[Cleverland.com] John Brown's fearsome pikes made for an army of freed slaves still hold fascination
![]()
Associated PressDennis Frye, chief historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, poses with a replica of the John Brown pike, Wednesday, May 20, 2009, at the park in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. The nearly 1,000 pikes Brown purchased from a Connecticut blacksmith for his abolitionist army were never used for their intended purpose.
DARGAN, Maryland -- The spears that John Brown ordered for his abolitionist army were fearsome, primitive things. Nearly seven feet long, the pikes had 10-inch steel blades made for slashing and impaling those who resisted the slave rebellion Brown envisioned.
But the uprising didn't come, and the nearly 1,000 pikes Brown purchased from a Connecticut blacksmith and stockpiled at a Maryland farm a few miles from the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., were never used for their intended purpose.
More on John Brown
More about history:
Nation | World
Instead, after Brown's ill-fated raid on the arsenal on Oct. 16, 1859, many pikes were seized as souvenirs and today command high prices. One bearing the serial number 846 was sold through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries in 2007 for $13,000.
Brown's capture and execution for treason foiled his plan to hand out pikes to freed slaves and ignited passions on both sides of the slavery divide. Northern abolitionists considered him a martyr; secessionist fire-eaters in the South raised the John Brown pikes as symbols of Northern aggression in the run-up to the Civil War.
"There wasn't anything you could put in front of Southern aristocracy that was more frightening than a slave revolt. They feared that more than anything," said Dennis Lowe, who oversees Civil War material at Heritage Auction Galleries.
Virginian Edmund Ruffin, a pro-slavery extremist, acquired a number of pikes from Col. Alfred W, Barbour, superintendent of the federal arsenal, and arranged with Alabama Sen. Clement C. Clay to have them sent to the governors of the slave-holding states.
To the handle of each pike, Ruffin pasted a label: "Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren." He asked that the weapons be conspicuously displayed, preferably at the statehouse.
The historical record is hazy on whether any pikes were showcased. But Ruffin caused a stir by writing an editorial promoting his idea for the Examiner newspaper in Richmond, Va., said Eric H. Walther, a University of Houston historian and author of "The Fire-Eaters."
Ruffin also carried a pike with him to Washington to garner support for the gimmick, historians said.
"It became a huge media event: 'Come see the John Brown pike,'" said Dennis Frye, chief historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. "His wish was to create fear and terror of slave insurrection."
Frye said the anxiety whipped up by secessionists like Ruffin accelerated the formation of Southern militias and helped the Confederacy grow strong enough to defeat Union forces in the war's first battle at Fort Sumter, S.C., on April 12, 1861. Ruffin was there.
Surviving pikes are rarities, Lowe said. He said some were deliberately broken and used as knives and many others simply disappeared.
"If you see one of these every three or four years, it's unusual. That tells me a bunch of them were burned or destroyed. Otherwise, you'd see more of them," Lowe said.
Institutions with at least one intact pike -- two is a lot -- include Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., and the Kansas Museum of History. Brown led armed attacks against pro-slavery groups in Kansas before moving east.
Donald R. Tharpe, a private collector in Warrenton, Va., who owned the pike auctioned in 2007, said holding such relics brings history alive.
"It's a thrill because this is firsthand evidence of the scene at the time," Tharpe said. "I can just in my mind's eye visualize the whole incident."
Associated PressDennis Frye, chief historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, poses with a replica of the John Brown pike, Wednesday, May 20, 2009, at the park in Harpers Ferry, W.Va. The nearly 1,000 pikes Brown purchased from a Connecticut blacksmith for his abolitionist army were never used for their intended purpose.
DARGAN, Maryland -- The spears that John Brown ordered for his abolitionist army were fearsome, primitive things. Nearly seven feet long, the pikes had 10-inch steel blades made for slashing and impaling those who resisted the slave rebellion Brown envisioned.
But the uprising didn't come, and the nearly 1,000 pikes Brown purchased from a Connecticut blacksmith and stockpiled at a Maryland farm a few miles from the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., were never used for their intended purpose.
More on John Brown
More about history:
Nation | World
Instead, after Brown's ill-fated raid on the arsenal on Oct. 16, 1859, many pikes were seized as souvenirs and today command high prices. One bearing the serial number 846 was sold through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries in 2007 for $13,000.
Brown's capture and execution for treason foiled his plan to hand out pikes to freed slaves and ignited passions on both sides of the slavery divide. Northern abolitionists considered him a martyr; secessionist fire-eaters in the South raised the John Brown pikes as symbols of Northern aggression in the run-up to the Civil War.
"There wasn't anything you could put in front of Southern aristocracy that was more frightening than a slave revolt. They feared that more than anything," said Dennis Lowe, who oversees Civil War material at Heritage Auction Galleries.
Virginian Edmund Ruffin, a pro-slavery extremist, acquired a number of pikes from Col. Alfred W, Barbour, superintendent of the federal arsenal, and arranged with Alabama Sen. Clement C. Clay to have them sent to the governors of the slave-holding states.
To the handle of each pike, Ruffin pasted a label: "Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren." He asked that the weapons be conspicuously displayed, preferably at the statehouse.
The historical record is hazy on whether any pikes were showcased. But Ruffin caused a stir by writing an editorial promoting his idea for the Examiner newspaper in Richmond, Va., said Eric H. Walther, a University of Houston historian and author of "The Fire-Eaters."
Ruffin also carried a pike with him to Washington to garner support for the gimmick, historians said.
"It became a huge media event: 'Come see the John Brown pike,'" said Dennis Frye, chief historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. "His wish was to create fear and terror of slave insurrection."
Frye said the anxiety whipped up by secessionists like Ruffin accelerated the formation of Southern militias and helped the Confederacy grow strong enough to defeat Union forces in the war's first battle at Fort Sumter, S.C., on April 12, 1861. Ruffin was there.
Surviving pikes are rarities, Lowe said. He said some were deliberately broken and used as knives and many others simply disappeared.
"If you see one of these every three or four years, it's unusual. That tells me a bunch of them were burned or destroyed. Otherwise, you'd see more of them," Lowe said.
Institutions with at least one intact pike -- two is a lot -- include Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Va., and the Kansas Museum of History. Brown led armed attacks against pro-slavery groups in Kansas before moving east.
Donald R. Tharpe, a private collector in Warrenton, Va., who owned the pike auctioned in 2007, said holding such relics brings history alive.
"It's a thrill because this is firsthand evidence of the scene at the time," Tharpe said. "I can just in my mind's eye visualize the whole incident."
[York Town Square] Tough questions for York countians about John Brown’s Harpers Ferry Raid
![]()
This pike, in the collection of the York County, Pa., Heritage Trust, is credited as coming from John Brown’s Raid. History professor John Quist said abolitionist John Brown armed his band in their raid on Harper’s Ferry with pikes, believing that black members of the band could not be trained to use guns. Osborne Perry Anderson (see below) escaped, made his way to York and then to Philadelphia and freedom.
John Brown launched his raid on the federal arsenal and armory at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 with the hope of evoking slave revolt.
The plan went awry, and Brown and several of his band were cornered in the engine house and later captured. Civilians and a U.S. Marine died in the raid, which also failed in prompting a slave rebellion. Brown and his fellow captives were later hanged.
Osborne Perry Anderson, a free African-American and one of John Brown’s raiders, may have been positioned away from the main band.
He made his escape through Franklin County in Pennsylvania and worked his way to York where a Good Samaritan gave him refuge and sent him to freedom in Canada. Some historians believe former-slave-turned-businessman William C. Goodridge was that helpful soul.
John Quist told the story of John Brown’s Raid as part of Civil War Road Show observances this past weekend at Penn Park.
He ended his talk with questions about whether Brown’s violent actions were justified to destroy slavery… .
And the broader related question: Did slavery, dependent upon violence against a race of people, need to be ended by violence?
Good questions.
Bringing them right home to York, was the Good Samaritan justified in harboring a fugitive who was part of a band that meted out death to innocent civilians?
William C. Goodridge was known to whisk runaway slaves to freedom, flouting federal law, the Fugitive Slave Act. Few argue today that the Underground Railroad was an improper form of civil disobedience.
But to hide a John Brown raider, who the federal government would have hanged?
This example isn’t parallel but it’s worth discussion:
John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln and fled.
If he had fled to York County, would a Southern sympathizer providing safe haven be viewed as exercising proper civil disobedience? (Booth in York could have happened. He knew people here, York County was full of rebel sympathizers.)
Anderson and Booth both were part of conspiracies that took lives.
Was the Good Samaritan in York County justified in aiding a conspirator from Brown’s party who shed blood and broke the law?
Were other York countians, who no doubt knew about Good Samaritan’s actions, thereby drawn into a conspiracy of their own?
A point here is that the closer an event in history gets to a town, the tougher it is to pass judgment. York countians would not have easily cast stones at the Good Samaritan for housing a John Brown band member.
In fact, they didn’t. History does not decisively remember his name.
This pike, in the collection of the York County, Pa., Heritage Trust, is credited as coming from John Brown’s Raid. History professor John Quist said abolitionist John Brown armed his band in their raid on Harper’s Ferry with pikes, believing that black members of the band could not be trained to use guns. Osborne Perry Anderson (see below) escaped, made his way to York and then to Philadelphia and freedom.
John Brown launched his raid on the federal arsenal and armory at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 with the hope of evoking slave revolt.
The plan went awry, and Brown and several of his band were cornered in the engine house and later captured. Civilians and a U.S. Marine died in the raid, which also failed in prompting a slave rebellion. Brown and his fellow captives were later hanged.
Osborne Perry Anderson, a free African-American and one of John Brown’s raiders, may have been positioned away from the main band.
He made his escape through Franklin County in Pennsylvania and worked his way to York where a Good Samaritan gave him refuge and sent him to freedom in Canada. Some historians believe former-slave-turned-businessman William C. Goodridge was that helpful soul.
John Quist told the story of John Brown’s Raid as part of Civil War Road Show observances this past weekend at Penn Park.
He ended his talk with questions about whether Brown’s violent actions were justified to destroy slavery… .
And the broader related question: Did slavery, dependent upon violence against a race of people, need to be ended by violence?
Good questions.
Bringing them right home to York, was the Good Samaritan justified in harboring a fugitive who was part of a band that meted out death to innocent civilians?
William C. Goodridge was known to whisk runaway slaves to freedom, flouting federal law, the Fugitive Slave Act. Few argue today that the Underground Railroad was an improper form of civil disobedience.
But to hide a John Brown raider, who the federal government would have hanged?
This example isn’t parallel but it’s worth discussion:
John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln and fled.
If he had fled to York County, would a Southern sympathizer providing safe haven be viewed as exercising proper civil disobedience? (Booth in York could have happened. He knew people here, York County was full of rebel sympathizers.)
Anderson and Booth both were part of conspiracies that took lives.
Was the Good Samaritan in York County justified in aiding a conspirator from Brown’s party who shed blood and broke the law?
Were other York countians, who no doubt knew about Good Samaritan’s actions, thereby drawn into a conspiracy of their own?
A point here is that the closer an event in history gets to a town, the tougher it is to pass judgment. York countians would not have easily cast stones at the Good Samaritan for housing a John Brown band member.
In fact, they didn’t. History does not decisively remember his name.
예전에 노획항모 중 강습상륙함 루트에 쓸 함명 중, 네이밍 원칙에 따라 하나를 존 브라운 - 미국사를 아는 양반이라면 떠올릴 그양반 맞는 그 브라운이라는 이름을 붙였지만, 아무래도 혼자만 인물형이라 뭔가가 좀 찝찝하긴 했는데, 존 브라운에 관련된 아이템에 관한 기사를 이제서야 찾는 바람에, 함수마크 변경이 불가피하게 됬습니다 'ㅅ'!!!!
....그러면, 이제 생긴 게 가장 비스무리한
스펀툰(Spontoon [英]) 관련 템플릿을 한번 찾아봐야겠습니다.
※근데, 남북전쟁 전간기(?)에도 스펀툰이 쓰였다는 건 좀 개인적으로 의외인 그...'ㅛ';;;;
tag : 1：700_프라모델, 함수마크, 설정변경좀_해볼까