page_title: Heyward Shepherd monument
section_title: Heyward Shepherd
hierarchical_section_title: Heyward Shepherd monument / Heyward Shepherd
caption_attribution_description: English: This is from a 1906 book by Elijah Avey, The Capture and Execution of John Brown. The author says he was an eyewitness. It is not known if it was the author who himself made the drawing.
context_page_description: The Heyward Shepherd monument, in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, was erected in 1931, after decades of controversy, by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and, to a lesser extent, by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It commemorates Heyward Shepherd, a free black man, who was the first person killed during John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.
  The monument was intended to publicize the Lost Cause allegation that the enslaved were happy and did not want freedom; the UDC had a "Faithful Slave Memorial Committee". In fact, few slaves rebelled when John Brown gave them the opportunity; modern scholarship says that the illiterate slaves had never heard of John Brown. They were dumbfounde and incredulous at a white man offering them wespons and encouraging them to escape, which they knew would bring severe punishment if they were caught, as most fugitive slaves were.
  There is no evidence that Shepherd was born a slave or that he was opposed to John Brown's attempt to end American slavery, or even that he had heard of it.
context_section_description: Heyward Shepherd was a free black man who lived in Winchester, Virginia, on the rail line about 30 miles (48 km) west of Harpers Ferry. He owned a small house there, and had a wife and five children, according to the 1860 census. "It is unclear whether Shepherd was born a free man or was an emancipated slave because various anecdotal references present different opinions on that subject." While presenting him as the "happy slave," the thought of confirming his status never crossed the Daughters' minds.
  He had worked for "ten or twelve years" as a porter or baggage handler with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, whose trains went back and forth through Harpers Ferry, an important rail junction. The stationmaster was Fontaine Beckham, the 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." That was enlarged by the UDC, without documentary foundation, into his rejection of John Brown and an attempt to warn the whites of Harpers Ferry.
  He was buried in the Winchester–Fairfax Colored Cemetery without a grave marker. He was "accorded public honors by the state of Virginia, his funeral being attended by a detachment of the Virginia State militia."
caption: This is from a 1906 book by Elijah Avey, The Capture and Execution of John Brown. The author says that he was an eyewitness. It is not known if it was the author who made the drawing.
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