Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/28

 leading to the martyrdom of John Brown and most of his youthful followers, than any other State. It was in Iowa that he had established his chain of stations on the “Underground Railroad,” leading from the Missouri slave plantations to freedom. It was at Springdale that his men had been drilled for the desperate assault upon slavery. Of the twenty-sic volunteers who enlisted in this “forlorn hope,” Edwin Coppoc, Barclay Coppoc, Steward Taylor, Jeremiah G. Anderson, George B. Gill and Charles W. Moffat were Iowa men. It was in Iowa that the rifles and revolvers were collected and secreted for arming the volunteers who were expected to join the expedition at Harper’s Ferry. It was from West Liberty, Iowa, that they were shipped as “carpenters’ tools,” by John H. Painter to a fictitious consignee near Harper’s Ferry. It was from Iowa that the mysterious letter of warning was written to the Secretary of War two months before the attack. It was an Iowa Governor who saved from the Virginia gallows the Iowa boy who escaped capture and slaughter in the bloody conflict.

When the true story of the tragic affair came it was learned that twenty men captured Harper’s Ferry and seventeen of them held it for two days and three nights against Virginia citizens and militia, from one to two thousand strong. One by one the members of the heroic little band fell. Not a man flinched. When the third night came, John Brown, Edwin Coppoc, Shields Green, Jeremiah G. Anderson, Watson Brown and Dauphin A. Thompson were the only survivors cooped in the engine house. Ten had been killed and several more severely wounded; still Brown sternly refused to surrender. It required a reinforcement of one hundred United States Marines, commanded by Robert E. Lee, and an assault led by J. E. B. Stuart, to enable the army to capture or slay the six unyielding emancipators. Of the Iowa members of the little army, Steward Taylor was killed at the engine house; Jeremiah G. Anderson was pierced through by