For in that month, John Brown accomplished more for abolition than
even the stern deeds of Kansas had effected. He had put by the sword
forever, and now for a month took up the pen and made it as powerful
a weapon. He wrote innumerable letters to Northern friends and they
were published and read everywhere. Their tone was Christ-like; no
longer was Brown the militant Captain in the field, but the sweet,
patient martyr waiting for his end in tranquil joy. In many letters he
repeats the statement that he is glad to die; that his death is of
more value to the cause than ever his life could have been. This was no
vainglorious hysterical gesture with John Brown; he was calmly certain
of it; he slept peacefully as a child at night, and wrote his letters
by day, secure in his tranquil wisdom. Friends were planning an attempt
to rescue him, but he forbade them to try, for he really felt that his
death was necessary. “I am worth now infinitely more to die, than to
live,” he said.
And in his letters he gave Americans his last warning on the slavery
question. He told them it must be settled; it could not go on. His
letters were so strong, manly, and yet so touching, that even the
jailor wept as he censored them in the course of his duties. As Wendell
Phillips said, the million hearts of his countrymen had been melted by
that old Puritan soul.
With absolute equanimity, John Brown wrote his will, wrote his last
few letters to his family, determined the coffin in which he was to
be buried, and the inscription on the family monument, said farewell
to his fellow-prisoners and jail-keepers. On the morning of December
2nd he stood calmly on the steps of the scaffold and gazed about him.
Before leaving his cell he had handed to another prisoner the following
last and uncompleted message:
“I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty
land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think,
vainly flattered myself that without much bloodshed it might be done.”
Now, as he looked about, he could see massed beyond the fifteen hundred
soldiers Virginia had felt necessary for this execution, the hazy
outlines of the Blue Ridge mountains. The sun was shining; the sky
was blue, and his heart was at peace. “This is a beautiful country,”
he said, “I never had the pleasure of really seeing it before.” He
walked with perfect composure up the steps, watched by the eyes of
the soldiery and officialdom of slave-holding Virginia. They saw not
a tremor in his face or body; not even when the cap was drawn over
his head, his arms pinioned at the elbows, the noose slipped around
his neck. He had refused to have the solace of any ministers, for
they believed in slavery, and he told them he did not regard them as
Christians. He needed no man’s solace; he was braver than any one
there. “Shall I give you the signal when the trap is to be sprung?”
said a friendly sheriff. “No, no,” the serene old man answered, “just
get it over quickly.”
And quickly enough, it was all over for John Brown. The trap was
sprung; his body hung between heaven and earth. In the painful silence
that followed, the voice of Colonel Preston declaimed solemnly, the
official epitaph, “So perish all such enemies of Virginia! All such
enemies of the Union! All such foes of the human race!”
That was the verdict of the South, still infatuated and blinded by its
slave system. But on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line men were
pronouncing a different verdict on John Brown, and on the other side of
the Atlantic, the greatest man of letters in Europe, Victor Hugo, was
saying:
“In killing Brown, the Southern States have committed a crime which
will take its place among the calamities of history. The rupture of
the Union will fatally follow the assassination of Brown. As for John
Brown, he was an apostle and a hero. The gibbet has only increased his
glory, and made him a martyr.”