FOOTNOTES:
[A] “The hunt was up—woe to the game enclosed within that fiery circle! The town was occupied by a thousand or fifteen hundred men, including volunteer companies from Shepherdstown, Charlestown, Winchester, and elsewhere; but the armed and unorganized multitude largely predominated, giving the affair more the character of a great hunting scene than that of a battle. The savage game was holed beyond all possibility of escape.”—Virginia Correspondent of Harper’s Weekly.
[From the Boston Liberator.]
JOHN BROWN OF OSAWATOMIE.
BY G. D. WHITMORE.
So you’ve convicted old John Brown! brave old Brown of Osawatomie!
And you gave him a chivalrous trial, lying groaning on the floor,
With his body ripped with gashes, deaf with pain from sabre slashes,
Over the head received, when the deadly fight was o’er;
Round him guns with lighted matches, judge and lawyers pale as ashes—
For he might, perhaps, come to again, and put you all to flight,
Or surround you, as before!
You think, no doubt, you’ve tried John Brown, but he’s laid there trying you,
And the world has been his jury, and its judgment’s swift and true:
Over the globe the tale has rung, back to your hearts the verdict’s flung,
That you’re found, as you’ve been always found, a brutal, cowardly crew!
At the wave of his hand to a dozen men, two thousand slunk like hounds;
He kennelled you up, and kept you too, till twice you saw through the azure blue,
The day-star circle round.
No longer the taunt, our history’s new, “our hero is yet to come”—
We’ve suddenly leaped a thousand years beyond the rolling sun!
And, sheeted round with a martyr’s glory, again on earth’s renewed the story
Of bravery, truth, and righteousness, a battle lost and won;
A life laid down for the poor and weak, the immortal crown put on;
The spark of Luther’s touched to the pile—swords gleam—black smoke obscures the sun—
And the slave and his master are gone!
Ages hence, when all is over that shocks the sense of the world to-day,
Pilgrims will mount the western wave, seeking the new Thermopylæ;
Then, for that brave old man with many sons, mangled and murdered, one by one,
Whose ghosts rise up from Harper’s gorge, Missouri’s plains, and far away
Where Kansas’ grains wave tinged with their blood, will the column rise!
The Poet’s song and History’s page will the deeds prolong of John of Osawatomie,
The Martyr to Truth and Right!
[From the New York Independent.]
THE VIRGINIA SCAFFOLD.
Rear on high the scaffold altar! all the world will turn to see
How a man has dared to suffer that his brothers may be free!
Hear it on some hill-side looking North and South and East and West,
Where the wind from every quarter fresh may blow upon his breast,
And the sun look down unshaded from the chill December sky,
Glad to shine upon the hero who for Freedom dared to die!
All the world will turn to see him;—from the pines of wave-washed Maine
To the golden rivers rolling over California’s plain,
And from clear Superior’s waters, where the wild swan loves to sail,
To the Gulf-lands, summer-bosomed, fanned by ocean’s softest gale,—
Every heart will beat the faster in its sorrow or its scorn,
For the man nor courts nor prisons can annoy another morn!
And from distant climes and nations men shall westward gaze, and say,
“He who perilled all for Freedom on the scaffold dies to-day.”
Never offering was richer, nor did temple fairer rise
For the gods serenely smiling from the blue Olympian skies;
Porphyry or granite column did not statelier cleave the air
Than the posts of yonder gallows with the cross-beam waiting there;
And the victim, wreathed and crownéd, not for Dian nor for Jove,
But for Liberty and Manhood, comes, the sacrifice of Love.
They may hang him on the gibbet; they may raise the victor’s cry,
When they see him darkly swinging like a speck against the sky;—
Ah! the dying of a hero, that the right may win its way,
Is but sowing seed for harvest in a warm and mellow May!
Now his story shall be whispered by the firelight’s evening glow,
And in fields of rice and cotton, when the hot noon passes slow,
Till his name shall be a watch-word from Missouri to the sea,
And his planting find its reaping in the birthday of the Free!
Christ, the crucified, attend him, weak and erring though he be;
In his measure he has striven, suffering Lord! to love like Thee;
Thou the vine—thy friends the branches—is he not a branch of Thine,
Though some dregs from earthly vintage have defiled the heavenly wine?
Now his tendrils lie unclaspéd, bruised and prostrate on the sod,—
Take him to thine upper garden, where the husbandman is God!
“OLD JOHN BROWN.”
BY REV. E. H. SEARS.
Not any spot six feet by two
Will hold a man like thee;
John Brown will tramp the shaking earth,
From Blue Ridge to the sea,
Till the strong angel comes at last,
And opes each dungeon door,
And God’s “Great Charter” holds and waves
O’er all his humble poor.
And then the humble poor will come,
In that far-distant day,
And from the felon’s nameless grave
They’ll brush the leaves away;
And gray old men will point the spot
Beneath the pine-tree shade,
As children ask with streaming eyes
Where “Old John Brown” is laid.
DIRGE
Sung at a Meeting in Concord, Mass., Dec. 2, 1859.
To-day, beside Potomac’s wave,
Beneath Virginia’s sky,
They slay the man who loved the slave,
And dared for him to die.
The Pilgrim Fathers’ earnest creed,
Virginia’s ancient faith,
Inspired this hero’s noblest deed,
And his reward is—Death!
Great Washington’s indignant shade
For ever urged him on—
He heard from Monticello’s glade
The voice of Jefferson.
But chiefly on the Hebrew page
He read Jehovah’s law,
And this from youth to hoary age
Obeyed with love and awe.
No selfish purpose armed his hand,
No passion aimed his blow;
How loyally he loved his land,
Impartial Time shall show.
But now the faithful martyr dies,
His brave heart beats no more,
His soul ascends the equal skies,
His earthly course is o’er.
For this we mourn, but not for him,—
Like him in God we trust;
And though our eyes with tears are dim,
We know that God is just.