Existing comment:
No Remorse
The threat of slave insurrection angered and frightened white southerners. This fevered emotion led Harpers Ferry townspeople to disfigure the dead bodies of some of the insurgents.
Joseph Barry, a resident of the town and an eyewitness to the events of October 1859, observed, "The treatment the lifeless bodies of those wretched men received from some of the infuriated populace was far from creditable to the actors or to human nature in general."
After the battle, seven of the dead insurgents were placed in piano crates and buried in an unmarked common grave along the Shenandoah River. In the 1890s, these bodies were exhumed and sent to North Elba, New York, where they were given a more honorable burial near John Browns grave. |