The court clerk droned on while the tall, bearded man and his four allies stood before the bench. Few men, according to one reporter, could look John Brown in the eye for more than a moment. But Judge Richard Parker asked John Brown how he pleaded to the grand jury’s accusations of treason, servile insurrection, and murder.

Brown replied, “Not guilty,” then retreated to a cot, drew a blanket up to his chin, and closed his eyes. The trial that would inflame a nation had begun.

The country courtroom’s floor was littered with peanut and chestnut shells. The benches on three sides of the courtroom were crammed with as many as 600 spectators. Outside in the streets of Charlestown, Virginia, several thousand more people were held at bay by lines of militiamen.

At the lawyers’ table, Andrew Hunter, special counsel for the Commonwealth of Virginia, sat alongside Charles Harding, Jefferson County’s regular prosecutor. A notorious drunk, Harding’s hair was uncombed, and stubble covered his chin. On the other side, representing the defense, were Lawson Botts, and Thomas C. Green, the mayor of Charlestown. But all eyes were on Brown, whose fanatic daring had created this epic drama.

John Brown could unleash an undeniable power when he chose to. The spectators had gotten a glimpse of it the day before, when the sheriff brought Brown and his confederates into the courtroom to be arraigned before eight justices of the peace for the grand jury hearing. Brown had walked from the nearby jail, head erect and his stride steady. Prosecutor Harding, in charge of the arraignment, asked if the defendants had counsel, or if they wished the court to assign them qualified lawyers. Brown rose, and in a low, intense voice struck the first blow in his own defense: “Virginians, I did not ask for any quarter at the time I was taken. I did not ask to have my life spared. The governor of the state of Virginia tendered me his assurance that I should have a fair trial. But, under no circumstances whatever will I be able to have a fair trial. If you seek my blood, you can have it at any moment, without this mockery of a trial. I have had no counsel. I have not been able to advise with anyone. I know nothing about the feelings of my fellow prisoners, and am utterly unable to attend in any way to my own defense. My memory don’t serve me. My health is insufficient, although improving. There are mitigating circumstances that I would urge in our favor, if a fair trial is to be allowed us. But if we are to be forced with a mere form — a trial for execution — you might spare yourselves that trouble. I am ready for my fate. . . . I have now little further to ask, other than that I may not be foolishly insulted only as cowardly barbarians insult those who fall into their power.”

From boyhood, Brown believed that he was destined for great things. But before 1855, his life was mostly a series of bankruptcies and lawsuits. He married twice and had twenty children; eleven survived to adulthood.

He hated slavery, although he did little about it in a practical sense. His abolitionist views earned him a visit in 1846 from Frederick Douglass, the ex-slave who had become a well-known lecturer in the North. Brown, at the time, was working as a wool merchant. Douglass, who believed slavery could be abolished peacefully, was alarmed by Brown’s declaration that “no political action will ever abolish the system of slavery. It will have to go out in blood. Those men who hold slaves have even forfeited their right to live.”

When the wool business failed, Brown persuaded philanthropist Gerrit Smith to give him a portion of the 120,000 acres in upstate New York that Smith had opened to black refugees. There, Brown lived as a farmer and stern head of household to the handful of blacks who took advantage of Smith’s hospitality.

Brown found his calling in Kansas. Five of his sons had gone west in search of land and opportunity, and landed instead in a cauldron of North-South animosity. Brown responded to his sons’ call for help by abandoning the New York farm and joining them as “Captain” Brown, a title chosen in memory of his ancestor, who had died of illness in 1776 while serving in the Revolutionary Army.

Brown swiftly revealed a talent for guerrilla warfare. On May 24-25, 1856, he led his sons and a few followers in a raid on a handful of pro-southern settlers living on Pottawatomie Creek. The raiders dragged five people, including the father and two oldest sons of the Doyle family, out of their homes and murdered them. The slaughter - several of the victims were hacked almost to pieces by sabers - caused such a general revulsion that Brown and his sons had to flee. James Redpath, an ardently abolitionist reporter, found Brown hiding in a Kansas creek bed and interviewed him for an article in which Brown declared he had nothing to do with the Pottawatomie murders, although he “approved of them” as reprisal for murders committed by the pro-slavers.

The propaganda - plus his courage in several Kansas skirmishes, particularly the battle at Osawatomie against proslavery forces - made Brown a hero to a small circle of abolitionists who advocated violence to overthrow slavery. This popularity helped Brown finance a slave-and-horse-stealing expedition into Missouri, and eventually launch what was covertly referred to as “the well-matured plan.”

The plan was to seize the federal arsenal across from Harpers Ferry and lead an armed slave rebellion across the South. Brown led the attack on Sunday, October 16, 1859. With twenty-one armed followers, he seized the federal arsenal just across the Potomac River from Maryland and converted it into a fortress to which, Brown was confident, every slave in the area would flee. The next day, a Virginia militia drove Brown and his band out of the arsenal and into the adjacent fire-engine house. A furious fire fight raged for the next day and a half, until all but seven of the raiders were killed, captured, or dispersed.

Brown tried to leverage ten local white hostages for safe passage into the Maryland hills, but U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee, ordered to the scene by President Buchanan, declined to bargain. When Brown refused a final demand to surrender, Lee sent a dozen Marines, led by Lieutenant Israel Green, crashing through the engine-room door with fixed bayonets. Green, according to his own account, caught Brown as he was reloading his gun and beat him to the ground with repeated blows to the head from his light dress sword.

Later, lying on the floor of the office of the armory paymaster, Brown was confronted by Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise and interrogated for more than three hours. His plan had failed, Brown insisted, because he had neglected tactics out of humane consideration for the hostages. He lamented that his wounds were inflicted “some minutes after I had ceased fighting and had consented to a surrender for the benefit of others, not for my own.”

Brown said he could have killed Lieutenant Green, “but I supposed he came in only to receive our surrender.” When it was pointed out that the lieutenant had scrambled headfirst through an opening battered in the door, with bullets whistling all around him, and that the first man to follow him had been killed and the second seriously wounded, Brown solemnly explained that the Marines had fired first. This was another lie; the Marines had strict orders to use only their bayonets to avoid harming the hostages.

The nation was shocked by initial reports, based on rumors, of a military invasion and an uprising involving thousands of slaves. When the true dimensions of Brown’s futile foray became known, the reaction was bewilderment. Editors of the Cleveland Leader thought the whole affair was “positively ridiculous.” The New York Tribune called it “the work of a madman.” Even the Liberator, Boston’s abolitionist organ, called the raid a “misguided, wild and apparently insane, though disinterested and well-intended effort by insurrection to emancipate the slaves.” The Richmond Inquirer echoed most of the South when it declared, “The Harpers Ferry invasion has advanced the cause of Disunion more than any other event that has happened since the formation of the Government.”

The reference in the indictment to “divers other evil-minded and traitorous persons to the Jurors unknown” fed rumors of a conspiracy, soon supported by evidence. On a Maryland farm a few miles from Harpers Ferry, where Brown had spent the summer planning the raid, investigators found a carpetbag full of correspondence between Brown and his backers. Many of the primary investors in Brown’s scheme vanished. Frederick Douglass and several others left for Canada, beyond the reach of federal warrants.

Within a week of his capture, Brown was on trial in accordance with the Virginia statute that required speed. Governor Wise rejected the advice of some Virginians to declare martial law, convict Brown in a drumhead court, and hang him on the spot. He insisted the honor and reputation of the South made it imperative to give Brown every benefit the law allowed. Neither Wise nor his prosecutor could see that they were dueling John Brown for the minds and hearts of millions of neutral northerners.

Already, Brown’s tactics were having their effect beyond Virginia. The Lawrence, Kansas, Republican fulminated, “We defy an instance to be shown in a civilized community where a prisoner has been forced to trial for his life, when so disabled by sickness or ghastly wounds as to be unable even to sit up during the proceedings, and compelled to be carried to the judgment hall upon a litter.” But Brown did not convince everyone. The reporter for the New York Tribune wrote, “The prisoner . . . is evidently not much injured, but is determined to resist the pushing of his trial by all the means in his power.”

Brown was skilled at putting his accusers on the defensive. But he had more practical reasons to delay. He had sent letters north to three prominent lawyers; as yet, none had responded. Moreover, if he managed to stall long enough, his supporters might have time to mount a rescue operation.

When news of the trial reached Boston, abolitionist John W. Le Barnes hired George H. Hoyt, a fledgling lawyer who was only twenty-one (and looked nineteen), to leave immediately for Charlestown. Hoyt was to watch and report on the proceedings, talk with Brown and deliver any messages he might have. Secondly, he was instructed to send Barnes “an accurate and detailed account of the military situation at Charlestown, the number and distribution of troops, the location and defenses of the jail, and nature of the approaches to the town and jail, the opportunities for a sudden attack, and the means of retreat, with the location and situation of the room in which Brown is confined, and all other particulars that might enable friends to consult as to some plan of attempt at rescue.”

Hoyt was riding a southbound train when Brown resumed his cot for the second day of his trial. The defense presented a telegram received late the previous night from Akron, Ohio, testifying that insanity was hereditary in the Brown family. Before either prosecuting attorney could object, Brown did: “As I remarked to Mr. Green, insane persons, so far as my experience goes, have but little ability to judge of their own sanity; and if I am insane, of course I should think I know more than all the rest of the world. But I do not think so. I am perfectly unconscious of insanity, and I reject, so far as I am capable, any attempt to interfere in my behalf on that score.”

The defendant’s abashed lawyers dropped the plea. But they promptly presented the court with another document: a telegram from Judge Daniel Tilden, announcing he was en route from Ohio in response to Brown’s letter. Botts and Green requested a delay until Tilden arrived.

The prosecutors objected; Hunter asked tartly if Tilden was a lawyer or a leader of a band of desperadoes, and insisted that if additional lawyers were coming, more than enough time had elapsed for them to reach Charlestown. What was there to debate, really? Brown had admitted and even gloried in his crimes.

Green lumbered to his feet in sharp rebuttal. Treason, he argued, could be confessed only in open court. What Brown had said to one or even 100 persons outside the court was irrelevant. Equally “idle,” Green said, were the prosecutor’s fears of a rescue attempt. Earnestly, Green asked Judge Parker for only one day’s delay, but the motion was denied.

In the defense’s opening statement, Lawson Botts argued that Virginia had no right to try Brown. To convict Brown of premeditated murder, Botts said, the prosecution must present evidence of malice, and Brown had gone to great lengths to guarantee the safety of the prisoners he had taken. Botts contended the charge of treason was invalid because, according to common-law tradition in the United States, treason could be committed only by a resident against his own state, and no stretch of logic could make Brown a citizen of Virginia. Finally, Botts questioned the court’s jurisdiction over crimes committed on federal property such as an arsenal.

Hunter replied with obvious pride that the Virginia law on treason was “more full” than the federal statute. A person was guilty of treason not only if he levied war against Virginia or gave aid to its enemies, but also if he established without the authority of the legislature “any governments within its limits separate from the existing government.” As for jurisdiction, Hunter cited an 1830 case involving a murder committed on the arsenal grounds, in which the killer had been tried, convicted, and executed under Virginia laws.

The prosecution produced witnesses who gave a detailed narration of the assault on Harpers Ferry. A. J. Phelps, a conductor with the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, testified that when his train arrived at the bridge outside Harpers Ferry shortly after midnight Sunday, he was warned by a wounded bridge watchman that riflemen had seized the arsenal. The conductor refused to take his train into Harpers Ferry.

Phelps testified that he returned to Harpers Ferry two days after the raid with Governor Wise and heard John Brown describe books that he said explained everything. Lee, who had confiscated one of the books, gave it to the governor. Brown explained it was the constitution of a “provisional government” in which he was president and commander-in-chief. Brown said there was also a secretary of state, a secretary of war, and all the other officers for a general government, including a house of representatives which included “an intelligent colored man.”

Green interrupted the “sensational” testimony to ask the court once more for a delay. He had received a message that counsel was arriving from Cleveland and would almost certainly be there by nightfall. The prosecution had selected “only scraps” of Brown’s long conversation with Governor Wise, Green said, and the new counsel should have an opportunity to cross-examine the witness. Hunter answered that other witnesses would cover much of the same ground, and the new counsel – if he arrived – would have ample opportunities to question them.

The judge ordered the testimony to proceed, and Green got Phelps to admit that Brown had said on Sunday night “it was not his intention to harm anybody or anything. He was sorry men had been killed. It was not by his orders or with his approbation.”

Colonel Lewis Washington took the stand next. The most distinguished of Brown’s hostages, he bore a striking resemblance to his famous great-granduncle, President George Washington. The colonel testified that four of Brown’s lieutenants had woken him between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. and at gunpoint ordered him and his slaves to come with them to Harpers Ferry. The raiders forced the colonel to hand over an old dress sword allegedly presented by Frederick the Great to George Washington. Later, the colonel was astonished to see the relic in Brown’s hands. “I will take especial care of it and I shall endeavor to return it to you after you are released,” Brown told him. Brown carried the sword throughout the battle and put it aside only when the Marines began to batter down the door.

Brown told each of the hostages that he could ransom himself by summoning a “stout Negro” to take his place, which Washington and the others declined to do. The colonel testified: “No Negro from this neighborhood appeared to take arms voluntarily.”

Not long after the court adjourned, George Hoyt arrived from Boston. Hunter took one look at him and wrote to Governor Wise, “A beardless boy came in last night as Brown’s counsel. I think he is a spy.”

Hunter paraded more witnesses to the stand. Armsted Ball, a master machinist who worked at the Harpers Ferry armory, testified he was seized by Brown’s men when he went to the arsenal to investigate the disturbance. Ball said he prevented one of Brown’s men from firing at an old man named Guess who was passing by, but was unable to stop him from killing Harpers Ferry Mayor Fontaine Beckham, who had ventured onto the railroad trestle to get a better look at the excitement in the arsenal below.

Four other witnesses were called in quick succession during the afternoon session, and the prosecution – convinced it had made its case against Brown – rested.

The first defense witness, a hostage named Joseph Brewer, described the strange mixture of murder and mercy that characterized the bloodshed at Harpers Ferry. He testified that when Brown sent his lieutenant, Aaron Stevens, and hostage A. M. Kitzmiller out with a flag of truce, the maddened citizens of Harpers Ferry riddled Stevens with bullets. Brewer, realizing Stevens was still alive, risked his life to carry the wounded man into a nearby building. Then, fulfilling a pledge he had made to Brown, Brewer returned to the engine house. Both he and Kitzmiller, who testified next, said Brown urged them to use their influence with the citizens to prevent unnecessary bloodshed.

Green asked Judge Parker for permission to introduce testimony about the death of one of Brown’s raiders, William Thompson, who was seized by the militia as he left the engine house to negotiate a truce. Hunter objected; all this testimony about Brown’s forbearance, he insisted, had no more to do with the legal realities of the case than the “dead languages.” But the judge ruled the evidence admissible, and Hunter had to sit stolidly while his own son, Harry, recited a grisly tale: “After Mr. Beckham, who was my granduncle, was shot, I was much exasperated and started with Mr. Chambers to the room where . . . Thompson was confined, with the purpose of shooting him. . . . We then caught hold of him, and dragged him out by the throat, he saying, ‘though you may take my life, 80,000 will rise up to avenge me and carry out my purpose of giving liberty to the slaves.’ We carried him out to the bridge and the two of us, leveling our guns in this moment of wild exasperation fired, and before he fell, a dozen or more balls were buried in him; we then threw his body off the trestlework. . . . I had just seen my loved uncle and best friend I ever had, shot down by those villainous Abolitionists, and felt justified in shooting any that I could find; I felt it my duty, and I have no regrets.”

The defense summoned several more witnesses, but none were present to take the stand. Brown suddenly rose from his cot to protest: “I discover that notwithstanding all the assurances I have received of a fair trial, nothing like a fair trial is to be given me, as it would seem. I gave the names, as soon as I could get them, of the persons I wished to have called as witnesses, and was assured that they would be subpoenaed. I wrote down a memorandum to that effect, saying where those parties were; but it appears they have not been subpoenaed as far as I can learn; and I now ask, if I am to have anything at all deserving the name and shadow of a fair trial, that this proceeding be deferred until tomorrow morning; for I have no counsel, as I before stated, in whom I feel that I can rely, but I am in hopes counsel may arrive who will attend to seeing that I get the witnesses who are necessary for my defense.”

Reporting this outburst, the New York Herald’s correspondent said, “The indignation of the citizens scarcely knew bounds. He [Brown] was stigmatized as an ungrateful villain, and some declared he deserved hanging for that act alone.” The sheriff assured Judge Parker that all Brown’s subpoenas had been served, and the courtroom seethed. Brown lay down again, drew his blanket over him, and closing his eyes, “appeared to sink in tranquil slumber.”

Hoyt, too, pleaded for a delay. He knew that Brown’s explosive repudiation of his court-appointed counsel meant that he was about to be left with the full responsibility for the defense. Hoyt told Judge Parker he had not even read the indictment and did not have “any idea of the line of the defense proposed . . .” or “knowledge of the criminal code of Virginia and no time to read it.” Botts offered Hoyt the full resources of his law office and declared he would “sit up with him all night to put him in possession of all the law and facts in relation to this case.” Reluctantly, Judge Parker agreed to a brief postponement and adjourned at 6:00 p.m.

Botts spent the night tutoring Hoyt in Virginia criminal law, only to discover in the morning that it was unnecessary. Two experienced lawyers had at last arrived in response to Brown’s call for counsel. Hiram Griswold of Cleveland had been sent by Judge Tilden; and Samuel Chilton, a Virginian by birth, had been hired (for a fee of $1,000) by John A. Andrew, a leading Boston abolitionist. Chilton asked Judge Parker for a few hours to prepare. But Parker, weary of pleas for delay, declared Brown had no one to blame but himself for dismissing his previous counsel.

Hoyt summoned more of the hostages, who added only grim details to the overall picture, such as seeing two of Brown’s sons fatally wounded during the first day’s fighting. Hunter charged the defense with calculating a course to waste time. Hoyt said he was trying to “prove the absence of malicious intention,” and was acting in accordance “with the express commands” of his client. Hunter gave up and allowed the parade of witnesses to continue, but did not bother to cross-examine them.

By the time the court adjourned for a one-hour recess, the defense had run out of witnesses. It was Saturday, and Judge Parker was determined to end the trial before nightfall. But Brown was equally determined to prolong it until Monday. When the bailiffs summoned him to reappear in court, Brown again said he was too sick to rise from his jail bed. The Judge demanded a report from the doctor, who said Brown was malingering. Parker ordered Brown carried into court, but another hour had been consumed.

Chilton asked the judge to compel the prosecutors to elect one count of the indictment and abandon the others, arguing it was unfair to force Brown to defend himself against three accusations simultaneously. But Parker ruled the jury had been charged and sworn to try the prisoners on the indictment as drawn. The trial must go on, but Chilton could at its close ask for “an arrest of judgment.”

All that was left was for the two sides to make closing arguments. Griswold asked for an adjournment after the prosecution had completed its statements so that he and Chilton could make a more respectable defense on Monday morning. Once more, there was a wrangle over this request for delay. Hunter blamed Brown for “dismissing his faithful, skillful, able and zealous counsel yesterday afternoon,” and could see no reason why the jurors should be kept away from their families for the weekend. Chilton said he hoped the court would not require a man on trial for his life to submit his case without an adequate argument. Judge Parker reluctantly agreed.

Pulling himself out of his alcoholic fog, the county prosecutor declaimed for about forty minutes while Hunter squirmed in his chair. “When Harding began to speak,” recalled one of the spectators, “if you shut your eyes and listened, for the first few minutes you would think Patrick Henry had returned to earth; after that he dwindled away into ineptitudes.” After Harding’s harangue, Parker adjourned the court until 9:00 a.m. Monday.

The judge and Hunter could only glare as Brown rose from his cot the moment the gavel fell and walked back to his cell.

On Monday, Griswold and Chilton spoke in Brown’s defense, but Botts had already made the best available arguments, and the lawyers did little more than paraphrase him. They maintained that Brown was not a Virginia citizen, the court did not have jurisdiction over the federal arsenal, and Brown’s consideration to his hostages proved his lack of malice and, therefore, his innocence of first-degree murder.

In reply, prosecutor Hunter explained to the jury that anyone who killed while committing a felony was guilty of first-degree murder. He argued Virginia code defined citizens as all white persons born in any other state who became residents, and Brown was attempting to become a resident, albeit a most unwelcome one, when he seized the arsenal. He had come to stay, Hunter said, “for the nefarious purpose of rallying forces into this Commonwealth and establishing himself at Harpers Ferry as a starting point for a new Government.” Brown’s conduct, Hunter added, showed clearly that his raid was not intended to carry off slaves, and his provisional government was “a real thing and no debating society.” His treatment of the prisoners was meant to lull the citizens of Virginia into letting him “usurp the government, manumit [release] our slaves, confiscate the property of slave holders and, without drawing a trigger or shedding blood, permit him to take possession of the Commonwealth.” Hunter asked that Brown be convicted so that “the majesty of the laws” might be vindicated.

Throughout these orations, Brown lay on his back with his eyes closed. Chilton asked Judge Parker to instruct the jury that they could not convict Brown of treason, but Parker denied the motion. Chilton asked the judge to rule on the question of jurisdiction. Parker affirmed the court’s jurisdiction, and the jury retired. For three-quarters of an hour, the court was in recess. Then the spectators swarmed back to hear the foreman of the jury announce that John Brown had been found guilty on all counts. There was not a sound in the courtroom.

Chilton moved for an arrest of judgment, citing the well-debated errors in the indictment. Parker promised to hear arguments on it the following day, and the court adjourned after selecting a jury to try Brown follower Edwin Coppoc.

When Parker arrived in court on Wednesday, the jury had already been seated for Coppoc’s trial; his ruling on Chilton’s motion would have to wait. Once Coppoc’s guilt was confirmed that afternoon, Parker summoned Brown to the courtroom and struck down the motion for an arrest of judgment. Then the clerk asked Brown, still prone on his cot, whether he wished to say anything before the sentence was pronounced.

Brown was flustered; he expected that he and his confederates would be sentenced together. “I have, may it please the court,” he said hesitantly, “a few words to say.” He braced himself, seeming to realize that he was a dead man. The law had condemned him, and he no longer needed to worry about arguments that satisfied judge and jury. In a voice that was to echo down bitter decades, John Brown spoke to America: “In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted: the design on my part to free slaves. . . . I never did intend murder, or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion, or to make insurrection. . . . 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!”

Brown added about his followers: “I hear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me. But the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. There is not one of them but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part of them at their own expense. A number of them I never saw, and never had a word of conversation with, till the day they came to me; and that was for the purpose I have stated.”

Of course, Brown was lying about his followers. Two weeks before the attack, one of the younger raiders, William H. Leeman, wrote: “I am now in a Southern Slave State and before I leave it, it will be a free state . . .” Frederick Douglass later recalled watching John Brown run his finger down a map of the Alleghenies from the border of New York into the southern states. “These mountains,” Brown said, “are the basis of my plan. God has given the strength of these hills to freedom; they were placed here to aid the emancipation of your race.” Brown told Douglass he would create an armed force in “the very heart of the South,” gathering and arming recruits from the slave population, keeping “the most restless and daring” in their ranks, and sending the others north.

On November 2, Judge Parker sentenced Brown to death by hanging, to be carried out precisely a month later. Letters poured into Governor Wise’s office threatening, exhorting, and pleading with him not to hang John Brown. From Massachusetts, Amos Lawrence, who had given Brown money, warned the Governor, “From his blood would spring an army of martyrs.” Fernando Wood, the pro-southern mayor of New York, wrote, “Dare you do a bold thing and temper justice with Mercy? Have you nerve enough to send Brown to the State Prison instead of hanging him?”

Many in the South were eager to see Brown die no matter the consequences. “Though it convert the whole Northern people, without an exception, into furious armed abolition invaders,” the Richmond Whig declared, “Yet old Brown will be hung!”

The headstrong governor did not need advice from either side. Two days after Brown’s sentence, he wrote to Fernando Wood: “My mind is inflexibly made up.” He rejected the argument that the hanging would make Brown a martyr. He could see no difference, so far as martyrdom was concerned, between the noose and a life sentence in a Virginia prison.

Some of Brown’s friends continued to foment desperate plans to free him. One involved gathering Kansas raiders and German immigrant volunteers to storm the jail some propitious midnight. Another, even wilder scheme involved kidnapping Governor Wise and smuggling him aboard a seagoing tug, where he was to be held hostage until exchanged for Brown. None of the plots came close to fruition, in part because sensible men saw they were all but hopeless and declined to donate the thousands of dollars needed to set them in motion. More importantly, Brown did not want rescued; he accepted and even gloried in “being worth infinitely more now to die than to live.”

Nerving himself for his final ordeal, Brown refused to see his wife until the day before his execution. In a letter to a cousin, he consoled himself that he had “never since I can remember required a great amount of sleep: so that I conclude that I have already enjoyed full an average amount of waking hours with those who reach their ‘three scores and ten.’” The best of Brown’s letters were reprinted in newspapers throughout the North. They reportedly brought tears to the eyes of his southern jailer as he read and sealed them.

Brown’s lawyers asked the Virginia court of appeals to overturn his conviction based on the argument over jurisdiction. They were turned down.

On December 2, John Brown - wearing a black frock coat and pants, a black slouch hat, and red slippers - was led into the street by his guards and saw some 1,500 armed men deployed. “I had no idea that Governor Wise considered my execution so important,” Brown gasped. Wise had, in fact, yielded to hysteria. He told President Buchanan that “Devils . . . trained in all the Indian arts of predatory war” were massing in Kansas and Ohio to rescue Brown. He persuaded the President to send Colonel Lee and 264 artillerymen to guard Harpers Ferry, and during the first two days of December, he clamped a security net around Charlestown which paralyzed the region. No one could travel on a train unless a station agent first issued a certificate of good character. Many people, including four congressmen, were jailed on suspicion the moment they reached Charlestown.

The day was clear and warm, and as Brown rode to the place of his execution, seated on his coffin in a wagon drawn by two white horses, he looked out at the Blue Ridge Mountains and said, “This is a beautiful country. I never truly had the pleasure of seeing it before.” Around the gallows, there were few civilians; Governor Wise had issued a proclamation urging the citizens to stay home and guard their property.

Brown mounted the scaffold with unwavering steps, threw aside his hat, and stood still while the sheriff tied a noose and white hood around his neck.

Major Thomas Jackson, soon to be dubbed “Stonewall” attended the execution. In a letter to his wife, Jackson described how the sheriff severed the rope that held the tray door and “Brown fell through about five inches, his knees falling on a level with the position occupied by his feet before the rope was cut. With the fall his arms, below the elbows, flew up horizontally, his hands clinched; and his arms gradually fell, but by spasmodic motions. . . . Soon the wind blew his lifeless body to and fro. . . . I sent up a petition that he might be saved.” Preston climbed the scaffold and thundered: “So perish all such enemies of Virginia! All such enemies of the Union! All such foes of the human race!”

Speaking in Kansas the same day, President Lincoln said, “Old John Brown has been executed for treason against a State. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason. It could avail him nothing that he might think himself right.” But the voices of moderation were lost in the shouts of extremists. Virginia Senator John M. Mason, author of the Fugitive Slave Act, fulminated: “John Brown’s invasion was condemned [in the North] only because it failed.” The Joint Committee of the General Assembly of Virginia declared, “The crimes of John Brown were neither more nor less than practical illustrations of the doctrines of the leaders of the Republican party.”

A year and a half later, Governor Wise, out of office, inspired a detachment of Virginians to seize the same Harpers Ferry arsenal - an act of reckless violence which did much to help the secessionists carry the day in the Virginia Convention. Lawson Botts, who had defended Brown so ably, died a Confederate colonel in the Second Battle of Bull Run. His fellow attorney, Thomas Green, served as a private in Botts’s regiment. Prosecutor Andrew Hunter emerged from the war a ruined man, his fine house burned by northern troops. Charles Harding, dissipated as he was, volunteered to serve his native state with a musket on his shoulder, and early in the war, died of pneumonia after a freezing night on picket duty.

On July 18, 1861, the 12th Massachusetts Regiment marched through the streets of Boston singing an improvised song about John Brown’s body. Men from Ohio sang other versions of it as the nation plunged into four mad years of war. In his poem in praise of Harriet Beecher Stowe, wry Oliver Wendell Holmes perhaps best assayed John Brown’s legacy:

All through the conflict up and down
Marched Uncle Tom and Old John Brown,
One ghost, one form ideal.
And which was false and which was true,
And which was mightier of the two,
The wisest sybil never knew,
For both alike were real.