Shields Green
Shields Green, who also referred to himself as "Emperor", was, according to Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and a leader in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in October 1859. He had lived for almost two years in the house of Douglass, in Rochester, New York, and Douglass introduced him there to Brown.
Although Green survived the raid unwounded, he was tried, convicted, and executed by hanging on December 16, 1859, together with three other raiders. All the trials and executions took place in Charles Town, West Virginia, county seat of Jefferson County. At John Brown's execution two weeks prior, very few spectators were permitted, for security reasons. Now there were no restrictions, the judge wanted the executions to be seen by the public, and there were 1,600 spectators. At the time, legal as well as illegal hangings were entertainment.
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 with rare pathos". In an article on courageous negroes who revolted he is mentioned alongside Douglass himself and Haitian leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines. 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. Floyd calls him a martyr.
Lack of information about Green
Information about Green is fragmentary and inconsistent. As with Nat Turner, there is a single source that everyone has used, Frederick Douglass, yet the reliability of that source has been questioned by Louis DeCaro, author of the only book on Green.Of the seven men who were tried, convicted, and executed after the raid—five white and two Black—less information is available about Green than about any of the others. He was a good shot, according to two separate eyewitnesses; he used his rifle and revolver "rapidly and diligently", according to another. But he was the most illiterate of the raiders—"very illiterate" as the Richmond Dispatch put it—although one newspaper reports him reading the Bible. He neither wrote nor received letters during his two months in the Jefferson County jail. No one visited him, or even tried to; there was no one to bury his body. The press and the legal system were far more concerned about the white prisoners than about the Blacks. The other Black prisoner, John Copeland, was a fountain of information, in comparison, and his skin was much lighter, which at the time gave him more credibility than Green. Although we have good evidence that Green had at least one son, in South Carolina, he kept this a secret and so far as we know had no contact with him. Of the five Black members of John Brown's raiders, Green was the only one of whom, in 2009, no descendants could be located.
"A man of few words", according to Douglass; there was no particular attempt to extract information from him by either the press or the legal system. They were far more interested in the white prisoners; Cook, in his published confession, seldom refers to "negroes", and never by name. Of the five Black members of Brown's party, Green is the only one of whom there is no daguerrotype image, although we have sketches by four different artists, including one of him alone, published for the first time in 2020. Copeland supplied all the information the press or legal system felt was needed from the Blacks of the party. "Copeland is an intelligent negro", wrote one who visited all the prisoners in jail in November. He does not say that about Green, who he visits next, implying that Green is less intelligent. He continues:
Green's life is in essence divided into two parts: before Douglass and after Douglass. He enters written history when he started living in Douglass's house, in Rochester, New York, about two years before Brown's raid. Douglass gives us essential information—were it not for him, we would not know that Green was an escaped slave.
But one interviewer considered Green as "not much inferior to Fred. Douglass" in education, and a Virginia physician, who believed Green showed no evidence of education, nevertheless added that he was "said to be finely educated." He was particularly abused in cross-examination by Prosecutor Andrew Hunter, and although his legal testimony was minimal, legal historian Steven Lubet believes that it "is therefore entirely possible, or even likely, that Judge Parker, himself a slave owner, did not allow the black prisoners any meaningful occasion to speak at sentencing." As a result of these circumstances, we have very little information about Green, and writers on John Brown's raiders say little or nothing on him.
Physical appearance
As was usual at the time, Green's skin color was commented on: he was "a negro of the blackest hue", "a black negro", "a full blooded negro," "a regular out-and-out tar-colored darkey." At that time, those of darker skin color, or "more African blood", were considered by whites to be inferior, less civilized than those with lighter brown skin, "mulattoes", usually the result of rape of female slaves by their white owners. In part because of his skin color, and in part because of his fighting skill, Green was "the most despised of Brown's captured men". "Of all the raiders to stand trial in Charlestown, Shields Green was the most notably harangued, maligned, and browbeaten by the vindictive prosecuting attorney—the harshest words being reserved for the darkest of the Harper's Ferry raiders."His hair was short and curly.
He was described as "small in stature and very active in his movements". "He had rather a good countenance, and a sharp, intelligent look." James Monroe described his as "a fine, athletic figure".
Hinton says Green had "huge feet", but he never saw Green and there is no known source for this detail. He also says Green had "a Congo face", apparently a reference to his dark skin color.
Names
Emperor
According to Douglass, living at his house when Brown visited was a "colored man who called himself by different names—sometimes 'Emperor', at other times, 'Shields Green'". On a business card he had printed in Rochester, New York, in 1858, Green referred to himself as "Shield Emperor."The other rebels also referred to him as "Emperor". The meaning of or reason for the nickname of Emperor is unknown. Sometimes writers speculate that this may reflect some status among the African people he was supposedly kidnapped from, or his ancestry from African royalty. However appealing, there is no evidence to support these hypotheses. Green grew up in Charleston, South Carolina. The nickname may reflect his status as leader among other Blacks. In harmony with this is a link between the name and Green's bearing: "very officious..., evidently conscious of his own great importance in the enterprise". To the hostages he was "very impudent"; he told a hostage to "shut up". "He was very insulting to Brown's prisoners, constantly presenting his rifle and threatening to shoot some of them."
Sometimes he is referred to in the press only as Emperor: "The negro, Emperor, is the only one among them who has a Bible, except old Brown". "The negro called 'Emperor of New York' taken prisoner is said to be the black man who was upon the stage with Douglass the night he lectured in this place ."
Esau Brown
It is sometimes found in modern presentations of Green that his real name was Esau Brown. The only evidence for this is a single newspaper article of 1861. But according to Louis A. DeCaro, Jr., author of The Untold Story of Shields Green, the only book thus far on his life, so far as is known Green never used the name Esau Brown, nor was it ever used by any of his Harpers Ferry associates. Frederick Douglass never referred to him by that name, nor is it found in documents concerning his trial and execution. The name never appears in any of the numerous newspaper reports of 1859. DeCaro concludes that it is "doubtful" that this single mention is correct. It may simply be a mishearing of "Emperor".Green's speech
Like other aspects of Green's life, the evidence about his speech is also somewhat contradictory.In the first place, Green had no problem with understanding speech. He was present at the lengthy Brown-Douglass meeting in Chambersburg, and there is no comment that Green had any trouble understanding it. Nor is there such a comment anywhere else. He was not hard to talk to.
However, Green was "a man of few words, and his speech was singularly broken", as Douglass put it. DeCaro suggests he may have had a speech defect. Douglass did not come to Chambersburg with the intent of speaking publicly, but local Blacks recognized him and asked him to talk. He gave an impromptu lecture in Franklin Hall on what he said to them was his only topic, slavery. On Saturday, August 20, before meeting with Brown. Green, called "Emperor of New York", was "upon the stage with Douglass".
In a reminiscence in later life, John Brown's daughter Anne Brown Adams recalled an incident that took place when she and her sister-in-law, Martha, were being sent home to New York shortly before the raid. According to Anne, this man of few words felt moved to deliver "a farewell speech," which she called "the greatest conglomeration of all the big words in the dictionary, and out, that was ever piled up." According to Anne, even fellow raider Osborne Anderson jested that "God himself could not understand that". Knowledge of big words, however, does not mean literacy, as DeCaro supposes. High-faluting words were used constantly in political speeches, of which there were many more than today. Brown and Douglass alone used plenty of them.
On another occasion, Anne said that Green was "a perfect rattlebrain in talk; he used to annoy me very much, coming downstairs so often. He came near betraying and upsetting the whole business, by his careless letting a neighbor woman see him."
We have a number of sentences reported that Green said in different contexts. Aside from the attempt of Douglass, and Douglass alone, to reproduce a rural or uneducated pronunciation, the sentences are adequate, even eloquent:
- "Oh, what a poor fool I am!" said Green to his companion on the way. "I had got away out of slavery, and here I have got back into the eagle's claw again!"
- "Death from the hands of the law for no offense save for believing in liberty for myself and my race, would not be a degradation."