After they had eaten their last meal together, Capt. John Brown commanded, “Men, get on your arms. We will proceed to the Ferry.” It was now 8 p.m. on Oct. 16, 1859.

It was a damp, misty night when the abolitionist Brown, who had earlier freed slaves in what became known as “Bleeding Kansas,” climbed onto the horse-drawn wagon. He was preceded  by two men on foot with rifles flung over their shoulders, and there were 16 more behind him.

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Osborne Perry Anderson would live to publish the only insider account of the event that, most historians agree, was a catalyst to the catastrophic Civil War that followed over the country’s original sin of slavery.

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In all, there were 19, including Brown. It was barely a platoon, much less an army. But their course was set, their destiny determined. Warmed in woolen shawls, they walked in double file five miles down a dark country road, silently, “as solemnly as [in] a funeral procession,” one of the men, Osborne Perry Anderson wrote. For that, in fact, is exactly what it was.

Anderson was one of five African Americans in John Brown’s revolutionary band that went to Harper’s Ferry that fateful night and the sole survivor. Their plan was to seize the town’s federal arsenal and rifle works, hold hostages, and attempt to incite a slave insurrection that would topple the hated institution of chattel slavery in the United States. 

Anderson would live to publish the only insider account of the event that, most historians agree, was a catalyst to the catastrophic Civil War that followed over the country’s original sin of slavery.

Located at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, Harpers Ferry is 60 miles upriver from Washington. It was easily attacked and occupied but not easily held. After the raid’s initial success, local and state militia arrived, and Brown and his men retreated to the arsenal fire engine house, where they barricaded themselves.

Federal forces were soon dispatched. Ninety marines under the command of Col. Robert E. Lee and Lt. J.E.B. Stuart—the future leaders of the Confederate Army, soon arrived. On the morning of Oct. 18, Lee sent Stuart to the engine house demanding Brown’s unconditional surrender. Brown refused. With 2,000 spectators, the marines rammed their way into the building.

Within three minutes, the 36-hour insurrection was over.
Those still alive were taken into custody. Within two months, they were tried, convicted and hanged. Brown, their martyred leader, was executed on Dec. 2, 1859. Two of the Black raiders—John Anthony Copeland and Shields Green—were executed on Dec. 16, 1859. Two others—Dangerfield Newby and Lewis Leary—died at the Ferry.

Newby, a free man of color from Ohio, the son of a white man and a Black woman, was the first to go. He was fatally shot in the neck, then dismembered by angry townspeople and left for the hogs. He had joined with Brown to liberate Harriet, his enslaved wife, and their children. She had written him three desperate letters. He was, she wrote, her “one bright hope.”

Today, there is no monument at Harpers Ferry today to John Brown’s raiders, and none that singles out the African American soldiers in John Brown’s Army.

A small bronze plaque, easily overlooked, is affixed to a brick wall on Public Way, a narrow path off High Street. Half hidden behind a bush, it is dedicated to “a group of men led by John Brown who, at Harpers Ferry on Oct. 17, 1859, struck a blow against slavery.” Erected on August 19, 2001, by the Jefferson County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, it lists those killed, executed, and escaped, with an asterisk next to each of the five Black raiders.

There is, however, a state highway plaque memorializing Dangerfield and Harriet Newby. It was erected in northwestern Culpeper County, Virginia, in 2022, near where Dangerfield was born and raised. They were nominated by Fairfax County (Virginia)fourth graders inspired by their story told in "Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown’s Army."

Cannonville, Utah, is three time zones and 2,170 miles from Harpers Ferry, where Dangerfield Newby died trying to liberate his enslaved wife and children. But for Ashton Robinson, the distance in time and space is not so great. Nearly 170 years after Newby’s death, his spirit and his story live on in Robinson, a descendant who spent decades seeking to liberate himself by searching for and reconnecting to his hidden roots. It has been a surprising, emotional, powerful, and often painful journey for him.

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The bigger picture can be found in the lives of the five black raiders and their descendants. This is Ashton Robinson’s story—and-our story.

Robinson, born in 1950, is a modest man of medium height and build with Caucasian features and copper skin tone.

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Inevitably, the Harpers Ferry raid is positioned at the top of the narrative arc, and John Brown’s eloquence and execution are rightly portrayed as the catalytic events that further polarized the nation and led to the Civil War. The bigger picture can be found in the lives of the five black raiders and their descendants. This is Astern Robinson’s story—and-our story.

Robinson, born in 1950, is a modest man of medium height and build with Caucasian features and copper skin tone. His parents, both fair-skinned, grew up Black in Washington, DC, married, passed for white and moved to Connecticut, where Ashton grew up, unaware of his legacy.

For some, the past is best forgotten and relegated to the dustbin of history. Yet the legacy of slavery of America’s “peculiar institution:” and its “original sin,” of Dangerfield Newby and the four other African Americans with John Brown at Harpers Ferry lives on in remote Cannonville, Utah, in the person of Ashton M. Robinson III. It is our legacy as well.  

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From Our Archives
Happy 210th Birthday, 'Mammy' Pleasant'

Some accounts indicate that Mary Ellen "Mammy" Pleasant gave patriot John Brown at least $30,000 with plans to discreetly provide much more after the first attack. It should be noted that that $30,000 in 1859 equals a whopping $1.14 million in 2024.