American Historical Ephemera and Photography Featuring the Civil War and American Militaria Collection of Bruce B. Hermann

Bullet encircled by thin period string attaching it at center of a 2 3/4 x 2 3/4 in. paper board with handwritten inked period text above the bullet: "This bullet was taken / from the box in which / four of the John Brown / raiders were (burried / [sic] 1859)." Below the bullet text continues: "Taken out 1899 / Some fiber of the / clothing was attached / to the bullet. P. Buckingham." Verso with handwritten text which appears to replicate portions of the text on opposite side. Housed in small wooden box without lid, 3 1/8 x 3 1/8 in., with period cotton batting on bottom.

Following John Brown's October 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia, ten of Brown's twenty-two men were killed or died shortly thereafter, seven were tried and executed, and five escaped. Of those killed, eight men were reported to have been hastily buried outside of Harper's Ferry in an inconspicuous and unmarked riverside location because the locals would not assent to having the "radicals" buried in their town. In 1899, a John Brown scholar named Dr. Thomas Featherstonhaugh determined to locate this mass grave, exhume the bodies, and reinter them in New York at John Brown's farm alongside Brown's body. After eliciting the assistance of several collaborators in his clandestine plans, Featherstonehaugh was ultimately was successful. Buried in a shallow grave were bone fragments, along with what witnesses described as remnants of woolen material thought to be the heavy blanket shawls that the men had worn on the raid. Forty years after Brown's raid, the exhumed "raiders" were buried again, though this time with great pomp and ceremony. The World of New York, New York, noted in an article of 31 August 1899, that there "were about 2,600 persons present, besides a detachment of the Twenty-sixth infantry from Plattsburgh post barracks, and the Serenac Lake Cornet Band." News of the "grave robbery" and reburial spread rapidly garnering nationwide attention. This relic no doubt reflects the period fascination with these somewhat unorthodox events.