Thomas Hovenden and John Brown's final moments


​INTRODUCTION 
Picture
Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11160
TWO POEMS
      Lydia Maria Child, a writer, abolitionist, and social activist, composed "The Hero's Heart" for an American Anti-Slavery Society program in Boston on January 26, 1860. It was reprinted in various publications shortly after. John Greenleaf Whittier's “Brown of Ossawatomie” was written a month earlier, in December 1859, the month of the execution (which was on December 2nd). 
 
The Hero's Heart
(by Lydia Maria Child)

[When John Brown went from the jail to the gallows, in Charlestown,
Virginia, December 3, 1859, he stooped to kiss a little colored child.]
 
A winter sunshine, still and bright,
The Blue Hills bathed with golden light,
And earth was smiling to the sky,
When calmly he went forth to die.

Infernal passions festered there,                                                         [5]
Where peaceful Nature looked so fair;
And fiercely, in the morning sun,
Flashed glitt'ring bayonet and gun.

The old man met no friendly eye,
When last he looked on earth and sky;                                              [10]
But one small child, with timid air,
Was gazing on his hoary hair.

As that dark brow to his upturned,
The tender heart within him yearned;
And, fondly stooping o'er her face,                                                     [15]
He kissed her for her injured race.

The little one she knew not why
That kind old man went forth to die;
Nor why, 'mid all that pomp and stir,
He stooped to give a kiss to her.                                                         [20]

But Jesus smiled that sight to see,
And said, "He did it unto me."
The golden harps then sweetly rung,
And this the song the angels sung:

"Who loves the poor doth love the Lord;                                         [25]
Earth cannot dim thy bright reward:
We hover o'er yon gallows high,
And wait to bear thee to the sky." 
Brown of Ossawatomie
(by John Greenleaf Whittier) 


John Brown of Ossawatomie spake
      on his dying day:
"I will not have to shrive my soul a
      priest in Slavery's pay.
But let some poor slave-mother whom I                           [5]
      have striven to free,
With her children, from the gallows-
      stair put up a prayer for me!"

John Brown of Ossawatomie, they led
      him out to die;                                                                  [10]
And lo! a poor slave-mother with her
      little child pressed nigh.
Then the bold, blue eye grew tender,
      and the old harsh face grew mild,
As he stooped between the jeering ranks                         [15]
      and kissed the negro's child!

The shadows of his stormy life that mo-
      ment fell apart;
And they who blamed the bloody hand
      forgave the loving heart.                                               [20]
That kiss from all its guilty means re-
      deemed the good intent,
And round the grisly fighter's hair the
       martyr's aureole bent!

Perish with him the folly that seeks                                  [25]
      through evil good!
Long live the generous purpose unstained
      with human blood!     
Not the raid of midnight terror, but the
      thought which underlies;                                               [30]
Not the borderer's pride of daring, but
      the Christian's sacrifice.

Nevermore may yon Blue Ridges the
      Northern rifle hear,
Nor see the light of blazing homes flash                          [35]
      on the negro's spear.
But let the free-winged angel Truth
      their guarded passes scale,
To teach that right is more than might,
      and justice more than mail!                                          [40]

So vainly shall Virginia set her battle
      in array;
In vain her trampling squadrons knead
      the winter snow with clay.
She may strike the pouncing eagle, but                            [45]
      she dares not harm the dove;
And every gate she bars to Hate shall
      open wide to Love!
Discussion points / questions / activities
  • What are the similarities in the three portrayals (one painting, and two poems) of John Brown's final moments? Think about what each poem chooses to specifically focus on in the imagined event of John Brown kissing a black child.
  • Joe Lockard, as part of the Antislavery Literature Project, gives a detailed write-up of the issues surrounding John Brown's execution and these two poems:​
         "John Greenleaf Whittier’s “Brown of Ossawatomie” was probably the most famous and widely-reprinted John Brown poem.  This poem, published in December 1859, attempts to reconcile Brown’s violence at Harpers Ferry with Whittier’s own Quaker pacifism, one that opposed violence over the slavery issue and sought to solve the conflict through spiritual reform.  Like many other Americans opposed to slavery and who did not share his pacifist beliefs, Whittier realized  that his political position was becoming untenable.  Thus in reading accounts of Brown’s execution, Whittier seized upon a false report by New York Tribune journalist Henry Olcott, published on December 5, 1859.  That report concerned an imagined kiss given to a black child by John Brown on his way to execution.  In this poem, the exchange of this kiss transforms Brown’s violence into a new Christian redemption flowing from the power of love.  Whittier so refigures Brown from fighter to saint: “That kiss from all its guilty means re- / deemed the good intent, / And round the grisly fighter's hair / the martyr's aureole bent!” (lines 21-24) Lydia Maria Child’s "The Hero's Heart" employed the same fictitious report to characterize Brown’s death, although without the same emphasis on pacifism. 
          "An earlier critic such as Cecil D. Eby found Whittier's poem “an unforgivable outrage upon [historical truth]" and asserted that it produced enormous social harm not only for misrepresentation but because it “agitated a nation already hovering precariously upon the brink of war.” (Eby, “Whittier’s Brown of Ossawatomie,” New England Quarterly 33 (Dec. 1960). In a contemporary reading, Zoe Trodd locates this poem within attempts to revise...an understanding of Brown’s rebellion, common among African Americans, as self-defense.  The poem, she argues, constitutes an initial instance of many subsequent cultural attempts to gentle Brown’s legacy, denature the historical events, and avoid confronting the social implications of Brown’s violence." (Joe Lockard)

REFERENCES

Lydia Maria Child, The Freedmen’s Book (Boston: Fields, Osgood, & Co., 1869) 241.  

Whittier, The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1892) 258.

Both poems can also be found here:  http://antislavery.eserver.org/poetry/john-brown-poetry​