The kerfuffle between the city of Marlboro and Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, over the John Brown bell reminds us that the past sometimes doesnt stay in the past. John Brown was hanged on Dec. 2, 1859, an event that led to the Civil War and created modern journalism.

As I hope you know, John Brown was a radical abolitionist who in 1859 led an invading force into Virginia in the hope of setting off a slave insurrection. With the country teetering on the edge of civil war, all eyes were on the little town of Harpers Ferry. Browns foray was quickly put down by an army unit headed by Col. Robert E. Lee and the ensuing trial was covered by reporters from publications far and wide. It was the first media extravaganza in U.S. history.

Harper's Weekly sent a reporter named David Huntington Strother, whose graphic account and drawing (under the pseudonym Porte Crayon) of the actual hanging proved too much for the Harper's editors and lay unpublished for years. Strother was an enterprising newsman and sketch artist. As the body hung in the gibbet, he mounted the scaffold and lifted the masking cap so that he could do a quick sketch of the old revolutionists face in death.

John Brown was a notorious figure in the America of the 1850s, beloved by some abolitionists in the North, untrusted by others and universally hated in the South. His strident call for armed intervention to overthrow slavery did much to ready the nation for Civil War.

Brown was born in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800 and led a peripatetic existence for most of his mature life. Early on he developed an overweening hatred of slavery and spent his life railing against it and plotting campaigns to get rid of it. He joined various abolition groups but considered them generally as ineffective. He went around the country with his message of violence and won support from some, including Henry David Thoreau and Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Worcesters radical minister. After the execution, Thoreau wrote a widely distributed article that compared Browns death with that of Jesus Christ. Others considered him an agent of the devil.

He polarized the nation. Many thought him a madman, especially after the so-called Pottawatomie massacre where Brown and three of his sons slaughtered a settler family from the South. That was during the Bleeding Kansas period when the new territory of Kansas was opened up for settlement. Under the Compromise of 1850, the new state could choose to be either slave or free, depending on the wishes of the settlers at the time. That set off a land rush from the North and the South with much violence.

All that was but a prelude to Browns grand scheme to overthrow slavery by a military attack. He imagined that such a dramatic move would inspire millions of slaves to join the rebellion and force Southern slave owners to capitulate. It did not work out that way. After months of speeches and fundraising, including a visit to Worcester, he assembled a motley group and attacked the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, on Oct. 16, 1859. After the hapless venture was put down. Brown was transferred to Charlestown, then in Virginia, later in West Virginia.

That led to an orgy of publicity. Magazines and newspapers from all over the country sent reporters and sketch artists to chronicle the events. Strothers reports and sketches were avidly featured by Harpers Weekly. Harpers great rival, Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, followed suit, using the work of Alfred Bergson, a talented artist. Other publications used telegraphed accounts from the scene. The trial and the conviction were followed far and wide. But Strothers description and drawings of the actual hanging were too much for the editors at Harper's and they were unpublished for 90 years.

At eleven oclock escorted by a strong column of soldiers the Prisoner entered the field. He was seated in a furniture wagon on his coffin with his arms tied down above the elbows, leaving his forearms free ... He wore the seedy and dilapidated dress that he had at Harpers Ferry ... As he neared the gibbet his face wore a grim and grisly smirk In this position he stood for five minutes or more while the troops that composed the escort were wheeling into the positions assigned them ... The Sheriff struck the rope a sharp blow with a hatchet, the platform fell with a crash a few convulsive struggles & a human soul had gone to judgment.

That was not the end of Strothers report. According to Andrew Hunter, reporter for the New Orleans Times-Democrat, While the body was hanging, Strother slipped up, raised the cap from his face and took a sketch of him hanging. An enterprising newsman indeed.

Strother, a staunch Union man, served with distinction in the Union army and ended the war a Brevet Brigadier General. After the war he resumed his career at Harpers.

The bell, seized by Union soldiers from Massachusetts after the Civil War, was brought to Marlboro, where it has been ever since, despite periodic demands from Harpers Ferry that it be returned. Should it be? Thats not for me to say.

Originally posted here:

Al Southwick: John Brown and his bell in Marlboro - Worcester Telegram