by H. W. Brands
This effort seemed to require all the prisoner’s energy. “Brown then lay down again, drew his blanket over him, and closed his eyes and appeared to sink in tranquil slumber,” the Herald reporter on the trial observed.
Brown in fact did get legal help. Various attorneys sent by Brown’s friends or traveling on their own hook arrived, alleviating the burden of his Virginia lawyers, who were happy to shed responsibility for a despised client bound for certain conviction.
The trial ran into the weekend. The prosecution didn’t bother cross-examining any of the defense witnesses, so confident were they of the jury’s support. The defense began its summary by reminding the jury that the burden of proof was on the prosecution and contending that the sum of the prosecution’s evidence fell short of the standard for conviction. Judge Parker had hoped to finish the trial before Sunday, but the defense had more to say, and he didn’t want to be accused of forcing a verdict. He recessed until Monday.
By then Brown looked better physically. “His health is evidently improving,” the reporter remarked, before adding, “He was laid on a bed, as usual.”
The defense reiterated that the burden of proof lay on the state. The prosecution, it said, had failed to clear the bar of reasonable doubt that Brown had committed treason, according to Virginia’s law; that he had committed murder, with premeditation; and that he had, while within Virginia, conspired to encourage slaves to rebel.
The prosecution countered that treason was implicit in the provisional constitution drafted by the defendant. The attack on Harpers Ferry had obviously been premeditated, and the murder of five men was the result. As for inciting slave rebellion, if putting weapons in their hands wasn’t incitement, nothing was.
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THE PROSECUTION’S SUMMARY finished at half past one. The jury was sent out; it returned before two thirty. The Herald man who had faithfully followed the proceedings from the start described the end. “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,” he wrote. “There stood the anxious but perfectly silent and attentive populace, stretching its neck to witness the closing scene of Old Brown’s trial. It was terrible to look upon such a crowd of human faces, moved and agitated with but one dreadful expectancy—to let the eyes rest for a moment upon the only calm and unruffled countenance there, and to think that he alone of all present was the doomed one above whose head hung the sword of fate. But there he stood, a man of indomitable will and iron nerve, all collected and unmoved.”
The clerk of the court spoke. “Gentlemen of the jury, what say you?” he asked. “Is the prisoner at the bar, John Brown, guilty or not guilty?”
“Guilty,” said the foreman of the jury.
“Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel, and murder in the first degree?” the clerk asked.
“Yes,” said the foreman.
The reporter watched and listened. “Not the slightest sound was heard in the vast crowd as this verdict was thus returned and read,” he recounted. “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.”
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“MY DEAR WIFE, and Children Every one,” John Brown wrote on October 31. “I suppose you have learned before this by the newspapers that two weeks ago today we were fighting for our lives at Harpers Ferry.” Brown related that Oliver Brown had been killed during the fighting and Watson Brown mortally wounded. “I received several sabre cuts in my head; & bayonet stabs in my body.” He had been taken prisoner. “I have since been tried, & found guilty of treason, etc.; and of murder in the first degree. I have not yet received my sentence.”
His conscience was clear and his soul at rest. “Under all these terrible calamities, I feel quite cheerful in the assurance that God reigns; will overrule all for his glory; and the best possible good. I feel no consciousness of guilt in the matter: or even mortification on account of my imprisonment; and irons; & I feel perfectly assured that very soon no member of my family will feel any possible disposition to blush on my account. Already dear friends at a distance with kindest sympathy are cheering me with the assurance that posterity, at least, will do me justice.”
His wounds were improving. His jailer was an honest man. “You may rest assured that both kind hearts and kind faces are more or less about me, whilst thousands are thirsting for my blood.”
He offered a benediction to his family and reminded them to put their faith in God. “He will never leave or forsake you, unless you forsake him.” He urged them to practice Christian charity. “Never forget the poor nor think anything you bestow on them to be lost to you even though they may be as black as Ebedmelech the Ethiopian….Be sure to entertain strangers….Remember them that are in bonds as bound with them.”
The mails were irregular, and not for four days was he able to send this letter. Just before it went out, he penned a postscript: “Yesterday November 2d I was sentenced to be hanged on 2 December next. Do not grieve on my account. I am still quite cheerful. God bless you all.”
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JOHN BROWN’S SENTENCE had largely been determined when the jury rendered its guilty verdict. Each of the crimes for which he was convicted carried the death sentence. Yet Judge Parker asked Brown if he wished to speak before the sentence was announced.
Brown rose from his bed and faced the judge. “I have, may it please the court, a few words to say,” he responded. “In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted, of a design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of the matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri, and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moving them through the country, and finally leaving them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended to do. I never did intend murder or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite the slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection. I have another objection, and that is that 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 on 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.”
Brown looked around the room. “This court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which 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 upon 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 on behalf of His despised poor, is no 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 say let it be done.”
He gazed ar
ound the courtroom again, pausing at Judge Parker. “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 liberty 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 the kind. Let me say also in regard to the statements made by some of those who were connected with me, I fear 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. Not one but 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 am done.”
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THE COURTROOM WAS perfectly still while Brown spoke. Most of those present refused to accept Brown’s version of events, which contradicted the evidence on which he had been convicted. But all admired his composure and courage in the face of imminent doom.
The judge broke the silence. He pronounced the sentence: hanging, in thirty days. The court was adjourned.
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SOME OF BROWN’S SUPPORTERS hoped to stay the execution by springing him from jail. Several of his Kansas friends, weary of the peace that had settled over that territory, hoped to revive the old spirit by galloping to Brown’s rescue. But two hurdles blocked their way. The first was the cordon of troops Governor Wise threw around the Charles Town jail. Wise had been embarrassed by the ease with which Brown had commenced the Harpers Ferry raid, and by the need for Virginia, a principal expositor of state self-sufficiency, to turn to the national government to subdue the raiders. He wasn’t going to be embarrassed again. No one was allowed near the jail without authorization; every body of men was halted and interrogated miles away.
The second hurdle was Brown’s refusal to countenance a rescue. The inactivity imposed by his wounds and the bars of his cell afforded Brown time to reflect on the outcome of the raid. The great act of his life had been a dismal failure. It hadn’t freed a single slave; in all likelihood it would make the lot of the slaves worse. And now he was bound for the scaffold.
Yet Brown believed God worked in mysterious ways. God must have a plan for him still. If John Brown couldn’t free the slaves in his life, perhaps he might free them in his death. In Kansas he had fought ferociously, like a man who didn’t fear death but neither wanted to die. Now Brown came to embrace death. This was the end toward which God had been guiding his steps; this would be the great act of his life.
In the clearest terms Brown made would-be rescuers understand he would not permit a rescue. George Hoyt was one of the Northern additions to Brown’s defense team; he was also a spy for some of those who wanted to free him. Hoyt hinted at a rescue; Brown “positively refused his consent to any such plan,” Hoyt reported. Brown sealed his refusal by pledging to his jailer, the one who had been kind to him, that he would not attempt to escape.
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HE MEANWHILE REASSURED his family that all was well. His wounds continued to heal, he said. His appetite was good. His jailer provided him with everything he needed and some nonessential niceties. “I am, besides, quite cheerful, having (as I trust) ‘the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,’ to rule in my heart, and the testimony (in some degree) of a good conscience that I have not lived altogether in vain. 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.” He hoped Mary and the children could accept this as he had come to accept it. “Remember, dear wife and children all, that Jesus of Nazareth suffered a most excruciating death on the cross as a felon, under the most aggravating circumstances.”
Mary had indicated she wanted to visit him. He gently pushed her back. The journey would be expensive, and the money could be better spent on herself and the children. The journey, moreover, would subject her to scrutiny and criticism, from which he knew she shied. “The sympathy that is now aroused in your behalf may not always follow you. There is but little more of the romantic about helping poor widows and their children than there is about trying to relieve poor ‘niggers.’ ” A visit would make the final separation harder. “The little comfort it might afford us to meet again would be dearly bought by the pains of a final separation. We must part; and I feel assured for us to meet under such dreadful circumstances would only add to our distress.”
Yet pushing her away didn’t come easily. “Oh, Mary! do not come, but patiently wait for the meeting of those who love God and their fellow-men, where no separation must follow.”
His eyes were on the future victory, and so must hers be. “I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day, nor a storm so furious and dreadful as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky.”
She read his letters but still wanted to see him before he died. She said she could bear the scrutiny, and others offered to bear the expense. His resistance weakened. “If you feel sure that you can endure the trials and the shock, which will be unavoidable if you come, I should be most glad to see you once more,” he wrote. Even so, he wondered if she knew what she was getting into. “When I think of your being insulted on the road, and perhaps while here, and of only seeing your wretchedness made complete, I shrink from it. Your composure and fortitude of mind may be quite equal to it all; but I am in dreadful doubt of it.”
Perhaps he wasn’t sure his composure could stand the visit. He had begun to take his leave of the earth; to be reminded of the affection and other good things the earth held for him might be more than he could bear. “Do consider the matter well before you make the plunge,” he repeated. “I think I had better say no more on this most painful subject.”
Mary made the trip. Governor Wise gave her a special pass, and on the afternoon of November 30 she saw her husband. They spoke of the children, of their education, of the farm at North Elba. The governor had allowed her a few hours; Brown, feeling the bonds of affection as he hadn’t for a long time, asked the governor’s representative if Mary could spend the night. The answer was a regretful no. With a final embrace they parted for the last time.
A letter he wrote the same day followed her as she left. “I am waiting the hour of my public murder with great composure of mind and cheerfulness, feeling the strong assurance that in no other possible way could I be used to so much advantage to the cause of good and of humanity, and that nothing that either I or all my family have sacrificed or suffered will be lost,” he said. “I have now no doubt but that our seeming disaster will ultimately result in the most glorious success; so, my dear shattered and broken family, be of good cheer, and believe and trust in God with all your heart, and with all your soul; for He doeth all things well. Do not feel ashamed on my account, nor for one moment despair of the cause or grow weary of well doing. I bless God I never felt stronger confidence in the certain and near approach of a bright morning and a glorious day than I have felt, and do now feel, since my confinement here.” The end was near. To them, and to himself, he urged, “Be faithful unto death.”
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DECEMBER 2, 1859, dawned clear and, for the season, quite warm. A haze set in by nine o’clock, but the temperature continued to climb. Residents of Charles Town threw open their windows to keep their houses from overheating. Early risers heard the sounds of hammers and saws coming from a field at the edge of the town; carpenters were building the platform for Joh
n Brown’s farewell to earth. All morning, troops from local militias marched from their bivouacs outside town to take up positions surrounding the field. Their inexpertise caused the maneuvers to drag on for hours, until they got it almost right.
At half past ten the prisoner was summoned. A wagon carrying his coffin rolled up to the door of the jail. John Brown walked out, climbed into the wagon and sat upon the coffin. With a military escort leading the way, the wagon moved slowly toward the execution field. As the wagon crested a high point, Brown looked across the land, and his jailer, seated next to him, heard him say, “This is beautiful country.” The wagon halted at the scaffold. Brown stepped from the wagon. He turned to the jailer. “I have no words to thank you for all your kindness to me,” he said.
He mounted the scaffold. His arms were tied behind his back, and his ankles were bound. In a steady voice, betraying no sign of fear, he requested of the sheriff and the captain of the guard, “Let there be no more delay than is necessary.”