“Santa Bibiana's Day.”* Day appointed to hang Capt. Brown. —
It is now 6 P.m., and I suppose
it is all over with my friends at Charlestown, Va., and that six corpses lie
there, ghastly, stiff, dead. How the heart of the slave-holders rejoices! But
there is a day after to-day. John Brown did not fear the gallows; he had
contemplated it, no doubt, as a possible finger-post to indicate the way to
heaven. It is as good as a cross. It is a pity they could not have had two
thieves to hang with Brown. There have been anti-slavery meetings to-day, at
Boston, Worcester, Salem, New Bedford, Providence, &c. The telegraph has
spread the news of Brown's death, I suppose, over half the Union by this time.
It is a great dark day in America. Thunder and lightnings will come out of it.
_______________
* Bibiana, Virgin and Martyr at Rome, in the year 363,
towards the end of the reign of Julian the Apostate. She was tied to a pillar
and scourged to death with loaded whips. A chapel was afterwards constructed,
in the times of Christian freedom, over the place where she was secretly buried;
and a church now stands there, rebuilt in 1628.
SOURCE: John Weiss, Life
and correspondence of Theodore Parker, Volume 2, p. 388
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