His guards and attendants can talk of nothing but his natural cheerfulness, which seems never to have given way at all. He was a man of few words; and any long conversations, any preachments, given out as his utterances, must be distrusted. His conduct and manners were just those of a man to whom nothing particular was happening. When an officer, impressed with this, asked him plainly whether he really felt no recoil at all from what awaited him; he replied, Why, no; but that fear was not his trial. He was not liable to fear. He had in the course of his life suffered far more from bashfulness than fear.
The aid of clergy was constantly pressed upon him till he decisively closed the subject. He objected that a slave-holding clergyman could do nothing for him, not being up to his business—“not understanding the A B C of Christianity.” “I should wish, if he came,” he said, “to treat him as a gentleman; but it must be understood that it would be as a heathen gentleman.” In no circumstances would he, a man whose hourly walk was with God, have admitted the intervention of a priest. Such was his view of the matter; and when the Virginia clergy were offered—priests who committed what seemed to him an act so anti-Christian as to be a deadly crime—he showed himself as thorough-going a puritan worshipper as when he prayed aloud in public in Kansas for divine direction what to do with his prisoners: “O Lord, what wilt Thou that I should do with these men?” And when a judge, there present, burst out a laughing at so unusual a mode of conducting a trial, Brown turned upon him with on intimation that if he did not suppress such unseemly levity, he should know what to do with him, “without asking the Lord anything about it.”
After his wife had left him, the officer who escorted her improved the occasion (for which his neighbours praised him), by addressing arguments to her in favour of “the peculiar institution.” And some governor or other, proud of the repute of his chivalrous State, told her—actually pressed it upon her at that hour of her life—that if she should ever be disposed to come to Charlestown (near Harper’s Ferry) again, the inhabitants would be happy to show her what Virginia hospitality was. Meantime, her husband was writing. He wrote till past midnight; then slept for some hours, and rose to write again. When his wife examined these papers (instructions for her guidance) she found a P.S., beginning, “I have time just to add,” &c. This was written at the last moment before leaving his cell. His handwriting was the same as ever—clear, but “angular and constrained.” His work had been more with the plough, the team, and the rifle, than with the pen, since he was disappointed of his clerical career.
In court, at his trial, he had been the object of the keenest attention, and we know exactly what he looked like, and how he carried himself; at least during the short time that his condition from his wounds allowed him to stand. When on his couch on the floor of the court he covered himself up, and shut his eyes, only occasionally conversing with a youth, Mr. Hoyt, of Boston, sent to give him legal assistance, without incurring the danger which any established professional man would have incurred on such an errand. While standing up, Brown looked about, and observed everything with his keen blue eye; and, as usual, when he had nothing else to do with his long arms, he drummed upon his knees with his fingers. Just so it was when he came out of the jail to die. He wore his ordinary amused smile at seeing any spectacle; and nothing escaped him. He had nothing to ask or to say. He had throughout declared that he would ask no favour of Virginia, or any of her officials. He took his seat on his coffin. It was of oak. The undertaker had some days before sent him a message of advice that he should have a metal coffin provided; to which Brown replied that, considering the weather would be cool, he was confident that he “should keep” till his wife reached home with the coffin; and that was all that was necessary.
On mounting the scaffold (which he was the first of the party to reach) he looked round upon the military display, which kept the crowd at a great distance; and while he observed upon it, he was patting his knees as usual. His eye fixed on the range of the Blue Mountains, which rose across the plain on the horizon, and observed that he had never seen them so well before—had not noted them in his hasty travelling. When the moment arrived for covering his face, he carelessly threw his black wide-awake on the floor beside him; and during the unpardonable delay which followed he showed no sort of agitation. For eight—some say ten—-minutes after he ought to have been turned off, the military commander made his troops march hither and thither, as if about to receive an attack from an enemy. So atrocious was the suspense that the word was given at last before the evolutions were complete. Brown had stood still, steady and silent. He was asked whether he was tired. “No, not tired,” he said; “but do not keep me longer than is necessary.” He was desired to step upon the drop. He answered, “You have put this thing upon my head so that I cannot see. You must lead me, gentlemen.” So they did. The accounts vary as to how long he moved; but the surgeons say he must have ceased to suffer instantly, as the spinal cord was ruptured, though the neck was not dislocated. Strange to say, his countenance was not deformed, more or less. A bruise near the right eye was the only sign of violence. The surgeons felt the pulse, laid their cars against his chest, steadying the body by passing an arm round it. In a little more than half an hour the corpse was taken down, and it fell together as if it had not a bone in it while the coffin was got ready. The flashing blue eye is half closed and dim; the grey hair no longer stands up like ruffled plumage, but falls damp and dead. The sinewy limbs bend as they are disposed; but the hard-featured face is unchanged, unless it be even more placid than usual.
His widow was well attended as she went homewards with her charge. Every effort was made to secure privacy on the journey; but the public interest baffled all. At Philadelphia the mayor and other authorities and a great crowd attended the coffin to the station, and saw it deposited in