Abolition: The Friendship of Frederick Douglass and John Brown

The horror of total war, the horror of slavery Which one is worse? Slavery. I still search for a better path. Harper's Ferry does not seem as advantageous as you think.

Abolisionism will be made to equal terrorism! You'll set us back twenty years! No. I'll put us on a quick road to war.

I'm saying we have the moral right to shed the blood of anyone who is working to expand the abomination of slavery. Whether or not they are a personal threat to us. -That's terrorism. -So be it.

The wilder the lie, the more people believe it. I cannot see any end to their hatred. It never seems to die......and there's nothing I can do. The feeling of this nation must be quickened.

The hypocrisy of this nation must be exposed. And the crimes against God and man must be denounced! I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great wrong to God and against humanity. But you don't even believe in God!

Sir, you know not whereof you speak. Perhaps the fear driven South will provoke the North to do exactly what Brown foresaw. You know, I think Brown has changed American history! Brown, I beseech you, don't go through with this suicidal plan.

This plan is who I am.

haunting music

night time cricket sounds

Sighing

Near the end of 1847, the Reverend Leonard Collins asked me to speak at his free church in Springfield, Massachussets. I had just founded the North Star, my newspaper, and we needed subscribers. After my talk a white man approached me with an intense gaze. John Brown.

Frederick Douglass. Are you the same John Brown who subscribes to my newspaper? I'm your proud supporter. Mr.

Garrison speaks well of you. Our mutual friend, Mr. William Lloyd Garrison. Eloquent man, important voice.

Do you trust him? Well sir, when I escaped from bondage Garrison published my first awkward writing. Took me under his wing, helped me tour with my own lectures. So you owe him a great deal, but his ideas, how to achieve our goal, do you trust his ideas?

Let's say, I'm still developing my own ideas. Shall we continue this conversation at my home? My children are eager to meet you. I'm afraid Reverend Collins has already planned my afternoon.

With your permission sir, I am the plans that Reverend Collins made. -What could I say? It was but a short walk through the crisp November afternoon and Brown's children were indeed eager. Annie, what's the title of Mr.

Douglass' book? Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass an American Slave. That's exactly right, Annie. Can I talk now?

Please? Go ahead, Watson. Mr. Douglass, do you remember in your book you had a fight with that slave master?

You started to beat him, but then his friend came and they started to beat you, then you smashed his friend with a tool and kept fighting and fighting and finally you beat the slave master. Do you remember that? Yes, Watson, and your account of it is quite... vivid!

And so the questions went on. Mrs. Brown served] a delicious dinner and soon John Brown announced that it was time for him to talk privately with me. I want to return to your friend, Mr.

Garrison. How will he end slavery? Moral persuasion, immediate national emancipation, and non-violent resistance. Non-violence.

A true visionary, your friend. But you can't have both emancipation and non-violence. It's one or the other. You and I both want emancipation.

We must be logical and the existing Constitution is our guide. No, it's not. It supports slavery. Slavery may seem to be implied but it is the words of the Constitution that are supposed to govern our land.

The meaning of the Constitution is in the words. Plain and simple. Those words, are the holy scripture of democracy. Only the words?

Not how it's been interpreted? Do we throw out the Bible because Southern preachers say it supports slavery? No. The words are the voice of God.

Their interpretations are filthy lies. We throw out the filth. Not God. Lot's of luck.

Listen, the first words, we the people of the United States, That means we all share the protection of the law. Those are the words, and that's what I believe. But the entire South and half the North... They are wrong!

Does Mr. Garrison know how you feel? We had this argument. We agreed to disagree.

Which side are you on, Mr. Douglass? In public... I agree with Garrison.

Violence will only beget more violence. I believe that. But? But?!

When I wake in the night, a dark voice tells me, "There will be blood. There will be oceans of blood." Remember that young man who fought his proud master and won. I am still willing to fight, Mr. Brown.

But are you willing to kill? It hasn't come to that yet. And when it does? I don't know, Brown.

If I had to plunge the knife or pull the trigger... Anyway, that's not all I'm talking about. I'm saying we have the moral right to shed the blood of anyone who is working to expand the abomination of slavery. Whether or not, they are a personal threat to us.

That's terrorism! So be it. I cannot subscribe to that, Mr. Brown.

Yes, Douglass. You must follow your conscience. Just keep giving your lectures. We must make the whole North hate slavery with the same fury as you and I.

All right. But even if we never make another slave state, millions of us will still be in bondage for another hundred years. So let me show you something. What's this?

The Appalachian Mountains. They stretch 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine. See, they split the slave states right down the middle. All right, I see.

My friend, you have not been free to explore these mountains as I have. I can tell you, God put them here for the emancipation of your race. Here, here, and here, there are caverns where multitudes can shelter on their journey North. -His plan was to train a company of hand-picked warriors.

White Abolitionists and free blacks. Groups of five would spread out along the mountains and prepare the caverns for fugitive slaves. From these forts we will raid the plantations, bring the people back to our camps. Those who choose to fight will be trained with guns.

The others will move north, from cavern to cavern 'till they reach freedom. Nat Turner tried that. He was caught and hanged. Hundreds of us were shot.

Turner had the right plan, but he lacked the means to carry it out. The men he freed had never held a gun. He had no contact with abolitionists, received no help from the North. Nevertheless, the South still trembles waiting for the next Nat Turner to rise up and cut their throats.

Where he failed, I will succeed. The audacity of his plan took my breath away. We talked far into the night but I was not convinced. I left his home the next morning full of admiration, and doubt.

Was my friend Garrison absolutely wrong? Was an unthinkable war necessary? Then it occurred to me. John Brown might be insane.

When Frederick Douglass left Springfield that morning in 1847, I knew how much I needed his eloquence. Not only to convince the white people of the North but even more to enlist our Black brothers and sisters who were already free. Frederick Douglass was the best man to stoke their courage. But I knew that he did not believe my plan would work.

Not yet. Just two months after Douglass comes to Springfield......the war with Mexico is over. The US acquires the land all the way west to the Pacific Ocean. Immediately gold is discovered in California.

Free-Soilers flock there from everywhere......along with slave owners. But in just two years......the free-soilers win! California enters the Union. As a free state!

I hope that non-violence will work after all. But exactly nine days after California becomes a state......Congress passes a new Fugitive Slave Law. Anyone, anywhere, who gives any kind of help to any escaped slave......is subject to arrest. All my black friends and half my white friends could go to jail.

The new law gets it's first real test in September of '51. Four men escape from a plantation in Maryland......owned by a rich farmer named Gorsuch. Gorsuch gathers a posse of slave-catchers. They ride to the North......armed with guns and warrants for the men's arrest.

Abolitionists, black and white, rally to the men's defense. Gorsuch tries to put them under arrest. There's a shoot-out. Gorsuch is shot dead by his former slave.

Blacks Fight Back! "Blacks Fight Back!" This is a national headline. The South is terrified. Blacks fight back!

Douglass is asked by his hometown, Rochester, New York, to give a Fourth of July speech in 1852. Rochester is a hot-bed of lukewarm abolition. I just happen to be in the area. Oh, Brown, why am I so anxious about this speech?

Don't worry. You'll be brilliantas always. But the fourth of July? The auditorium will be packed with abolitionists.

They'll love you to pieces! If you say so. You tell me the speech. I'll tell you the truth.

All right. I'll tell you what I'm going to say. Mr. President, Why do you bring me here on this fourth of July?

What have my people to do with your national holiday of freedom? The principles of life, liberty and equality in your beautiful Declaration of Independence are they applied to us? No. We are banished from the pale of this glorious anniversary!

This fourth of July you may rejoice; we must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into this grand temple of liberty, and expect him to join your joyful celebration is inhumane mockery; sacrilegious irony. Citizens! Do you mean to mock me?

Do you want to know how the American slave sees your 4th of July? We see your celebration as a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness swelling vanity. Your sounds of rejoicing; empty and heartless. Oh, if I could but reach the nation's ear I would pour out a fiery stream Of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm and stern rebuke.

It is not light we need, but fire. It is not the gentle shower but thunder! We need the storm the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of this nation must be quickened.

The conscience of this nation must be roused. The hypocrisy of this nation must be exposed and the crimes against God and man must be denounced. My friends, I paint a dark picture and yet I do not despair of America. There are forces alive in this nation which will work the downfall of the corruption and oppression.

The doom of slavery is certain. I draw encouragement from the great principles in the Declaration of Independence and I draw hope from the genius of American institutions as laid out in the Constitution. They have been damaged but not destroyed. The states of America must live Up to their founding principles.

Life, liberty and equal justice must bless all who live here. Then and only then will we earn the name The United States of America. Then and only then will I praise the Fourth of July for there will be no slaves.

Brown claps

Well, it's powerful! Our abolitionist friends will love it. But you don't. You say that we need fire.

"It is the time for storm, whirlwind, earthquake." But you don't draw the conclusion which is war. You don't tell the good people that only a violent revolution will finish the work of the Declaration of Independence. I know. You still have hope that war canbe avoided.

My friend... I'm at war with myself. The horror of total war, the horror of slavery, which one is worse? Slavery.

As you said, I still search for a better path. Search away, my young friend. You will discover that you have wasted a lot of time. Nevertheless, Brown had pulled me halfway into his camp.

If you take the Constitution at face value, slavery was never legal. Any honest Supreme Court would have banned it from the United States. Mr. Garrison, disagreed.

He still blamed the Constitution. He persuaded the American Anti- Slavery Society to remove its recommendation of my newspaper. He publicly burned a copy of the Constitution ending our long friendship. Kansas!

Kansas is the only new territory adjacent to a slave state. It is not yet incorporated. No American can claim land in unincorporated territory. But hordes of slave-owners stream west from Missouri and start squatting on the best farmland.

They are determined to make Kansas a new slave state in violation of the Missouri Compromise. The future is at stake! Congress repeals the Missouri Compromise. Free-Soil farmers pour in and make illegal claims of their own.

Hundreds more slave-owners and hired ruffians......swarm west from Missouri into Kansas. Hell-bent on driving the Northerners out. The future is at stake. My sons are in Kansas.

I'm on my way. Our side quickly builds the town of Lawrence, Kansas; a hotel, two newspapers, a telegraph. Then comes a week of hell on earth. A mob of 700, armed to the teeth, storms into Lawrence, smashes the printing presses, pillages the hotel, sets the town on fire.

The very next day, in Washington, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, is working at his desk in the Senate chamber. South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks, storms in swinging his cane. That cane has a head of solid gold. With this heavy gold head he strikes Sumner again and again 'till the Senator lies unconscious, bleeding, and nearly dead beside his desk on the Senate floor.

I'm in a rage and the free- soilers are scared They load their wagons to get out of Kansas. But Brown persuades them to stay and fight violence with violence. Some of them. Not enough.

Spring and summer pass with skirmishes everywhere. Brown is active all through the territory. -Dear Douglass, don't know when you'll get this. Today, October 7, arrived in Osawatomie with my sons.

My half-sister lives near town. Surrounding area thick with Ruffians. A turning point is near. -Tomorrow we'll scour all around Osawatomie.

Sweep 'em out. More soon. -Son Frederick spent last night with his aunt. This morning, shot in the back, dead.

Must stop. Town under attack. There will be blood. It's in the news.

There is blood. Three hundred Ruffians lay siege to Osawatomie. Brown has only 38 riflemen. We kill thirty then they overwhelm us.

We flee. They steal the horses and cattle. Burn Osawatomie to the ground. Brown loses that battle against overwhelming odds.

But we show those criminals how hard a Yankee can fight for Abolition. And that's the real news. America knows who John Brown is. He loses the battle for the little town......but I win the battle for hearts and minds.

Half the nation now admires him. And the other half trembles in fear. Abolitionists everywhere take heart. Dear Douglass, my work in Kansas is done for now.

I have much to do in the East. I'll be in Rochester around Christmas and hope that we can meet.

sound of sword slicing

Julia? Did you finish editing the new speech? Sorry Douglass, it's only the old man. Julia's still editing away upstairs.

Brown! You made it before the storm! Good to see your face again, Douglass, and not just your photos that crop up everywhere. Yes, I spend an extravagant number of hours in front of cameras.

Well, the more the public sees of you, the better. Is that the Herald you're reading? It's disgusting but someone has to do it. Why?

So I can shoot down their lies in my newspaper. Listen to this. "We believe that the institution of slavery in the South is no evil. That it is a positive good." Truly sickening.

My friend, There's a delicate question I need to ask you. And I promise you that your answer will be held in perfect confidence. Go ahead. It concerns that terrible week in May.

Was there anything remarkable that you did that week? Something you wanted to keep outof the news? Yes, Douglass, there was. Will you trust me to tell me what it was?

If the free-soilers don't stay and fight then slavery will push west and west all the way to the Pacific. I could not keep them from leaving, but the Ruffians could.

distant thunder

What do you mean? I had to provoke ever more barbaric attacks on our people. Stoke their righteous outrage. I see.

You don't approve. That depends on what comes next. The day I made my call to arms, we read the telegram about Senator Sumner. I knew that would stir you up.

Congressman Brooks! A premeditated act of attempted murder, committed in public by a notorious slave-owner, and he was never even arrested. I could feel the events, like a poison, in every fiber of my body. And so I acted.

Did you and your sons ride out looking for Ruffians? We did. And did you find any? Not that day.

But you found something else. We found the homestead of five slave-owners. They were not armed. We sacrificed them.

Sacrificed? We hacked them to death with our swords. You butchered unarmed men? To terrify the Ruffians and every slave-owner in every slave state.

But you brutally murdered five innocent men! Innocent? In what sense innocent? Innocent in the sense that they had done no harm to you or anyone you can name!

No harm?! In the name of Almighty God, Douglass They came to Kansas to make it a slave state! Is that innocent? How many of your truly innocent ancestors did those people hang, rape, beat, or starve?

Thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands! Reaching back two hundred years. All of them victims of unspeakable crimes against humanity and God! Are the sins of the fathers to be visited on their sons?

Yes! For how long?! 'Till they confess their sins. Till they give back to their victims all they plundered from their lives.

Till they devote themselves night and day to atoning for two-hundred years of never- ending atrocities. Then my work will be done. And God will forgive them. Brown, are you truly at ease with your conscience?

I regret that I let myself be controlled by anger. But no regret over killing unarmed men?

rain and thunder

Let me tell you something, Douglass. In Kansas I met a young man. Samuel Waters. Born in Georgia, he fought his master, who fell backward and split his head open on a plowshare.

Waters dragged the body to a hiding place and fled on foot to the mountains. He had relatives there with connections to the Underground Railroad, which eventually got him to Ohio. He was free. Until he found out what had happened back where he came from.

When they couldn't find Waters, the white people went crazy. We don't know how many innocent men they lynched, or shot, or threw in the river. At least 13, perhaps twice that. One of the men they lynched was a friend of Waters Hays Turner.

The mob hanged him and left the body dangling for three days and nights over the road. His widow Mary Turner, was pregnant in her last month. When she heard her man was dead she walked to town and shouted his innocence all up and down the street and in the square. The mob dragged her to a bridge over the river.

They hanged her by her ankles, upside down They drenched her in kerosene and burned the clothing off her living body. Hundreds of people were cheering. She was still alive when someone slit her belly open spilling her bloody daughter onto the ground. The baby gave two feeble cries then a man crushed her skull with his heel.

The crowd was in ecstasy. Boiling over with the glee of Satan himself they shot hundreds of bullets into Mary Turner's body. When Samuel Waters heard this story he knew that he would never be free. Never.

He will never be free, Douglass. This is the story I tell myself whenever I am tempted to regret killing those "innocent" slave-owners in Kansas. Can it be right to stoop to the same savagery as our enemy? My dear young man.

The blood I spilled is barely the first drop of the blood-storm that will soon flood our country. Once again I wondered if John Brown might be insane. Yet I, when I calmed my heart, I could find no fault in his logic. The conclusion is monstrous, but the argument was sound.

He had struck terror in the heart of Dixie. Meanwhile events are accelerating. A new political party rises from the ashes of the old Whig Party. It's called the Republican Party.

Their platform states that all men really "All Men", are created equal. -Hallelujah! A bright beam of hope! A peaceful solution is still possible.

-The Republicans nominate John C.Fremont their candidate for President. Fremont's an Abolitionist. But he loses the election. To James Buchanan.

A Democrat from Pennsylvania. -In his inaugural address, Mr. Buchanan tells us......the slave problem does not exist! That everyone knows that every State......gets to choose for its own sweet self.

Long live Abomination! Never before has there been a president......so out of touch with his people. The first thing he does is to urge the Supreme Court......to issue a very broad ruling in the pending Dred Scott case. They rule that a Negro, any of whose ancestors were imported into the U.S......and sold into slavery...can never be an American citizen.

No matter if the family's been free for a hundred years. In other words, my friend Frederick Douglass is not now and can never be a citizen of these United States. Moreover, they rule the federal government has no power to regulate slavery in the territories. Just what our President wants them to rule.

Also what John Brown wants them to rule. Because I know they have made a losing move in the game. They are infuriating millions of white citizens in the North who want all the Western states free of slaves. Brown is wrong.

The North may want free access to the West. But will they put their lives on the line? No, I'm right. Dred Scott is a huge step toward the war that I long to provoke.

Meanwhile John Brown has been raising money for his old master plan in the Appalachian Mountains. I hire a military expert from England. A mercenary from England. I travel under an assumed name to the far western corner of Iowa.

We refine my master plan. -Something odd is happening to my friend. He's becoming theatrical. Traveling in disguise.

Using assumed names. Polishing his plot in darkest Iowa. Pulling off daring stunts like raiding a plantation in Missouri and herding the slaves all the way to Canada. Getting more famous by the month.

Relishing the terror he provokes In slave-holders everywhere. And don't forget that President Buchanan puts a price on my head. Two-hundred and fifty dollars. And Brown responds by offering a reward for Buchanan's head.

Two dollars and fifty cents. And so time lurches forward into 1859. I don't see much of Brown, until... Hello, dear friend it's a lovely summer down here in Chambersburg.

Only a week till your visit. Bring the Emperor too. There's room for all. When you get off the train, treat yourself to a haircut at Harry's barber shop right around the corner.

Harry is the best! Sincerely, Your friend, Nelson Hawkins. I'll translate. The "Emperor" is an escaped slave whose real name is Shields Green.

He and Brown have hit it off. "Nelson Hawkins" is one of the aliases Brown has been using. Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, just north of Virginia is a station on the Underground Railroad. My friend Harry the barber will guide Douglass to my secret headquarters.

And this visit in "a couple of weeks" is a plea for me to join his band of Merry Men. My friend Douglass has straddled the fence too long. It is time for him to commit. But I fear that Brown is the one who will be executed, not his plan.

Nevertheless I decided to meet him. Shields Green let out a whoop for joy when I asked him to join me. We took the train the following Thursday and arrived in Chambersburg on Friday afternoon. The next day, Harry led us southwest of town along a country road.

While Green and Harry get to know each other I let my mind wander over the odd happiness that had come to me on this morning walk through the green countryside. How did these fit in with the violence that I knew Brown was planning? All too soon we reached a small pond. There be the man you seek.

Hey old man! Ain't no fish to catch in this old mud puddle. Well, may the good Lord bless my soul. It's the Emperor Green!

At your service, sire. Time for me to go cut some hair. Good luck, sir.

singing

way down yonder in the middle of the field, angel working at the chariot wheel. Ain't so particular about working at the wheel,

singing fades

Douglass, you're right on time. And you're ahead of time. That's what we have to talk about. Your Highness, you bring along your toys?

You bet, old man. Got us a whole army of black men on white horses, gonna be at our disposal. That's my emperor. My headquarters are this way.

A mocking bird perched in an oak tree sang a song he picked up who knows where. Brown led us upstream and then down a steep hill to the bottom of an abandoned quarry. There we met Mr. John Henry Kagi introduced as the secretary of war.

While the Emperor and Kagi got acquainted Brown led me into his headquarters. I've chosen the place to begin the war. Harper's Ferry, Virginia. It's right here?

Yes, fifty miles south of where we stand. Perfect in so many ways. Close to Pennsylvania and freedom for the slaves we liberate. Also for all the fighters who will join us from the north.

Rich plantations here. Their slaves will join our revolution. And here is a government arsenal with muskets, rifles, ammunition. That's where we'll start.

We'll capture it at night. But you're frowning. Do you have a question? How many men do you have?

As we speak my sons are scouring the North. When we stage the raid we expect more than a hundred abolitionists. How many men have committed? I'll know when my sons come in a week or two.

Do you have agents going to the slaves so they know what is happening? Too dangerous. They might be caught, give away our plan. So you are counting on the somehow hearing about the raid and streaming en masse to join up with you.

That's exactly what will happen. And if it doesn't? It will. As I look at this map, Harper's Ferry does not seem as advantageous as you think.

What do you mean? It's on a thin peninsula where two rivers join. The local police will occupy the top of the peninsula, here, set up snipers here on the hills above the rivers. You'll be caught in a steel trap.

That won't happen, but if it does, we'll cut our way out. Brown......forgive me for disagreeing, but the South will take this seriously. They will send large numbers of troops. They will not let you escape the neighborhood.

You will be killed. All of your men will be killed. So what? So what?!

You'll be dead. All your men! Your life-work will come to nothing. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, came down from heaven to sacrifice himself to save our whole race.

He had fewer men than I. You're comparing yourself to Jesus? No. I'm a worm, not worthy to crawl beneath His feet.

So how can I not sacrifice myself to further His work? The South will control the news of the event. You will be painted as a fanatic. Abolitionism will be made to equal terrorism.

You'll set us back twenty years. No. I'll put us on a quick road to war. Believe me, Douglass, I'm a white man.

I know white men. I know that only the death of other white men will build a fire in their souls and wake them to the moral swamp that now surrounds us. "This nation obeys not the voice of God,

nor receiveth correction

truth is perished, and is cut off from our mouth."

Jeremiah 7

28. Correct! I didn't think you knew. I'm always looking for colorful sentences to punctuate my lectures.

You can't do better than the Prophets. Shakespeare is better than the Prophets. Perhaps he is. For the likes of you!

Oh, my dear old friend. Do you really want to throw your life into a deadly trap of your own making? I don't believe that will happen. My plan will work.

I'll set up a country within the country of the South. You've seen the Constitution I wrote. I want you to be the first President. And when the slaves come streaming in to camp to camp I want you there beside me.

You can talk to them as I never can, show them what freedom really means. Of course I'm flattered, Brown. But I can't do what I don't believe in. What I believe is that when you and your men leave Harper's Ferry, you will either leave in chains, or in coffins.

You may think that I'm a coward. Perhaps I am a coward. But I also know that I still have years of work to do. You know that I still have years of work.

Don't you? Yes, well, that's it then. That's it. Is that it?

Oh Brown. Brown, Brown, I beseech you, don't go through with this suicidal plan! You don't understand, do you? I thought you would, but you don't.

This plan. This plan is who I am. Walking back to town, I realized how shaken I was. Twelve years of friendship ending so painfully.

I would never see Brown again. I also realized that in my emotional state, I forgot that Brown had letters from me and those letters would incriminate me. Weeks had passed and there was no news. I began to hope.

But then on October 17, I was in Philadelphia to give a speech. I was in the green room going over my lines. Douglass! Thank God I found you!

I beg your pardon! I just... I go on stage in ten minutes. You can't.

I must! John Brown's been arrested in Virgina. How do you know? The telegraph operator got a message from the sheriff in Virginia to the sheriff here.

Arrest Frederick Douglass! Send him to me in chains! But how? The operator's one of us, but he has to take it to the Sheriff.

So you've got to get out of the country! Now! GO!!! I caught the first train out of Philadelphia, changed trains at the next station, and again at the next station after that, until a zig-zag route got me safely to Rochester before dawn the next day.

When I reached my house all was quiet. The news had not yet burst upon the town. I quickly packed my bags and bid farewell to my family. The sun was rising when I boarded the early ferry for Kingston.

I breathed a sigh of relief and fell asleep. I woke up in Canada still a free man. Then it was a ten day voyage to Southampton. Julia met me there.

She was the one person in the world I most needed to talk to. She had compiled an album of stories about the raid, clipped from the English press. Brown was wounded but alive. Shields Green and Kagi had been captured along with Brown.

Two of his sons were dead. One of them was Watson, the boy who was so impressed by my fight with the slave-master. Sweet little Watson. Of course the Southern papers are outraged, but I can't understand the overwhelming terror that blinds them.

What, after all, did the raid amount to? Twenty fanatical men with a bad plan attack an insignificant town. All but two are killed or arrested the next day! Order is restored, the laws take effect, and yet the South reacts as if a million vipers had crawled out of the ground on every acre of the south.

As if every white life was in immediate danger of a dreadful death. They're taking it out on every white northerner they can lay their hands on. And the North is hardly better. Dear God, the papers are bending over backwards to paint Brown as a maniac who is far more to be despised than all the brutal slave masters in the South!

You do still love the man, don't you? He was like no other man I ever met. The best of fathers, he led his sons to their death. The best of friends, he wanted me to follow him to my death.

He must have known what would happen. And it did! And I can't forgive him for that. But yes, I do still love him.

Perhaps you take too small a view, Fred. What do you mean? Perhaps Brown did know white men in a way you cannot. Perhaps the fear-driven South will provoke the North to do exactly what Brown foresaw.

I guess I hope you're right. The war would be ghastly, but the irony, delicious. Seriously though, you are following the reports of the trial, aren't you? I haven't felt up to that yet.

You must read the reports of the trial. It seems to me John Brown, surrounded by chaos and fear, is the calmest man in the United States. When asked who financed the operation, the wounded Brown replied... I furnished most of the money myself.

I cannot implicate anyone else. -Why did you not escape when you had the chance? -I had about thirty-odd prisoners, whose wives and daughters were in tears. I felt for them.

-What was your object in coming here? To free the slaves. Nothing else. I want you to understand, sir, that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful.

If I had done what I did to free some white people kept in slavery by a malicious power, you would speak of me as a hero. Mr. Brown, how can you possibly justify your treasonous crime? I think, my friend, you are guilty of a great wrong to God and against humanity.

I say this without wishing to be offensive. I believe it to be perfectly right to interfere with you, so far as to free those you wickedly and willfully hold in bondage. So I think I did right. Search for my justification in the Bible.

But you don't even believe in God!

Gavel bangs on desk

Jeremiah 7

Sir, you know not whereof you speak! Is that all you have to say? No sir. I wish to add that you had better - all you people in the South - prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question.

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.

But you are a criminal with blood on your hands. You should be thinking about your own afterlife! I have not long to live, Governor. Fifteen years, fifteen minutes, hardly a difference.

There is one eternity behind me and another eternity before. We all live on a mere speck of time. The difference between your speck and my speck, it's nothing compared to eternity.

And so I say to you

Be prepared, as I am prepared. The enemies of slavery are not those going to hell. This is true heroism, is it not? It is.

And the South knows it. They do? Read what Governor Wise said. They are mistaken who take him for a madman.

He's a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw. Cut and thrust, bleeding and in chains, he is cool, collected, and indomitable. Yes, he's a fanatic, vain, and garrulous, but firm and intelligent. All over the North they're calling him insane, delusional, reprehensible, disgusting.

I came close to calling him that myself. Yet here are Southern politicians calling him admirable in every way except for his hatred of slavery. He seems to personify the very virtues they aspire to. You know I think Brown has changed American history.

And it was pure luck that I survived the battle in Harper's Ferry. One of the Southern lieutenants tried to finish me off. But he wore the wrong sword that day. He left his saber at home and strapped on his dress sword instead.

He whacked me back and forth with that flimsy decoration, bloodied my head and left me for dead. God knew that I still had work to do. The anger I felt for my old friend faded away. His trial was completed in seven days.

Before being sentenced he spoke to the court, or rather, he spoke to the nation. This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, which teaches me to "remember them that are in bonds." So I endeavored to act on behalf of the oppressed. Now, if this court rules that I shall forfeit my life, and mingle my blood with the blood of my children and the blood of millions in this slave country where human rights are denied by a wicked, cruel, and unjust government,

I say

let it be done! John Brown was condemned to die on December 2nd. But the paranoia of the South only increased. To my amazement they let him keep talking to reporters and visitors.

He held court every day. He put America on trial even as he waited to be hanged. He befriended the officers guarding him in jail. When they expressed sadness that he had to die,

he simply said

Don't be sad. I was born to die for this. -Everything began to change. Many in the North forgot the "madman" and began to speak of the martyr, the hero, John Brown.

Brown remained calm to the end. When they led him out of the jail to be hanged he gave his guard a slip of paper, on which he had written... Charlestown, Virginia. 2nd of December, 1859.

I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had as I now think vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done. I want to pause a moment. This is a beautiful country.

I have not cast my eyes over it before that is, while passing through the field.

dramatic music

he simply said

Well, that was thirty-five years ago. Now I'm trying to write one last speech. I once dreamed that my last speech would portray a wise old man summing up a lifetime of achievement. What a delusion!

That dark voice in the night is back again telling me what I don't want to hear. Lord, I wish Old Brown were here.

sighs

he simply said

So we could argue. Except I'd have to tell him what happened. I wonder how he'd take it? How I would take what?

It would be painful to break the news. Break what news? You know, even after thirty-five years the memory of Brown can be so vivid that I almost think I'm hearing his voice. Bloody hell, Douglass, I'm right here!

Brown? Brown?! What are you doing here? You're dead!

What's that got to do with anything? You're a figment of my imagination. Call me all the dirty names you want. All I know is you needed me and here I am.

So tell me what happened? Was there a war? Yes! Who won?

We did. Praise the Lord! It was even more bloody than we thought. and the Union Soldiers marched to a song that was all about you.

But we really won the war? Yes! That is spectacular, Douglass! The best thing since the Resurrection!

And there's more. Three amendments were passed to the Constitution setting us all free, granting us equal rights under the law. We could learn to read, study anything, get married, vote, everything a white man could do. This is incredibly wonderful, Douglass.

Everything we did, everything we strived for, everything we suffered, it was all worth it! But why do you look like that? Why are you not happy? Tell me, my friend.

We won the war, and then we lost the peace. We lost the peace? When they got back on their feet, the Southern states passed laws saying Negroes cannot own guns, cannot vote, cannot go to public school and any black man who didn't have a labor contract is a vagrant who could go to jail. I should have known.

Even though the Constitution was changed giving blacks the same rights as whites. And the Federal government? Stopped enforcing the law. May God condemn their rotten souls.

And just to insure that we didn't come up with any ideas, they invented a brand new lie to persecute us. They claimed that all White women every day, everywhere, were subject to sexual assault from savage Negro men. What? Yes, and to this day people everywhere believe it!

The wilder the lie, the more people believe it. In this decade, not a week goes by that there isn't a Negro lynching somewhere in the South. And Congress refuses, time and again, to make lynching a Federal crime. Sounds like the good ole days.

In the good old days we dreamed that war would set us free. Did we fight that war for nothing? Oh no, no, my friend. Don't, don't think that.

We now have vastly more doctors, lawyers, journalists, even politicians in the North. But. But for millions and millions of others schools don't exist, jobs pay next to nothing, poverty is brutal, and they live in a constant fear of the white man's whim. And lynching is how the white people keep them in line.

It'll be a long battle to wipe out lynching, if we can ever knock it out. And if we do somehow manage to rub that out, then they'll find new ways to keep us down. I cannot see any end to their hatred. It never seems to die and there's nothing I can do.

So you're saying the whole struggle is futile?

sighs

he simply said

I'm a tired old man, Brown. And days like today I feel... What were you writing when I showed up? Nothing.

What were you not writing? My last speech. About? Lynching.

It's about lynching. It's called, "Why is the Negro Lynched?" Ah! That makes everything clear. You cannot stand a task that you think is futile.

Reminds me of a futile military operation you once tried to persuade someone not to carry out. Oh, that's different! Anyway, I was wrong. Harper's Ferry was who you are.

You did ignite the Civil War. Your plan was not futile after all. Thanks Douglass. That's gracious of you.

But I was trying to save your life and you're trying... To save your soul. You'll never know how much or how little you changed the world, Douglass. But you'll die knowing you spoke the truth.

Believe me, it's the best way to go. Here's your pen, my friend. Go to your desk, and write. I'll be gone now.

Fare well. Well. His truth goes marching on. And he's right.

Time for this old man to get back to work. Why is the Negro still lynched?

Solo cello plays Battle Hymn of the Republic

he simply said

A two person stage play of Abolition is available for production from Duende Drama and Literature.