MONTPELIER - In Arlington, church bells rang throughout the day on Dec. 2, 1859, and for one hour in Peacham, starting at 11 a.m., as abolitionist John Brown was hanged in a field in far-off Charles Town, Va.

"We don't know the full extent of the hanging in Vermont. We do know in Arlington, (Almera Hawley Canfield) was firmly opposed to slavery, and had her grandsons ring the bells in the Episcopal church all day long," said Civil War historian and preservationist Howard Coffin. "One of the grandsons (later) said he couldn't go into Arlington without hearing that long, long tolling."

And in Peacham, Coffin said, abolitionist Leonard Johnson rang the bell at the Congregationalist church as the execution took place.

"Not all the people of Peacham were pleased by that," said Coffin, who has written several Vermont Civil War books, including "Full Duty." He said Johnson had two daughters who went south into Union-occupied areas of North Carolina and Georgia to teach black students. "One of them died down there."

Coffin has long been aware that Vermonters' historic "tradition of freedom," with this state the first to prohibit slavery in its constitution, led to broad support for the abolitionist movement. In addition, Brown spent a great deal of time in Vergennes as he regularly traveled from his home in North Elba, N.Y. - near Lake Placid - to shop.

In fact, Brown's corpse stopped one night at the Rutland depot as his boxed coffin made its way north to his North Elba homestead; his wife, Mary Ann Day, stayed at the Bardwell House.

"Word got out and people went over and looked" at the box containing the remains of the famous - or infamous in the view of some - abolitionist, Coffin said. Souvenir hunters used pocket knives to cut off pieces of the outer box containing the coffin, he said.

The journey then continued on to Vergennes, where Brown's body would be sent across Lake Champlain on a ferry, and on to North Elba.

"The wagon that carried the casket was driven by a 14-year-old Vergennes boy, who four years later would fight and be wounded at Gettysburg," Coffin said. "Brown would have liked that."

Joshua Young, the minister at Burlington's Unitarian church at that time and connected to the Underground Railroad, traveled to Vergennes to cross to the funeral, but was delayed by a storm. Eventually the moon broke out of the clouds, creating what Young described as "a bridge of silver," and he was ferried to New York to preside over Brown's funeral - only to return to Burlington and be fired from his job.

"Not everybody was anti-slavery," Coffin said.

Coffin can recount these stories from easy memory. He said he is excited that the 150th anniversary of the war - signaled by the April 12, 1861, firing on South Carolina's Fort Sumter by Confederate forces - is set to be recognized in 2011; discussions are beginning now about events to be held in Vermont to honor the occasion.

It's clear that Coffin also is a fan of Brown, who is a controversial figure because unlike pacifist abolitionists, he promoted armed insurrections that, in the case of a Kansas campaign in 1856, left five pro-slavery people dead. Brown was hanged after an ultimately failed attempt to seize a federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Va., (now West Virginia) that left seven dead.

"The day he's hanged, he leaves a note to his jailer saying he believes 'that the crimes of this guilty land will not be purged away but with blood.' He predicts the war," Coffin said. And historians generally believe the hanging of Brown prompted the South to begin setting up militias, inevitably leading to the U.S. Civil War.

"He goes to his death very calmly. He rides on a wagon, seated on his casket, about a mile. He remarks on the beauty of the countryside," Coffin recounted of the execution. "I've sat in that wagon. I've been to the site of the execution - it's now in the backyard of somebody's house."



A new connection

What Coffin only discovered six weeks ago, however, was that Brown made a visit to Cavendish in 1857, probably in hopes of securing some of the $20,000 the Vermont Legislature had approved to support anti-slavery settlements in Kansas. Although Vermont's governor at that time, Ryland Fletcher, was a devout abolitionist, he turned down Brown's request for some of the money at the Cavendish meeting.

Coffin tripped across a newspaper recounting of the visit in a microfilmed copy of the Rutland Herald from May 7, 1869.

The writer, who is not identified, described how Brown's physical appearance on that visit differed from the bearded photographs taken around the time of the Harpers Ferry raid.

"... Hair closely cut, beard neatly shaven, tight, stiff stock around his neck, no collar, or dickey, closely fitting swallow-tailed coat ..." the newspaper described. "As soon as it was known that 'John Brown' was stopping in our village, all manifested a desire to see and hear the man ... Notice was given that he would meet the people at the school house, and at the appointed hour an audience assembled.

"We introduced the modest and unassuming old man ... He went on and told the tale of his struggles with the despotism of slavery ... We little thought then how soon 'John Brown's body' would be mouldering in the ground, but his soul was even at that hour 'marching on.'"

"I thought, 'Wow,' Coffin said of the article's discovery. "It's an authentic account, there's no question because you couldn't make this stuff up. It's somebody in Cavendish who was working for the Herald."

Brown was raising money all over New England at that time. "I'm sure he had Harpers Ferry in mind then," Coffin said. "You can see what a celebrity he is here. People apparently flocked to see him, to meet him."

Coffin is so intrigued with Brown that he recalls attending a hockey game in Lake Placid in the early 1990s and discovering that Brown's body was buried nearby. After the game, around midnight, he set off for the historic site and, using a flashlight, walked through the snow to the homestead

"There's a boulder in the front yard, and he's buried beside that," Coffin said. As he was walking back to his car, he came up behind a statue of Brown holding the hand of a young black man. In the sky over the statue was the Big Dipper - the "drinking gourd" that slaves seeking freedom were told to follow in seeking Canada.

"It was one of the great moments in my Civil War research," Coffin said. "It was amazing. I've been back there and back there and back there ever since."

sue.allen@timesargus.com