s will only swell his market price,
And rivet on his chain.

God of all right! how long
Shall priestly robbers at Thine altar stand,
Lifting in prayer to Thee, the bloody hand
And haughty brow of wrong?

1843

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN

Oh, from the fields of cane,
From the low rice-swamp, from the trader's cell;
From the black slave-ship's foul and loathsome hell,
And coffle's weary chain;
Hoarse, horrible, and strong,
Rises to Heaven that agonizing cry,
Filling the arches of the hollow sky,
How long, O God, how long?

THE SENTENCE OF JOHN L. BROWN.

John L. Brown, a young white man of South Carolina, was in 1844
sentenced to death for aiding a young slave woman, whom he loved and had
married, to escape from slavery. In pronouncing the sentence Judge
O'Neale addressed to the prisoner these words of appalling blasphemy:

You are to die! To die an ignominious death--the death on the gallows!
This announcement is, to you, I know, most appalling. Little did you
dream of it when you stepped into the bar with an air as if you thought
it was a fine frolic. But the consequences of crime are just such as you
are realizing. Punishment often comes when it is least expected. Let me
entreat you to take the present opportunity to commence the work of
reformation. Time will be furnished you to prepare for the great change
just before you. Of your past life I know nothing, except what your
trial furnished. That told me that the crime for which you are to suffer
was the consequence of a want of attention on your part to the duties of
life. The strange woman snared you. She flattered you with her word;
and you became her victim. The consequence was, that, led on by a desire
to serve her, you committed the offence of aid in a slave to run away
and depart from her master's service; and now, for it you are to die!
You are a young man, and I fear you have been dissolute; and if so,
these kindred vices have contributed a full measure to your ruin.
Reflect on your past life, and make the only useful devotion of the
remnant of your days in preparing for death. Remember now thy Creator in
the days of thy youth is the language of inspired wisdom. This comes
home appropriately to you in this trying moment. You are young; quite
too young to be where you are. If you had remembered your Creator in
your past days, you would not now be in a felon's place,