Chapter Text
2nd of December, 1859 (11:00 AM)
Charles Town, Virginia
Around two-thousand soldiers were gathered around a carriage. Inside the carriage was not an honored guest or a high-ranking official. No, guarded by two-thousand was just one man convicted of treason. The man was on his way to the gallows, sitting on his own coffin.
The man on the coffin had no chance of escape; all of his allies had been driven out of the city, there had not even been a minister available that could dare visit the man lest they draw the ire of the town.
Yet, despite his upcoming, inevitable death, the man seemed calm. His mortal body would soon lie moldering in a grave, that much was inevitable. He had already finished his divinely ordained mission, spending his last month in prison responding to letters, talking to reporters, doing everything to advance the cause he had fought for all his life.
The man was too old to run away and become a fugitive; he had accepted that he’d commit one last great act, that of becoming a martyr.
The carriage finally came to a stop in front of a wooden scaffold that had a noose prepared on top of it. He walked in a composed and calm manner, as if he was going for dinner and not to his death.
He uttered what’d be his last words to the sheriff.
“This is a beautiful country.”
He had a clear view of the surroundings from the platform. Two entire battalions of troops were protecting him, a mostly ordinary old man if not for his unordinary acts. They had even put a cannon directed at the scaffolding. It was clear that he had succeeded in his death; he had succeeded in striking fear in the heartless heart of the South.
If they were so afraid of one old man, what’d they do when others inevitably followed in his footsteps?
The noose, made out of cotton from South Carolina, was finally tied to the man’s neck along with a hood covering his head.
The audience was silent. The troops had done their best to make sure no one sympathetic to him was nearby. The circle of men around him was so large that nobody outside the circle would be able to hear him if he had decided to hold one last speech.
Yet, the troops could not drive off the man’s greatest collaborator that still listened to him, for the man knew that the Lord was still here with him.
He had instructed the sheriff not to make him wait. Without much delay, the noose tightened around his neck following a short drop.
He was left to slowly suffocate.
Yet, something odd happened before he fully lost consciousness.
Suddenly the man’s vision turned fully white, as if some divine light had suddenly engulfed him. He felt as if he was floating on top of clouds, not suffocating anymore.
He heard a faint voice that seemed to come from a great distance “Damn it, I asked for Jon Brown, not John Brown!” The voice seemed to be extremely annoyed. “How do you people mess up so badly! There’s a whole bloody century and a half between the two!”
The aforementioned John Brown was greatly discombobulated. He had been ready to die. He was definitely not ready for whatever was happening.
“Alright, just send him anyways. I can’t bother with fixing this mess.”
The white void around Brown slowly faded, turning to a black void while he finally went unconscious…