Lee,
whose aide, upon this occasion, was J.E.B. Stuart, later the Confederate
cavalry leader. Stuart had been in Kansas, and it was he who recognized
the leader of the raid as Brown of Ossawatomie.
It is said that Brown's violent anti-slavery feeling was engendered by
his having seen, in his youth, a colored boy of about his own age
cruelly misused. He brooded over the wrongs of the blacks until, as some
students of his life believe, he became insane on this subject. His
utterances show that he was willing to give up his life and those of his
sons and other followers, if by such action he could merely draw
attention to the cause which had taken possession of his soul. In the
course of the fighting he saw his two sons mortally wounded, and was
himself stabbed and cut. Throughout the fight and his subsequent trial
at Charles Town he remained imperturbable; when taken to the gallows he
sat upon his coffin, in a wagon, and he not only mounted the scaffold
without a tremor, but actually stood there, apparently unmoved, for ten
or fifteen minutes, with the noose around his neck, while the troops
which had formed his escort were marched to their positions.
A large number of troops were present at the execution, for it was then
believed in the South that the Brown raid was not the mere suicidal
stroke of an individual fanatic, but an organized movement on the part
of the Republican party; an effort to rescue Brown was therefore
apprehended.
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