John Brown's fearsome pikes still hold fascination

2009-06-12 20:27:06 -

DARGAN, Maryland (AP) - The spears that John Brown ordered for his abolitionist army were fearsome, primitive things. Nearly seven feet long, the pikes had 10-inch steel blades made for slashing and impaling those who resisted the slave rebellion Brown envisioned.
But the uprising didn't come, and the nearly 1,000 pikes Brown purchased from a Connecticut blacksmith and stockpiled at a Maryland farm a few miles from the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, were never used for their intended purpose.
Instead, after Brown's ill-fated raid on the arsenal on Oct. 16, 1859, many pikes were seized as souvenirs and today command high prices. One bearing the serial number 846 was sold through Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries in 2007 for $13,000.
Brown's capture and execution for treason foiled his plan to hand out pikes to freed slaves and ignited passions on both sides of the slavery divide. Northern abolitionists considered him a martyr; secessionist fire-eaters in the South raised the John Brown pikes as symbols of Northern aggression in the run-up to the Civil War.
«There wasn't anything you could put in front of Southern aristocracy that was more frightening than a slave revolt. They feared that more than anything,» said Dennis Lowe, who oversees Civil War material at Heritage Auction Galleries.
Virginian Edmund Ruffin, a pro-slavery extremist, acquired a number of pikes from Col. Alfred W, Barbour, superintendent of the federal arsenal, and arranged with Alabama Sen. Clement C. Clay to have them sent to the governors of the slave-holding states.
To the handle of each pike, Ruffin pasted a label: «Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren.» He asked that the weapons be conspicuously displayed, preferably at the statehouse.
Surviving pikes are rarities, Lowe said. He said some were deliberately broken and used as knives and many others simply disappeared.