The Sun.
London, England, 1859-12-19 00:00:00

THE EXECUTION OF OLD JOE BROWN.

(From the Times.) -
We have been so far removed for a quarter of a
century from all national interest in the question
of slavery that we may look with impartial eyes
on the strange events which have recently occurred
on the other side of the Atlantic. Au old man was
hanged on the 2d of December at Charlestown,
Virginia, who will probably be remembered as a
hero by the Abolitionists of both countries for some
time to come. We sincerely wish that " Old Cap-
tain John Brown" had not met his death at the
hands of the executioner. But this wish leads us
back to other and still other wishes, until we find
ourselves wishing that the whole framework of
American society were not what it is. The fate of
John Brown is connected with the growth of
cotton in India or West Africa, with the instincts
of the Anglo• Saxon race, with the intellectual
powers of the African, with the principles of self-
government, with the theory of the American Con-
stitution. There are certainly people who think
that a slaveholding community has no right to
take the life of a would•be liberatoi of their slaves,
and that the principles of natural justice require
them to be considered as murderers as much as the
burglar who shoots the policeman who arrests him.
Into these abstract questions of moral right we
shall not enter. The Virginians have hanged poor
old Brown, and there is no profit in further discus-
sing the question, unless the actual state of Ameri-
can society and the rights of the governing
communities be taken for granted.
Massachusetts
for
thhaev have
criminal, ma d e greatand
demonstrations
people
the sympathy of such a people is a title to the
consideration of the world. No community of
of
o f sympathy
which we have any knowledge approaches in en-
lightenment and morality to the inhabitants of this
part of the Union, where, though wealth may not
be heaped up in masses, as in New York, yet
poverty hardly exists, education is universal, and
the tone of society is singularly high-minded,
honourable, and liberal. Massachusetts may be
taken to represent the extreme section of northern
politicians ; and the sympathy for Brown fullest in
this part of the country, will taper off until in
some of the Free States public opinion will be en-
tirely on the side of his executioners. What
Abolitionist feelings, intentions, and powers aro

"But when to-morrow's sun in blood goes down,
It will breathe free, no longer fearing BroWn."
Mr. Garrison, the most conspicuous Abolitionist of
the day, then " drew a fine picture of the results
which would follow if the Union could be divided
and a firm healthy Government formed, stretching
from the Atlantic to the Pacific." At Worcester a
meeting was held equally enthusiastic, at which Mr.
Hugginson made, as it seems to us, the most sensi-
ble remarks. He said, "We talc, we build John
Brown a monument of words. We don't occupy a
very sublime position to-night." This language
was much more suitable to the situation than de-
clamations that General Wise had committed a
murder that he had no right to."
Bells were tolled probably in every town in Mas-
sachusetts, and in many throughout the entire
North. Yet we will venture to say that in a few
days. everything was quiet again, and John Brown,
for whom parallels wore sought; in history, sacred
and profane, was judged in' the true light, as a cou-
rageous old man, maddened by the partisan warfare
of the West, and whom it would have been as well
for the State of Virginia to pardon, if possible. The
truth is, that these Abolitionist meetings and de-
monstrations express only an impulse, and not a con-
viction, of the Northern people. There is not ono
American in a thousand who would act on the prin-
ciples which were applauded in " Tremont Temple"
and in numbers of other places after Brown's execu-
tion. Happily for the peace of society and the
security of the Republio, there is a'stiong Conser-
vative feeling throughout the Union, and Mr. Gar-
rison's scheme for a secession of the Northern States
will find favour only with" a narrow clique even in
his own city. The Central' States of the Union,—
such as New York and Pennsylvania, will, never
permit the fanatics of either North or South to
imperil the fabric of American nationality. But
their interference will never be required, for
even in Massachusetts and South Carolina ex-
treme opinions are allowed expressions only because
they are are felt to be practically harmless. These
noisy and, useless demonstrations of so enlight-
ened a community as that of New England are,
however, not without their evil effect. They em-
bitter the slaveholders against the North, while they
give them the Jeonviction that the North fears to
oppose them. The Virginian authorities might
have spared Brown, had it not been openly boasted
in the frontier free States that he should be rescued
on the very drop by an army of Abolitionists. Go-
vernor Wise was told that he durst not bang Brown
—that 5,000 Freesoilers could march from one end
of Virginia to the other ; that the negroes would be
made to rise in earnest this time, and so on. In
short, a section of fanatics, in the name of the North,
threw out a challenge to the entire South, and by
so doing sealed Brown's fate. The Virginians hanged
the poor old man, and the rescuers did not move, but
when the tragedy was complete began to indulge in
the useless declamation we have recorded. The re-
sult will be to strengthen the South by the adhesion
of that floating mass of opinion which in every
country lies between the two extremes. Whatever
may be the future of the negro race, no one in his
senses can believe that its regeneration can be
effected by inciting it to murder planters and ravish
white women, and, if any man chooses to head an
outbreak of this kind, he must expect to meet a fate
which right-thinking men will not glorify with the
crown of martyrdom.

(Front the Morning Advertiser.)

The star-spangled banner has received a foul stain
—a stain cruelly offensive to the eyes of those who •
are wont to look with sympathy towards the great
Republic beyond the ocean. John Brown, the de-
fender—ill-advised it may be—but still the defender
of the outraged cause of humanity; John Brown,
the man who staked his fortune, his life, and all
that he held dear in the vindication of the inalien-
able rights of a degraded race of fellow-beings—
was brought to the scaffold at Charlestown on the
2d inst., and there hanged like a common mur-
derer. Down to the last moment men had hoped
that the escutcheon of the Transatlantic Com-
monwealth would not be tarnished by so dis-
graceful a " legal murder." All over Europe,
wherever the traffic in human flesh is abhorred as
a Cain's act, the news from the United States, as
each mail succeeded the other, was eagerly scanned
for some ray of hope. Tho fervent wishes of all
good men were for the rescue of John Brown from
the grip of the hangman. Victor Hugo, from his
place of exile, stepped forth to address an appeal
for mercy to the Republican authorities—an appeal
in which he pathetically exclaims :—" Yes, there is,
and let America well reflect upon it, something
more terrible yet than the slaughter of Abel by his
brother Cain—and that is the murder of Spartacus
by the hand of Washington !"
But the prayers of noble hearted men have been
doomed to disappointment. The last mail from the
United States has brought the dreadful report of
the execution of Brown on that December day
which has already become celebrated as so fatal to
European liberty. As though they wished, in ad-
dition to the cruelty of the procedure, to mock the
feelings of the " Abolitionist" and " Republican"
parties, the judicial authorities appointed as the
day for dragging a wounded old man to the scaffold
the very anniversary which marks the strangling
of the Republic in France. The foul deed was ac-
companied with other allusions of an equally hate-
ful character. Thus, for instance, the rope with
which John Brown was to be hung was, previous to
being employed for the fell purpose, exposed for
show in the sheriff's office, with the announcement
that " it was made of cotton from South Carolina."
The produce of slave hands was to serve as an in-
strument for strangling the man who had fought
and bled for the freedom of the negro ! Such a re-
finement of fiendish cruelty almost staggers our
belief, when even the last hour of death is not sacred
from the gibes and jeers of triumphant malice.
No wonder that that portion of the Press in
America, which recognises in John Brown a brave,
enthusiastic, though rash champion of the good
cause, should have beer driven furious by the de-
cree of death pronounced against the venerable
hero. Foremost in energetic expression of their
indignation are the anti-slavery organs of the Ger-
man Press in the United States. One of them
speaks out thus :—" The whole State of Virginia,
which calls itself the chivalrous, has become con-
verted into a camp of hangmen. From Governor
Wise down to the last ruffian, all have become
hangmen. Charlestown is occupied by two thousand

armed hangmen. All the Christian temples of the
place have been converted into barracks for hang-
men. Whoever desires to enter Virginia just now
must wend his way through guards and bands of
self-elected hangmen. The place of execution, on
December 2, is to be a vast open space, surrounded
by an army of hangmen, to enable the chief execu-
tioner toply his calling with complacency and com-
fort, and to prevent the possibility of any sympa-
thising car from catching the dyingwords of the
assassinated hero of freedom. To bael up and coun-
tenance this array of Virginian hangmen, a small
army of United States troops will not he wanting,
troops converted for the nonce, by the Chief Magis-
trate of the Republic, into a brigade of hangmen.
What are we called upon now to behold as the
highest and most honourable task of the President,
the governors, the army, and militia of the Repub-
lic? Not the sacred duty of guarding its freedom
and its rights, but the loathsome vocation of hang-
men, for murdering the champions of freedom who
have endeavoured to rescue their country from the
curse of slavery."
John Brown is now no more ; but while his me-
mory is befouled by the libertines who treat the
negro as the beast of the field, his name will be
esteemed by all those who hold it the fundamental
law of civilised society not to allow any portion of
the human family to be degraded into servile bon-
, dage. John Brown is dead, but his spirit is still
abroad. Woo to the deluded men who dwell as
nigger-drivers in the South, if they think they can
now with impunity continueth eirproffigate tyranny!
Woe.to them if, to the entreaties of the North, they
should continue to oppose the same menace of car-
rying the boundaries of the slave district even far-
ther—into countries hitherto uncontaminated!
There is a limit to all human endurance; pass that
boundary, and. the aggression will rebound upon
him who has been the original violater of justice.
Who knows but this retribution is already on its
way to overtake the traffickers in human fiesh---:and
in a form more daißgerOus to the guilty ones than
the ill-organised attempt made at Harper's Ferry?
All this we say in shame and sorrow. The people
of England, themselves still hampered in the free-
dom of their political action by a feudalist oligarchy,
have always looked with pride at the growing
power and liberties of their kinsmen across the
ocean, hoping that the one marring feature, Slavery,
would in duo time be got rid of, or at least be pre-
vented from eating cancer-like into the American
body politic. The people of England, and the organs
of English Liberalism, are therefore not among
those likely to cast a stone undeservedly at their
Transatlantic brethren. It is a sad and most un-
welcome duty for us to take up in this manner our
stand against the Republic ; but, as it is a dots',
oil other considerations must give way. Let us,
however, still hope that the blood of John Brown
will not have been shed in vain—that men, when
the first intoxication of revengeful feeling
ha-
passed away, will become more accessible to per-
suasion—that a conviction will spring up of the
necessity of doing somethin in justice to humanrights,
rights, lest civil war should' spring up throughout
the Commonwealth, and the manes of John Brown
be avenged by a Servile Rebellion.
"What friend of freedom is there that would not
wish to see such a fate averted from the American
Republic ? How despots would chuckle should they
see the great democrc tic State rent asuader by in-
ternal convulsion—the glorious Union divided into
some strips of territory, each of which would be se-
cluded from the other by hostile barriers ! But to
this, unfortunately, it must come if the cause of
humanity continues to he outraged by a set of
reckless man-sellers, whose abominable profligacy
has reached such a height that they already exhi-
bit their coloured fellow-men as cattle shows, and
award each other prizes for the production of the
greatest amount of bone and muscle in the bodies
of their human cattle ! 'Would that a reaction of in-
dignant feeling were at last visible among the
population of the South! For the first principles
of humanity cannot thus be violated year by year
without a rightful retribution falling on the heads
of the guilty. Punishment may be slow in coming ;
it may hobble, as the proverb has it, on crutches,
but it knocks at the door at last.