THE HALT OF THE BODY AND THE MARCH OF THE SOUL
The journeys of John Brown's body were now at an end. Only his soul
was free to travel, and it found its vehicle in letters which carried
thoughts that breathed and words that burned far and wide.
This condemned prisoner had five weeks left of mortal life, and they
were the most fruitful he ever spent. The greatest achievement of his
life was the marvellous advocacy of the cause conducted from his
prison. His friend F. B. Sanborn says: 'Here was a defeated, dying old
man, who had been praying and fighting and pleading and toiling for
years, to persuade a great people that their national life was all
wrong, suddenly converting millions to his cause by the silent
magnanimity or the spoken wisdom of his last days as a fettered
prisoner.'
He had spoken of a Samson's victory as possibly the great triumph in
store for him. Even so it was, and in his death and by the manner of
it he mortally wounded his old enemy, Slavery. As the great continent
watched from afar his last days, a thrill passed through it that made
Emancipation a triumphant cause. Efforts to save Brown's life might be
in vain, but Brown's death was helping to save the life of the nation.
His letters from the prison were many and widely circulated. All he
has to say of himself is that he knows no degradation. 'I can trust
God with the time and manner of my death, believing that for me now to
seal my testimony with my life will do vastly more for the Cause than
all I have done before. Dear wife and children, do not feel degraded
on my account.' Humorously he remarks, 'I am worth inconceivably more
to hang than for any other purpose.' 'Say to my poor boys never to
grieve for one moment on my account; and should many of you live to see
the time when you will not blush to own your relation to old John
Brown, it will not be more strange than many things that have
happened.' '"He shall BEGIN to deliver Israel out of the hand of the
Philistines." This,' said he, 'I think is true of my commission from
God and my work.' The scaffold had no terrors for him. His trust, he
averred, was firm in that Redeemer who, to European and Ethiopian, bond
and free alike, had brought a year of Jubilee and a great salvation.
But though he asked no pity for himself, he pleaded in every letter for
those who, as he said, were on the 'under-hill' side. 'Weep not for
me,' he wrote home, 'but for the crushed millions who have no
comforter.' The old text was continually repeated, 'Remember them that
are in bonds as bound with them,' and he bade them abhor with undying
hatred that 'sum of all villanies--slavery.'
His only cause of agitation in the prison was the intrusive
ministration of certain pro-slavery parsons. He refused to let a man
who 'had the blood of the slaves on his skirts' minister to him. 'I
respect you as a gentleman, but a HEATHEN gentleman,' he would say.
'Don't let such go with me to the scaffold,' he asked. 'I would rather
have an escort of barefooted, bareheaded, ragged slave boys and girls
led by some old grey-headed slave mother.'
A sculptor who had conceived a great admiration for the brave old man
was ambitious to execute a marble bust of him. He applied to Mrs.
Stearns--Brown's old wealthy supporter--to aid him in his enterprise.
She readily promised to supply all funds, but, said she, 'You will have
a vain journey for the measurements. He will just say, "Nonsense; give
the money to the poor." You will then say, "Mr. Brown, posterity will
want to know what you looked like," and he will reply, "No consequence
to posterity how I looked; better give the money to the poor." But go
if you will and use my name.' And off went the eager artist. With
some difficulty he procured an interview with the prisoner. But woman
is far-sighted; sure enough the answer came, 'Nonsense; give the money
to the poor.' But the artist pleaded, 'Posterity will want to see what
you were like.' Said the man who longed that his work rather than his
memory should live, 'No consequence to posterity how I looked; give the
money to the poor.' However, the name of Mrs. Steams prevailed at
last, and with a thankful look he said, 'She must have what she
desires; take the measurements.'
The day of execution, December 2, 1859, drew near. Excitement
increased, and for the first time in the history of the Union the
passport system was introduced by the State Government of Virginia, and
was maintained during the last eight days of Brown's life, lest haply
aid from the North should be organized. Troops were present to the
number of 3,000, around the scaffold at Charlestown, when he was
carried forth to die. Rumour alleged that he had on the way to the
scaffold taken a slave child from its mother's arms and kissed it.
But, credible as it may have been to many, those who were present knew
he was too closely pinioned and guarded for it to be possible. He had
little to say--only one word of the glory of the surrounding scenery,
for he was a true son of Nature to the last. He had placed in an
official's hands a slip of paper with the following words upon it: '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 very much bloodshed it might be
done.'
Upon the scaffold he only bade them be quick, as he was quite ready.
Ready! Yes, he had been ready many a year, and it was no unwilling
victim that swung mid-air that December morning.
They carried his body to the old log-house he occupied at North Elba,
where it was buried upon the farm. That farm has been recently
purchased for a public park; and the grave, with the big boulder upon
it, forms a conspicuous feature. Thousands approach it with reverent
feet, not so much because of the body which lies mouldering there, but
for the sake of the soul which is marching on. They had sung in
Northern streets a grim ditty during those days of suspense before his
execution, with the refrain, addressed to the Southerner:
And Old Brown, Osawatomie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever
When you've nailed his coffin down.
It contains a true word of prophecy. Says an American writer: soon
after, 'I meet him at every turn. John Brown is not dead; he is more
alive than ever he was.' As that same year the Northern States gird
themselves for the great Presidential contest, determined that at
length a thorough Abolitionist named Abraham Lincoln shall tenant the
White House, it is evident that John Brown's soul is marching on.
When at length fierce civil war breaks out, and those same Northern
States month by month are brought to the sure conviction that Freedom
as certainly as Union is the cause for which they fight, and as through
long disappointment and suspense, lavish effusion of blood, generous
sacrifice of their bravest sons they steadily press to victory under
the ever-patient, dogged leadership of President Lincoln and General
Grant, it is evident that John Brown's soul is marching on.
In the tramp of ten thousands of armed men, in the strains of that
grand old battle-hymn of the Republic, I hear the march of his soul:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword:
His truth is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah, &c.
He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgement-seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul! to answer Him; be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us live to make men free!
While God is marching on.
When Lincoln's first Emancipation Decree (made necessary by the fact
that so many blacks belonging to the disloyal were fighting for the
Union), that all slaves in the Rebel States from New Year's Day, 1863,
shall be free, is promulgated; and when, two years later, the
Constitution is amended so as to forbid slavery all through the
Republic, now again united; when the nation generously provides food,
shelter, and education for the emancipated; and when the freed bondmen
greet their liberty-loving President in Southern streets with shouts of
gratitude and cries of 'Father Abraham'--you may know that John Brown's
soul is marching on.
There in America and elsewhere it continues its march. Wherever the
swift cruiser speeds in pursuit of the infamous slave-ship, in every
heart-beat of the brave seamen who feel they are on a righteous errand
and will overhaul her in the King's--aye, in God's--name, we hear the
march of John Brown's soul.
When a nation of free men rises up in wrath at the issue of some
official document that seems to be couched in temporizing language on
this supreme subject, or at some government that has tolerated
conditions that approximate slavery, and will have none of it, we know
the old hero's soul is marching on.
Whenever in secret council the ambassador of a free people negotiates a
treaty, and, backed by the most sacred impulses of those he represents,
urges an anti-slavery clause, we know John Brown's soul is on the march.
And march it shall, while nations learn to prize liberty as God's great
chartered right to every man, while they read the shining letters of
the Golden Rule, while they remember that God made all men of one blood
and that all are redeemed by the blood of One.
While God looks down from His heaven and sees the distressed face, or
hears the piercing cry of the oppressed, and can turn the hearts of men
to fight His battles upon earth, the soul of John Brown will be
marching still.