The Heyward Shepherd monument is a monument in
Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
Harpers Ferry is a historic town in Jefferson County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 269 at the 2020 United States census. Situated at the confluence of the Potomac River, Potomac and Shenandoah River, Shenandoah Rivers in the ...
, dedicated in 1931. It commemorates Heyward Shepherd (1825 – October 17, 1859), a
free black man who was the first person killed during
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort by abolitionist John Brown, from October 16th to 18th, 1859, to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (since 1863, We ...
.
In 1918, the all-Black
Storer College
Storer College was a historically Black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put i ...
dedicated a plaque on its campus celebrating John Brown's raid. The
United Daughters of the Confederacy
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, a ...
(UDC) were offended by this positive depiction of Brown and commissioned the Heyward Shepherd monument to discredit Brown's positive image and promote the "faithful slave" as a role model for Blacks. The monument misrepresented the circumstances of Shepherd's death to imply that he consciously opposed John Brown's plan to spark a slave rebellion; in reality, Shepherd was not aware of the plan and believed he was dealing with robbers. The inscription praises the "faithfulness of thousands of negroes" to the
Confederacy during the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. The idea of the "faithful slave" was an important component of the "
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, known simply as the Lost Cause, is an American pseudohistory, pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that argues the cause of the Confederate States of America, Confederate States during the America ...
", a
pseudohistorical
Pseudohistory is a form of pseudoscholarship that attempts to distort or misrepresent the historical record, often by employing methods resembling those used in scholarly historical research. The related term cryptohistory is applied to pseudoh ...
myth that the cause of the Confederacy was justified and not centered on slavery.
The Heyward Shepherd monument was one of many erected by the UDC to help popularize the Lost Cause myth.
Although the monument was completed before 1923, it was not installed immediately because local White leaders feared that it would provoke interracial animosity. The UDC eventually agreed to change the design to satisfy White leaders' concerns, and the memorial was dedicated in 1931. Despite the changes, the monument was strongly opposed by the
NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
, the Black press, and the local Black community. The NAACP responded by creating a new tablet that was even stronger in its support for John Brown. The Heyward Shepherd monument continued to be controversial. The
National Park Service
The National Park Service (NPS) is an List of federal agencies in the United States, agency of the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government, within the US Department of the Interior. The service manages all List ...
(NPS) designed a series of interpretative signs to place the monument in historical context, and from 1981 to 1995 kept it covered in plywood to prevent vandalism.
[ As of 2022, the monument remains on display accompanied by an interpretative sign.
]
Historical context
Black people's response to John Brown
:''See also John Brown's raiders#Black participation''
The monument was intended to publicize the Lost Cause
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy, known simply as the Lost Cause, is an American pseudohistorical and historical negationist myth that argues the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not cente ...
allegation that the enslaved were happy and did not want freedom; the UDC had a "Faithful Slave Memorial Committee". However, the grand jury Bill of Indictment lists 11 Black enslaved men who were allegedly incited to revolt by the accused. One was locked up in the Charles Town jail together with Brown, Green, and the others. The owners of two submitted claims for their losses. Some slaves were observed with weapons inside the Arsenal. The story that Washington and Allstadt's slaves were there only because they were forced to be there is what the slaves had said, after Brown's raid had failed, and their owners wanted to believe that.
A different view is provided by Osborne Perry Anderson, the only Black in Brown's party who escaped:
However, the official view, in the reports of the Virginians Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee
Robert Edward Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870) was a general officers in the Confederate States Army, Confederate general during the American Civil War, who was appointed the General in Chief of the Armies of the Confederate ...
and Governor Henry A. Wise
Henry Alexander Wise (December 3, 1806 – September 12, 1876) was an American attorney, diplomat, politician and slave owner from Virginia. As the 33rd Governor of Virginia, Wise served as a significant figure on the path to the American Civil ...
, was that no Blacks participated voluntarily at all. Lee's report did not become public until the report of the Senate Select Committee investigating the incident, over six months later. But Wise's views were widely known, as he stated them clearly in speeches, which appeared in many newspapers.
There is no evidence that Shepherd was opposed to John Brown John Brown most often refers to:
*John Brown (abolitionist) (1800–1859), American who led an anti-slavery raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859
John Brown or Johnny Brown may also refer to:
Academia
* John Brown (educator) (1763–1842), Ir ...
's plan to end American slavery
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865, predominantly in the South. Sl ...
, or even that he had heard of it. He thought he was dealing with robbers. Nevertheless, the monument was intended to be a reply to Blacks' glorification of Brown, in whose honor Storer College
Storer College was a historically Black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put i ...
had been established in Harpers Ferry; the college placed a plaque on the Armory in 1918.[ There was no better place, from the UDC's point of view, for a monument to the "happy slave" than Harpers Ferry.
]
Haywood Shepherd
Haywood Shepherd was a Black man; according to one source he was born free, but another source says that he had been the property of station master Fontaine Beckham. He was over 6 feet (180 cm) in height, and lived in Winchester, Virginia
Winchester is the northwesternmost Administrative divisions of Virginia#Independent cities, independent city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It is the county seat of Frederick County, Virginia, Frederi ...
, about southwest of Harpers Ferry, which two communities were served by the Winchester and Potomac rail line. He owned a small house there, had a wife and five children, according to the 1860 census, and had money in the bank.[
He had worked for nearly twenty years as a porter or baggage handler with the ]Baltimore and Ohio Railroad
The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was the oldest railroads in North America, oldest railroad in the United States and the first steam engine, steam-operated common carrier. Construction of the line began in 1828, and it operated as B&O from 1830 ...
, whose trains went back and forth through Harpers Ferry. In Harpers Ferry was the first interline rail junction in the country: there was frequently baggage or freight to move to or from the trains of the Winchester and Potomac Railroad, whose northern terminus was the Harpers Ferry station. The stationmaster was Fontaine Beckham, the popular mayor of Harpers Ferry; when he was absent, Shepherd was in charge of the station. Beckham, who also was killed, "liked him very much."
What happened, as described by Shepherd to the physician who treated him, John D. Starry, was "that he had been out on the railroad bridge looking for a watchman who was missing, and he had been ordered to halt by some men who were there, and, instead of doing that, he turned to go back to the office, and as he turned they shot him in the back." He rejected his assaulters' claim that this was to begin a slave rebellion. He thought they were robbers and refused to keep quiet as they requested.[
A bill was introduced into the Virginia Legislature to provide a pension for his widow Sarah. His wife and children moved to Washington, D.C.][
He was buried in the Winchester–Fairfax Colored Cemetery, on what is today Route 11, with "honors of war by the military companies of the town, accompanied by the mayor and other citizens." However, in 1932 no one could find his grave.]
Subsequently, Winchester's Old Colored Cemetery has been paved over and the location used for parking. It was located at current North East Lane and Woodstock Lane, near .
Monuments
There has been contention throughout the 20th century as to what plaque, if any, should be displayed next to the UDC's memorial. "Today the Heyward Shepherd Memorial stands not as a representative of a community's collective remembrance, but rather as a testament to the struggle between Southern Whites and African Americans to write their respective memories of the raid into the historical landscape."[
]
1918 plaque to Brown
The origin of the monument to the "faithful slave" is the monument to Brown, posted on the original building, the "firehouse," which had been moved to the campus of Storer College
Storer College was a historically Black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put i ...
:
THAT THIS NATION MIGHT HAVE
A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM
THAT SLAVERY SHOULD BE REMOVED
FOREVER FROM AMERICAN SOIL
JOHN BROWN
AND HIS 21 MEN GAVE THEIR
LIVES
TO COMMEMORATE THEIR
HEROISM THIS TABLET IS
PLACED ON THIS BUILDING
WHICH HAS SINCE BEEN
KNOWN AS
JOHN BROWN'S FORT
BY THE
ALUMNI OF STORER COLLEGE
1918
1931 monument
In 1931, after opposition since it had been proposed in 1920,[ what was called at the time the Faithful Slave Memorial] was erected by the Sons of Confederate Veterans
The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is an American neo-Confederate nonprofit organization of male descendants of Confederate soldiers that commemorates these ancestors, funds and dedicates monuments to them, and promotes the pseudohisto ...
and the United Daughters of the Confederacy
The United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) is an American neo-Confederate hereditary association for female descendants of Confederate Civil War soldiers engaging in the commemoration of these ancestors, the funding of monuments to them, a ...
. The text of the granite monument reads: On the night of October 16, 1859, Heyward Shepherd, an industrious and respected colored freeman, was mortally wounded by John Brown's raiders. In pursuance of his duties as an employee of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, he became the first victim of this attempted insurrection.
This boulder is erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of Confederate Veterans as a memorial to Heyward Shepherd, exemplifying the character and faithfulness of thousands of negros who, under many temptations throughout subsequent years of war, so conducted themselves that no stain was left upon a record which is the peculiar heritage of the American people, and an everlasting tribute to the best in both races.
Although he had objected to the original 1920 proposal as provocative of "unpleasant racial feeling"—there was a Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
march a year later—Storer College president Henry T. MacDonald gave the opening address, and the college chorus performed.[ A "distinguished colored clergyman" gave the benediction.
]
1932 plaque
The monument was immediately challenged by many as perpetuating the "happy slave" concept of slavery as a justification for the practice.
The NAACP
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans by a group including W. E. B. Du&nbs ...
responded by preparing a plaque, which they called "The Great Tablet",[ to be displayed at ]Storer College
Storer College was a historically Black college in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, that operated from 1867 to 1955. A national icon for Black Americans, in the town where the 'end of American slavery began', as Frederick Douglass famously put i ...
in Harpers Ferry, where the firehouse used by John Brown as a fort had been moved. The text on the plaque, replying to the "faithful slave" allegation that Virginia's happy slaves did not want freedom, states that seven "slaves and sons of slaves" fought with Brown, who was "crucified". It was written by W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois ( ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, socialist, historian, and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist.
Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relativel ...
, author of a biography of John Brown and NAACP cofounder. Henry T. McDonald, the white president of Storer, who had participated in the UDC's 1931 ceremony, refused to allow the plaque to be mounted, because he found it "too militant".
In 2006, 74 years later, the plaque was finally given a public place, but a remote one: on the former Storer College grounds, at the Fort's former location. Tourist guides largely ignore it.[ The plaque reads:
]
2010 picture of the plaque
at its current location
Close-up photo
1955 plaque
A plaque to contextualize the original 1931 monument was placed in 1955 by the National Park Service. The text of the plaque read:
John Brown's raid on the armory at Harpers Ferry caused the death of four townspeople. One of those who died in the fighting was Heyward Shepherd, a railroad baggagemaster and a free black. Although the true identity of his assailant is uncertain, Shepherd soon became a symbol of the "faithful servant" among those who deplored Brown's action against the traditional southern way of life. The monument, placed here in 1931, reflects those traditional views.
The monument was in storage from 1976 to 1980 and then shrouded in plywood, supposedly to protect it from vandalism, until 1995.[
]
1995 plaque
Another plaque was installed near the 1931 monument by the National Park Service, to place the monument in context. It reads: On October 17, 1859, abolitionist John Brown attacked Harpers Ferry to launch a war against slavery. Heyward Shepherd, a free African-American railroad baggage master, was shot and killed by Brown's men shortly after midnight. Seventy-two years later, on October 10, 1931, a crowd estimated to 300 whites and 100 blacks gathered to unveil and dedicate the Shepherd Monument. During the ceremony, voices rose to praise and denounce the monument. Conceived around the turn of the century, the monument endured controversy. In 1905, the United Daughters of the Confederacy stated that erecting the monument would influence for good the present and coming generations, and prove that the people of the South who owned slaves valued and respected their good qualities as no one else ever did or will do.
"Also on the wayside he 1995 plaqueis a section titled 'Another Perspective.' It is the same response to the Shepherd Memorial that Du Bois wrote in 1932 and hoped to have inscribed on the John Brown Fort".[A photo of the plaque, including "Another Perspective," is at ]
See also
* Loyal slaves monument
The loyal slaves monument (or faithful slaves monument; it does not have a formal proper name) is an 1896 monument in Confederate Park in Fort Mill, South Carolina, dedicated to the proposition that slaves were loyal and gladly helpful to the Conf ...
Notes
References
Media
*
*
Further reading (most recent first)
*
*
*
*
* Hayes, Dianne. "NAACP Retraces History at Harpers Ferry." Diverse: Issues in Higher Education 23, no. 13 (August 10, 2006): 17.
* Shackel, Paul A. (2003). "Southern Heritage and the Faithful-Slave Monuments: The Heyward Shepherd Memorial". Ch. 3 of Shackel, Paul A. ''Memory in Black and White: Race, Commemoration, and the Post-Bellum Landscape''. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press.
*
*
*
* Andrews, Matthew Page
Heyward Shepherd, Victim of Violence. Address of Dedication at the Unveiling of the Heyward Shepherd Monument, at Harpers Ferry, October 10, 1931
arpers Ferry, W. Va.? Published under the auspices of the Heyward Shepherd Memorial Association, 1931.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shepherd, Heyward
African-American-related controversies
Confederate States of America monuments and memorials in West Virginia
Monuments and memorials to American slaves
Jefferson County, West Virginia, in the American Civil War
John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry
Free Negroes
Historical controversies
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
History of slavery in West Virginia
Buildings and structures in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia
Tourist attractions in Jefferson County, West Virginia
1931 establishments in West Virginia
United Daughters of the Confederacy monuments and memorials
Buildings and structures completed in 1931
Monuments and memorials to John Brown (abolitionist)