The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery, by Steven Lubet
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The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery, by Steven Lubet
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On the night of Sunday, October 16, 1859, hoping to bring about the eventual end of slavery, radical abolitionist John Brown launched an armed attack at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Among his troops, there were only five black men, who have largely been treated as little more than "spear carriers" by Brown's many biographers and other historians of the antebellum era. This book brings one such man, John Anthony Copeland, directly to center stage. Copeland played a leading role in the momentous Oberlin slave rescue, and he successfully escorted a fugitive to Canada, making him an ideal recruit for Brown's invasion of Virginia. He fought bravely at Harpers Ferry, only to be captured and charged with murder and treason. With his trademark lively prose and compelling narrative style, Steven Lubet paints a vivid portrait of this young black man who gave his life for freedom.
The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery, by Steven Lubet - Amazon Sales Rank: #457266 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.98" h x .94" w x 5.98" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 282 pages
The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery, by Steven Lubet Review "In this vivid account of John Anthony Copeland and his times, Steven Lubet has recovered from unjust obscurity the story of a young man of deep passion and moral commitment. With both narrative verve and a telling eye for the dramatic, he has also given us an intimate portrait of the competing worlds of slavery and abolitionist activism on the cusp of the Civil War. The 'Colored Hero' of Harpers Ferry is a significant addition to our understanding of the brave but tragic saga of John Brown and his men." Fergus M. Bordewich, author of America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise that Preserved the Union"The 'Colored Hero' of Harpers Ferry is a well-researched and highly readable work of scholarship. Steven Lubet chronicles in fine detail the life and tragic death of a 'colored' participant in John Brown's ill-fated raid on the arsenal at Harpers Ferry. The author brings the raid, its characters, and its aftermath to life in vivid detail, never abandoning the thread that ties the idealistic young John Anthony Copeland to the antebellum movement to abolish slavery." Ron Soodalter, author of Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader, and The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today"In this well-researched and well-written book, Steven Lubet tells the tale of John Anthony Copeland, one of only five black men to join John Brown in his attack on Harpers Ferry. By focusing on one of the men, and on a black man, Lubet has given us a fresh and fascinating perspective on the months just before the Civil War." Walter Stahr, Presidential Fellow, Chapman University"Steven Lubet is a master storyteller. In this book, he tells the story of a little-known well-educated black man, John Anthony Copeland, who joined John Brown at Harpers Ferry. The insurrection is told from the perspective of Copeland, a pious abolitionist who thought he was there to rescue enslaved people and escort them to freedom as he had helped runaways to Canada before ... Copeland was one of only five black men who were recruited to John Brown's cause, though he only knew of Brown's true purpose shortly before the shooting began. From Lubet's careful reading of original material, he is able to piece together a thoroughly engrossing tale. A story to be read and remembered." Lea VanderVelde, Josephine Witte Professor of Law, University of Iowa College of Law
About the Author Steven Lubet is the Edna B. and Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University School of Law and a leading authority on African American resistance to slavery and notable trials in American history. He is the award-winning author of numerous books, including Murder in Tombstone: The Forgotten Trial of Wyatt Earp, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial and John Brown's Spy: The Adventurous Life and Tragic Confession of John E. Cook. Lubet has been an award-winning columnist for the American Lawyer Magazine, a commentator on NPR's Morning Edition, and the author of many op-ed pieces in national newspapers and on Slate.com and Salon.com.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. A Neglected Dimension of Brown/ Harpers Ferry...Gotta Read It By j a haverstick Harper’s Ferry is a beautiful little town at the confluence of the Shenandoah and the Potomac, just south of the Pa. border, maybe 140 miles west of Philly. If you go and if you climb the steep hill to the cemetery (the town climbs the hill like a Mediterranean village) to see the merger of the these euphoniously named rivers, the view is postcard like. The town itself is well preserved, much under the auspices of the park service for historical reasons and the various museum are well kept. There are several very nice eating places where you can have some good sandwiches or bar food, a couple with court yards. It’s not hard to take yourself back to 1861. It is hard, however, not to feel the heavy weight of America’s past. This place is full of ghosts. More real than your fellow visitors, it seems. If you’re in day trip distance, do it.And, then, there’s the moral and spiritual component. Overwhelming. Most folks, and I’d guess most European Americans like me, have the idea of “Old Brown” prominently in their thoughts. In a way, that’s a distraction, for one reason because John Brown’s biography is a separate issue. The situation on the ground and at the time involved a cast of characters. John Copeland has his own story, masterfully related here.Copeland came from a free black family in NC who had moved to Oberlin, Ohio. His mixed parentage and “free” legal status offered him little in the antebellum United States, at least in comparison to the euros. Compared to being whipped, sold, yanked away from his family, etc., maybe the glass was half full. A strength of this book, for me, was its matter-of-fact treatment of the status of free Africans at the time. This wasn’t exactly news to me, but it was factually quite informative. This is the first most interesting part of the book. The author is very good on facts. In that regard Copeland, himself, rightfully saw the glass as half empty. It’s a sad commentary on the rulers (people?) of this country that we have to say a couple centuries later that we’re a long way from the goal and that a lot of euros still blame the victim. But I digress.I have no problem in justifying Brown’s actions, although I’m a Quaker (and an ethics professor). Living in slave society is a mortal affront to everyone in it - and all bets are off when it comes to resistance. If the human living in that society, though, happens to be one of the enslaved group, I really don’t think there are too many restraints on his or her choice of actions to remedy the evil. Some, of course, but the default by natural law is to do what it takes to destroy the institution.We are half way through the 200 pages before Copeland takes center stage in his own right. He lives in Oberlin, as above, an oasis of decency. The culture of this town is impressively drawn. John has not finished school, yet he is a deliberate and literate young man participating in the abolitionist activities around him In short order he has taken a barrel stave to a Buchaninite Fugitive-Slave-Law-enforcing federal marshal. (I’m from Buchanan’s home town, another area of refuge at the time, -also the hometown of Thaddeus Stevens! - Lancaster, Pa.). A little later he joins a group of Euros and Africans who chase down a slave catcher at a train station. Copeland pulls a gun on the slavecatcher! Escorting the rescued escapee to Canada is where he apparently hooks up with Old Brown’s team. Brown by this time has quite a reputation. Brown's saving role in Bloody Kansas is well known. Again we find the Buchanan administration actively abetting the forces of darknss. There, Brown finally brought Southern tactics to the fight against the South.* He is finessing his role in a famous atrocity, however. Brown has also led an expedition to Missouri to actually rescue and lead to Canada a group of 12 slaves, all the while walking around in public taunting the federal and local authorities. Of course on his next strike, to begin an insurrection in the South an establish an interim “government”, constitution and all, by raiding the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, he’d really like the participation of some Africans. But recruitment has been tough in general, especially as some delay by Brown had caused confusion. There is a question whether anybody, Copeland included, knew they were signing up for an invasion or a (lesser) slave rescuing foray. This becomes an issue later in the ensuing trials.The attack on the armory is treated in outline. Copeland is separated from the main body and stationed at the rifle works and is subsequentially captured. From here we launch into the second most interesting part of the book, historically speaking: the trials. Here we see a microcosm of the Satanic evil which rotted the social contract from the outset. First, the euros tried, Brown and the other eoroamericans were, though, of course, going to be hanged no matter what, afforded a semblance of legal procedure. And their tribulations and pronouncements given space in the press. Not so Copeland and the other African defendant. Their defense is an afterthought (though one lawyer’s claim that since Dred Scott affirms an African can’t be a citizen exempts them from the treason charge is an ironic victory!). Additionally their final words to the court, if any, etc., are just not part of our Great Country’s history, being not as newsworthy as their euro counterparts. In perhaps the most gruesome commentary of all, Copeland was buried shallowly on the hanging grounds to shortly be dug up for dissection! His family’s plea to have the body was dismissed, and being African, no one was permitted to come to Virginia to claim the body!The 21st century’s bovine politicians and their bloviating mouth-trumpets have emptied the word “hero” of all meaning. John Copeland is a true American hero in the way honest folk once used the word.(Lubet's specialty, I get from the DJ, is african resistance antebellum. This has inspired me to do some more close reading on the Christiana Riots which took place nearby and so I've ordered an older book, Bloody Dawn**, on that incident where, when slave catchers were sent here to Lancaster, one was killed. Happy to say that that also involved the gentle people, Quakers. And the catchers didn't come back. I struggle to express myself succintly as a liberal white guy. The great part of the book under review is that it gives a detailed account of the actions of a black guy, a perspective maybe a little underplayed.)* I cannot forbear repeating Mark Twain's remark on Southern honor: sneaking up on someone in the deark and shooting them in the back.** I did order and read T. Slaughter's Bloody Dawn, just $5. If there's anyone who wants to deepen her understanding of the role and condition of free blacks, this is another 200 page impressive read on that subject as expressed in the Cristiana riot of 1859. It's an even smoother narrative. Back to back, I'm feeling well informed.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. He describes in great detail the perfidy of slave owners and the evil ... By Jeffry V. Mallow Law professor Steven Lubet has done it again. As in his earlier book about John Brown’s spy John Cook, Lubet illuminates the events leading up to the Harpers Ferry raid, but this time through the biography of one of the black men who fought alongside Brown. John Anthony Copeland was a free black, born in North Carolina the son of free blacks. His family moved north to the abolitionist town of Oberlin, Ohio. This book is as much about Oberlin as about Copeland. That remarkable integrated community served as a haven for free blacks and for runaway slaves, who were protected by Oberlin residents or spirited to Canada. Copeland himself escorted an escaped slave across the border.Copeland was both an anti-slavery revolutionary and a deeply religious man. The latter strongly influenced the former, perhaps was even the dominant influence in his activities, up to and including the Harpers Ferry raid. Lubet paints a detailed picture of Copeland, his surroundings, his family and friends, and his conversion to militancy. As in all of Lubet’s books--and I have read them all--, he combines dramatic storytelling with impeccable scholarship. This is (the phrase sounds oxymoronic!) an erudite page-turner. He describes in detail the perfidy of slave owners and the evil they supported, an evil endorsed by the US Supreme Court in the notorious Dred Scott decision, depriving blacks of citizenship, and the Fugitive Slave Act (the subject of yet another Lubet book), further enabling slave hunters to carry out their mission in both north and south.Like the other captured raiders and Brown himself, Copeland was hanged. At least as awful as the capture was the post mortem treatment of Copeland and another black, Shields Green. In a book replete with descriptions of the horrors endured by blacks, slave and free, I found this chapter the most horrifying. Despite pleas from the families, the decaying bodies were delivered to a local medical school whose students threatened the lawyer sent to retrieve them, essentially driving him out of town.John Brown’s leadership of the raid has been well studied. Not so the lives of his fellow raiders, and especially not of the black men among them. For this, Steven Lubet is owed a debt of gratitude. And not only for this, but for once again giving the lie to the claims of the revisionists and irredentists. The Civil War wasn’t about states’ rights or about economics or about “northern aggression.” It was about slavery.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A Forgotten Hero By Ms. L. This book is very well-written, and really portrays John Copeland, who was my great great uncle!
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The 'Colored Hero' of Harper's Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery, by Steven Lubet
