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Show TWENTY YEARS AGO. Just twenty years ago this day (Tuesday, December 2,) old John Brown, of Ossawattomie, was hanged at Charleston, Virginia, after trial and conviction for invading that State - with twenty men - for the purpose of liberating the slaves. His execution was unquestionably one of the most memorable executions that have occurred in history. It produced a profound impression throughout this country and Europe, and did much to make John Brown one of the foremost figures of the western world. He was the sixth in descent from Peter Brown, a carpenter and a Puritan, one of the sturdy band that reached Plymouth on the Mayflower. Born at Torrington, Connecticut, in 1800, his father removed to Ohio when he was a child, and from fifteen to twenty he worked there as a tanner and currier. He was made abolitionist and led to declare eternal war against slavery, when a mere lad, by seeing the abuse heaped upon a negro boy, a slave of his own age, by a man whose hospitality he was sharing. He conceived, as early as 1830?, the plan of freeing the southern slaves, and he never rested until he had undertaken the rash expedition which resulted in his death. He became generally known in 1856? by the active part he played in Kansas against the border ruffians, as the pro-slavery Missourians were then designated. His abolitionism was intensified there by the killing of his son Frederick by Rev. [reverend] Martin Wite, who led the pro-slavery party, and who, after boasting of his deed in the Lecompton legislature, was found dead on the prairies with a bullet through his heart. Nothing could have been more foolhardy than Brown's invasion of Virginia with a handful of men, but with twenty followers he seized Harper's Ferry, and took forty prisoners. Attacked by a large body of state militia, he was captured only after he had been severely wounded, and nearly all of his adherents, including two of his sons, had been killed. No man was more intrepid than he. He bore himself most heroically through the trial, and on the gallows, evoking the admiration of his bitterest foes. He walked to the scaffold with a shining face and the air of a conqueror, and it has been remarked that his was the lightest heart in Charlestown on the day of his execution. As he passed out of the jail he observed near the door a black woman with a child in her arms. He stopped, stooped and kissed the infant. The incident has become historic. Another negress, also carrying a child, said, as he went by, ???? help you, old man, but I can't. God bless you! He looked at her pityingly , and a tear stood in his eye. When the sheriff asked if he would have a handkerchief to let fall as a signal for the drop, he replied with perfect composure, "No, I am ready at any time; but do not keep me waiting needlessly." Henry A. Wise declared that he was the gamest man he had ever seen. <br><br> New York Times. |