The soldier drew his sword and lunged at John Brown, but the tip hit the metal of Brown’s belt buckle, shattering the weapon’s blade.
Brown had come to Harpers’ Ferry two days earlier intending to seize the lightly guarded federal weapons armory and use the stockpiles to mount a slave insurrection in the hills on the Virginia and West Virginia border.
But now, the morning of Oct. 18, 1859, two days after Brown and 19 abolitionists had infiltrated the settlement, federal troops under the command of Gen. Robert E. Lee stormed the area. Brown was fighting for his life in the fire station of the small peninsula town. Carnage was in the air; ten of Brown’s men lay dead or mortally wounded alongside one U.S. Marine.
Though Brown, by a stroke of luck, was not stabbed to death during the fighting, within hours after daylight he had been captured along with his remaining fighters. Several months later, Brown was hanged in public, solidifying his role as martyr of the abolitionist cause.
The whole ordeal raises the question: how did Brown, a former wool salesman, expect to take control of a U.S. Armory with fewer than 20 men against the ranks of the U.S. Army?
The Sword of the Spirit, a one-act play based on the letters of Brown and his wife Mary that went up in Wilder Main last weekend, attempted to answer that very question by examining the abolitionist’s motives and life.
A two-person show, The Sword of the Spirit, was essentially a series of monologues in which Brown and his wife read letters they had received from one another and commented on their significance. Greg Artzner played Brown while Mary was personated by Leonino. The duo, which hails from Virginia, has performed numerous times at Harpers’ Ferry, which is now preserved as a national park.
In every case, the letters served to portray important moments in Brown’s life. They showed his increasing agitation with slavery, leading to his bold decision to storm the armory in Harpers’ Ferry and his time in prison, the source of his lasting fame.
When Brown wrote from Kansas that during the fighting between pro-slave settlers and abolitionists, one of their sons, Frederick, had been killed, Mary was understandably upset. Later, when she told him that it would be impossible for her to join him while he was plotting the Harpers’ Ferry raid, he was desperate and begged her to come. When he suggested she not visit him in prison before his execution, Mary lamented to such a degree that he changed his mind.
“It seems the greatest sacrifice I could ever make is to hang by the neck for a few seconds,” Brown’s character observed in the play, recounting a remark Brown made to a reporter 40 days after his imprisonment.
The scenery for the play was quite simple. In a split stage, Brown sat with his feet shackled in the prison cell on the left, while his wife sat at home on the right, knitting and tending to laundry.
The play progressed from Brown’s early years as a failed businessman to his first slave insurrection plans — spoiled by a government informer — to the time he spent in Kansas when two of his sons were killed trying to prevent the spread of slavery. It culminates in the raid of Harpers’ Ferry, planned at a nearby farm leased under the name “Smith” and carried out the evening of Oct. 16, 1859.
In the end, this sparsely-attended play proved a valuable contribution to the celebration of Black History Month, though it suffered from a lack of publicity and the larger Black Musicians’ Guild Concert was scheduled at the same time.
Mary ended up visiting Brown before his hanging. On the appointed day, Brown was not allowed to give final remarks. As a religious man, he gave a note to the officer as he left his cell for the final time. Immortalized, it read: “He has taken the sword from me for a time, but He has given me the sword of the spirit.”