THE EXECUTION OF JOHN BROWN.*

BY MURAT HALSTEAD

The execution of John Brown was on the second of December, 1859; the scene, in a field a furlong south of Charlestown, seven miles from Harper's Ferry. The sensation caused by the John Brown raid was something wonderful. The excitement of the whole country was out of all proportion to the material incidents. The shock was because the feeling of the people that the slavery question had reached an acute stage and demanded uncompromising attention, was general, and there was apprehension that there were conditions upon the country of "unmerciful disaster" a public sensibility that an immense catastrophe was impending.

As a correspondent of the Cincinnati Commercial, to write the story of the hanging of old John Brown, I carried letters from Dr. Dandridge, cousin of Colonel Washington, to that gentleman, and from the Hon. George H. Pendleton, to the superintendent of the Harper's Ferry rifle-works of the United States. On the journey I fell in with the Baltimore police scouts, who by command of the Governor of Virginia had explored "the abolition counties of Ohio" in search of military organizations, made up in violation of the peace and dignity of the United States, for "another raid on Virginia."

*Written for the New York Independent. See Connelly's John Brown, pages 384-393.

When we reached Harper's Ferry the station was in the hands of the military, and I was driven about at the point of the bayonet for some time before finding a place to stand and wait a few minutes. There was a hole ragged with splinters at the corner of the station-house constructed of plank, but put together with tongue and groove, said to mark the course of "the ball from a yager with which old Brown killed a man." Inside Brown's fort was a plain red stain on the whitewashed brick wall, the blood of Brown when, overpowered, he was wounded with a cutlass and thrust down with a strong hand. There was a curved red streak and a few long hairs where the gashed head of the old man had been rubbed against the whitened bricks. The superintendent of the rifle-works was a cautious official. He took a member of the Legislature of Pennsylvania and myself in his carriage, and putting on a belt with two revolvers we were driven along a good turnpike through a pleasant country to the county seat, where Brown was tried and was the next day to be executed. By the roadside there were marks of fire, the burning of stacks, and the explanation, "The niggers have burned the stacks of one of the jurors who found Brown guilty." There was no reference to the fact that the superintendent took his pistols with him for a daylight drive over seven miles of turnpike through a highly cultivated country. That was taken as a matter of course. There was greater alarm among the people of Virginia than could be accounted for by comparison with the experience of communities into which the slave element did not enter. It was doubtless that deep sense of insecurity that widened into awful alarms at the suggestion of slave insurrections the fact that society was permeated

with stories of West-Indian wars of races, especially the traditions, more terrible than history, of the San Domingo horrors. The town, then and always to be distinguished as the place of the trial of John Brown, and his death, was crowded with the troops of Virginia, and there was a marked absence of the people of the surrounding country. The uniforms of the militia of Virginia were as various as the companies were numerous. There was no uniformity of dress or weapons. There were a troop of cavalry, a battery of field guns, and about two thousand infantry, the whole under the command of General Taliaferro, whose headquarters were at the Washington House. There was the palpable excitement of conscious history-making, and trifling incidents magnified by common consent.

The fact about myself best known was that I had a letter from Dr. Dandridge to Colonel Lewis Washington and one from George H. Pendleton to the Harper's Ferry superintendent. My connection with an "abolition newspaper" was quite subordinated, but there were many inquiries as to my "views" of the John Brown raid, and I did not insist upon attempting to vindicate the old farmer, so suddenly and strangely a world's hero. Indeed, the close contact with the events of the raid made it difficult to resist the impression that Brown was an unbalanced man, one whose exaltation was akin to insanity. The philosophy, the philanthropy, the martyrdom, the religion of humanity, the spiritual sanctification, and immense, romantic and tragic interpretations placed upon the raid of "The Man of Osawatomie" by Victor Hugo and Ralph Waldo Emerson, the latter declaring that "the gallows was made glorious like the cross," had in the immediate presence of the miserable

skirmishing and the shedding of the blood of men who were, by all the customary tests, kindly disposed to be orderly, neighborly, humane, become obscure, belonging to the sentimental, the imaginative, and the impossible.

Late in the evening Mrs. Brown arrived in a dingy hack, escorted by the horsemen who became known in the war that was on two years later as "The Black Horse Cavalry." As the carriage approached the jail the artillery, which had been arranged on either side of the door, was trundled across the street and turned about, the muzzles open-mouthed upon the prison. There was much parade and shuffling of military figures in the execution of this maneuver, and then Mrs. Brown was taken to her husband's cell, when he was reported to have repeated to her often the admonition, "My dear, you must keep your sperrets up"-"sperrets" pronounced as here spelled; but a very strict and close guard was kept upon the pair.

As the evening wore on, General Taliaferro was seated surrounded by his staff, in the public room of the hotel. A young man, tall and lithe, and wearing a military dress, rushed up to him and said hurriedly in my hearing: "General, I am told, sir, and believe, that Henry Ward Beecher is coming here tomorrow to pray on the scaffold with old Brown, and I pledge you my word if he does he shall be hanged along with Brown." The General stared coldly and said with deliberation and severe dignity: "If Mr. Beecher comes, as you say, I pledge my word of honor, sir, that while I live not a hair of his head shall be harmed, sir; not one hair of his head shall be harmed."

On the morning of the execution the troops were early stirring. The murmur of camps filled the air.

There were no visitors trailing along the roads, to be witnesses of the solemn function. It was forbidden. The people far and near were ordered to be alert at home. Therefore, when the hollow square of the military companies was formed about the scaffold there was not even a fringe of civil spectators. There were reporters, surgeons, three or four politicians of distinction, and one woman on the roof of a house nearly a quarter of a mile distant. The Hon. James M. Ashley was in the town with Col. Henderson of Kansas, and introduced him as "the worst of the border ruffians," an announcement usually received with approbation of the humor in it and of the fact also. Ashley had just dropped in from the West, and was held to be of those interested in the care of Mrs. Brown and her Quaker escort from Philadelphia. A story has been largely circulated that as Brown left the jail he kissed a colored child, and there are paintings and poetry to that effect. When he stepped out of the prison there was not a group other than military in sight. I was not on the spot at the moment, but saw the street before the jail filled with guns and soldiers and horses, staff officers and officials, and no one else during the morning. I had walked, before Brown came out, to the vicinity of the scaffold where the militia companies were marching into the positions assigned them. The most striking horseman on the field, Turner Ashby, galloped around bearing orders and giving directions, mounted on a spotted stallion with a wonderful mane and tail, flowing like white silk from neck and rump, almost sweeping the ground. The Colonel and his horse- and the horsemanship of the Colonel was worthy his steed were were a gallant show. Ashby was killed in battle, defending for his