ck
Republicans," they classed them--of taking orders from abolitionists
and planning evil against them. To law-abiding northerners, John Brown
was a menace, stirring up lawlessness. Seward and Lincoln, speaking
for the Republicans, declared that violence, bloodshed, and treason
could not be excused even if slavery was wrong and Brown thought he
was right. All saw before them the horrible threat of civil war.

During John Brown's trial, his friends did their utmost to save him.
The noble old giant with flowing white beard, who had always been more
or less of a legend, now to them assumed heroic proportions. His
calmness, his steadfastness in what he believed to be right captured
the imagination.

The jury declared him guilty--guilty of treason, of conspiring with
slaves to rebel, guilty of murder in the first degree. The papers
carried the story, and it spread by word of mouth--the story of those
last tense moments in the courtroom when John Brown declared, "It is
unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interferred ... in
behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called
great, or in behalf of any of their friends ... it would have been all
right.... I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any
respecter of persons. I believe that to have interferred as I have
done, in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong but right. Now if
it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the
furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with
the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave
country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust
enactments, I say, let it be done...."[85]

He was sentenced to die.

Susan, sick at heart, talked all this over with her abolitionist
friends and began planning a meeting of protest and mourning in
Rochester if John Brown were hanged. She engaged the city's most
popular hall for this meeting, never thinking of the animosity she
might arouse, and as she went from door to door selling tickets, she
asked for contributions for John Brown's destitute family. She tried
to get speakers from among respected Republicans to widen the popular
appeal of the meeting, but her diary records, "Not one man of
prominence in religion or politics will identify himself with the John
Brown meeting."[86] Only a Free Church minister, the Rev. Abram Pryn,
and the ever-faithful Parker Pillsbury were willing to speak.