– December 16, 1859), who also referred to himself as "Emperor",[1]: 387 [2][3] was, according to Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave from Charleston, South Carolina, and a leader in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry, in October 1859.

Local Blacks, working in 1860 on a monument to the colored men of Oberlin that were with John Brown at Harper's Ferry, said that "Shields Green was but little known to us, excepting as he has been made known to the nation and the world by his manly conduct, his patient and heroic endurance in prison, and his pious, courageous and consistent deportment as be stood on the fatal gallows.

As there was no one protecting their graves, the bodies of Green and Copeland were dug up within hours by students and faculty of the Winchester Medical College, for use in anatomy classes, in which the corpses were dissected.

However, as he had a few hours free, a medical college professor gave him a tour, and in the dissecting rooms: I was startled to find the body of another Oberlin neighbor whom I had often met upon our streets, a colored man named Shields Greene [sic].

A fine, athletic figure, he was lying on his back—the unclosed, wistful eyes staring wildly upward, as if seeking, in a better world, for some solution of the dark problems of horror and oppression so hard to be explained in this.

[34]: 183  These remarks immediately preceded the beginning of the efforts to build a monument to the Oberlin Blacks who participated in John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.

[26]: 5 In the case of the free negro Green, allusion was made by the counsel for the defense to an attempt to introduce impertinent evidence respecting the advances of the prisoner toward a mulatto girl at the time of the midnight entrance into the plantations.

Mr. Hunter pursued his answering argument quietly, until he reached this point, and then, lifting himself to his full height, and compressing hie fine features to unwonted sternness—for he usually wears a smile—he turned upon the negro, and with a rapidity that certainly exhibited a wonderful acquaintance with the vocabulary of invective, hurled for a while incessant denunciation upon the guilty passions which he assumed to have inspired Shields Green to join the expedition.

He did this, and with a touch of ferocity, too, when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green, till the crowd in and around the court-house blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race, and both as lighter and prisoner showed in rude, but vigorous manner, his utter disdain of men who sold mothers, dealt in men, bred children for sale, making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land.

"[35]: 348 "On the morning of December 2, the day of John Brown's execution, [S]hields Green sent word to his leader that he waited willingly and calmly for his own death, and that he was glad he had come.

"[81] "The evening previous to the starting of Captain Brown's followers from Rochester, I spent at the house of Mr. Frederick Douglass, and when ready for my walk home, Shields Green accompanied me.

Anderson wrote that 'Newby was a brave fellow' and when he was shot through the head by the trooper who took advantage of a mutual withdrawal, 'his death was promptly avenged by Shields Green,' who raised his rifle in an instant and 'brought down the cowardly murderer.

[35]: 261 He [Hunter] did this, and with a touch of ferocity, too, when making his final argument for the conviction of Shields Green, till the crowd in and around the courthouse blazed with fury at his denunciation of the black man who had attempted to free his race, and both as fighter and prisoner showed in rude, but vigorous manner, his utter disdain of men who sold mothers, dealt in men, bred children for sale, making concubines for profit of every ninth woman in the land.The Virginian lawyers selected by the Examining Court to defend these prisoners had an ungracious and thankless task assigned them.

Mr. Green was described by Correspondent House, of the New York Tribune, as a "most extraordinary man to look upon, ...long, angular, uncouth, and wild in gesture, ...deficient in all rhetorical graces.

¶ But the negro man with Congo face, big, misplaced words, and huge feet, knew instinctively what courageous manhood meant and how devotion acted.

Frederick Douglass tells how, when he turned to leave the Chambersburg quarry, where his last interview with John Brown was had, that, on telling Green he could return with him to Rochester, New York, the latter had turned and looked at the strong but bowed figure of John Brown, weighted with the pain of Douglass's refusal to aid him in, as he termed it, "hiving the bees," and then asked: "Is he going to stay?"

When, a short time after O. P. Anderson and Albert Hazlett had decided the resistance then making to be hopeless, Green came, under fire, with some message, over to their station at the arsenal on the Potomac.

They were all intelligent, Green looking the least so, though possessed of considerable natural ability, vigor of character, and a courage which showed that if better trained he might have become a marked man."

"[36] By far the most dramatic and best-known moment in Green's life, which has been made into a play or movie script several times, was his meeting with Brown and Douglass in an abandoned stone quarry near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, which lasted "a whole day and night".

[88]: 600  The meeting took place in Chambersburg, an Underground Railroad stop, because it was the "staging ground" for Brown's raid; just 22 miles (35 km) from the Maryland border, it was the closest city in the (free) North.

[41] In an incident which became famous when it was made public over 20 years later, in August 1859 Douglass, accompanied by Green, traveled from Rochester to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, for a secret meeting with Brown.

"[91] Frederick Douglass wrote the only description of this meeting in his third and final autobiography, conflating the chronology of events in 1859, including the fact that his disagreement with Brown over the seizure of the Harper's Ferry armory dated to earlier in 1859.

He had heard there would be a street parade of a "colored military company" named the Frank Johnson Guards, and he found that the situation in Philadelphia was worse than he had feared.

The "armed and disciplined" Black group was publicly exhorted by J. J. Simons, "one of Brown's lieutenants", to participate in the upcoming invasion of Virginia to free the slaves.

Far more heinous in Washington's eyes, however, had been Green's "very impudent manner" in addressing his betters, a crime that the aristocratic plantation owner considered more threatening than violence.

Although he may have appeared impudent in the eyes of a slave master, the reality was, as Frederick Douglass put it, that Green's "courage and self-respect made him quite a dignified character."

[96]: 111 He was thoroughly dressed down by prosecuting attorney Hunter: [A]t times he rises to an eloquence that rings through the court-room, and moves listeners to approving outbursts that call for subjugation by sheriff and constable.

In the case of the negro Green, allusion was made by the counsel for the defense to an attempt to introduce impertinent evidence respecting the advances of the prisoner toward a mulatto girl at the time of the midnight entrance into the plantations.

Mr. Hunter pursued his answering argument quietly, until he reached this point, and then, lifting himself to his full height, and compressing his fine features to unwanted sternness (for he usually wears a smile), he turned upon the negro, and with a rapidity that certainly exhibited a wonderful acquaintance with the vocabulary of invective, hurled for a while incessant denunciation upon the guilty passion which he assumed to have inspired Shields Green to join the expedition.

These colored citizens of Oberlin, the heroic associates of the immortal John Brown, gave their lives for the slave.Et nunc servitudo etiam mortua est, laus deo [And now slavery is finally dead, thanks be to God].