own his life for
his friends." John Brown fulfilled the highest interpretation of this
Scriptural maxim. The edict once published, and all over the North
there was a feeling of the deepest sympathy. There was nothing that
could be done. People must wait and meditate. Just enough more than a
month to bring the execution on Friday was accorded the condemned man,
for it was on Monday the 31st of October that the trial was ended, and
the sentence was pronounced the following day.

During this month follow the letters, the sermons, the speeches, the
editorials, the thinking, that were the immediate results of the
attack. Never had the subject of Negro Slavery been so thoroughly
ventilated. The liberation of the Slave was coming, and that speedily
through the agency of Brown, but not in the way he had intended. While
audiences throughout the North, and South, too, were roused to fever
heat through the presentations, in different lights it is true, of
this cause, the prime mover in the matter was making his final
preparations for departure. Preparations, I say, not in the sense that
we ordinarily give the word, for of his own future he had no doubt,
but in that of care for the families of his stricken followers. To
Mrs. Lydia Maria Child he writes asking her assistance in behalf of
his daughters-in-law, whose husbands, his sons, fell by his side,
three daughters, his wife, Mrs. Thompson whose husband fell at
Harper's Ferry, and a son unable to wholly care for himself. To a
Quaker lady of Newport, R.I., he sends asking her to write and to
comfort the sad hearts at North Elba, Essex County, N.Y. To his wife
"'Finally, my beloved, be of good comfort.' May all your names be
'written on the Lamb's book of life--may you all have the purifying
and sustaining influence of the Christian religion is the earnest
prayer of your affectionate husband and father, John Brown. P.S. I
cannot remember a night so dark as to have hindered the coming day,
nor a storm so furious or dreadful as to prevent the return of warm
sunshine and a cloudless sky. But, beloved ones, do remember that this
is not your rest; that in this world you have no abiding place or
continuing city. To God and his infinite mercy I always commend you.
J.B."

And thus he wrote to his half-brother, to his old schoolmaster, to his
son Jason, and to many others. Every word is expressive of the deepest
anxiety for the welfare of his loved ones, and a calm trust in the God
of al