THE TRIAL OF JOHN BROWN. By Bushrod C. Wash1ngton. WITH the character and career of John Brown, history and biography are replete. Few men in so short a period have been so much written up and written down. But fact and fiction are so inextricably mingled in everything yet writtem of him, that the searcher for truth must either bide his time for some decades, and then perhaps content himself by striking an average of the extreme and varying estimates of him; orelse begin de novo, and sift out for himself facts from unbiased and original sources. It is to this latter task we address our selves, as to that part of Brown's history con nected with his capture, trial and execution. Truthful history can hardly be written, while a remnant of partisan prejudice survives; but facts gathered from authentic records and credible witnesses will serve at least to sup ply trustworthy data for the honest histo rian who shall hereafter record those events in our national life, enacted while the North and the South were divided upon the ques tion of slavery; when partisan strife had gone from words to blows, from appeals to law to use of force and arms. The heredity and environment, the influ ences and processes under which John Brown evolved into the character now so famous or infamous, as you will, are not the subjects of this inquiry. Forty years after the closing scenes in his "strange eventful history," the memory of it all is still too fresh to be dealt with from any standpoint, without danger of stirring again the embers of a once raging conflagra tion. Time may have mitigated, but has not altered the sentiment with which Brown has been regarded either south or north. To those who advocated the abolition of slavery by any means, within or without the law, who appealed to a " higher law " than the
Federal Constitution and denounced that sacred bond between the commonwealths, in tolerating slavery, as " a league with death and a covenant with hell, " he remains the re former, hero, martyr.- To those who remem ber that slavery was an institution that ante dated the American Union, that was once gen eral throughoutthe colonies but had gradually from natural causes become provincial and local in the South, and who regarded the forcible abolition of it as the breach of a solemn constitutional compact and the infrac tion of a guaranteed right — he is still the desperado, outlaw and leader of insurrection. By some he is canonized as a saint and compared to the Saviour; by others de nounced as a brutal freebooter and redhanded assassin. Opinions and sentiments so at variance will hardly be reconciled within the living generation. Of one thing however, all are agreed : it is, that the issue is dead. The pro voking cause of John Brown's campaigns in Kansas and Missouri, his raid into Virginia, and the civil war of which it was the forerun ner, no longer exists. The form of involuntary servitude and ownership of negroes, called slavery, which existed in the southern States, with all that was good and all that was evil in it (and there was much of both), has, as a result of the civil war, disappeared forever. It is no longer a bone of contention be tween the North and the South, a thorn in the side of the nation. But while the issue is dead, the facts of history remain; and the time ought now to have arrived when the people of a reunited country, reserving their private judgments, may, with fairmindedness and toleration, and without suspicion of ulterior motive, en tertain the statement of any authentic facts
