All uncertainty at an end to his execution, John Brown set his hand tofinish the work of his life in a supreme triumph. He entered upon thetask with religious joy. The old Puritan had always been an habitualwriter of letters. The authorities of Virginia allowed him to writedaily to his friends and relatives. He quickly took advantage of thispower. The sword of Washington which he grasped on that fatal Sundaynight had proven a feeble weapon. He seized a pen destined to slay amillion human beings.
His soul on fire with the fixed idea that he had been ordained by God todrench a nation in blood, he joyfully began the task of creating the mobmind.
No man in history had a keener appreciation of the power of the dailypress in the propaganda of crowd ideas. The daily newspaper had justblossomed into its full radiance in the modern world. No invention inthe history of the race has equaled the cylinder printing press as anengine for creating crowd movements.
The daily newspaper of 1859 spoke only in the language of crowds. Theywere, in fact, so many mob orators haranguing their subscribers. Theywrote down to the standards of the mob. They were molders of publicopinion and they were always the creatures of public opinion. They wrotefor the masses. Their columns were filled with their own peculiar brandof propaganda, illusions, dreams, assertions, prejudices, sensations,with always a cheap smear of moral platitude. Our people had grown toobusy to do their own thinking. The daily newspapers now did it for them.
There was as little originality in them as in the machines which printedthe editions. Yet they were repeated by the crowd as God-inspired truth.
We no longer needed to seek for the mob in the streets. We had it at thebreakfast table, in the office, in the counting room. The process ofcrowd thinking became the habit of daily life.
John Brown hastened to use this engine of propaganda. From hiscomfortable room in the jail at Charlestown there poured a daily streamof letters which found their way into print.
A perfect specimen of his art was the concluding paragraph of a letterto his friend and fellow conspirator, George L. Stearns of Boston.
"I have asked to be _spared_ from having any _mock or hypocriticalprayers made over me_ when I am publicly _murdered_; and that my only_religious attendants_ be poor, _little, dirty, ragged, bareheadedand barefooted slave boys and girls_, led by old, _gray-headed slavemothers_,"This message he knew would reach the heart of every Abolitionist ofthe North, of every reader of _Uncle Tom\'s Cabin_. On the day of histransfiguration on the scaffold he would deliver the final word thatwould sweep these millions into the whirlpool of the Blood Feud.
To his wife and children he wrote a message which hammered again hisfixed idea into a dogma of faith:
"John Rogers wrote to his children, \'Abhor the arrant whore of Rome.\'
John Brown writes to his children to abhor with _undying hatred_ alsothe \'sum of all villainies,\' slavery."Not only did these daily letters find their way into the hands ofmillions through the press, but the newspapers maintained a staff ofreporters at Charlestown to catch every whisper from the prisoner. Sobrilliantly did these reports visualize his daily life that the crowdswho read them could hear the clanking of the chains as he walked and thegroans that came from his wounded body.
Thousands of letters began to pour into the office of the Governor ofVirginia, threatening, imploring, pleading for his life. The leadingpoliticians of all parties of the North were at length swept into thishowling mob by the press. To every plea the Governor of the Commonwealthreplied:
"Southern Society is built on Reverence for Law. The Law has beenoutraged by this man. It shall be vindicated, though the heavens fall."In this stand he was immovable and the South backed him to a man. Forexciting servile insurrection the King of Great Britain was held upto everlasting scorn by our fathers who wrote the Declaration ofIndependence. For this crime among others we rebelled and establishedthe American Republic. Should John Brown be canonized for the sameinfamy? The Southern people asked this question in dumb amazement at theclamor from the North.
And so the Day of Transfiguration on the scaffold dawned.
Judge Thomas Russell and his good wife journeyed all the way from Bostonto minister to the wants of their strange guest. There was in thedistinguished jurist\'s mind a question which he must ask Brown beforethe rope should strangle him forever. His martyrdom had cleared everydoubt and cloud from the mind of his friend save one. His fascinatingletters, filled with the praise of God and the glory of a martyr\'scause, had exalted him.
The judge had heard his speech in court on the day he wa............