Hundreds of people came to visit Brown in prison, and he eventually even gained the sympathy of his jailers. One attendant, John Frederick Blessing, was a baker and confectioner who dutifully brought Brown and his men cakes, oysters, and various other delicacies. The abolitionist appreciated Blessing’s kindness, and a warm friendship developed.
In the days before his execution, Brown received comfort not only from strangers but from his beloved Bible as well. In sworn, notarized affidavits made in January 1893, George W. Engle and Charles C. Conklyn, assistant guards who escorted Brown from prison to the courthouse and guarded him there each day of the trial, noted “the devoted attention and religious fervor shown by John Brown in the study of his Bible and in marking certain verses therein.” Jail guard John E. Hilbert recorded Brown’s “constant perusal and study of the Bible.” Indeed, Brown marked passages that mirrored his personality, temperament, and beliefs, such as the following:
Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none. Mischief shall come upon mischief, and rumour shall be upon rumour; then shall they seek a vision of the prophet; but the law shall perish from the priest, and counsel from the ancients. The king shall mourn, and the prince shall be clothed with desolation, and the hands of the people of the land shall be troubled: I will do unto them after their way, and according to their deserts will I judge them; and they shall know that I am the Lord.
—Ezekiel 7:25-27
Before he was hanged, John Brown gave John Frederick Blessing, one of his jailers, the Bible he read and marked in prison. "With the best wishes of the undersigned and his sincere thanks for many acts of kindness," wrote the abolitionist on the flyleaf. "There is no commentary in the world so good in order to a right understanding of this blessed book as an honest Childlike and teachable spirit."
To mark passages, Brown usually either drew ink lines running down the margins or folded page corners.
So earnestly devoted was Brown to his Bible, which he always kept by his side, that “sometimes [he] did not even lay aside the book when his physician entered,” recalled Dr. G. F. Mason, who treated the wounded prisoner in the jail at what was then Charlestown, Virginia (now Charlestown, West Virginia).
Brown did pay attention to some of the visitors he had a fondness for. He spoke kindly and serenely with a judge’s wife who came from Boston to see him, causing her to weep when she left. He spoke calmly with reporters and clergymen and soldiers.
On the day before he died, John Brown was allowed to see his wife, Mary, one more time. Mary had made a fervent but unsuccessful appeal on behalf of her husband to the governor of Virginia, and she was in an emotional whirlwind. The couple spoke about their children, the family’s future, his burial, and the burials of those who were killed in raids with him. They hugged emotionally as Mary, prohibited from being with him his final night, departed.
Abolitionist John Brown
Before John Brown was led away to die, he extended his appreciation to John Frederick Blessing, the jail guard who showed kindness to him and his fellow prisoners, and to whom he had become deeply attached. He gave to Blessing his cherished Bible, with an inscription (dated November 29, 1859) on the flyleaf.
On the morning of December 2,1859, John Brown was led out of his cell by some prison guards. He passed his fellow raiders and blessed them, saying he hoped to meet them again in heaven.
With the area filled with militiamen and spectators, the abolitionist rode to the place of execution. It was on a hill in rolling countryside. There were a thousand U.S. soldiers present and a score of citizens. Many were happy to see him finally get his comeuppance and wanted to witness this long-awaited event. Brown was escorted up the scaffold, a hood was placed over his head, and his feet were bound. The swift thrust of an ax cut a rope, dropping the false floor on which Brown stood. His body fell, suspended only by the noose around his neck. After a few moments, life passed from the man who had been obsessed with liberating the black slaves, the abolitionist whose actions would reverberate throughout the turbulent years ahead.
John Brown’s Bible was to be a sacred relic in the Blessing home for over thirty years. The family protected and preserved it, and they never permitted any leaves to be taken out or any additions or changes to be made. With the hundreds of visitors—friends and curiosity seekers—to the Blessing home, intrigued by the legendary martyr’s Bible and eager to touch it, about the only effect on the book through the years was the soiling and tearing of the flyleaf.
John Frederick Blessing died in 1869, and his widow, Emily Jane, requiring money for some badly needed repairs on her home, was forced to sell the Bible in 1893. She was very old and would have preferred to pass along this family treasure to her children, but economic hardship prevailed. Although she had received offers as high as $250, she wanted to sell it to Frank G. Logan, a Chicago banker who she believed would diligently guard and conserve it. Logan (1851-1937) was also a collector of art, historical manuscripts, and letters; his collection of John Brown items included cotton from Brown’s coffin and Brown’s pistol from his Kansas campaign. Logan had offered only $150 for the Bible. A Charlestown, West Virginia, notary public, B. D. Gibson, acted as an intermediary to facilitate the sale.
In a letter dated December 21, 1892, Gibson urged Logan to pay Mrs. Blessing the $200 she wanted, telling him this was still an excellent deal because “there are no precedents by which to rate the value of the John Brown relics, because he was a martyr whose principles succeeded ultimately and speedily too.” Gibson, who indicated that his letter was not written “in any spirit of barter or dicker” but because he wanted to see the book “in the proper hands,” even went so far as to offer to advance the extra $50 himself, payable up to a year after a date Logan would elect. He proposed that Logan exhibit the Bible at the World’s Fair to make up the $50. And to sweeten the deal, Gibson noted that he had induced the Blessings to include along with the Bible a picture of John Brown sitting down and holding a copy of the New York Tribune and a copy of Made-Up Stories (part of Mrs. Follen’s Twilight Series), autographed for John Frederick Blessing by one of Brown’s raiders, John E. Cook. A deal was struck, and less than three weeks later a pasteboard box containing the items was placed in a wooden crate that was nailed shut and shipped by U.S. mail to Logan in Chicago. In the 1920s the Bible, along with other articles in Logan’s collection, was obtained by a private nonprofit organization.
A song about the controversial emancipator-martyr grew popular in the Union as the war between the states raged on. While his “body lies amould’ring in the grave,” goes the lyric, “his soul goes marching on.” It still does today, in John Brown’s Bible.
LOCATION: Chicago Historical Society, Chicago, Illinois.
CAPTAIN DANJOU’S WOODEN HAND
DATE: 1863.
WHAT IT IS: The artificial left hand of a French foreign legion commander who was killed in battle. In this battle, a small company of legionnaires gallantly and heroically fought a large army that attacked them. The commander’s artificial hand was recovered from the battlefield and became a revered relic among the French foreign legion.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: The hand is wooden, and the fingers are slightly curled.
The scene was intense. Southern Mexico, near the eastern coast, mid-nineteenth century. Swampy lowlands infested with malaria-carrying mosquitoes, an oppressive tropical climate. This poor country was politically unstable, its civilization was backward, and sovereignty was a function of military supremacy.
The French were trying to seize control of the nation. Napoleon III sensed an opportunity to wrest control of a huge parcel of land from the current Mexican leader, an Indian named Benito Juarez, and used the excuse of the country’s unresolved financial debts to send in troops. But the Mexicans, like their forefathers who had fought hard for independence from Spain just decades earlier, were determined to be free of foreign domination.
Assisting the army of France in Mexico was the French foreign le
gion, an elite band of professional fighters that was created in 1831 by Louis Philippe, then king of France. The legion was composed mostly of rogues, fugitives, and rebels—it was a volunteer force with a “no questions asked” enlistment policy—who endured severe training and who prided themselves on being brave and highly skilled. Friction with the French army caused the thousands of legionnaires dispatched to Mexico to be assigned to patrol and work in rough and unhealthy areas.
On the morning of April 30, 1863, Captain Jean Danjou of the French foreign legion was leading a company of sixty-two men and two officers on a reconnaissance mission on a trail between Veracruz and Puebla. A huge shipment of gold—remuneration for the French forces in Mexico—was to be sent to Mexico City by carts. A company of the French foreign legion drew the assignment to guard it along this part of the route.
The company’s regular officers and half its regular men were ill from dysentery and malaria, so volunteers were recruited from other companies. Captain Danjou was among the volunteers. Danjou was a veteran of several legion campaigns, and his left hand had been ripped off during an engagement in the southern Crimea. The thirty-five-year-old officer used a prosthetic wooden hand, over which he always wore a white glove.
Around 8:00 A.M., after his troops had been marching for hours without eating, and the sun was beginning to beat down mercilessly, Captain Danjou decided to give his men a respite: coffee, a short rest, then back on their feet. But just as the men were settling down, a sentinel shouted. Materializing out of the countryside was an incredible sight: an army, a huge army of Mexican nationalists, both on horse and on foot.
Captain Jean Danjou became a legend in the French foreign legion after the battle in Camerone.
Quick-minded, Captain Danjou issued an order. A few thousand feet back the company had passed through the village of Camerone. It had been partially destroyed, but a hacienda was still standing. This would be a good defensive fortification from which the men could fight the Mexicans until backups arrived. The legionnaires disappeared into the brush as the Mexicans swooped down, capturing a number of them.
Forty-nine of the legionnaires made it back to the hacienda. There they engaged in a battle with their attackers. Less than an hour after fighting began, a Mexican soldier approached the hacienda under a flag of truce. His message was simple: the Mexican army was two thousand strong, and the French company could not possibly prevail. If the legionnaires surrendered, they would not be mistreated.
Surrendering was not part of the code of the French foreign legion. That would be cowardly and disgraceful. Danjou responded to the insulting offer with animation: the Mexicans would have them only when they had killed every last one of them.
So the fighting raged on. Despite being vastly outnumbered, the French troops fought valiantly and caused many Mexican casualties. But in the end there were simply too many soldiers and guerrillas. One by one the legionnaires, dehydrated now, were picked off. In the late morning Captain Danjou was struck by a round and died.
The French mercenaries’ numbers dwindled until there were only about a half-dozen left. After nearly ten hours of fighting, the Mexican nationalist commander, Colonel Milan, decided to put an end to the skirmish, lest the foreigners’ perseverance be an embarrassment to him. When the Mexicans stormed the hacienda, the legionnaires put up a last effort and charged them with their bayonets. The Mexican forces engulfed them and moved in for the final kill. However, a Mexican officer decided to spare the few remaining warriors, so these men were captured and the other still-living but wounded legionnaires were carried by stretcher to a hospital, where many succumbed despite medical treatment.
Colonel Milan did not pursue the cargo of gold—perhaps because he forgot about it—which was on its way back to the French base after its carriers heard the gunfire.
The wooden hand of Captain Danjou. Found in the rubble after an 1860s battle in Mexico, the prosthesis became a symbol to legionnaires of courage and fortitude.
The backups that the legionnaires hoped would soon arrive did not come until early the next day, at which point the Mexicans had taken the wounded men as hostages, and only the residue remained—corpses. Strangely, the body of Captain Danjou, the gallant commander, was nowhere to be found. However, a legionnaire officer spotted Danjou’s wooden hand in the rubble, scooped it up, and carried it with him for the duration of his service in Mexico and then back to legionnaire headquarters in Algeria.
Camerone. Danjou. The battle and its commander became legends in the French foreign legion. In the twentieth century, April 30, the day of the historic battle, was established as an annual ceremony in France, commemorated with a parade and a recounting of Danjou and the legionnaires’ heroic stand.
The prosthesis used by the French commander to gesture, to direct his men, to carry out actions as if it were his real hand, is an intimate remnant of that historic battle. This object bears witness to the bravery of all those who fought the battle at Camerone, and indeed to that of the French foreign legion itself. New generations of this elite organization see the wooden hand of Captain Jean Danjou as an emblem of what they stand for, of the quintessential esprit of la légion étrangère.
LOCATION: French Foreign Legion Museum, Aubagne, France.
MAJOR GENERAL DANIEL E. SICKLES’S LEG
DATE: 1863.
WHAT IT IS: The fractured right tibia and fibula of a forty-three-year-old Civil War general.
WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE: A shattered lower leg bone.
One of the great pieces of folklore of the Civil War involves one Daniel Edgar Sickles, a general who was wounded at Gettysburg. After a doctor amputated his leg, Sickles proudly dispatched it with his compliments in a coffin-like box to the Army Medical Museum in Washington, D.C., where he regularly brought his friends to join him in admiring this gruesome battle souvenir.
If Sickles’s bequest seems a bit eccentric, it was only one of a series of audacious acts that characterized this controversial and colorful fellow. Born in New York City on October 20, 1819, to George Sickles, a patent lawyer, and his wife, Susan, Daniel grew into an unruly youth, at times running away from home or dropping out of school. He was blessed, however, with a charming personality and loving parents, who, in an attempt to mature him, sent him off to private school. This effort proved fruitless, for young Daniel quit that school, too, in response to a teacher’s admonishment. Attracted to journalism, Daniel became an apprentice for a newspaper, but he was eventually coaxed home by his father after the lawyer’s business investments finally hit pay dirt.
More conflict between father and son resulted in more itinerancy for Daniel, until George Sickles finally arranged for his son to stay with some friends prior to entering college. Daniel found happiness in the home of Lorenzo Da Ponte, an old Italian with an eclectic background that included serving as Mozart’s librettist. The household, comprising Lorenzo’s scholarly children and a young couple (the wife had been adopted by Lorenzo) and their infant daughter, Teresa, offered quite a Bohemian atmosphere.
Daniel entered college but dropped out soon after, devastated when Lorenzo and one of his sons suddenly died within a short period of each other. He went to work for an attorney and learned quickly, demonstrating an aptitude for law. He was admitted to the bar and followed in his father’s footsteps by becoming a patent lawyer. But over the next few years, he developed an unsavory reputation for frequenting bordellos and misappropriating clients’ funds. He also joined the corrupt world of New York politics, this being the heyday of Tammany Hall, and with the aid of influential friends he was elected to the legislature. While in the public eye, Sickles boldly continued his questionable antics, which included bringing a favorite lady of the evening to a meeting of the august New York State Assembly. Despite his relentless womanizing, he eventually decided to settle down. The object of his affection was a girl half his age, Teresa, the seventeen-year-old daughter of the couple he lived with at the Da Pontes’ (whose mother Sickles was said to have seduced).
All the hot water Sickles got into as a result of his undignified peccadilloes while an assemblyman was a minor nuisance compared to the scandal that was to afflict him as a New York congressman living in Washington, D.C. In the late 1850s the nation’s capital was feverish with political activity as the debate over the slavery issue reached a crisis level. Sickles wasted no time ingratiating himself with the resident bigwigs, men such as Washington district attorney Philip Barton Key, the son of Francis Scott Key, and President James Buchanan.
Harboring presidential ambitions himself, Sickles plunged into the turbulent political waters. With equal gusto but much greater discretion now, he resumed his philandering.
His work frequently took him out of town, leaving his beautiful young wife alone and vulnerable to the flirtatious men of Washington society. One who was attracted to her was Philip Barton Key, a widower and father of four children. At first, the time they spent together—horseback riding, strolling, and other leisurely pastimes—was surely innocent; the fortyish Key professed no more than fatherly affection for Teresa, now twenty-three. But soon their admiration took on a physical aspect.
So torrid was this love affair that the prominent Key, a strikingly attractive man with a reputation as a charmer, rented a house nearby. Rendezvous were frequent. The lovers devised an elaborate set of signals, including mounting a red ribbon from a second-story window to indicate that Key was inside and waiting. Neighbors in front and back couldn’t help but notice the frequent coming and going of Key and the mysterious woman dressed in a black raglan cloak.
Rumors cycled through the Washington gossip mill until everyone of consequence, it seemed, knew about the affair—everyone, that is, except Daniel Sickles. Finally, Sickles received a note, signed only with initials, that revealed to the incredulous congressman that Key had rented the house “for no other reason than to meet your wife, Mrs. Sickles.” The note continued, “He hangs a string out the window to signal her that he is in, and leaves the door unfastened and she walks in and . . . with these few hints I leave the rest to your imagination.” Wanting to be unequivocally certain of his wife’s purported indiscretions, Sickles had a close associate, George Woolridge, spy on Teresa and interview his servants. Woolridge confirmed the contents of the note. In a rage, Sickles confronted his wife and demanded that she write a lengthy confession. “I did what is usual for a wicked woman to do,” she stated, and provided details of when and where she and Key met and how the two undressed and went to bed together.
Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, & Einstein's Brain Page 23