JOHN BROWN-THE SLAVE MARTYR.

Colonist, Volume IV, Issue 366, 26 April 1861, Page 4

JOHN BROWN-THE SLAVE MARTYR.

John Brown was sixth in the descent from one of the veritable Pilgrim Fathers, Peter Brown, who lauded from the Mayflower, on Plymouth Eock, in Massachusetts Bay, on the 22nd of December, 1620. Peter's great-grandson-John's grandfather—was a gallant soldier in the Eevolutionary war. He led out the Connecticut company of which ke was captain to the conflict when its seat was New York; and he died in camp iv the year of the Declaration of Independence, 177 G. One of his many children was a judge in Ohio. One of his grandsons was for twenty years the president of a New England university. Owen, one of the sons of the captain, and father of John, married into a family as good as his own —his father-iu-law having been the officer in charge of the prisoners when General Burgoyne's army surrendered. Thus Johq inherited a military spirit from both lines of ancestry. He seemed framed for a military existence; but the religious tendency prevailed in the very years when martial ardour is strongest. He desired to be in the church; and he went from Ohio both from Connecticut for the sake of a college education to fit him for the pulpit. Inflammation of the eyes, which became chronic, prevented study, and compelled him to give up bis wish. But he was, in his temper of mind and domestic and social character, a minister of the Gospel, as he understood it, through life. He had a large family; and as the sons grew up they pushed westward from Ohio, in the pioneering fashion of the far west, moving with their waggons and farm-Btook, and settling down on new land beyond the Mississippi. Through life the whole family had aborred negro slavery —regarding it not only as the disgrace and curse of their country, but as a heathen vice and cruelty upon which every true Christian was bound to make war to the death. In Kansas there was free scope for their action, when the border banditti of Missouri strove to compel the adoption of slavery in Kansas, against the wishes of the free settlers. The Browns suffered cruelly in the border warfare, several of John's sons being slain or wounded. It is not true, however, that John or his sons ever inflicted retaliatory injury on^the border ruffians—at Ossawatomie or elsewhere. What John did was to run off as many slaves as he could from Missouri, where everything is ripe for emancipation, and where the farmers would have abolished slavery long ago, but for the control of their banditti neighbors. John used to prepare a certain number of negroes, through his messengers, for a long ride, on some appointed night; then meet them with horses, and escort tksni to the Canada frontier, or some friendly »helt&r short of it. On one occasion, when the pursuit was hot, and the escape nearly hopeless, he turned aside among the trees, put on some disguising article of dress, slipped in among the pursuers as they came up, and by his evident knowledge of the tracks, obtained the direction of the party, and led them wide apart from the negroes, every oue of whom reached Canada. He well knew the faces of some of the border ruffiau party ; but they did not recognise him, in such a place,acd iv such company as their own It seems to have been in some such way as this that he proposed to free Virginia negroes; and no doubt he choose the point of invasion from his knowledge that, as iv Missouri, slavery is near its end in. Virginia, being unpopular among the farmers, and precarious through the State. If he bad desired a servile insurrection he would have gone further south among the cotton plantations. He had lost two more of bis sons, slain in the enterprise which had failed. He had undergone while sulT ring from wounds, a trial unfair to the last degree. He had sent his positive commands to distant friends that no one should come to his assistai C) from the free states, because he knew that they would never return ; and he refused the aid of local council because he did not choose to run the risk of being kept silent, or made to say what he did not think. Thus alone, in his condemned cell, bereaved of many beloved sons, feebie from his wounds, and expecting to be banged on the 2nd of December, he was not only as calm as when conducting family worship at home, but as cheerful as at the head of bis own table. The most irresistable proof of the fixed heroism of his temper is, that he has imbued his wife with it. The night before his death, she was with him at his supper —haviDg persisted in going to him, and thus for once deciding on her duty apart from him. They had settled some affairs; she had received his instructions about the children and some other matters: they had supped together—on prison fare so dished up that they could eat it with their fingers, as knife and fork were forbidden ; and now it was getting late at night, and she must go. Some tears fell from her eyes, but not many. Her husband tapped her on the shoulder, saying, " Now, Mary, this is not right. Show that you have nerve." As by an electric shock she was roused ; she drew up to her full height, and wept no more. Aa she was leaving the cell, her husband said he might have something to add, and would write it; xurning to the jailor, and asking " What is the hour to-morrow ?" to which the answer was, " Eleven o'clock." Mrs. Brown had put two pairs of stout woollea socks on his feet, to lessen the pressure of the chain on bis ancles. She made interest to get possesion of that chain, to transmit as a family honor to future generations. His guai'ds aud attendants can talk of nothing j but his natural cheefulness, which seems never to have given away at all. He was a man of few words; and any long conversations, any preachments, given out as his utterances, must be distrusted. His conduct and manners were jmt those of a man to whom nothing particular * was happening. .When an officer, impressed . "with this, asked him plainly whether he really felt no recoil at all from what awaited him ; he replied, Why, no; but that fear was not his trial. He was not liable to fear. He had, in the course of his life, suffered fur more from j bashfulness than fear. ' The aid of clergy was constantly pressed upon him, till he decisively closed the subject, He objected that a slave-holding clergyman could do nothing for him, not being up to his business—-" not understanding the A B C of Chris, tianity," "I should wish, if he came," he said, to treat .him as a gentleman ; but it mu3t be understood that it would bo as a heathen gentleman." In no circumstances would he, a man whose hourly walk was with God, have admitted the iuterventiou of a priest. Such was his view of the matter; and when the Virginia clergy were offered—priests who committed what seemed to him an act so anti-Christ:an as to be a deadly crime—he showed himself as thorough going a puritan worshipper as when be prayed aloud in f uWig ja jfonsa.3 for, divine direction what to do

with his prisoners: " 0 Lord, what wilt thou that I should do with these men ?" And when a judge, there present, burst out a-laughing at so unusual mode of conducting a trial, Brown turned upon him with an intimation that if he did not suppress such unseemly levity, he should know what to do with him, " without asking the Lord anything about it."

After his wife had left him, the officer who escorted her improved the occasion (for which his neighbors praised him), by addressing arguments to her iv favor of "the peculiar institution." And some governor or other, proud of the repute of bis ohivalrous state, told her—actually pressed it upon her, at that hour of her life—that if she should ever be disposed to come to Charleston (near Harper's Ferry) again, the inhabitants would be happy to show her what Virginia hospitality was. Meantime, her husband was writing. He wrote till past midnight; then slept for hours, and rose to write again. When his wife examined these papers (instructions for her guidance) she found a P.S., beginding, " I have time juat to add," &c. This was written at the last moment before leaving his cell. His handwriting was the same as ever —clear, but angular and constrained." His work had been more with the plough, the team, and th§ rifle, thau with the pen, since he was disappointed of his clerical career. In court, at hia trial, he had been the objeot of the keenest attention, and we know exactly what he looked like, and how he carried himself, at least during the short time that his condition from his wounds allowed him to stand. When on his couch on the floor of the court, he covered himself up, and shut hia eyes, only occasionally conversing with a youth, Mr. Hoyt, of Boston, sent to give him legal assistance, without iv curring the danger whioh any established professional man would have incurred on such an errand. While standing up, Brown looked about and observed everything with hia keen blue eye; and, as usual when he had nothing else to do with his long arms, he drummed upon his knees with his fingers. Just so it was when he came out of the jail to die. He wore his ordinary amused smile at seeing any spectacle, and nothing escaped him. He had nothing to ask or to say. He had throughout declared that he would ask no favor of Virginia, or any of her officials. He took his seat on his coffin. It wa3 of oak. The undertaker had some days before sent him a message of advice that he should have a metal coffin provided ; to which Brown replied that, considering the weather would be cool, he was confident that he " should keep" till his wife reached home with the coffin ; and that was all that was necessary. ,

Ou mounting the scaffold (which he was the first of the party to reach) he looked round upon the military display, which kept the crowd at a great distance ; and while he observed upon it he was patting his knees as usual. His eye fixed ou the range of Blue Mountains which rose across the plaiu on the horizon, and ob. served that he had never seen them so well before—had not noted them in his hasty travelling. When the moment arrived for oovering his face, he carelessly threw his black wideawake on the floor beside him ; and during the unpardonable de'ay which followed he showed no sort of agitation. For eight—some say ten —minutes after he ought to have been turned off, the military commapder made his troops march hither and thither, as if about to receive an attack from an »nemy. So atrocious Wc;b the suspense that the word was given at last before the evolutions were complete. Brown had stood still, steady aud silent. He was asked whether he was tired. " No, not tired," he said ; " but do not keep me longer than is necessary." He was desired to step upon the drop. He answered, " You Ijave put this thing upon my head so tbat I cannot see. You must lead me, gentlemen" So they did. The accounts vary as to how long he moved ; but the surgeons say he must have ceased to suffer instantly, as the spinal cord was ruptured though the neck was not dislocated. Strauge to say, his countenance was not deformed, more or less. A brui-e near the right eye was the only sign of violence. The surgeons felt the pulse, laid their ears against the chest, steadying the body by passing an arm round it. In a J little more than half an hour the corpse was taken down, and it fell together as if it had not a bone in it, while the coffin was got ready. The flashing blue eye is half closed and dim ; the grey hair no longer stands up like ruffikd plumage, but falls damp aud dead. The sinewy limbs bend as they are disposed ; but the hard featured face is unchanged, unless it be even more piacid than usual. His widow was well attended as she went homeward with her charge. Every effort was made to secure privacy on the journey ; but the public interest baffled all. At Philadelphia the mayor and other authorities and a great crowd attended the coffin to the station, and saw it deposited in the train. Warning was taken by tbi3; and at New York the coffin was not landed till two, a.m. Mrs. Brown's arrival was also not announced, yet early in the morning crowds assembled at the house where the body was; aud it was necessary to allow.access to the coffin. The serene face was looked at by eager thousands. There- was no shroud ; but the man lay iv his ordinary cloths. An eminent citizen from Philadelphia, and another from New York, and another from Boston, escorted Mrs. Biown to her home in Vermont, and witnessed her hero's burial. She and her children are adopted by the Free States. It will be time enough to speak of the results of John Brown's orusade when we see more of them. They are abundantly remarkable already, and they will be more so by the time this portrait is in print. Our business has been with the character of the man. It has impressed the national imagination for ever in his own country. Some eminent citizens of Virginia oaunot bear force of it, aud are preparing to migrate, with their property to Europe. (Their slaves they must leave behind). Among those who must remain, the children will never forget the man, nor lose the impression of the winter nights fol lowing his death

In Cumberland the aurora borealis is called " Lord Derwentwater's lights," because it was particularly splendid the night after his execution. The Virginia children will shiver for life when they remember John Brown's lights — those mysterious lights which ascend every nigbt in the direction of Harper's Ferry and are answered from various parts of the horizon in spite of all the efforts of police and military to make out what they mean. John Brown is as sure of immortality as Washington himself.— Once a Week.

Some of the Paris journals state that Abd -el Kader has reoeived a letter from Schamyl, congratulating him on his noble conduct in the massacres of Syria: it is signed—"Schamyl, who is in the power of the infidel."