THE TRIAL AT CHARLESTOWN

And they failed to understand that it was not he who was on trial at the Charlestown court-house a month later, but the whole slavery system.

Every moment of that trial was reported in the newspapers of the nation. Every reader in America knew of the wonderful strength and majesty of John Brown in the court-room. The North began thinking about slavery as it had never thought before. John Brown was so manifestly pure in his intentions; manifestly a crusader, and people were forced to try to understand why an old, gray-haired farmer should have taken up arms at the age of sixty, after a life spent in useful occupations.

His dignity, his piety, his reputation as a terrible fighter, and the Biblical sublimity of the picture of this white-bearded patriarch surrounded by his seven sons, all of them armed with rifles, all of them ready to die for the cause of abolition—these had their powerful effect on the imagination of the North. Hosts of new friends rose up in Brown’s defense; legislatures passed resolutions asking for his pardon, Congressmen began speaking out, newspapers suddenly found themselves in danger of losing their subscribers if they spoke against John Brown; everywhere in the North men found themselves waking from a dream, and coming into the clear, white vision of John Brown. They saw slavery as if for the first time in all its horrors; they could not help taking sides. And the South became more and more inflamed with rage as the trial progressed, and those reverberations reached it from the North.

John Brown was tried on three charges, murder, treason, and inciting the slaves to rebellion. The trial was quickly over; it was but a formality. The jury, of course, returned the verdict of guilty, and John Brown, lying on his cot in the court-room, said not a word, but turned quietly over on his side, when he heard it.

A few days later, Judge Parker pronounced the sentence of death, and this time John Brown rose from his cot, and drawing himself up to his full stature, with flashing eagle eyes, and calm, clear and distinct tones, he addressed the citizens of America. He said many things that they were soon to understand clearly on the battlefields of the Civil War.

“Had I taken up arms in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends, or any of their class, every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than of punishment. But this Court acknowledges the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which is the Bible, and which teaches me that all things that I would have men do unto me, so must I do unto them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I fought for the poor; and I say it was right, for they are as good as any of you; God is no 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, I did 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.”

Judge Parker fixed the date for hanging on December 2nd, 1859, a month away. It was a fatal mistake for the South, and John Brown’s finest gift at the hands of the God he believed in.