Asia has a fleeting memory of sitting on his bed at Tudor Hall, listening to him talk about the insurrection at St. Timothy’s. His excitement is just as boyish as then. “The best time in my life,” is what she remembers him saying. And now he’s had a better.
* * *
—
The Grays go first to Washington, where they have enough time between trains to march on the city in a spirited display. John’s borrowed some bits of uniform, a musket, and he marches directly behind the governor. The man next to him carries the Grays’ flag with the state motto in curling letters: Sic semper tyrannis. They circle the White House three times, expecting every minute that President Buchanan will come out to salute them. This doesn’t happen. He appears to be asleep.
Wise gives a speech. When he’s president, he says, he will never sleep through an invading army. It’s the least, really, one can ask of a president, that he be awake when troops descend on the Capitol.
They leave Washington, unheralded. The total trip takes twenty-one hours. They ride on three trains and one steamship, crossing through Maryland, over planted fields and plantations, then through wild gorges and tumbled rocks. Harpers Ferry lies at the juncture of the Potomac and the blue necklace of the Shenandoah. “Remember Niagara?” John asks Asia. “Almost that beautiful. Almost forgot how tired and hungry I was. Almost.”
Finally they arrive at Charlestown. Rain is bucketing down, the ground a churn of mud. They must stand at attention in this storm, water streaming from their hat brims, while Governor Wise gives more speeches from the shelter of a nearby porch. Then the Charlestown city leaders make barracks for them out of houses and schools.
No abolitionists ever arrive. It now appears there was never an army on the way. The sortie turns social. The young women of Charlestown insist on a ball so that they can meet the soldiers. One red-haired flower tells John over a glass of punch that she feels as if she’s in an Austen novel.
He’s given the position of quartermaster sergeant, for which he draws a salary. He keeps a military discipline, drilling in the mornings, helping to manage provisions in the afternoon. In the evenings, he tells stories and performs soliloquies on command. He couldn’t have enjoyed himself more if there’d been actual fighting.
* * *
—
John Brown asks to be spared the steady stream of visitors come to gawk at him. He doesn’t wish, he says, to be a monkey show. And yet, on December 1st, John manages to enter his cell. He doesn’t tell Asia what they said to each other and she doesn’t ask. But she can see that the experience has moved him deeply. “He was a brave old man,” he says. “I could see him scanning the horizon for his rescuers when he stood before the scaffold. His heart must have broken when he felt himself deserted.”
John has a souvenir for Asia—John Brown’s spear with the words Major Washington to J Wilkes Booth written on the handle in ink. He swings her legs aside, runs upstairs to fetch it. Asia lies very still, waiting for him. Outside some men pass, singing drunkenly some song about the pleasures of being drunk. Irish by the sound of them, no surprise there. Probably relatives of Mary Devlin’s.
She sits up when she hears John’s footsteps. There’s a moment of dizziness, a brief blackness before her eyes, and then John puts the spear in her hand and she feels the weight, the reality of it. John Brown’s spear! Had he used it? The wood is splintering slightly. A tiny piece, like a thorn, goes into her palm. Not deep enough to make her bleed, just a prick. John pulls it out easily with his fingers.
He’s kneeling by the sofa, the lamplight shining on his black hair. “Give the spear to your son,” he says. “When he’s old enough to value it.” He’s still appalled by the raid, the lives lost, the terrible idea of slaves with guns. He’s glad Brown went to the gallows. But he can’t help but note the old man’s stoicism. He admires men of action, men who live their principles without apology or compromise. Brown is an instrument of evil, but also a Shakespearean hero.
On December 2nd, John was there, in the crowd to see Brown hang.
* * *
—
He returns to Richmond to learn he’s been fired from the theater for desertion. But his brothers-in-arms, the Richmond Grays, lay siege to the Marshall until he’s hired again. Though he says to Asia that he’s less interested in acting now. Maybe being a soldier is his true vocation. “He’s wild to do it,” she tells Mother and Rosalie next morning.
Mother responds with alarm. War seems more likely with every passing day. She should never have said a word to anyone about that long-ago night when, baby John at her breast, the harbinger of an anointing arm rose from the fire. She really can’t bear to lose him. It makes her hysterical to think of it.
She tells him it would kill her if he enlisted. “I love my children above my country,” she says. “I love my children above all.” She sobs into her hands. From behind the screen of tears, she whispers the names of Frederick, Mary Ann, Elizabeth, and Henry—her sad roster of lost loves. By the time she’s finished, he’s promised never to go to war.
Lincoln Goes to Kansas
John Brown has shown great courage, rare unselfishness . . . But no man, North or South, can approve of violence or crime.
—Abraham Lincoln, December 1859
As Brown is being hanged, Lincoln is traveling to Kansas, braving the weather and the uncertain roads. This is much appreciated, all the more so since the audiences are small and hardly worth the effort. Few politicians come to Kansas in December. Fewer have Lincoln’s national profile.
So the Republicans there are gratified, but also firmly Seward’s people, their own feelings about slavery radicalized by the boil of terrorism and murder in which they’ve been living. They see no reason to switch to Lincoln, much as they like him. Despite this, Lincoln’s chances for nomination have materially improved and their own John Brown is responsible.
In the shock of the insurrection, Seward is suddenly too extreme. Every effort must be made to disassociate the Republican Party from Harpers Ferry. John Brown, it is said, has killed the Seward presidency dead.
If Seward is too radical for the conservatives, Bates is too conservative for the radicals. What’s needed now is a moderate. What’s needed now is Lincoln.
* * *
—
Lincoln’s private opinion is that Brown, while right in his beliefs, was wrong in his actions.
* * *
—
Lincoln’s private opinion is that Brown was insane and those slaves who did not come to his side when called were not.
* * *
xvi
The following winter is severe. Snow drifts against the front door during the night and Sleeper has to push with his shoulder to crack the seal of ice in the morning. One morning he can’t do it, and has to leave through the kitchen, where the stove has already warmed things up. Rosalie, going out for groceries, takes a bad fall and is helped home by two men, each so drunk at ten in the morning as to make it unclear who is holding up whom. Rosalie mentions several times the fact that, in Baltimore, the grocery was right next door—it was a matter of a minute to fetch the eggs and bread no matter what the weather. If this is intended to irritate Asia, it works. They have servants to go for the groceries. There was no need for Rosalie to leave the house.