Benjamin F. Gue

“ Permit me to say in conclusion that one of the most important duties of the official position I hold is to see that no citizen of Iowa is carried beyond her border and subjected to the ignominy of imprisonment and the perils of trial for crimes in another State otherwise than by due process of law. ”

“ It is a high prerogative of official power in any case to seize a citizen of the State and send him upon an ex-parte statement without any preliminary examination, and without confronting him with a single witness, to a distant State for trial. It is a prerogative so high that the law tolerates its exercise only on certain fixed conditions, and I shall not exercise that power to the peril of any citizen of Iowa upon demand of the State of Virginia, or any other State, unless these conditions are complied with. ”

“ We knew there was a drilled band of seventy-five determined young men in and about Springdale who were well armed and had declared that Barclay Coppoc should never be surrendered to the Virginia Governor, who had a few weeks before hung John Brown, Edwin Coppoc, John E. Cook, shields Green and John Copeland. If our messenger could reach Springdale before Mr. Camp could get to Iowa City and procure a posse to make the arrest, a bloody conflict would be prevented and Coppoc would be able to reach a place of safety. ”

“ I have discovered the existence of a secret organization having for its object the liberation of the slaves at the South by a general insurrection. The leader of the movement is “Old John Brown,” late of Kansas. He has been in Canada during the winter drilling the negroes there, and they are only Canada during the winter drilling the negroes there, and they are only waiting his word to start for the South to assist the slaves. They have one of their leading men (a white man) in an armory in Maryland—where it is situated I have not been able to learn. ”

“ In looking back upon the Kansas War for free soil, the assault upon slavery at Harper’s Ferry, which precipitated the great Civil War a few years later, the sublime figure of John Brown, the most conspicuous leader in the armed conflicts, stands out preëminent. ”

“ Of the men who were most conspicuous on the other side of John Brown’s war, Lee, Stuart, Floyd and Wise attained high rank in the war which followed for the perpetuation of human slavery, while Mason, the author of the infamous Fugitive Slave Law, was the Confederate Ambassador to England; Jefferson Davis, the confederate President; Letcher, the confederate Governor. J. Wilkes Booth, one of Virginia’s militia officers, who escorted John Brown and Edwin Coppoc to the gallows, closed his career by assassinating the great emancipator. ”

“ While the great mass of our Northern people utterly condemn the act of John Brown, they feel and express admiration and sympathy for the disinterestedness of purpose by which they believe he was governed and for the unflinching courage and calm cheerfulness with which he met the consequences of his failure.” The Governor attempted a solution of the troublesome negro problem and threatened dangers from American slavery by advocating a system of colonization of the negro population in some South American country. ”

“ As insignificant as was the affair when viewed as a battle, the impression that it has made upon impartial, thinking people throughout the civilized world has hardly been surpassed by any great conflict of modern times. ”

“ Coppoc and Maxson took the night train on the Northwestern road for Chicago, where they staid several days with a trusted family of colored friends. They went on to Canada and remained until the Virginia officer left for his home. Learning that his late companions, Owen Brown and F. J. Merriam, were staying in Ashtabula County, Ohio, Barclay and his friend Maxson joined them and the little party staid several weeks at the town of Dorset. They were always well armed and ready to defend themselves day or night. ”

“ The young man who so narrowly escaped death the second time, was not to be intimidated by dangers. Barclay Coppoc never ceased his war upon slavery. Early in the summer of 1860 he went to Kansas and aided some Missouri slaves to freedom. When the Civil War began, he hastened to join the Union army and was commissioned Lieutenant in the Fourth Kansas Volunteers, commanded by the gallant Colonel Montgomery of Kansas War Fame. Lieutenant Coppoc was sent to his old home in Iowa to secure recruits. ”

“ There were many capitalists in the State, however, who wished a more liberal law under which they could establish banks. They came before the Eighth General Assembly and managed to convince a majority of its members that the Free Banking Law was too rigid and was keeping capital out of the State, which, under a more liberal law, would be sent here to establish banks and provide the people with an abundance of currency. ”

“ Camp reached Iowa City, he heard of the armed guard of Coppoc’s friends at Springdale, and remembering that John Brown, with seventeen young men of the same stamp, had held Harper’s Ferry two days and three nights against a thousand armed Virginians, he had no consuming desire to lead an officer’s squad against the Sharpe’s rifles of Coppoc’s defenders. He journeyed on to Muscatine to await legal requisition papers. ”

“ As soon as everything is ready those of their number who are in small companies to their rendezvous, which is in the mountains of Virginia. They will pass down through Pennsylvania and Maryland, and enter Virginia at Harper’s Ferry. ”

“ To their surprise and chagrin, the fact was developed that John B. Floyd, Secretary of War and a Virginian, had been informed in the August previous that such an invasion was being organized by John Brown and that he took no steps to prevent it. A letter had been mailed to a member of this committee by some unknown person purporting to have been written to Secretary Floyd from Cincinnati, Ohio, august 20th, 1859, nearly two months before the attack upon Harper’s Ferry. ”

“ A short time before the execution of the undaunted leader and his surviving comrades, this letter of warning came to light and was published in the principal papers of the country, as related by Secretary Floyd in his testimony before the Senate committee. Whether the other letter ever reached him is unknown. But in the course of his evidence he states that he frequently received anonymous letters and gave no attention to them, among which he mentions one from Philadelphia.
Almost half a century has passed away since the tragedy at Harper’s Ferry. ”

“ It was the 10th day of February before Governor Letcher’s legal requisition reached Des Moines. Then Governor Kirkwood was compelled to issue his warrant The original papers in this case, with a copy of Virginia's indictment of Barclay Coppoc, may be seen in the Historical Department of Iowa. for the arrest—but Coppoc was not to be found. His friends promptly received news of the last requisition. That night, with his stanch friend, Thaddeus Maxson, Barclay was conveyed in a sleigh to Mechanicsville, accompanied by a well armed guard. ”

“ I do not know but that I should have paid attention to this, notwithstanding it was anonymous, as the writer seemed to be particular in the details; but I knew there was no armory in Maryland, and supposed he had gone into details for the purpose of exciting alarm of the Secretary of War and have a parade. ”

“ A large number were killed and wounded. Lieutenant Coppoc’s body was taken to Leavenworth and buried in Pilot Knob Cemetery. On a soldier’s monument erected at Tipton, near his old home, by the patriotic people of Cedar County, to the memory of its citizen soldiers who gave their lives for their country in the Rebellion, is inscribed the name of Barclay Coppoc.
The Maxson house near Springdale is still standing. Carefully preserved on the wall are the names of John Brown’s men who spent the winter of 1858 there drilling for the Harper’s Ferry campaign. ”

“ A large part of Governor Kirkwood’s inaugural address, delivered to the Legislature on the 11th of January, was given to the consideration of issues involved in the Kansas and Nebraska struggle over slavery and John Brown’s raid in Virginia. ”