John Brown Meeting the Slave Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charleston Jail on His Way to Execution

John Brown Meeting the Slave Mother and Her Child on the Steps of Charleston Jail on His Way to Execution (New York, 1863)

This popular Currier & Ives print, after a painting by Louis L. Ransom, was captioned "Regarding them with a look of compassion." No such encounter is known to have taken place, and it should also be noted that the guard is dressed in a Revolutionary-era uniform, a reminder that the battle for liberty is still to be won.

Thomas Satterwhite Noble, John Brown's Blessing (1867)

The New-York Historical Society

This painting also draws upon the same iconographic materials as did the Ransom/ Currier & Ives representation of "the fallen hero." As one commentator has written: "Looking more like a patriarch of the church than a dangerous religious fanatic, white-bearded John Brown emerges from jail, a phalanx of bayonets behind him to symbolize his martyrdom by the state."

Thomas Hovenden, The Last Moments of John Brown (c. 1884)

The Fine Arts Museum of San Francico

Though difficult to see in this reproduction, Hovenden shows John Brown wearing the noose that would hang him. Even after twenty-five years, the familiar image continued to play powerfully upon the emotions of both artists and viewers.

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