62 Facts About Shields Green

1.

Shields Green had lived for almost two years in the house of Douglass, in Rochester, New York, and Douglass introduced him there to Brown.

2.

Shields Green was the only one from the raid on Harpers Ferry that Frederick Douglass mentioned alongside iconic rebels Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey; Douglass "eulogized [him] with rare pathos".

3.

In Silas X Floyd's Floyd's Flowers, or Duty and Beauty for Colored Children, Green is a Black hero like Crispus Attucks, Toussaint l'Ouverture, or Benjamin Banneker.

4.

Shields Green was a good shot, according to two separate eyewitnesses; he used his rifle and revolver "rapidly and diligently", according to another.

5.

Shields Green neither wrote nor received letters during his two months in the Jefferson County jail.

6.

Shields Green had never heard that force was to be used against the whites, only persuasion with the negroes.

7.

Shields Green was not allowed to write or communicate with anyone except Brown's men.

8.

Shields Green stated that a number of the men were similarly restricted.

9.

Shields Green said he knew nothing of Fred Douglass in the Harper's Ferry matter; that all the proceedings were kept from him; that he would have left Brown before the attack if he could have done so.

10.

Shields Green said running off slaves is quite unprofitable, and recommended everybody not to attempt it hereafter.

11.

Shields Green [Cook] fully corroborated the statement made by Green, the negro, in reference to the watch that was kept on a part of the men who were at Brown's house.

12.

Shields Green said that that portion of them who were kept upstairs did not know anything of the intentions of Brown until 11 o'clock on the Sunday morning before Harper's Ferry was taken.

13.

Shields Green denied, with feeling, that he ever came to Harper's Ferry as a spy.

14.

Shields Green's life is in essence divided into two parts: before Douglass and after Douglass.

15.

Shields Green enters written history when he started living in Douglass's house, in Rochester, New York, about two years before Brown's raid.

16.

Douglass" in education, and a Virginia physician, who believed Shields Green showed no evidence of education, nevertheless added that he was "said to be finely educated.

17.

In part because of his skin color, and in part because of his fighting skill, Shields Green was "the most despised of Brown's captured men".

18.

Shields Green was described as "small in stature and very active in his movements".

19.

Hinton says Shields Green had "huge feet", but he never saw Shields Green and there is no known source for this detail.

20.

Shields Green says Green had "a Congo face", apparently a reference to his dark skin color.

21.

Shields Green was present at the lengthy Brown-Douglass meeting in Chambersburg, and there is no comment that Green had any trouble understanding it.

22.

However, Shields Green was "a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken", as Douglass put it.

23.

Shields Green gave an impromptu lecture in Franklin Hall on what he said to them was his only topic, slavery.

24.

Shields Green, called "Emperor of New York", was "upon the stage with Douglass".

25.

Shields Green came near betraying and upsetting the whole business, by his careless letting a neighbor woman see him.

26.

Once again, if reportage on the raid by Southern journalists lacks interviews with Shields Green, this is because Brown's men were largely overshadowed by Brown in general, and because the Black raiders were treated with even less regard than were the white raiders, and of the Black raiders, from any reporter's point of view Copeland was preferable.

27.

The situation regarding Shields Green is confusing and the pieces of evidence impossible to reconcile.

28.

The reference to Shields Green having lived in Oberlin is from Oberlin College professor James Monroe.

29.

Shields Green was a fugitive slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and had attested his love of liberty by escaping from slavery and making his way through many dangers to Rochester, where he had lived in my family, and where he met the man with whom he went to the scaffold.

30.

Shields Green met John Brown in Douglass's house; Brown stayed in Douglass's house at the same time, for weeks, so Brown had ample opportunities to get to know him.

31.

Presumably Shields Green came to Rochester because he was thinking of emigrating to Canada, as most Blacks entering Rochester were.

32.

Certainly preparing a business card, as Shields Green did, advertising his clothes cleaning and giving his address, means he felt to some extent secure.

33.

Shields Green was not one to shrink from hardships or dangers.

34.

Shields Green was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.

35.

Shields Green requested when in the Charles Town jail that he have as few visitors as possible.

36.

Shields Green was the head and front of all the negro rescues at Harrisburg, for several years past, a Journeyman barber by trade.

37.

Shields Green was a fugitive slave, who had made his escape from Charleston; a state from which a slave found it no easy matter to run away.

38.

Shields Green was a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken; but his courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character.

39.

John Brown saw at once what 'stuff' Shields Green was made of, and confided to him his plans and purposes.

40.

Shields Green easily believed in Brown, and promised to go with him whenever he should be ready to move.

41.

Shields Green was similarly defiant at an encounter with a White while travelling from Hagerstown to the Kennedy farm.

42.

Shields Green did this, and with a touch of ferocity, too, when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green, till the crowd in and around the court-house blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race, and both as lighter and prisoner showed in rude, but vigorous manner, his utter disdain of men who sold mothers, dealt in men, bred children for sale, making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land.

43.

Anderson wrote that 'Newby was a brave fellow' and when he was shot through the head by the trooper who took advantage of a mutual withdrawal, 'his death was promptly avenged by Shields Green,' who raised his rifle in an instant and 'brought down the cowardly murderer.

44.

Shields Green [Hunter] did this, and with a touch of ferocity, too, when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green, till the crowd in and around the courthouse blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race, and both as fighter and prisoner showed in rude, but vigorous manner, his utter disdain of men who sold mothers, dealt in men, bred children for sale, making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land.

45.

Shields Green had left a boy in slavery; his wife dying before he made his escape.

46.

Shields Green first met John Brown at the house of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass in Rochester, where Shields Green was living; Brown spent some weeks there, working on his Provisional Constitution from morning to night.

47.

Brown, who knew "the stuff Shields Green was made of", as Douglass put it, had asked Douglass to bring Shields Green with him.

48.

Douglass returned to Rochester but Shields Green refused to accompany him.

49.

Shields Green describes Green as "more mindful and alert" than he was himself, spotting Whites first, telling Owen to remove his too visible white summer coat and put on Green's black cloak instead.

50.

From Chambersburg to Hagerstown, Maryland, the trip was by wagon, and from there Owen and Shields Green traveled on foot at night, across cornfields and thinly-wooded areas.

51.

Owen tells us that Shields Green had been brought up in the city, and was very much out of his element in the Maryland countryside.

52.

Shields Green was much disturbed at re-entering a slave state, fearing his capture.

53.

Shields Green had heard there would be a street parade of a "colored military company" named the Frank Johnson Guards, and he found that the situation in Philadelphia was worse than he had feared.

54.

Shields Green was with Dangerfield Newby and Osborne Anderson at the Arsenal during the raid; Osborne said that Shields Green immediately avenged Newby's death.

55.

Shields Green's case was called first, and the prosecution's evidence was overwhelming.

56.

Washington testified that Shields Green had fired shots at the surrounding militia, but that was not his worst offense.

57.

Stuart, made their final assault on Brown's position at the armory, Shields Green evidently threw away his arms and tried to lose himself among the local slaves.

58.

The spectators gasped, but he argued successfully that since Blacks, including Shields Green, were not citizens of the United States according to that ruling, they could not commit treason.

59.

Shields Green was thoroughly dressed down by prosecuting attorney Hunter:.

60.

Mr Hunter pursued his answering argument quietly, until he reached this point, and then, lifting himself to his full height, and compressing his fine features to unwanted sternness, he turned upon the negro, and with a rapidity that certainly exhibited a wonderful acquaintance with the vocabulary of invective, hurled for a while incessant denunciation upon the guilty passion which he assumed to have inspired Shields Green to join the expedition.

61.

Shields Green did not say a word during the trial, according to one source, but court records do not support this: in response to the same question John Brown was asked, if he had anything to say before sentencing, his reply was "nothing but what he had before said", whereas his cellmate John Copeland remained mute.

62.

Shields Green was unable to retrieve Copeland's body, as the medical students hid the corpse and threatened him with violence if he continued his quest.