Barclay Coppoc – Survivor of John Brown’s Raid, Early Casualty of the War

His brother hanged, his slave-liberating raid under John Brown a failure, pursuers seeking his death, Barclay Coppoc tried to make his way from the South back to his native Iowa. The South wanted him back so they could kill him, and they would get their wish.

Barclay Coppoc was a handsome young man, raised in Springdale, Iowa by a pious widowed Quaker mother, Anne Lynch Coppoc. They needed all their piety since, as was too common in the 1850s, two of his sisters and one of his brothers died of tuberculosis (then called consumption). Young Barclay seems to have caught the disease himself, since he was physically weakened and decided, for his health, to move to a more salubrious climate: Kansas.

Kansas may have been healthy in one sense, but politically it was in turmoil, with supporters and opponents of slavery clashed, often violently. Back in Springdale, Barclay and Edward and their neighbors saw a band of armed men come into town in winter 1857. The men stayed and drilled at the house of Spiritualist William Maxon. The leader, John Brown, left to raise funds in the East, leaving his son Owen in charge. John Brown and his followers had plans to fight slavery. Brown wanted to stage an armed slave-liberation raid into Southern territory. The Coppoc brothers, though Quaker, were willing to shed their religion’s pacifism and if need be shed their blood, to rid their country of slavery. Even if the Internet had existed then, their courage and high spirits would not have let them limit themselves to hashtags and sad emojis against slavery. They wanted to take more decisive action.

In 1859, a year after Brown’s party left Springdale, Edwin and Barclay got a message to report for duty with John Brown. Their mother Anne, who had inculcated them in antislavery principles, was nonetheless unwilling that they should risk their lives. Three of her children had died and she only had three left, including Edwin and Barclay. Though Edwin and Barclay were cagey with Mom about where they were going, Anne saw what was happening, and declared, “I believe you are going with old Brown. When you get the halters around your necks, will you think of me?”

The Quaker mother’s antislavery principles had taken stronger hold on her sons than even she may have wished, and Edwin and Barclay went to join Brown’s crusade.

Thus it was that Edwin and Barclay established themselves on the Kennedy Farm in Maryland, the staging ground for a raid into Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, to free as many slaves as possible. While the main raiding party entered Virginia, Edwin went with the raiders but Barclay, still not in the best of health, stayed behind as part of a rearguard to secure the farm and be ready to supply additional arms. Barclay and others went to scout out the area and find out what had happened to their colleagues. Soon it became clear that something had gone wrong. The attacking party, with John Brown and Edwin Coppoc, had not recruited the slaves, and instead of retreating to a more defensible position they had holed up in a Harper’s Ferry engine house. Edwin, along with Brown and another raider, were the only able-bodied men remaining. The group was besieged by Marines under Robert E. Lee. The Marines stormed the engine house and captured Brown and other survivors, including Edwin. Virginia authorities held the captured raiders on charges of murder and treason.

Barclay and others who had avoided capture, learned at least the gist of these events, and their priorities shifted from freeing the slaves to effecting their own escape. While Northern opponents of slavery were inspired by the raid, Southerners demanded vengeance, and “moderate” Northerners were happy to offer assistance to the South. The proslavery federal government began a manhunt for the escaped raiders and for John Brown’s backers. Some of these backers fled to Canada. Gerrit Smith, who had help finance the raid, checked into an insane asylum. Frederick Douglass, who had refused to take part in the raids but wasn’t sure the government was making fine distinctions, went abroad for a time. Republican politicians like Abraham Lincoln, accused of encouraging John Brown’s raid with their antislavery rhetoric, indignantly disavowed the raid. It was not a good environment in which to be a John Brown associate.

Under the leadership of John Brown’s son Owen, Barclay and a few others began a long walk toward what they hoped would be safety. They came soon to Pennsylvania, but this free state was not a safe refuge. Government agents and vigilantes were on the prowl, so the fugitives moved cautiously and by night. They soon ran out of food, and one of their number, John E. Cook, appropriated some food for them. On a second food run Cook was captured and sent to Virginia to share the fate of other captured raiders.

There was nothing for it but to keep walking. They found a Quaker house where the husband wanted to give them refuge but the wife and daughters wanted to deny hospitality. The fugitives convinced the Quaker women, grudgingly, to let them stay, but the women would not serve these violent men food – slavery should only be abolished by peaceful, Quaker-style methods. Barclay, Owen and the others had a (presumably self-prepared) breakfast, helped out on the farm in lieu of paying rent, and proceeded on their risky journey.

Barclay finally left the party to go to Ohio, sending his arms separately. Then he came back to Iowa. Meanwhile Edwin Coppoc was hanged, as was John Brown, and John Cook who had been captured in trying to bring the fugitives food. Edwin’s body came back North for a hero’s funeral. Anne wrote a minister who had visited Edwin in prison: “Every son of America whom you send to the North with the prints of the accursed halter upon his neck and whose funeral is attended by assembled thousands, has a tendency to kindle the fires of indignation and hatred against the common cause which is at the bottom of all of this” – referring of course to slavery.

Barclay’s friends did not want him to receive a hero’s funeral, or any funeral at all at such an early age, so they urged him to escape to Canada. Barclay protested that he did not want to run any more. He had not done anything wrong, he had fought for the rights of the oppressed – so why should he act like a skulking fugitive by going to Canada? Barclay’s sympathetic Iowa neighbors at least seem to have persuaded him to follow security protocols. Barclay would not stay two nights at the same place, and vigilance groups were ready to give the alarm if the Virginians came seeking their quarry.

Even the Coppocs’ local Quaker Meeting (congregation) showed some sympathy, praising them with faint damns. The brothers had admittedly violated pacifist tenets, but the Meeting expressed its “desire to establish a forgiving feeling towards those who may have been overtaken in weekness, & would tenderly admonish all men to an increased watchfulness in the precepts of our Redeamer” (misspelling in original).

The Virginia government wasn’t feeling the love. They learned that Barclay Coppoc was back in Iowa, and they sent their agent, C. Camp, to demand Coppoc’s extradition. Camp appeared before the Republican governor of Iowa, Samuel J. Kirkwood. The governor was sympathetic to Coppoc, but he had to deal with the fact that public opinion, North and South, was aroused against John Brown’s surviving men, and that it might not be wise to give open support to a young man formally charged in this context with treason and murder (as Barclay was).

So Kirkwood resolved to delay, rather than outright deny, extradition. He found technical deficiencies in Virginia’s extradition papers, and rejected the request, while suggesting that a more properly-drawn request might be more effective. Camp loudly protested, and some antislavery state Republican legislators, who had entered the room, realized Barclay Coppoc was in danger.

Soon, a messenger on horseback was on his way from Des Moines to Springdale – a 130 mile ride as the crow flies, probably more as the horse gallops – to warn Coppoc’s supporters of what was afoot.

The governor of Virginia, who had the unfortunate name of Letcher, indignantly informed an equally-indignant Virginia legislature of Governor Kirkwood’s action. Kirkwood’s behavior, said Letcher, “force[s] upon my mind the conclusion that his action was taken, if not with the intention of permitting Coppoc to escape, and thus shield him from just punishment, for crimes of the most serious and aggravated character….yet with a certainty that it must have that effect.”

Governor Kirkwood finally received a new set of extradition papers presented by Virginia, more correctly drawn than the first attempt, with Virginia dotting its legal i’s and crossing its legal t’s. Kirkwood duly signed an extradition warrant. Soon the local sheriff was in Springdale, but the sheriff was no more enthusiastic about arresting Coppoc than Governor Kirkwood was. Accosting local citizens, the sheriff loudly announced that he has a warrant for Barclay Coppoc. By some curious oversight, the sheriff didn’t go to the Coppoc house, where Barclay and his mother were waiting. Anyway, the citizens all professed to know nothing. The Virginia agent, C. Camp, himself, was hesitant to go to Springdale, fearing his reception there.

Young Barclay finally saw the usefulness of fleeing to Canada, and agreed to depart. When he got near the border, he was persuaded by the surviving John Brown sons to wait things out in Ohio.

The Democratic-controlled Iowa Senate passed a resolution demanding that Governor Kirkwood should explain how Barclay learned he was wanted by the Iowa authorities, suggesting (correctly) that a leak had tipped off Barclay and his supporters. Governor Kirkwood considered the Senate resolution too insulting to answer, and he wrote an answer saying so. But he complied with a more respectful request from the state House to provide information on the attempted rendition.

The outbreak of the Civil War found Barclay Coppoc in Kansas and Springdale, recruiting soldiers for the Union army, including some old classmates in Springdale. As he and fellow soldiers heading for the front were moving through Missouri, Confederate bushwhackers attacked a bridge their train was crossing. A day after the ensuing train wreck, Barclay Coppoc died, finally succumbing to the Slave Power but leaving a proud legacy.

Out of six Coppoc children, only one, Joseph, remained to console his mother, who had almost fully gone blind. Joseph, like Barclay, joined the Union army, but he survived the war. His fellow Iowa Quakers did not like him taking up arms, so he joined the Baptists and became a minister. On Anne’s death in 1884, Joseph was the only child who survived her. Joseph honored his brothers and their commander John Brown in an 1895 article – “Robert E. Lee was victor at Harper’s Ferry that the institution which he represented might be ground to powder at Appomattox.” Joseph died in 1914.

For Further Reading

J. L. Coppoc, “John Brown and His Cause,” Midland Monthly, September 1895, pp. 317-325.

Nicholas Dolan, “Bright Radical Star’: When John Brown came to Iowa,” Little Village (Iowa City/Cedar Rapids), January 15, 2019, https://littlevillagemag.com/bright-radical-star-when-john-brown-came-to-iowa/

C. B. Galbreath, “Barclay Coppoc,” Ohio History Journal, Volume 30, Number 4, October, 1921, pp. 459-481.

“Joseph Lynch Coppoc, 1840-1914,” https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80860751/joseph-lynch-coppoc.

Robert E. McGlone, John Brown’s War against Slavery. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Narcissa Macy Smith, “Reminiscences of John Brown,” Midland Monthly, 1895, 231 ff.

Thomas Teakle, “Rendition Foiled.” The Palimpsest 41 (1960), pp. 73-77.