NARRATOR
John Brown, more than any other white American, devoted his life, and finally sacrificed it, on behalf of freedom for the slave. His plan, impossible and courageous, was to seize the arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, with a band of black and white abolitionists, and set off a revolt of slaves throughout the South. The plan failed. Some of his men, including his son, were killed. John Brown was wounded, captured, and sentenced to death by hanging, with the state of Virginia and the government of the United States joining in his execution. When he was put to death, Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “He will make the gallows holy as the cross.” Here John Brown addresses the court that ordered his hanging.
JOHN BROWN
Had I interfered in the manner, which I admit, had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or in behalf of any of their friends…or father, mother, brother, sister, wife or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. Every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.
This court acknowledges too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction…. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I always have freely admitted, I have done, in behalf of His despised poor. I did not wrong, but right. Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I submit. So let it be done.
NARRATOR
Twenty-two years later, in 1881, Frederick Douglass was asked to speak at a college in Harpers Ferry.
FREDERICK DOUGLASS
If John Brown did not end the war that ended slavery, he did at least begin the war that ended slavery. If we look over the dates, places, and men, for which this honor is claimed, we shall find that not Carolina, but Virginia—not Fort Sumter, but Harpers Ferry and the arsenal—not Colonel Anderson, but John Brown began the war that ended American slavery and made this a free Republic. Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy, and uncertain. The irrepressible conflict was one of words, votes, and compromises. When John Brown stretched forth his arm, the sky was cleared….