John Brown walks to the gallows and, as he does so, hands the jailer six lines of memo. In them, the Puritan, with impressive foresight, depicted the catastrophe looming over the United States of America: “Charleston, Virginia, December 2, 1859. I, John Brown, am now fully certain that the crimes of this guilty country will never be atoned for except in blood. I, as I now believe, have vainly flattered myself that this could be accomplished without much bloodshed.”
