Never in the history of an American commonwealth was a trial conducted
with more reverence for Law than the arraignment of John Brown and his
followers in the stately old Court House at Charlestown, Virginia.
The people whom he had assaulted with intent to kill, the people against
whom he had incited slaves to rise in bloody insurrection, the kinsmen
of the dead whom his rifles had slain, stood in line on the street and
watched him pass into the building manacled to one of his disciples.
They did not hoot, nor hiss, nor curse. They watched him walk in silence
between the tall granite pillars of the House of Justice.
The behavior of this crowd was highwater mark in the development of
Southern character. The structure of their society rested on the
sanctity of Law. It was being put to the supreme test.
A Northern crowd under similar conditions, had they followed the
principles which John Brown preached, would have torn those prisoners to
pieces without the formality of a trial.
It was precisely this trait of character in his enemies on which Brown
relied for the martyrdom he so passionately desired. When the witnesses
at the preliminary hearing had testified to his guilt and the Court had
ordered the trial set, he was asked if he had counsel.
He rose from his seat and addressed the nation, not the Court:
"Virginians, I did not ask for any quarter at the time I was taken.
I did not ask to have my life spared. The Governor of the State of
Virginia tenders me his assurance that I shall have a fair trial, but
under no circumstances whatever will I be able to have a fair trial. If
you seek my blood, you can have it at any moment, without this mockery
of a trial. I have no counsel. I am ready for my fate. I do not wish a
trial. I have now little further to ask, other than that I may not be
foolishly insulted, as cowardly barbarians insult those who fall into
their power."
The posing martyr was courting insults which had not been offered
him. He was grieved that he could not bring the charge of barbarous
treatment. He had been treated by Colonel Lee with the utmost
consideration. His wounds had been dressed. He had received the best
medical care. He had eaten wholesome food. His jailer had proven
friendly and sympathetic.
He went out of his way to insult the Court and the people and invite
abuse. He demanded that he be executed without trial.
The Court calmly assigned him two of the ablest lawyers in the county,
and ordered the trial to proceed.
At noon the following day the Grand Jury returned a true bill against
each of the prisoners for treason to the commonwealth, and for
conspiring with slaves to commit both treason and murder, and for
murder.
Captain Avis, the kindly jailer, was ordered to bring his prisoners into
Court. He found old Brown in bed, pretending to be ill. He refused to
rise. He was determined to get the effect of an arraignment of his
prostrate body in the court room. He had foreseen the effect of this
picture on the imagination of the North. The crowd of eager reporters at
the preliminary hearing had given him the cue.
He was carried into the court room exactly as he had desired, on a cot.
While the hearing proceeded he lay with his eyes closed as if in deep
suffering. He had carefully prepared a plea for delay which he knew
would not be granted. Its effect on the mob mind of the North was what
he sought. The press would give it wings.
He lifted himself on his elbow and asked Judge Parker to allow him to
make a protest:
"I have been promised a fair trial. I am not now in circumstances that
enable me to attend a trial, owing to the state of my health. I have a
severe wound in the back, or rather in one kidney which enfeebles me
very much. But I am doing well, and I only ask for a very short delay
of my trial, that I may be able to listen to it! And I merely ask this
that, as the saying is, the devil may have his dues, no more. I wish to
say further that my hearing is impaired by wounds I have about my head.
I could not hear what the Court said this morning. I would be glad to
hear what is said at my trial. Any short delay would be all I would ask.
I do not presume to ask more than a very short delay so that I may in
some degree recover and be able at least to listen to my trial."
Dr. Mason the attending physician, swore that he had examined Brown,
and that his wounds had effected neither his hearing nor his mind. He
further swore that he was not seriously disabled.
Brown knew that this was true, but he had entered his plea. His words
would flash over the nation. The effect was what he foresaw. Although he
had defied the laws of God and man, he dared demand more than justice
under the laws which he had spit upon. And, however inconsistent his
position, he knew that as the poison of the Blood Feud which he was
raising filled the souls of the people through the press, he would be
glorified from day to day and new power given to every word he might
utter.
He had already composed his last message destined to sway the minds of
millions. The response of the radical press to his pose of illness was
quick and sharp. The Lawrence, Kansas, _Republican_ voiced the feelings
of thousands:
"We defy an instance to be shown in any civilized community where a
prisoner has been forced to trial for his life, when so disabled by
sickness or ghastly wounds as to be unable even to sit up during the
proceedings, and compelled to be carried to the judgment hall upon a
litter. Such a proceeding shames the name of Justice, and only finds a
congenial place amid the records of the bloody Inquisition."
Even so conservative a paper as the Boston _Transcript_ said:
"Whatever may be his guilt or folly, a man convicted under such
circumstances, and, especially, a man executed after such a trial, will
be the most terrible fruit that Slavery has ever borne, and will excite
the execration of the civilized world."
The canny old poseur was on his way to an immortal martyrdom. He knew
that every article of the Virginia Code was being scrupulously obeyed.
He knew that the Grand Jury was in session and that the trial was set
at the first term of the court following the crime. There had been no
haste. He also knew that the impartial Judge who was presiding was the
soul of justice in his dealings both with the clamorous people, the
prosecution and the counsel appointed for the defense. But he also knew
that the mob mind to whom he was appealing would not believe that he
knew this. In appeals to the crowd he was a past master. In this appeal
he knew that facts would count for nothing--beliefs, illusions for
everything.
He played each opportunity for all it was worth.
When the Court opened the following morning, his counsel, Mr. Botts,
amazed the prisoner and the prosecution by reading a telegram from Ohio
asking a delay on the ground that important affidavits were on the way
to prove legally that John Brown was insane. Before the old man could
stop him he gave to the Court the substance of these sworn statements.
His friends and relatives in Ohio had sworn that Brown had been always
a monomaniac and had been intermittently insane for twenty years. One
swore that he had been plainly insane for a quarter of a century. On the
family record of insanity the affidavits all agreed. His grandmother was
hopelessly insane for six years and died insane. His uncles and aunts,
two sons and two daughters had been intermittently insane for years,
while one of his daughters had died a hopeless maniac. His only sister,
her daughter and one of his brothers were insane at intervals. Two of
his first cousins were occasionally mad. Two had been committed to the
State Insane Asylum repeatedly and two others were at that time in close
restraint.
Brown refused to allow this plea to be entered. He bitterly denounced
the counsel assigned to him as traitors, and at their request the
following day they were allowed to withdraw from the case. No sooner had
he finished his denunciation of his counsel than Hoyt, the young alleged
attorney, sent by Higginson to defend him, sprang to his feet and asked
a delay, as he was unprepared to proceed without assistance.
The Judge adjourned the Court until the following morning at ten
o'clock.
The young spy knew nothing of law but he bluffed it through until the
arrival of two able attorneys, Samuel Chilton of Washington, and Hiram
Grismer of Cleveland.
Botts, the dismissed counsel, who had sought to save Brown's life by the
plea of insanity, put his notes and his office at the disposal of Hoyt
and sat up all night with him preparing his work for the following day.
When the new lawyers appeared the old man made another play at illness
to gain delay. The Court ordered him to be brought in on his cot. Again,
the physician swore he was lying, that he was gaining in strength daily.
The Judge, however, granted a delay of two days.
The moment the order was issued for an adjournment Brown deliberately
rose from his cot and walked back to jail.
The trial was closed on Monday by the speeches of the prosecution and
the defense. The judge charged the jury and in three-quarters of an hour
they filed back into the jury box.
The crowd jammed every inch of space in the old Court House, the wide
entrance hall, and overflowed into the street.
The foreman solemnly pronounced him guilty.
The old man merely pulled the covers of his cot up and stretched his
legs, as if he had no interest in the verdict. Entirely recovered from
every effect of his wounds, as able to walk as ever, he had refused to
walk and had been carried again into the court room. He had determined
to receive his sentence on a bed. He knew the effect of this picture on
the gathering mob.
The silence of death fell on the crowded room. Not a single cry of
triumph from the kindred of the dead. Not a single cheer from the men
whose wives and children had been saved from the horrors of massacre.
Chilton made his motion for an arrest of judgment and the judge ordered
the motion to stand over until the next day. Brown heard the arguments
the following day again lying on his cot. The judge reserved his
decision and the final scene of the drama was enacted on November
second.
The clerk asked John Brown if he had anything to say concerning why
sentence should not be pronounced upon him.
The crowd stared as they saw the wiry figure of the old man quickly
rise. He fixed his eagle eye on them, not on the judge.
Over their heads he talked to the gathering mob of his countrymen. Brown
had been a habitual liar from boyhood. In this speech, made on the eve
of the sentence of death, he lied in every paragraph. He lied as he had
when he grew a beard to play the role of "Shubel Morgan." He lied as he
had lied to his victims when posing as a surveyor on the Pottawattomie.
He lied as he had done when he crept through the darkness of the night
on his sleeping prey. He lied as he had a hundred times about those
gruesome murders. He lied for his Sacred Cause.
He lied without stint and without reservation. He lied with such
conviction that he convinced himself in the end that he was a hero--a
martyr of human liberty and progress. And that he was telling the solemn
truth.
"I have, may it please the court, a few words to say:
"In the first place I deny everything but what I have already admitted:
of a design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly to have made
a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into
Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either
side, moving them through the country and finally leading them into
Canada. I designed to have done the thing again on a larger scale.
That was all I intended. I never did intend murder or treason, or the
destruction of property, or to excite or to incite slaves to rebellion,
or to make insurrection.
"Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the
furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with
the blood of my children--and with the blood of millions in this slave
country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust
treatment--I say let it be done."
David Cruise was not there to tell of the bullet that crashed through
his heart in Missouri. Frederick Douglas was not there to tell that he
abandoned Brown in the old stone quarry outside Chambersburg, precisely
because he had changed the plan of carrying off slaves as in Missouri to
a scheme of treason, wholesale murders and insurrection.
Cruise was in his grave and Douglas on his way to Europe. There was no
one to contradict his statements. The mob mind never asks for facts. It
asks only for assertions. John Brown gave them what he knew they wished
to hear and believe.
They heard and they believed.
With due solemnity, the Judge pronounced the sentence of death and fixed
the date on December the second, thirty days in the future.
The old man's eyes flamed with hidden fires at the unexpected grant of a
month in which to complete the raising of the Blood Feud so gloriously
begun. He was a master in the coming of mystic phrases in letters. He
gloried in religious symbols. Within thirty days he could work with his
pen the miracle that would transform a nation into the puppets of his
will.
He walked beside the jailer, his eyes glittering, his head uplifted.
The Judge ordered the crowd to keep their seats until the prisoner was
removed. In silence he marched through the throng without a hiss or a
taunt.