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Boston: Printed for the Author, 1861. 12mo (7.25” x 4.5”), 72 pp. CONDITION: Lacking wrappers, very light soiling to first and last pages, old paper strip reinforcement at spine, else very good.

The only insider account of the raid on Harpers Ferry, written and self-published by the only surviving Black member of John Brown’s raiding party.

Osborne P. Anderson (1830–1872) was born free in West Fallow Field, Pennsylvania, and attended Oberlin College with another participant in the raid, John Anthony Copeland, Jr. (1836–1859). Anderson moved to Ontario in the early 1850s and worked for the Provincial Freeman, run by Mary Ann Shadd Cary, the first Black woman to publish a newspaper in North America. He met John Brown in 1858 while participating in Brown’s Constitutional Convention in Chatham (for a future free state in the Appalachian Mountains), and became the only participant in the convention to join the raid. According to one account written some sixty years after the fact, “Anderson might not have been there at all had it not been for the drawing of lots among the principals of the Provincial Freeman newspapers, which felt obliged to send at least one recruit” (Meyer, 76). In 1864, Anderson enlisted in the Union Army and worked as a recruitment officer in Arkansas and Indiana.

The narrative offered here opens by presenting John Brown as “another Moses,” situating the “Idea underlying the outbreak at Harper’s Ferry” in the Book of Exodus—“that inexorable, ‘Thus saith the Lord : Let my people go!’” After briefly summarizing previous insurrections (including Nat Turner’s), it details John Brown’s own preparations, from the 1858 Chatham convention and the necessity of changing plans following the betrayal of Hugh “Judas” Forbes, to “Life at Kennedy Farm” as the party readied itself for action and the eleven orders Brown gave his men before setting out for Harper’s Ferry. The heart of the account covers the raid itself, beginning with the quiet taking of the town and the capture of several slave owners (“Col. Washington opened his room door, and begged us not to kill him. Capt. Stevens replied, ‘You are our prisoner…’”) and the joyful spread of their purpose among the Black and enslaved population (“…the very thing she had longed for, prayed for, and dreamed about, time and again…”) and culminating in their attack and besiegement in the armory by local militia—a consequence that, according to Anderson, could have been avoided had Brown not used valuable time “to parley with the prisoners.” Anderson repeatedly corrects prevailing narratives of the time, and underscores the weaknesses of slavery exposed by the raid:

…Southern chivalry may hide its brazen head, for their boasted bravery was well tested that day, and in no way to their advantage. It is remarkable, that except that one foolhardy colored man was reported buried, no other funeral is mentioned, although the Mayor and other citizens are known to have fallen. Had they reported the true number, their disgrace would have been more apparent; so they wisely (?) concluded to be silent.

The fight at Harper’s Ferry also disproved the current idea that slaveholders will lay down their lives for their property. Col. Washington, the representative of the old hero, stood ‘blubbering’ like a great calf at supposed danger…

The account then relates Anderson’s harrowing escape from Virginia with fellow African American Albert Hazlett, and Hazlett’s ultimate inability to go on:

our only food was corn roasted in the ear, often difficult to get without risk, and seldom eaten but at long intervals…we became nearly famished, and…Poor Hazlett could not bear the privations as I could; he was less inured to physical exertion, and was of rather slight form, though inclined to be tall. With his feet blistered and sore, he held out as long as he could, but at last gave out, completely broken down, ten miles below Chambersburg. He declared it was impossible for him to go further, and begged me to go on, as we should be more in danger if seen together in the vicinity of the towns. He said after resting that night, he would throw away his rifle, and go to Chambersburg in the stage next morning, we agreed to meet again. The poor young man’s face was wet with tears when we parted. I was loth to leave him…

Following his account of Hazlett’s capture and execution and his own return to Canada, Anderson concludes the narrative with his interpretation of the events as a whole, and of African American participation in particular:

The truth of the Harper’s Ferry ‘raid,’ as it has been called, in regard to the part taken by the slaves, and the aid given by colored men generally, demonstrates clearly: First, that the conduct of the slaves is a strong guarantee of the weakness of the institution, should a favorable opportunity occur; and, secondly, that the colored people, as a body, were well represented by numbers, both in the fight, and in the number who suffered martyrdom afterward…That hundreds of slaves were ready, and would have joined in the work, had Captain Brown’s sympathies not been aroused in favor of the families of his prisoners, and that a very different result would have been seen, in consequence, there is no question…John Brown did not only capture and hold Harpers Ferry for twenty hours, but he held the South. 

Five songs for John Brown, including a ballad and a dirge, close the volume.

While widely held in institutions, rare in the trade, with no examples recorded at auction since the 1976.

A Black abolitionist’s eyewitness account of one of the most important flashpoints leading up to the Civil War.

REFERENCES: Afro-Americana 576; Dumond, A Bibliography of Antislavery, p. 16; Blockson 4285, for ca. 1974 edition; “Osborne P. Anderson (1830–1872)” at BlackPast online; Meyer, Eugene L. Five for Freedom : The African American Soldiers in John Brown’s Army (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2018). 

Item #9598

Price: $12,500.00