She goes out.
Mr. Cuffney (after a further pause, stroking his pipe): I suppose there's no doubt about the message they'll bring?
Mr. Stone: No, that's settled right enough. It'll be an invitation. That's as sure as John Brown's dead.
Mr. Cuffney: I could never make Abraham out rightly about old John. One couldn't stomach slaving more than the other, yet Abraham didn't hold with the old chap standing up against it with the sword. Bad philosophy, or something, he called it. Talked about fanatics who do nothing but get themselves at a rope's end.
Mr. Stone: Abraham's all for the Constitution. He wants the Constitution to be an honest master. There's nothing he wants like that, and he'll stand for that, firm as a Samson of the spirit, if he goes to Washington. He'd give his life to persuade the state against slaving, but until it is persuaded and makes its laws against it, he'll have nothing to do with violence in the name of laws that aren't made. That's why old John's raiding affair stuck in his gullet.
Mr. Cuffney: He was a brave man, going like that, with a few zealous like himself, and a handful of niggers, to free thousands.
Mr. Stone: He was. And those were brave words when they took him out to hang him. "I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity. You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now. But this question is still to be settled—this negro question, I mean. The end of that is not yet." I was there that day. Stonewall Jackson was there. He turned away. There was a colonel there giving orders. When it was over, "So perish all foes of the human race," he called out. But only those that were afraid of losing their slaves believed it.
Mr. Cuffney (after a pause): It was a bad thing to hang a man like that. ... There's a song that they've made about him.
He sings quietly.
John Brown's body lies a mould'ring in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on...