Shady Hill, 13 December, 1859.
... I have thought often of writing to you, — especially
since John Brown made his incursion into Virginia, — but it has been difficult hitherto
to form a dispassionate judgment in regard to this affair, and I have not cared
to write a mere expression of personal feeling. Perhaps it is even now still
too near the event for one to balance justly all the considerations involved in
it. Unless you have seen some one of the American papers during the last two
months you can hardly have formed an idea of the intensity of feeling and
interest which has prevailed throughout the country in regard to John Brown. I
have seen nothing like it. We get up excitements easily enough, but they die
away usually as quickly as they rose, beginning in rhetoric and ending in
fireworks; but this was different. The heart of the people was fairly reached,
and an impression has been made upon it which will be permanent and produce
results long hence.
When the news first came, in the form of vague and
exaggerated telegraphic reports, of the seizure of the Arsenal at Harper's
Ferry, people thought it was probably some trouble among the workmen at the
place; but as the truth slowly came out and John Brown's name, which was well
known through the country, was mentioned as that of the head of the party, the
general feeling was that the affair was a reckless, merely mad attempt to make
a raid of slaves, — an attempt fitly put down by the strong arm. There was at
first no word of sympathy either for Brown or his undertaking. But soon came
the accounts of the panic of the Virginians, of the cruelty with which Brown's
party were massacred; of his noble manliness of demeanour when, wounded, he was
taken prisoner, and was questioned as to his design; of his simple declarations
of his motives and aims, which were those of an enthusiast, but not of a bad
man, — and a strong sympathy began to be felt for Brown personally, and a
strong interest to know in full what had led him to this course. Then the
bitterness of the Virginia press, the unseemly haste with which the trial was
hurried on, — and all the while the most unchanged, steady, manliness on the
part of "Old Brown," increased daily the sympathy which was already
strong. The management of the trial, the condemnation, the speech made by
Brown, the letters he wrote in prison, the visit of his wife to him, — and at
last his death, wrought up the popular feeling to the highest point. Not,
indeed, that feeling or opinion have been by any means unanimous; for on the
one side have been those who have condemned the whole of Brown's course as
utterly wicked, and regarded him as a mere outlaw, murderer, and traitor,
while, on the other, have been those who have looked upon his undertaking with
satisfaction, and exalted him into the highest rank of men. But, if I am not wrong,
the mass of the people, and the best of them, have agreed with neither of these
views. They have, while condemning Brown's scheme as a criminal attempt to
right a great wrong by violent measures, and as equally ill-judged and rash in
execution, felt for the man himself a deep sympathy and a fervent admiration.
They have admitted that he was guilty under the law, that he deserved to be
hung as a breaker of the law, — but they have felt that the gallows was not the
fit end for a life like his, and that he died a real martyr in the cause of
freedom.
Brown in truth was a man born out of time. He was of a rare
type, rare especially in these days. He belonged with the Covenanters, with the
Puritans. He was possessed with an idea which mastered his whole nature and
gave dignity and force to his character. He had sincere faith in God, — and
especially believed in the sword of the Lord. His chief fault seems to have
been impatience with the slowness of Providence. Seeing what was right he
desired that it should instantly be brought to pass, — and counted as the
enemies of the Lord those who were opposed to him. But the earnestness of his
moral and religious convictions and the sincerity of his faith made him
single-minded, and manly in the highest degree. There was not the least sham
about him; no whining over his failure; no false or factitious sentiment, no
empty words; — in everything he showed himself simple, straightforward and
brave. The Governor of Virginia, Governor Wise, said of him, that he was the
pluckiest man he had ever seen. And on the morning of his execution, the jailor
riding with him to the gallows said to him, — “You 're game, Captain Brown.”
And game he was to the very last. He said to the sheriff as he stepped onto the
platform of the gallows, “Don't keep me waiting longer than is necessary,” —
and then he was kept waiting for more than ten minutes while the military made
some movement that their officers thought requisite. This gratuitous piece of
cruel torture has shocked the whole country. But Brown stood perfectly firm and
calm through the whole.
The account of his last interview with his wife before his
death, which came by telegraph, was like an old ballad in the condensed
picturesqueness of its tender and tragic narrative.
You see even from this brief and imperfect statement of
mine, how involved the moral relations of the whole affair have been, and how
difficult the questions which arise from it are to answer.
What its results will be no one can tell, but they cannot be
otherwise than great. One great moving fact remains that here was a man, who,
setting himself firm on the Gospel, was willing to sacrifice himself and his
children in the cause of the oppressed, or at least of those whom he believed
unrighteously held in bondage. And this fact has been forced home to the
consciousness of every one by Brown's speech at his trial, and by the simple
and most affecting letters which he wrote during his imprisonment. The events
of this last month or two (including under the word events the impression made
by Brown's character) have done more to confirm the opposition to Slavery at
the North, and to open the eyes of the South to the danger of taking a stand
upon this matter opposed to the moral convictions of the civilized world, —
than anything which has ever happened before, than all the anti-slavery tracts
and novels that ever were written.
I do not believe that other men are likely to follow John
Brown in the course which he adopted, — mainly because very few of them are of
his stamp, but also because almost all men see that the means he adopted were
wrong. But the magnanimity of the man will do something to raise the tone of
national character and feeling, — and to set in their just position the claims
and the pretensions of the mass of our political leaders. John Brown has set up
a standard by which to measure the principles of public men. . . .
SOURCE: Sara Norton and M. A. DeWolfe Howe, Letters
of Charles Eliot Norton, Volume 1, p. 197-201
