One hundred fifty years ago today, John Brown was hanged after being convicted for murder and various other crimes committed in Harpers Ferry which is now West Virginia but in 1859 was still part of Virginia.  Brown was a fervent Abolitionist who intended to seize the almost 10,000 guns that were stored at the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and use them to build an army of freed slaves that would role across the south, continuously adding to its numbers until the institution of slavery was ended once and for all.  While Brown succeeded in seizing the arsenal, his plan soon went awry and he and most of his 26 companions were either killed or captured (and subsequently executed).

 

John Brown is one of the most controversial figures in American history.  He has been portrayed as an irrational zealot and as a visionary patriot.  On the oped pages of today’s New York Times, for instance, one writer compares Brown to the soon-to-be-tried terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed while another urges a posthumous pardon.  My own feelings about Brown fall closer to the terrorist than the patriot side, but I find the era before the Civil War immensely confusing and difficult to understand, so I hesitate to render judgment without being better informed.  Perhaps that’s why I spend so much time reading, writing, talking and thinking about that time in our history.  

 

But as is often the case, there’s always a Lowell connection.  Our friend and reader/commentor Tony Sampas last week shared a story about the newly rededicated bell that is now located at the fork of Central and Prescott Streets.  Here’s what Tony wrote:

 

I love a good Bell Story. Oddly enough one of the greatest Lowell bell moments occurred 150 years ago Wednesday December 2, 1859 when it tolled for Abolitionist John Brown.

Here is a somewhat stuffy 1888 account of it from the “History of Pawtucket Church and Society: with Reminiscences of Pastors and Founders, Sketches of Congregational Churches in Lowell and Brief Outline of Congregationalism” by A.C. Varnum Lowell Mass. Morning Mail Print, 18 Jackson Street 1888


Page 77: “A New Bell”

In 1859 the old meeting-house at Middlesex Village (built 1822), which had been out of use for some years, was sold and removed to North Chelmsford; but the bell, a very fine-toned one, was purchased by this Society, and their bell of smaller size (purchased in 1820) was sold to Horatio G.F. Corliss for some small society in Maine.


When the old village church bell was transported to its new headquarters, quite a sensation was made in Lowell and Dracut, and it happened in this wise: John Brown had seized the national armory buildings at Harper’s Ferry, Va., with and army of seventeen white men and five negroes, and so frightened the Old Dominion that he was hung with so little ceremony that a good deal of sympathy was created all over the country for poor old Brown; and it so happened that the day on which the bell was to be removed was the same day on which Brown was executed - the second day of December, 1859. William McFarlin, being chairman of the committee on the part of the Society to take charge of the bell, took some large wheels, hung the bell underneath, had the name “John Brown” painted upon it, procured a band of music, marched through the principal streets, followed by a procession of spectators, while the bell slowly and solemnly tolled the knell of the brave but deluded old hero of Harper’s Ferry scare. The procession finally halted at Pawtucket Square, and as was afterward expressed by some apt rhymester,

 

“They delivered the bell to Josiah Sawtell:
Who hung it in his steeple-
A wonderful sight, which gave great delight
To crowds of gazing people.”

 

Let me close with some travel advice: if you ever find yourself 60 or so miles northwest of Washington, D.C., by all means visit Harpers Ferry.  I’ve been there three times and find it to be one of the most beautiful spots in the entire country.  The town sits alongside the intersection of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers and is surrounded by high hills.  (In fact a visit requires you to park on the other side of one of the hills and ride a National Park Service shuttle bus into the very small town).  The Park Service does a dutiful if understated job of telling Brown’s story and displaying the brick “engine house” in which he barricaded himself and was subsequently captured, but as is the case at Civil War sites throughout the south, military history takes center stage and messy social issues like slavery get shunted away lest they make either locals or visitors uncomfortable.  (Don’t get me wrong, the National Park Service strives mightily to drag these issues into the light of day but is often frustrated by restrictions imposed by Congress). 

 

No, the big story at Harpers Ferry, besides the beauty of the surroundings, is the Federal arsenal which used water power from the two rivers to drive the machinery that made hundreds of thousands of guns for the United States Army.  Walking into the arsenal exhibit is like walking into the weave room at the Boott Cotton Mills: the technology is identical except the looms are replaced by lathes. 

Before closing, here’s a “the more things change, the more they stay the same” fact.  In our country’s infancy, the newly formed federal government decided to build and operate two arsenals to produce arms.  One was built in Harpers Ferry, Virginia.  The other in Springfield, Massachusetts.  Of course, it was a complete coincidence that President George Washington was from Virginia and Vice President John Adams was from Massachusetts.