Shields Green

Shields Green
Green awaiting his trial after the Harpers Ferry raid
Born	c. 1836 South Carolina, U.S.
Died	December 16, 1859(1859-12-16) (aged 22–23) Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia), U.S.
Cause of death	Hanging
Resting place	Winchester, Virginia
Other names	Emperor or S. Emperor, Shields Greene
Known for	Raid on Harpers Ferry
Criminal charges	Murder and inciting a slave insurrection
Criminal penalty	Hanging
Criminal status	Executed

Shields Green or Greene (1836? – December 16, 1859), who also referred to himself as "Emperor", was an escaped slave who participated in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. Though he had a chance to escape capture, he returned to the fighting and was captured with Brown. For their parts in the raid, Green and John A. Copeland were hanged on December 16, 1859, in Charles Town, West Virginia (then part of Virginia). There were 1,600 spectators.

In 1861, he was the only one from the raid on Harpers Ferry that Frederick Douglass mentioned alongside rebels Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey;. Douglass "eulogized [him] with rare pathos". In Silas X. Floyd's Floyd's Flowers, or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children, Green is a black hero like Crispus Attucks, Toussaint l'Ouverture, or Benjamin Banneker. Floyd calls him a martyr.

Paucity of information

The most reliable source for information about Green, until he appears in Harpers Ferry, is Frederick Douglass, who discusses Green briefly in one of his autobiographies. The second most reliable source is John Brown himself. These are the only two people known to have had contact with Green before he left Chambersburg en route to the Kennedy Farm, John Brown's base.

Green lived in Douglass's house in Rochester, New York, working as a launderer, and perhaps barber, for over a year. During a few weeks of that year John Brown also stayed in Douglass's house. There is no other person known to have visited him in jail or corresponded with him. (Although he was illiterate, he could easily have gotten someone to read and write his letters.)

Information about Green is sparse and sometimes contradictory. The prisoners in the Charles Town jail awaiting execution were allowed to send and receive letters, but Green did neither. According to the Richmond Dispatch, he was "very illiterate". No one visited him in jail; in fact, we have don't know of anyone that knew Green before he showed up at Douglass's house.

According to Frederick Douglass, Green's speech was "singularly broken". The information we have suggests that Green understood English fine; he didn't speak "broken English" in the sense of a foreigner who didn't know the language well. He may have had a speech defect. In any event, he was "a man of few words". Because of his broken speech, reporters covering the trials in Charles Town did not interview him, nor, in contrast with Copeland, did he make a statement to the court. The person he had most contact with was Douglass, in whose house in Rochester, New York he was living in 1858 and 1859. Green met John Brown in Douglass's house; Brown stayed in Douglass's house at the same time, for weeks, so Brown had ample opportunities to get to know him. also, Douglass talks about Green in His Life and Times, one of his three autobiographies.

Name

It is commonly found in modern references to Green that his real name was Esau Brown. The only evidence for this is a single newspaper article of 1861. But according to Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., author of the only book on him (2020), so far as is known he never used that name, nor was it ever used by any of his Harpers Ferry associates. Frederick Douglass, who often mentioned Green, never referred to him by that name, nor is it found in documents concerning his trial and execution. The name never appears in any other of the very numerous newspaper reports of 1859. Caro concludes that it is "doubtful" that this single mention is correct.

He used the nickname of Emperor, and sometimes was referred to as Shields Emperor, although he never referred to himself that way. There is no explanation of this nickname; it is speculated that this relates to who he was in Africa before he was captured and enslaved.

Born free or enslaved?

According to Douglass, Green was a fugitive slave.

He was a fugitive slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and had attested his love of liberty by escaping from slavery and making his way through many dangers to Rochester, where he had lived in my family, and where he met the man with whom he went to the scaffold.

However, the court documents in Charles Town refer to him as "a free negro". No fugitive would tell a court that he was an escaped slave; the consequences were always unpleasant at best. So until the owner or his slave catcher representative appeared with a document, all fugitive slaves said they were free. In Green's case, everyone still alive from Brown's party would have backed him up.

Presumably Green came to Rochester because he was thinking of emigrating to Canada, as most Blacks entering Rochester were. But finding Douglass's Underground Railroad house, Douglass took a liking to him. Douglass knew the law well and could have coached Green on what to say, and Green was pretty quiet anyway. Living with Douglass, he worked as a waiter, launderer, and barber. Certainly preparing a business card, as Green did, advertising his clothes cleaning and giving his address (2 Spring St.), means he felt to some extent secure.

Age

Different accounts have his age from 23 to 30.

Green's life before living with Douglass in Rochester

As Green was not talkative, and uncaptured fugitive slaves do not leave much of a paper trail, there is not much reliable information on Green before he met Douglass. He was said to be from Iowa,

from Pittsburg  [sic], and from: Harrisburg, 

Pittsburg [sic] (on the same page he is also said to be from Harrisburg), Rochester, New York, "New York—previously of South Carolina", One person from Oberlin, Ohio, where Green's name is on a cenotaph together with those of raiders Copeland and Leary, said that Green had lived there for some time; another that he could not possibly have lived there.

Body

As was usual at the time, his skin color was commented on: he was "a negro of the blackest hue", "quite a black negro", "a regular out and out tar colored darkey." At that time, those of darker skin color, or "more African blood", were considered inferior, more primitive than those with light brown skin, "mulattoes".

He was described as "small in stature and very active in his movements". "He had rather a good countenance, and a sharp, intelligent look."

Family

According to the Charleston Daily News of June 7, 1870, a son of Green was living in Charleston.

Early life

He called himself Emperor, though for what reason is unknown. He was born into slavery in South Carolina. Green escaped a little over a year before the events at Harper's Ferry, fleeing from Charleston, South Carolina, and making his way north to freedom in Rochester, New York. It is thought that he left behind a son in bondage in South Carolina. Other reports also have Green working as a sailor before he joined up with Douglass in Rochester. The statement by James Monroe, quoted below, reveals that Green lived for some time in Oberlin, Ohio, but his activities there are unknown.

Oberlin

Statements contradict each other concerning Green's residence in Oberlin. None says why he was there or what he was doing while there.

John Anthony Copeland was tried and executed along with Green. His parents attempted to recover their son's body, which like that of Green had been dug up by students from Winchester Medical College, who needed bodies to dissect in their studies of anatomy. Since as free Blacks they were barred from entering Virginia, at their request a white friend and professor at Oberlin College, James Monroe, travelled to Winchester to try to retrieve it. He was unsuccessful, but in the dissecting room "I was startled to find the body of another Oberlin neighbor whom I had often met upon our streets, a colored man named Shields Greene." No one was looking for Green's body.

Contradicting this statement of Monroe, that Green was an "Oberlin neighbor" he had often met in the street.

Frederick Douglass said that Green had been a student at Oberlin.

Copeland, after his arrest, was asked who else from Oberlin was at Harpers Ferry, and he said that besides himself, only Leary.

"The negro Green and Edwin Coppic at one time lived near Salem. ...I think Copeland was the only man who went to John Brown from Oberlin."

Comments on Green's personality

Osborne Anderson described him as "the Zouave of the band", "the most inexorable of all our party, a very Turco in his hatred against the stealers of men. ...Wiser and better man no doubt there were, but a braver man never lived than Shields Green".

Years later Douglass described Green in his memoir:

Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.

According to Joseph Barry, "He seemed to be very officious in the early part of Monday, flitting about from place to place, and he was evidently conscious of his own great importance in the enterprise. It is supposed that it was he that killed Mr. Boerly [the mayor]. ...He was very insulting to Brown's prisoners, constantly presenting his rifle and threatening to shoot some of them."

As reported by Richard Hinton, in the engine house he was described as "very impudent" from the point of view of the hostages. At one point he pointed a gun at a hostage and told him to "shut up".

While on the scaffold he was "engaged in earnest prayer".. "Green was an ambitious, vindictive, but very illiterate negro of the African species, and evidently died a victim to his own brutish impetuosity. He was the head and front of all the negro rescues at Harrisburg, for several years past, a Journeyman barber by trade."

According to Du Bois, Green was "a full-blooded negro from South Carolina, whence he had escaped from slavery, after his wife had died, leaving a living boy still in bondage. He was about twenty-four years old, small and active, uneducated but with natural ability and absolutely fearless." Frederick Douglass said "While at my house, John Brown made the acquaintance of a colored man who called himself by different names — sometimes 'Emperor,' at other times, 'Shields Green.' . . . He was a fugitive slave, who had made his escape from Charleston; a state from which a slave found it no easy matter to run away. But Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers. He was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken ; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character. John Brown saw at once what 'stuff' Green was made of,' and confided to him his plans and purposes. Green easily believed in Brown, and promised to go with him whenever he should be ready to move."

Lewis Washington, interviewed by the Senate Select Committee, discussed him thus after the raid:

Question. Did he use his arms; did he fire?

Answer. Yes, sir, very rapidly and dilligently.[sic] I do not know with what effect.

Question. What was his deportment? Answer. It was rather impudent in the morning. I saw him order some gentlemen to shut a window, with a rifle raised at them. He said, "Shut that window, damn you; shut it instantly." He did it in a very impudent manner. But when the attack came on, he had thrown off his hat and all his equipments, and was endeavoring to represent himself as one of the slaves.

"Oh what a poor fool I am! I had got out of slavery, and here I have gotten into the eagle's claws again." The state's attorney, Andrew Hunter, lashed him furiously during the prosecution for his bold and unwavering stand at the trial:

"On the morning of December 2, the day of John Brown's execution, [S]hields Green sent word to his leader that he waited willingly and calmly for his own death, and that he was glad he had come."

"The evening previous to the starting of Captain Brown's followers from Rochester, I spent at the house of Mr. Frederick Douglass, and when ready for my walk home, Shields Green accompanied me. I said to him, while on our walk, “Do you know that by going with Captain Brown into a Southern State, you expose yourself to the gallows? That if you are taken you will surely be executed ? ” He answered, “Yes; I shall probably lose my life, but if my death will help to free my race, I am willing to die. I have suffered cruel blows frơm men who said they owned me. Death from the hands of the law for no offense, save for believing in liberty for myself and my race, would not be a degradation; but blows from an overseer's lash, crush into my soul.”

Meeting in Chambersburg

Shields Green, John Copeland, and Albert Hazlett in their cell in the Jefferson County jail

Death sentence of Shields Green, November 10, 1859

Monument honoring Copeland, Green, and Leary in Oberlin, Ohio.

Plaque showing original inscription

Green first met John Brown at the house of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester, where Green was living; Brown spent some weeks there, working on his Provisional Constitution from morning to night. Some months later, in the best-known incident from Shield's life, because Frederick Douglass published a description of it, Green and Douglass travelled together from Rochester via New York to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to meet with Brown and his second in command, John Henry Kagi. Brown, who knew "the stuff Green was made of", as Douglass put it, had asked Douglass to bring Green with him. The meeting took place in Chambersburg, an Underground Railroad stop, because it was the "staging ground" for Brown's raid; just 22 miles (35 km) from the Maryland border, it was the closest city in the (free) North. For secrecy, the meeting was in an abandoned stone quarry.

Brown tried in this meeting to get Douglass to join in the raid, because Douglass, a national Black leader, would have added credibility to it, motivating the enslaved to rise up and run away, as Brown would propose. Douglass declined to participate in Brown's planned raid because he believed it could not succeed and was, therefore, suicidal. Green declined Douglass's suggestion that he return to Rochester with him, saying, as reported by Douglass, "“I b'l’eve I'll go wid de old man". During the raid, Green made a similar remark when invited to flee, as the raid was failing.

The Harpers Ferry raid

During the raid, Green and others were assigned to recruit slaves from the nearby countryside to join the rebellion. Green was with Dangerfield Newby and Osborne Anderson at the Arsenal during the raid; Osborne said that Green immediately avenged Newby's death. According to Douglass, Osborne Anderson (not Jeremiah Anderson) said that Green could have escaped with him. "I told him to come; that we could do nothing more," But his reply was the same: "I b'l’eve I'll go down wid de ole man.”

Green was indicted, tried, and convicted along with John Brown and the others captured (see John Brown's raiders) of murder and inciting a slave insurrection. He was acquitted of the charge of treason, as his attorney, George Sennott, citing the Dred Scott decision, successfully argued that since Green was not a citizen under that Supreme Court ruling, he could not commit treason. He did not say a word during the trial, according to one source, but court records do not support this: in response to the same question John Brown was asked (see John Brown's last speech), if he had anything to say before sentencing, his reply was "nothing but what he had before said". On the morning of John Brown's execution, Green sent word to Brown that he was glad to have fought with him and awaited his own execution willingly.

Green and Copeland were hanged two weeks after Brown. After the execution, their corpses were taken to the nearby Winchester Medical College for dissection by students. A letter from Black residents of Philadelphia to Virginia Governor Wise, requesting their bodies so as to bury them, had no effect. Professor James Monroe of Oberlin College, a family friend of Copeland from Oberlin, Ohio, searched for Copeland's body, but found only Green's, and was unable to retrieve either body. "We visited the dissecting rooms. The body of Copeland was not there, but I was startled to find the body of another Oberlin neighbor whom I had often met upon our streets, a colored man named Shields Greene." Likewise, the bodies of Watson Brown and Jerry Anderson were also "claimed" by Winchester Medical College as teaching cadavers for students. In retaliation, the College was burned to the ground by Union troops in 1862.

Legacy and honors

• On December 25, 1859, a memorial service was held in Oberlin for Copeland, Green, and Lewis Sheridan Leary, who died during the raid.
• A cenotaph was erected in 1865 in Westwood Cemetery to honor the three "citizens of Oberlin." The monument was moved in 1971 to Martin Luther King Jr. Park on Vine Street in Oberlin. The inscription reads:

These colored citizens of Oberlin, the heroic associates of the immortal John Brown, gave their lives for the slave.
Et nunc servitudo etiam mortua est, laus deo [And now slavery is finally dead, thanks be to God].

S. Green died at Charleston, Va., Dec. 16, 1859, age 23 years.

J. A. Copeland died at Charleston, Va., Dec. 16, 1859, age 25 years.

L. S. Leary died at Harper's Ferry, Va., Oct 20, 1859, age 24 years.

The 2020 film Emperor is partially based on Green's life.

See also

• John Brown's raiders

Further reading

• DeCaro, Louis A., Jr. (2020). The Untold Story of Shields Green: The Life and Death of a Harper's Ferry Raider. New York University Press. ISBN 9781479802753.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Lawson, John D. (1916). "The Trial of John Anthony Copeland and Shields Green for Murder, Charlestown, Virginia, 1859". American State Trials : A collection of the important and interesting criminal trials which have taken place in the United States from the beginning of our government to the present day. Vol. 6. St. Louis: Thomas Law Books. pp. 808–813.