[263] Lieutenant Green, as soon as he saw John Brown, although he was unarmed, (according to the testimony of a Virginian,) struck him in the face with his sabre, which instantly knocked him down. Not content with this brutality, the Lieutenant repeated the blow several times, and then another soldier ran a bayonet twice into the prostrate body of the old man.1 The scenes that followed this assault are so discreditable to Virginia-nay, to human nature — that I dare not trust myself to describe them; but will content myself with quoting the accounts of two ultra pro-slavery journalists. This is the report of the Baltimore American:
When the insurgents were brought out, some dead and others wounded, they were greeted with execrations, and only the precautions that had been taken saved them from immediate execution. The crowd, nearly every man of which carried a gun, swayed with tumultuous excitement, and cries of “ Shoot them! shoot them!” rang from every side. The appearance of the liberated prisoners, all of whom, through the steadiness of the marines, escaped injury, changed the current of feeling, and prolonged cheers took the place of howls and execrations. The lawn in front of the engine house, after the assault, presented a dreadful sight. Lying on it were two bodies of men killed on the previous day, and found inside the house; three wounded men, one of them just at the last gasp of life, [Anderson;] and two others groaning in pain. One of the dead was Brown's son Oliver. The wounded father and his son Watson were lying on the grass, the old man presenting a gory spectacle. He had a severe bayonet wound in his side, and his face and hair were clotted with blood.Porte-Crayon, a Virginia artist and author, and a fiendish historian of the holy Invasion, thus writes of the same infamous scene:
