Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/38

son, and Thompson went down beneath the thrusts of sabers and bayonets. Edwin Coppoc fired the last shot and he and Green alone were left unhurt to surrender. The fight was ended. Ten of the little band were slain. Brown and Stevens were desperately wounded and with Coppoc, Green and Copeland, were prisoners. William Thompson and W. H. Leeman, who had before surrendered, were butchered in cold blood by the Virginia “chivalry.” Harper’s Ferry had been held fifty-eight hours by seventeen men against the assaults of from five hundred to 1,500 armed citizens and militia from Maryland and Virginia.*

Nowhere in modern warfare is there recorded such an unequal contest of similar duration. Of the immortal seventeen three were Iowa boys under twenty-four years of age. On the 22d of November Edwin Coppoc wrote home an account of the battle in which he says:

“Eleven of our little band are now sleeping in their bloody garments with the cold earth above them. Braver men never lived; truer men to their plighted word never banded together. … As our comrades fell we could not minister to their wants as they deserved, for we were surrounded by troops firing volley after volley, and we had to keep up a brisk fire in return to keep them from charging upon us. Watson Brown was wounded on Monday, at the same time Stevens was, while carrying a flag of truce; but he got back to the engine house. He fought as bravely as any man. When the fight was over he got worse. He and Green and myself were put in the watch-house. Watson kept getting worse until Wednesday morning, and begged hard for a bed, but could not get one. I pulled off my coat and put it under him and placed his head in my lap, and in that position he died. … Whatever may be our fate, rest assured we shall not shame our dead companions by a shrinking fear. They lived and died like brave men; we, I trust, shall do the same.”

On the 19th Edwin Coppoc, Green and Copeland were taken to Charleston jail, which was guarded by State militia with two cannon trained on it. Edwin’s trial began on the afternoon of November 1st and ended the fol-

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* Hinton gives the loss of life as follows: Of Brown’s band, ten were killed and seven more executed; of the liberated slaves, seventeen were slain; of the citizens and soldiers, eight were killed and nine wounded. Total killed, forty-two.