Private Luke Quinn – The Unlikely Celebrity of Harpers Ferry

When Private Luke Quinn arrived in Harpers Ferry, Virginia on October 18, 1859 he likely did not imagine that he’d never leave. He certainly could not have imagined that he’d be popularized in the small town with a namesake pub, an interesting monument and an unrestful sleep in St. Peter’s Cemetery. Here’s a quick look at the lively afterlife of the most unlikely celebrity of John Brown’s Raid…

Little is known about Private Luke Quinn prior to his untimely death. From his military records we know that he was born in Ireland in 1835 and arrived in the United States with his parents in 1844. He worked as a common laborer until November 1855 when he enlisted for a term of four years as a private in the United States Marine Corps at Brooklyn, New York. He would train at the Marine Barracks in Washington, DC until September, 1856 when he was assigned to the frigate USS St. Lawrence. He served aboard the St. Lawrence and the USS Perry on expeditions to Brazil and Paraguay and arrived back at the DC barracks in May 1859, his term of enlistment nearing its end.

On October 17, 1859 Quinn was among the approximately 100 Marines dispatched to Harpers Ferry by President James Buchanan to quell a rumored insurrection at that place. The Marines arrived at the United States Armory at Harpers Ferry the following morning to find a band of raiders under the command of Captain John Brown of Bleeding Kansas fame. Brown and his men had arrived at the Ferry to seize a cache of weapons stored at the arsenal there and to liberate slaves from local slaveholders. Local militia companies, railroad workers and armory employees had cornered the raiders and their civilian hostages inside the armory engine house. After a final, unsuccessful attempt to engage Brown and negotiate a surrender, Colonel Robert E. Lee commanded the Marines to attack the engine house and quell the insurrectionists.

A group of Marines stormed the engine house, battering the heavy door with sledgehammers. Lieutenant Israel Green – tasked with leading the assault – espied a nearby ladder and ordered the Marines to use it as a battering ram. After a few blows the lower section of the door collapsed and Green gained entry into the dark, hazy engine house. Immediately behind Green entered Private Quinn. As Green recalled in 1885,

“The Marine who followed me into the aperture made by the ladder received a bullet in the abdomen, from which he died in a few minutes.”

Green couldn’t be certain but he believed it was John Brown who fired the fatal shot. Hostage John Allstadt likewise believed Brown to have fired the shot that killed Quinn. In testimony during the trial that followed the raid, Allstadt stated that…

“He [Brown] fired at the marines, and my opinion is that he killed that marine.”

On cross-examination Allstadt clarified that he could not definitively say it was Brown that fired the fatal shot, and that he [Quinn] “might have been killed by shots fired before the door was broken open.”

Private Quinn was one of two Marines injured during the assault on the engine house and was the only Marine fatality. He had less than five weeks left on his term of enlistment. In a letter written just three months following the raid, Father Michael A. Costello, pastor of St. Peter’s Catholic Church in Harpers Ferry, recalled the events…

“In the final attack on the insurgents two of the soldiers were wounded, one of them mortally. As both were Catholics I was summoned to attend them. As Private Luke Quin[n] fell, pierced through with a ball, his first exclamation was to Major Russel[l], of the United States Marines, who seeing him fall, went up to him. In pitiful accents he cried out “Oh! Major, I am gone, for the love of God will you send for the priest.” I administered to him the holy rites of the Church; he died that day, and was buried with military honours in the Catholic graveyard at this place.”

“As I passed the window at the Old Superintendent’s House, now used as an office, an acquaintance beckoned me to enter. I did so, and found there lying on the floor a marine who was mortally wounded. He was an Irishman named Quinn, a mere boy & his sufferings must have been great as his cries and screams made one’s flesh creep. A priest knelt beside him and like the friar in Marmion – “With unavailing cares, exhausted all the churches prayers” to soothe the dying soldier’s agony.”

Quinn’s remains were interred in an unmarked grave in St. Peter’s Cemetery in Harpers Ferry where they would remain for 68 years. In 1927 local physician Walter Dittmeyer, resident Loughlin Mater and Reverend John Curran undertook an effort to locate Quinn’s grave and provide a proper marker. The trio also enlisted longtime resident Thomas Boerley, whose father had been killed by one of Brown’s men during the raid. They identified the spot that oral tradition held as Quinn’s burial location and soon disinterred a partial skeleton, including a skull and fragments of the long bones. Brass buttons, bits of a greenish-blue uniform and a Catholic emblem gave the group reasonable certainty that they’d located Quinn’s grave. Pieces of the uniform were acquired by West Virginia historian and John Brown buff Boyd Stutler, who displayed the morbid artifacts at West Virginia University in 1955.

In 1931, the Holy Name Society of the Diocese of Richmond passed a resolution to erect a monument on Quinn’s grave. It took nearly a decade before the monument was dedicated on May 5, 1940, where it stands to this day. In 2012 a local Marine Corps League detachment rededicated the gravesite and installed a new marker and flagpole.

In 2009 a pub and eatery opened in a ca. 1830’s building along Potomac Street in Harpers Ferry with Private Quinn – who had died less than 500 feet away – as its namesake. Private Quinn’s Pub was a popular stop for hikers, tourists and residents until the devastating 2015 fire that swept the Harpers Ferry historic commercial district. The pub was heavily damaged during the fire and opted not to reopen – the restored building today houses Almost Heaven Pub and Grill.

For nearly a century Harper’s Ferry has worked – sometimes unconventionally – to keep alive the memory of Private Luke Quinn, an otherwise faceless soldier who was among the first of hundreds of thousands to follow in the years ahead.

Jon-Erik M. Gilot holds degrees from Bethany College and Kent State University. He has been involved in the fields of archives and preservation for more than a decade and today works as an archivist in Wheeling, West Virginia.

This is the USMC account of the Harper's Ferry action:

"AT ALL TINES READY.,.,;" HARPER'S FERRY AND THE tVIL WAR By Bernard C. Nalty "I must also ask to express...my entire commendation of the conduct of the detachment of Marines, who were at all times ready and prompt in the execution of any duty."

Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee from his report to the Adjutant GenerTof the Suppression ot John Brown'ajd,

Thus wrote one of America's foremost soldiers of the 19th Century in reporting Marine participation in the major armed outbreak foreshadowing the bitter Civil War. He also might have been describing the often times overlooked role of the United States Marines in the terrible months between Fort Sumter and Appomattox. Harper's Ferry can, therefore, be logically considered as a part of the Civil War saga of the Corps.

James Ewell Brown Stuart, First Lieutenant, U. S. Cavalry, was enjoying six months' leave from his frontier post at Fort Riley, Kansas rr1tory. Yet, the joys of coming home to Virginia had not made him forget that he was a cavalryman by profession. On the rainy morning of 17 October l89, he had ridden over the muddy streets of Washington to the offices of the War Department, and now, he sat waiting to speak with Secretary of War John B. Floyd. While the young lieutenant was rehearsing in his mind for the coming Interview, the Secretary himself was face to face with the spectre of a slave insurrection. (1)

John B. Floyd was a poor administrator, a failing which almost resulted in his removal from office;(2) but on this day there was no time for paper shuffling, Word had come by way of Baltimore that an insurrection had broken out at Harper's Ferry. A band of armed men had captured the United States arsenal there and was fomenting a slave rebellion. A native ot Virginia, the Secretary must have heard the oft-told tales of the Haitians' revolt against their French masters with all its barbarism. Nor had any son of the Old Dominion forgotten Nat Thrner'g Rebellion, a slave uprising

which occurred a generation before and claimed the lives of 50 whites in a single bloody night. (3)

Swinging into action, Floyd fired off a telegram to Fort Monroe; and by noon Captain Edward 0. C. Ord with iSO artillerymen was on his way toward Baltimore on the first leg ot the journey to Harper's Ferry.(L.) There was no question as to who would command operations against the insurgents. Floyd called for his chief clerk and set him to writing orders summoning to the War Department Brevet Colonel Robert E. Lee, then on leave at his estate, Arlington, just across the Potomac from the Capital.

Message in hand, the harassed aide came dashing'out of the office, only to halt when he spied the forgotten cavalry officer. Stuart, by now thoroughly bored, was easily persuaded to deliver the sealed envelope. Even as this message was speed1ng toward its destination, President James Buchanan called upon Secretary Floyd to move even faster, a demand which was to bring the Marine Corps into the picture. (5)

Since there were no troops nearer the scene of the uprising than those en route from Fort Monroe, Floyd was powerless to comply; but Secretary of the Navy Isaac Toucey quickly offered a solution to his dilemma. About noon, Charles W. Welsh, chief clerk of the Navy Department, came riding through the main gate of the Washington Navy Yard. He sought out First Lieutenant Israel Greene, temporarily in command of Marine Barracks, Washington, and asked how many Leathernecks were available for duty, Greene estimated that he could round up some 90 men from both his barracks and the small Navy Yard detachment. He then asked Welsh what was wrong. The civilian told him all he knew-- that the armory at Harper's Ferry had been seized by a group of abolitionists and that state and

Federal troops were already on the march.(6)

Mr. Welsh reported back to the Navy Department, and Secretary Toucey at once began drafting an order to John Harris, Colonel Commandant of the Corps. "Send all the available. marines at Head Quarters," he wrote, "under charge of suitable officers, by this evening's train of cars to Harpers Ferry to protect the public proerty at that place, which is endangered by a riotous outbreak. Once they arrived at their destination, the Leathernecks would be under the command of the senior Army officer present,(7) in this case, Colonel Lee.

As the senior line officer on duty at the Navy Yard, Israel Greene assumed the burden of organizing the expedition. Major William W. Russell, Paymaster of the Corps, was detailed to assist him; but Russell, a staff officer, could not exercise conmand over the force. Colonel Harris felt that the presence of a more mature person--Greene, after all, had only a dozen years' service to his credit——might prevent unnecessary bloodshed. (8) Working with the major, Greene saw to it that each of his 86 men had drawn ,nuskets,ball cartridges, and rations. Since no one knew for certain the strength or exact position of the insurgent force, two 3-inch howitzers and a number of shrapnel shells were made ready. At 1530, the Leathernecks clambered aboard a Baltimore and Ohio train and rattled off toward Harper's Ferry. (9)

While Secretary Toucey was busy alerting the Marines, Jeb Stuart had returned from Arlington with Colonel Lee. Once again the lieutenant waited in the Secretary's anteroom as Floyd outlined the crisis to Lee. There was no need to stress the savage implications of a slave uprising; for the colonel had been stationed at Fort Monroe when Nat Turner had put aside his hoe to take up the sword, and he well remembered the terror that followed. He recalled, too, how militia, regulars, and Marines from Norfolk had scoured the Virginia countryside before bringing Turner to bay deep in the vastness of Dismal Swamp. After receiving the latest intelligence from western Virginia, Lee was handed orders placing him in overall command of the effort to suppress the insurrection. (10)

Accompanied by Stuart, Floyd and Lee hurried to the White House where the colonel was given a proclamation of martial law to issue if he should see fit, In addition to the procla— mation, Lee acquired an aide. Certain that a fight of some sort was at hand, Stuart volunteered to accompany him to Harper's Ferry, and Lee accepted. Still in civilian clothes, the colonel hurried to the railroad station, but the Marines had already left. (11)

The next train to leave the National Capital was the Baltimore Express. At 1700, Lee arid Stuart boarded the train in the hope of catching up with the column at Relay House, a station near Baltimore where the troops had to change trains. They were too late, and the expedition rolled off toward its goal without its commanding officer. Lee then wired the stationmaster at Sandy Hook, Maryland, to hold the trainload of Leathernecks until he and his aide arrived, For the time being, all the two officers could do was wait.

Fortunately, they were not delayed for long. John W. Garrett, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, learned of Lee's plight and ordered a locomotive to Relay House. Aware that a few moments wasted might cost him his job, the engineer opened wide the throttle. At 2200, Lee arrived at Sandy Hook, on the Maryland side of the Potomac across the bridge from Harper's Ferry. Major Russell and Lieutenant Greene were waiting as the Army officers decended from the cab.(l2) Lee now learned the details of the insurrection.

It had happened so quickly. On the night of 16 October, at about 2230, 18 armed men, led by a farmer who called himself Isaac Smith--.some said he was "Old Osawatomie," John Brown of Kansas-padded across the covered, wooden railroad trestle leading into the town and made a prisoner of one of the bridge tenders. Next the raiders had strolled undetected through the darkness of the gates of the United States armory. They leveled their pistols at a startled watchman and quickly gained access to the buildings.

The leader of the band then sent out patrols to take hostages. Most prominent among the captives was Lewis W. Washington, a colonel on the staff of Governor Henry A. Wise of Virginia and the great-grandnephew of George Washington. His captors forced him to hand over a sword given the first President by Frederick the.Great or Prussia l3). During the nightmare that followed, this sword hung at the side of the man called Smith.

While the prisoners were being rounded up, the second bridge tender, Patrick Higgins, wandered out onto the span in search of his partner. In the darkness, he collided with two of the raiders who had been posted as guards. A single punch floored one of them, and as the other fired widly, Higgins sprinted back to town. The angry, red crease etched lightly across his scalp by a rifle bullet was proof enough that Harper's Ferry was under attack.

The raiders next showed their hand when the eastbound night express neared Harper's Ferry. Afraid that the bridge had been weakened, a railroad employee flagged the train to a halt short of the trestle. A party of trainmen walked out onto the span to Investigate but were driven back by a volley of rifle fire. Mortally wounded by the self-appointed liberators was Shephard Hayward, a freed slave. Until dawn, the raiders held the train at Harper's Ferry. Then the locomotive gingerly eased Its cars across the bridge, gathered momentum, and roared off toward Frederick City, Maryland. There, it halted while the conductor wired a garbled report of the insurrection to the railroad's main office in Baltimore. This news was relayed to the governors of Maryland and Virginia; militiamen were alerted and sent marching toward the embattled town. Next, a telegram was dispatched to the Secretary of War, and now, at last, Colonel Lee and the Marines had arrived on the scene. (l).i.)

To the colonel's experienced eye, the situation did not appear critical. Harper's Ferry swarmed with militia; and although the state troops were disorganized, ill-trained, some of them drunk, there was enough of them to prevent the raiders escaping Into the hills. Nor was there any point In posting the proclamation of martial law. There were too few Federal troops to patrol the streets, and the citizen soldiers who would have to assist them were perhaps the least orderly group in town. '4.

Since the situation was fairly well in hand, Colonel Lee hurried off a wire informing Captain Ord that his artillerymen, turned infantry, would not be needed at Harper's Ferry. They were to halt at Fort McHenry in Baltimore. (15) Learning that the militiamen, whatever their faults, had at least forced the insurgents to barricade themselves in a single small building on the armory grounds-- the engine house-- Lee decided to attack as quickly as possible. Because of the danger to the hostages, a night assault was out of the question, so the colonel, his aide, and the Marines crossed the river to await the dawn. (16)

About 2300 on the night of 17 October, Greene led his men across the covered bridge and into the armory yard to relieve the militia posted around the raider bastion. The insurgents had taken refuge In a stone building, about 30 by 35 feet, which housed the armory's fire fighting equipment. Three entrances, each separated from its neighbor by a stone abutment, pierced the front of the structure. Two of these were guarded by heavy, nail-studded, double doors, while on their left was an equally strong single door. (17) To assault a band of determined men, frontier guerrillas who had proven themselves to be deadly marksmen, would not be an easy task.

As the Marines moved out, Lee was busy laying his plans. First, he drafted a surrender ultimatum addressed to the person in command of the insurgents- -Lee was not yet certain that Brown was leading the raid-- to be delivered by Lieutenant Stuart' at the colonel's orders. Should the raiders refuse uncondition&1 surrender, there would be no bargaining with them. At a signal from Stuart, the assault party would batter down a door and pounce on the enemy with bayonet and rifle butt. There could be no shooting because of the danger to the hostages. (18) Selecting men to make the assault posed a touchy problem in federal—state rlationships. Since the uprtsing was directed mainly against the slave states, even though ederal property was involved, Lee offered the honor of spearheading the attack to the militia. The officer in charge of Maryland troops, who maintained that his only mission was to protect the townspeople, declined. He could see no reason for sacrificing Maryland lives to avenge an insult to a sister state; besides, Marines were paid for this kind of work. Nor was the Virginia militia colonel eager to erase the stain of insurrection from the honor of the Old Dominion; let the "mercenaries," as he called the Marines, do the job. The veteran Army officer, still clad In civilian clothes, then turned to Israel Greene splendid in his dress uniform. Would the Marines storm the engine house? Greene whipped off his cap and accepted with thanks. (19) At about 0630, Greene received his instructions. Twelve men were to form the storming party, with an equal number in reserve. In addition, a detail of three men, each of whom had been issued a heavy sledge harnmer,(20) was to accompany the assault party and batter down the center doors of the engine house. Twenty-seven Marines, with Greene and Russell at their head, gathered close to the engine house, but out of the insurgent's line of fire to await Stuart's signal.

Two thousand pairs of eyes were fixed on Jeb Stuart as he strode, bearing a flag of truce, toward the engine house to deliver Lee's ultimatum. Thnsely, the throng of spectators waited for the drama to unfold. Standing on a small rise in front of the makeshift fort was Robert E. Lee, looking every Inch an officer in spite of his grimy clothing and tired face. Near him, dressed as though for parade, were the blue-clad Marines.

Now, •Stuart halted before the building and called for "Mr. Smith." The center doors opened a few inches, There carbine In hand, stood the lean, fierce figure of old John Brown, the antislavery zealot who had caused so much bloodshed on the banks of Osawatomle Creek in Kansas. Stuart recognized him at once.

The lieutenant repeated Lee's demand for Immediate surrender, but Brown tried desperately to bargain, From Inside the building came the cries of the hostages, pleading that Lee cooperate with their captor. Satisfied that Brown would not listen to reason, Stuart spun aside, pressed his back against the abutment, and waved his hat, that gaudily plumed chapeau which would become his trademark during the Civil War. (21) Instantly the Marines sprang to the assault. Three of them flailed away with their sledge hammers; but the center doors, now slammed and bolted, held fast. Inside, Brown removed the historic sword from his belt, placed It reverently upon one of the fire carts, then joined the four raiders yet unwounded in trying to beat back the assault. From within the building caine the bold words of Lewis Washington. "Don't mind us," he shouted. "FireJ" Lee recognized the voice. "The old revolutionary blood does tell," was his quiet comment. (22)

Suddenly, the thudding hammers etopped. During the charge, Greene had seen a ladder lying near the engine house. Now, he ordered his men to snatch It up to use as a battering ram. Its second blow splintered the door, and the Leathernecks came spilling into the building just as Brown was reloading his weapon. (23)

Armed only with his light dress sword, Greene jumped from the cover of the abutment and bounded through the opening. Behind him came Major Russell, weaponless but brandishing a rattan switch. The darkened interior rocked to the echoing shots. The third Marine to scramble through the shattered door, Private Luke Quinn, took a fatal bullet in his abdomen. The fourth man, Private Mathew Ruppert, was slightly wounded in the face; (2Li.) but these casualties could not stem the blue— clad tide.

The first figure to rise from the gloom as Greene rushed forward was that of Lewis Washington, an old friend. The Virginia aristocrat strode up to the officer, warmly took his left hand, then, pointing to a bearded man tumbling with a carbine, said, "This is Oswatomie." With all his strength Greene slashed at Brown with his sword. The first blow left a deep cut across the back of his neck; but the frail blade bent double on Brown's ammunition belt when Greene thrust at his heart, and John Brown was spared for the hangman. (25) In a moment the engine house was filled with widly charging Marines. A sniper posted under one of the engines was bayoneted to death; sharpened steel pinned a second raider to the wall. Greene then called a halt to the onslaught as the two unwounded raiders surrendered. (26)

Three minutes of fierce action had ended a 32-hour reign of terror. None of the hostages was harmed, but the Marines suffered two men wounded, one of them fatally. Brown, his wounded and semiconscious son, and four able-.bodied riflemen had defended the engine house, Of these, two were killed, and the others taken prisoner.(27)

All that remained was to deliver the prisoners to the jail at Charlestown, a journey that proved uneventful. Upon their return to Harper's Ferry, rumors of a new uprising, this one at the village of Pleasant Valley, Maryland, greeted the Marines. Lee, Stuart, Greene, and 25 men marched the five miles to this sleepy hamlet on the night of 19 October, but, as the colonel expected, all was calm. (28)

The slave uprising had not materialized. The pikes with which John Brown had hoped to arm the rebels were never issued. Yet, the raid on Harper's Ferry, this ill-planned, poorly executed attempt to free men in bondage, hastened "the inevitable conflict."

In this conflict, the four officers who took part in Brown's capture were to find themselves sorely tried in spirit and body. Only Major Russell was to remain with the Union, dying in office as Paymaster of the United States Marine Corps in October 1862. (29) The exploits of Lee and Stuart are too well known to recount.

Israel Greene, literally the sword of the Union at Harper's Ferry, also joined the Confederate cause. A New Yorker by Lirth, a Wisconsinite by rearing, a Virginian by marriage, and a Marine by profession, Greene's services were sought after when the time came to choose up sides in 1861. Declining appointment both as a lieutenant colonel in the Virginia Infantry and as a colonel in the Wisconsin militia, Greene accepted a captaincy In the fledgling Confederate States Marine Corps. As a major and Adjutant and Inspector of the Corps he served throughout the war at Confederate Marine headquarters In Richmond until his capture and parole at Farmville, Virginia, in April 1865. Returning to the west, Greene settled in Mitchell, South Dakota, where he died in 1909, 50 years after his moment in the glaring spotlight of history at Harper's Ferry--a visible symbol of the great struggle that tore the nation asunder and put it back together again. (30)

https://www.usmcu.edu/Portals/218/United%20States%20Marines%20at%20Harper_s%20Ferry%20and%20in%20the%20Civil%20War%20PCN%2019000410300.pdf

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