Pardon sought for Connecticut abolitionist warrior hanged in Virginia after John Brown’s raid

A Connecticut state senator is pressing Virginia officials for action, or at least an answer, on a pardon she sought three years ago for a Norwich man who was hanged in 1860 for trying to incite a slave revolt.

Following is a breakdown on the case of Aaron Dwight Stevens, who joined abolitionist firebrand John Brown in the failed raid on Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, an event that helped spark the Civil War.

What’s happening now?

Sen. Cathy Osten, a Democrat whose district includes Norwich, said Tuesday that she has called officials in Virginia, including the governor, every month or so to check on the pardon request that she and others submitted in 2018.

Osten said she called again Tuesday and left messages with officials in charge of pardons and in the secretary of the commonwealth’s office. She also sent a letter to Gov. Ralph Northam dated Tuesday, writing, “I have tried on multiple occasions by mail, phone, and email to follow-up on this request. My efforts thus far have been unsuccessful.

“While I understand that we are not your regular constituency,” Osten wrote, “it would be greatly appreciated if you would take up this issue.”

Virginia officials did not respond to emails and phone calls from The Courant Tuesday.

Who was Aaron Dwight Stevens?

Born on March 15, 1831, Stevens grew up in a strict Puritan household. His father was the choir director of Norwich’s First Congregational Church.

“But Dwight was not the Puritan, stay-at-home person that his family was,” Vic Butsch, co-author of a book about Stevens, said in a 2018 interview with The Courant. “He had an itch to go.”

Stevens joined the 1st Massachusetts Regiment at age 16 during the Mexican-American War and served through the war’s end. He later enlisted in the 1st U.S. Dragoons cavalry unit and fought Native Americans. While stationed in New Mexico, Stevens’ temper flared and he tried to shoot his commanding officer. The initial death sentence was commuted to three years of hard labor.

Imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth, Stevens escaped in 1856 and joined a militia unit fighting pro-slavery forces in “Bloody Kansas,” where he met Brown, another hot-tempered Connecticut native.

Both men believed that slavery would end only through violence. Stevens wrote his brother in August 1858 — “You may think it not best to do it by the sword, but I tell you it will never be done away except by the sword ...”

What happened at Harper’s Ferry?

A geographically dramatic place at the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers, the town (now part of West Virginia) was home to a large federal armory. Torrington-born Brown hatched a plan to capture weapons and wait while enslaved people and anti-slavery whites from throughout the area joined a guerilla war against the slaveholders. The revolt was to spread like wildfire throughout the South.

Brown needed men like Stevens, a burly combat veteran, to train the insurrectionists and lead the initial attack. On Oct. 16, 1859, the two men and 20 others crossed the Potomac River and captured the arsenal.

Everything went wrong after that. Seventeen people were killed, including two of Brown’s sons, and most of the remaining raiders were captured by U.S. Marines led by Col. Robert E. Lee. A saloonkeeper named George Chambers, who either did not see the white flag of surrender that Stevens was holding or ignored it, shot him in the face and neck with a double-barreled shotgun.

Stevens was treated for his wounds and imprisoned in Charlestown, where he was tried in February 1860 and convicted of advising slaves to rebel and conspiring with others to induce slaves to rebel and make insurrection.

People throughout the North idolized Stevens and sent letters to the Virginia governor seeking a pardon, Butsch said, but Southerners despised him. Stevens was hanged on March 16, one day after his 29th birthday. Brown had gone to the gallows in December.

What does the pardon petition say?

“The one obvious and all-encompassing purpose of (Stevens’) actions and resultant prosecution was to rid the United States of slavery,” the petitioners wrote. “Since his hanging, the country has passed the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which certainly ensures that slavery has now been eradicated by law in our country.”

They also wrote that Stevens “should not be forever punished and held in our nation’s history as a traitorous villain, simply because God gave him the ability to visualize how all of us were meant to exist together without slavery long before most people understood.

“Dwight truly believed we were all equal in the eyes of God, and he willingly gave his life to that belief. Please extend a Virginia State pardon to Aaron Dwight Stevens in recognition of the changes our young country has gone through and the courage he exhibited to fight to the death so that others could be free.”

Osten said she and other petitioners, including Butsch and municipal officials in Norwich and Stevens’ birthplace, Lisbon, will keep lobbying for a response.

“We would like an answer,” she said. “We’re hoping it’s positive, but we would like an answer.”

Sadly, Osten said, an answer did not come before the death of one ardent petitioner, Tommy Coletti, who co-authored “A Journey to the Gallows” with Butsch. Coletti died of cancer on Sept. 24.

In an interview with The Courant in 2018, Coletti compared Stevens with another Norwich native who remains much better known to history.

“Norwich has always been seen as the home of Benedict Arnold, but he was a traitor,” Coletti said of the Revolutionary War turncoat. “Here is a true American hero who is listed as a traitor also, but he wasn’t. He was doing work in the 1800s that you had continued in the 1900s with Martin Luther King.”

Jesse Leavenworth can be reached at jleavenworth@courant.com