The Untold Story of Shields Green. Louis A. Decaro, Jr.
Also by Louis A. DeCaro, Jr.
On the Side of My People: A Religious Life of Malcolm X
Malcolm and the Cross: The Nation of Islam, Malcolm X, and Christianity
“Fire from the Midst of You”: A Religious Life of John Brown
John Brown—The Cost of Freedom
Freedom’s Dawn: The Last Days of John Brown in Virginia
John Brown Speaks: Letters and Statements from Charlestown (Editor)
A Shepherd in Harlem: The Life and Times of Ezra N. Williams
The Untold Story of Shields Green
The Life and Death of a Harper’s Ferry Raider
Louis A. DeCaro, Jr.
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
© 2020 by New York University
All rights reserved
References to Internet websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor New York University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: DeCaro, Louis A., 1957– author.
Title: The untold story of Shields Green : the life and death of a Harper's Ferry raider / Louis A. DeCaro, Jr.
Description: New York : New York University Press, [2020] |bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020016525 (print) | LCCN 2020016526 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479802753 (cloth) | ISBN 9781479802807 (ebook) | ISBN 9781479802791 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Green, Shields, 1836?–1859. | Harpers Ferry (W. Va.)—History—John Brown’s Raid, 1859. | African American abolitionists—Biography. | Free African Americans—Biography. | Fugitive slaves—United States—Biography. | African Americans—South Carolina—Charleston—Biography. | Charleston (S.C.)—Biography.
Classification: LCC E451 .D445 2020po (print) | LCC E451 (ebook) |
DDC 326/.8092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016525
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020016526
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. We strive to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the greatest extent possible in publishing our books.
Book designed and typeset by Charles B. Hames
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Also available as an ebook
For my beloved wife, Michele,
in the year of our twentieth wedding anniversary
There has been a systematic attempt to underrate the bravery of the colored men who fought with Brown at Harper’s Ferry. . . . Northern men, always easily impressed when a statement reflects upon black men, saw only old John Brown and seventeen white men.
Weekly Anglo-African, 1860
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
1 Emperor Mysterious: To Find the Man Who Lived
2 Emperor Enlisted
3 Emperor among the “Invisibles”: Maryland, 1859
4 The Raid and the Black Witness
5 Alias Emperor
6 Emperor Seen: Image and Identity
Epilogue: Legacy, Relic, Legend
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Illustrations
Figure 3.1. John Brown
Figure 3.2. Kennedy farm in Maryland
Figure 3.3. Teenage Anne Brown
Figure 4.1. Osborne P. Anderson
Figure 6.1. DeWitt Hitchcock’s sketch of Shields Green in the Charlestown jail with Copeland and Hazlett
Figure 6.2. Alfred Berghaus’s sketch of Shields Green under arrest at Harper’s Ferry with Coppic
Figure 6.3. William S. L. Jewett’s sketch of Shields Green in the Charlestown jail with Copeland and Hazlett
Figure 6.4. David H. Strother’s preliminary study of Shields Green and John Copeland
Figure 6.5. Strother’s sketch of Shields Green in court with Brown and raiders
Figure 6.6. Strother’s sketch of Shields Green riding to execution
Figure 6.7. Strother’s caricatures of fearful and loyal enslaved people
Figure 6.8. Strother’s sketch showing loyal slaves
Figure 6.9. Detail of Hitchcock’s sketch of Shields Green in jail
Figure E.1. Frederick Douglass in later life
Figure E.2. Anne Brown Adams in later life
Preface
A young man named Shields Green, who went down with [Frederick Douglass], staid and joined in the attack.
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 18751
According to the conventional narrative, Shields Green was a young black man who broke the chains of slavery and fled northward in the late 1850s. A widower, he left a young son behind in South Carolina and was smuggled on a ship traveling northward along the Atlantic coast. Upon reaching the North, Green, who liked to call himself Emperor, made his way to Rochester, New York, where he met Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist orator. Through involvement with Douglass, Green eventually came into contact with John Brown, who sought to enlist him for his imminent liberation effort in Virginia. Despite Douglass’s opposition, Green decided to join Brown’s small “army” of little more than twenty men in seizing the town and federal armory at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, on Sunday night, October 16, 1859.
Although the raid initially went well, Brown’s tactical misjudgments, especially his long delay in town, proved his undoing. By late morning the next day, the tide of advantage turned against him, and his men were now being shot down in the streets—in some cases, captured and murdered outright by angry townsmen. As things fell apart, Brown retreated into the armory’s fire engine house with several of his raiders, including his sons Watson and Oliver, as well as some enslaved men and a group of hostage slaveholders.
The narrative continues that Shields Green was yet outside when Brown had taken refuge in the engine house. Admonished to flee by another raider, instead Green chose to go down into Harper’s Ferry to join the “Old Man.” The raider who had urged him to escape,