(Cross posted, with some changes, from The Faculty Lounge)
John E. Cook served as John Brown's advance man and spy in Harper's Ferry, and he was initially one of only seven raiders who was not either killed or captured when the insurrection failed. He managed to reach Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he was apprehended by bounty hunters. Returned to Virginia for trial, Cook was represented by the Copperhead Democrat Daniel Voorhees, who claimed that Cook had been duped by John Brown, and thus based his defense on a ringing affirmation of slavery.
Voorhees's trial work was highly professional from the perspective of advocacy, although shameful in its premise. But Voorhees was not Cook's first lawyer. When he was captured in Pennsylvania, Cook had been briefly represented by Alexander McClure, an ardent abolitionist who took a very different approach to the case. McClure was far more principled than Voorhees concerning human rights, but with much less adherence to legal ethics.
It might have seemed that McClure had simply capitulated on behalf of his client, but in fact he had a plan, or at least the beginning of one. It was already night time, and no extradition warrant could still arrive that day from Virginia. It therefore might be possible to arrange an escape for Cook, assuming that the other local authorities were accommodating.
McClure took leave of the judge and accompanied his client and the constable to the town jail, where Cook was handed over to Franklin County sheriff Jacob Brown. Himself a Republican, Sheriff Brown was ready to allow Cook’s escape, but he first wanted reassurance that no adverse consequences would follow. As McClure later put it, the sheriff “ill concealed his willingness to let Cook get away if it could be done without official responsibility for the escape; and this he was more than willing to leave me to decide.
The sheriff’s anti-slavery sympathies created a uniquely awkward dilemma for McClure, who counted the sheriff among his clients. Sheriff Brown “was more than ready to obey any instructions I might give him to facilitate Cook’s escape without legal responsibility for the act,” but McClure still found himself “in the rather delicate position of being counsel for a prisoner whose escape I wanted to effect, and at the same time . . . counsel for the sheriff whose duty it was to prevent him from escaping.” McClure’s personal ethics apparently permitted him to coordinate a jailbreak in behalf of a noble cause – he had long since chosen his side in the “irrepressible conflict,” and had concluded that sending fugitives to the South was a “dead letter” in which he would not participate. But his sense of professional responsibility would not allow him simultaneously to betray another client.
There was no easy way for McClure to resolve the incompatible demands of abolitionism and professionalism, or to decide which client’s interests should come first. Instead of making an immediate decision, he asked to be left alone in the cell with Cook, hoping to arrive at a solution to the problem. McClure patiently reminded Cook that he could not simply “walk out of jail,” and cautioned him that “his escape that night, under any circumstances, would be specially dangerous to himself and dangerous to the sheriff.” Cook, did not share McClure’s concern about the sheriff, but he no doubt found it more convincing that the jail would be under especially heavy watch on his first night in custody. In any case, McClure was unwilling to provide any assistance that night, reasoning that “my presence with him in the jail until a late hour and my professional relations as counsel of the sheriff forbade any needless haste.”
McClure assured the frightened prisoner “that the next night he should have the necessary instructions and facilities to regain his liberty,” and he meant what he said. By the end of the evening, McClure had recruited two accomplices “who took upon themselves the work of ascertaining just where and by what means Cook could best break out of the old jail.” According to McClure, the two nameless plotters did their work well. They visited the builder who was responsible for the recent security remodeling, and obtained “minute instructions as to the best method of making the escape.” McClure fully expected that Cook would be “following the North Star” by the end of the next day.
McClure returned home once the plans were made, and he was surprised to discover his wife Matilda and her friend Virginia Reilly dressed in their overcoats and carrying a small package. It was unusual to see two such respectable ladies about to venture onto the street so late in the evening, and McClure must have realized they had a compelling reason. Both women were “strongly anti-slavery by conviction,” having “heartily sympathized with the Free State people in the bloody Kansas struggle,” and they explained that they were “about to proceed to the jail” to rescue Cook. Their plan was to “dress him in the extra female apparel they had in a bundle, and one of them walk out with him while the other remained in the cell” impersonating the prisoner. Of course, the faux-Cook could expect to be released the next morning when the ladies’ ploy was discovered.
The plan failed, although not for any reasons that readers may suspect. Cook was duly extradited to Virginia, where Daniel Voorhees took over the defense. Which lawyer was more admirable: The slavery-supporting Voorhees, who persuaded Cook to betray his principles and his friends? Or the slavery-hating McClure, who was willing to betray his own attorney’s oath to save his client’s life for the sake of abolitionism? The rest of the story -- and there is much more -- can be found in John Brown's Spy.