by Ann Williams
Following the hearing of his sentence, Brown was allowed to make one last address to the court:
. . . I believe to have interfered as I have done . . . in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it be deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I submit: so let it be done.
The month that Brown spent in jail awaiting his forthcoming hanging, he received and sent letters. A friend of Brown’s from Kansas, Silas Soule, somehow managed to gain access into the prison, but when he tried to rescue his friend, Brown told him that he was ready to die as a martyr and Silas left him to his fate. The letters that Brown wrote were soon picked up by the local press, and his unfaltering beliefs and support for abolition gained him increasing numbers of supporters in the North, while infuriating the population of the South.
Brown’s loyal wife joined him for his last meal on December 1, but when they denied her permission to spend the night with her husband, it was the only time that John Brown was seen to lose his composure throughout the whole ordeal.
On the morning of December 2, Brown wrote a final letter to his wife which included his will, and then sat down and read his Bible. At 11 o’clock he was escorted through the crowds. Among the crowds was John Wilkes Booth, who is best known today as the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln. He had borrowed a militia uniform and stood guard during the execution. Brown refused the offer of a minister at the final hour, due to the fact that he had consistently rejected the ministrations of proslavery clergy. On his way to the gallows, Brown handed his jailer a note which read:
I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood.
Drawing strength from his own principles, John Brown was hanged at 11.15 a.m. As a last gesture of Southern contempt his body was placed in a basic wooden coffin with the noose still around his neck.
THE LEGEND
News of John Brown’s exploits shocked the nation. Many praised him for his fight against slavery, while others considered he had committed an evil crime. Many of Brown’s friends sent letters to Governor Wise of Virginia, but he chose to ignore them. The end of slavery of the United States came with the end of the Civil War in 1865. The war was fought to decide whether or not to allow slavery into the new territories and also in an effort to prevent the southern states from leaving the Union and forming an independent nation. People throughout the North gathered to mourn Brown, and church bells tolled throughout the region at the hour of his execution.
John Brown was buried in North Elba and was considered a hero among abolitionists. Already a legend, in 1861 a song was written about him called ‘John Brown’s Body’, which was set to the music of an old hymn:
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave,
But his soul goes marching on.
Chorus:
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
His soul goes marching on.
He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
He’s gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:
John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back,
John Brown’s knapsack is strapped upon his back,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:
John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
John Brown died that the slaves might be free,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:
The stars above in Heaven now are looking
kindly down,
The stars above in Heaven now are looking
kindly down,
His soul goes marching on.
Chorus:
Pogroms In Odessa
We saw a procession of peasants and townspeople, led by priests, carrying crosses and banners and images. We lived in fear till the end of the day, knowing that the least disturbance might start a riot, and a riot led to a pogrom.
Mary Antin (1881–1949)
The Russian word pogrom literally means ‘an outbreak of mass violence directed against a minority religious, ethnic or social group’. The Oxford English Dictionary records the first use of the word on March 17, 1882, when the Times stated ‘That the Pogromen [riots against the Jews] must be stopped . . .’ and gave the full definition as ‘an organized massacre in Russia for the destruction or annihilation of any body or class: orig. and esp. applied to those direction against the Jews’.
Before 1881 anti-Jewish violence in the Russian Empire was hardly ever heard of, being confined largely to the ever-expanding area of Odessa. In Odessa, two rival ethnic communities, the Greeks and the Jews, lived side by side and it was obvious that it wouldn’t be long before there would be some form of friction.
It was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 that threw the Russian government into chaos and directly preceded the first major outbreak of pogroms. The first pogrom flared up in Elizavetgrad when the new Tsar Alexander III blamed the Jews for having murdered his father. He issued a decree instructing the people to beat and plunder the Jews. Thousands of Jewish homes were destroyed, many families were reduced to exceptional poverty, women were sexually assaulted, and many men, women and children were injured in the frenzied attacks. After Elizavetgrad, a wave of pogroms spread throughout the southwestern regions, and in the first year there were at least 200 such riots.
The authorities turned a blind eye to the pogroms, feeling that the pogromists were justified in their actions, and the riots continued for more than three years. It was widely believed by many of the Jewish contemporaries that the pogroms could possibly have been organized or directed by the government itself, given their wide range and duration. However, in 1882 the new tsar, believing that the pogroms were not the result of revolutionary fervour but the action of the Jews themselves, issued a series of harsh restrictions on the Jewish community. These laws prohibited new Jewish settlement outside towns, or shtetles, prohibited Jews from buying property in the country, and also banned Jews from trading on Sundays or any Christian holidays. These new laws, instead of preventing further pogroms, instigated a new spread of violence and regular pogrom outbreaks lasted until June 7, 1884, culminating in a particularly vicious one in Nizhnii Novgorod, where the victims were killed with axes and thrown from the rooftops.
Situated at the centre of Odessa was the marketplace, and it was here that the pogroms of 1871 and 1881 took place. Throughout the market, Jewish stallholders were beaten, their stalls, stands and shops raided, and their goods were either stolen or destroyed. The pogrom spread to other parts of the city where the Jews were known to live or where they had businesses, schools and synagogues. The rioters broke into their houses, smashing windows, forcing doors open, destroying furniture and ripping open feather pillows and mattresses, a somewhat traditional, if pointless, element of the pogroms. Once again the government seemed to turn their backs on these outbursts, and only occasionally did they send an army in to dampen down the hostility.
An even worse wave of pogroms broke out during the years 1903–06, in which an estimated 2,000 Jews were killed and many more wounded. The New York Times described the first Kishinev pogrom that took place during Easter 1903 in the following way:
The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia, are worse than the censor will permit to publish. There was a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Russian Easter. The mob was led by priests, and the general cry, ‘Kill the Jews’, was taken up all over the city. The Jews were taken wholly unaware and were slaughtered like sheep. The dead number 120 [Note: the actual number of dead was 47–48] and the injured about 500.
The scenes of horror attending this massacre are beyond description. Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzies and blood-thirsty mob. The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.
The worst pogrom in the history of Jewish Odessa took place in October 1905, after Tsar Nicholas II was forced to sign the October Manifesto, which created a constitutional monarchy. At this time there were an estimated 175,000 Jews living inside the city of Odessa. The pogram enveloped the whole of the city and spread from the central streets to the outlying districts, predominantly Moldovanka, which was known to have a large and impoverished Jewish population. The riot lasted for three days and nights, and the frenzied crowds robbed shops, destroyed houses, tortured and killed Jews with knives, daggers and firearms, in fact nobody was spared, not even the women, elderly or children. This pogrom took 299 victims, the youngest of whom was one year old and the eldest 85. Thousands managed to escape to the city’s hospital, which was surrounded by solid stone walls, and this was where the wounded were brought for treatment. Following this last pogrom there was a considerable increase in the emigration of Jews out of Odessa.
Pogroms continued during the Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing Russian Civil War, and it is estimated that a further 70,000 to 250,000 Jewish civilians were slaughtered in the atrocities throughout the former Russian Empire. After the Civil War pogroms slowly died out, but anti-Semitism still persists in certain areas to this very day.
LASTING EFFECT
The horrendous pogroms of the 1880s caused public outcry throughout the world and, along with the harsh laws that had been imposed, they were instrumental in the mass emigration of Jews. Around two million Jews fled the Russian Empire between the years 1880 and 1914, many of whom made the United States their home. Also as a result of the pogroms, Jews became more politically active. The Bund, otherwise known as the General Jewish Labour Union, and the Jewish participation in the Bolshevik movements were a direct repercussion to the riots. Pogroms were also instrumental in the forming of Hibbat Zion, a pre-Zionist movement advocating the revival of Jewish life in the Land of Israel. Its adherents worked towards the physical development of the land and founded agricultural settlements in Palestine. By the time the First Zionist Congress met in 1897, they had already begun to transform the face of the Holy Land.
Assassination Of Tsar Alexander Ii
It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to wait for it to abolish itself from below.
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander was the eldest son of Tsar Nicholas I and was born on April 17, 1818, in Moscow. His mother was Charlotte of Prussia, daughter of Frederick William III of Prussia. In his early years he showed no aptitude towards politics, and indeed right up until the time of his accession in 1855, he showed no real potential for the duties required in his future role.
During his early years, poverty was rife in St Petersburg, compared to the riches of the royal court. Freedom of thought or indeed political innovation or initiative were not encouraged and both personal and official censorship was rife. Any criticism of the authorities was considered to be a very serious crime.
The young Alexander was educated in the same way as other young affluent Russians, and the topics included a small amount of knowledge on a great many subjects. Alexander showed no interest at all in military affairs, which was a great disappointment to his father, who had a great passion for the military. In fact his hard, demanding father considered his son too soft for his forthcoming role.
Alexander married Princess Marie of Hesse on April 16, 1841. She was the daughter of Ludwig II, and after their marriage she became known as Maria Alexandrovna. They had six sons and two daughters before her premature death in June 1880. Less than a month after Maria’s death, Alexander formed a morganatic marriage with his mistress, Princess Catherine Dolgoruki, with whom he had already had three children.
Alexander became the Tsar of Russia on the death of his father in 1855, and he fought hard for peace after the fall of Sevastopol, with the help of his trusted counsellor, Prince Gorchakov. The Crimean War had made Alexander realize that Russia was no longer a great military power, and that their economy was no match for the industrialized nations such as Britain and France. Alexander also had in his mind to eradicate serfdom in Russia, but the nobility were opposed to this move.
Alexander eventually got his own way and passed his Emancipation Manifesto in 1861, which proposed laws that would give freedom to the serfs. He publicly announced that personal serfdom would be abolished and that peasants would now be allowed to buy land from their landlords. The State would pay the landlords for the land, which they in turn would get back from the peasants through a payment scheme called redemption payments, which consisted of 49 annual payments.
During that year Alexander introduced many other reforms, and in 1864 he allowed each district to set up an authority called a Zemstvo. This gave the local councils power to provide roads, schools and medical services, which gave everyone a better standard of life. Alexander encouraged the expansion of industry and the railway network, and he introduced reforms that improved the municipal government.
However, through his new reforms Alexander made many enemies among the liberals and radicals, who wanted a parliamentary democracy with the power of freedom of speech. The reforms in agriculture did not appease the peasants and workers who wanted even better conditions. Radicals started to form secret societies and there was a rumour of revolutionary agitation. Alexander felt compelled to adopt severe and repressive measures to quell the revolutionaries.
In 1876 a group of reformers formed an organization called Land and Liberty. Their main aim was to fight for the peasants and their rights to own agricultural land. It was a punishable offence in Russia to criticize the government so the group held their meetings in secret. The men were influenced by the writings of a man named Mikhail Bakunun, who had published literature demanding that the government handed over agricultural land to the peasants. Some of these reformers even favoured terrorism to obtain reform, and this led to several assassination attempts on Tsar Alexander II.
ATTEMPTS OF HIS LIFE
The first attempt made on Alexander’s life was in 1866 in the city of Petersburg, by a man named Dmitry Karakozov. The tsar had a narrow escape on this occasion, and to commemorate his survival he held a competition to design a magnificent gate for the city. Viktor Hartmann, an architect, painter and costume designer, won the competition, but the gate was never to be built.
The second assassination attempt took place on the morning of April 20, 1879, when Alexander was walking towards the Square of the Guards Staff. He was confronted by a 33-year-old student, Alexander Soloviev, with a revolver in his hand. The tsar turned quickly and ran, and even though Soloviev fired several times, he never hit his target. Soloviev was subsequently sentenced to death and hanged on May 28.
Although the student was acting independently, there were plenty of revolutionary groups who were keen to see Alexander dead. Hoping to incite a social revolution, a radical group placed some explosives on the railway line from Livadia to Moscow, but the tsar didn’t get on the train as planned and so their attempts were futile. Another failed attempt took place on the evening of February 5, 1880, when the same band of revolutionaries placed some explosives underneath the dining room of the tsar’s Winter Palace. On this occasion the tsar was late for supper and was therefore unharmed by the explosion, which turned out to be rather less powerful than the revolutionaries had intended anyway.
However, March 1, 1881, proved to be a different story. Alexander was travelling through the snow to his Winter Palace in St Petersburg. The tsar was accompanied by guards, and next to the coach driver sat an armed Cossack and another six followed on horseback. By coincidence it was the day that the tsar had signed a document granting the first ever constitut
ion to the Russian people, but this was not known to the group of radicals calling themselves ‘Narodnaya Volya’ or ‘The People’s Will’. On a street corner near the Catherine Canal, they hurled the first of their hand-made bombs at the tsar’s carriage. The missiles missed the carriage and landed among the Cossacks instead. The tsar was unhurt, but he was insistent that he wanted to get out of the carriage to check the condition of his wounded guards. While he was standing with the wounded Cossacks, another terrorist by the name of Ignacy Hryniewiecki threw his bomb and this time it hit the target. The blast was so great that Alexander died instantly, as did the bomber himself. Of the other conspirators, Nikolai Sablin committed suicide before he could be arrested and Gesia Gelfman died in prison. The remainder were hanged on April 3, 1881.
Alexander’s assassin was a Pole, and it is theorized that Hryniewiecki wanted to resolve the issue of Russification by the assassination of the tsar. Russification was a process that the Russians had instigated to eradicate the Polish language in public places, schools and offices.
Alexander’s importance lies chiefly in his efforts to modernize Russia. He certainly had a great influence through his position as autocratic ruler and through his Great Reforms, although they didn’t always achieve what they set out to do. Alexander II, perhaps unknowingly, did much to hinder his own policies of reform, which finally set Russia on the road to revolution.
