Five for Freedom: The African American Soldiers in John Brown's Army

by Eugene L. Meyer

Late on the evening of October 16, 1859, John Brown and his band of 18 raiders descended on Harpers Ferry at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. In an ill-fated attempt to incite a slave insurrection, they seized the federal arsenal, took hostages and retreated to a fire engine house where they barricaded themselves until a contingent of US Marines battered their way in on October 18.

The raiders were routed, and several were captured. Soon after, they were tried, convicted and hanged. Among Brown’s raiders were five African Americans whose lives and deaths have long been overshadowed by their martyred leader and, even today, are little remembered. Two—John Copeland and Shields Green—were executed. Two others—Dangerfield Newby and Lewis Leary—died at the scene. Newby, the first to go, was shot in the neck, then dismembered by townspeople and left for the hogs. He was trying to liberate his enslaved wife and children.

Of the five, only Osborne Perry Anderson escaped and lived to publish the lone 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.

Five for Freedom is the story of these five brave men, the circumstances in which they were born and how they came together at this time and place, grew to manhood and died. Their lives and deaths affected future generations, not just of their descendants, but of us all. It is a story that continues to resonate in the present.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Civil War, American History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2018

Reviews

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

While John Brown is well known to history following the ill-fated attempt at Harpers Ferry. Five of the soldiers in his contingent were African Americans. Four of them (Dangerfield Newby, Lewis Leary, John Copeland and Shields Green) died during or soon after the insurrection, and one (Osborne Perry Anderson) lived to publish an account of what took place. Unfortunately, these five men have mostly been forgotten from the historical records and even Osborne Perry Anderson with his insider account was ignored.

"Five for Freedom" provides an excellent account bringing to light the lives of these brave men. The author was even able to meet with some of the descendants of the five who mostly remember the sacrifices that their ancestors.

Overall this is a well-presented book and recommended reading.

[Rick Hollis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I lived near Harper's Ferry for a good part of my life. I can see the shape of the mountains where the Potomac and the Shenandoah cut through, when I close my eyes. I have even read good bit about the Civil War and the events leading up to.

The fact that there were 5 free African American men who accompanied Brown on his raid.
It will not give anything away to mention that 2 died during the raid, 2 were hung, and one escaped.

The second half of this book follows these men's families and the history of the raid up until the present time. This part drags.

There was another African American man, an employee of the railroad, who was the first person killed during the raid. The South considered him a hero.

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lewis Leary, Osborne Anderson, Shields Green, John Copeland, Dangerfield Newby.
While even those with a passing interest in American history may be familiar with John Brown, the five aforementioned men played a key role in the raid that Brown led and eventually led to the start of the American Civil War. What Eugene Meyer does in his book “Five For Freedom” is restore these men to their rightful place in history by examining who they were, their motivations for joining Brown, and their courage to fight for the cause of freedom.
This however is no easy task. As with most books that try to reclaim the histories of those who have fallen into obscurity, details of their lives is often sparse or worse inaccurate. Considering the circumstances, Meyer does a wonderful job of bringing these men back to life with the little he has to work with.
Being a wonderful writer helps as well as Meyer vividly reconstructs the events leading up to and following the raid on Harper’s Ferry and the machinations of Brown and his ragtag group of raiders.
While much can and has been written about the larger than life John Brown, there is sadly probably not enough book length material to focus on the five Black men who accompanied him.
How does one top Brown who has has stories like this attributed to him:

The raid had been long planned and long in preparation, but Brown had delayed it for more than a year after Chatham. The postponement stemmed from concern that an insider, a British-born soldier of fortune named Hugh Forbes, had divulged, and criticized as impractical, his plans to several antislavery politicians and donors. This, in turn, discouraged the donors. To reassure them, Brown needed to demonstrate his ability to act decisively and with military precision on behalf of the abolitionist cause. Thus, he traveled to Kansas and Missouri, where during Christmas week in
1858 he and twenty of his men freed eleven slaves at three farms, killing one of the owners and taking horses, mules, oxen, bedding, and two old Conestoga wagons. Over the next two months, he took those he freed across Iowa, then by train to Chicago and Detroit, where, amid much publicity, they crossed over into Canada.
The donations resumed.

Meyer therefore chooses to take the story in several directions following the deaths of our protagonists.
First he examines how the cult of the Lost Cause unexpectedly continued to excoriate Brown and his men well into the 20th century by arguing that most slaves were happier being home with their masters who they were by and large loyal to. The good Negro as it were. In a bizarre twist this was personified by their embrace of a black railway man, Haywood Shepherd.
Shepherd was the first casualty of Brown’s raid, an innocent bystander shot by a white member of Brown’s party, when Shepherd tried to flee.
White Southerners claimed Shepherd died defending the White man against Brown’s abolitionists, going so far to even claim that Shepherd was a slave, and building statues to him.
A bizarre claim to be sure considering that Shepherd was by all public records available a free man who had never been a slave and in fact had been quite wealthy and successful. The South’s embrace of Shepherd of course precluded any mention of the Black men who joined John Brown.
Meyer goes deeper into Southern attitudes about the raid even in the present day and is quite fascinating reading.
Where Meyer lost me a bit though is in his extremely detailed breakdown of the five mens descendants.
Perhaps it is just me but I had very little interest in where the great great granddaughter of Lewis Leary was living in the 1960’s, what she was employed as, or who she was married to. To do this deep dive up to the present day for all five men reads more like a genealogical report rather than anything relevant to the actions of these men. It’s boring in the extreme. It felt as if Meyer was so excited to find this information that he couldn’t bear to leave it out of the book despite its lack of relevance to the topic. The last chapter about a man with distant ties to Dangerfield Newby living in present day Utah. More accurately its about his house, his solar panels, his kids schools. Really there’s nothing about Dangerfield Newby here, just about some random guy in Utah who’s pretty boring.
That aside, I respect Meyer for trying to raise awareness about the courage of these five men. Their stories deserve to be told.

[Lois · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but slow and written with an agenda or poorly researched.
Hard to tell which.
The Five men covered in this book deserved much better.

[Michael C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.0

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Half way through audiobook chapter 10 he says that “…in May 1861, the 1st LA Native Guard formed in New Orleans mostly of free persons of color to fight for the Confederacy.” This immediately got my History PhD “bullshit” detector tingling, as the myth of black Confederate soldiers is 100% false. I got a hard copy of the book so I could check his source on this: there was none, see below. He goes on to say that “It disbanded in April 1862 after the state legislature decreed that: ‘only free white males capable of bearing arms’ could belong. In September, some members joined the Union Army under the same name. It later became the 73rd Infantry of the U.S. Colored Troops….”

I got hold of a copy of the printed book and it’s chapter 9, page 149. There is a footnote that provides an original source for the order saying the troops would be white men only. There is not a single reference for there ever being any free black volunteers for a Confederate regiment. This makes my blood boil, that an author otherwise trying to highlight black history in a fair manner, should perpetuate the canard that there were ever black people eager to fight for the Confederacy. This myth is a modern lie so that the Confederate apologists and sympathizers can feel less bad about themselves and the tortures of slavery, by claiming there were black people who willingly fought to perpetuate enslavement. I had to dock a star from my review for this disgusting falsehood.

The author is a journalist who loves history. Mostly he did a good job of playing historian, but occasionally his journalistic roots shown through. There are a few extra passages in which he talks about his own travels to the historical sites, telling us such unnecessary details as whether there is a “children at play” sign posted at the entrance to a neighborhood. He also loves to give a figure for how much a historical amount would be in modern dollars at nearly every mention of a historical monetary sum. The online calculators that give an approximate modern figure for historical money amounts do not accurately portray what money was worth in the nineteenth century, nor how much further your money went in those days (and how low annual incomes were). Just adding inflation alone as these calculators generally do, does not accurately allow a modern person to understand the monetary value of a historical sum. Basically, money was much harder to come by and went much further historically than the “modern equivalent” today, and I wish he had explained that (but this is an example of the difference between a trained historian and a very good amateur.) So if something cost 1,000 back in the day, and it would be equivalent of 10,000 today when adjusted for inflation, it’s likely that it would actually have the purchasing power of 100,000 or 1,000,000 of today’s money.

For example, consider how Mister Darcy’s $10,000 a year in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice allowed him to never work, own multiple grand mansions including a vast estate, have a veritable army of live-in servants and groundskeepers waiting on his every need around the clock, and never have to worry about money a day in his life. How much would you need to have today to live that same lifestyle? Much more than the £568,412.48 which the Bank of England online calculator estimates 10k pounds would be worth today of 1813 money (when P & P was first published). Considering the yearly wages alone for the dozens of full-time live-in servants, I think you’d need 5 million or 50 million a year to follow the same lifestyle today.
https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monet...

[Brooke Stoddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Generally presented as the work of a madman gone off half-cocked, John Brown's Raid had far more depth and breadth. Eugene Meyer is a seasoned researcher and expert story-teller, and he uncovers a richness to a portion of the little band of emancipators not even presented when the press of the time was fascinated by the attack. Meyer puts flesh and bones on five of the raiders who were ignored at the time and then covered over by history. These were men with families, with wives and children yearning to breathe free. Could any of us have done less for persons we loved? And, as Meyer also rightly explains, Brown's Raid was more than a mere swoop down from the surrounding hills. Rather it fermented in Northeast Ohio – generally around Oberlin College – and Ontario. You'll never think of John Brown's Raid the same way again.

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is clearly a very well researched book paying long overdue attention to these five men relegated to obscurity in the story of John Brown’s raid of Harper’s Ferry. I think it could have benefited though from a different structure; there are so many different threads and the narrative jumped between them and into tangents in such a way that made it hard to follow. Still a very worthwhile read.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing. I was sad when I got to the epilogue and realized it was coming to an end. The stories of the five African Americans who were with John Brown at Harpers Ferry are very well researched, and told with respect. Definitely recommend this book for anyone with an interest in John Brown, Harpers Ferry, and the events that eventually led to the Civil War.

[Matt Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book won’t give you much that you can’t find elsewhere regarding John Brown’s raiders, but the information is very well researched and presented. The author has engaged with primary documents, you can tell that from the text, but the text itself does not present much primary material. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but something of which you should be aware. Meter’s analysis of family records of the Black raiders at Harper’s Ferry is interesting, although kind of dry (it’s hard to read my own family history without yawning — so maybe that’s just me). I did learn that Dangerfield Newby’s son, Dangerfield Jr lived and died and is buried about a mile from my apartment, so that’s a point of interest. Perhaps most powerful are the chapters on Storer College and the 100 and 150 year anniversaries of the Raid. Though not the best book out there on Brown and company, this is well worth the read.

[Erica Brody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling account of five men who deserve to be remembered in the fight for civil rights.

[Jean · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Forest Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected. Decent book and I did learn about the five who were with John Brown. However, I wish there would have been more primary sources- pictures, letters, etc.

[Logan Dreher · Rating 3 out of 5]

fascinating history, I didn't vibe with the writing and found it tedious at times, but I'm still glad to have read this and know the names beyond John Brown.

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

An enthralling, fascinating, and somber read that will stay with you long after you have put the book down.

[Dan Rosenblum]

A new look at John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, the parts of history that are often overlooked, such as the disastrous story of the the Kansas-Nebraska act and the Bloody Wars as people in favor of extending slavery to Kansas fought with those who opposed it. John Brown was supported by five African Americans who each had a different reason for supporting his almost futile battle, which survived as a symbol of courage and determination to end slavery by war if not by peaceful means. Meyer had done a beautiful job of reporting on their individual stories in the context of the other events which transpired during the pre-Civil War struggle.