Freeman now, but married to one not free
Who, with their seven children, waited him South,
The youngest baby just beginning to crawl;
Watson Brown, the steady lieutenant, who wrote
Back to his wife, “Oh, Bell, I want to see you
And the little fellow very much but must wait.
There was a slave near here whose wife was sold South.
They found him hanging in Kennedy’s orchard next morning.
I cannot come home as long as such things are done here.
I sometimes think that we shall not meet again.”
These were some of the band. For better or worse
They were all strong men. The bearded faces look strange
In the old daguerreotypes: they should be the faces
Of prosperous, small-town people, good sons and fathers,
Good horse-shoe pitchers, good at plowing a field,
Good at swapping stories and good at praying,
American wheat, firm-rooted, good in the ear.
There is only one whose air seems out of the common,
Oliver Brown. That face has a masculine beauty
Somewhat like the face of Keats. They were all strong men.
They tied up the watchmen and took the rifle-works.
Then John Brown sent a raiding party away
To fetch in Colonel Washington from his farm.
The Colonel was George Washington’s great-grand-nephew,
Slave-owner, gentleman-farmer, but, more than these,
Possessor of a certain fabulous sword
Given to Washington by Frederick the Great.
They captured him and his sword and brought them along
Processionally. The act has a touch of drama,
Half costume-romance, half unmerited farce.
On the way, they told the Washington slaves they were free,
Or free to fight for their freedom. The slaves heard the news
With the dazed, scared eyes of cattle before a storm.
A few came back with the band and were given pikes,
And, when John Brown was watching, pretended to mount
A slipshod guard over the prisoners.
But, when he had walked away, they put down their pikes
And huddled together, talking in mourning voices.
It didn’t seem right to play at guarding the Colonel
But they were afraid of the bearded patriarch
With the Old Testament eyes. A little later
It was Patrick Higgins’ turn. He was the night-watchman
Of the Maryland bridge, a tough little Irishman
With a canny, humorous face, and a twist in his speech.
He came humming his way to his job. “Halt!” ordered a voice.
He stopped a minute, perplexed. As he told men later,
“Now I didn’t know what ‘Halt!’ mint, any more
Than a hog knows about a holiday.” There was a scuffle.
He got away with a bullet-crease in his scalp
And warned the incoming train. It was half-past-one.
A moment later, a man named Shepherd Heyward,
Free negro, baggage-master of the small station,
Well-known in the town, hardworking, thrifty and fated,
Came looking for Higgins. “Halt!” called the voice again,
But he kept on, not hearing or understanding,
Whichever it may have been. A rifle cracked.
He fell by the station-platform, gripping his belly,
And lay for twelve hours of torment, asking for water
Until he was able to die. There is no stone,
No image of bronze or marble green with the rain
To Shepherd Heyward, free negro of Harper’s Ferry,
And even the books, the careful, ponderous histories,
That turn live men into dummies with smiles of wax
Thoughtfully posed against a photographer’s background
In the act of signing a treaty or drawing a sword,
Tell little of what he was. And yet his face
Grey with pain and puzzled at sudden death
Stares out at us through the bookworm-dust of the years
With an uncomprehending wonder, a blind surprise.
“I was getting along,” it says, “I was doing well.
I had six thousand dollars saved in the bank.
It was a good town, a nice town, I liked the folks
And they liked me. I had a good job there, too.
On Sundays I used to dress myself up slick enough
To pass the plate in church, but I wasn’t proud
Not even when trashy niggers called me Mister,
Though I could hear the old grannies over their snuff
Mumbling along, ‘Look, chile, there goes Shepherd Heyward.
Ain’t him fine in he Sunday clo’es—ain’t him sassy and fine?
You grow up decent and don’t play ball in the street,
And maybe you’ll get like him, with a gold watch and chain.’
And then, suddenly—and what was it all about?
Why should anyone want to kill me? Why was it done?”
So the grey lips. And so the hurt in the eyes.
A hurt like a child’s, at punishment unexplained
That makes the whole child-universe fall to pieces.
At the time of death, most men turn back toward the child.
Brown did not know at first that the first man dead
By the sword he thought of so often as Gideon’s sword
Was one of the race he had drawn that sword to free.
It had been dark on the bridge. A man had come
And had not halted when ordered. Then the shot
And the scrape of the hurt man dragging himself away.
That was all. The next man ordered to halt would halt.
His mind was too full of the burning judgments of God
To wonder who it had been. He was cool and at peace.
He dreamt of a lamb, lying down by a rushing stream.
So the night wore away, indecisive and strange.
The raiders stuck by the arsenal, waiting perhaps
For a great bell of jubilation to toll in the sky,
And the slaves to rush from the hills with pikes in their hands,
A host redeemed, black rescue-armies of God.
It did not happen. Meanwhile, there was casual firing.
A townsman named Boerley was killed. Meanwhile, the train
Passed over the bridge to carry its wild news
Of abolition-devils sprung from the ground
A hundred and fifty, three hundred, a thousand strong
To pillage Harper’s Ferry, with fire and sword.
Meanwhile the whole countryside was springing to arms.
The alarm-bell in Charlestown clanged “Nat Turner has come.’
Nat Turner has come again, all smoky from Hell,
Setting the slave to murder and massacre!”
The Jefferson Guards fell in. There were boys and men.
They had no uniforms but they had weapons.
Old squirrel-rifles, taken down from the wall,
Shot guns loaded with spikes and scraps of iron.
A boy dragged a blunderbuss as big as himself.
They started for the Ferry. In a dozen
A score of other sleepy, neighboring towns
The same bell clanged, the same militia assembled.
The Ferry itself was roused and stirring with dawn.
And the firing began again. A queer, harsh sound
In the ordinary streets of that clean,
