The “Colored Hero” of Harper’s Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery by Steven Lubet

Abstract

Reviewed by: The “Colored Hero” of Harper’s Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery by Steven Lubet Vanessa Holden The “Colored Hero” of Harper’s Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery. By Steven Lubet. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Pp. xii, 272. $27.99, ISBN 978-1-107-07602-0.) Most historians know well the events at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in the fall of 1859. John Brown, with his charismatic persona, radical progeny, and bold plan to eradicate slavery, continues to garner both scholarly and popular attention. Of course, Brown did not act alone. While the men, white and black, who joined with him are often listed in accounts of the events, Brown’s personality, politics, and religiosity almost always remain at the center of the narrative of the raid that failed at Harpers Ferry. Steven Lubet’s new work, The “Colored Hero” of Harper’s Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery, provides readers with an in-depth examination of the life of one of Brown’s African American co-conspirators, John Anthony Copeland. As the book’s final chapter notes, Copeland remained important to the community of African Americans he left behind after his execution. But to most, Copeland’s life, abolitionism, and contribution to the raid at Harpers Ferry remain obscure. Over the course of twenty-five concise chapters, Lubet explores what can be known from extant sources of Copeland’s biography, from his early childhood through his time with John Brown, ending with detailed coverage of his trial and execution. The use of short chapters makes [End Page 930] the book very readable and teachable. Lubet chronicles the life of a free black family, the Copelands, within the context of the rapidly forming free black community of Oberlin, Ohio, over the course of the antebellum period. The Copelands migrated out of the South in search of better prospects. Lubet’s description of antebellum Oberlin presents a community where radical whites grappled with slavery as a moral evil and pervasive racism. Lubet’s characterization of Oberlin honestly accounts for the ways that both the town and Oberlin College could not escape the racism of the day. From boyhood Copeland experienced the dangers of residing in proximity to slave country, the tenuous nature of freedom, and racism. He knew well the dangers of living so near to a slave state and aided in thwarting slave catchers in Oberlin during the Oberlin slave rescue. Copeland’s life story and the story of Oberlin, Ohio, present the reader with an alternate radical biography to attach to the raid at Harpers Ferry, one grounded in a particular experience with race and racism that John Brown never could have had. Copeland’s experience of freedom, in all of its late antebellum contradictions, provides a valuable and important contribution to the narrative of the raid at Harpers Ferry and the trials and executions that followed. The raid itself takes up much less space in the book than does Copeland’s life and experience with the antislavery movement. This focus makes the book of interest to anyone interested in the nuances and trials of free black northern life. The book also contributes to the literature concerned with slave resistance and rebellion. The book presents a very personal war against slavery fought out in daily practice and personal experience. Making one of the most famous events in American history into one of many events in an often glossed over historical figure’s life is no small achievement. Through Copeland’s life, this book highlights how free people of color, fugitives, and their white allies braved considerable violence and were willing to enact violence—be they in Oberlin shuttling runaways to freedom or at Harpers Ferry. And that is an important narrative. Vanessa Holden Michigan State University Copyright © 2016 The Southern Historical Association