On December 2, 1859, a tall, thin, 59-year-old man rode on a wooden box in an open wagon.

The box was his coffin. He was going to his execution.

He just handed his jailer a note.

I, John Brown, know quite certain that the crimes of the guilty land will never be

purged away, but with blood.

It had painly flooded myself that without very much bloodshed, it might be done.

For most of his life, John Brown had been an obscure shepherd and tenant. Now he was a national

symbol.

Brown goes from being a very minor figure and the abolitionist war against slavery to the

emblematic figure of that, the defining figure in some ways.

To abolitionists, John Brown was a hero, a saintly man who killed for his beliefs. But others

saw him as the embodiment of evil, a murderer, and lunatic.

John Brown was fighting for the American Creed, putting into practice the words of Thomas

Jefferson that the tree of liberty should be watered with the blood of tyrants.

Brown carved a canyon in public opinion that split North and South, and no longer were

there any ties. Brown had taken his sword and sliced the connections.

The South rejoiced in the execution.

Throughout the North, church bells told them.

Some 1800 years ago, Christ was crucified.

This morning, Captain Brown was hung.

He is not old brown any longer.

He is an angel of light.

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