The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-07-26
JOHN BROWN, "MARTYR"
BY W. R. HoUeHToN.

| Sunday night, October 16. 1859, Brown, with sixteen whites and six blacks, cross- 1 cd the railroad bridge and took posses
 sion of the United States arsenal They l compelled some leading citizens among l them Lewis Washington, grand nephew 1 of George, and about thirty unwilling l negroes to accompany them. Early the l next morning the colored porter of the 1 railroad station was killed because he
 tried to escape, and citizen standing in 1 his own door was the next victim, whilst l the third was a graduate of West Point i riding into the town to help his friends l Colonel Robert F. Lee was then at Ar l lington and he was ordered with ba- talion of marines to suppress the insur-
 rection and retake the government ar
 mory He made very quick work of 1t,
 but whilst firing on the marines, one of
 Browns followers asked him, Captain
 Brown, are we guilty of treason in what
 we are doing? I did not so understand i it. "Gertainly" said Brown, and kept
 on firing. Badly wounded, he was tried l by the state for treason, murder and in- l citing slaves to insurrection, and was l defended by able counsel. Of course, ] there could be nothing but conviction,
 and the verdict was received in silence
 and he was sentenced to be hung. R. D. l Lee, the colonel who captured him. Wise, | the governor of Virginia, and the ma- l 1ority of the citizens of the state, were, lat heart, opposed 10 the institution of
 slavery, but instead of sympathy in the onslaught made upon their state, what l did they receive?
 1 On the day of John Browns execution,
 in many churches of the north were held 1 services of humiliation and prayer; bells
 were tolled. minute guns were fired, and he was glori1ed as a saint. Eight out of
 nineteen senators in the legislature of Massachusetts voted to adjourn on the day of his execution. Women called him "St John the Just" Phlanthropists pronounced him "most truly Christian" Whittier, Emerson and Longfellow wrote panegyrics. Garrison and Phillips count ed him martyr. John A. Andrews said
 John Brown was right, and next year
 was elected governor of Massa chusetts.
 Lincoln made a speech in New York the l following February, and characterized Browns efforts as peculiar and absurd, l but had no words of censure. This was
 the nimble politician. Seward pro-
 nounced the act sedition and treason, 1 and lost the nomination for the Presi- l dency because he dared to expose his views.
 Now. the writer of the "Pilgrimage'
 was raised in that sort of an atmosphere
 and perhaps never took the trouble to
 look up the facts. She has doubtless 1 heard that John Brown hated the south, l and loved the negro-ergo, he was 1 saint But can the same be said of the 1 editor of a magazine which undertakes to welcome 25,000 teachers? Was 1t an | accident that the ''Pilgrimage" appear
 ed Just when the poor benlghted south
 ern teachers were to be the guests of the city of culture? Was it necessary to gently train their ideas into the fashion of worshiping the memory of the man
 whose history has just been given, who mutilated the bodies of his murdered vic-
 tims and levied war against the United States and Virginia.
 Evidently somebody has been reading 1.-the Bible backwards. The testament
 which conveys the message of peace on
 earth, good will toward man, has been i passed over; the hanging of witches is Of
 the past, and now the mind rests with satisfaction on the warfare of Saul
 against the Amalelzites; men and women,
 even sucking babes were not spared
 only the fat cattle and sheep were
 saved as spells.
 If the appearance of the "Pilgrimage"
 whilst the teachers were in Boston was
 not an accident, why could not some of
 the facts of the martyrs" life have
 been given? I was boy when all these
 things appeared in the newspapers of the
 day, but they are well told in ''The End
 of an Era" book by John s. Wise, son of him who was governor Of Vir- ginia.