that Barclay Coppoc should never be surrendered to the Virginia Governor, who had a few weeks before hung John Brown, Edwin Coppoc, John E. Cook, shields Green and John Copeland. If our messenger could reach Springdale before Mr. Camp could get to Iowa City and procure a posse to make the arrest, a bloody conflict would be prevented and Coppoc would be able to reach a place of safety. On the morning of the 25th, Mr. Williams alighted from his last foaming horse at John H. Painter’s and Barclay Coppoc was saved.
When Mr. Camp reached Iowa City, he heard of the armed guard of Coppoc’s friends at Springdale, and remembering that John Brown, with seventeen young men of the same stamp, had held Harper’s Ferry two days and three nights against a thousand armed Virginians, he had no consuming desire to lead an officer’s squad against the Sharpe’s rifles of Coppoc’s defenders. He journeyed on to Muscatine to await legal requisition papers.
The day after our messenger started, it became known that Governor Kirkwood’s legal learning had enable d him to detect flaws in Governor Letcher’s requisition papers and that he had refused to surrender Coppoc. M. V. Bennett (a bitter Democratic partisan member of the lower house of the Legislature from Marion County), presented resolutions of inquiry, sometime after the affair became public, as follows:
“Whereas, A requisition was made on the Governor of Iowa by the Governor of Virginia for Barclay Coppoc, an alleged participant in the difficulties at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, as a fugitive from justice, and
“Whereas, The Governor of Iowa has refused to deliver up said Coppoc under said requisition, alleging technical defects therein, therefore be it
“Resolved, That the Governor of Iowa be requested to lay before the House a copy of the requisition directed to him by the Governor of Virginia, and all matters connected therewith; also to inform this House whether he possessed any knowledge in regard to a rumor that a special messenger was dispatched to inform Coppoc of his danger; and if so, by what authority said messenger was dispatched to inform Coppoc of his danger.”
