The Untold Story of Shields Green. Louis A. Decaro, Jr.
reared as a freeman, it is more likely that at least he had some basic schooling, certainly beyond what would have been allowed of an enslaved man. The interviewer J.T. described Green as showing “a good countenance, and a sharp, intelligent look,” concluding that he was “not much inferior to Fred. Douglass in mind or education.”37 The comparison with Frederick Douglass probably was intentional, given that by the time of the interview, it is likely that Green’s association with the famous abolitionist had become known. In contrast, another interviewer was determined to belittle Green, as if to spite that same association. The physician Alban Payne was eager to pronounce Green as showing “no evidence of either education or intelligence.” But the racist forgot himself, afterward mentioning that Green was “said to be finely educated.”38
Of course, even if some Virginians thought that Shields Green was “finely educated,” they were speaking in the context of racist realities, not the norms of white society. More likely, Green’s schooling was incomplete, commensurate with the tenuous existence he had known in Charleston. Just as his economic and political condition reflected the restrictions forced upon free blacks in the Lower South, so perhaps the limitations imposed upon his schooling also reflect his precarious existence in a racist, slavery-based society. One snobbish Virginia clergyman, who had ministered to him in his final days, thus adjudged Green “an uneducated Negro.” Likewise, after his death, a journalist from the Richmond Daily Dispatch repeated another report that called Green illiterate.39 But the notion of Green’s illiteracy may have been based on prejudice, given that he was a dark-skinned man who was not well spoken, and who was presumed to have been a slave.
In her later years, Anne Brown Adams seems to have lacked the kind of empathy for black people demonstrated by her father and mother, and sometimes even conveyed the impression that they owed her a measure of fealty and support.40 Reading over her several reminiscences of the Harper’s Ferry raiders, one can also see that she tended to favor the white men, of whom she could write about passionately and extensively when asked. In fairness to Anne, however, three of the raiders were her brothers, and two of the black raiders (John Copeland and Lewis Leary) did not even join Brown and his men until after she had left her father and returned home in September 1859. In the 1890s, when she was asked to provide reminiscences of the Harper’s Ferry raiders, Anne felt constrained to make her own search for information about Brown’s black raiders by soliciting sources in Ohio.41
Yet even if Anne’s reminiscences of Brown’s black men were as benign as they were brief, her remarks about Shields Green are the least flattering. Indeed, in every reference to him, Anne tended to present Green as having been something of a nuisance while at Brown’s Maryland farmhouse prior to the raid. Based upon her reminiscences, it seems that Emperor was either always in her way or tediously rambling on, to her annoyance. Belittling even his efforts at conversation, she wrote to Franklin Sanborn that Shields Green was “a perfect rattlebrain in talk.”42 In another remembrance from the 1890s, she relayed an incident that took place prior to her departure from Maryland, when Green attempted to make something of a farewell speech. “It was the greatest conglomeration of all the big words in the dictionary, and out, that was ever piled up,” she recalled. According to Anne, even fellow raider Osborne Anderson had jested that “God Almighty could not understand” Green’s speech.43 But if Green was aspiring to use words in the dictionary, maybe he could read one too. In his own reminiscence of the Harper’s Ferry raid, Osborne Anderson made no such jest about Shields Green. Nor did Frederick Douglass, who described him rather as dignified, yet as “a man of few words” whose “speech was singularly broken.”44 Taken together, these descriptions suggest that despite his desire to learn, it is more likely that Shields Green had labored under the deficiencies of an uneven schooling, or may have struggled with a speech impediment or even a learning disability. That he has been portrayed as illiterate in history seems to be a notion partially rooted in the unreliable Pine and Palm article—the same source that gave us the doubtable tale of Esau Brown the runaway slave.
Another hint at Green’s former status may be found in the kinds of livelihoods he sustained after he had fled the South. During an extended stay in Canada, he worked as a waiter. In Rochester, New York, he assumed proprietorship of a clothes cleaning business.45 (Certainly it is quite possible that Green himself wrote the draft for the printer who published his business card.) After his arrest at Harper’s Ferry, one journalist who interviewed Green identified him as a barber by trade, and following his death, another reporter noted that he had been a “journeyman barber.”46 Restaurant service, clothes cleaning, and barbering were among a number of livelihoods typically carried on by free blacks in the North and the South in that era. Berlin notes that in the South there was a variety of “drudgery jobs” that working-class whites either avoided or conceded to free blacks in order to elevate their status. These jobs, derogatorily referred to as “nigger work,” ranged from serving as coachmen and stable hands to food service, tailoring, barbering, and other roles that whites preferred not to undertake for themselves.47 Green seems to have had a varied skill set, which may further suggest his original status as a freeman in Charleston.
Another detail that bears reconsideration is Green’s age at the time of the Harper’s Ferry raid in 1859. Traditionally, it has been presumed that he was a young man in his twenties at the time, especially by Benjamin Quarles, who referred to Green as being twenty-five years old—once more based upon the unreliable reportage in the Pine and Palm.48 Certainly, a few newspaper reports at the time did describe him as a young man in his twenties, although no definitive age was ever established by reporters.49 As a man of dark complexion, Emperor more likely had a youthful appearance. Still, at least one interviewer concluded, “Green is a dark negro about 30 years of age.”50 In this light, estimation of Emperor’s age at the time of the raid cannot rely alone upon random newspaper descriptions.
Another source that has been taken as evidence for Green’s youth is a letter written by John Brown Jr. on August 11, 1859, still fresh from a meeting with Frederick Douglass in Rochester. Writing to John Henrie Kagi, Brown’s trusted agent in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, John updated him on the upcoming meeting between the Old Man and Douglass later that month. “The friend at Rochester will set out to make you a visit in a few days,” he wrote. “He will be accompanied by that ‘other young man,’” referring to Shields Green.51 However, the phrase “other young man” is only a veiled reference to Green as a recruit. As age goes, there is no literal intent in John’s words since, if Green was the “other young man,” then the first “young man” was forty-one-year-old Frederick Douglass. Richard Hinton seems to have missed this in taking these words literally, although John clearly placed them within quotation marks.52 There are yet other reasons for suggesting that Shields Green was older than what has been presumed by historians, including the conclusion of an elusive genealogical researcher.53 Certainly, as observed in chapter 6, the best sketches of Emperor made from life suggest that he was not a twenty-something youth at the time of his death. While it is not yet possible to determine Green’s actual age, it is far more reasonable to assume that he was in his mid-thirties at the time of the Harper’s Ferry raid.
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A survey of contemporary newspaper accounts shows that much of the reporting about Brown and his men after the raid mainly was picked up from major New York papers like the Herald and Tribune, or from newspapers in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., from which reporters were also dispatched to Harper’s Ferry and Charlestown. In some cases, however, newspapers featured other details, a few of which had substance, while others were based upon transcription errors. To no surprise, details of all kinds traveled across the country, North and South, based upon reprinted newspaper reports. For instance, an antislavery editor in Lisbon, Ohio, published a flawed reiteration of a report originally in the Baltimore Sun. In so doing, he mistakenly transformed raider Edwin Coppic’s racial identification (“white”) into an additional raider named “White.” The same report erroneously stated that both Coppic and Green were from Iowa. This line seems to have been picked up by smaller newspapers across the North, suggesting that it was an error first made in a Northern newspaper.54 In another report, Shields Green was associated with the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In this case, however, the error seems to have traveled south. While it is difficult to be certain as to the origin of this mistake, an early report stating that