Part 2

Why review the scenes of those hours of attack and fierce defence at Harper's Ferry? Poorly informed, indeed, must be that American man or woman, boy or girl, who has not repeatedly read the events of those less than twenty-four hours of condensed history. They furnish the prelude to every account of the War of the Rebellion. No matter how vivid the scenes of later days, somewhere in the background we get these earlier details over again. The blow once struck, and there arose from Maine to Texas cries ranging through all the variations of surprise, exultation, and fiercest denunciation. I am speaking as a Northern man to Northern people, and it is natural that we should look upon the acts of John Brown with quite different feelings from those held by the people who saw in them the uprooting of all the traditions and customs of their society. For the present, however, I will confine myself to the opinions of those who from the north side of Mason and Dixon's Line, heard the "clash of resounding arms." There were many men who had in various ways assisted Brown in his work without knowing just what his plans were. It sufficed for them to know that he was to harry the Institution, leaving to him the perfecting and executing of details. The telegraphic dispatches on that Monday morning of October 17th, carried consternation into other homes than those of the South. It seemed reasonable to the Government that men who had contributed in any way to the support of John Brown must have been privy to his plans. However much we may pride ourselves now that such and such men assisted the movement, then the barest suspicion of complicity made many households look to their hearths. Some, whose names had been mingled with his, sought refuge in Canada, as Dr. S.G. Howe, Frederick Douglass and F.B. Sanborn. Gerrit Smith of New York, worn out by previous hard work, was by this final burden reduced to a condition necessitating his removal to the Utica Asylum. Now that the affair is all over and past, it seems very strange that men like those mentioned before, who were known to be intimate with the Revolutionist, were not made to suffer at the hands of the law. The only explanation that occurs to me is that public opinion, while it might not stay the hand of the executioner in Virginia, most resolutely opposed his crossing the line. "The New York Democratic Vigilance Association" issued a manifesto breathing forth threatenings against all those implicated in the matter, but it came to nothing. Every movement of the trial was followed with the closest interest, and Massachusetts sent down a man to assist in the defense who became, in after years, one of her most famous sons. It is certain that the experience of these weeks at Harper's Ferry gave John A. Andrew the prompting to the extraordinary zeal with which he entered upon the duties of his gubernatorial office less than two years afterward. The whole trial seems farcical; but we must admit that a show of fairness was had, and, considering the ferocity with which the old man was attacked when down in the Engine House, the only wonder is that he was granted a trial at all. Through all the trying hours of that ordeal how like a hero did he deport himself! Grand in his assaults on the citadel of slavery, he became grander still as he calmly met his enemies, and told them of his purposes. Never boastful, he assumes nothing, but at the end, when asked to say why sentence of death should not be imposed upon him, he said: "The 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 unto me I should do even so to 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." Even if we grant that he was technically wrong we must accord to him the meed of perfect sincerity. Whatever his failings he had not that of lying. "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." John Brown fulfilled the highest interpretation of this Scriptural maxim. The edict once published, and all over the North there was a feeling of the deepest sympathy. There was nothing that could be done. People must wait and meditate. Just enough more than a month to bring the execution on Friday was accorded the condemned man, for it was on Monday the 31st of October that the trial was ended, and the sentence was pronounced the following day.

During this month follow the letters, the sermons, the speeches, the editorials, the thinking, that were the immediate results of the attack. Never had the subject of Negro Slavery been so thoroughly ventilated. The liberation of the Slave was coming, and that speedily through the agency of Brown, but not in the way he had intended. While audiences throughout the North, and South, too, were roused to fever heat through the presentations, in different lights it is true, of this cause, the prime mover in the matter was making his final preparations for departure. Preparations, I say, not in the sense that we ordinarily give the word, for of his own future he had no doubt, but in that of care for the families of his stricken followers. To Mrs. Lydia Maria Child he writes asking her assistance in behalf of his daughters-in-law, whose husbands, his sons, fell by his side, three daughters, his wife, Mrs. Thompson whose husband fell at Harper's Ferry, and a son unable to wholly care for himself. To a Quaker lady of Newport, R.I., he sends asking her to write and to comfort the sad hearts at North Elba, Essex County, N.Y. To his wife "'Finally, my beloved, be of good comfort.' May all your names be 'written on the Lamb's book of life--may you all have the purifying and sustaining influence of the Christian religion is the earnest prayer of your affectionate husband and father, John Brown. P.S. I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day, nor a storm so furious or dreadful as to prevent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky. But, beloved ones, do remember that this is not your rest; that in this world you have no abiding place or continuing city. To God and his infinite mercy I always commend you. J.B."

And thus he wrote to his half-brother, to his old schoolmaster, to his son Jason, and to many others. Every word is expressive of the deepest anxiety for the welfare of his loved ones, and a calm trust in the God of all as to the righteousness of his cause. Such words and such behaviour do not comport with the "black heart" which a large part of the nation was then ascribing to him. It is true, he told a clergyman of a Southern church who attempted to draw an argument in defence of Slavery, that he did not know the A B Cs of Christianity since he was entirely ignorant of the meaning of the word, "I, of course, respect you as a gentleman, but it is as a _heathen_ gentleman." I can, myself, appreciate to some extent what must have been the feelings of the prisoner at the religious ministrations offered him; for I well remember with what a skeptical air I heard the prayer and the words of a Rebel clergyman who visited the prison in which I was confined in 1865. I knew he was daily praying God to bring defeat to my comrades in arms, to increase the number of prisoners, in fine, for the triumph of the Confederate cause. He undertook a pretty serious task, that of talking entertainingly in a general way to a company of Federal prisoners. Had he come to kneel by the side of a dying man, and to point the way to eternal life, it had been different; but for doctrinal policies what cared we? We had empty stomachs, and till they were filled all creeds were alike illusory. Preaching to hungry men was not a success, and he came but seldom--indeed I remember only once. Dead men were carried out daily, but they went unattended by religious rites. I recall now the thought, if God heard his prayer and answered it, of what avail was mine; but I was certain that mine was the one listened to, and that being the case, of what avail was his opinion on the state of the country any way? During these weeks the condemned man is visited by large numbers of people, both friends and foes; but before no one does he for a moment weaken in his constant declaration of the correctness of his cause. Some of the verbal shot that his proslavery interlocutors received were as hot as those which he fired from his musket into their midst on that terrible Monday--for instance, he told Col. Smith, of the Virginia Military Institute, that he would as soon be escorted to his death by blacklegs or robbers as by slave-holding ministers. Socrates, awaiting the death which slowly creeps from his extremities to his heart converses not more quietly and resignedly to those about him than does this decided old man of Harper's Ferry. One, a Stoic, discourses on Death and Immortality; and dying, desires his followers to offer a cock to AEsculapius. The other, a Christian, ceases not to converse concerning the wrongs of an oppressed race, and of his deep anxiety for the slaves; and his last written words were: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think, vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done." [December 2nd. 1859.]

Our retrospect would be incomplete did we not recall the events happening in this very City of Worcester, twenty-five years ago to-day. Never were the pulsations of the "Heart of the Commonwealth" more in accord with the heart beats of humanity than on that second of December, 1859. Whatever the thoughts and words of truckling people in other places, here the tolling bell spoke unmistakably to all who heard, the sorrow of those mourned the death of the Great liberator. The _Spy_ of December 3d devotes two columns to an account of the observances in this city. From this description I learn that from ten o'clock, A.M. till noon, and again, from seven to seven and one-half o'clock, P.M., the bells of the Old South, the Central, the Union, and the Third Baptist churches were tolled. During the tolling of the bells in the forenoon, the engines at Merrifield's buildings, and at the card manufactory of T.K. Earle & Co., were stopped, while their places of business were closed, bearing appropriate symbols of regret and mourning. The colored people generally closed their places of employment, and engaged in appropriate religious exercises in Zion's Church in the afternoon. Earlier than had been advertised Mechanics Hall was thronged to its utmost capacity, in the vast audience there being as many women as men. Three sides of the walls bore placards on which were the words:

"Whether on the scaffold high, Or in the battle's van, The fittest place where man can die, Is where he dies for man."

At half-past seven o'clock Hon. W.W. Rice called the meeting to order, saying: "There is no true man that does not feel his bosom swell with indignation and grief, and pray that God will watch over this land with his especial care. For Virginia has, to-day, executed a man, who, by the judgment of this community, is guilty of no moral crime; but for his fidelity to the principles which his own soul told him were truths and duty. And we are met to hear the words of our best and most eloquent men, and to tender our aid and sympathy to the family--that family in whose veins flows the blood of the martyr, Brown." In closing, Mr. Rice, who had been heard with repeated applause, read the following list of officers:

PRESIDENT: Dea. Ichabod Washburn; VICE-PRESIDENTS: Hon. John Milton Earle, Hon. Peter C. Bacon, Hon. George F. Hoar, Hon. W.W. Rice, Hon. Lemuel Williams, Albert Tolman, William T. Merrifield, George M. Rice, Hon. Austin L. Rogers, Edward Earle, John D. Baldwin, George W. Russell, Abram Firth, Joseph P. Hale, Dr. S. Rogers, William R. Hooper, Benjamin Goddard, Joseph Pratt, Harrison Bliss, Thomas Tucker, Rev. Horace James, Rev. Merrill Richardson, Rev. Ebenezer Cutler, Rev. R.R. Shippen, Rev. J.H. Twombly, Rev. George Allen, Rev. T.W. Higginson, Rev. Peter Ross, Rev. William H. Sanford, Rev. Samuel Souther, Dr. Joseph Sargent, Dr. William Workman, Dr. O. Martin, Dr. T.H. Gage, Marcus Barrett, Warren Williams, Thomas L. Nelson, Hartley Williams, Edwin Draper, S.A. Porter, Jonathan Day; SECRETARIES: Charles E. Stevens, D.A. Goddard, Joseph H. Walker.

Deacon Washburn, in taking the chair, called on the Rev. Mr. Richardson to open the further exercises with prayer, after which he read the following letter inclosing twenty dollars:

WORCESTER, DEC. 2, 1859.

Dear Sir: I shall not be able to unite with you as I had hoped and expected, in your meeting of sympathy and charity. The noble and heroic old man who loved the cause that we love, and who has been faithful unto death to the principles as he understood them, of the religion which we profess, has bequeathed to the friends of liberty the charge of comforting the desolate old age of his widow, and providing for the education of his fatherless children. The charge is too sacred to be declined.

Permit me to enclose, which would be of more value than anything I could say at present, a slight contribution toward this object.

Yours respectfully, G.F. HOAR.

The speeches that followed were of a particularly eloquent nature. Why should this be otherwise? Never had men a grander theme nor more sympathetic listeners. The Rev. Mr. Shippen, among other glowing passages, said: "John Brown felt as Cromwell felt that he was commissioned by God to fight against the wrong. Believing in that eternal judgment based upon the law more lasting than the temporary statutes of to-day, he acted in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel, as he in his conscience understood it." Hon. D.F. Parker was glad to honor John Brown because he dared, upon slave soil, to strike the blow he did. "Whenever wrong exists, it is our duty to wage war against it, with peaceful remedies if possible, if not, then with such as our grandsires used in settling accounts with their oppressors."

The Rev. Mr. Richardson was particularly apt--I may say, grandly prophetic. Thus: "Never at the beginning of great periods in history was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it apparent that slavery can and must be abolished; it has set every press and every tongue in the land to agitating the subject of slavery, and has made the pillars of that institution to rock and reel. It has diminished the value of slave stock. Two hundred million dollars, says a Southern paper, John Brown destroyed that Sunday night, and has led how many families to look for a speedy and certain method of getting rid of the perilous property. That man whom we wrong in calling crazy, was groping for the pillars of the slave institution, and he has been successful." Then came Rev. T.W. Higginson who had known much of Brown's plans, and to whom the prisoner had written only a short time before his execution. "How little, one year ago to-day, we expected to hear such words from men who have been deemed conservative; words so heroic, so absolute in defence of principle; and I have wished the pen to record the thoughts which lie behind the faces we all meet; the anxious, the determined, the desperate faces, the varied faces that meet us ... John Brown is now beyond our reach; but the oppressed for whom he died still live. Methinks I hear his voice speaking to you in the words of that Scripture which he loved, 'Inasmuch as ye did it to these little ones ye did it unto me.'"

The collection that was taken up for the family amounted to $145.88. Afterward Homer B. Sprague, Principal of the High School, spoke, as did Mrs. Abby K. Foster, both in an eloquent and forcible manner. At half-past ten o'clock the meeting adjourned, the large audience remaining to the end.

Milford, Millbury and Fitchburg, in this County, in a similar manner took notice of the sad event. In the Legislature, then in session, there was a movement made in both houses to secure an adjournment. Though defeated, the motion drew out pretty generally the sentiments of the members. Many of these voting against adjournment, admired the martyr; but objected to leaving the business of the day, saying that Brown himself would counsel continued attention to proper legislative duties.

From the vantage ground of twenty-five years after, it is interesting to read what leading exponents of public opinion said then. From the South there came but one cry. It was to be expected. Nothing else could have been tolerated. From the North there was a diversity of language.

The _New York Tribune_ of December 3d said, and I can believe that Greeley himself wrote the words: "John Brown, dead, will live in millions of hearts, will be discussed around the homely hearth of Toil, and dreamed of on the couch of Poverty.... Yes, John Brown, dead, is verily a power like Samson in the falling temple of Dagon, like Ziska, dead, with his skin stretched over a drum head still routing the foe he bravely fought while living." The _New York Herald_ of the same date, voicing the sentiment of those who actively or passively upheld slavery, alludes to the Hero as "Old John Brown, the culprit, hanged for murder," etc., and states that the South was correct. The _Boston Courier_ wishes Governor Banks to ask the Legislature to make an appropriation of $40,000 to assist Virginia in paying the bills incident to the Trial. If I am not mistaken, it was this same Courier's editor, one Homer by name, who, some years before, had placarded the city to excite a riot against Thompson, the English Emancipationist, and who had been largely instrumental in fostering trouble for Garrison and Phillips.

If we only knew that we were prophesying at the time! Little did the Tribune writer think that his allusion to Ziska would prove almost literally true. In two years from the death of John Brown the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, the Fletcher Webster Regiment, marched down the streets of Boston to the words:

"John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave,"

and like magic the whole Union Army took it up, nay more, those who stood behind the army, young and old. Men and women sung it from Maine to California. No one knows who wrote it--it was unwritten. It was the popular idea, inspired by God, given vocal expression. There was nothing to learn about it. Everybody knew it before he heard it. Once raised the tune was chanted till the war was over, and its mission accomplished. It closed not then; for to-day, after our lapse of a quarter of a century, it is the tune of all others that fires the Nation's heart. Ziska's drum head is immortal. Early in the War a large prize was offered for competition, to those who would try to write a National Hymn. True, we had "America," but it was sung to the tune of "God save the King or Queen." "The Star Spangled Banner," but it ran so high that few attempted it. "Red, White and Blue," and "Hail Columbia"; but they were not adapted to the popular demands. A National Hymn was demanded, and a committee of meritorious gentlemen gravely sat down to decide on the merits of more than five bushels of poems. Twelve hundred poetasters had sent in their lucubrations, over three hundred of these sending music also, and what came of it? Nothing, of course. Lowell can write an ode that will make our cheeks tingle. Bayard Taylor has written them that exalted us with pride; but neither of these men, nor any other, could sit down and in repose--in cold blood as it were--write a National Hymn. What was wanted was another Marseillaise, something which all could readily grasp and hold, something that no man or woman could help singing, no matter whether they had ever sung before or not. Roget de Lisle, amid the terrible scenes of the French Revolution, and stung almost to madness by the terrible events about him, in a single night gave expression to a hymn that, in power, has been approached by only one other, that of "John Brown's Body." Are there not points of resemblance? Both stir the soul in the chorus. The "_Aux armes, Aux armes_," of the Frenchman's song is reproduced in our "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!" No man will take either hymn off by himself to learn it. They are in his mind already; but he is never conscious of them till the proper moment draws them forth. Our National Hymn has no parentage. I have heard men thrillingly relate the fever of patriotism into which the singing of its words threw them, as regiment would file along the streets of our great cities during the war. There is not much to it in point of words. Such hymns need few words.

"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave."

"He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord."

"We will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree."

There they are, the three stanzas; but they have been sung more times, especially the first one, than any equal number of words ever put to music in America. Put in one sum the times the name of Lincoln, the Martyred President, and Grant, the Peerless General have been uttered, and it would not make a hundredth part the number that represents the utterance of John Brown's name in this song. Some one will say it cannot be a National Hymn unless sung by all parts of our people. Millions of people in the South, true of dusky faces, sung it, and how they sung it. It is more than sentiment, it is life to them; and I am sanguine enough to believe that the time will come when those who wore the gray on our Great Contest will so far have seen the error of their position as to join with us of the other side in singing

"Glory, Glory, Hallelujah,"

over the fact that the soul of John Brown is marching on.

What think ye of John Brown? Have the widely separated opinions of twenty-five years ago approached or are they even more divergent? Of course, the active thinkers and workers of that day have joined the great majority. A younger and later generation has the conduct of affairs. In the main, those who hated him then hate him now. Those who thought him a martyr then are sure of it now. Perhaps we are still too near the events that made him famous to properly weigh and criticise the evidence; but what we write now, with what has been written, must be the source of future conclusions. As to the South, it is far too early to expect other than the most rancorous feeling towards him. More than many of us are willing to admit, we are the creatures of our surroundings, men, thinking and acting as we have been reared. John Brown put himself in direct opposition to all that made the South distinctive; and, however much I may blame the section for its continued hold on Slavery, I cannot think it strange that the inhabitants looked upon the Liberator with feelings quite the reverse from ours. For those, however, of equal privileges with ourselves, of substantially the same rearing, I have not the same measure of charity. In 1880 one G.W. Brown, M.D., of Rockford, Illinois, formerly the editor of a paper in Kansas, gave himself the trouble to write a pamphlet in which he spares no effort to calumniate the Old Hero. I quote a notice of it from the _Boston Journal_: