“John Brown, Aaron C. Stevens, Andrew Coppoc . . . evil minded and traitorous persons . . . not having the fear of God before their eyes, but being moved and seduced by the false and malignant counsel of other evil and traitorous persons and the instigation of the devil ... are hereby charged with:“One: Confederating to make rebellion and levy war against the State of Virginia . . .“Two: Conspiring to induce slaves to make rebellion and insurrection . . .“Three: With committing murder . .
John Brown Obtains His Guns
As the litany of the court droned on, Old Brown, eyes deep-set in recall, thought back over the flaming Kansas years that had brought him to this bar of a lesser justice. Too vividly in memory he knew the hellhole of the arsenal firehouse at Harpers Ferry with the Minie balls poking splintery fingers through the doors, and the thudding battering ram as Colonel Lee’s Marines breached the tiny fort; remembered the Kansas years and a Sharps sporting rifle he had once so proudly carried, ’til the 200 Sharps carbines fell into his hands, and the mad dream of a slaves’ revolt seemed a possibility. Seemingly from the first, Christian Sharps’ destiny and that of John Brown of Ossawattomi were linked, for the rifle used by Brown for hunting on the plains, and left by him with his friend Charles Blair in Collinsville, Connecticut, was one of Sharps’ first-made: 1848.Brown wanted no maker’s name on it, this breechloader for Kansas fighting, since there were many who did not care to be identified with his movement. So gunsmith Albert S. Nippes of Philadelphia, licensee of some of the earliest Sharps guns, finished it plain. He carried this rifle during the years when jayhawkers and bushwackers kept the Border States in unrest; perhaps had it with him during the silent but bloody saber-hacking massacre of the Doyles. Yet this monomaniac had strong friends; in his own violent way he was a genius. He planned to arm the slaves who should rise to his standard with pikes, and in the summer of 1859 journeyed to Collinsville, the town made famous by the Collins Axe Company. He stayed at the home of
Charles Blair, who had once made weapons, the Elgin cutlass pistol, in 1836, and gave him the old Sharps in token of his help, for Brown had obtained 200 new slant-breech Sharps carbines through the Massachusetts State Committee which he diverted to his military foray into western Virginia.
“I’ll carry the war into Africa,” Brown once boasted, but his project was doomed. It takes a consciousness of oppression to allow one man, or a nation, to revolt. The slave class in the South as a group did not possess this recognition that they were oppressed, any more than a dog, fed and housed by its master, regrets the loss of freedom of the wilds. Only as generations of slaves were born and grew up in the Southern version of modem European culture, did the Stone Age savage from the Ivory Coast leam he was a victim. Mostly he had a recognition that he received food regularly, was looked after, housed, and did not have to fight superior forces of black enemies in league with Arab or Portuguese slave traders. What had taken the Anglo-Saxon forebears of the Southern whites some centuries to do, wash off their blue-woad dye and become travelers on the Roman road to civilization, Brown hoped to do in a few weeks with the black men of the South.
The sovereign State of Virginia did not view this as any minor foray, but an incitement to insurrection. With memories of the Nat Turner rebellion of three decades past still clear, both Federal and State forces went to the aid of Harpers Ferry Arsenal, which Brown in one fearful morning seemed to have captured; the first casualty one of the very black men whom Brown wanted to free.
Relics of Brown’s Raid
In the Maryland Historical Society is one of Brown’s Sharps carbines. It is the slant breech Model 1853; the main difference between it and the preceding Ml852 is in the link pin that holds the breechblock. Its turning arm, which frees the pin and allows it to be withdrawn sideways from the breech frame, is held by a small spring-loaded plunger fitted into the solid breech frame. (In the 1852 model, a flat spring like the band retaining spring of a musket, is fitted to the wood of the forestock.) The brass band has a widened bottom section, pointing forward, and a brass patch-box on the stock |
| “John Brown” Sharps is M1853 with slant breech, brass trim and sling bar on left side, cal. .54, barrel 21 '/2 inches long. Serial numbers observed (Smith) range between 9179—18602. |
right. To the left, a long sling-ring bar is attached to both front band and frame, while the rear sight folds backward toward the breech when not in use for long range shooting. Inscribed on the patch box of this particular carbine are the words: Captured from insurgents at Harpers Ferry, Va. Oct. 18, 1959, by Col. A. P. Shutt, and presented to his Son A ugustus J. C. L. Shutt.
Colonel Shutt in militia life was commander of the 6th Regiment, Maryland Volunteers. In civil life he earned his wages as an express and passenger train conductor for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The wires carried strange messages of insurgents at Harpers Ferry, and by the morning of October 17, when Negro porter Washington Hayward, at the B & O station near the arsenal, was shot through the body by one of Brown’s men, Baltimore perceived that something unusual was happening.
Colonel Shutt, sent to protect the railroad’s property and interests, arrived at his post after Brown’s capture. He endeavored to restore train service to normal, and using 30 men armed with rifles borrowed from the armory, placed there a temporary guard to prevent rioting, and especially to protect the important covered railroad bridges that spanned the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. His main job seemed to be to break up the selling of souvenir pikes on the Baltimore & Ohio trains by the inhabitants of Harpers Ferry who would board the train at one place along with sandwich and coffee vendors and disembark a few miles down the line after having disposed of, in total, probably considerably more than the number of pikes which John Brown ever contracted for at Collinsville.
Shutt’s carbine came from a cache of arms located at Brown’s farmhouse. The day after Brown’s arrest, a company of Marines searched the place, recovering 102 Sharps rifles, 102 Massachusetts Arms Company’s pistols (“A little under the Navy size,” said Brown), 56 Massachusetts Arms Company powder flasks, 4 large powder flasks, 10 kegs of gunpowder, 23,000 percussion rifle caps, 100,000 percussion pistol caps, 1,300 ball cartridges for Sharps rifles (some slightly damaged by water), 160 boxes Sharps primers, 14 lbs. lead balls, one old percussion pistol, 1 major general’s sword, 55 old bayonets, 12 old artillery swords, 483 standard spears, 150 broken handles for spears, 16 picks, 40 shovels, 1 tin powder case, 1,500 pikes, together with a large quantity of stationery, clothing, and personal property.
Among the personal property items to which John Brown kept title until his death by hanging, December 2, 1859, was a Sharps carbine and “his belt pistol,” both of which he bequeathed to Captain John Avis, jailer at Charlestown prison. Though Captain Avis’ men of the Charlestown Irregulars militia had been glad when Old Brown was brought before them at the close of the fighting, bloody and bowed, those few minutes before Brown’s death were a time of compassion and weeping. As he gave away the few bits of property— a Bible and some books—the hearts of those assembled to watch him die seemed moved by the message which Brown had tried to preach; blundering, he yet sought recognition for the dignity of men.
Beecher’s Bibles
In the North, abolitionist Reverend Henry Ward Beecher thundered in his pulpit even before Brown’s death:“Seventeen men, white men, without a military base, without artillery . . . attacked a State, and undertook to release and lead away an enslaved race.” As the congregation of his Plymouth Church in Boston listened, none nodding, for this they knew was history in the making, he roared on: “Seventeen white men surrounded two thousand and held them in duress . . . overawed a town of two thousand brave Virginians, and held them captive until the sun had gone laughing twice around the globe . .
While historians may dissect Beecher’s personality and his penchant for pushing others along in the cause of Abolition, history shows him to have been on the right side. All have heard how chests of Sharps carbines were shipped out secretly from New England to the west, marked “Bibles,” giving rise to the legend for the John Brown Sharps as “a case of Beecher’s Bibles.” Not at all surprisingly, a case of ordinary King James Bibles packed in clean white wood looks to the gun crank for all the world, and feels, like a case of carbines.
Guns of this ill-fated expedition which, like the Shot at Sarajevo in World War I, effectively may be said to have “started” the Civil War, have long interested collectors. But there exist today few guns having unmistakable association with John Brown’s expedition, like the 1848 Nippes Sharps (now property of M. C. Clark of Los Angeles) or the 1853 carbine from the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore.
As with relics found by archeologists in ground strata, so legitimate regional association will do much to place a gun in its niche in history. Hence Kansas should be a fertile ground today for Sharps guns from this turbulent period. For example, the New England Emigrant Aid Committee’s purchasing agent for Kansas obtained 100 carbines from the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company in Hartford on March 19, 1856. The price was $30 each less 10 percent. The invoice included 29 packages of Sharps primers at $1 1/8, 20 bullet moulds
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Patchbox of carbine among 102 found on Brown’s farm at Harpers Ferry is inscribed with sentiment of presenta::on from Colonel Shutt of Maryland troops to his son. Shutt was Baltimore & Ohio Railroad man. |
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| Mass. Arms revolvers cal. .31 designed by Joshua Stevens, with Maynard tape primer, were among weapons taken from Brown’s men after capture. Guns sold by Yankee abolitionists to further discord in South were presumably plain; engraved specimen shown was type often presented to free state leaders. |
The ten boxes of carbines, presumably Model 1853 arms (using Sharps pellet primers instead of the Maynard tape primer coil of the Ml855 Carbine mechanism) were sent to Kansas on the Missouri river steamer Arabia. The fact of carbines being aboard became known to some pro-slavery passengers and at Lexington, Missouri the ship was boarded by the pro-slavery faction and the carbines taken off. Prior to shipment, Dr. Calvin Cutter acting for General Pomeroy (the Committee’s agent), had taken out all the breechblocks and shipped them to Kansas by a different route. The 100 carbines were finally recovered by Free Staters and, according to Martin F. Conway of Lawrence, testifying before a Senate committee 13 February 1860, were in his possession at that time.
Carbines of the Same Type in Belgium
In 1960 in the shop of Mr. Paul Hanquet in Liege, I saw a couple of dozen dirty Model 1853 Sharps carbines, which I was informed had been purchased by an American gun dealer, Turner Kirkland. They were without breechblocks. I now wonder if they were part of Martin Conway’s lot of breechblockless guns, sold eventually because of the impossibility of getting the special slant breechblock from the Sharps Company during the war, and by reason of being obsolete after the war.John Brown’s guns came from a similar lot, actually 200 Sharps purchased by the Massachusetts State Committee in August 1856, and shipped out to Kansas. A momentary peace being established by the presence of United States troops along the Kansas border, the carbines, to prevent their seizure by the United States as contraband, were diverted and stored at Tabor, Iowa.
Brown wanted these guns and prevailed upon the Massachusetts abolition authorities to allow him to have them, he being instructed to sell 100 of them at a reduced price of $15 to aid reliable Kansans and use the proceeds to relieve suffering among Free State families attacked by border ruffians. Unknown to the Massachusetts authorities, Brown planned to use these guns for his slave revolt. According to J. H. Kagi, one of the more intelligent and literate of Brown’s followers, “The arms in the Arsenal were to be taken to the mountains, with such slaves as joined. As fast as possible other bands besides the original ones were to be formed, and a continuous chain of posts established in the mountains. They were to be supported by provisions taken from the farms of the oppressors. The slaves were to be armed with pikes, scythes, muskets, shotguns, and other simple instruments of defense; the officers, white or black, and such of the men as were skilled and trustworthy, to have the use of the Sharps rifles and revolvers.”
Brown was a Guerrilla
The broad plains of Kansas soon to be rippling in wheat, and the wooded hills of western Virginia that a century later would lie scarred and stripped of their tops by mining, were united in Brown’s plan; both were the scenes of what today is studied as guerrilla warfare. No man better understood the nature of backwoods warfare than John Brown. A man who, in death, was to lead thousands of soldiers “as his soul goes marching on,” led his band almost unseen through a populous countryside, transported into his farmhouse headquarters case after case of munitions, and shipped in steel pike heads to the number of 1,500, within walking distance of one of the nation’s most important public military establishments, the United States Arsenal at Harpers Ferry, without arousing suspicion.Brown’s Pistols Though the Sharps gun and John Brown were linked in the popular mind, another arm, a pistol, figured in this drama. Made by a major firm of this era, these were the Maynard-primed revolvers built by the Massachusetts Arms Company at Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. As Brown stated, they were “a little under the Navy size.” Question has been raised over the exact model and design of these guns, for none are known with Brown’s raid association to them. But a Navy-size revolver in the parlance of the period was an arm of .36 caliber, what today is called a .38. An arm of “just under” Navy caliber would, in the phrasing most commonly used, have been a .31 caliber arm. The Massachusetts Arms Company built such a pistol, and the exact model can be deduced from a bill of sale located by collector Albert W. Lindert of Homewood, Illinois, in the hands of Boyd B. Stutler, Charlestown, West Virginia. The original bill of sale was to one George L. Stearns, of Boston, and covered 200 “belt revolvers, 6" (barrels), with Maynard Primer locks,” which were forwarded to Captain John Brown, Iowa City, Iowa, from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts on May 25, 1857. The price was low, $6.50 each, and the price included “set implements” which would be bullet mould and nipple wrench, also flasks and extra main springs. The bill of sale description “belt revolvers” normally would suggest .36 caliber; but Captain Brown specifically stated “a little under the Navy size.” Hence the description ties up the exact model as the Maynard primed revolver, caliber .31, 6-inch barrel, in production at the time. The original Wesson & Leavitt mechanically turned revolver with separate nipples had been discontinued; the declaration they were “Maynard primer” locks definitely rules out the Adams revolvers made about this time by the Massachusetts Arms Company. Remaining, known to collectors, is the Joshua Stevens hand-turned revolver, using one single nipple in the frame, and a tiny hole at the base of each chamber which in succession is carried past the main nipple to allow the flame to discharge the shot.
Whether Brown had all 200 of these revolvers with him at the time of his raid is uncertain, but 102 of them were removed by the Marines officially. A local farmer, John C. Unseld, testified that he opened some of the boxes of materials there and that the guns, carbines and pistols, were taken by “the Baltimore Company” (under Colonel Shutt?) and some other young men who showed up. He estimated that 40 to 50 people got carbines, and most of these got pistols also.
The Allen Breechloader
One rifle never identified with the Brown episode is the Allen & Wheelock. On November 25, 1859, an Allen breechloader was found on the hill near the east end of the railroad bridge, evidently abandoned by one of Brown’s men. Unless the gun used was a prototype or early production “patent pending” model, this is not the relatively common .44 caliber rimfire breechloader patented by Ethan Allen in 1860 and made by Allen &Wheelock in Worcester. It probably was a previous model, very little known, of a “faucet breech” construction. Ethan Allen’s patent of 1855, this mechanism has a cylinder lying across the back of the barrel, with a hole bored in it the same size as the bore. A lever on the top of the grip or small of the stock when lifted rotates the cylinder or drum to permit loading the chamber. A side hammer back-action lock fires a percussion cap; the nipple on the breech flashing through channels in the cross-breech drum. The New England firms were engaged in promotional gifts to would-be purchasers on the troubled frontier, and this rifle may have been among them. It was not an item of issue and this is the only reference found to warlike use of this early Allen breechloader.
Colt Navy Revolver Found Among the personal relics salvaged by Maryland men was an incomplete Colt Navy Ml851 revolver; just the barrel was obtained. It was sent to Sam Colt in the fall of 1859 as a memento of the historic occasion.
The remaining arms were taken to the armory and stored there until later capture by the Confederacy. If not lost in the burning of the storehouse of muskets, which collapsed in flames into the basement during Jackson’s attack, they may have been salvaged and taken to Richmond, there to be cleaned and issued for Confederate service.
Notables at Brown’s Hanging It was an oddly assorted group of soldiery which converged upon the arsenal firehouse and which followed Old Brown and his boys to incarceration and hanging at Charlestown. The Marines, efficiently under command of Colonel Robert E. Lee, were supported by such men as Maj. Thomas J. Jackson and his company
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Colt .28 pistol made at Paterson, N. J., 1840, was found at Bolivar Heights overlooking Harpers Ferry recently. Owner George Debo of Altoona, Pa., wonders if it is souvenir of Brown’s Raid, characterizes it as “smallest revolver of CW.” |
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