THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX
“Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we
did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
“But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our
iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His
stripes we are healed.”
The deed was done. The next day the world knew and the world sat in
puzzled amazement. It was ever so and ever will be. When a prophet like
John Brown appears, how must we of the world receive him? Must we follow
out the drear, dread logic of surrounding facts, as did the South, even
if they crucify a clean and pure soul, simply because consistent
allegiance to our cherished, chosen ideal demands it? If we do, the
shame will brand our latest history. Shall we hesitate and waver before
his clear white logic, now helping, now fearing to help, now believing,
now doubting? Yes, this we must do so long as the doubt and hesitation
are genuine; but we must not lie. If we are human, we must thus hesitate
until we know the right. How shall we know it? That is the Riddle of the
Sphinx. We are but darkened groping souls, that know not light often
because of its very blinding radiance. Only in time is truth revealed.
To-day at last we know: John Brown was right.
Yet there are some great principles to guide us. That there are in this
world matters of vast human import which are eternally right or
eternally wrong, all men believe. Whether that great right comes, as the
simpler, clearer minded think, from the spoken word of God, or whether
it is simply another way of saying: this deed makes for the good of
mankind, or that, for the ill—however it may be, all men know that there
are in this world here and there and again and again great partings of
the ways—the one way wrong, the other right, in some vast and eternal
sense. This certainly is true at times—in the mighty crises of lives and
nations. On the other hand, it is also true, as human experience again
and again shows, that the usual matters of human debate and difference
of opinion are not so vitally important, or so easily classified; that
in most cases there is much of right and wrong on both sides and, so
usual is it to find this true, that men tend to argue it always so.
Their life morality becomes always a wavering path of expediency, not
necessarily the best or the worst path, as they freely even smilingly
admit, but a good path, a safe path, a path of little resistance and one
that leads to the good if not to the theoretical (but usually
impracticable) best. Such philosophy of the world’s ways is common, and
probably it is well that thus it is. And yet we all feel its temporary,
tentative character; we instinctively distrust its comfortable tone, and
listen almost fearfully for the greater voice; its better is often so
far below that which we feel is a possible best, that its present
temporizing seems evil to us, and ever and again after the world has
complacently dodged and compromised with, and skilfully evaded a great
evil, there shines, suddenly, a great white light—an unwavering,
unflickering brightness, blinding by its all-seeing brilliance, making
the whole world simply a light and a darkness—a right and a wrong. Then
men tremble and writhe and waver. They whisper, “But—but—of course;”
“the thing is plain, but it is too plain to be true—it is true but truth
is not the only thing in the world.” Thus they hide from the light, they
burrow and grovel, and yet ever in, and through, and on them blazes that
mighty light with its horror of darkness and behind it peals the
voice—the Riddle of the Sphinx, that must be answered.
Such a light was the soul of John Brown. He was simple, exasperatingly
simple; unlettered, plain, and homely. No casuistry of culture or of
learning, of well-being or tradition moved him in the slightest degree:
“Slavery is wrong,” he said,—“kill it.” Destroy it—uproot it, stem,
blossom, and branch; give it no quarter, exterminate it and do it now.
Was he wrong? No. The forcible staying of human uplift by barriers of
law, and might, and tradition is the most wicked thing on earth. It is
wrong, eternally wrong. It is wrong, by whatever name it is called, or
in whatever guise it lurks, and whenever it appears. But it is
especially heinous, black, and cruel when it masquerades in the robes of
law and justice and patriotism. So was American slavery clothed in 1859,
and it had to die by revolution, not by milder means. And this men knew.
They had known it a hundred years. Yet they shrank and trembled. From
round about the white and blinding path of this soul flew equivocations,
lies, thievings and red murders. And yet all men instinctively felt that
these things were not of the light but of the surrounding darkness. It
is at once surprising, baffling and pitiable to see the way in which
men—honest American citizens—faced this light. Many types met and
answered the argument, John Brown (for he did not use argument, he was
himself an argument). First there was the Western American—the typical
American, like Charles Robinson—one to whose imagination the empire of
the vale of the Mississippi appealed with tremendous force. Then there
was the Abolitionist—shading away from him who held slavery an incubus
to him who saw its sin, of whom Gerrit Smith was a fair type. Then there
was the lover of men, like Dr. Howe, and the merchant-errant like
Stearns. Finally, there were the two great fateful types—the master and
the slave.
To Robinson, Brown was simply a means to an end—beyond that he was
whatever prevailing public opinion indicated. When the gratitude of
Osawatomie swelled high, Brown was fit to be named with Jesus Christ;
when the wave of Southern reaction subjugated the nation, he was
something less than a fanatic. But whatever he was, he was the sword on
which struggling Kansas and its leaders could depend, the untarnished
doer of its darker deeds, when they that knew them necessary cowered and
held their hands. Brown’s was not the only hand that freed Kansas, but
his hand was indispensable, and not the first time, nor the last, has a
cool and skilful politician, like Robinson, climbed to power on the
heads of those helpers of his, whose half-realized ideals he bartered
for present possibilities—human freedom for statehood. For the
Abolitionist of the Garrison type Brown had a contempt, as undeserved as
it was natural to his genius. To recognize an evil and not strike it was
to John Brown sinful. “Talk, talk, talk,” he said derisively. Nor did he
rightly gauge the value of spiritual as contrasted with physical blows,
until the day when he himself struck the greatest on the Charleston
scaffold.
But if John Brown failed rightly to gauge the movement of the
Abolitionists, few of them failed to appreciate him when they met him.
Instinctively they knew him as one who grasped the very pith and kernel
of the evil which they fought. They asked no proofs or credentials; they
asked John Brown. So it was with Gerrit Smith. He saw Brown and believed
in him. He entertained him at his house. He heard his detailed plans for
striking slavery a heart blow. He gave him in all over a thousand
dollars, and bade him Godspeed! Yet when the blow was struck, he was
filled with immeasurable consternation. He equivocated and even denied
knowledge of Brown’s plans. To be sure, he, his family, his fortune were
in the shadow of danger—but where was John Brown? So with Dr. Howe,
whose memory was painfully poor on the witness stand and who fluttered
from enthusiastic support of Brown to a weak wavering when once he had
tasted the famous Southern hospitality. He found slavery, to his own
intense surprise, human: not ideally and horribly devilish, but only
humanly bad. Was a bad human institution to be attacked _vi et armis_?
Or was it not rather to be met with persuasive argument in the soft
shade of a Carolina veranda? Dr. Howe inclined to the latter thought,
after his Cuban visit, and he was exceedingly annoyed and scared after
the raid. He fled precipitately to Canada. Of the Boston committee only
Stearns stood up and out in the public glare and said unequivocally,
then and there: “I believe John Brown to be the representative man of
this century, as Washington was of the last—the Harper’s Ferry affair,
and the capacity shown by the Italians for self-government, the great
events of this age. One will free Europe and the other America.”[258]
The attitude of the black man toward John Brown is typified by Frederick
Douglass and Shields Green. Said Douglass: “On the evening when the news
came that John Brown had taken and was then holding the town of Harper’s
Ferry, it so happened that I was speaking to a large audience in
National Hall, Philadelphia. The announcement came upon us with the
startling effect of an earthquake. It was something to make the boldest
hold his breath.”[259]
Wise and Buchanan started immediately on Douglass’s track and he fled to
Canada and eventually to England. Why did not Douglass join John Brown?
Because, first, he was of an entirely different cast of temperament and
mind; and because, secondly, he knew, as only a Negro slave can know,
the tremendous might and organization of the slave power. Brown’s plan
never in the slightest degree appealed to Douglass’s reason. That the
Underground Railroad methods could be enlarged and systematized,
Douglass believed, but any further plan he did not think possible. Only
national force could dislodge national slavery. As it was with Douglass,
so it was practically with the Negro race. They believed in John Brown
but not in his plan. He touched their warm loving hearts but not their
hard heads. The Canadian Negroes, for instance, were men who knew what
slavery meant. They had suffered its degradation, its repression and its
still more fatal license. They knew the slave system. They had been
slaves. They had risked life to help loved ones to escape its
far-reaching tentacles. They had reached a land of freedom and had begun
to taste the joy of being human. Their little homes were clustering
about—they had their churches, lodges, social gatherings, and newspaper.
Then came the call. They loved the old man and cherished him, helped and
forwarded his work in a thousand little ways. But the call? Were they
asked to sacrifice themselves to free their fellow-slaves? Were they not
quite ready? No—to do that they stood ever ready. But here they were
asked to sacrifice themselves for the sake of possibly freeing a few
slaves and certainly arousing the nation. They saw what John Brown did
not fully realize until the last: the tremendous meaning of sacrifice
even though his enterprise failed and they were sure it would fail. Yet
in truth it need not have failed. History and military science prove its
essential soundness. But the Negro knew little of history and military
science. He did know slavery and the slave power, and they loomed large
and invincible in his fertile imagination. He could not conceive their
overthrow by anything short of the direct voice of God. That a supreme
sacrifice of human beings on the altar of Moloch might hasten the day of
emancipation was possible, but were they called to give their lives to
this forlorn hope? Most of them said no, as most of their fellows, black
and white, ever answer to the “voice, without reply.” They said it
reluctantly, slowly, even hesitatingly, but they said it even as their
leader Douglass said it. And why not, they argued? Was not their whole
life already a sacrifice? Were they called by any right of God or man to
give more than they already had given? What more did they owe the world?
Did not the world owe them an unpayable amount?
Then, too, the sacrifice demanded of black men in this raid was far more
than that demanded of whites. In 1859 it was a crime for a free black
man even to set foot on Virginia soil, and it was slavery or death for a
fugitive to return. If worse came to worst, the Negro stood the least
chance of escape and the least consideration on capture. Yet despite all
this and despite the terrible training of slavery in cowardice,
submission and fatality; the systematic elimination, by death and
cruelty, of strength and self-respect and bravery, there were in Canada
and in the United States scores of Negroes ready for the sacrifice. But
the necessary secrecy, vagueness and intangibility of the summons, the
repeated changes of date, the difficulty of communication and the
poverty of black men, all made effective coöperation exceedingly
difficult.
Even as it was, fifteen or twenty Negroes had enlisted and would
probably have been present had they had the time. Five, probably six,
actually came in time, and thirty or forty slaves actively helped.
Considering the mass of Negroes in the land and the character of the
leader, this was an insignificant number. But what it lacked in number
it made up in characters like Shields Green. He was a poor, unlettered
fugitive, ignorant by the law of the land, stricken in life and homely
in body. He sat and listened as Douglass and Brown argued amid the
boulders of that old Chambersburg quarry. Some things he understood,
some he did not. But one thing he did understand and that was the soul
of John Brown, so he said, “I guess I’ll go with the old man.” Again in
the sickening fury of that fatal Monday, a white man and a black man
found themselves standing with freedom before them. The white man was
John Brown’s truest companion and the black man was Shields Green. “I
told him to come,” said the white man afterward, “that we could do
nothing more,” but he simply said, “I must go down to the old man.” And
he went down to John Brown and to death.
If this was the attitude of the slave, what was that of the master? It
was when John Brown faced the indignant, self-satisfied and arrogant
slave power of the South, flanked by its Northern Vallandighams, that
the mighty paradox and burning farce of the situation revealed itself.
Picture the situation: An old and blood-bespattered man, half-dead from
the wounds inflicted but a few hours before; a man lying in the cold and
dirt, without sleep for fifty-five nerve-wrecking hours, without food
for nearly as long, with the dead bodies of two sons almost before his
eyes, the piled corpses of his seven slain comrades near and afar, a
wife and a bereaved family listening in vain, and a Lost Cause, the
dream of a lifetime, lying dead in his heart. Around him was a group of
bitter, inquisitive Southern aristocrats and their satellites, headed by
one of the foremost leaders of subsequent secession.
“Who sent you—who sent you?” these inquisitors insisted.
“No man sent me—I acknowledge no master in human form!”
“What was your object in coming?”
“We came to free the slaves.”
“How do you justify your acts?”
“You are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity and it would
be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free
those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage. I think I did right;
and that others will do right who interfere with you at any time and at
all times. I hold that the Golden Rule, ‘Do unto others as ye would that
others should do unto you,’ applies to all who would help others to gain
their liberty.”
“But don’t you believe in the Bible?”
“Certainly, I do.”
“Do you consider this a religious movement?”
“It is in my opinion the greatest service man can render to God.”
“Do you consider yourself an instrument in the hands of Providence?”
“I do.”
“Upon what principles do you justify your acts?”
“Upon the Golden Rule. I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help
them. That is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity,
revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and
the wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of
God.”
“Certainly. But why take the slaves against their will?”
“I never did.”...
“Who are your advisers in this movement?”
“I have numerous sympathizers throughout the entire North.... I want you
to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and the weakest
of colored people, oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do
those of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that has moved
me, and that alone. We expected no reward except satisfaction of
endeavoring to do for those in distress and greatly oppressed as we
would be done by. The cry of distress of the oppressed is my reason, and
the only thing that prompted me to come here.”
“Why did you do it secretly?”
“Because I thought that necessary to success; no other reason.... I
agree with Mr. Smith that moral suasion is hopeless. I don’t think the
people of the slave states will ever consider the subject of slavery in
its true light till some other argument is resorted to than moral
suasion.”
“Did you expect a general rising of the slaves in case of your success?”
“No, sir; nor did I wish it. I expected to gather them up from time to
time, and set them free.”
“Did you expect to hold possession here till then?”
“You overrate your strength in supposing I could have been taken if I
had not allowed it. I was too tardy after commencing the open attack—in
delaying my movements through Monday night, and up to the time I was
attacked by the government troops.”
“Where did you get arms?”
“I bought them.”
“In what state?”
“That I will not state. I have nothing to say, only that I claim to be
here in carrying out a measure I believe perfectly justifiable, and not
to act the part of an incendiary or ruffian, but to aid those suffering
great wrong. I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better—all you
people at the South—prepare yourselves for a settlement of this
question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared
for it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me
very easily,—I am nearly disposed of now, but this question is still to
be settled,—this Negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet.”
“Brown, suppose you had every nigger in the United States, what would
you do with them?”
“Set them free.”
“Your intention was to carry them off and free them?”
“Not at all.”
“To set them free would sacrifice the life of every man in this
community.”
“I do not think so.”
“I know it; I think you are fanatical.”
“And I think you are fanatical. Whom the gods would destroy they first
make mad, and you are mad.”
“Was it your only object to free the Negroes?”
“Absolutely our only object.”...
“You are a robber,” cried some voice in the crowd.
“You slaveholders are robbers,” retorted Brown.
But Governor Wise interrupted: “Mr. Brown, the silver of your hair is
reddened by the blood of crime, and you should eschew these hard words
and think upon eternity. You are suffering from wounds, perhaps fatal;
and should you escape death from these causes, you must submit to a
trial which may involve death. Your confessions justify the presumption
that you will be found guilty; and even now you are committing a felony
under the laws of Virginia, by uttering sentiments like these. It is
better you should turn your attention to your eternal future than be
dealing in denunciations which can only injure you.”
John Brown replied: “Governor, I have from all appearances not more than
fifteen or twenty years the start of you in the journey to that eternity
of which you kindly warn me; and whether my time here shall be fifteen
months, or fifteen days, or fifteen hours, I am equally prepared to go.
There is an eternity behind and an eternity before; and this little
speck in the centre, however long, is but comparatively a minute. The
difference between your tenure and mine is trifling, and I therefore
tell you to be prepared. I am prepared. You have a heavy responsibility,
and it behooves you to prepare more than it does me.”[260]
Thus from the day John Brown was captured to the day he died, and after,
it was the South and slavery that was on trial—not John Brown. Indeed,
the dilemma into which John Brown’s raid threw the state of Virginia was
perfect. If his foray was the work of a handful of fanatics, led by a
lunatic and repudiated by the slaves to a man, then the proper procedure
would have been to ignore the incident, quietly punish the worst
offenders and either pardon the misguided leader, or send him to an
asylum. If, on the other hand, Virginia faced a conspiracy that
threatened her social existence, aroused dangerous unrest in her slave
population, and was full of portent for the future, then extraordinary
precaution, swift and extreme punishment, and bitter complaint were only
natural. But both these situations could not be true—both horns of the
dilemma could not be logically seized. Yet this was precisely what the
South and Virginia sought. While insisting that the raid was too
hopelessly and ridiculously small to accomplish anything, and saying,
with Andrew Hunter, that “not a single one of the slaves” joined John
Brown “except by coercion,” the state nevertheless spent $250,000 to
punish the invaders, stationed from one to three thousand soldiers in
the vicinity and threw the nation into turmoil. When the inconsistency
of this action struck various minds, the attempt was made to exaggerate
the danger of the invading white men. The presiding judge at the trial
wrote, as late as 1889, that the number in Brown’s party was proven by
witnesses to have been seventy-five to one hundred and he “expected
large reinforcements”; while Andrew Hunter, the state’s attorney, saw
nation-wide conspiracies.
What, then, was the truth about the matter? It was as Frederick Douglass
said twenty-two years later on the very spot: “If John Brown did not end
the war that ended slavery, he did, at least, begin the war that ended
slavery. If we look over the dates, places, and men for which this honor
is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia, not Fort
Sumter, but Harper’s Ferry and the arsenal, not Major Anderson, but John
Brown began the war that ended American slavery, and made this a free
republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim,
shadowy, and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words,
votes, and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm the sky
was cleared,—the armed hosts of freedom stood face to face over the
chasm of a broken Union, and the clash of arms was at hand.”[261]
The paths by which John Brown’s raid precipitated civil war were these:
In the first place, he aroused the Negroes of Virginia. How far the
knowledge of his plan had penetrated is of course only to be
conjectured. Evidently few knew that the foray would take place on
October 17th. But when the movement had once made a successful start,
there is no doubt that Osborne Anderson knew whereof he spoke, when he
said that slaves were ready to coöperate. His words were proven by the
200,000 black soldiers in the Civil War. That something was wrong was
shown, too, by five incendiary fires in a single week after the raid.
Hunter sought to attribute these to “Northern emissaries,” but this
charge was unproven and extremely improbable. The only other possible
perpetrators were slaves and free Negroes. That Virginians believed this
is shown by Hinton’s declaration that the loss in 1859 by the sale of
Virginia slaves alone was $10,000,000.[262] A lady who visited John
Brown said, “It was hard for me to forget the presence of the jailer (I
had that morning seen his advertisement of ‘fifty Negroes for
sale’).”[263] It is impossible to prove the extent of this clearing-out
of suspected slaves but the census reports indicate something of it. The
Negro population of Maryland and Virginia increased a little over four
per cent. between 1850 and 1860. But in the three counties bordering on
Harper’s Ferry—Loudoun and Jefferson in Virginia and Washington in
Maryland, the 17,647 slaves of 1850 had shrunk to 15,996 in 1860, a
decrease of nearly ten per cent. This means a disappearance of 2,400
slaves and is very significant.
Secondly, long before John Brown appeared at Harper’s Ferry, Southern
leaders like Mason, the author of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and chairman
of the Harper’s Ferry investigating committee; Jefferson Davis, who was
a member of this committee; Wise, Hunter and other Virginians, had set
their faces toward secession as the only method of protecting slavery.
Into the mouths of these men John Brown put a tremendous argument and a
fearful warning. The argument they used, the warning they suppressed and
hushed. The argument was: This is Abolitionism; this is the North. This
is the kind of treatment which the South and its cherished institution
can expect unless it resorts to extreme measures. Proceeding along these
lines, they emphasized and enlarged the raid so far as its white
participants and Northern sympathizers were concerned. Governor Wise, on
November 25th, issued a burning manifesto for the ears of the South and
the eyes of President Buchanan, and the majority report of the Senate
Committee closed with ominous words. On the other hand, the warning of
John Brown’s raid—the danger of Negro insurrection, was but whispered.
Third, and this was the path that led to Civil War and far beyond: The
raid aroused and directed the conscience of the nation. Strange it was
to watch its work. Some, impulsive, eager to justify themselves, rushed
into print. To Garrison, the non-resistant, the sword of Gideon was
abhorrent; Beecher thundered against John Brown and Seward bitterly
traduced him. Then came an ominous silence in the land while his voice,
in his own defense, was heard over the whole country. A great surging
throb of sympathy arose and swept the world. That John Brown was legally
a lawbreaker and a murderer all men knew. But wider and wider circles
were beginning dimly and more clearly to recognize that his lawlessness
was in obedience to the highest call of self-sacrifice for the welfare
of his fellow men. They began to ask themselves, What is this cause that
can inspire such devotion? The reiteration of the simple statement of
“the brother in bonds” could not help but attract attention. The beauty
of the conception despite its possible unearthliness and
impracticability attracted poet and philosopher and common man.
To be sure, the nation had long been thinking over the problem of the
black man, but never before had its attention been held by such deep
dramatic and personal interest as in the forty days from mid-October to
December, 1859. This arresting of national attention was due to Virginia
and to John Brown:—to Virginia by reason of its exaggerated plaint; to
John Brown whose strength, simplicity and acumen made his trial,
incarceration and execution the most powerful Abolition argument yet
offered. The very processes by which Virginia used John Brown to “fire
the Southern heart” were used by John Brown to fire the Northern
conscience. Andrew Hunter, the prosecuting state’s attorney, of right
demanded that the trial should be short and the punishment swift and in
this John Brown fully agreed. He had no desire to escape the
consequences of his act or to clog the wheels of Virginia justice. After
a certain moral bewilderment there in the old engine-house at his
failure on the brink of success, the true significance of his mission of
sacrifice slowly rose before him. In the face of proposals to rescue him
he said at first thoughtfully: “I do not know that I ought to encourage
any attempt to save my life. I am not sure that it would not be better
for me to die at this time. I am not incapable of error, and I may be
wrong; but I think that perhaps my object would be nearer fulfilment if
I should die. I must give it some thought.”[264] And more and more this
conviction seized and thrilled him, and he began to say decisively: “I
think I cannot now better serve the cause I love so much than to die for
it; and in my death I may do more than in my life.”[265]
And again: “I can trust God with both the time and the manner of my
death, believing, as I now do, that for me at this time to seal my
testimony for God and humanity with my blood will do vastly more toward
advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavored to promote, than all I
have done in my life before.” And then finally came that last great hymn
of utter sacrifice: “I feel astonished that one so vile and unworthy as
I am would even be suffered to have a place anyhow or anywhere amongst
the very least of all who when they came to die (as all must) were
permitted to pay the debt of nature in defense of the right and of God’s
eternal and immutable truth.”[266]
The trial was a difficult experience. Virginia attempted to hold scales
of even justice between mob violence and the world-wide sympathy of all
good men. To defend its domestic institutions, it must try a man for
murder when that very man, sitting as self-appointed judge of those very
institutions, had convicted them before a jury of mankind. To defend the
good name of the state, Virginia had to restrain the violent blood
vengeance of men whose kin had been killed in the raid, and who had
sworn that no prisoner should escape the extreme penalty. The trial was
legally fair but pressed to a conclusion in unseemly haste, and in
obedience to a threatening public opinion and a great hovering dread.
Only against this unfair haste did John Brown protest, for he wanted the
world to understand why he had done the deed. On the other hand, Hunter
not only feared the local mob but the slowly arising sentiment for this
white-haired crusader. He therefore pushed the proceedings legally, but
with almost brutal pertinacity. The prisoner was arraigned while wounded
and in bed; the lawyers, hurriedly chosen, were given scant time for
consultation or preparation. John Brown was formally committed to jail
at Charlestown, the county seat, on October 20th, had a preliminary
examination October 25th, and was indicted by the grand jury October
26th, for “conspiracy with slaves for the purpose of insurrection; with
treason against the commonwealth of Virginia; and with murder in the
first degree.”
Thursday, October 27th, his trial was begun. A jury was impaneled
without challenge and Brown’s lawyers, ignoring his outline of defense,
brought in the plea of insanity. The old man arose from his couch and
said: “I look upon it as a miserable artifice and pretext of those who
ought to take a different course in regard to me, if they took any at
all, and I view it with contempt more than otherwise.... I am perfectly
unconscious of insanity, and I reject, so far as I am capable, any
attempts to interfere in my behalf on that score.”[267]
On Friday a Massachusetts lawyer arrived to help in the trial and also
privately to suggest methods of escape. John Brown quietly refused to
contemplate any such attempt, but was glad to accept the aid of this
lawyer and two others, who were sent by John A. Andrew and his friends.
The judge curtly refused these men any time to prepare their case, but
in spite of this it ran over until Monday when the jury retired. Late
Monday afternoon they returned. Redpath says:
“At this moment the crowd filled all the space from the couch inside the
bar, around the prisoner, beyond the railing in the body of the court,
out through the wide hall, and beyond the doors. There stood the anxious
but perfectly silent and attentive populace, stretching head and neck to
witness the closing scene of old Brown’s trial.”
The clerk of the court read the indictment and asked: “Gentlemen of the
jury, what say you? Is the prisoner at the bar, John Brown, guilty or
not guilty?”
“Guilty,” answered the foreman.
“Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others
to rebel, and murder in the first degree?”
“Yes.”
Redpath continues: “Not the slightest sound was heard in this vast crowd
as this verdict was thus returned and read. Not the slightest expression
of elation or triumph was uttered from the hundreds present, who, a
moment before, outside the court, joined in heaping threats and
imprecations on his head; nor was this strange silence interrupted
during the whole of the time occupied by the forms of the court. Old
Brown himself said not even a word, but, as on any previous day, turned
to adjust his pallet, and then composedly stretched himself upon
it.”[268]
The following Wednesday John Brown was sentenced. Moving with painful
steps and pale face, he took his seat under the gaslight in the great
square room and remained motionless. The judge read his decision on the
points of exception and the clerk asked: “Have you anything to say why
sentence of death should not be passed upon you?” Then rising and
leaning forward, John Brown made that last great speech, in a voice at
once gentle and firm:
“I have, may it please the court, a few words to say.
“In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along
admitted,—the design on my part to free the 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, moved them through the country and finally left them in
Canada. I designed to have done the same 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 incite slaves to rebellion, or
to make insurrection.
“I have another objection; and that is, it is unjust that I should
suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and
which I admit has been fairly proved (for I admire the truthfulness and
candor of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in
this case),—had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the
intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their
friends,—either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or
any of that class,—and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this
interference, it would have been all right; and every man in this court
would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
“This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God.
I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least
the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would
that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me,
further, to ‘remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them.’ I
endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to
understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have
interfered as I have done—as I have always freely admitted I have
done—in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. 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 enactments,—I
submit; so let it be done! Let me say one word further.
“I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my
trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than
I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the
first what was my intention, and what was not. I never had any design
against the life of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason,
or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never
encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that
kind.
“Let me say, also, a word in regard to the statements made by some of
those connected with me. I hear it has been stated by some of them that
I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say
this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one
of them but that joined me of his own accord, and the greater part at
their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of
conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was for the
purpose I have stated.
“Now I have done.”[269]
The day of his dying, December 2d, dawned glorious; twenty-four hours
before he had kissed his wife good-bye, and on this morning he visited
his doomed companions—Shields Green and Copeland first; then the
wavering Cook and Coppoc and the unmovable Stevens. At last he turned
toward the place of his hanging. Since early morning three thousand
soldiers had been marching and counter-marching around the scaffold,
which had been erected a half mile from Charlestown, encircling it for
fifteen miles; a hush sat on the hearts of men. John Brown rode out into
the morning. “This is a beautiful land,” he said. It was beautiful.
Wide, glistening, rolling fields flickered in the sunlight. Beyond, the
Shenandoah went rolling northward, and still afar rose the mighty masses
of the Blue Ridge, where Nat Turner had fought and died, where Gabriel
had looked for refuge and where John Brown had builded his awful dream.
Some say he kissed a Negro child as he passed, but Andrew Hunter
vehemently denies it. “No Negro could get access to him,” he says, and
he is probably right; and yet all about him as he hung there knelt the
funeral guard he prayed for when he said:
“My love to all who love their neighbors. I have asked to be spared from
having any weak or hypocritical prayers made over me when I am publicly
murdered, and that my only religious attendants be poor little dirty,
ragged, bareheaded, and barefooted slave boys and girls, led by some
gray-headed slave mother. Farewell! Farewell!”[270]