 On the morning of October 17th, while the events at Harper's Ferry were unfolding, Lieutenant Jeb Stewart was visiting the War Department to try to sell them on a new scabbard strap he designed. When word came out about the attacks on Harper's Ferry, he volunteered to service. The only military force within reasonable distance from the town were 90 inexperienced U.S. Marines. Keep in mind, prior to the Civil War, there was very little in the way of a standing military. Stewart was sent with the summons for another nearby Army officer and to the father of one of Stewart's closest friends, Colonel Robert E. Lee. Lee lived just across the river from Harper's Ferry. Both Stewart and Lee would join the Confederacy in little more than a year's time, but at the moment, they were still loyal United States soldiers. The pair made it to Sandy Hook, Maryland, just across the bridge from Harper's Ferry a little before midnight on October 17th, and the 90 Marines were placed under their command. Lee led them into Harper's Ferry, where he heard rumors of the mass uprising, which he quickly realized were hyperbole. He referred to the Raiders as a party of Banditi. He sent the Raiders a message informing them that they would surrender at dawn and in return. They would be kept safe until the President gave his orders for what to do with them. But Lee knew the surrender would be refused, so he also planned an attack for his inexperienced Marines, which would be commenced the moment word of the refusal to surrender had been signal to avoid harming hostages. They were instructed to use their bayonets only, but with Raiders who had already proven themselves willing to die for their cause, fortified inside the Harper's Ferry Armory, an attack with a group of inexperienced Marines sounded easier in theory than it would be in practice. I'm Chris Calton and this is the Mises Institute podcast, Historical Controversies. In the previous episode, we covered the first half of the Harper's Ferry raid, and this episode will continue this story so that we can see how Brown and his men were ultimately defeated. We left off in the last episode, still several hours before Robert E. Lee and Jeb Stewart would arrive, and things were already going downhill for Brown. As many of his men had been killed, and he was trapped inside the armory, surrounded by a mob of angry and drunk civilians and local militiamen. At about 4.30 in the afternoon, Brown finally got word sent to one of the local leaders, Colonel Robert Baylor, who had taken command of the local militia, with his terms for negotiation that he'd twice tried to deliver through hostages, only to have his men killed or captured. Brown's note read, quote, in consideration of all my men, whether living or dead or wounded, being soon safely in and delivered up to me at this point, with all their arms and ammunition, we will then take our prisoners and cross the Potomac Bridge, a little beyond which we will set them at liberty. We require the delivery of our horses and harnesses at the hotel, end quote. This is another example I think of Brown's naivete as a military commander. He believed that because he had fought honorably, at least according to his own assessment, and because he had not killed hostages or razed the town, that he was entitled to some terms for negotiation. He seemed unable to conceive that the people outside saw him as a petty domestic terrorist or an armed robber who didn't deserve their respect. But with Brown completely trapped inside the armory, Baylor saw no need to give Brown any concessions, and he certainly did not believe Brown deserved them. But even if he had conceded to Brown's terms, it's unlikely that the men under him would have honored them. Baylor didn't have a strong command over the men, remember that these were mostly just local militia and many of the people weren't even that, they were just angry civilians armed with their own weapons. Only about one-fifth of the people present were under Baylor's command, and many people were routally firing their guns in the air while others were desecrating danger-filled newbies' corpse or taunting Aaron Stevens, who was incapacitated from his wound. So had Baylor tried to honor Brown's demand across the Potomac Bridge, it's unlikely that the people of Harper's Ferry would have resisted the temptation to fire on him anyway. One Maryland militia leader actually sent a surgeon and his own company into the engine house to deal with Watson Brown, who was still dealing with his bullet wound to the stomach. Once inside, the surgeon was horrified to see that the dead bodies of Stuart Taylor and Oliver Brown were lying in a bloody mess next to Watson, who was himself begging for the rest of the men to finish him off and put him out of his misery. The uninjured people inside the engine house weren't much better off, Brown's men were exhausted from lack of sleep, the hostages were starving, many of them had refused to eat the breakfast that Brown had secured that morning because they were afraid the food was drugged. The Black men Brown had liberated, at least in theory, were by any standard worse off than if Brown had never liberated them at all. By handing them pikes, they had essentially just been forced into Brown's service, the irony lost on him, of course, and now Brown had put them in a position where the mob outside could see them armed, which was often a death sentence for blacks in the antebellum south. They had been given little choice in their participation, as Brown just assumed that they'd be eager to join his party and the white hostages present could take mental note of any cooperation they offered the raiders, so the nominally liberated blacks were arguably in the worst position of any of them. By all accounts, Brown kept remarkably calm during all of this. I've read several histories of Brown, and you can find two different accounts of how he spoke to his son Watson. In some accounts, he comes across as a kind father, responding to Watson's cries to be put out of his misery by saying, quote, No, my son, have patience. I think you will get well. If you die, you die in a glorious cause. Other accounts portray him as cold heartedly telling his son to deal with the pain and die as a man. Most likely, these varying reports are colored by the biases of the hostages who gave their recollection of Brown. According to another hostages testimony, when the federal troops showed up, one of the raiders asked Brown if fighting against them would constitute treason. Brown said it would be so the raider, we don't know who, said that he would not fight anymore. He was only fighting to liberate the slaves, and he had no intention of committing treason. At this point, according to Lewis Washington's account, Brown kept incredibly calm but admitted that he knew escape was impossible and he would die. Some historians believe that Brown wanted to make himself a martyr from the very beginning. I don't personally buy that interpretation, and I think it's made by people who want to make Brown look like less of a failure than he was, but by the end of October 17th, it was clear that Brown had resigned himself to being a martyr as his defeat was now evident. So by the time Lee ordered Jeb Stewart to go to the Injun House to tell Brown to surrender, John Brown had resigned himself as a martyr for his cause, regardless of whether or not this was his intention from the beginning. Brown also seemed to have no compunction against making this decision for his men as well, though some of his men seemed like they would have voluntarily agreed to martyr them regardless. Jeb Stewart had been in Kansas during the time of John Brown's infamy there, and when Brown cracked the door of the Injun House open about four inches, Stewart was surprised to recognize the man. You are also one of me, Brown of Kansas? He asked. Brown replied, well, they do call me that sometimes, Lieutenant. Up to this point, Brown's participation in the raid was a rumor, but nobody had been able to confirm this. Jeb Stewart was now able to positively identify Brown as the raid leader. After processing the surprise of being confronted by Brown, he continued to carry out Lee's order. He spoke to Brown, quote, this is bad business. You are engaged in captain. The United States troops have arrived and I am sent to demand your surrender. Brown responded, quote, upon what terms? Stewart relayed Lee's message demanding a peaceable surrender and return for safety until Brown and his men awaited trial. Brown made the counter proposal of carrying his hostages across the Potomac Bridge safely. Stewart said, quote, I have no authority to agree to such an arrangement. My orders being to demand your surrender on the terms I have stated. Brown refused, letting Stewart know that he would rather die fighting. This response terrified the hostages who begged Stewart to convince Lee to meet with Brown for a parlay. But Lee had already planned the bayonet charge once Brown refused. So like the host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Stewart asked, is that your final answer, Captain? Brown confirmed that it was and Stewart waved his hat, signaling Brown's refusal to surrender. 12 Marines were already standing outside the engine house waiting to attack. With the signal given, three of the Marines started battering the engine house doors with sledgehammers. Brown was taken by surprise, which was what Robert E. Lee was counting on with the plan. Even though Brown and the other raiders were taken by surprise, they'd already placed fortifications around the engine house door. They had placed two fire carts in front of the doors and fastened everything with ropes so the sledgehammers were unable to break through. Finally, after several minutes of loud banging against the door, the people inside the engine house heard silence as the Marines gave up trying to hammer through. One of the raiders announced that he wanted to surrender and Brown said, quote, you can do is you please. Which a hostage followed by yelling, one man surrenders. But there was too much commotion for his announcement to be heard. Outside the Marines were too busy replacing their sledgehammers with a ladder, which they were holding horizontally to use as a battering ram. It took three blows, but they were able to ram the ladder through the doors, creating an open large enough for one man to charge through at a time. The first Marine inside was Lieutenant Israel Green. Other Marines followed closely behind him. The third Marine inside took a bullet to the stomach, and the one behind him was shot in the face. Smoke covered the chaos, so onlookers could hardly see what was going on, even those inside the engine house. Two of Brown's men threw down their weapons and yelled their surrender. Shields Green, the former slave who joined Brown after accompanying Frederick Douglas to meet him, threw down his weapons and joined the six slaves, hoping that he would be mistaken as another of Brown's liberated slaves, rather than one of the raiders. Brown fought to the bitter end, and only by a stroke of luck did he even survive the skirmish inside the engine house. Israel Green, the Lieutenant who led the way through the engine house doors, found Brown kneeling on one knee as he tried to reload his rifle. Green drew his saber and swung it as hard as he could at Brown's head. Brown moved enough that the sword came down on his neck, giving him a large gash. Brown fell onto his back and Green thrust his saber into the left side of Brown's chest. This should have killed him, but his green had rushed to put on his uniform that morning. He failed to grab his combat saber and instead has strapped on his dress sword. It was decorative and not very useful as a weapon, so when he tried to stab Brown, his blade bent double and failed to penetrate Brown's torso. Green continued trying to finish Brown off with the useless sword, but he only succeeded in giving Brown a nice beating where a real sword would have certainly finished him off. Other of Brown's men were not so lucky. Dauphin Thompson and Jeremiah Anderson were both bayonetted. Edwin Coppick and Shields Green went unharmed in the tussle, but they were arrested, and the hostages were able to make sure that Shields Green's plan to be mistaken for a slave was unsuccessful. The entire skirmish was over in minutes. Dauphin Thompson was still alive when he was carried out of the engine house, and he died shortly after. Jeremiah Anderson was vomiting blood from his stab wound. Dauphin Onlooker spat tobacco juice in Anderson's face. He lingered for a little while, taking abuse from the angry citizens before he finally died. Watson Brown was still alive, and he and the other raiders who weren't killed were taken to a nearby guardhouse where makeshift beds were quickly thrown together for the injured men. Watson continued to linger in pain until Wednesday morning. A 24-year-old Marine named Luke Quinn also died from his injuries. He used to, as broad end to read him his last rites, said that his quote, cries and screams made one's flush creep, end quote. The mob outside wanted blood, and they were yelling to have the surviving raiders lynched. Had they been captured before federal troops had arrived, this probably would have been their ending. But Robert E. Lee ensured that they would be kept alive to face trial. Virginia's governor, Henry Wise, had been traveling to Harpers Ferry, hoping to make it before the fighting ended, but a train delay prevented him from doing so. So he visited Brown after his capture. Brown apparently said to him, quote, well, Governor, I suppose you think me a depraved criminal. Well, sir, we have our opinions of each other, end quote. Senator James Mason also visited Brown. Mason had helped draft the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and he interrogated Brown. In his interview, he asked Brown how he justified his actions to which Brown replied, quote, I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity. I say that without wishing to be offensive. It would be perfectly right for anyone to interfere with you so far as to free those you willingly and wickedly hold in bondage. I do not say this insultingly. I think I did right. And that others will do right, who interfere with you at any time and all times. I hold that the golden rule, do unto others as you would that others should do under you, applies to all who would help others to gain their liberty, end quote. During the interrogation, one witness yelled to Brown, quote, I think you are fanatical, to which Brown answered, quote, and I think you are fanatical, whom the gods would destroy. They first make mad. The last line there being quoted from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow that John Brown was citing. At the very end of the interrogation, Brown gave a statement that would leave a deep impression in the minds of Southern slaveholders. He said, quote, you had better all you people at the South prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question that must come up. You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now. But this question is still to be settled. This Negro question I mean. The end of that is not yet, end quote. Even before John Brown and the other raiders in the dungeon house were defeated and arrested, John Cook realized that nobody would be coming for the weapons he was guarding in the schoolhouse, and he decided to make his escape. The first stop was the home of an Irish family who fed him and gave him coffee, and the family informed him that John Brown had been killed in the raid. Although the information was inaccurate, John Cook had no reason not to believe them. So he went back to the schoolhouse, hoping that some of the other raiders might have rendezvoused there. Keep in mind that he did not know that the men at the rifleworks had already tried to escape and failed. When he found nobody at the schoolhouse, he decided to return to John Brown's base before the raid, where the three men who did not participate in the attack on Harper's Ferry were still guarding the rest of the weapons. The hideout was five miles away, so John Cook set off on the long walk. But on the way to the hideout, Cook ran into a group of men. Cautiously, he raised his rifle and ordered them to halt. But as luck would have it, they were the very men Cook was going to rejoin, Owen Brown, Francis Merriam, and Barclay Coppock, who had left the hideout to try to find out what was going on with the raiders, who they supposed should have been back by now. Also with them were Charles Tidd, and one of John Allstat's slaves who'd been liberated during the raid. So the men debated what to do. Should they make a run for it, or should they try to help any other men who might still be down in Harper's Ferry? This was all taking place on Monday evening before Robert E. Lee had arrived, just so the timeline jumps don't confuse anybody. Going off Cook's information, the four men thought John Brown was dead, but they didn't know the status of the other raiders. The men returned to the farmhouse to grab some supplies and then left and made camp on a mountainside a little ways away. At three o'clock on Tuesday morning, John Cook woke up and discovered that Allstat's slave had abandoned them, and he was worried that the slave would reveal their location to the authorities, which, by the way, is exactly what the slave did. So the men got up in the middle of the night and took off. As the men continued their escape on Tuesday and Wednesday, they were aided by the distraction of the attention paid to John Brown and the drunken celebrations of the Harper's Ferry citizens. But the authorities were aware that some raiders had escaped and because John Cook had been spying on Harper's Ferry for the past year, he was a known figure, and rumors were quickly spreading about him, including one that said Cook and his men had massacred a white family in Pleasant Valley, Maryland. The story was nonsense, but the rumor spread swiftly and created some small level of hysteria. People terrified of abolitionist terrorists were fleeing their homes left and right, compelling Robert E. Lee to actually investigate the rumored massacre. Although John Cook and his men did not massacre anybody in Pleasant Valley, they were hiding just outside of the town. I don't know if this is by coincidence or if somebody had spotted Cook and started the rumor, but either way, he wasn't far from Lee during the investigation, though Lee was not aware that Cook was so close by. But Cook and the other four raiders were able to avoid capture for several days by staying off the roads, living off the land and traveling at night. It was only through several strokes of rotten luck that Cook was captured at all. Sometime in late October, the five men ended up in Pennsylvania where they stumbled across a farmhouse. The men were starving and the smell of food was too alluring to resist. Owen Brown was worried that if any of them made an appearance, they would be identified as refugees from Harper's Ferry, but the rest of the group outvoted him and they all decided that Cook should go and see if he could fetch them some food. Cook was good at making friends with people and this proved true when he went to the farmhouse as well. He told the family that he was part of a hunting party that had gotten lost in the woods and he purchased some loaves of bread and some beef for the other raiders, which was the first real meal they'd received in more than a week. But Owen Brown was still worried and not without reason. Cook, being cocky as always, revealed something he'd been hiding since the raid. Marquis de Lafayette's pistol that he'd stolen from Lewis Washington and kept hidden from John Brown because he wanted to keep the treasure for himself. Now he pulled the gun out and started firing it off randomly, supposedly maintaining the pretense that they were hunters, but this was too much for Charles Tid who already had a tense relationship with Cook, so Tid and Cook got into a heated argument over Cook's behavior. The other raiders kept them in from fighting, but tension between the two of them was still raging the next day, which was October 26th. When the men stopped for arrest, it was decided that Cook should again go out and try to secure more food and Cook readily agreed, partly because he wanted to get away from Charles Tid. But this time, Cook was not so lucky and by midnight that night, Cook still had not returned to camp. The others thought he might have gotten lost, but the truth was that he had been captured. The only thing Cook took with him when he left the other raiders was a revolver. He figured if he couldn't talk himself out of trouble, he could at least shoot himself out of trouble. This may have been true for many situations, but it did not prove the case when he ran into Daniel Logan. Daniel and his brother Hugh Logan had strong Southern sympathies and they earned a living as fugitive slave catchers. The overconfident Cook actually took the initiative in the meeting, walking up to Daniel and some other men who worked in the nearby Iron Forge. But Daniel Logan remembered that the infamous John Cook was still at large and he had read a description of the man and easily recognized him. Since the Logan brothers were bounty hunters, they were already on the lookout for the fugitive Cook, who had a nice bounty on his head for a whopping $1,000. But Daniel Logan didn't reveal this right away. Instead, he quickly whispered to his friend, Cleget Fitzhugh, the manager of the Iron Works, and the two men feigned ignorance and invited Cook to follow them to a nearby store of supplies. Cook agreed and followed as Logan and Fitzhugh led him a little ways away and then grabbed him by the arms when his guard was down. Cook asked the men, why do you arrest me? But he already knew the answer they would give him. Because you are Captain Cook, Logan told him. Then they dragged Cook to Fitzhugh's home nearby. After searching Cook and finding some incriminating documents that confirmed his identity, including a copy of John Brown's provisional constitution, they loaded Cook into a buggy and headed to Chambersburg to collect the bounty on the way John Cook tried to negotiate with them. Cook's family had money. He also had two sisters who married well off men. So John Cook was certain that he could secure more than the $1,000 bounty the government was offering. He just had to get in touch with his brothers-in-law, one of whom lived in New York and the other in Indiana. Logan didn't trust Cook, of course, but he was intrigued at the prospect of a larger payout. So he offered John Cook the opportunity to get up with Colonel Alexander McClure, an anti-slavery legislator, who would then secure the deal. Logan agreed to escort Cook to McClure's office in Chambersburg without revealing his identity to anybody else. If McClure could guarantee the ransom, he'd let Cook walk. Logan and Cook arrived in town that evening, and Logan sent word to McClure's office. McClure was nowhere to be found. He was actually out looking at some real estate he was thinking about purchasing as luck would have it. Logan tried to find out where McClure was, but as night came, he still couldn't get in touch with the man. So finally, he decided he'd be better off just collecting the bounty, and he started marching Cook to the local courthouse. Once Cook was already inside the courthouse and standing in front of the local judge, McClure showed up and noticed the commotion. Upon seeing him, Daniel Logan actually tried to make good his promise to give John Cook the opportunity to get the ransom for his freedom, but it was too late. Had McClure been available as he normally would have, it's very possible John Cook would have escaped, but it was too late for that now. As the local judge had already seen him, and there was no way anybody could act on his behalf without putting themselves in legal jeopardy. Even despite this, McClure did plan and attempted jailbreak to free Cook. The idea was to get a pair of local anti-slavery women to smuggle in some women's clothing. Then he would dress up as a woman and walk out pretending to be one of the two visitors, while the other women stayed behind in his jail cell, a bait and switch, so to speak. This plan was actually when adopted from previous successful jailbreaks for fugitive slaves, so it wasn't as absurd as it may sound today since it had worked in the past. But McClure ruined this escape for John Cook as well after convincing the women to delay the plan until the next night. When he awoke in the morning, he was informed that John Cook had already been taken back to Virginia. McClure's decision to delay the plan cost John Cook his last chance at escape. The reason for this rapid departure was simply one more piece of incredibly bad fortune for John Cook. What John Cook had no idea of is that in addition to the four men he had escaped with, two other John Brown Raiders had escaped Harper's Ferry, Osborn Anderson and Albert Haslett. When they were captured, Haslett was mistaken for John Cook. So an extradition order was issued for Cook by mistake. So when John Cook was sitting in a jail cell in Chambersburg, it just so happened that an extradition order had already been issued for him, allowing him to be taken to Virginia more quickly than McClure could have anticipated. So John Cook seemed like the unluckiest guy in the world at this point. He had the bad luck of happening upon a bounty hunter who recognized him, the bad luck of having McClure absent when he needed him and having the bad luck of his friend being mistaken for him. So his extradition order had him taken to Virginia before his sympathizers could break him at a jail. Even before he got back to Virginia, John Cook had already started establishing himself as the Judas of John Brown's men, trying to negotiate his release from his captors by giving them all the information he could about the other raiders. Once he was put in a Virginia jail cell, he actually pinned a lengthy testimony to try to give up the other raiders in exchange for his own clemency. At the end though, all it accomplished was to tarnish his historical legacy as the traitor in John Brown's group before he was hanged anyway. There were also some plans to try to break John Brown out of prison. Brown didn't want this. He'd already resigned himself to take on the role as the martyr, but his friends still wanted to save him from the hangman's noose and various plans were concocted. The first plan to break John Brown out of prison was called the German project due to the volunteering of some German veterans to participate in the rescue. The idea here was for a group of armed volunteers to ambush the guards escorting Brown to his execution. We actually don't know why this plan was never attempted but it fizzled out before it even began. The second plan was one concocted by Lysander Spooner called the Richmond plan. The idea was for some of the members of the secret six to pay men to kidnap Virginia's governor Henry Wise and hold him hostage for John Brown. Unlike the German project, we know why this was never executed though. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, one of the secret six, said that the men they paid would probably just run off with the money and they'd have no legal recourse they could take to stop this. So the funds for the plan never came. There were also other alleged plans to free Brown. One of them would have had a Kansas woman visit Brown with plans of his rescue protected in a ball of wax that she would hide in her mouth. She would then kiss Brown on the lips and transfer the plans to him secretly. I have no idea what the actual rescue plans were supposed to be but it's doubtful that the doctrinaire Calvinist to Brown would have allowed a woman who wasn't his wife to kiss him anyway. But as we all know, Brown did not escape nor did he want to. He faced trial and one of the legal strategies employed by his lawyers was to make an insanity plea. This is actually the origin of the claim that John Brown was insane. I mentioned before that I wrote an article for this on the Mises Wire, which to summarize basically shows why the ideas that John Brown was insane in a clinical sense is doubtful if anybody's interested in that. It's hard to argue that John Brown wasn't delusional or fanatical but I think it's hard to argue that he was literally insane but that's a debate that will probably never be completely settled. John Brown did not want the insanity defense though. He wanted to be a martyr and if people thought he was insane this would undermine the image he wanted to portray. John Brown gave a speech in his trial. In it, he made his purpose abundantly clear. He said, quote, had I interfered in the manner which I admit and which I admit has been fairly proved, 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, either 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 here which I suppose to be the Bible or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that all things whatsoever I would men should do to me I should do ever so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to these instructions, end quote. This is only an excerpt from the speech but it highlights a lot of the abolitionist arguments, the higher law doctrine, the golden rule and so forth. After he finished his speech, the courtroom was silent. A single person started to clap but he was quickly quieted. So there goes the opportunity for a good start of a slow clap like you had seen in the movie. This was shut down before it could get very far. Brown was convicted of treason. This was actually a weird thing to try him for because he was not tried under federal law but rather under Virginia law. And since Brown wasn't a Virginia citizen, treason really didn't apply here. But for those of you who are fans of Fleissander Spooner's no treason pamphlets, it might be worth thinking about how John Brown's conviction may have influenced Spooner's thinking on the matter, as I'm sure it did. The fact that Brown was tried under Virginia law is worth noting for other reasons. After he was caught, the members of the Secret Six were worried they would be arrested for their participation. Some went into hiding, some were already out of the country. Garrett Smith actually had a nervous breakdown and was committed to a mental hospital. But for them to have shared Brown's conviction, Brown would have had to have been tried in federal courts. Governor Wise wouldn't allow this to happen because he wanted credit for Brown's execution which he would have been able to tout as a political victory. So Brown was ultimately convicted for treason against a state he'd never been a citizen of. And when he was hanged, he became the first person to be hanged for treason in United States history. The people who participated in the Whiskey Rebellion were tried and convicted of treason and were supposed to be hanged, but their sentence was commuted. So they would have been the first people in the country hanged for treason but because of the commutation of their sentence, John Brown became the first person hung for treason though he was not hanged for treason against the United States. On December 2nd, John Brown's jailers tied a cord around him and began their escort from the prison cell. They put a hood over his head and led him to the executioner's platform. The noose was fastened around his neck and finally the order was given for the sheriff to use his hatchet to cut the rope holding the trapdoor in place. Now for those of you who don't know the idea of hanging was not to strangle somebody to death, it was to break their neck. The length of the rope was estimated according to the weight of the victim and the idea was that the knot would slam into the chin of the person being executed and break their neck but if the rope was too long, the person might be decapitated. If the rope was too short, their neck wouldn't break and they'd suffer for several minutes strangling to death. Both mistakes provided a more gruesome scene for the witnesses. As it happened, John Brown's rope was too short so when he fell through the trapdoor his neck did not break. The large crowd of witnesses who showed up for the highly publicized execution watched for several minutes as Brown jerked around in spasms kicking and swinging at the end of a rope until he finally choked to death and stopped moving. Among the many witnesses to Brown's execution were Thomas Jackson who had yet to earn his nickname Stonewall and of even more interest, John Wilkes Booth. Booth wrote about the execution later expressing his happiness in seeing the traitor hanged but also describing John Brown as quote, a brave old man. In 1864 Booth said to his sister quote, John Brown was a man inspired, the grandest character of the century, end quote. Not long after Booth would assassinate Lincoln possibly inspired at least in part by John Brown. John Brown's final words were given in a note to a jail guard named Hiram O'Bannon. These are some of the most famous of John Brown's words in which he said quote, I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood, end quote. Many Southerners actually opposed Brown's execution because they did not want to make him a martyr and their fears were well founded. Most people in the North were very opposed to John Brown's rate and even other abolitionists announced his violence but after he was executed the Northern abolitionists changed their tune. William Lloyd Garrison gave Brown's eulogy. Frederick Douglass famously elevated Brown's devotion to ending slavery above his own saying that he could only live for the slave while John Brown was willing to die for him. Becoming a martyr was perhaps the only thing that John Brown did successfully in his entire life. And Southerners paid very close attention to all the praise that was heaped upon Brown. Most of the North was still not abolitionist and it was only a minority of the population that praised him so openly but this colored Southern perception of the North they were convinced that the North was not only full of abolitionists but that it was full of violent abolitionists who would copy Brown's radical actions in attempts to liberate the slaves. The Republican Party was the formal representation of John Brown's ideas in the minds of Southerners and this is incredibly important to keep in mind in understanding this history. The Republican Party absolutely did not condone or support John Brown and Abraham Lincoln explicitly denounced Brown's actions but the truth did not matter. Perception was reality in the South and they operated under the delusion that the Republican Party was a John Brown Party. This is also vital in understanding why non-slave holding Southerners were so against anti-slavery sentiment. They may not have had an economic interest in slavery as many people like to point out but John Brown represented to them the very real danger they believed they were facing with a Republican victory. Violent abolitionists like Brown had no compunction against bringing violence against non-slave holding Southerners just as he demonstrated in the Potawatomi massacre years before. This is why John's Brown role in antebellum history is so important. Whether it was his intention or not, John Brown started a wildfire of paranoia in the South against violent abolitionism and this would come into play in what may be the most heated election in U.S. history, the election of 1860, which will be the topic of the next episode. 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