Brown John



John Brown, 3 Execution Relics Including Pieces of Rope, Coat, and Coffin







3 relics from John Brown's execution handsomely presented in a display featuring copies of the original provenance. Pieces of Brown's coat, noose, and coffin are displayed above a detail of John Steuart Curry's portrait of John Brown from his Kansas State Capitol Building mural "Tragic Prelude." The relics were recovered by Captain Richard Adams after the abolitionist's hanging at Charles Town, Virginia on December 2, 1859, and come from the Donald P. Dow Collection of Americana.







1. The .25" x .375" swatch of Brown's coat that he had worn at Harper's Ferry was extracted from the tangled noose. The provenance reads: "John Brown (ossawatomio) Pieces of his coat and rope with which he was hung, coffin in which he was first put in after he was hung at Charlestown, VA Dec 2, 1859 Pres by Capt Richard Adams 1860." John Brown was referred to as "Osawatomie Brown" because he unsuccessfully defended free state Osawatomie, Kansas against pro-slavery raiders in August 1856.







2. Several strands from the noose. The provenance, translated from original German, reads: "John Brown. A piece of the coat he wore when taken prisoner, a piece of the rope used to hang him, and a piece of the coffin he was laid in. Charlestown, December 2nd 1859."







3. A .375" x .125 wooden fragment from Brown's coffin. The provenance reads: "John Brown, pieces of his coat captured in the rope hung with and the coffin first put in when executed at Charlestown Dec 2, 1859 Pres by Capt Rich. Adams 1860."







John Brown was charged with murder, treason, and inciting slave insurrection following his abortive raid of the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia. His execution was witnessed by thousands of military cadets and faculty from the nearby Virginia Military Institute, including Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson and John Wilkes Booth.







Brown was hanged at 11:15 am. Eyewitnesses John T.L. Preston and "Stonewall" Jackson reported that, after the rope securing the trapdoor was severed, Brown's body dropped between 25-36" inches. Brown did not die immediately, instead "growing feebler and feebler at each abortive attempt to breathe. His knees were scarcely bent, his arms were drawn up at a right angle at the elbow, with the hands clenched; but there was no writhing of the body, no violent heaving of the chest," as Preston recalled in a December 15, 1859 letter to his wife. After Brown was declared dead at 11:50 am, his body was placed into a black walnut coffin, with the noose still around his neck. Sometime during the transfer of the body, Brown's black frock coat became tangled with the heavy noose.







Incredible relics from John Brown's execution!







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