CHARLES TOWN - The 1859 trial of John Brown was the most important trial in the history of America, historian Brian McGinty told an audience of about 200 people gathered in the Jefferson County Courthouse on October 15, 2009, the eve of 150th anniversary of Brown's raid on the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

The trial, especially Brown's final statement before his sentencing, set in motion the course to the Civil War, McGinty said. The raid, the trial, and the public reaction to them convinced Southerners that talk alone was not enough to protect their way of life; they needed to secede from the Union, and perhaps take up arms to do so.

Brown's trial also was the first trial to generate nationwide media attention, the first trial involving treason against a state instead of the nation, and the first to appeal to a higher moral law to justify criminal action. The trial also pitted two starkly different moral visions against each other: those who opposed slavery and those who supported it. If Brown had been killed in the October 16, 1859, raid, killed by a mob, or tried by a court martial as the Virginia governor had considered doing, he would not had had the public forum that his trial in Charles Town provided, McGinty said. Brown would have been known only as a cutthroat terrorist. Instead, his demeanor and eloquence during the four-day trial inspired even some slave owners to consider him a man of integrity, sincerity, and raw courage.

"Was the trial fair? That's not easy to answer," said McGinty, a retired California attorney who now lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, and has written seven books, including John Brown's Trial, published in October by Harvard University Press.

Brown was injured by three sword wounds and one saber stab above his heart, and he lay on a cot in the well of the courtroom during the trial because he could not sit or stand. Because of the laws at the time, he was not allowed to testify in his own defense, but he did question witnesses, challenge judicial rulings, and hire three attorneys to supplement the three the state provided.

His three attorneys, however, arrived after the trial began. The law at the time required Judge Richard Parker to indict and try Brown and his co-conspirators during the same term of court. The term of court in which they were arrested ended November 10.

"There's no question Parker conducted the trial with haste, but he had to," McGinty said.

If Judge Parker had postponed the indictment and trial until the next term of court, that would have meant waiting until April. There was a legitimate fear at the time that Northern sympathizers would help Brown escape, or that a pro-slavery mob would lynch him, McGinty said. 

Brown was captured on October 18, 1859. He and John Copeland, Edwin Coppoc, Shields Green, and Aaron Stevens were arraigned on October 25. On October 26 they were indicted for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, inciting slaves to rebel, and the murders of George Turner, Fontaine Beckham, Thomas Boerly, Heyward Shepherd, and Luke Quinn.

Charles Town lawyers Charles Faulkner, Lawson Botts, and Thomas C. Green were appointed as defense counsel for Brown, and his trial began on October 27. Once George Hoyt of Massachusetts, Samuel Chilton of Washington, D.C., and Hiram Griswold of Ohio, arrived, they took over the defense. Andrew Hunter and Charles Harding prosecuted the case. The trial lasted four days. The jury deliberated only 45 minutes before finding Brown guilty, and on November 2 Judge Parker sentenced him to hang. The sentence was carried out on December 2. Brown was 59 years old at the time of his death. 

Although the haste of the trial was not unusual, there are other reasons to doubt it was a fair trial, McGinty said.

"He was not an innocent man, at least not if guilt or innocence is determined by the laws of Virginia. But even guilty men are entitled to fair trials," McGinty said.

Brown said his main purpose in coming to Virginia was to free slaves.

According to the 1860 Census, Judge Parker owned ten slaves. The three court-appointed defense attorneys among them owned twenty-one slaves. Jurors owned at least fifty-four slaves (records for all of them could not be found). And magistrates involved in the case owned 105 slaves. The justices of the Virginia Supreme Court, who denied Brown's appeal without a written opinion, were slave owners.

McGinty's visit was sponsored by the West Virginia Humanities Council and the Circuit Court of Jefferson County and covered by a film crew from C-Span Book TV. It can be viewed at http://www.booktv.org/Watch/10910/John+Browns+Trial.aspx.

McGinty was invited to Charles Town by Twenty-Third Judicial Circuit Chief Judge David Sanders. The men met when McGinty took a tour of the Jefferson County Courthouse led by Judge Sanders. 

"I was leading a small group around the courthouse, re-telling the aspects of that famous building's history as I know it, when it became clear one of my listeners knew a great deal more about the trial of John Brown than I," Judge Sanders said.

"This book is the most comprehensive account of John Brown's trial that I have ever read," Judge Sanders said of McGinty's book. "He gives great detail, making the story absolutely come alive." 

The book can be ordered at http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/MCGJOH.html.

Fellow Circuit Judge John Yoder noted that he has lived in many of the same places as John Brown.

He grew up in Kansas, where school children are taught that Brown is a hero who saved residents of Lawrence, Kansas, from bloodthirsty pro-slavery raiders from Missouri. Judge Yoder graduated from law school at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He also lived in Wellman, Iowa, for three years, where Brown and his followers camped for two weeks during a trip across the country. Then Judge Yoder moved to Harpers Ferry twenty-five years ago. Now he works in the renovated courtroom where Brown was tried for treason.

"It is interesting how various regions of our nation view John Brown from completely different perspectives," Judge Yoder said in a recent newspaper column.

 The Yale University Law School has an on-line account of Brown printed in 1859 on its Avalon Project at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/john_brown.asp.




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