Brown's statement was not exactly sustained by the facts. Why had he collected the Sharpe's rifles, the pikes, the kegs of powder, many thousands of caps and much warlike material at the Kennedy farm? Why did he and other
armed men, break into the United States Armory and Arsenal, make portholes in the engine house, shoot and kill citizens and surround their own imprisoned persons with prominent men as hostages? But everybody in the court house believed the old man when he said that he did everything with a solitary motive, the liberation of the slaves.
Judge Parker could, under his oath, do nothing else than to sentence him to be hung. He fixed the date for Friday, the second of December. Brown's counsel appealed to the Supreme Court of Virginia. Its five judges unanimously sustained the action of the Jefferson county court.
Brown was hung on the bright and beautiful morning of December 2nd at 11:15 o'clock. At his request Andrew Hunter wrote his will. He then visited his fellow prisoners who were all executed at a later date. He rode to his death between Sheriff Campbell and Captain Avis in a furniture wagon drawn by two white horses. He did not ride seated on his coffin as some of his chief eulogists have affirmed. The wagon was escorted to the scaffold by State military companies. No citizens were allowed near to the jail. Hence he did not kiss any negro baby as he emerged from his prison, as Mr. Whittier has described in a poem on the event and as artists have memorialized in paintings. The utter absurdity of such an incident occurring under such surroundings any Virginian will see. Avis, Campbell and Hunter publicly denied it. But the story will doubtless have immortality. In one of the companies of soldiers walked the actor John Wilkes Booth, the infamous assassin of Abraham Lincoln. At the head of the Lexington cadets walked Professor Thomas Jefferson Jackson, who became an able Confederate General and is best known to the world as "Stonewall Jackson." As the party neared the gallows Brown gazed on the glorious panorama of mountain and landscape scenery. Then he said: "This is a beautiful country." He wore a black slouch hat with the front tipped up. Reaching the scaffold the numerous State troops formed into a hollow square. Brown mounted the platform without trepidation. Standing on the drop he said to the
sheriff and his assistants: "Gentlemen! I thank you for your kindness to me. I am ready at any time. Do not keep me waiting." The drop fell and in ten minutes Dr. Mason pronounced him dead. That evening Mrs. Brown and her friends received the casket at Harper's Ferry and accompanied it to the old home at North Elba, N. Y. His funeral, as reported by the metropolitan papers, took place there six days after his execution. An immense concourse was in attendance. The conspicuous and brilliant orator, Wendell Phillips, delivered the address. He closed it with these words: "In this cottage he girded himself and went forth to battle. Fuller success than his heart ever dreamed of God had granted him. He sleeps in the blessings of the crushed and the poor. Men believe more firmly in virtue now that such a man has lived." Personally I remained in Virginia.
On the day that Brown was hung Martyr Services, as they were called, were held in many Northern localities. At Concord, Dr. Edmund Sears read a poem in which are these stanzas:
"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 length
And opes each dungeon door:
And God's Great Charter holds and waves
O'er all the humble poor.
And then the humble poor may come
In that far distant day,
And from the felon's nameless grave
Will brush the leaves away:
And gray old men will point the spot
Beneath the pine tree's shade,
As children ask with streaming eyes
Where old John Brown was laid."
Before he was executed many threatening communications were received by the Virginia State and Jefferson County officers. Large numbers of E. C. Stedman's poem, entitled "John Brown of Ossawattamie," were scattered about Charlestown. One stanza reads as follows:
"But Virginians! Don't do it, for I tell you that the flagon,
Filled with blood of Old Brown's offspring, was first poured by Southern hands;
And each drop from Old Brown's life veins, like the red gore of the dragon,
May spring up, a vengeful Fury, hissing through your slave-worn lands;
And Old Brown,
Ossowattamie Brown,
May trouble you more than ever,
When you've nailed his coffin down."