Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [50]
“I believe it’s because we’ve spent our money and not ourselves. I believe it’s because we’ve served a cause and not the needs of the oppressed. Those needs include the need for fellowship, for friendship, for love.” He gripped the pulpit and leaned forward, staring fearlessly at his disgruntled congregation. “If we want the light of Christ to shine in our darkness, then we must remember one thing: Our Negro brothers and sisters are not a cause. They are people!”
The next day at breakfast, Uncle Philip opened his newspaper and read aloud to us the shocking events that had occurred the day before, on that beautiful autumn Sunday, October 16, 1859. “ ‘The following dispatch has been received from Frederick, Maryland, but as it seems very improbable, it should be received with great caution until confirmed. . . . An insurrection has broken out at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia. A band of armed abolitionists have full possession of the U.S. Arsenal. . . . The band is composed of about 250 whites, followed by a band of Negroes who are fighting with them. . . . The telegraph wires have been cut. . . . It is reported that there has been a general stampede of Negroes from Maryland. . . . Many wild rumors are afloat, but we have nothing authentic at this time. . . .’ ”
A chill went through me. My cousin Jonathan and the other plantation owners had always feared another slave insurrection like Nat Turner’s. But this time white abolitionists had led it. And now they had an arsenal full of weapons.
“Did you say Virginia, Daddy?” Julia asked.
“Yes. Harper’s Ferry, Virginia.”
She turned to me. “Is that close to where you used to live in Richmond?”
“I don’t know where it is,” I replied. My heart had begun to race as I did the arithmetic; my uncle and the overseer were the only white men left to defend the isolated plantation against more than fifty slaves.
The next day, the news was only slightly more reassuring. It wasn’t a widespread rebellion as people had feared, but a small band of five Negroes and thirteen white men, led by a fanatical abolitionist named John Brown. They had seized the federal armory, the arsenal, and the engine house in Harper’s Ferry, taking several hostages. The first man to be killed by Brown and his followers had been a free Negro; the first rebel to die had also been a Negro, a former slave who’d hoped to win freedom for his wife and children.
By Tuesday morning the insurrection was over. Ninety U.S. Marines, under the command of Colonel Robert E. Lee of Virginia, arrested Brown and the others and turned them over to the Virginia authorities to stand trial. I breathed a little easier knowing that all those weapons had been returned to the arsenal. But what continued to make me uneasy was the way the abolitionists praised John Brown for his courage and zeal. One newspaper called the incident “a great day in our history, a new revolution.” Brown himself was called “an angel of light.” I recalled what Rev. Greene had once told me about the abolition movement’s nonviolent principles, and I wondered what he had to say about these unsettling events. I never had a chance to ask him.
I came home from an afternoon tea on Friday to find my father waiting in the parlor for me. He had arrived in Philadelphia unannounced. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw him.
“Daddy? What are you doing here?”
“I’ve come to bring you home, Caroline.” He opened his arms to me for a rare embrace, then rested his cheek against my hair. “I’ve missed you, Sugar. Two years is a long time.”
“I’ve missed you, too, Daddy.” I realized that it was true. I’d especially missed the sound of his voice, his gentle drawl. He looked so much better than he had when I’d left home, even though he’d lost weight and his hair had turned steely gray. But his gentle dignity and handsome face were unchanged.