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Shields Green

November 23, 2023

Shields Green (1836? – December 16, 1859), who also referred to himself as "'Emperor"',[1]: 387 [2][3] was, according to Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and a leader in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in October 1859.[1]: 387 [4] He had lived for almost two years in the house of Douglass, in Rochester, New York, and Douglass introduced him there to Brown.

Shields Green
Green awaiting his trial
after the Harpers Ferry raid
Bornc. 1836
South Carolina, U.S.
DiedDecember 16, 1859(1859-12-16) (aged 22–23)
Charles Town, Virginia
(now West Virginia), U.S.
Cause of deathHanging
Resting placeWinchester, Virginia (grave unknown)
Other namesEmperor
Known forRaid on Harpers Ferry
Criminal chargesMurder and inciting a slave insurrection; charge of treason dropped
Criminal penaltyDeath by hanging
Criminal statusExecuted

Although Green survived the raid unwounded, he was tried, convicted, and executed by hanging on December 16, 1859, together with three other raiders. All the trials and executions took place in Charles Town, West Virginia (at the time Charlestown, Virginia), county seat of Jefferson County. At John Brown's execution two weeks prior, very few spectators were permitted, for security reasons. Now there were no restrictions, the judge wanted the executions to be seen by the public,[5] and there were 1,600 spectators.[6][7] At the time, legal as well as illegal hangings were entertainment.[8][9]

Green was the only one from the raid on Harpers Ferry that Frederick Douglass mentioned alongside iconic rebels Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey;[10][11][12] Douglass "eulogized [him] with rare pathos".[13][14]: 27  In an article on courageous negroes who revolted he is mentioned alongside Douglass himself and Haitian leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines.[15][16] In Silas X. Floyd's Floyd's Flowers, or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children, Green is a Black hero like Crispus Attucks, Toussaint l'Ouverture, or Benjamin Banneker.[17] Floyd calls him a martyr.

Lack of information about Green edit

Information about Green is fragmentary and inconsistent. As with Nat Turner, there is a single source that everyone has used, Frederick Douglass, yet the reliability of that source has been questioned by Louis DeCaro, author of the only book on Green.

Of the seven men who were tried, convicted, and executed after the raid—five white and two Black—we have less information about Green than about any of the others. He was a good shot, according to two separate eyewitnesses;[18]: 40 [19] he used his rifle and revolver "rapidly and diligently", according to another.[3]: 37  But he was the most illiterate of the raiders[20]—"very illiterate" as the Richmond Dispatch put it[21]—although one newspaper reports him reading the Bible.[22]: 133  He neither wrote nor received letters during his two months in the Jefferson County jail. (He could easily have gotten someone to write letters for him.) No one visited him, or even tried to; there was no one to bury his body. The press and the legal system were far more concerned about the white prisoners than about the Blacks. The other Black prisoner, John Copeland, was a fountain of information, in comparison, and his skin was much lighter, which at the time gave him more credibility than Green. Although we have good evidence that Green had at least one son, in South Carolina, he kept this a secret and so far as we know had no contact with him. Of the five Black members of John Brown's raiders, Green was the only one of whom, in 2009, no descendants could be located.[23]

"A man of few words", according to Douglass; there was no particular attempt to extract information from him by either the press or the legal system. They were far more interested in the white prisoners; Cook, in his published confession, seldom refers to "negroes", and never by name.[24][25] Of the five Black members of Brown's party, Green is the only one of whom there is no daguerrotype image,[26]: 137–138  although we have sketches by four different artists,[26]: 138–149  including one of him alone, published for the first time in 2020.[26]: 148  Copeland supplied all the information the press or legal system felt was needed from the Blacks of the party. "Copeland is an intelligent negro", wrote one who visited all the prisoners in jail in November. He does not say that about Green, who he visits next, implying that Green is less intelligent. He continues:

Shields Green, or Emperor, said to me that he had been at Brown's house in Maryland ever since the latter part of August; that when he went there he did not know that anything was to be done but run off slaves. He had never heard that force was to be used against the whites, only persuasion with the negroes. That when he arrived at Brown's quarters he was taken up stairs and never allowed to come down again except to attend calls of nature, after which he was compelled to return. He was not allowed to write or communicate with anyone except Brown's men. He stated that a number of the men were similarly restricted. He said he knew nothing of Fred Douglass in the Harper's Ferry matter; that all the proceedings were kept from him; that he would have left Brown before the attack if he could have done so. He said running off slaves is quite unprofitable, and recommended everybody not to attempt it hereafter. ...He [Cook] fully corroborated the statement made by Green, the negro, in reference to the watch that was kept on a part of the men who were at Brown's house. He said that that portion of them who were kept upstairs did not know anything of the intentions of Brown until 11 o'clock on the Sunday morning before Harper's Ferry was taken. The Constitution was then read to them by Stevens, and that some of them did not then seem to understand it. He denied, with feeling, that he ever came to Harper's Ferry as a spy.[27]

Green's life is in essence divided into two parts: before Douglass and after Douglass. He enters written history when he started living in Douglass's house, in Rochester, New York, about two years before Brown's raid. Douglass gives us essential information—were it not for him, we would not know that Green was an escaped slave.

But one interviewer considered Green as "not much inferior to Fred. Douglass" in education,[citation needed] and a Virginia physician, who believed Green showed no evidence of education, nevertheless added that he was "said to be finely educated."[citation needed] He was particularly abused in cross-examination by Prosecutor Andrew Hunter,[26]: 121–122  and although his legal testimony was minimal, legal historian Steven Lubet believes that it "is therefore entirely possible, or even likely, that Judge Parker, himself a slave owner, did not allow the black prisoners any meaningful occasion to speak at sentencing."[28]: 1802  As a result of these circumstances, we have very little information about Green, and writers on John Brown's raiders say little or nothing on him.

Body edit

As was usual at the time, Green's skin color was commented on: he was "a negro of the blackest hue",[29]: 83  "a black negro",[30][31] "a full blooded negro,"[19] "a regular out-and-out tar-colored darkey."[28]: 1787  At that time, those of darker skin color, or "more African blood", were considered by whites to be inferior, less civilized than those with lighter brown skin, "mulattoes", usually the result of rape of female slaves by their white owners. In part because of his skin color, and in part because of his fighting skill, Green was "the most despised of Brown's captured men".[26]: xv  "Of all the raiders to stand trial in Charlestown, Shields Green was the most notably harangued, maligned, and browbeaten by the vindictive prosecuting attorney—the harshest words being reserved for the darkest of the Harper's Ferry raiders."[26]: 137 

His hair was short and curly.[32]

He was described as "small in stature and very active in his movements".[29]: 83  "He had rather a good countenance, and a sharp, intelligent look."[33][19] James Monroe described his as "a fine, athletic figure".[34]: 175 

Hinton says Green had "huge feet", but he never saw Green and there is no known source for this detail. He also says Green had "a Congo face", apparently a reference to his dark skin color.[35]: 507 

Names edit

Emperor edit

According to Douglass, living at his house when Brown visited was a "colored man who called himself by different names—sometimes 'Emperor', at other times, 'Shields Green'".[1]: 387  On a business card he had printed in Rochester, New York, in 1858, Green referred to himself as "Shield Emperor."[26]: 5 [36]

The other rebels also referred to him as "Emperor".[3]: 33  The meaning of or reason for the nickname of Emperor is unknown. Sometimes writers speculate that this may reflect some status among the African people he was supposedly kidnapped from, or his ancestry from African royalty.[37] However appealing, there is no evidence to support these hypotheses. Green grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. The nickname may reflect his status as leader among other Blacks. In harmony with this is a link between the name and Green's bearing: "very officious..., evidently conscious of his own great importance in the enterprise".[29]: 83  To the hostages he was "very impudent"; he told a hostage to "shut up".[35]: 305  "He was very insulting to Brown's prisoners, constantly presenting his rifle and threatening to shoot some of them."[29]: 83 

Sometimes he is referred to in the press only as Emperor: "The negro, Emperor, is the only one among them [the prisoners in Charles Town] who has a Bible, except old Brown".[38] "The negro called 'Emperor of New York' taken prisoner is said to be the black man who was upon the stage with Douglass the night he lectured in this place [Chambersburg]."[39]

Esau Brown edit

It is sometimes found in modern presentations of Green that his real name was Esau Brown. The only evidence for this is a single newspaper article of 1861. But according to Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., author of The Untold Story of Shields Green (2020), the only book thus far on his life, so far as is known Green never used the name Esau Brown, nor was it ever used by any of his Harpers Ferry associates. Frederick Douglass never referred to him by that name, nor is it found in documents concerning his trial and execution. The name never appears in any of the numerous newspaper reports of 1859. DeCaro concludes that it is "doubtful" that this single mention is correct.[26]: 3–6  It may simply be a mishearing of "Emperor".

Green's speech edit

Like other aspects of Green's life, the evidence about his speech is also somewhat contradictory.

In the first place, Green had no problem with understanding speech. He was present at the lengthy Brown-Douglass meeting in Chambersburg, and there is no comment that Green had any trouble understanding it. Nor is there such a comment anywhere else. He was not hard to talk to.

However, Green was "a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken", as Douglass put it.[1]: 387  DeCaro suggests he may have had a speech defect.[26]: 13  Douglass did not come to Chambersburg with the intent of speaking publicly, but local Blacks recognized him and asked him to talk. He gave an impromptu lecture in Franklin Hall on what he said to them was his only topic, slavery. On Saturday, August 20, before meeting with Brown. Green, called "Emperor of New York", was "upon the stage with Douglass".[39][40]

In a reminiscence in later life, John Brown's daughter Anne Brown Adams recalled an incident that took place when she and her sister-in-law, Martha, were being sent home to New York shortly before the raid. According to Anne, this man of few words felt moved to deliver "a farewell speech," which she called "the greatest conglomeration of all the big words in the dictionary, and out, that was ever piled up." According to Anne, even fellow raider Osborne Anderson jested that "God himself could not understand that".[41][35]: 507  Knowledge of big words, however, does not mean literacy, as DeCaro supposes.[26]: 13  High-faluting words were used constantly in political speeches, of which there were many more than today. Brown and Douglass alone used plenty of them.

On another occasion, Anne said that Green was "a perfect rattlebrain in talk; he used to annoy me very much, coming downstairs so often. He came near betraying and upsetting the whole business, by his careless letting a neighbor woman see him."[42]

We have a number of sentences reported that Green said in different contexts. Aside from the attempt of Douglass, and Douglass alone, to reproduce a rural or uneducated pronunciation, the sentences are adequate, even eloquent:

  • "Oh, what a poor fool I am!" said Green to his companion on the way. "I had got away out of slavery, and here I have got back into the eagle's claw again!"[43]: 414–415 
  • "Death from the hands of the law for no offense save for believing in liberty for myself and my race, would not be a degradation."[26]: 157 

Once again, if reportage on the raid by Southern journalists lacks interviews with Green, this is because Brown's men were largely overshadowed by Brown in general, and because the Black raiders were treated with even less regard than were the white raiders, and of the Black raiders, from any reporter's point of view Copeland was preferable.

Green's life edit

Before 1857 edit

It is not clear when Green first arrived in Rochester, New York, or how long he actually stayed in the Douglass home. It was not unusual for the Douglass home to serve as a sanctuary for fugitives from slavery.[44] Information about Green's life before that is fragmentary.

According to Douglass, who is the best source we have, Green was an escaped slave from Charleston, South Carolina;[1]: 387  According to an unpublished document unearthed by Louis DeCaro, he grew up in Charleston. He was an urban man, "much out of his element under the open skies of the Maryland countryside."[26]: 40  Fugitive slaves always said they were free, except to people they trusted; the court documents in Charles Town describe him as "a free negro", as he claimed. [45] On the other hand, Green told a reporter after his trial that he was born of free parents,[46] while a reporter covering Green's trial for The New York Herald wrote that "the count of treason was abandoned since it was not proven that Green was a free person."[47] Douglass did not reveal Green's true status until long after his death.

Different accounts have his age from 23 to 30.[26]: 14  According to DeCaro, if he did participate in the 1850 "excitement" in Harrisburg, he must have been in his early thirties.[26]: 19  Four pages earlier DeCaro has him "in his mid-thirties at the time of the Harper's Ferry raid".[26]: 15 

Green was a widower. According to the Charleston Daily News of June 7, 1870, a son of his was living in Charleston.[48][49] The names of his wife and his son are unknown. His owner and occupation are unknown. There may have been more than one son, but aside from this nothing else is known of his life in South Carolina. It was not easy to get away;[1]: 387  he escaped hidden in cargo on a ship. Without citing any source, an article on the numerous Black sailors reports that Green had been one.[50] Strangely, there is no newspaper advertisement seeking recovery of a Black so easily recognizable (because of his speech defect, as well as his skin color).

Governor Wise, when he came to Harpers Ferry to interview participants in the raid, said "I immediately examined the leader. Brown, his lieutenant, Stevens, a White man named Coppie, and a negro from Canada. They made full confessions."[51]: 245 

As Green was not talkative, and uncaptured fugitive slaves do not leave much of a paper trail, there is not much reliable information on Green before he met Douglass.

  • News stories after the raid said he was from Iowa,[52][53][54][55][56]
  • Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,[57][58][26]: 16  where he "was conspicuous in the fugitive slave riot at Harrisburg some years ago",[59] On the same front page of The New York Times just cited, another dispatch says he was from Iowa.
  • Pittsburg [sic], Pennsylvania,[60][61]
  • and Rochester, New York,[31] A single story says in one paragraph that Green was from Harrisburg, and in another that he was from Pittsburg [sic].[62]
  • Another lists "a negro named Shields Green who came to join Brown from Pittsburgh", but later on the same page says that "Emperor" was from "New York—formerly of South Carolina".[63]
  • "Shields Green alias Emperor, New York, raised in South Carolina"[64][65]
  • "Emperor, of New York, raised in South Carolina, not wounded, a prisoner—the latter was elected a member of Congress of the Provisional Government some time since"[66]
  • "Emperor, New York—formerly of South Carolina" "Emperor, also negro, is in chains at Harper's Ferry"[67]
  • Mistakenly calling him "Gains", one of the first reports relates that "the negro...says he lived in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania," adding that "Gains is a bad fellow, and no truth in him. He told several palpable lies while telling his story."[68]
  • In Robert E. Lee's report he is called "Green Shields (alias Emperor)"[2]: 44  and once "(alias S. Emperor)".[2]: 42 
  • One story mentioning Harrisburg describes Green as "a somewhat notorious character".[58]
  • One person from Oberlin, Ohio, where Green's name is on a cenotaph together with those of raiders Copeland and Leary, said that Green had lived there for some time; another that he could not possibly have lived there.[26]: 21 
  • "Green was an ambitious, vindictive, but very illiterate negro of the African species, and evidently died a victim of his own brutish impetuosity. He was the head and front of all the negro rescues at Harrisburg for several years past, a journeyman barber by trade."[21]

Green's supposed connection with Oberlin edit

There is a cenotaph monument in Oberlin to three young Black men from Oberlin who participated in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. The other two are John Anthony Copeland and Lewis Sheridan Leary. About their residence in Oberlin there is no doubt. The situation regarding Green is confusing and the pieces of evidence impossible to reconcile.

Local Blacks, working in 1860 on a monument to the colored men of Oberlin that were with John Brown at Harper's Ferry, said that "Shields Green was but little known to us, excepting as he has been made known to the nation and the world by his manly conduct, his patient and heroic endurance in prison, and his pious, courageous and consistent deportment as be stood on the fatal gallows."[69] Copeland, after his arrest, was asked who else from Oberlin was at Harpers Ferry, and he said that besides himself, only Leary.[70] The Oberlin Evangelist of November 9 says two of Brown's men were from Oberlin.[71] An Ohio man said that "the negro Green and Edwin Coppic at one time lived near Salem." Salem, Ohio, is 90 miles (140 km) east of Oberlin. He continues: "I think Copeland was the only man who went to John Brown from Oberlin."[72]

The reference to Green having lived in Oberlin is from Oberlin College professor James Monroe. At the request of Copeland's parents, who as free Blacks were barred from entering Virginia, he travelled to Winchester, Virginia, just after the December 16, 1859, execution of Green, Copeland, and two others. As there was no one protecting their graves, the bodies of Green and Copeland were dug up within hours by students and faculty of the Winchester Medical College, for use in anatomy classes, in which the corpses were dissected. At the time, this was a common way of using or disposing of unclaimed bodies.

Monroe tried but failed to recover Copeland's body so his parents could bury it; students threatened violence, and they stole the body from the College and hid it. However, as he had a few hours free, a medical college professor gave him a tour, and in the dissecting rooms:

I was startled to find the body of another Oberlin neighbor whom I had often met upon our streets, a colored man named Shields Greene [sic]. I had indeed known that he also had been executed at Charlestown, as one of John Brown's associates, but my warm interest in another object had banished the thought of him from my mind. It was a sad sight. I was sorry I had come to the building; and yet who was I, that I should be spared a view of what my fellow-creatures had to suffer? A fine, athletic figure, he was lying on his back—the unclosed, wistful eyes staring wildly upward, as if seeking, in a better world, for some solution of the dark problems of horror and oppression so hard to be explained in this.[34]

No one other than anatomy students was interested in Green's body, not even Monroe.

Upon Monroe's return to Oberlin he gave a public report of his trip at a coffinless funeral for Copeland.[34]: 183  These remarks immediately preceded the beginning of the efforts to build a monument to the Oberlin Blacks who participated in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.

1857–1859 edit

Frederick Douglass's account edit

From January 28 through February 14, 1858, John Brown also stayed in Douglass's house, working on his Provisional Constitution.[43]: 675 

Many years later, in 1881, Douglass again describes Green as a fugitive slave:

He was a fugitive slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and had attested his love of liberty by escaping from slavery and making his way through many dangers to Rochester, where he had lived in my family, and where he met the man with whom he went to the scaffold.[14]: 26 

The person he had most contact with was Douglass, in whose house in Rochester, New York, he was living from 1857 to 1859. This was Douglass's second Rochester house, near Highland Park.[73] Green met John Brown in Douglass's house; Brown stayed in Douglass's house at the same time, for weeks, so Brown had ample opportunities to get to know him.

Presumably Green came to Rochester because he was thinking of emigrating to Canada, as most Blacks entering Rochester were. But finding Douglass's Underground Railroad house, Douglass took a liking to him. Douglass knew the law well and could have coached Green on what to say, and Green was pretty quiet anyway. Living with Douglass, he worked as a waiter, launderer, and barber.[26]: 13–14  Certainly preparing a business card, as Green did, advertising his clothes cleaning and giving his address (2 Spring St.), means he felt to some extent secure.[26]: 5 

Comments on Green's personality edit

In the case of the free negro Green, allusion was made by the counsel for the defense to an attempt to introduce impertinent evidence respecting the advances of the prisoner toward a mulatto girl at the time of the midnight entrance into the plantations. Mr. Hunter pursued his answering argument quietly, until he reached this point, and then, lifting himself to his full height, and compressing hie fine features to unwonted sternness—for he usually wears a smile—he turned upon the negro, and with a rapidity that certainly exhibited a wonderful acquaintance with the vocabulary of invective, hurled for a while incessant denunciation upon the guilty passions which he assumed to have inspired Shields Green to join the expedition. How the negro sat so stolid under it, I cannot understand, but the crowd that filled the hall blazed with fury, and clenched fists in agonies of virtuous indignation. I suppose that the consciousness of having offered endless similar impure examples never entered their minds at all. Mr. Hunter, however, gained new and blushing honors. It was his best display of the season, and far surpassed anything offered by other orators.[74]

Osborne Anderson described him as "the Zouave of the band",[18]: 40 [35]: 298  an opinion repeated by Annie Brown.[19]

"Of the four prisoners taken at the engine house, Shields Green, the most inexorable of all our party, a very Turco in his hatred against the stealers of men, was under Captain Hazlett, and consequently of our little band at the Arsenal ; but when we were ordered by Captain Brown to return to our positions, after having driven the troops into the bridge, he mistook the order, and went to the engine house instead of with his own party. Had he remained with us, he might have eluded the vigilant Virginians. As it was, he was doomed, as is well-known, and became a free-will offering for freedom, with his comrade, John Copeland. Wiser and better man no doubt there were, but a braver man never lived than Shields Green".[18]: 45 

"A little while prior to this, [Douglass] went down to [Chambersburg], to accompany Shields Green, whereupon a meeting of Capt. Brown, Kagi, and other distinguished persons, convened for consultation."[18]: 23 

Years later Douglass described Green in his memoir:

Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.[1]: 387 

Green requested when in the Charles Town jail that he have as few visitors as possible.[22]: 133  While on the scaffold, in contrast with Copeland, he was "engaged in earnest prayer"[7] (see drawing in DeCaro). "Green was an ambitious, vindictive, but very illiterate negro of the African species, and evidently died a victim to his own brutish impetuosity. He was the head and front of all the negro rescues at Harrisburg, for several years past, a Journeyman barber by trade."[75]

Frederick Douglass said:

While at my house, John Brown made the acquaintance of a colored man who called himself by different names — sometimes 'Emperor,' at other times, 'Shields Green.' ...He was a fugitive slave, who had made his escape from Charleston; a state from which a slave found it no easy matter to run away. But Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character. John Brown saw at once what 'stuff' Green was made of, and confided to him his plans and purposes. Green easily believed in Brown, and promised to go with him whenever he should be ready to move."[76][77]: 354 

Lewis Washington, interviewed by the Senate Select Committee, discussed him thus after the raid:

Question. Did he use his arms; did he fire?

Answer. Yes, sir, very rapidly and dilligently.[sic] I do not know with what effect.

Question. What was his deportment?

Answer. It was rather impudent in the morning. I saw him order some gentlemen to shut a window, with a rifle raised at them. He said, "Shut that window, damn you; shut it instantly." He did it in a very impudent manner. But when the attack came on, he had thrown off his hat and all his equipments, and was endeavoring to represent himself as one of the slaves.[78][79]

Green was similarly defiant at an encounter with a White while travelling from Hagerstown to the Kennedy farm.[26]: 41 

The state's attorney, Andrew Hunter, lashed him furiously during the prosecution for his bold and unwavering stand at the trial:

As a pleader, his [Hunter's] manner was subdued, his diction strong and earnest, his voice deep and full, and he could make it ring at will. He did this, and with a touch of ferocity, too, when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green, till the crowd in and around the court-house blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race, and both as lighter and prisoner showed in rude, but vigorous manner, his utter disdain of men who sold mothers, dealt in men, bred children for sale, making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land."[35]: 348 

"On the morning of December 2, the day of John Brown's execution, [S]hields Green sent word to his leader that he waited willingly and calmly for his own death, and that he was glad he had come."[80]

"The evening previous to the starting of Captain Brown's followers from Rochester, I spent at the house of Mr. Frederick Douglass, and when ready for my walk home, Shields Green accompanied me. I said to him, while on our walk, "Do you know that by going with Captain Brown into a Southern State, you expose yourself to the gallows? That if you are taken you will surely be executed?" He answered, "Yes; I shall probably lose my life, but if my death will help to free my race, I am willing to die. I have suffered cruel blows frơm men who said they owned me. Death from the hands of the law for no offense, save for believing in liberty for myself and my race, would not be a degradation; but blows from an overseer's lash, crush into my soul."[81]: 57–58 

Douglass: "When, by and by, a monument is built to John Brown, a niche must be reserved in it for Shields Green."[82]

"Of the bravery exhibited at Harpers Ferry, no doubt Shields Green was foremost. Anderson wrote that 'Newby was a brave fellow' and when he was shot through the head by the trooper who took advantage of a mutual withdrawal, 'his death was promptly avenged by Shields Green,' who raised his rifle in an instant and 'brought down the cowardly murderer. Wiser and better men no doubt there were, but a braver men [sic] never lived than Shields Green'... [Ellipsis in the original.] Frederick Douglass said, 'If a monument should be erected to the memory of John Brown, as there ought to be, the form and name of Shields Green should have a conspicuous place on it.'"[83]

Brown's son John Brown, Jr., who like his father met Green at Douglass's house, called him a "young friend".[35]: 261 

He [Hunter] did this, and with a touch of ferocity, too, when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green, till the crowd in and around the courthouse blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race, and both as fighter and prisoner showed in rude, but vigorous manner, his utter disdain of men who sold mothers, dealt in men, bred children for sale, making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land.

The Virginian lawyers selected by the Examining Court to defend these prisoners had an ungracious and thankless task assigned them. Mr. Green was described by Correspondent House, of the New York Tribune, as a "most extraordinary man to look upon, ...long, angular, uncouth, and wild in gesture, ...deficient in all rhetorical graces. His words rush from his mouth scarce half made up. He speaks sentences abreast. ...His...'whar['] and ' thar' are the least of his offenses. His demeanor, altogether, is of unrivaled oddity; and yet his power is so decided that, while he is upon his legs, he carries everything before him.[page 349] He is the most remarkable man I have seen here, although not so impressive in his bearing as Mr. Andrew Hunter, who is a man of real nobility of presence." [Ellipses in the original.][35]: 348–349 

"Mr. Sennott fought vigorously for these men, and went the length of justifying them in their resistance to the enslavement of their race. The State Attorney, Hunter, was almost ferocious in his philippics against Shields Green. whose boldly careless bearing had aroused all the brutal malignity that slave ownership and race prejudice necessarily produced."[35]: 376 

"Shields Green, a fugitive slave from Charlestown, S. C., who came with Frederick Douglass to Chambersburg, Pa., on the 19th of August preceding the outbreak, and entered the party at Kennedy Farm as in sort a representative of Mr. Douglass;"[35]: 504 

"At the Kennedy Farm, the night before we were leaving for home (Martha and Anne), he came downstairs to listen to the 'Emperor's' (Shields Green) farewell speech, as he called it. This was the greatest conglomeration of big words that was ever piled up. Some one asked Anderson 'if he understood it,' and he replied, 'No, God Himself could not understand that.'" ¶ But the negro man with Congo face, big, misplaced words, and huge feet, knew instinctively what courageous manhood meant and how devotion acted. Frederick Douglass tells how, when he turned to leave the Chambersburg quarry, where his last interview with John Brown was had, that, on telling Green he could return with him to Rochester, New York, the latter had turned and looked at the strong but bowed figure of John Brown, weighted with the pain of Douglass's refusal to aid him in, as he termed it, "hiving the bees," and then asked: "Is he going to stay?" An affirmative answer being made, he looked again at the old leader, and slowly said, "Well, I guess I's goes wid de old man." When, a short time after O. P. Anderson and Albert Hazlett had decided the resistance then making to be hopeless, Green came, under fire, with some message, over to their station at the arsenal on the Potomac. Anderson told him he'd better go with them. He turned and looked toward the engine-house, before the door of which stood its few defenders, and asked: "You think der's no chance, Osborne?" "Not one," was the reply. "And de old Captain can't get away?" "No," said both the men. "Well," with a long look and slow [page 508] utterance, "I guess I'll go back to de old man." In the prison, Green, with Copeland and Leary, were constantly sending messages of regard to Captain Brown and Stevens, and on the morning of John Brown's execution he sent him word that he was glad he came, and that he waited willingly for his own death."[35]: 507–508 

Green had left a boy in slavery; his wife dying before he made his escape. ...Green was a full-blooded black.... They were all intelligent, Green looking the least so, though possessed of considerable natural ability, vigor of character, and a courage which showed that if better trained he might have become a marked man." : 505 

A Rochester newspaper described him as "of course ignorant, though naturally intelligent, ...of a reckless disposition" He was "about twenty-five years of age, and has no family."[36]

Meeting of Brown and Douglass in Chambersburg edit

 
In a stone quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Shields Green, with dark skin, is at center, Frederick Douglass on the left and John Brown on the right. Watercolor by Richard Schlecht.

By far the most dramatic and best-known moment in Green's life, which has been made into a play or movie script several times, was his meeting with Brown and Douglass in an abandoned stone quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, which lasted "a whole day and night".[84] However, we have only a single source for this interview, Frederick Douglass, and his reliability has been questioned by Louis DeCaro, author of the only book-length study of Green.

Green first met John Brown at the house of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester, where Green was living;[1]: 387 [14]: 26  Brown spent some weeks there, working on his Provisional Constitution from morning to night.[85]: 246  Green and Douglass travelled together from Rochester via New York to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to meet with Brown and his second in command, John Henry Kagi.[86] Brown, who knew "the stuff Green was made of", as Douglass put it, had asked Douglass to bring Green with him.[87]: 600  The meeting took place in Chambersburg, an Underground Railroad stop, because it was the "staging ground" for Brown's raid; just 22 miles (35 km) from the Maryland border, it was the closest city in the (free) North. Brown was incognito.[88] Jerry Anderson, Owen Brown, and Oliver Brown were also in Chambersburg, but did not participate in the meeting.[26]: 19 

For secrecy, the meeting was in an abandoned stone quarry.[89]

Brown tried in this meeting to get Douglass to join in the raid, because Douglass, a national Black leader, would have added credibility to it, motivating the enslaved to rise up and run away, as Brown would propose.[87]: 599  Douglass declined to participate in Brown's planned raid because he believed it could not succeed and was, therefore, suicidal. Green declined Douglass's suggestion that he return to Rochester with him, saying, as reported by Douglass, ""I b'l'eve I'll go wid de old man".[14]: 26  During the raid, Green made a similar remark when invited to flee, as the raid was failing.

Green and Douglass edit

Although neither Douglass nor Green mentions it, afterwards Green has been spoken of as a replacement for Douglass.[41]

In an incident which became famous when it was made public over 20 years later, in August 1859 Douglass, accompanied by Green, traveled from Rochester to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, for a secret meeting with Brown. In what became a central incident of Douglass's life, Douglass refused to join Brown's party, as he saw it as doomed, suicidal. More importantly, he demurred from enlisting Black support for Brown, which was of vital importance to Brown. While the two parted as friends, Brown was much disappointed in Douglass, and privately listed him as "unreliable."[90] Frederick Douglass wrote the only description of this meeting in his third and final autobiography, conflating the chronology of events in 1859, including the fact that his disagreement with Brown over the seizure of the Harper's Ferry armory dated to earlier in 1859.[90]: 27–29  Douglass returned to Rochester but Green refused to accompany him. Green then joined Brown and his men at a rented farm in Maryland, where he was sequestered along with the rest until the Harper's Ferry raid in October.

According to Douglass, Green could have escaped when it was clear the raid was failing, but he chose again to remain with Brown. However, this appears to have been a legend that Douglass himself initiated. According to fellow Black raider Osborne Anderson, Green actually confused orders during the fighting and ended up staying with Brown instead of escaping with Anderson.[91]: 169–170 

Owen Brown escorted Green on his difficult 20 miles from Chambersburg to the Kennedy Farm; it was difficult and dangerous because of the many slave catchers watching the roads. Owen has left us a 20-page report on the trip. He describes Green as "more mindful and alert" than he was himself, spotting Whites first, telling Owen to remove his too visible white summer coat and put on Green's black cloak instead.[26]: 47  From Chambersburg to Hagerstown, Maryland, the trip was by wagon, and from there Owen and Shields traveled on foot at night, across cornfields and thinly-wooded areas.[26]: 39  Owen tells us that Green had been brought up in the city, and was very much out of his element in the Maryland countryside. At one point they had to cross a river, presumably Antietam Creek, and since Green could not swim Owen made a makeshift raft.[26]: 40  Green was much disturbed at re-entering a slave state, fearing his capture. When they got to the farm, "A happier man than Shields Green was never seen. He was like a new man", according to Owen.[26]: 43–44 

Douglass and Brown had another, little-known meeting on August 15, 1859. Brown travelled to Philadlephia from Chambersburg. He had heard there would be a street parade of a "colored military company" named the Frank Johnson Guards, and he found that the situation in Philadelphia was worse than he had feared. The "armed and disciplined" Black group was publicly exhorted by J. J. Simons, "one of Brown's lieutenants", to participate in the upcoming invasion of Virginia to free the slaves. Brown was in the audience, and late that night he was roused from bed by an urgent messenger who took him to a house where both Douglass and Brown were.

The Harpers Ferry raid edit

During the raid, Green and others were assigned to recruit slaves from the nearby countryside to join the rebellion. Green was with Dangerfield Newby and Osborne Anderson at the Arsenal during the raid; Osborne said that Green immediately avenged Newby's death.[18]: 40  According to Douglass, Osborne Anderson (not Jeremiah Anderson[1]: 391 ) said that Green could have escaped with him. "I told him to come; that we could do nothing more,"[1]: 391–392  But his reply was the same: "I b'l'eve I'll go down wid de ole man."[14]: 26 

Green and Edwin Coppock were the only two of Brown's raiders who neither escaped nor were injured.[52]

Green nearly killed Robert E. Lee. Colonel Washington told him not to shoot.[92]

"Newby and Green, negroes, were stationed at the junction of High and Shenandoah rivers."[93]

Washington said: "Shields Green was one of the men who took my carriage from my place."[94]: 811 

After taking refuge in the "engine house", as it was called, Green's job was to supervise the hostages.[95]: 93 

Green's trial edit

 
Shields Green, John Copeland, and Albert Hazlett in their cell in the Jefferson County jail
 
Death sentence of Shields Green, November 10, 1859

Green's trial preceded that of the other Black captive, Copeland, and began on November 3, that of Edwin Coppock having ended the day before.[96] "Mr. Griswold appeared as his counsel, Judge Russell, of Boston, is also on his way here to take part in the defence of the prisoners."[97]

Green's case was called first, and the prosecution's evidence was overwhelming. The chief witness against the defendant was the plantation master Lewis Washington, a great-nephew of George Washington, who had been kidnapped and held prisoner by Brown's men. Washington testified that Green—who was carrying a rifle, a pistol, and a butcher knife—had been placed in charge of guarding the white hostages. Washington also testified that Green had fired shots at the surrounding militia, but that was not his worst offense. Far more heinous in Washington's eyes, however, had been Green's "very impudent manner" in addressing his betters, a crime that the aristocratic plantation owner considered more threatening than violence. Unusual forborn in slavery, Green did have a self-confident bearing that led his friends to affectionately call him "Emperor."" Although he may have appeared impudent in the eyes of a slave master, the reality was, as Frederick Douglass put it, that Green's "courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character." Lewis Washington, however, was unable to recognize dignity in a Black man, and he was especially offended that Green had presumed to give orders to the white hostages. Washington also called Green a coward. When a detachment of Colonel Lee's men, under the command of Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, made their final assault on Brown's position at the armory, Green evidently threw away his arms and tried to lose himself among the local slaves." Despite Washington's condescending characterization,[28]: 1797–98 

Green's pro bono attorney George Sennott "argued for the defence of Shields Green. His address was full of ingenuity. Every resource seemed to be invoked. I cannot tell you the number of 'points' he made, but they were very numerous and very sharp. The sensitiveness of the audience, too, was less evident than yesterday, and Mr. Sennott's manner, which was not so demonstrative as before, augmented their good humor. I think the Court was hardly prepared for so much acuteness as he showed."[98]

In a startling and much-commented argument, Sennott cited the recent Dred Scott decision to get the charge of treason dropped. The spectators gasped,[28]: 1799  but he argued successfully that since Blacks, including Green, were not citizens of the United States according to that ruling, they could not commit treason.[28]: 1785  According to the relevant statute, only "free persons" could commit treason.[99] The jury found him not guilty of that charge. Abolitionists, however, were concerned about this apparent endorsement of the Dred Scott decision.[95]: 111 

He was thoroughly dressed down by prosecuting attorney Hunter:

[A]t times he rises to an eloquence that rings through the court-room, and moves listeners to approving outbursts that call for subjugation by sheriff and constable. In the case of the negro Green, allusion was made by the counsel for the defense to an attempt to introduce impertinent evidence respecting the advances of the prisoner toward a mulatto girl at the time of the midnight entrance into the plantations. Mr. Hunter pursued his answering argument quietly, until he reached this point, and then, lifting himself to his full height, and compressing his fine features to unwanted sternness (for he usually wears a smile), he turned upon the negro, and with a rapidity that certainly exhibited a wonderful acquaintance with the vocabulary of invective, hurled for a while incessant denunciation upon the guilty passion which he assumed to have inspired Shields Green to join the expedition. How the negro ever sat so stolid under it, I cannot understand; but the crowd that filled the hall blazed with fury, and clenched fists in agonies of virtuous indignaticn. I suppose that the consciousness of having offered endless similar impure examples never entered their minds at all. Mr. Hunter, however, gained new and blushing honors. It was his best display of the season, and far surpassed anything offered by other orators.[100]

Green, like all criminal defendants in Virginia at the time, could not testify. He did not say a word during the trial, according to one source,[101] but court records do not support this: in response to the same question John Brown was asked (see John Brown's last speech), if he had anything to say before sentencing, his reply was "nothing but what he had before said",[102] whereas his cellmate John Copeland remained mute. (A different report has Green mute as well.[103]) Steven Lubek has pointed out that Green obviously did not disclose that Brown and Douglass knew each other, as that would have been a bombshell and all over the papers.[28]: 1796  That is why Brown and Douglass met at such a remote location—an abandoned stone quarry, to which thet were led by the Chambersburg conductor of the Underground Railroad. (After the raid, the Chambersburg newspaper, writing on Brown's many visits to that city, linked Douglass's visit with a meeting with Brown.[39])

The three Black defendants—Green, Copeland, and Leahy—all said that they knew nothing of Brown's plans until the Sunday morning meeting before the raid.[24]: 11  In Green's case this was certainly false, since he had been present at the lengthy discusions between Douglass and Brown.

The comment of the correspondent for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper is: "the colored men do not seem to know what all the fuss is about; they keep close to the stove and read the Bible."[104]

Green's trial ended November 5, and was followed by that of Copeland.[99] The charge of treason was also dropped for Copeland. Both were convicted, along with John Brown and the others, of murder and inciting a slave insurrection. Green, Copeland, Cook, and Edwin Coppock were sentenced to death on November 10.[103][102] According to Parker, pronouncing the death sentences "is the most painful duty I have ever been called on to perform".[105] According to a reporter, "a large number of the spectators wept, as did the Judge".[106]

On December 2, the morning of John Brown's execution, Green sent word to Brown that he was glad to have fought with him, and awaited his death willingly.[35]: 507–508 

Coppock and Cook attempted to escape from the jail using a knife they got from Green, but he did not try to escape himself.[95]: 116  There is no comment anywhere on how Green got a knife in jail.

Green's execution edit

 
John Anthony Copeland Jr. and Shields Green, being taken in a wagon from the jail to the gallows.

Green and Copeland were hanged on Friday December 16, two weeks after Brown. There were at least 1,600 spectators.[107] "The bodies of the negroes, after being cut down, were placed in poplar coffins and carried back to the jail. They will be interred tomorrow on the spot where the gallows stand, though there is a party of medical students here from Winchester who will doubtless not allow them to remain there long."[108]

After a burial which may have lasted no more than an hour, their corpses were dug up—the grave-robbing students carried guns, in part to keep away other medical students that also wanted the corpses. They were taken to the nearby Winchester Medical College for dissection by students. A letter from Black residents of Philadelphia to Virginia Governor Wise, requesting their bodies so as to bury them, had no effect.[109] Professor James Monroe of Oberlin College, a friend of Copeland's family from Oberlin, Ohio, searched for Copeland's body, but found only Green's. He was unable to retrieve Copeland's body, as the medical students hid the corpse and threatened him with violence if he continued his quest. It did not occur to him to retrieve Green's body; no one wanted it, in Oberlin or anywhere else. This is the last news we have of it, on a dissecting table.[110][111][34] At the time, unclaimed dead bodies were often used or disposed of this way. During the Civil War, Union troops burned down Winchester Medical College in retaliation for what happened to Brown and his men. It was never rebuilt.

In 1928, unidentifiable bones from bodies dissected at the Winchester Medical College were found in a pit under a building being torn down.[112] There is no report on what was done with the bones found.

Legacy and honors edit

 
Monument honoring Copeland, Green, and Leary in Oberlin, Ohio.
 
Plaque showing original inscription
  • On December 25, 1859, a memorial service was held in Oberlin for Copeland, Green, and Lewis Sheridan Leary, who died during the raid.
  • A cenotaph was erected in 1865 in Westwood Cemetery to honor the three "citizens of Oberlin." The monument was moved in 1971 to Martin Luther King Jr. Park on Vine Street in Oberlin.[113] The inscription reads:

These colored citizens of Oberlin, the heroic associates of the immortal John Brown, gave their lives for the slave.
Et nunc servitudo etiam mortua est, laus deo [And now slavery is finally dead, thanks be to God].

S. Green died at Charleston, Va., Dec. 16, 1859, age 23 years.

J. A. Copeland died at Charleston, Va., Dec. 16, 1859, age 25 years.

L. S. Leary died at Harper's Ferry, Va., Oct. 20, 1859, age 24 years.

  • The Green–Copeland American Legion Post 63 was founded in Charles Town, West Virginia in 1929. It joined with another Black post after the Second World War.[95]: 120 
  • "John Brown's Body Servant", a fictionalized version of his time with Frederick Douglass, was published in 1941.[114][115]
  • At the centennial in 1959, a columnist expressed frustration that no school or anything else had been named for either Green or Copeland.[116]
  • A 1983 play by Alf Pratt, When My Bees Swarm (words of Brown), dramatizes the Brown–Douglass–Green meeting in Chambersburg. It has never been produced.[117]
  • He was called "Rochester's first black martyr" by Shirley Clark Husted, in her Monroe County, New York, Civil War anthology, Sweet Gift of Freedom (1986).[118]
  • The Brown–Douglass–Green meeting is the subject of the play Ten Thousand Mornings by T. P. Bancroft. It was produced non-professionally in 1990.[119]
  • African-American storyteller David Anderson expanded the known facts of Green's life into a story, "Being of a Reckless Disposition" (1994).[120]
  • He Who Endures, by Bill Harris, is a one-act play in seven scenes about Green, Douglass, and Brown, that puts on the stage Douglass's Chambersburg meeting with Brown. Henry Highland Garnet is also a character. It was published in 1996.[121]
  • Shields Green and the Gospel of John Brown is a 1996 screenplay by Kevin Willmott and Mitch Brian which "tells the story of Green, an ex-slave and disciple of Frederick Douglass[,] who accompanied Brown to Harper's Ferry, where he died." In Shields Green, "there's a reluctant leader/hero. It's like The 70's in the sense that there's a kid—Shields Green, in this case—who is running from reality, and he ends up embracing the reality of race and assuming the mantle of leadership. I mean, at first Green only wants to get his family free from slavery, but then he grows into a person who believes that all slaves need to be free." It was purchased by Chris Columbus for 20th-Century Fox, but was not produced.[122] Denzel Washington was offered the part of Shields, with Harrison Ford playing John Brown.[123] Paul Newman considered the part of Brown, but withdrew "because of ideological differences with the late Rupert Murdoch" (part owner of Fox Entertainment Group, which was undertaking the project).[26]: 179 n. 4  The rights have reverted to the authors. A public reading was held in Lawrence, Kansas, in 2002.[124]
  • On August 19, 2001, the Jefferson County Black Historical Preservation City had a small memorial service for Green and Copeland, at the site of the former "Colored Cemetery" in Charles Town.[95]: 120–121 
  • The Brown–Douglass–Green meeting in Chambersburg also appears in a 2013 PBS miniseries, The Abolitionists.[125][126]
  • The study Five for Freedom. The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army, by Eugene L. Meyer, was published in 2018.[95]: xvii 
  • Dayo Okeniyi portrays Green in the 2020 film Emperor. In the film, Green does not have a speech defect, survives Harpers Ferry, and his son writes a book about him.
  • Louis A. DeCaro's book The Untold Story of Shields Green was published by New York University Press in 2020.[26]
  • Quentin Plair portrays Green in the 2020 Showtime miniseries The Good Lord Bird.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Douglass, Frederick (1892). Life and Times of Frederick Douglass: Written by himself. His Early Life as a Slave, His Escape from Bondage, and His Complete History to the Present Time, including his Connection with the Anti-slavery Movement; His Labors in Great Britain as well as in His Own Country; His Experience in the Conduct of an Influential Newspaper; His Connection with the Underground Railroad; His Relations with John Brown and the Harper's Ferry Raid; His Recruiting the 54th and 55th Mass. Colored Regiments; His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson; His Appointment by Gen. Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission—also to a Seat in the Council of the District of Columbia; His Appointment as United States Marshal by President Rutherford B. Hayes; also His Appointment to be Recorder of Deeds in Washington by President J. A. Garfield; with Many Other Interesting and Important Events of His Most Eventful Life; with An Introduction by Mr. George L. Ruffin, of Boston (New, revised ed.). Boston: De Wolfe & Fiske Co.
  2. ^ a b c Lee, Robert E. (1902). "Col. Robert E. Lee's Report. Headquarters Harper's Ferry. October 19, 1859". The John Brown Letters. Found in the Virginia State Library in 1901 (continued). pp. 17–32, at p. 22. JSTOR 4242480. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help)
  3. ^ a b c Mason, James M.; Collamer, Jacob (June 15, 1860). Report [of] the Select committee of the Senate appointed to inquire into the late invasion and seizure of the public property at Harper's Ferry. p. 42.
  4. ^ ASR (March 21, 1995). . Archived from the original on 2018-06-07. Retrieved May 21, 2007.
  5. ^ "(Untitled)". Hartford Courant. Hartford, Connecticut. November 15, 1859. p. 2 – via newspapers.com.
  6. ^ "The executions at Charlestown". Pittsburgh Post. December 17, 1859. p. 1. from the original on 2020-10-16. Retrieved 2020-10-16 – via Pennsylvania News Archive.
  7. ^ a b "Execution of the Insurgents". Tyrone Star. Tyrone, Pennsylvania. December 24, 1859. p. 2 – via newspapers.com.
  8. ^ "Harper's Ferry". Pontiac Gazette. Pontiac, Michigan. December 16, 1859. p. 2 – via Digital Michigan Newspapers.
  9. ^ "Expulsion of strangers". New-York Tribune. November 16, 1859 [November 12, 1859]. p. 6 – via newspapers.com.
  10. ^ Douglass, Frederick (September 1861). "Fighting Rebels With Only One Hand". Douglass' Monthly. African American Newspapers. Vol. 4, no. 4. p. 516 – via Accessible-Archives.com.
  11. ^ Douglass, Frederick (March 5, 1863). . The Evening Post. New York, New York. p. 1. Archived from the original on 2023-07-15. Retrieved 2021-03-05 – via NYS Historic Newspapers.
  12. ^ "A Call from Fred Douglass". Cleveland Daily Leader. Cleveland, Ohio. March 6, 1863. p. 2 – via newspapers.com.
  13. ^ "John Brown". Boston Globe. December 17, 1873. p. 5. from the original on February 1, 2021. Retrieved January 27, 2021 – via newspapers.com.
  14. ^ a b c d e Douglass, Frederick (1881). John Brown. An address by Frederick Douglass, at the fourteenth anniversary of Storer College, Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, May 30, 1881. Dover, New Hampshire: Dover, N. H., Morning Star job printing house.
  15. ^ Adams, Mary (May 1, 1928). "Record of revolts in negro workers' past". Daily Worker. Via Old Fulton New York Post Cards.
  16. ^ Allen, James Egert (May 16, 1970). "Black History Past and Present". New York Amsterdam News. p. 17. Via Old Fulton New York Post Cards.
  17. ^ Dyer, Thomas G. (1976). "An Early Black Textbook: Floyd's Flowers or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children". Phylon. 37 (4): 359–361. doi:10.2307/274499. JSTOR 274499.
  18. ^ a b c d e Anderson, Osborne P. (1861). A Voice from Harper's Ferry; with incidents prior and subsequent to its capture by Captain Brown and his men. Boston: The author.
  19. ^ a b c d "John Brown's raid. Details as told by one of the survivors. Suffered hardships. Efforts of the Survivors to Get Away from the Scene and how Some Were Captured. Captain Cook's Experience in a Justice's Court in Chambersburg, Where He Was Taken After His Capture by Professional Fugitive Slave Hunters". The Gazette. York, Pennsylvania. July 23, 1903. p. 6 – via newspapers.com.
  20. ^ Stutler, Boyd (1930). Captain John Brown and Harper's Ferry: The Story of the Raid and the Old Fire Engine House Known as John Brown's Fort (2nd ed.). Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: Storer College.
  21. ^ a b "The executions at Charlestown". Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia). December 19, 1859. p. 1. from the original on October 17, 2020. Retrieved January 22, 2021 – via newspapers.com.
  22. ^ a b Quarles, Benjamin (1974). Allies for Freedom. Blacks and John Brown. New York: Oxford University Press. LCCN 73-90372.
  23. ^ Meyer, Eugene L. (Oct 13, 2019). "The five black men who raided Harpers Ferry with John Brown have been forgotten". Washington Post – via Gale Academic Onefile.
  24. ^ a b Cook, John Edwin (November 11, 1859). Confession of John E. Cooke [sic], brother of Gov. A.P. Willard, of Indiana, and one of the participants in the Harper's Ferry invasion: published for the benefit of Samuel C. Young, a non-slaveholder, who is permanently disabled by a wound received in defence of Southern institutions [slavery]. Charles Town, Virginia: D. Smith Eichelberger, Editor of the Independent Democrat. from the original on December 9, 2020. Retrieved March 10, 2021.
  25. ^ "John Brown's Invasion. Cook's confession". New-York Tribune. November 26, 1859. p. 7. from the original on June 14, 2021. Retrieved March 10, 2021 – via newspapers.com.
  26. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa DeCaro, Louis A. Jr. (2020). The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life and Death of a Harper's Ferry Raider. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-0275-3.
  27. ^ Terre, Indice (November 19, 1859) [November 14, 1859]. "Letter from Virginia". Louisville Daily Courier (Louisville, Kentucky). p. 1 – via newspapers.com.
  28. ^ a b c d e f Lubet, Steve (June 1, 2013). "Execution in Virginia, 1859: The Trials of Green and Copeland". North Carolina Law Review. 91 (5): 1785–1815. from the original on April 30, 2019. Retrieved February 2, 2021.
  29. ^ a b c d Barry, Joseph (1903). The Strange Story of Harpers Ferry. Martinsburg, West Virginia. from the original on 2021-01-25. Retrieved 2021-01-26.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  30. ^ "The Harper's Ferry Affairs". Columbus Daily Sun (Columbus, Georgia). December 22, 1859. p. 2 – via newspaperarchive.com.
  31. ^ a b "Ages of the prisoners". The Liberator. Boston, Massachusetts. December 23, 1859. p. 3. from the original on June 14, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2021 – via newspapers.com.
  32. ^ Rambler (November 25, 1859). "Letter from Harpers Ferry". Richmond Whig. p. 2. from the original on February 14, 2021. Retrieved February 7, 2021 – via VirginiaChronicle.
  33. ^ "Ages of the prisoners". New-York Tribune. [Says he was 22.] December 19, 1859. p. 6.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  34. ^ a b c d Monroe, James (1897). "A journey to Virginia in December 1859". Oberlin Thursday Lectures and Essays. Oberlin, Ohio: Edward J. Goodrich. pp. 158–184, at pp. 174–175.
  35. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Hinton, Richard J. (1894). John Brown and His Men. With Some Account of the Roads They Traveled to Reach Harpers Ferry (Revised ed.). New York: Funk and Wagnalls.
  36. ^ a b "A Rochester man (illegible) Harper's Ferry Insurrection". New York Daily Herald. October 29, 1859. p. 10 – via newspapers.com.
  37. ^ For example, see Benjamin Quarles, Allies for Freedom: Blacks and John Brown (1974, 2000), 85.
  38. ^ "Affairs at Charlestown.—More Rumors--The Life of John Brown--The Prisoners--The Approaching Execution, &c". Richmond Dispatch. Richmond, Virginia. 2 Dec 1859. p. 1 – via newspapers.com.
  39. ^ a b c "Insurrection at Harper's Ferry". Valley Spirit (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania). October 26, 1859. p. 5 – via newspapers.com.
  40. ^ Stake, Virginia Orr (1977). John Brown in Chambersburg. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Franklin County Heritage, Inc. p. 111.
  41. ^ a b Betz, I. H. (July 22, 1903). "John Brown's raid. Details As Told By One Of The Survivors. Careful preparations. Plan Was To Set Up A Republic In The Mountains. First meetings were in Canada". The Gazette (York, Pennsylvania). p. 6 – via newspapers.com.
  42. ^ Sanborn, Franklin Benjamin (1909). Recollections of Seventy Years. Vol. 1. Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Gorham Press. p. 179. ISBN 978-0-8103-3045-0.
  43. ^ a b Villard, Oswald Garrison (1910). John Brown, 1800–1859: A Biography Fifty Years After. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  44. ^ David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), 243.
  45. ^ "John Brown Papers held by the Jefferson County Circuit Clerk's Office". West Virginia Department of Arts, Culture and History. 2021. from the original on January 28, 2021. Retrieved January 15, 2021.
  46. ^ J.T., "Old Brown and His Fellow Prisoners," Spirit of the Times [New York], Dec. 3, 1859, 21.
  47. ^ "The Trial of the Conspirators," New York Herald, Nov. 5, 1859, 1.
  48. ^ "Crumbs". Charleston Daily News (Charleston, South Carolina). June 7, 1870. p. 3. from the original on January 29, 2021. Retrieved January 21, 2021 – via newspapers.com.
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Further reading edit

  • DeCaro, Louis A. Jr. (2020). The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life and Death of a Harper's Ferry Raider. New York University Press. ISBN 978-1-4798-0275-3.
  • Stake, Virginia Ott (1977). John Brown in Chambersburg. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: Franklin County Heritage.
  • Lawson, John D. (1916). "The Trial of John Anthony Copeland and Shields Green for Murder, Charlestown, Virginia, 1859". American State Trials: A collection of the important and interesting criminal trials which have taken place in the United States from the beginning of our government to the present day. Vol. 6. St. Louis: Thomas Law Books. pp. 808–813.

External links edit

  Media related to Shields Green at Wikimedia Commons

November 23, 2023
shields, green, 1836, december, 1859, also, referred, himself, emperor, according, frederick, douglass, escaped, slave, from, charleston, south, carolina, leader, john, brown, raid, harpers, ferry, october, 1859, lived, almost, years, house, douglass, rocheste. Shields Green 1836 December 16 1859 who also referred to himself as Emperor 1 387 2 3 was according to Frederick Douglass an escaped slave from Charleston South Carolina and a leader in John Brown s raid on Harpers Ferry in October 1859 1 387 4 He had lived for almost two years in the house of Douglass in Rochester New York and Douglass introduced him there to Brown Shields GreenGreen awaiting his trialafter the Harpers Ferry raidBornc 1836 South Carolina U S DiedDecember 16 1859 1859 12 16 aged 22 23 Charles Town Virginia now West Virginia U S Cause of deathHangingResting placeWinchester Virginia grave unknown Other namesEmperorKnown forRaid on Harpers FerryCriminal chargesMurder and inciting a slave insurrection charge of treason droppedCriminal penaltyDeath by hangingCriminal statusExecutedAlthough Green survived the raid unwounded he was tried convicted and executed by hanging on December 16 1859 together with three other raiders All the trials and executions took place in Charles Town West Virginia at the time Charlestown Virginia county seat of Jefferson County At John Brown s execution two weeks prior very few spectators were permitted for security reasons Now there were no restrictions the judge wanted the executions to be seen by the public 5 and there were 1 600 spectators 6 7 At the time legal as well as illegal hangings were entertainment 8 9 Green was the only one from the raid on Harpers Ferry that Frederick Douglass mentioned alongside iconic rebels Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey 10 11 12 Douglass eulogized him with rare pathos 13 14 27 In an article on courageous negroes who revolted he is mentioned alongside Douglass himself and Haitian leader Jean Jacques Dessalines 15 16 In Silas X Floyd s Floyd s Flowers or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children Green is a Black hero like Crispus Attucks Toussaint l Ouverture or Benjamin Banneker 17 Floyd calls him a martyr Contents 1 Lack of information about Green 2 Body 3 Names 3 1 Emperor 3 2 Esau Brown 4 Green s speech 5 Green s life 5 1 Before 1857 5 1 1 Green s supposed connection with Oberlin 5 2 1857 1859 6 Frederick Douglass s account 7 Comments on Green s personality 8 Meeting of Brown and Douglass in Chambersburg 9 Green and Douglass 10 The Harpers Ferry raid 11 Green s trial 12 Green s execution 13 Legacy and honors 14 See also 15 References 16 Further reading 17 External linksLack of information about Green editInformation about Green is fragmentary and inconsistent As with Nat Turner there is a single source that everyone has used Frederick Douglass yet the reliability of that source has been questioned by Louis DeCaro author of the only book on Green Of the seven men who were tried convicted and executed after the raid five white and two Black we have less information about Green than about any of the others He was a good shot according to two separate eyewitnesses 18 40 19 he used his rifle and revolver rapidly and diligently according to another 3 37 But he was the most illiterate of the raiders 20 very illiterate as the Richmond Dispatch put it 21 although one newspaper reports him reading the Bible 22 133 He neither wrote nor received letters during his two months in the Jefferson County jail He could easily have gotten someone to write letters for him No one visited him or even tried to there was no one to bury his body The press and the legal system were far more concerned about the white prisoners than about the Blacks The other Black prisoner John Copeland was a fountain of information in comparison and his skin was much lighter which at the time gave him more credibility than Green Although we have good evidence that Green had at least one son in South Carolina he kept this a secret and so far as we know had no contact with him Of the five Black members of John Brown s raiders Green was the only one of whom in 2009 no descendants could be located 23 A man of few words according to Douglass there was no particular attempt to extract information from him by either the press or the legal system They were far more interested in the white prisoners Cook in his published confession seldom refers to negroes and never by name 24 25 Of the five Black members of Brown s party Green is the only one of whom there is no daguerrotype image 26 137 138 although we have sketches by four different artists 26 138 149 including one of him alone published for the first time in 2020 26 148 Copeland supplied all the information the press or legal system felt was needed from the Blacks of the party Copeland is an intelligent negro wrote one who visited all the prisoners in jail in November He does not say that about Green who he visits next implying that Green is less intelligent He continues Shields Green or Emperor said to me that he had been at Brown s house in Maryland ever since the latter part of August that when he went there he did not know that anything was to be done but run off slaves He had never heard that force was to be used against the whites only persuasion with the negroes That when he arrived at Brown s quarters he was taken up stairs and never allowed to come down again except to attend calls of nature after which he was compelled to return He was not allowed to write or communicate with anyone except Brown s men He stated that a number of the men were similarly restricted He said he knew nothing of Fred Douglass in the Harper s Ferry matter that all the proceedings were kept from him that he would have left Brown before the attack if he could have done so He said running off slaves is quite unprofitable and recommended everybody not to attempt it hereafter He Cook fully corroborated the statement made by Green the negro in reference to the watch that was kept on a part of the men who were at Brown s house He said that that portion of them who were kept upstairs did not know anything of the intentions of Brown until 11 o clock on the Sunday morning before Harper s Ferry was taken The Constitution was then read to them by Stevens and that some of them did not then seem to understand it He denied with feeling that he ever came to Harper s Ferry as a spy 27 Green s life is in essence divided into two parts before Douglass and after Douglass He enters written history when he started living in Douglass s house in Rochester New York about two years before Brown s raid Douglass gives us essential information were it not for him we would not know that Green was an escaped slave But one interviewer considered Green as not much inferior to Fred Douglass in education citation needed and a Virginia physician who believed Green showed no evidence of education nevertheless added that he was said to be finely educated citation needed He was particularly abused in cross examination by Prosecutor Andrew Hunter 26 121 122 and although his legal testimony was minimal legal historian Steven Lubet believes that it is therefore entirely possible or even likely that Judge Parker himself a slave owner did not allow the black prisoners any meaningful occasion to speak at sentencing 28 1802 As a result of these circumstances we have very little information about Green and writers on John Brown s raiders say little or nothing on him Body editAs was usual at the time Green s skin color was commented on he was a negro of the blackest hue 29 83 a black negro 30 31 a full blooded negro 19 a regular out and out tar colored darkey 28 1787 At that time those of darker skin color or more African blood were considered by whites to be inferior less civilized than those with lighter brown skin mulattoes usually the result of rape of female slaves by their white owners In part because of his skin color and in part because of his fighting skill Green was the most despised of Brown s captured men 26 xv Of all the raiders to stand trial in Charlestown Shields Green was the most notably harangued maligned and browbeaten by the vindictive prosecuting attorney the harshest words being reserved for the darkest of the Harper s Ferry raiders 26 137 His hair was short and curly 32 He was described as small in stature and very active in his movements 29 83 He had rather a good countenance and a sharp intelligent look 33 19 James Monroe described his as a fine athletic figure 34 175 Hinton says Green had huge feet but he never saw Green and there is no known source for this detail He also says Green had a Congo face apparently a reference to his dark skin color 35 507 Names editEmperor edit According to Douglass living at his house when Brown visited was a colored man who called himself by different names sometimes Emperor at other times Shields Green 1 387 On a business card he had printed in Rochester New York in 1858 Green referred to himself as Shield Emperor 26 5 36 The other rebels also referred to him as Emperor 3 33 The meaning of or reason for the nickname of Emperor is unknown Sometimes writers speculate that this may reflect some status among the African people he was supposedly kidnapped from or his ancestry from African royalty 37 However appealing there is no evidence to support these hypotheses Green grew up in Charleston South Carolina The nickname may reflect his status as leader among other Blacks In harmony with this is a link between the name and Green s bearing very officious evidently conscious of his own great importance in the enterprise 29 83 To the hostages he was very impudent he told a hostage to shut up 35 305 He was very insulting to Brown s prisoners constantly presenting his rifle and threatening to shoot some of them 29 83 Sometimes he is referred to in the press only as Emperor The negro Emperor is the only one among them the prisoners in Charles Town who has a Bible except old Brown 38 The negro called Emperor of New York taken prisoner is said to be the black man who was upon the stage with Douglass the night he lectured in this place Chambersburg 39 Esau Brown edit It is sometimes found in modern presentations of Green that his real name was Esau Brown The only evidence for this is a single newspaper article of 1861 But according to Louis A DeCaro Jr author of The Untold Story of Shields Green 2020 the only book thus far on his life so far as is known Green never used the name Esau Brown nor was it ever used by any of his Harpers Ferry associates Frederick Douglass never referred to him by that name nor is it found in documents concerning his trial and execution The name never appears in any of the numerous newspaper reports of 1859 DeCaro concludes that it is doubtful that this single mention is correct 26 3 6 It may simply be a mishearing of Emperor Green s speech editLike other aspects of Green s life the evidence about his speech is also somewhat contradictory In the first place Green had no problem with understanding speech He was present at the lengthy Brown Douglass meeting in Chambersburg and there is no comment that Green had any trouble understanding it Nor is there such a comment anywhere else He was not hard to talk to However Green was a man of few words and his speech was singularly broken as Douglass put it 1 387 DeCaro suggests he may have had a speech defect 26 13 Douglass did not come to Chambersburg with the intent of speaking publicly but local Blacks recognized him and asked him to talk He gave an impromptu lecture in Franklin Hall on what he said to them was his only topic slavery On Saturday August 20 before meeting with Brown Green called Emperor of New York was upon the stage with Douglass 39 40 In a reminiscence in later life John Brown s daughter Anne Brown Adams recalled an incident that took place when she and her sister in law Martha were being sent home to New York shortly before the raid According to Anne this man of few words felt moved to deliver a farewell speech which she called the greatest conglomeration of all the big words in the dictionary and out that was ever piled up According to Anne even fellow raider Osborne Anderson jested that God himself could not understand that 41 35 507 Knowledge of big words however does not mean literacy as DeCaro supposes 26 13 High faluting words were used constantly in political speeches of which there were many more than today Brown and Douglass alone used plenty of them On another occasion Anne said that Green was a perfect rattlebrain in talk he used to annoy me very much coming downstairs so often He came near betraying and upsetting the whole business by his careless letting a neighbor woman see him 42 We have a number of sentences reported that Green said in different contexts Aside from the attempt of Douglass and Douglass alone to reproduce a rural or uneducated pronunciation the sentences are adequate even eloquent Oh what a poor fool I am said Green to his companion on the way I had got away out of slavery and here I have got back into the eagle s claw again 43 414 415 Death from the hands of the law for no offense save for believing in liberty for myself and my race would not be a degradation 26 157 Once again if reportage on the raid by Southern journalists lacks interviews with Green this is because Brown s men were largely overshadowed by Brown in general and because the Black raiders were treated with even less regard than were the white raiders and of the Black raiders from any reporter s point of view Copeland was preferable Green s life editBefore 1857 edit It is not clear when Green first arrived in Rochester New York or how long he actually stayed in the Douglass home It was not unusual for the Douglass home to serve as a sanctuary for fugitives from slavery 44 Information about Green s life before that is fragmentary According to Douglass who is the best source we have Green was an escaped slave from Charleston South Carolina 1 387 According to an unpublished document unearthed by Louis DeCaro he grew up in Charleston He was an urban man much out of his element under the open skies of the Maryland countryside 26 40 Fugitive slaves always said they were free except to people they trusted the court documents in Charles Town describe him as a free negro as he claimed 45 On the other hand Green told a reporter after his trial that he was born of free parents 46 while a reporter covering Green s trial for The New York Herald wrote that the count of treason was abandoned since it was not proven that Green was a free person 47 Douglass did not reveal Green s true status until long after his death Different accounts have his age from 23 to 30 26 14 According to DeCaro if he did participate in the 1850 excitement in Harrisburg he must have been in his early thirties 26 19 Four pages earlier DeCaro has him in his mid thirties at the time of the Harper s Ferry raid 26 15 Green was a widower According to the Charleston Daily News of June 7 1870 a son of his was living in Charleston 48 49 The names of his wife and his son are unknown His owner and occupation are unknown There may have been more than one son but aside from this nothing else is known of his life in South Carolina It was not easy to get away 1 387 he escaped hidden in cargo on a ship Without citing any source an article on the numerous Black sailors reports that Green had been one 50 Strangely there is no newspaper advertisement seeking recovery of a Black so easily recognizable because of his speech defect as well as his skin color Governor Wise when he came to Harpers Ferry to interview participants in the raid said I immediately examined the leader Brown his lieutenant Stevens a White man named Coppie and a negro from Canada They made full confessions 51 245 As Green was not talkative and uncaptured fugitive slaves do not leave much of a paper trail there is not much reliable information on Green before he met Douglass News stories after the raid said he was from Iowa 52 53 54 55 56 Harrisburg Pennsylvania 57 58 26 16 where he was conspicuous in the fugitive slave riot at Harrisburg some years ago 59 On the same front page of The New York Times just cited another dispatch says he was from Iowa Pittsburg sic Pennsylvania 60 61 and Rochester New York 31 A single story says in one paragraph that Green was from Harrisburg and in another that he was from Pittsburg sic 62 Another lists a negro named Shields Green who came to join Brown from Pittsburgh but later on the same page says that Emperor was from New York formerly of South Carolina 63 Shields Green alias Emperor New York raised in South Carolina 64 65 Emperor of New York raised in South Carolina not wounded a prisoner the latter was elected a member of Congress of the Provisional Government some time since 66 Emperor New York formerly of South Carolina Emperor also negro is in chains at Harper s Ferry 67 Mistakenly calling him Gains one of the first reports relates that the negro says he lived in Harrisburg Pennsylvania adding that Gains is a bad fellow and no truth in him He told several palpable lies while telling his story 68 In Robert E Lee s report he is called Green Shields alias Emperor 2 44 and once alias S Emperor 2 42 One story mentioning Harrisburg describes Green as a somewhat notorious character 58 One person from Oberlin Ohio where Green s name is on a cenotaph together with those of raiders Copeland and Leary said that Green had lived there for some time another that he could not possibly have lived there 26 21 Green was an ambitious vindictive but very illiterate negro of the African species and evidently died a victim of his own brutish impetuosity He was the head and front of all the negro rescues at Harrisburg for several years past a journeyman barber by trade 21 Green s supposed connection with Oberlin edit There is a cenotaph monument in Oberlin to three young Black men from Oberlin who participated in John Brown s raid on Harpers Ferry The other two are John Anthony Copeland and Lewis Sheridan Leary About their residence in Oberlin there is no doubt The situation regarding Green is confusing and the pieces of evidence impossible to reconcile Local Blacks working in 1860 on a monument to the colored men of Oberlin that were with John Brown at Harper s Ferry said that Shields Green was but little known to us excepting as he has been made known to the nation and the world by his manly conduct his patient and heroic endurance in prison and his pious courageous and consistent deportment as be stood on the fatal gallows 69 Copeland after his arrest was asked who else from Oberlin was at Harpers Ferry and he said that besides himself only Leary 70 The Oberlin Evangelist of November 9 says two of Brown s men were from Oberlin 71 An Ohio man said that the negro Green and Edwin Coppic at one time lived near Salem Salem Ohio is 90 miles 140 km east of Oberlin He continues I think Copeland was the only man who went to John Brown from Oberlin 72 The reference to Green having lived in Oberlin is from Oberlin College professor James Monroe At the request of Copeland s parents who as free Blacks were barred from entering Virginia he travelled to Winchester Virginia just after the December 16 1859 execution of Green Copeland and two others As there was no one protecting their graves the bodies of Green and Copeland were dug up within hours by students and faculty of the Winchester Medical College for use in anatomy classes in which the corpses were dissected At the time this was a common way of using or disposing of unclaimed bodies Monroe tried but failed to recover Copeland s body so his parents could bury it students threatened violence and they stole the body from the College and hid it However as he had a few hours free a medical college professor gave him a tour and in the dissecting rooms I was startled to find the body of another Oberlin neighbor whom I had often met upon our streets a colored man named Shields Greene sic I had indeed known that he also had been executed at Charlestown as one of John Brown s associates but my warm interest in another object had banished the thought of him from my mind It was a sad sight I was sorry I had come to the building and yet who was I that I should be spared a view of what my fellow creatures had to suffer A fine athletic figure he was lying on his back the unclosed wistful eyes staring wildly upward as if seeking in a better world for some solution of the dark problems of horror and oppression so hard to be explained in this 34 No one other than anatomy students was interested in Green s body not even Monroe Upon Monroe s return to Oberlin he gave a public report of his trip at a coffinless funeral for Copeland 34 183 These remarks immediately preceded the beginning of the efforts to build a monument to the Oberlin Blacks who participated in John Brown s raid on Harpers Ferry 1857 1859 editFrederick Douglass s account editFrom January 28 through February 14 1858 John Brown also stayed in Douglass s house working on his Provisional Constitution 43 675 Many years later in 1881 Douglass again describes Green as a fugitive slave He was a fugitive slave from Charleston South Carolina and had attested his love of liberty by escaping from slavery and making his way through many dangers to Rochester where he had lived in my family and where he met the man with whom he went to the scaffold 14 26 The person he had most contact with was Douglass in whose house in Rochester New York he was living from 1857 to 1859 This was Douglass s second Rochester house near Highland Park 73 Green met John Brown in Douglass s house Brown stayed in Douglass s house at the same time for weeks so Brown had ample opportunities to get to know him Presumably Green came to Rochester because he was thinking of emigrating to Canada as most Blacks entering Rochester were But finding Douglass s Underground Railroad house Douglass took a liking to him Douglass knew the law well and could have coached Green on what to say and Green was pretty quiet anyway Living with Douglass he worked as a waiter launderer and barber 26 13 14 Certainly preparing a business card as Green did advertising his clothes cleaning and giving his address 2 Spring St means he felt to some extent secure 26 5 Comments on Green s personality editIn the case of the free negro Green allusion was made by the counsel for the defense to an attempt to introduce impertinent evidence respecting the advances of the prisoner toward a mulatto girl at the time of the midnight entrance into the plantations Mr Hunter pursued his answering argument quietly until he reached this point and then lifting himself to his full height and compressing hie fine features to unwonted sternness for he usually wears a smile he turned upon the negro and with a rapidity that certainly exhibited a wonderful acquaintance with the vocabulary of invective hurled for a while incessant denunciation upon the guilty passions which he assumed to have inspired Shields Green to join the expedition How the negro sat so stolid under it I cannot understand but the crowd that filled the hall blazed with fury and clenched fists in agonies of virtuous indignation I suppose that the consciousness of having offered endless similar impure examples never entered their minds at all Mr Hunter however gained new and blushing honors It was his best display of the season and far surpassed anything offered by other orators 74 Osborne Anderson described him as the Zouave of the band 18 40 35 298 an opinion repeated by Annie Brown 19 Of the four prisoners taken at the engine house Shields Green the most inexorable of all our party a very Turco in his hatred against the stealers of men was under Captain Hazlett and consequently of our little band at the Arsenal but when we were ordered by Captain Brown to return to our positions after having driven the troops into the bridge he mistook the order and went to the engine house instead of with his own party Had he remained with us he might have eluded the vigilant Virginians As it was he was doomed as is well known and became a free will offering for freedom with his comrade John Copeland Wiser and better man no doubt there were but a braver man never lived than Shields Green 18 45 A little while prior to this Douglass went down to Chambersburg to accompany Shields Green whereupon a meeting of Capt Brown Kagi and other distinguished persons convened for consultation 18 23 Years later Douglass described Green in his memoir Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers He was a man of few words and his speech was singularly broken but his courage and self respect made him quite a dignified character 1 387 Green requested when in the Charles Town jail that he have as few visitors as possible 22 133 While on the scaffold in contrast with Copeland he was engaged in earnest prayer 7 see drawing in DeCaro Green was an ambitious vindictive but very illiterate negro of the African species and evidently died a victim to his own brutish impetuosity He was the head and front of all the negro rescues at Harrisburg for several years past a Journeyman barber by trade 75 Frederick Douglass said While at my house John Brown made the acquaintance of a colored man who called himself by different names sometimes Emperor at other times Shields Green He was a fugitive slave who had made his escape from Charleston a state from which a slave found it no easy matter to run away But Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers He was a man of few words and his speech was singularly broken but his courage and self respect made him quite a dignified character John Brown saw at once what stuff Green was made of and confided to him his plans and purposes Green easily believed in Brown and promised to go with him whenever he should be ready to move 76 77 354 Lewis Washington interviewed by the Senate Select Committee discussed him thus after the raid Question Did he use his arms did he fire Answer Yes sir very rapidly and dilligently sic I do not know with what effect Question What was his deportment Answer It was rather impudent in the morning I saw him order some gentlemen to shut a window with a rifle raised at them He said Shut that window damn you shut it instantly He did it in a very impudent manner But when the attack came on he had thrown off his hat and all his equipments and was endeavoring to represent himself as one of the slaves 78 79 Green was similarly defiant at an encounter with a White while travelling from Hagerstown to the Kennedy farm 26 41 The state s attorney Andrew Hunter lashed him furiously during the prosecution for his bold and unwavering stand at the trial As a pleader his Hunter s manner was subdued his diction strong and earnest his voice deep and full and he could make it ring at will He did this and with a touch of ferocity too when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green till the crowd in and around the court house blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race and both as lighter and prisoner showed in rude but vigorous manner his utter disdain of men who sold mothers dealt in men bred children for sale making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land 35 348 On the morning of December 2 the day of John Brown s execution S hields Green sent word to his leader that he waited willingly and calmly for his own death and that he was glad he had come 80 The evening previous to the starting of Captain Brown s followers from Rochester I spent at the house of Mr Frederick Douglass and when ready for my walk home Shields Green accompanied me I said to him while on our walk Do you know that by going with Captain Brown into a Southern State you expose yourself to the gallows That if you are taken you will surely be executed He answered Yes I shall probably lose my life but if my death will help to free my race I am willing to die I have suffered cruel blows frơm men who said they owned me Death from the hands of the law for no offense save for believing in liberty for myself and my race would not be a degradation but blows from an overseer s lash crush into my soul 81 57 58 Douglass When by and by a monument is built to John Brown a niche must be reserved in it for Shields Green 82 Of the bravery exhibited at Harpers Ferry no doubt Shields Green was foremost Anderson wrote that Newby was a brave fellow and when he was shot through the head by the trooper who took advantage of a mutual withdrawal his death was promptly avenged by Shields Green who raised his rifle in an instant and brought down the cowardly murderer Wiser and better men no doubt there were but a braver men sic never lived than Shields Green Ellipsis in the original Frederick Douglass said If a monument should be erected to the memory of John Brown as there ought to be the form and name of Shields Green should have a conspicuous place on it 83 Brown s son John Brown Jr who like his father met Green at Douglass s house called him a young friend 35 261 He Hunter did this and with a touch of ferocity too when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green till the crowd in and around the courthouse blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race and both as fighter and prisoner showed in rude but vigorous manner his utter disdain of men who sold mothers dealt in men bred children for sale making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land The Virginian lawyers selected by the Examining Court to defend these prisoners had an ungracious and thankless task assigned them Mr Green was described by Correspondent House of the New York Tribune as a most extraordinary man to look upon long angular uncouth and wild in gesture deficient in all rhetorical graces His words rush from his mouth scarce half made up He speaks sentences abreast His whar and thar are the least of his offenses His demeanor altogether is of unrivaled oddity and yet his power is so decided that while he is upon his legs he carries everything before him page 349 He is the most remarkable man I have seen here although not so impressive in his bearing as Mr Andrew Hunter who is a man of real nobility of presence Ellipses in the original 35 348 349 Mr Sennott fought vigorously for these men and went the length of justifying them in their resistance to the enslavement of their race The State Attorney Hunter was almost ferocious in his philippics against Shields Green whose boldly careless bearing had aroused all the brutal malignity that slave ownership and race prejudice necessarily produced 35 376 Shields Green a fugitive slave from Charlestown S C who came with Frederick Douglass to Chambersburg Pa on the 19th of August preceding the outbreak and entered the party at Kennedy Farm as in sort a representative of Mr Douglass 35 504 At the Kennedy Farm the night before we were leaving for home Martha and Anne he came downstairs to listen to the Emperor s Shields Green farewell speech as he called it This was the greatest conglomeration of big words that was ever piled up Some one asked Anderson if he understood it and he replied No God Himself could not understand that But the negro man with Congo face big misplaced words and huge feet knew instinctively what courageous manhood meant and how devotion acted Frederick Douglass tells how when he turned to leave the Chambersburg quarry where his last interview with John Brown was had that on telling Green he could return with him to Rochester New York the latter had turned and looked at the strong but bowed figure of John Brown weighted with the pain of Douglass s refusal to aid him in as he termed it hiving the bees and then asked Is he going to stay An affirmative answer being made he looked again at the old leader and slowly said Well I guess I s goes wid de old man When a short time after O P Anderson and Albert Hazlett had decided the resistance then making to be hopeless Green came under fire with some message over to their station at the arsenal on the Potomac Anderson told him he d better go with them He turned and looked toward the engine house before the door of which stood its few defenders and asked You think der s no chance Osborne Not one was the reply And de old Captain can t get away No said both the men Well with a long look and slow page 508 utterance I guess I ll go back to de old man In the prison Green with Copeland and Leary were constantly sending messages of regard to Captain Brown and Stevens and on the morning of John Brown s execution he sent him word that he was glad he came and that he waited willingly for his own death 35 507 508 Green had left a boy in slavery his wife dying before he made his escape Green was a full blooded black They were all intelligent Green looking the least so though possessed of considerable natural ability vigor of character and a courage which showed that if better trained he might have become a marked man 505 A Rochester newspaper described him as of course ignorant though naturally intelligent of a reckless disposition He was about twenty five years of age and has no family 36 Meeting of Brown and Douglass in Chambersburg edit nbsp In a stone quarry near Chambersburg Pennsylvania Shields Green with dark skin is at center Frederick Douglass on the left and John Brown on the right Watercolor by Richard Schlecht By far the most dramatic and best known moment in Green s life which has been made into a play or movie script several times was his meeting with Brown and Douglass in an abandoned stone quarry near Chambersburg Pennsylvania which lasted a whole day and night 84 However we have only a single source for this interview Frederick Douglass and his reliability has been questioned by Louis DeCaro author of the only book length study of Green Green first met John Brown at the house of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester where Green was living 1 387 14 26 Brown spent some weeks there working on his Provisional Constitution from morning to night 85 246 Green and Douglass travelled together from Rochester via New York to Chambersburg Pennsylvania to meet with Brown and his second in command John Henry Kagi 86 Brown who knew the stuff Green was made of as Douglass put it had asked Douglass to bring Green with him 87 600 The meeting took place in Chambersburg an Underground Railroad stop because it was the staging ground for Brown s raid just 22 miles 35 km from the Maryland border it was the closest city in the free North Brown was incognito 88 Jerry Anderson Owen Brown and Oliver Brown were also in Chambersburg but did not participate in the meeting 26 19 For secrecy the meeting was in an abandoned stone quarry 89 Brown tried in this meeting to get Douglass to join in the raid because Douglass a national Black leader would have added credibility to it motivating the enslaved to rise up and run away as Brown would propose 87 599 Douglass declined to participate in Brown s planned raid because he believed it could not succeed and was therefore suicidal Green declined Douglass s suggestion that he return to Rochester with him saying as reported by Douglass I b l eve I ll go wid de old man 14 26 During the raid Green made a similar remark when invited to flee as the raid was failing Green and Douglass editAlthough neither Douglass nor Green mentions it afterwards Green has been spoken of as a replacement for Douglass 41 In an incident which became famous when it was made public over 20 years later in August 1859 Douglass accompanied by Green traveled from Rochester to Chambersburg Pennsylvania for a secret meeting with Brown In what became a central incident of Douglass s life Douglass refused to join Brown s party as he saw it as doomed suicidal More importantly he demurred from enlisting Black support for Brown which was of vital importance to Brown While the two parted as friends Brown was much disappointed in Douglass and privately listed him as unreliable 90 Frederick Douglass wrote the only description of this meeting in his third and final autobiography conflating the chronology of events in 1859 including the fact that his disagreement with Brown over the seizure of the Harper s Ferry armory dated to earlier in 1859 90 27 29 Douglass returned to Rochester but Green refused to accompany him Green then joined Brown and his men at a rented farm in Maryland where he was sequestered along with the rest until the Harper s Ferry raid in October According to Douglass Green could have escaped when it was clear the raid was failing but he chose again to remain with Brown However this appears to have been a legend that Douglass himself initiated According to fellow Black raider Osborne Anderson Green actually confused orders during the fighting and ended up staying with Brown instead of escaping with Anderson 91 169 170 Owen Brown escorted Green on his difficult 20 miles from Chambersburg to the Kennedy Farm it was difficult and dangerous because of the many slave catchers watching the roads Owen has left us a 20 page report on the trip He describes Green as more mindful and alert than he was himself spotting Whites first telling Owen to remove his too visible white summer coat and put on Green s black cloak instead 26 47 From Chambersburg to Hagerstown Maryland the trip was by wagon and from there Owen and Shields traveled on foot at night across cornfields and thinly wooded areas 26 39 Owen tells us that Green had been brought up in the city and was very much out of his element in the Maryland countryside At one point they had to cross a river presumably Antietam Creek and since Green could not swim Owen made a makeshift raft 26 40 Green was much disturbed at re entering a slave state fearing his capture When they got to the farm A happier man than Shields Green was never seen He was like a new man according to Owen 26 43 44 Douglass and Brown had another little known meeting on August 15 1859 Brown travelled to Philadlephia from Chambersburg He had heard there would be a street parade of a colored military company named the Frank Johnson Guards and he found that the situation in Philadelphia was worse than he had feared The armed and disciplined Black group was publicly exhorted by J J Simons one of Brown s lieutenants to participate in the upcoming invasion of Virginia to free the slaves Brown was in the audience and late that night he was roused from bed by an urgent messenger who took him to a house where both Douglass and Brown were The Harpers Ferry raid editDuring the raid Green and others were assigned to recruit slaves from the nearby countryside to join the rebellion Green was with Dangerfield Newby and Osborne Anderson at the Arsenal during the raid Osborne said that Green immediately avenged Newby s death 18 40 According to Douglass Osborne Anderson not Jeremiah Anderson 1 391 said that Green could have escaped with him I told him to come that we could do nothing more 1 391 392 But his reply was the same I b l eve I ll go down wid de ole man 14 26 Green and Edwin Coppock were the only two of Brown s raiders who neither escaped nor were injured 52 Green nearly killed Robert E Lee Colonel Washington told him not to shoot 92 Newby and Green negroes were stationed at the junction of High and Shenandoah rivers 93 Washington said Shields Green was one of the men who took my carriage from my place 94 811 After taking refuge in the engine house as it was called Green s job was to supervise the hostages 95 93 Green s trial edit nbsp Shields Green John Copeland and Albert Hazlett in their cell in the Jefferson County jail nbsp Death sentence of Shields Green November 10 1859Green s trial preceded that of the other Black captive Copeland and began on November 3 that of Edwin Coppock having ended the day before 96 Mr Griswold appeared as his counsel Judge Russell of Boston is also on his way here to take part in the defence of the prisoners 97 Green s case was called first and the prosecution s evidence was overwhelming The chief witness against the defendant was the plantation master Lewis Washington a great nephew of George Washington who had been kidnapped and held prisoner by Brown s men Washington testified that Green who was carrying a rifle a pistol and a butcher knife had been placed in charge of guarding the white hostages Washington also testified that Green had fired shots at the surrounding militia but that was not his worst offense Far more heinous in Washington s eyes however had been Green s very impudent manner in addressing his betters a crime that the aristocratic plantation owner considered more threatening than violence Unusual forborn in slavery Green did have a self confident bearing that led his friends to affectionately call him Emperor Although he may have appeared impudent in the eyes of a slave master the reality was as Frederick Douglass put it that Green s courage and self respect made him quite a dignified character Lewis Washington however was unable to recognize dignity in a Black man and he was especially offended that Green had presumed to give orders to the white hostages Washington also called Green a coward When a detachment of Colonel Lee s men under the command of Lieutenant J E B Stuart made their final assault on Brown s position at the armory Green evidently threw away his arms and tried to lose himself among the local slaves Despite Washington s condescending characterization 28 1797 98 Green s pro bono attorney George Sennott argued for the defence of Shields Green His address was full of ingenuity Every resource seemed to be invoked I cannot tell you the number of points he made but they were very numerous and very sharp The sensitiveness of the audience too was less evident than yesterday and Mr Sennott s manner which was not so demonstrative as before augmented their good humor I think the Court was hardly prepared for so much acuteness as he showed 98 In a startling and much commented argument Sennott cited the recent Dred Scott decision to get the charge of treason dropped The spectators gasped 28 1799 but he argued successfully that since Blacks including Green were not citizens of the United States according to that ruling they could not commit treason 28 1785 According to the relevant statute only free persons could commit treason 99 The jury found him not guilty of that charge Abolitionists however were concerned about this apparent endorsement of the Dred Scott decision 95 111 He was thoroughly dressed down by prosecuting attorney Hunter A t times he rises to an eloquence that rings through the court room and moves listeners to approving outbursts that call for subjugation by sheriff and constable In the case of the negro Green allusion was made by the counsel for the defense to an attempt to introduce impertinent evidence respecting the advances of the prisoner toward a mulatto girl at the time of the midnight entrance into the plantations Mr Hunter pursued his answering argument quietly until he reached this point and then lifting himself to his full height and compressing his fine features to unwanted sternness for he usually wears a smile he turned upon the negro and with a rapidity that certainly exhibited a wonderful acquaintance with the vocabulary of invective hurled for a while incessant denunciation upon the guilty passion which he assumed to have inspired Shields Green to join the expedition How the negro ever sat so stolid under it I cannot understand but the crowd that filled the hall blazed with fury and clenched fists in agonies of virtuous indignaticn I suppose that the consciousness of having offered endless similar impure examples never entered their minds at all Mr Hunter however gained new and blushing honors It was his best display of the season and far surpassed anything offered by other orators 100 Green like all criminal defendants in Virginia at the time could not testify He did not say a word during the trial according to one source 101 but court records do not support this in response to the same question John Brown was asked see John Brown s last speech if he had anything to say before sentencing his reply was nothing but what he had before said 102 whereas his cellmate John Copeland remained mute A different report has Green mute as well 103 Steven Lubek has pointed out that Green obviously did not disclose that Brown and Douglass knew each other as that would have been a bombshell and all over the papers 28 1796 That is why Brown and Douglass met at such a remote location an abandoned stone quarry to which thet were led by the Chambersburg conductor of the Underground Railroad After the raid the Chambersburg newspaper writing on Brown s many visits to that city linked Douglass s visit with a meeting with Brown 39 The three Black defendants Green Copeland and Leahy all said that they knew nothing of Brown s plans until the Sunday morning meeting before the raid 24 11 In Green s case this was certainly false since he had been present at the lengthy discusions between Douglass and Brown The comment of the correspondent for Frank Leslie s Illustrated Newspaper is the colored men do not seem to know what all the fuss is about they keep close to the stove and read the Bible 104 Green s trial ended November 5 and was followed by that of Copeland 99 The charge of treason was also dropped for Copeland Both were convicted along with John Brown and the others of murder and inciting a slave insurrection Green Copeland Cook and Edwin Coppock were sentenced to death on November 10 103 102 According to Parker pronouncing the death sentences is the most painful duty I have ever been called on to perform 105 According to a reporter a large number of the spectators wept as did the Judge 106 On December 2 the morning of John Brown s execution Green sent word to Brown that he was glad to have fought with him and awaited his death willingly 35 507 508 Coppock and Cook attempted to escape from the jail using a knife they got from Green but he did not try to escape himself 95 116 There is no comment anywhere on how Green got a knife in jail Green s execution edit nbsp John Anthony Copeland Jr and Shields Green being taken in a wagon from the jail to the gallows Green and Copeland were hanged on Friday December 16 two weeks after Brown There were at least 1 600 spectators 107 The bodies of the negroes after being cut down were placed in poplar coffins and carried back to the jail They will be interred tomorrow on the spot where the gallows stand though there is a party of medical students here from Winchester who will doubtless not allow them to remain there long 108 After a burial which may have lasted no more than an hour their corpses were dug up the grave robbing students carried guns in part to keep away other medical students that also wanted the corpses They were taken to the nearby Winchester Medical College for dissection by students A letter from Black residents of Philadelphia to Virginia Governor Wise requesting their bodies so as to bury them had no effect 109 Professor James Monroe of Oberlin College a friend of Copeland s family from Oberlin Ohio searched for Copeland s body but found only Green s He was unable to retrieve Copeland s body as the medical students hid the corpse and threatened him with violence if he continued his quest It did not occur to him to retrieve Green s body no one wanted it in Oberlin or anywhere else This is the last news we have of it on a dissecting table 110 111 34 At the time unclaimed dead bodies were often used or disposed of this way During the Civil War Union troops burned down Winchester Medical College in retaliation for what happened to Brown and his men It was never rebuilt In 1928 unidentifiable bones from bodies dissected at the Winchester Medical College were found in a pit under a building being torn down 112 There is no report on what was done with the bones found Legacy and honors edit nbsp Monument honoring Copeland Green and Leary in Oberlin Ohio nbsp Plaque showing original inscriptionOn December 25 1859 a memorial service was held in Oberlin for Copeland Green and Lewis Sheridan Leary who died during the raid A cenotaph was erected in 1865 in Westwood Cemetery to honor the three citizens of Oberlin The monument was moved in 1971 to Martin Luther King Jr Park on Vine Street in Oberlin 113 The inscription reads These colored citizens of Oberlin the heroic associates of the immortal John Brown gave their lives for the slave Et nunc servitudo etiam mortua est laus deo And now slavery is finally dead thanks be to God S Green died at Charleston Va Dec 16 1859 age 23 years J A Copeland died at Charleston Va Dec 16 1859 age 25 years L S Leary died at Harper s Ferry Va Oct 20 1859 age 24 years The Green Copeland American Legion Post 63 was founded in Charles Town West Virginia in 1929 It joined with another Black post after the Second World War 95 120 John Brown s Body Servant a fictionalized version of his time with Frederick Douglass was published in 1941 114 115 At the centennial in 1959 a columnist expressed frustration that no school or anything else had been named for either Green or Copeland 116 A 1983 play by Alf Pratt When My Bees Swarm words of Brown dramatizes the Brown Douglass Green meeting in Chambersburg It has never been produced 117 He was called Rochester s first black martyr by Shirley Clark Husted in her Monroe County New York Civil War anthology Sweet Gift of Freedom 1986 118 The Brown Douglass Green meeting is the subject of the play Ten Thousand Mornings by T P Bancroft It was produced non professionally in 1990 119 African American storyteller David Anderson expanded the known facts of Green s life into a story Being of a Reckless Disposition 1994 120 He Who Endures by Bill Harris is a one act play in seven scenes about Green Douglass and Brown that puts on the stage Douglass s Chambersburg meeting with Brown Henry Highland Garnet is also a character It was published in 1996 121 Shields Green and the Gospel of John Brown is a 1996 screenplay by Kevin Willmott and Mitch Brian which tells the story of Green an ex slave and disciple of Frederick Douglass who accompanied Brown to Harper s Ferry where he died In Shields Green there s a reluctant leader hero It s like The 70 s in the sense that there s a kid Shields Green in this case who is running from reality and he ends up embracing the reality of race and assuming the mantle of leadership I mean at first Green only wants to get his family free from slavery but then he grows into a person who believes that all slaves need to be free It was purchased by Chris Columbus for 20th Century Fox but was not produced 122 Denzel Washington was offered the part of Shields with Harrison Ford playing John Brown 123 Paul Newman considered the part of Brown but withdrew because of ideological differences with the late Rupert Murdoch part owner of Fox Entertainment Group which was undertaking the project 26 179 n 4 The rights have reverted to the authors A public reading was held in Lawrence Kansas in 2002 124 On August 19 2001 the Jefferson County Black Historical Preservation City had a small memorial service for Green and Copeland at the site of the former Colored Cemetery in Charles Town 95 120 121 The Brown Douglass Green meeting in Chambersburg also appears in a 2013 PBS miniseries The Abolitionists 125 126 The study Five for Freedom The African American Soldiers in John Brown s Army by Eugene L Meyer was published in 2018 95 xvii Dayo Okeniyi portrays Green in the 2020 film Emperor In the film Green does not have a speech defect survives Harpers Ferry and his son writes a book about him Louis A DeCaro s book The Untold Story of Shields Green was published by New York University Press in 2020 26 Quentin Plair portrays Green in the 2020 Showtime miniseries The Good Lord Bird See also editJohn Brown s raidersReferences edit a b c d e f g h i j Douglass Frederick 1892 Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by himself His Early Life as a Slave His Escape from Bondage and His Complete History to the Present Time including his Connection with the Anti slavery Movement His Labors in Great Britain as well as in His Own Country His Experience in the Conduct of an Influential Newspaper His Connection with the Underground Railroad His Relations with John Brown and the Harper s Ferry Raid His Recruiting the 54th and 55th Mass Colored Regiments His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson His Appointment by Gen Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission also to a Seat in the Council of the District of Columbia His Appointment as United States Marshal by President Rutherford B Hayes also His Appointment to be Recorder of Deeds in Washington by President J A Garfield with Many Other Interesting and Important Events of His Most Eventful Life with An Introduction by Mr George L Ruffin of Boston New revised ed Boston De Wolfe amp Fiske Co a b c Lee Robert E 1902 Col Robert E Lee s Report Headquarters Harper s Ferry October 19 1859 The John Brown Letters Found in the Virginia State Library in 1901 continued pp 17 32 at p 22 JSTOR 4242480 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a journal ignored help a b c Mason James M Collamer Jacob June 15 1860 Report of the Select committee of the Senate appointed to inquire into the late invasion and seizure of the public property at Harper s Ferry p 42 ASR March 21 1995 John Brown The Conspirators sic Biographies Archived from the original on 2018 06 07 Retrieved May 21 2007 Untitled Hartford Courant Hartford Connecticut November 15 1859 p 2 via newspapers com The executions at Charlestown Pittsburgh Post December 17 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on 2020 10 16 Retrieved 2020 10 16 via Pennsylvania News Archive a b Execution of the Insurgents Tyrone Star Tyrone Pennsylvania December 24 1859 p 2 via newspapers com Harper s Ferry Pontiac Gazette Pontiac Michigan December 16 1859 p 2 via Digital Michigan Newspapers Expulsion of strangers New York Tribune November 16 1859 November 12 1859 p 6 via newspapers com Douglass Frederick September 1861 Fighting Rebels With Only One Hand Douglass Monthly African American Newspapers Vol 4 no 4 p 516 via Accessible Archives com Douglass Frederick March 5 1863 A Call to the Negroes to Arm Appeal from Frederick Douglass The Evening Post New York New York p 1 Archived from the original on 2023 07 15 Retrieved 2021 03 05 via NYS Historic Newspapers A Call from Fred Douglass Cleveland Daily Leader Cleveland Ohio March 6 1863 p 2 via newspapers com John Brown Boston Globe December 17 1873 p 5 Archived from the original on February 1 2021 Retrieved January 27 2021 via newspapers com a b c d e Douglass Frederick 1881 John Brown An address by Frederick Douglass at the fourteenth anniversary of Storer College Harper s Ferry West Virginia May 30 1881 Dover New Hampshire Dover N H Morning Star job printing house Adams Mary May 1 1928 Record of revolts in negro workers past Daily Worker Via Old Fulton New York Post Cards Allen James Egert May 16 1970 Black History Past and Present New York Amsterdam News p 17 Via Old Fulton New York Post Cards Dyer Thomas G 1976 An Early Black Textbook Floyd s Flowers or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children Phylon 37 4 359 361 doi 10 2307 274499 JSTOR 274499 a b c d e Anderson Osborne P 1861 A Voice from Harper s Ferry with incidents prior and subsequent to its capture by Captain Brown and his men Boston The author a b c d John Brown s raid Details as told by one of the survivors Suffered hardships Efforts of the Survivors to Get Away from the Scene and how Some Were Captured Captain Cook s Experience in a Justice s Court in Chambersburg Where He Was Taken After His Capture by Professional Fugitive Slave Hunters The Gazette York Pennsylvania July 23 1903 p 6 via newspapers com Stutler Boyd 1930 Captain John Brown and Harper s Ferry The Story of the Raid and the Old Fire Engine House Known as John Brown s Fort 2nd ed Harpers Ferry West Virginia Storer College a b The executions at Charlestown Richmond Dispatch Richmond Virginia December 19 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on October 17 2020 Retrieved January 22 2021 via newspapers com a b Quarles Benjamin 1974 Allies for Freedom Blacks and John Brown New York Oxford University Press LCCN 73 90372 Meyer Eugene L Oct 13 2019 The five black men who raided Harpers Ferry with John Brown have been forgotten Washington Post via Gale Academic Onefile a b Cook John Edwin November 11 1859 Confession of John E Cooke sic brother of Gov A P Willard of Indiana and one of the participants in the Harper s Ferry invasion published for the benefit of Samuel C Young a non slaveholder who is permanently disabled by a wound received in defence of Southern institutions slavery Charles Town Virginia D Smith Eichelberger Editor of the Independent Democrat Archived from the original on December 9 2020 Retrieved March 10 2021 John Brown s Invasion Cook s confession New York Tribune November 26 1859 p 7 Archived from the original on June 14 2021 Retrieved March 10 2021 via newspapers com a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa DeCaro Louis A Jr 2020 The Untold Story of Shields Green The Life and Death of a Harper s Ferry Raider New York University Press ISBN 978 1 4798 0275 3 Terre Indice November 19 1859 November 14 1859 Letter from Virginia Louisville Daily Courier Louisville Kentucky p 1 via newspapers com a b c d e f Lubet Steve June 1 2013 Execution in Virginia 1859 The Trials of Green and Copeland North Carolina Law Review 91 5 1785 1815 Archived from the original on April 30 2019 Retrieved February 2 2021 a b c d Barry Joseph 1903 The Strange Story of Harpers Ferry Martinsburg West Virginia Archived from the original on 2021 01 25 Retrieved 2021 01 26 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link The Harper s Ferry Affairs Columbus Daily Sun Columbus Georgia December 22 1859 p 2 via newspaperarchive com a b Ages of the prisoners The Liberator Boston Massachusetts December 23 1859 p 3 Archived from the original on June 14 2021 Retrieved January 21 2021 via newspapers com Rambler November 25 1859 Letter from Harpers Ferry Richmond Whig p 2 Archived from the original on February 14 2021 Retrieved February 7 2021 via VirginiaChronicle Ages of the prisoners New York Tribune Says he was 22 December 19 1859 p 6 a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a CS1 maint others link a b c d Monroe James 1897 A journey to Virginia in December 1859 Oberlin Thursday Lectures and Essays Oberlin Ohio Edward J Goodrich pp 158 184 at pp 174 175 a b c d e f g h i j k Hinton Richard J 1894 John Brown and His Men With Some Account of the Roads They Traveled to Reach Harpers Ferry Revised ed New York Funk and Wagnalls a b A Rochester man illegible Harper s Ferry Insurrection New York Daily Herald October 29 1859 p 10 via newspapers com For example see Benjamin Quarles Allies for Freedom Blacks and John Brown 1974 2000 85 Affairs at Charlestown More Rumors The Life of John Brown The Prisoners The Approaching Execution amp c Richmond Dispatch Richmond Virginia 2 Dec 1859 p 1 via newspapers com a b c Insurrection at Harper s Ferry Valley Spirit Chambersburg Pennsylvania October 26 1859 p 5 via newspapers com Stake Virginia Orr 1977 John Brown in Chambersburg Chambersburg Pennsylvania Franklin County Heritage Inc p 111 a b Betz I H July 22 1903 John Brown s raid Details As Told By One Of The Survivors Careful preparations Plan Was To Set Up A Republic In The Mountains First meetings were in Canada The Gazette York Pennsylvania p 6 via newspapers com Sanborn Franklin Benjamin 1909 Recollections of Seventy Years Vol 1 Boston Richard G Badger The Gorham Press p 179 ISBN 978 0 8103 3045 0 a b Villard Oswald Garrison 1910 John Brown 1800 1859 A Biography Fifty Years After Boston Houghton Mifflin David W Blight Frederick Douglass Prophet of Freedom New York Simon amp Schuster 2018 243 John Brown Papers held by the Jefferson County Circuit Clerk s Office West Virginia Department of Arts Culture and History 2021 Archived from the original on January 28 2021 Retrieved January 15 2021 J T Old Brown and His Fellow Prisoners Spirit of the Times New York Dec 3 1859 21 The Trial of the Conspirators New York Herald Nov 5 1859 1 Crumbs Charleston Daily News Charleston South Carolina June 7 1870 p 3 Archived from the original on January 29 2021 Retrieved January 21 2021 via newspapers com Pratte Alf October December 1986 When my bees swarm Negro History Bulletin 49 4 13 16 at p 13 JSTOR 44176900 Kaplan Sidney Spring 1957 The American Seamen s Protective Union Association of 1863 A Pioneer Organization of Negro Seamen in the Port of New York Science amp Society 21 2 154 159 at p 155 JSTOR 40400494 Wise Barton Haxall 1899 The Life of Henry A Wise of Virginia 1806 1876 New York Macmillan Inc a b The Negro Insurrection Defeat and Capture of the Insurgents Capt Brown of Kansas the Ringleader and his Son Shot One Dead and the other Dying The Rebels brought out in Presence of the People The Brooklyn Daily Eagle Brooklyn New York Also available from New York State Historic Newspapers October 18 1859 p 3 via newspapers com a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a External link in code class cs1 code others code help CS1 maint others link Highly Interesting Particulars Daily Dispatch Richmond Virginia October 20 1859 p 3 Untitled Buffalo Daily Republic Buffalo New York October 18 1859 p 3 via newspapers com Untitled Brooklyn Daily Times Brooklyn New York October 18 1859 p 3 via newspapers com Untitled Daily Evening Express Lancaster Pennsylvania October 18 1859 p 2 Archived from the original on February 9 2021 Retrieved February 5 2021 via newspapers com The Harper s Ferry Insurrection Alexandria Gazette Alexandria Virginia October 25 1859 p 1 via VirginiaChronicle a b Incidents of the second battle Baltimore Sun Baltimore Maryland October 19 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on August 29 2020 Retrieved January 21 2021 via newspapers com The latest accounts The New York Times 19 Oct 1859 p 1 via newspapers com Harper s Ferry Insurrection National Era Washington D C October 27 1859 p 4 Archived from the original on February 2 2021 Retrieved January 21 2021 via newspapers com The Harper s Ferry insurrection Fighting in the streets and on the bridge Killing of the Mayor Storming of the engine house Pursuit of the escaped insurgents The Outbreak Rumored to be a Premature Explosion of a More General Conspiracy Detroit Free Press Detroit Michigan Associated Press October 21 1859 October 18 1859 p 1 via newspapers com Insurrection at Harpers Ferry Full particulars Richmond Dispatch Richmond Virginia October 20 1859 p 1 via newspapers com List of the insurgents National Era Washington D C October 27 1859 p 4 Archived from the original on February 2 2021 Retrieved January 21 2021 via newspapers com Insurrection at Harper s Ferry Alexandria Gazette Alexandria Virginia October 21 1859 p 2 via newspapers com Insurrection at Harper s Ferry Cecil Whig Elkton Maryland col 3 October 22 1859 p 2 via Chronicling America a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a CS1 maint others link The Attempt to Establish Freedom Anti Slavery Bugle Salem Ohio col 5 October 29 1859 October 19 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on February 10 2017 Retrieved March 10 2021 via Chronicling America a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a CS1 maint others link List of the insurgents Daily Dispatch Richmond Virginia October 21 1859 p 1 via Chronicling America The Late Rebellion The Daily Exchange Baltimore Maryland October 19 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on September 1 2020 Retrieved February 22 2021 via newspapers com A Monument The Liberator Boston Massachusetts January 13 1860 p 2 via newspapers com Copeland s Confession New York Tribune November 4 1859 p 6 via newspapers com The Harper s Ferry Tragedy Oberlin Evangelist November 9 1859 p 3 Archived from the original on June 27 2021 Retrieved June 27 2021 Baird R K April 22 1888 An Ohio Man s Story The Funeral over Coppic s body St Louis Globe Democrat St Louis Missouri p 32 12 feet 3 7 m Archived from the original on February 2 2021 Retrieved January 30 2021 via newspapers com Marcotte Bob June 9 2008 Rochester did not rally behind abolitionists Part 2 Democrat and Chronicle Rochester New York p 18 4B via newspapers com Personal portraits Staunton Spectator Staunton Virginia November 29 1859 p 1 via VirginiaChronicle Execution of Green and Copeland Richmond Dispatch December 19 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on February 3 2021 Retrieved January 28 2021 via newspapers com Du Bois W E Burghardt 1909 John Brown Philadelphia G W Jacobs pp 280 281 Douglass Frederick 1882 Life and times of Frederick Douglass Written by Himself His early life as a slave his escape from bondage and his complete history to the present time including his connection with the anti slavery movement his labors in Great Britain as well as in his own country his experience in the conduct of an influential newspaper his connection with the Underground Railroad his relations with John Brown and the Harper s Ferry raid his recruiting the 54st and 55th Mass colored regiments his interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson his appointment by Gen Grant to accompany the Santo Domingo Commission also to a seat in the Council of the District of Columbia his appointment as Unitrd States marshal by President R B Hayes also his appointment bt President J A Garfield to be Recorder of Deeds in Washington with many other interesting and important events of his most eventful life Hartford Connecticut Park Publishing Co Testimony of Lewis W Washington Archived from the original on 2021 02 09 Retrieved 2021 02 01 P 37 https archive org details reportselectcommi00unit page 36 mode 2up Those that fought with John Brown at Harper s Ferry Indianapolis Recorder February 27 1937 p 9 Colman Lucy N 1891 Reminiscences Buffalo H L Green John Brown Shepherdstown Register March 7 1874 p 1 via VirginiaChronicle Sheeler J Reuben October 1960 John Brown A Century Later Negro History Bulletin 24 1 7 10 15 JSTOR 44215599 Untitled Kingston Daily Freeman Kingston New York December 4 1873 p 3 via newspaperarchive com DeCaro Jr Louis A 2002 Fire from the Midst of You A Religious Life of John Brown New York New York University Press ISBN 0 8147 1921 X John Brown s Black Raiders Archived 2020 08 11 at the Wayback Machine PBS accessed May 20 2007 a b Geffert Hannah N October 2002 John Brown and His Black Allies An Ignored Alliance Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 126 4 591 610 JSTOR 20093575 Rankin Andrew N October 28 1882 Memories of the John Brown raid New York Tribune p 7 via newspapers com Frederick Douglass in council with John Brown in Chambersburg prior to the raid on Harpers Ferry Public Opinion Chambersburg Pennsylvania July 22 1882 p 1 Archived from the original on January 31 2021 Retrieved January 27 2021 via newspapers com a b Louis A DeCaro Jr Freedom s Dawn The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia Lanham Md Rowman amp Littlefield 2015 29 30 DeCaro Jr Louis A 2020 The Untold Story of Shields Green The Death of a Harper s Ferry Raider New York New York University Press ISBN 978 1 4798 0275 3 John Brown s raid recalled by musket York Dispatch York Pennsylvania December 17 1902 p 2 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 25 2021 via newspapers com Leech D D Rev Samuel Vanderlip 1909 The Raid of John Brown at Harper s Ferry as I Saw it Washington D C The author p 7 Archived from the original on 2021 06 14 Retrieved 2021 03 19 Lawson John D 1916 The Trial of John Anthony Copeland and Shields Green for Murder Charlestown Virginia 1859 American State Trials A collection of the important and interesting criminal trials which have taken place in the United States from the beginning of our government to the present day Vol 6 St Louis Thomas Law Books pp 808 813 a b c d e f Meyer Eugene L 2018 Five for Freedom The African American Soldiers in John Brown s Army Chicago Lawrence Hill Books Chicago Review Press ISBN 978 1 61373 572 5 By telegraph Wisconsin State Journal Madison Wisconsin November 4 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 19 2021 via newspaperarchive com The Harper s Ferry Foray The Appeal in the Case of Brown Trial of Shields Green Cook s Case Compndition of Stevens Baltimore Sun November 5 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 18 2021 via newspapers com The trials in Virginia Boston Evening Transcript 9 Nov 1859 p 1 via newspapers com a b The Harpers Ferry Trials Conviction of Green Trial of Copeland Baltimore Sun Baltimore Maryland November 7 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 18 2021 via newspapers com John Brown s Invasion Personal Portraits New York Tribune November 17 1859 p 5 Archived from the original on May 16 2021 Retrieved March 29 2021 via newspapers com De Witt Robert M Cook John Edwin 1859 Life Trial and Execution of Captain John Brown known as Old Brown of Ossawatomie with a full account of the attempted insurrection at Harper s Ferry Compiled from official and authentic sources Including Cooke s sic confesson and all the Incidents of the Execution New York The author Archived from the original on February 11 2007 a b Parker Richard November 10 1859 Death sentence of Shields Green Jefferson County Circuit Court archived from the original on January 30 2021 retrieved January 26 2021 a b The Sentence of the Harpers Ferry Insurgents Baltimore Sun Baltimore Maryland November 14 1859 p 1 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 18 2021 via newspapers com The Harper s Ferry Insurrection Harper s Ferry and Charlestown revisited Final interviews with John Brown Cook Stevens and the other conspirators Frank Leslie s Illustrated Newspaper 26 December 10 1859 via accessible archives com Free Press Extra Friday Morning Nov 11 Virginia Free Press Charles Town Virginia Nov 11 1859 The Insurrection Rockland County Journal Nyack New York November 19 1859 p 3 Archived from the original on 2021 07 03 Retrieved 2021 02 18 via NYS Historic Newspapers The Charleston Executions The Agitator Wellsborough Pennsylvania December 22 1859 p 2 Archived from the original on 2021 07 03 Retrieved 2021 03 31 via Pennsylvania Newspaper Archive John Brown s War Another panic in Virginia Chicago Tribune December 17 1859 p 4 Archived from the original on December 9 2020 Retrieved March 31 2021 via newspapers com Request to Gov Wise to get the bodies of the colored men to be executed to day The Liberator Boston Massachusetts December 23 1859 p 3 Archived from the original on January 28 2021 Retrieved January 21 2021 via newspapers com John Copeland A Hero of Harpers Ferry text and audio versions WCPN Radio aired February 21 2001 Retrieved August 28 2014 Nudelman Franny 2004 John Brown s Body Slavery Violence amp the Culture of War UNC Press ISBN 0 8078 5557 X Finds Cemetery in Backyard Bones May Be Those of John Brown s Men Richmond Times Dispatch Richmond Virginia April 8 1928 p 1 Archived from the original on October 9 2020 Retrieved February 17 2021 via newspapers com Monument to the Oberlinians Who Participated in John Brown s Raid On Harpers Ferry Archived 2007 04 29 at the Wayback Machine accessed May 21 2007 Thompson James H February 9 1941 John Brown s Body Servant part 1 Democrat and Chronicle Rochester New York Next page https www newspapers com clip 103091785 pp 71 72 Sunday Magazine 4 5 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 13 2021 via newspapers com a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a External link in code class cs1 code others code help Thompson James H February 16 1941 John Brown s Body Servant part 2 Democrat and Chronicle Rochester New York Next page https www newspapers com clip 103091838 pp 80 81 Sunday Magazine 4 5 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 13 2021 via newspapers com a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a External link in code class cs1 code others code help Loren Miller Says California Eagle Los Angeles California October 22 1959 p 4 via Old Fulton NY Post Cards a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a External link in code class cs1 code via code help New Historic Development Ideas Discussed Public Opinion Chambersburg Pennsylvania September 8 2000 p 2 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 21 2021 via newspapers com Prince Richard January 22 1990 Glory Be But don t forget the heroes here Democrat and Chronicle Rochester New York p 7 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 21 2021 via newspapers com Chambersburg is setting for New York City play Public Opinion Chambersburg Pennsylvania February 5 1990 p 13 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 21 2021 via newspapers com Stories fill void for listeners teller Democrat and Chronicle Rochester New York November 23 1994 p 181 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 21 2021 via newspapers com Harris Bill 1996 He Who Endures In Young Al ed African American literature a brief introduction and anthology New York HarperCollins pp 507 535 ISBN 0 673 99017 6 Loeb Jeff Willmotty Kevin Summer 2001 A Conversation with Kevin Willmott African American Review 35 2 249 262 doi 10 2307 2903256 JSTOR 2903256 Stars get in line for the day of the remake Daily News New York New York July 8 1996 p 14 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 21 2021 via newspapers com Butler Robert W February 10 2002 Screenwriters settle for live reading of John Brown movie Kansas City Star Kansas City Missouri p 137 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved March 3 2021 via newspapers com PBS series tells story of The Abolitionists Intelligencer Journal Lancaster New Era Lancaster Pennsylvania January 4 2013 p 9 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 21 2021 via newspapers com Derakhshani Tirdad January 6 2013 Inner angst of antislavery activists Part 1 Philadelphia Inquirer Philadelphia Pennsylvania Part 2 p H01 Archived from the original on July 3 2021 Retrieved February 19 2021 via newspapers com a href Template Cite news html title Template Cite news cite news a External link in code class cs1 code others code help Further reading editDeCaro Louis A Jr 2020 The Untold Story of Shields Green The Life and Death of a Harper s Ferry Raider New York University Press ISBN 978 1 4798 0275 3 Stake Virginia Ott 1977 John Brown in Chambersburg Chambersburg Pennsylvania Franklin County Heritage Lawson John D 1916 The Trial of John Anthony Copeland and Shields Green for Murder Charlestown Virginia 1859 American State Trials A collection of the important and interesting criminal trials which have taken place in the United States from the beginning of our government to the present day Vol 6 St Louis Thomas Law Books pp 808 813 External links edit nbsp Media related to Shields Green at Wikimedia Commons Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Shields Green amp oldid 1186221690, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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