The following article appeared in a North Carolina newspaper the day after Brown’s execution. It predicts that the North will make Brown a martyr and ridicules the Day of Mourning held in his honor. The article singles out the celebration in Boston, at which J. Sella Martin gave a speech (Document 12.9), for particular condemnation and labels those who attended as treasonous.
The chances are ninety-nine in a hundred, that before this paper reaches our subscribers John Brown will have paid the penalty of his crimes on the gallows, and gone to render an account of his life to that Being who says “thou shalt do no murder.”
While we have not the slightest fear that any attempt has been made to rescue Old Brown, we are not without painful apprehensions that among such a large body of inexperienced and excited soldiery, mischief has happened from the incautious use of fire arms.
It is to be hoped, with Brown’s exit from the world, the excitement at the North will subside. But we must confess that this hope is but of the faintest character. Fanaticism at the North is rampant, and overrides every thing. On yesterday, the godly city of Boston, built up and sustained by the products of negro slave labor, went into mourning, fasting, and prayer, over the condign [deserved] punishment of a negro stealer, murderer, and traitor, and from fifty pulpits the Praise-God-Bare-bones belched forth volumes of blasphemy and treason.
In all the Noo England towns and villages, we may expect to hear that mock funerals have been celebrated, and all kinds of nonsensically lugubrious displays made. (It is a pity that they haven’t a witch or two to drown or burn, by way of variety.) We hope that Gov. Wise [governor of Virginia] will have the gallows on which Brown was hung burned, and give notice of the fact. Our reasons for this wish is this: The Yankees have no objection to mingling money making with their grief, and they will, unless Brown’s gallows is known to have been burned, set to work and make all kinds of jimcracks and notions out of what they will call parts of Old John Brown’s gallows and sell them. Let the rope which choked him, too, be burned and the fact advertised, or we shall see vast quantities of breast pins, lockets, and bracelets, containing bits of the “rope which hung Old Brown” for sale. [P. T.] Barnum is already in the market for Old Brown’s old clothes, and hopes and expects to make [a good] speculation out of them.
Source: “Execution of John Brown,” Register (Raleigh, North Carolina), December 3, 1859.