Fierce debates over the issue of slavery had imperiled the creation of the American colonies from their earliest days. Delegates to the Second Continental Congress refused to sign the Declaration of Independence until severe, antislavery language written by Thomas Jefferson—ironically, a slaveowner himself—was expunged. Forty-four years later Jefferson articulated his own ambivalence on slavery in a letter to John Holmes, a member of the Massachusetts Senate: “We have the wolf by the ears,” Jefferson wrote on April 22, 1820, “and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other.” Tensions mounted as violent encounters flared throughout the nation. In 1831 a slave named Nat Turner led a two-day insurrection in Virginia that left an estimated fifty-seven white men, women, and children dead. In 1837 a white newspaper editor, Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, was shot to death in Illinois by a mob infuriated by his abolitionist views. Beginning in the early 1840s fugitive slave Frederick Douglass traveled throughout the North describing to audiences the brutality he had experienced under his master’s whip. Harriet Beecher Stowe further exposed the horrors of slavery in her 1852 best-seller Uncle Tom’s Cabin. An explosive clash, like the one erupting in Kansas in the 1850s between pro- and antislavery factions, seemed increasingly likely on a national scale, and some—like Aaron Dwight Stevens—were literally praying for its arrival. A veteran of the Mexican War, Stevens was a skilled soldier who wanted to use his military expertise to hasten slavery’s demise. As expressed in the following letter to his brother in Minnesota, he believed its end would come only through bloodshed.
Spring Dale Cedar Co. Iowa
Aug: 2nd 1858.
My Dear Brother,
It seames a long time since I had a letter from you. I have been traveling about so much that I’v not been able to write offtiner.
I think I told you before that I was in the cause of human Freedom, but I did not give you the particklures. We left Kansas to strike Slavory at the heart, and we had things all arrianged to do it, and would of done so, but for a trator, one of the party had a falling out with the head one and for gold turned trator to himself his country and his god; you may think it not best to do it by the sword, but I tell you it never will be done away except by the sword, and every year it is getting worse, and then think of the thousands who are murdered yearly, you are aware of how they do things down south. I suppose you know
I suppose that they work there Slaves on those big plantations hard enouf to kill them in seven years, they can make the most of them in thatt way, so you see there is thousands of them murdered yearly, and would you not think it best to do away with Slavory in a year or two by loosing a few thousands in war than to have thousands of them murdered yearly for god knows how many years, and to think how many of them have been murdered before this.
I am aganst war, except in self defense, and then I am like Pattrick Henry, when he sayd “give me Liberity or give me death.” I do not think we shall be able to go on with it this year, but I think the time is acoming when it will be done, it leaves us in rather bad circumstances for we had sackraficed all we had to the cause, but we are willing to give up life it self for the good of humanity.
how is the times in Minisoti I suppose they are about the same as else where. I have not heard from Father for a long time nor eny of the rest of our folkes. I had a letter from Lemuel about four months ago. he was well then I would like to see him very much, and o. how I wish we could all meet once more.
give my love to your wife, and tell her I should like to see her very much. you must excuse me for writing this short lettor.
I will send you my likeness, it is not a very good one, but then you can see how I look somewhat. I wish you would send me yours and you will gratley oblige your
Loving Brother
A. D. Stevens
(Please write as soon as you get this.)
Over a year after writing this letter, Stevens joined forces with John Brown, a man who was equally as impassioned about eradicating slavery through violence. On October 16, 1859, Brown, Stevens, and seventeen other men, including five blacks and twelve whites, seized the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia) in an attempt to rally the local slaves in a rebellion that, Brown anticipated, would spread throughout the South. The raid was a disaster. Not a single slave heeded Brown’s summons, and Brown and his men found themselves surrounded in the fire engine house, first by armed townspeople, and then by United States Marines under the command of U.S. Army Lt. Col. Roben E. Lee. Ten of Brown’s men, including two of his sons, were killed. Aaron Stevens was shot several times but lived. Captured and tried, the surviving men all received a sentence of death, and Brown was hanged on December 2. (Standing in the crowd of 1,500 to watch the execution was a young actor named John Wilkes Booth, who conceded that Brown was “a brave old man.”) Aaron Stevens’s hanging did not take place until over three months later. On March 13, 1860, Stevens, unrepentant and ready to die, wrote a final letter to his brother from the Charles Town Jail.
My ever dear Brother.
I sit down for the last time, without doubt, to communicate a few thoughts to thee. I am in excellent health and very happy. Sister Lydia is with me, and she is as brave as ever I was very glad to see her, it is now over nine years since I last saw her. it does not seem so long. how fast the time flies. I should like to see you my Dear Brother very much, but shall have to wait untill we meet in the Spirit-world. What joy it will give me to meet you and all other kind friends there.
I hope Dear Brother you will investigate the spiritual theory for it is such pleasure to know that we shall all meet sooner or later in the Spirit-land, than mere belief. It has been very consoling to me during these trying times. I hope you will be one of those lovers of truth and right, and help redeem the world from sin and oppression of all kinds, and as you love yourself as you love man, as you love woman, as you love God, work with your head, heart, and hands, for the happiness of yourself and all the world. be careful and not think too much of self this is one great thing we should all conquer.
Give my love to your wife, and little one and say Farewell. Farewell my Dear Brother we meet again beyond the tomb, god bless you and yours
A. D. Stevens
The deaths of Brown and his men galvanized both sides of the debate over slavery. Southerners were outraged that Brown, a “traitorous, cold-blooded killer” whose sanity was questioned even by his supporters, had become a martyr. But to the abolitionists, the raid on Harpers Ferry heralded the possible end of one of the foulest of all human creations. “This day will be a great day in our history,” wrote the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Brown’s execution, “the date of a new Revolution—quite as much needed as the old one.”