Secession Era Editorials Project

The Martyr's Death and the Martyr's Triumph

New York, Tribune [Republican]

(9 December 1859)

Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather last evening, a large and attentive congregation assembled in the church of the Puritans, to hear a discourse from Dr. Cheever on the above subject. The reverend gentleman took for his text Matthew x., 27, 28. The tribute which he paid to the character of John Brown was lofty and eloquent. He described the lineage of the martyr, from Peter Brown, one of the Pilgrims of the Mayflower. He showed that God had impersonated His almighty protest against the reigning iniquity of the land in John Brown, and had sent him to throw it in the fact of the very perpetrators themselves. He pointed out various reasons for applying the word Martyr to the memory of John Brown, and said that excess had never made a martyr. John Brown's trial was that of a martyr; his deportment was that of a martyr; and like a martyr, he was a man of prayer; and it was a great consolation that God had chosen a Christian man to do justice to the discourse by mere allusion. We understand that the discourse is to be published in pamphlet form -- the profits accruing from the sale of which are to go to the family of John Brown.