About this time twenty-two years ago the city of New York was greatly excited over the hangin’ of John Brown for raising an insurrection near Harpers Ferry. This event has not yet been forgotten, for some rather prominent men and Communists lately got together and celebrated the anniversary of that peculiar event in their own peculiar style.
The day that John Brown was hung was a marked day in New York. The whole city was excited one way or the other, and, of course, the abolitionists, believin’ it the greatest outrage that had ever been perpetrated, acted accordin’ly.
The Rev. Dr. Cheever’s church held services that day, which were largely attended by those who thought John Brown was dyin’ as a martyr. One of the Harpers, one of the Tappans and other prominent abolitionists made prayers and speeches, and about a hundred dollars was raised for the benefit of the martyr’s family, which was not a very big amount to be a martyr on.
But the boss excitement of the day was at Shiloh (colored) Church, corner of Prince and Marlon streets. This place was crowded to the doors with black and white. The Rev. H Highland Garnet presided. It was a most enthusiastic as well as mixed assemblage; one of the “queerest” gatherings on record. Everybody prayed and talked and sang and cursed the slaveholders, and cursed the clergy because they hadn’t come out against ‘em. The reverend gent who presided let the people do pretty much as they pleased, only wisely advisin’ those who spoke or prayed not to be longer at it than five minutes each. A great deal of sense and nonsense can be talked in five minutes.
Some of the five-minute speeches were curious. One speaker said that he had known a man named Schmitz who had been executed in the West Indies for incitin’ a revolt among the slaves. “Schmitz died,” said the speaker, “but those who had a hand in his death all died worse than he did. His murderers all died awful. One of ‘em just before he died barked like a dog and howled like a cat. Another of ‘em said he was goin’ to hell and jumped overboard into the ocean. Another got the cholera very bad, and the man who killed Schmitz died of the jim-jams. And I tell you,” said the prophet, “not one of those who have had a hand in this murder of John Brown will die easy on their beds.”
Another speaker said he was sure that John Brown wouldn’t, couldn’t die. The Lord couldn’t spare him. A miracle would certainly happen to save him this very day. “Wait till the de evenin’, brethren,” said this prophet, “and you will find dat dere has been an earthquake, and dat all have been swallowed up alive but John Brown.”
But the second prophet proved to be as mistaken as the first. Nothing happened to interfere with the execution. John Brown was hung quickly and quietly, and all parties concerned in his execution lived years after it, and died in ordinary ways.
About noon the presidin’ minister got up and said: “If Heaven has not interfered, John Brown has now been launched into eternity. And prior to dismissal we will take up a collection.” And the coppers jingled in the plate as it passed round. This was, to say the least, a very practical way of celebratin’ the dying agonies of John Brown.
Meanwhile John Brown had had an interview with his wife, and had died like a man. Mrs. Brown was a strange sort of a woman, very cold and calm. She took her husband’s death as a matter of course. He was a martyr, and what could a martyr do but die?
It is a rather curious fact that the officer who under Governor Wise’s direction escorted her to meet her condemned husband, got talking with her on the way to prison, about slavery, and talked so eloquently, too, that he half converted to his side of the controversy the wife of the man who was about to die for his adherence to the other side. From that time Mrs. Brown herself never said anythin’ more against slavery. Perhaps, having lost her husband and two children by abolitionism, she thought she had had enough of it.
It was feared that Mrs. Brown would, if allowed to see her husband, give him the means to commit suicide, and thus escape the gallows. But although there was plenty of opportunity for this sort of thing, neither man nor wife tried it. Mrs. Brown was perfectly willing that her husband should die as a martyr, and Brown himself wanted nothin’ better–so all parties were satisfied, includin’ Governor Wise.
After the execution the body of John Brown was put into a pine box, and under the care of his friends, was sent on to Philadelphia, and after a quick passage through the Quaker City was forwarded to New York.
It reached the city by the Camden and Amboy Railroad, about seven o’clock one Saturday evenin’, in charge of J. M. Hopper, of Brooklyn.
The body was still in the very box upon which Brown had ridden from the jail to the gallows.
There was quite a crowd at the wharf as the box containing the body made its entry into the city of New York. But there was little excitement and no disturbance whatever.
Gran & Taylor, undertakers in the Bowery, then took charge of the body, which was removed to their establishment. It was slowly borne along the great thoroughfare of the East side, till it reached the undertakers’ shop, where it was placed in a little out-house, or carpenter shop, in the rear.
When the box was opened the body of John Brown was found to be little changed. So little that it looked as if he were not dead but only sleepin’. He would have been readily mistaken for a man “takin’ a rest,” had it not been for the discoloration of the throat and the back of the head near the left ear by the rope, and the blood towards the top of the box, caused by the oozing of the life blood from the ears durin’ strangulation. The upper part of the face was slightly flushed, and the eyes were very red. But in every other respect John Brown dead was exactly like John Brown livin’. The thick, long grizzled beard was carefully combed down on his breast, and the features were, if quite as stern, yet quite as calm as ever. He was arrayed in the clothes in which he had been executed. Altogether, here in the undertaker’s shop in New York, he looked precisely as he had appeared thirty-six hours before when cut down from the gallows.
The body was now stripped and placed awhile on ice, then arrayed decently for the grave in a white shroud and put into a solid rosewood coffin, without ornament or plate.
The news that John Brown’s body was in town soon got noised around the Bowery, and a crowd of men and a few women gathered around the undertaker’s shop and clamored for admittance. The major part of the crowd were actuated by curiosity, but some had been personal friends of Brown, or were red-hot abolitionists ‘emselves. These latter were admitted to view the remains. The elder Harper, the elder Tappan and others paid the last respects to the “martyr,” but as a rule the persons who paid their final tributes were not to be classed among the wealthy or the influential of New York.
The most nervous and noteworthy of the livin’ visitors of the dead John Brown was a shoemaker by the name of Bennett, who had a shop in Mulberry street, and had been for years fearfully affected by the miseries of Southern slaves, not one of whom he had ever seen. This Bennett overheard somebody in the Bowery, near the undertaker’s, say “that the dead traitor’s carcass ought to be got out of New York as soon as possible,” and at once construed this brutal speech of one ruffian into an indication of popular feelin’, imitatin’ smarter people than himself in this respect.
He went around among the his abolition friends sayin’ that “outrage and violence were threatened to the remains of the martyr,” and he found a few to believe with him that there was danger of insult to the dead.
By dint of saying this stuff over and over again, Bennett convinced himself at last that his wild guess was a certain fact, and as such he communicated his fears to some members of Hose Company No. 14, whom he met at Winchester’s cigar store in the Bowery. The “boys,” didn’t agree with him that there was really any danger of insult, but still, to please Bennett and his set, and to prevent even the possibility of disgrace to the city, the “boys” agreed to constitute ‘emselves into a guard of the dead. Most of the “boys” were Democrats, opposed to the politics for which Brown died, and belongin’ to a party to which Brown, in his life had been bitterly hostile. But what of that, as the foreman of No.14 remarked: “Politics stop at the grave.”
So all Sunday night the hose company kept watch around the undertaker’s, makin’ all their arrangements skillfully and systematically, just as if they had been appointed by the police, or by the county, the sentries of the dead. James R. Mount, the foreman of No. 14, superintended all details of the extempore “death watch;” and Jim Kerrigan, Ed. Holmes, Jim DeVoe, Henry Weakly and Dan McMahon assisted him energetically.
About midnight some members of Hose and Engine companies No. 15 and Hook and Ladder No. 4 volunteered to assist No. 14’s boys. And thus the long night wore on. In the carpenter shop back of the undertaker’s, the dead man in his coffin, surrounded by few, a very few, sorrowing friends and adherents, part in the undertaker shop and part out in the street, the fire laddies with unusually solemn faces, and all around them quite a concourse of men women and children, attracted more by the “guard” than by that which they guarded.
Had there been the slightest attempt to dishonor the dead it would have received a punishment that would have been deserved. For the fire boys would have protected the remains of that executed criminal (in the eyes of the law) as they would have protected the dead body of their own father or mother. But although Bennett fussed and fumed all night, and although two or three times some indiscreet and disrespectful utterances were spoken by some in the crowd, there was no attempt made to violate the sanctity of the dead.
Monday mornin’ dawned at last, and the death watch was over.
Bennett thanked the boys, and the boys made light of their really troublesome task, and laughed good naturedly at the shoemaker’s fears. Then just as the coffin was startin’ for its last restin’ place at North Elba, accompanied by the wife, who now joined the funeral procession for the first time, the brave big-hearted fire laddies clubbed together and purchased a monster bouquet. This floral tribute they laid reverently upon the just-departin’ coffin. So the body of the “first Republican martyr,” as John Brown has been called, left New York, guarded and honored by the Democratic fire laddies of the great-hearted metropolis.
[Editor’s notes: The attitude that the above column displays is likely a reflection of the readership of the New York Sunday Mercury, tending toward white, working-class, Democratic demographics. There is thinly-veiled, racist ridicule of the vigil held by Rev. Garnet at the Shiloh Baptist Church; there are pointed references to Brown as the “Republican martyr”; there is a smear of Mrs. Brown as not being wholly dedicated to the abolitionist cause; and there is an emphasis on the respect that firefighters showed to their grief-stricken neighbors. Lacking is any mention of the righteousness of the abolitionist cause, or the suffering endured by the enslaved.
Mary Day Brown was forceful in asserting her husband’s burial wishes. Some Southerners wanted his remains to be chopped up and scattered, rather than return him to the North to be martyred; but Mrs. Brown’s requests to take the body to his upstate New York homestead were honored by Virginia’s Governor Wise. Certain abolitionist groups wanted Brown to have a funeral procession through the states, and burial at a public memorial, and a monument erected at his grave. They were bitterly disappointed that Mrs. Brown did not let them use his remains for publicity; this may be the source of the rumors that she was disillusioned with the cause.
The reference to “Schmitz” is a bit of a mystery. Brother Schmitz was a Moravian missionary on St. John, where he acted as a negotiator to get a group of escaped slaves to return to captivity, seeking only to avoid bloodshed. There is no record I’ve found that he was murdered, or was particularly advocating against slavery.]
