The second of December, on which day John Brown was executed at
Charlestown, Virginia, was bright in that State, but in New England was
of a strange sultriness with a wind from the south and a lowering sky.
At noon, the hour appointed for his death, in Concord (as in many New
England towns) the men and women who honored his character and motives
gathered and made solemn observance of a day and event which seemed laden
with omens. There was a prayer, I think offered by the Rev. Edmund Sears
of Wayland,[I] Mr. Emerson read William Allingham’s beautiful poem “The
Touchstone” which is used as the motto to this speech, Thoreau read with
sad bitterness Sir Walter Raleigh’s “The Soule’s Errand.” Hon. John S.
Keyes read some appropriate verses from Aytoun’s “Execution of Montrose”
and Mr. Sanborn a poem which he had written for the occasion.
[155] _Page 279, note 1._ Here, as often in Mr. Emerson’s speech and
writing, is shown his respect for the old religion of New England and its
effect on the thought and character of her people. As Lowell said of them
in his Concord Ode in 1875:—
“And yet the enduring half they chose,
Whose choice decides a man life’s slave or king,
The invisible things of God before the seen and known.”
[156] _Page 279, note 2._ I well remember the evening, in my school-boy
days, when John Brown, in my father’s house, told of his experiences as
a sheep-farmer, and his eye for animals and power over them. He said he
knew at once a strange sheep in his flock of many hundred, and that he
could always make a dog or cat so uncomfortable as to wish to leave the
room, simply by fixing his eyes on it.
[157] _Page 281, note 1._ “Heroism feels and never reasons, and
therefore is always right; and although a different breeding, different
religion and greater intellectual activity would have modified or even
reversed the particular action, yet, for the hero, that thing he does
is the highest deed, and is not open to the censure of philosophers and
divines.”—“Heroism,” _Essays, First Series_.
“I can leave to God the time and means of my death, for I believe now
that the sealing of my testimony before God and man with my blood will do
far more to further the cause to which I have earnestly devoted myself
than anything else I have done in my life.”—Letter of John Brown to a
friend.