Part 65 (1/2)

Thousands of letters began to pour into the office of the Governor of Virginia, threatening, imploring, pleading for his life. The leading politicians of all parties of the North were at length swept into this howling mob by the press. To every plea the Governor of the Commonwealth replied:

”Southern Society is built on Reverence for Law. The Law has been outraged by this man. It shall be vindicated, though the heavens fall.”

In this stand he was immovable and the South backed him to a man. For exciting servile insurrection the King of Great Britain was held up to everlasting scorn by our fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence. For this crime among others we rebelled and established the American Republic. Should John Brown be canonized for the same infamy? The Southern people asked this question in dumb amazement at the clamor from the North.

And so the Day of Transfiguration on the scaffold dawned.

Judge Thomas Russell and his good wife journeyed all the way from Boston to minister to the wants of their strange guest. There was in the distinguished jurist's mind a question which he must ask Brown before the rope should strangle him forever. His martyrdom had cleared every doubt and cloud from the mind of his friend save one. His fascinating letters, filled with the praise of G.o.d and the glory of a martyr's cause, had exalted him.

The judge had heard his speech in court on the day he was sentenced to death and had believed that each word was inspired. But the old man, who was now to die in glory, had spent a week in Judge Russell's house in Boston hiding from a deputy sheriff in whose hands was a warrant for plain murder--one of the foulest murders in the records of crime. The judge was a student of character, as well as Abolitionist.

He asked Brown for his last confidential statement as to these crimes on the Pottawattomie. There was no hesitation in his bold reply. Standing beneath the shadow of the gallows, the white hand of Death on his stooped shoulders, one foot on earth and the other pressing the sh.o.r.es of eternity, he lied as brazenly as he had lied a hundred times before.

He a.s.sured his friend and his wife that he had nothing to do with those killings.

Mrs. Russell, weeping, kissed him.

And Brown said calmly: ”Now, go.”

As he ascended the scaffold he handed to one who stood near his final message, the supreme utterance over which he had prayed day and night to his G.o.d. Despatched from the scaffold, and sealed by his blood, he knew that its magic words would spread by contagion the Red Thought.

His face shone with the glory of his hope as his feet climbed the scaffold steps. On the sc.r.a.p of paper he had written:

”I, JOHN BROWN, AM NOW QUITE CERTAIN THAT THE CRIMES OF THIS GUILTY LAND WILL NEVER BE PURGED AWAY BUT WITH BLOOD.”

The trap fell, his darkened soul swung into eternity and the deed was done. He had raised the Blood Feud to the nth power. His message thrilled the world.

Bells were tolling in the North while crowds of weeping men and women knelt in prayer to his G.o.d. Had they but lifted the veil and looked, they would have seen the face of a fiend. But their eyes were now blinded with the madness which had driven him to his death.

In Cleveland, Melodeon Hall was draped in mourning at a meeting where thousands wept and cursed and prayed. Mammoth gatherings were held in New York, in Rochester and Syracuse. In Boston a crowd, so dense they were lifted from their feet by the pressure of thousands behind, clamoring for entrance, rushed into Tremont Temple.

William Lloyd Garrison, the Pacifist, declared the meeting was called to witness John Brown's resurrection. He flung the last shred of principle to the winds and joined the mob of the Blood Feud without reservation.

”As a peace man--an ultra peace man--I am prepared to say: 'Success to every Slave Insurrection in the South and in every Slave Country!'”

Wendell Phillips, believing Judge Russell's report of Brown's denial of the Pottawattomie murders, declared to the thousands who crowded Cooper Union that John Brown was a Saint--that he was not on the Pottawattomie Creek on that fateful night, that he was not within twenty-five miles of the spot!

Ralph Waldo Emerson, ignorant of the truth of Pottawattomie, hailed Brown as ”the new Saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of men into conflict and death--the new Saint who has achieved his martyrdom and will make the gallows glorious as the cross.”

One great spirit among the anti-slavery forces refused to be swept in the current of insanity. Abraham Lincoln at Troy, Kansas, said on the day of Brown's death:

”Old John Brown has been executed for treason against a State. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking Slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might _think_ himself right.”

Lincoln's voice was drowned in the roar of the mob.

John Brown from the scaffold had set in motion forces of mind beyond control. Never before had men so little grasped the present, so stupidly ignored the past, so poorly divined the future. Reason had been hurled from her throne. Man had ceased to think.

Had Lieutenant Green's sword pierced Brown's heart he would have died the death of a mad dog. His imprisonment, his carefully staged martyrdom, his message of blood, and final, just execution by Law created the mob mind which destroyed reverence for Law.

As he swung from the gallows and his body swayed for a moment between heaven and earth Colonel Preston, standing beside the steps, solemnly cried: