THE “NIGGER-THIEF”

When the South heard of John Brown’s raid, there was a wave of immediate fury. Men poured by the thousands into the little Virginia town, and the bars were filled with savage, half-drunk men, who talked of lynching the “old nigger-thief.” Governor Wise had come down from the capital, and he and others prevented any such disgraceful procedure. He himself was mystified by the raid. It seemed an incredible performance, for these Southerners could not understand the moral passion that animated the Abolitionists. To the south Negroes were property—private property. And an attempt to free slaves was to them insane, illegal and criminal. When men came with arms for this purpose and Southerners were killed in defending slavery, the crime became doubly damnable.

John Brown, after his capture, was taken with Aaron Stevens to a room nearby. Lying on a cot, his head bandaged, his hair clotted and tangled, hands and clothing powder-stained and blood-smeared, the old lion was questioned by Governor Wise and a party of officials, who included Robert E. Lee, Colonel J. E. B. Stuart, Senator Mason, Congressman Vallandigham of Ohio, and other pro-slaveryites.

Their questions were a summary of the attitude of the South to such as he. And John Brown, though he was wounded and a prisoner, though everywhere enemies surrounded him, and the gallows stared him full in the face, answered their questions calmly and courteously, without the slightest show of fear.

“Who sent you here?” one official asked. They were trying to worm out the names of Northerners who had given Brown money for the raid, so as to prosecute them for conspiracy in murder.

“No man sent me here,” John Brown answered calmly. “It was my own prompting, and that of my Maker, or that of the devil, which ever you please. I acknowledge no man in human form.”

“What was your object in coming?”

“I came to free the slaves.”

“And you think you were acting righteously?”

“Yes. I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong, against God and humanity. I think it right to interfere with you to free those you hold in bondage. I hold that the Golden Rule applies to the slaves, too.”

“And do you mean to say you believe in the Bible?” some one said, incredulously. They could not understand this man; they only saw a wild, mad “nigger-thief” in him.

“Certainly I do,” John Brown said with dignity.

“Don’t you know you are a seditionist, a traitor, and that you have taken up arms against the United States government?”

“I was trying to free the slaves. I have tried moral suasion for this purpose, but I don’t think the people in the slave states will ever be convinced they are wrong.”

“You are mad and fanatical.”

“And I think you people of the South are mad and fanatical. Is it sane to keep five million men in slavery? Is it sane to think such a system can last? Is it sane to suppress all who would speak against this system, and to murder all who would interfere with it? Is it sane to talk of war rather than give it up?”

Thus John Brown uttered his challenge to the South; but they failed to understand.