"I, JOHN BROWN, AM NOW QUITE CERTAIN THAT THE CRIMES OF THIS GUILTY LAND WILL NEVER BE PURGED AWAY BUT WITH BLOOD."
The trap fell, his darkened soul swung into eternity and the deed was done. He had raised the Blood Feud to the nth power. His message thrilled the world.
Bells were tolling in the North while crowds of weeping men and women knelt in prayer to his God. Had they but lifted the veil and looked, they would have seen the face of a fiend. But their eyes were now blinded with the madness which had driven him to his death.
In Cleveland, Melodeon Hall was draped in mourning at a meeting where thousands wept and cursed and prayed. Mammoth gatherings were held in New York, in Rochester and Syracuse. In Boston a crowd, so dense they were lifted from their feet by the pressure of thousands behind, clamoring for entrance, rushed into Tremont Temple.
William Lloyd Garrison, the Pacifist, declared the meeting was called to witness John Brown's resurrection. He flung the last shred of principle to the winds and joined the mob of the Blood Feud without reservation.
"As a peace man—an ultra peace man—I am prepared to say: 'Success to every Slave Insurrection in the South and in every Slave Country!'"
Wendell Phillips, believing Judge Russell's report of Brown's denial of the Pottawattomie murders, declared to the thousands who crowded Cooper Union that John Brown was a Saint—that he was not on the Pottawattomie Creek on that fateful night, that he was not within twenty-five miles of the spot!
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ignorant of the truth of Pottawattomie, hailed Brown as "the new Saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of men into conflict and death—the new Saint who has achieved his martyrdom and will make the gallows glorious as the cross."
One great spirit among the anti-slavery forces refused to be swept in the current of insanity. Abraham Lincoln at Troy, Kansas, said on the day of Brown's death:
"Old John Brown has been executed for treason against a State. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking Slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right."