Special Message of Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood, In Reply to a Resolution of Inquiry, Passed by the House of Representatives, March 2d, 1860, in Relation to the Requisition of the Gov. of Virginia, for One Barclay Coppic
Iowa Governor Samuel Kirkwood’s refusal to extradite Barclay Coppic to Virginia to face prosecution for his alleged roll in John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry on the grounds that Virginia Governor Letcher’s request is defective.
Barclay Coppock (1839-1861) was a follower of John Brown who participated in the raid on Harpers Ferry. He escaped to back to Springdale, Iowa, though his brother was hanged in Virginia. When presented with a petition by the Governor of Virginia for the extradition of Coppoc, Iowa Governor Samuel J. Kirkwood refused based an a legal technicality. By the time the proper papers were served, Coppoc had escaped to Canada; he later joined the Union army and was killed in action. Though spelled Coppoc in the document itself, the wrapper and title page misspell it Coppic. Samuel Jordan Kirkwood (1813-1894), though originally a conservative, antislavery Democrat, helped found the Iowa Republican party in 1856 largely because of his antipathy to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed territories to decide whether they would be “slave” or “free” and later became one of Lincoln’s stalwart supporters during the critical early years of the Civil War (cf. ANBO).
John Brown’s last words are said to be “I die for the inalienable right of mankind to freedom, whatever hue the skin may be.”