James Redpath, The Public Life of Captain John Brown

After an absence of three quarters of an hour, the Jury returned into Court with a verdict. At this moment the crowd filled all the space from the couch inside the bar, around the prisoner, beyond the railing in the body of the Court, out through the wide hall, and beyond the doors. There stood the anxious but perfectly silent and attentive populace, stretching head and neck to witness the closing scene of Old Brown's trial. It was terrible to look upon such a crowd of human faces, moved and agitated with but one dreadful expectancy — to let the eyes rest for a moment upon the only calm and unruffled countenance there, and to think that he alone of all present was the doomed one, above whose head hung the sword of fate. But there he stood, a man of indomitable will and iron nerve, all collected and unmoved, even while the verdict that consigned him to an ignominious doom was pronounced upon him. After recapitulating his offences set forth in the indictment, the Clerk of the Court said:

Gentlemen of the Jury, what say you? Is the prisoner at the bar, John Brown, guilty, or not guilty?

Foreman. Guilty.

Clerk. Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising with slaves and others to rebel, and murder in the first degree?

Foreman. Yes.

Not the slightest sound was heard in the vast crowd as this verdict was thus returned and read. Not the slightest expression of elation or triumph was uttered from the hundreds present, who, a moment before, outside the Court, joined in heaping threats and imprecations on his head; nor was this strange silence interrupted during the whole of the time occupied by the forms of the Court. Old Brown himself said not even a word, but, as on any previous day, turned to adjust his pallet, and then composedly stretched himself upon it.

Mr. Chilton moved an arrest of judgment, both on account of errors in the indictment and errors in the verdict. The objection in regard to the indictment has already been stated. The prisoner has been tried for an offence not appearing on the record of the Grand Jury. The verdict was not on each count separately, but was a general verdict on the whole indictment.

Counsel on both sides being too much exhausted to go on, the motion was ordered to stand over till to-morrow, and Brown was again removed unsentenced to prison.

“There he stood!” Alas! for the honor of the