“When and in what form death may come is but of small moment. I feel just as content to die for God’s eternal truth and for suffering humanity on the scaffold as in any other way; and I do not say this from disposition to ‘brave it out.’ No; I would readily own my wrong were I in the least convinced of it. I have now been confined over a month, with a good opportunity to look the whole thing as ‘fair in the face’ as I am capable of doing; and I feel it most grateful that I am counted in the least possible degree worthy to suffer for the truth.”[[285]]
“I can trust God with both the time and the manner of my death, believing, as I now do, that for me at this time to seal my testimony for God and humanity with my blood will do vastly more toward advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavored to promote, than all I have done in my life before.”[[286]]
“My whole life before had not afforded me one-half the opportunity to plead for the right. In this, also, I find much to reconcile me to both my present condition and my immediate prospect.”[[287]]
Against slavery his face is set like flint: “There are no ministers of Christ here. These ministers who profess to be Christian, and hold slaves or advocate slavery, I cannot abide them. My knees will not bend in prayer with them, while their hands are stained with the blood of souls.”[[288]] He said to one Southern clergyman: “I will thank you to leave me alone; your prayers would be an abomination to God.” To another he said, “I would not insult God by bowing down in prayer with any one who had the blood of the slave on his skirts.”
And to a third who argued in favor of slavery as “a Christian institution,” John Brown replied impatiently: “My dear sir, you know nothing about Christianity; you will have to learn its A, B, C; I find you quite ignorant of what the word Christianity means.... I respect you as a gentleman, of course; but it is as a heathen gentleman.”[[289]]
To his children he wrote: “Be determined to know by experience, as soon as may be, whether Bible instruction is of divine origin or not. Be sure to owe no man anything, but to love one another. John Rogers wrote his children, ‘Abhor that arrant whore of Rome.’ John Brown writes to his children to abhor, with undying hatred also, that sum of all villanies,—slavery.”[[290]]
And finally he rejoiced: “Men cannot imprison, or chain, or hang the soul. I go joyfully in behalf of millions that ‘have no rights’ that this great and glorious, this Christian republic ‘is bound to respect.’ Strange change in morals, political as well as Christian, since 1776.”[[291]]
“No formal will can be of use,” he wrote on his doomsday, “when my expressed wishes are made known to my dutiful and beloved family.”[[292]]
This was the man. His family is the world. What legacy did he leave? It was soon seen that his voice was a call to the great final battle with slavery.
In the spring of 1861 the Boston Light Infantry was sent to Fort Warren in Boston harbor to drill. A quartette was formed among the soldiers to sing patriotic songs and for them was contrived the verses,