HAUTEVILLE HOUSE, Dec. 2, 1859.
SIR: When one thinks
of the United States of America, a majestic figure rises to the mind—Washington.
Now, in that country of Washington, see what is going on at this hour!
There are slaves in
the Southern States, a fact which strikes with indignation, as the most
monstrous of contradictions, the reasonable and freer conscience of the
Northern States. These slaves, these negroes, a white man, a free man, one John
Brown, wanted to deliver. Certainly, if insurrection be ever a sacred duty, it
is against Slavery. Brown wished to begin the good work by the deliverance
of the slaves in Virginia. Being a Puritan, a religious and
austere man, and full of the Gospel, he cried aloud to these men — his brothers
— the cry of emancipation "Christ has set us free!" The slaves,
enervated by Slavery, made no response to his appeal — Slavery makes deafness
in the soul. Brown, finding himself abandoned, fought with a handful of heroic
men; he struggled; he fell, riddled with bullets; his two young sons, martyrs
of a holy cause, dead at his side. This is what is called the Harper's Ferry
affair.
John Brown, taken
prisoner, has just been tried, with four of his fellows — Stephens, Coppoc,
Green, and Copeland. What sort of trial it was, a word will tell.
Brown, stretched
upon a truckle bed, with six half-closed wounds—a gun-shot wound in his
arm, one in his loins, two in the chest, two in the head—almost bereft of
hearing, bleeding through his mattress, the spirits of his two dead sons
attending him; his four fellow-prisoners crawling around him; Stephens with
four sabre wounds; "Justice" in a hurry to have done with the case;
an attorney, Hunter, demanding that it be despatched with sharp speed; a Judge,
Parker, absenting; the defence cut short; scarcely any delay allowed; forged or
garbled documents put in evidence; the witnesses for the prisoner shut out; the
defence clogged; two guns, loaded with grape, brought into the court, with an
order to the jailers to shoot the prisoners in case of an attempt at rescue;
forty minutes' deliberation; three sentences to death. I affirm, on my honor,
that all this took place, not in Turkey, but in America.
Such things are not
done with impunity in the face of the civilized world. The universal conscience
of mankind is an ever-watchful eye. Let the Judge of Charlestown, and Hunter,
and Parker, and the slave-holding jurors, and the whole population of Virginia,
ponder it well: they are seen! They are not alone in the world. At this moment
the gaze of Europe is fixed on America.
John Brown, condemned
to die, was to have been hanged on the 2d of December—this very day. But news
has this instant reached us. A respite is granted him. It is not until the 16th
that he is to die. The interval is short. Has a cry of mercy time to make
itself heard? No matter. It is a duty to lift up the voice.
Perhaps a second
respite may be granted. America is a noble land. The sentiment of humanity is
soon quickened among a free people. We hope that Brown may be saved. If it were
otherwise—if Brown should die on the scaffold on the 16th of December—what a
terrible calamity!
The executioner of
Brown—let us avow it openly (for the day of the kings is past, and the day of
the people dawns, and to the people we are bound frankly to speak
the truth)—the executioner of Brown would be neither, the Attorney
Hunter, nor the Judge Parker, nor the Governor Wise, nor the State of Virginia;
it would be, we say it, and we think it with a shudder, the whole American
Republic.
The more one loves,
the more one admires, the more one reveres the Republic, the more heart-sick
one feels at such a catastrophe. A single State ought not to have the power to
dishonor all the rest, and in this ease federal intervention is a clear right.
Otherwise, by hesitating to interfere when it might prevent a crime, the Union
becomes an accomplice. No matter how intense may be the indignation of the
generous Northern States, the Southern States associate them with the disgrace
of this murder. All of us, whosoever we may be—for whom the democratic cause is
a common country—feel ourselves in a manner compromised and hurt. If the
scaffold should be erected on the 16th of December, the incorruptible voices of
history would thenceforward testify that the august confederation of the New
World had added to all its ties of holy brotherhood a brotherhood of blood, and
the fasces of that splendid Republic would be bound together
with the running noose that hung from the gibbet of Brown.
This is a bond that
kills.
When we reflect on
what Brown, the liberator, the champion of Christ, has striven to effect, and
when we remember that he is about to die, slaughtered by the American Republic,
the crime assumes the proportions of the Nation which commits it; and when we
say to ourselves that this Nation is a glory of the human race; that—like France,
like England, like Germany—she is one of the organs of civilization; that she
sometimes even out-marches Europe by the sublime audacity of her progress; that
she is the queen of an entire world; and that she bears on her brow an immense
light of freedom; we affirm that John Brown will not die; for we recoil,
horror-struck, from the idea of so great a crime committed by so great a
People,
In a political
light, the murder of Brown would be an irreparable fault. It would penetrate
the Union with a secret fissure, which—would in the end tear it asunder. It is
possible that the execution of Brown might consolidate Slavery in Virginia, but
it is certain that it would convulse the entire American Democracy. You
preserve your shame, but you sacrifice your glory.
In a moral light, it
seems to me, that a portion of the light of humanity would be eclipsed; that
even the idea of justice and injustice would be obscured on the day which
should witness the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty.
As for myself,
though I am but an atom, yet being, as I am, in common with all other men,
inspired with the conscience of humanity, I kneel in tears before the great
starry banner of the New World, and with clasped hands, and with profound and
filial respect, I implore the illustrious American Republic, sister of the
French Republic, to look to the safety of the universal moral law, to save
Brown; to throw down the threatening scaffold of the 16th December, and not to
suffer that, beneath its eyes, and, I add, with a shudder, almost by its fault,
the first fratricide be outdone.
For yes, let America
know it, and ponder it well—there is something more terrible than
Cain slaying Abel—it is Washington slaying Spartacus.
VICTOR HUGO.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE LONDON NEWS.
SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, pp. 99-102
