Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1860-01-14

JOHN BROWN"

The body Of the old man is dead. The pageant
of music and banners, and the columns Of citizen
soldiery have passed by, and there is silence by
the scaffold where the chivalry of a State gathered
in arms to see him die. But the name rings like
the bugle cry of vengeance--tbe wild, startling
slogan of coming strife-over the whole North
The answering echoes from sympathizing States
will reach the distant Businesses where slavery
listens with paid lip, and even where its thrall il
the strongest, telegraph over the ground the heavy
football of a new and more terrible hatred of its
power-a hatred born in an hour and conse.
Grated with its baptism in blood. Virginia has
immortalizcd John Brown. She enjoyed the sweet
revenge of choking the breath out of tho scanned
and weather-beaten body. The name laughed at
the revenge Of the scaffold and the serried ranks
of armed men, and shot like a fiery bolt athwart
the public mind Of the North. 1t has become q
pillar of FIRE. 1t burns its way TO sluggish hearts
and comes pulsing back to the timid tongue, until
hands that have hitherto been folded with indif-
ference, have been compressed as If the fierce
thought upon the lip, were blades Of avenging
steel. Its light bursting up from the prison house,
is being answered back by ten thousand watch
fires from Maine to the Valley of the Mississippi.
Like the leaves swept by the blast,it has fallen mp
on the public mind from the press. The pulpit
lifts it as a red cross with its history of bloJd and
breaches a sterner crusade Of hatred against slave.
ry. Men forget the mad folly of the man, and re-
member only the calmness and grandeur of the
old Puritan's bearing in prison and on the scat
fold.
The oil saying shat the gods make mad those
they intend to destroy, never seemed more appli-
cable. than in the present case. There has been
q ferocity-literally a fendish thirsting for old
Browns blood-a clustering system of outrage
upon peaceable strangers stopping or Virginia
sofia widely trumpeted and mocking display Of
armed force at his execution, which has done more
to canonize his name and memory, and create hat
red of Southern chivalry and magnanimity, than
a thousand old Browns could have done of shem-
selves. We have watched the course of events,
and been surprised OF the weakness and folly of
Virginia. The heated ~invective of o hundred
years of abolitionism could not have done so much
to build up and strengthen the hatred of slavery
in the North. Apparent in oil, is that evidence
of weakness and fear from the onslaught of a
score Of m%admen, which %injects a more fierce and
exultant faith into the veins of those who have
long watched and waited for such q day as this.
Virginia could have well afforded to treat Brown
with magnanimity-with ~contempt-if SO she
chose to term the forbearance. Had she taken
him from prison after sentence, and with her
twenty-five hundred soldiers guarded him to the
line and babe him 20 and not commit such folly
again for fear a worse thing come upon him, che
would done more to impress the North with hei
strength, and to allay and disarm what they term
"fanaticism," than the hanging of q Thousand
John Browns.