"In the minds of Southerners, Brown was the greatest threat to slavery the South had ever witnessed." His execution on December 2 was what most white Southerners wanted, but it gave them little relief from their panic. "The South was visibly beside itself with rage and terror." According to Dennis Frye, formerly the chief historian at the
Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, "this was the South's
Pearl Harbor, its
ground zero". Northern-inspired revolt of their allegedly happy enslaved was the South's worst nightmare, and it was taken for granted that others would soon follow in Brown's footsteps. In the North the result was the opposite. "We shall be a thousand times more Anti-Slavery than we ever dared to think of being before," proclaimed a Massachusetts newspaper. Huge prayer meetings were held in
Concord,
New Bedford,
Worcester, and
Plymouth, Massachusetts, and many other cities. Churches and temples were full of mourners. The chapel of
Yale College was draped in mourning. In
Concord, Massachusetts, a ceremony was held at the Town Hall, in which an organ had been placed for the occasion.
Henry Thoreau was a key speaker, as was
Ralph Waldo Emerson. The "celebrated" words of President
Thomas Jefferson on slavery were read. A considerable portion of the
Wisdom of Solomon was read. In
Albany, New York, Brown received a slow 100-gun salute. In
Syracuse, New York, City Hall was "densely packed" with citizens, who listened to over three hours of speeches and contributed "a large amount of money" to aid his family. The City Hall bell was rung 63 times, "the strokes corresponding with Brown's age". In Philadelphia, a sympathy meeting was held in
Shiloh Hall; In
National Hall there was that evening "an extensive Brown meeting", with "an overflow crowd of more than 4,000". Three letters Brown sent from jail were read, and
Theodore Tilton, whose speech was immediately published, compared the "martyr" Brown with Biblical figures and other historical martyrs. In Cleveland there was a crowd of 5,000; the Melodeon was draped in mourning. Across a main street was a banner with the quote: "I do not think I can better honor the cause I love than to die for it". Some businesses closed; in Akron, court adjourned. In
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 100 guns were fired at noon. In
Montreal, there were "numerously attended" meetings on December 2, at which a collection for Brown's family was taken. In
Port-au-Prince, Haiti, there were three days of mourning, all flags were at half-mast, and houses and the cathedral were draped in black. They raised $2,240 () to assist his widow Mary, which she had not received as of July 1860; Haitians also sent to the U.S. 2,000 bags of coffee, of each, to be sold to benefit the fund. In
Princeton, New Jersey, on December 3 students demonstrated against Brown, and burned
William H. Seward and
Henry Ward Beecher in effigy. The participation of former president
Franklin Pierce had been announced,
Publications , published by
Wm. Lloyd Garrison and sold at
The Liberator office. Newspapers and magazines had whole sections on the episode. A poster (broadside) was made of
Brown's last speech (see left). As there was as yet no process to print a photograph, a
lithographed [engraved] reproduction of his last photograph and his signature were offered for sale for $1, to benefit the Brown family. Pamphlets started to appear as soon as Brown was sentenced, before his execution. A pamphlet of
John A. Andrew, Republican candidate for Governor of Massachusetts, proudly states his connection with Brown, and his efforts for Brown's widow and children. There were also anti-Brown pamphlets. ''. Note skin colors of Black woman and her baby.
Currier and Ives print, 1863. in a birdcage, wearing a dress, as he did when fleeing Virginia in 1865, and carrying a sour apple. (In the marching song ''
John Brown's Body,'' Davis was to be hung from a sour apple tree.)
Minstrels rejoice beneath. 1865? It is no coincidence that the preface of the fourth, by the family's preferred biographer,
James Redpath, is dated December 25, 1859, as Brown was sometimes seen, and saw himself, as Christ, or Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery. On the title page it has a version of the seal of Virginia, with its motto, "
Sic semper tyrannis" ('Thus always to
tyrants'), exclamation point added. Virginia is now the tyrant, as explained on the day of Brown's sentencing by
abolitionist Wendell Phillips, to whom, along with
Thoreau and the young
Emerson, Redpath's volume is dedicated: {{blockquote|It is a mistake to call him an insurrectionist. He opposed the authority of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Commonwealth of Virginia!there is no such thing. There is no civil society, no government; nor can such exist except on the basis of impartial equal submission of its citizensby a performance of the duty of rendering justice between God and man. The government that refuses this is none but a pirate ship. Virginia herself is to-day only a chronic insurrection. I mean exactly what I sayI consider well my wordsand she is a pirate ship. John Brown sails with
letters of marque from God and Justice against every pirate he meets. He has twice as much right to hang Governor Wise as Governor Wise has to hang him. Total sales were over 36,000 copies. his self-sacrifice showed by example how important fighting the sin of slavery was. For the South, he was what he had been in pro-slavery Kansas: the devil stirring up the hornet's nest, a traitor to the
Constitution, which allegedly protected chattel slavery, and a murderer.
Local retaliation by Blacks The barns of all the members of the jury that convicted Brown were burned by slaves. On December 2, 1859, the day of his hanging, "the farm of a ruthless slaveholder killed at Harper's Ferry was burned, and his livestock poisoned by slaves." "Slaves in Maryland stopped a westbound train, carrying the rebellion into a different county, and five were arrested after trying to organize a horse-and-carriage 'stampede' to freedom." There was a "mass movement of self-liberation" among the slaves of Jefferson County. Jerry, an enslaved man from nearby
Clarke County, Virginia, was in January 1860 convicted of inciting a slave insurrection.{{cite news
Long-term results. The outbreak of the Civil War "The
attempt of John Brown has not had much effect, but the manner in which that attempt is received at the North is what has done the injury. The orations, speeches, sympathy, approval, the proposal to toll bells, close stores, &c., without any public manifestation to the contrary, has created a state of feeling at the South that is not to be described. ...In all our previous troubles I never had a shadow of fear as to the Union. ...But now I acknowledge that my fears amount almost to conviction that we shall see on the 5th [of December 1859] the
last Congress of the present Union assemble. ...The cry for dissolution is
sincere and
unanimous. It is no longer the ultras and the
fire-eaters."{{cite news "The execution of these prisoners is yet [1901] memorable in Virginia as one of the most impressive exhibitions ever given in the history of the State. It would have been eminently wise for the Virginia governor to have treated Brown and his followers as fanatical [insane] beyond full responsibility to the law, but the ostentatious exhibition of vengeance that came up from Virginia did much to deepen and widen the anti-slavery sentiment of the North. ...[H]e gave his life in such heroic devotion to his cause that the Northern people were impressed far beyond what they themselves had knowledge of." ==Reenactment==