spalding called for an immediate trial. The unexpected demand shook the courtroom like a “respectable sized torpedo,” as prosecutor Belden had assumed that the defendants, “like other criminals,” would seek postponement. His main witnesses, Belden sputtered, were in Kentucky, and he would need at least two weeks to bring them to Ohio.
22 - An Abolition Harangue
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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SIX LAWYERS HAD COME AND GONE from John Brown's case by the time attorney George Sennott made his presence known in Charlestown on November 2. Finding the two African-Americans unrepresented, Sennott filed his appearance on behalf of Copeland and Green and began to prepare a startling defense.
Sennott was an outsized character – in terms of height, girth, and personality – whose appearance at first occasioned outright ridicule in Charlestown. The local newspapers took turns deriding him. One reporter sneered that “George Sennott has come to us upon a mission of great bigness, and his size, so far as latitude is concerned, shows him fully up to the immortal standard of envoys extraordinaire.” “When he is out of Boston,” another journalist scoffed, “we presume lager beer has an opportunity to accumulate.” Sennott was indeed a man of large appetites, but he was also an outstanding lawyer. He was an anti-slavery Democrat – an identification that was vanishing in the North and nonexistent in the South – which may have contributed to the scorn he attracted in Charlestown. One courthouse wag opined that Sennott's representation of the black defendants was intended just “to waste time” by a lawyer who was “either a fool, crazy, or drunk.” But never was an insult more misguided.
Sennott had taken a circuitous route to abolitionism. Born in Vermont, he had come to Boston as a young man in order to read law in the office of Rufus Choate, who was widely regarded as the finest trial lawyer in New England. Choate was a consummate professional, meaning that he had broad connections but few fixed principles when it came to clients. He was therefore the lawyer of choice for Boston's merchants and bankers, many of whom owed their wealth to goods produced by slavery.
25 - The Colored American Heroes
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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GENERAL WILLIAM TALIAFERRO ARRIVED AT THE JAIL shortly after 10:30 on the morning of December 16, leading a contingent of two dozen troops. The armed men formed a hollow square as the jailor and county sheriff led Green and Copeland out of their cells and down the jailhouse steps. An open wagon pulled into the square, carrying two rough poplar caskets. With their arms tied behind their backs, Green and Copeland were helped onto the wagon and seated on their coffins. The two prisoners appeared frightened and downcast, and “wore none of that calm and cheerful spirit evinced by Brown under similar circumstances.” Soon the grim parade was under way. Reverend Leech walked slowly behind the wagon, with riflemen flanking the procession as it passed through the streets of Charlestown. It took only five or ten minutes to arrive at the hanging ground, where the condemned men were escorted up the scaffold steps. Copeland stood calm and silent on the gallows, but Green appeared to shiver while praying out loud.
After yet another minister delivered an obligatory prayer, Copeland attempted to step forward to speak to the crowd. It was common in the nineteenth century for condemned men to be allowed a final address, so Copeland reasonably expected to make one last denunciation of slavery. But that routine privilege could not be extended to a black insurrectionist in Virginia. The hangman literally choked off Copeland's speech, abruptly pulling a hood down over his head and tightening the rope around his neck. Copeland did not struggle but instead appeared to endure the ultimate indignity with “firm and unwavering fortitude.”
The trap was drawn at a few minutes after eleven o'clock, and the two men were “launched into eternity.” Green appeared to die instantly, his neck having been broken by the fall, but Copeland was slowly strangled, and he “writhed in violent contortions for several minutes.”
23 - Only Slave Stealing
- Steven Lubet, Northwestern University, Illinois
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COPELAND AND SENNOTT MADE AN ODD PAIR when they rose to face the court. The defendant was youthful and wiry, with an appearance so neat that one Southern journalist remarked that “he would make a very genteel dining-room servant.” Almost twenty years his client's senior, Sennott overshadowed Copeland in almost every way. His disheveled dress and eccentric personality drew everyone's attention (which was probably beneficial to the silent defendant), and his great size and odd proportions dwarfed nearly everyone in the room. One observer likened him to a “table with an apple on top,” and she did not have a small table in mind.
Sennott immediately moved to strike the treason count, as he had the previous day. This time, the prosecution made no objection and voluntarily dismissed the charge. The case would be tried only on the murder and conspiracy counts, but first a jury had to be selected. “Twenty four freeholders” were summoned by the sheriff, who was instructed to exclude citizens of Harper's Ferry. Needless to say, there were no black persons on the panel, although there were many slave owners. As far as Judge Parker was concerned, the only test for impartiality was whether a prospective juror “had expressed an opinion which would prevent [him from] giving the prisoner a fair and impartial trial,” although the court took precautions not to reject anyone who might mistakenly have shown too much sympathy for the prosecution. In one typical exchange, Parker continued the questioning until he got the right answer:
JUDGE: Have you heard the evidence in the other cases?
JUROR: (Eagerly) yes, sir.
JUDGE: I mean, if you have heard the evidence, and are likely to be influenced by it, you are disqualified here. Have you heard much of the evidence?
JUROR: No, sir.
Once the jury was seated, two witnesses described Copeland's flight from the rifle works and his arrest in the Shenandoah River, adding that he had been armed with a rifle and a spear. The story of the spear was obviously an embellishment – whether prompted by the prosecutor or simply invented by the witness – intended to tie Copeland to the pikes that Brown had distributed at the armory.