CHAPTER XXXII
Never in the history of an American commonwealth was a trial conducted with more reverence for Law than the arraignment of John Brown and his followers in the stately old Court House at Charlestown, Virginia.
The people whom he had assaulted with intent to kill, the people against whom he had incited slaves to rise in bloody insurrection, the kinsmen of the dead whom his rifles had slain, stood in line on the street and watched him pass into the building manacled to one of his disciples. They did not hoot, nor hiss, nor curse. They watched him walk in silence between the tall granite pillars of the House of Justice.
The behavior of this crowd was highwater mark in the development of Southern character. The structure of their society rested on the sanctity of Law. It was being put to the supreme test.
A Northern crowd under similar conditions, had they followed the principles which John Brown preached, would have torn those prisoners to pieces without the formality of a trial.
It was precisely this trait of character in his enemies on which Brown relied for the martyrdom he so passionately desired. When the witnesses at the preliminary hearing had testified to his guilt and the Court had ordered the trial set, he was asked if he had counsel.
He rose from his seat and addressed the nation, not the Court:
"Virginians, I did not ask for any quarter at the time I was taken. I did not ask to have my life spared. The Governor of the State of Virginia tenders me his assurance that I shall have a fair trial, but under no circumstances whatever will I be able to have a fair trial. If you seek my blood, you can have it at any moment, without this mockery of a trial. I have no counsel. I am ready for my fate. I do not wish a trial. I have now little further to ask, other than that I may not be foolishly insulted, as cowardly barbarians insult those who fall into their power."
The posing martyr was courting insults which had not been offered him. He was grieved that he could not bring the charge of barbarous treatment. He had been treated by Colonel Lee with the utmost consideration. His wounds had been dressed. He had received the best medical care. He had eaten wholesome food. His jailer had proven friendly and sympathetic.
He went out of his way to insult the Court and the people and invite abuse. He demanded that he be executed without trial.
The Court calmly assigned him two of the ablest lawyers in the county, and ordered the trial to proceed.
At noon the following day the Grand Jury returned a true bill against each of the prisoners for treason to the commonwealth, and for conspiring with slaves to commit both treason and murder, and for murder.
Captain Avis, the kindly jailer, was ordered to bring his prisoners into Court. He found old Brown in bed, pretending to be ill. He refused to rise. He was determined to get the effect of an arraignment of his prostrate body in the court room. He had foreseen the effect of this picture on the imagination of the North. The crowd of eager reporters at the preliminary hearing had given him the cue.
He was carried into the court room exactly as he had desired, on a cot. While the hearing proceeded he lay with his eyes closed as if in deep suffering. He had carefully prepared a plea for delay which he knew would not be granted. Its effect on the mob mind of the North was what he sought. The press would give it wings.
He lifted himself on his elbow and asked Judge Parker to allow him to make a protest:
"I have been promised a fair trial. I am not now in circumstances that enable me to attend a trial, owing to the state of my health. I have a severe wound in the back, or rather in one kidney which enfeebles me very much. But I am doing well, and I only ask for a very short delay of my trial, that I may be able to listen to it! And I merely ask this that, as the saying is, the devil may have his dues, no more. I wish to say further that my hearing is impaired by wounds I have about my head. I could not hear what the Court said this morning. I would be glad to hear what is said at my trial. Any short delay would be all I would ask. I do not presume to ask more than a very short delay so that I may in some degree recover and be able at least to listen to my trial."
Dr. Mason the attending physician, swore that he had examined Brown, and that his wounds had effected neither his hearing nor his mind. He further swore that he was not seriously disabled.
Brown knew that this was true, but he had entered his plea. His words would flash over the nation. The effect was what he foresaw. Although he had defied the laws of God and man, he dared demand more than justice under the laws which he had spit upon. And, however inconsistent his position, he knew that as the poison of the Blood Feud which he was raising filled the souls of the people through the press, he would be glorified from day to day and new power given to every word he might utter.
He had already composed his last message destined to sway the minds of millions. The response of the radical press to his pose of illness was quick and sharp. The Lawrence, Kansas, Republican voiced the feelings of thousands:
"We defy an instance to be shown in any civilized community where a prisoner has been forced to trial for his life, when so disabled by sickness or ghastly wounds as to be unable even to sit up during the proceedings, and compelled to be carried to the judgment hall upon a litter. Such a proceeding shames the name of Justice, and only finds a congenial place amid the records of the bloody Inquisition."
Even so conservative a paper as the Boston Transcript said:
"Whatever may be his guilt or folly, a man convicted under such circumstances, and, especially, a man executed after such a trial, will be the most terrible fruit that Slavery has ever borne, and will excite the execration of the civilized world."
The canny old poseur was on his way to an immortal martyrdom. He knew that every article of the Virginia Code was being scrupulously obeyed. He knew that the Grand Jury was in session and that the trial was set at the first term of the court following the crime. There had been no haste. He also knew that the impartial Judge who was presiding was the soul of justice in his dealings both with the clamorous people, the prosecution and the counsel appointed for the defense. But he also knew that the mob mind to whom he was appealing would not believe that he knew this. In appeals to the crowd he was a past master. In this appeal he knew that facts would count for nothing—beliefs, illusions for everything.
He played each opportunity for all it was worth.
When the Court opened the following morning, his counsel, Mr. Botts, amazed the prisoner and the prosecution by reading a telegram from Ohio asking a delay on the ground that important affidavits were on the way to prove legally that John Brown was insane. Before the old man could stop him he gave to the Court the substance of these sworn statements.
His friends and relatives in Ohio had sworn that Brown had been always a monomaniac and had been intermittently insane for twenty years. One swore that he had been plainly insane for a quarter of a century. On the family record of insanity the affidavits all agreed. His grandmother was hopelessly insane for six years and died insane. His uncles and aunts, two sons and two daughters had been intermittently insane for years, while one of his daughters had died a hopeless maniac. His only sister, her daughter and one of his brothers were insane at intervals. Two of his first cousins were occasionally mad. Two had been committed to the State Insane Asylum repeatedly and two others were at that time in close restraint.
Brown refused to allow this plea to be entered. He bitterly denounced the counsel assigned to him as traitors, and at their request the following day they were allowed to withdraw from the case. No sooner had he finished his denunciation of his counsel than Hoyt, the young alleged attorney, sent by Higginson to defend him, sprang to his feet and asked a delay, as he was unprepared to proceed without assistance.
The Judge adjourned the Court until the following morning at ten o'clock.
The young spy knew nothing of law but he bluffed it through until the arrival of two able attorneys, Samuel Chilton of Washington, and Hiram Grismer of Cleveland.
Botts, the dismissed counsel, who had sought to save Brown's life by the plea of insanity, put his notes and his office at the disposal of Hoyt and sat up all night with him preparing his work for the following day.
When the new lawyers appeared the old man made another play at illness to gain delay. The Court ordered him to be brought in on his cot. Again, the physician swore he was lying, that he was gaining in strength daily. The Judge, however, granted a delay of two days.
The moment the order was issued for an adjournment Brown deliberately rose from his cot and walked back to jail.
The trial was closed on Monday by the speeches of the prosecution and the defense. The judge charged the jury and in three-quarters of an hour they filed back into the jury box.
The crowd jammed every inch of space in the old Court House, the wide entrance hall, and overflowed into the street.
The foreman solemnly pronounced him guilty.
The old man merely pulled the covers of his cot up and stretched his legs, as if he had no interest in the verdict. Entirely recovered from every effect of his wounds, as able to walk as ever, he had refused to walk and had been carried again into the court room. He had determined to receive his sentence on a bed. He knew the effect of this picture on the gathering mob.
The silence of death fell on the crowded room. Not a single cry of triumph from the kindred of the dead. Not a single cheer from the men whose wives and children had been saved from the horrors of massacre.
Chilton made his motion for an arrest of judgment and the judge ordered the motion to stand over until the next day. Brown heard the arguments the following day again lying on his cot. The judge reserved his decision and the final scene of the drama was enacted on November second.
The clerk asked John Brown if he had anything to say concerning why sentence should not be pronounced upon him.
The crowd stared as they saw the wiry figure of the old man quickly rise. He fixed his eagle eye on them, not on the judge.
Over their heads he talked to the gathering mob of his countrymen. Brown had been a habitual liar from boyhood. In this speech, made on the eve of the sentence of death, he lied in every paragraph. He lied as he had when he grew a beard to play the role of "Shubel Morgan." He lied as he had lied to his victims when posing as a surveyor on the Pottawattomie. He lied as he had done when he crept through the darkness of the night on his sleeping prey. He lied as he had a hundred times about those gruesome murders. He lied for his Sacred Cause.
He lied without stint and without reservation. He lied with such conviction that he convinced himself in the end that he was a hero—a martyr of human liberty and progress. And that he was telling the solemn truth.
"I have, may it please the court, a few words to say:
"In the first place I deny everything but what I have already admitted: of a design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moving them through the country and finally leading them into Canada. I designed to have done the thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended. I never did intend murder or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or to incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection.
"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 treatment—I say let it be done."
David Cruise was not there to tell of the bullet that crashed through his heart in Missouri. Frederick Douglas was not there to tell that he abandoned Brown in the old stone quarry outside Chambersburg, precisely because he had changed the plan of carrying off slaves as in Missouri to a scheme of treason, wholesale murders and insurrection.
Cruise was in his grave and Douglas on his way to Europe. There was no one to contradict his statements. The mob mind never asks for facts. It asks only for assertions. John Brown gave them what he knew they wished to hear and believe.
They heard and they believed.
With due solemnity, the Judge pronounced the sentence of death and fixed the date on December the second, thirty days in the future.
The old man's eyes flamed with hidden fires at the unexpected grant of a month in which to complete the raising of the Blood Feud so gloriously begun. He was a master in the coming of mystic phrases in letters. He gloried in religious symbols. Within thirty days he could work with his pen the miracle that would transform a nation into the puppets of his will.
He walked beside the jailer, his eyes glittering, his head uplifted. The Judge ordered the crowd to keep their seats until the prisoner was removed. In silence he marched through the throng without a hiss or a taunt.