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The author of the annexed crude production has no better apology to offer for his extreme assurance in presenting it to the public than a statement of the facts which explain its conception.
A short time before the actual breaking out of the present war, the Virginia Historical Society honored him with a request that be would prepare, for the sake of historic reference, a brief chronicle of what was termed the "Harper's Ferry Rebellion."
This was at once acceded to; but absence from this country, to which he returned but a few months prior to the commencement of hostilities, prevented more than a partial completion of his engagement when a higher duty called him to the field. Since that time, until recently, he has had no opportunity of prosecuting the work which he had undertaken, and the difficulties of which were greatly increased by the destruction of his original manuscript and material by Patterson's soldiers. Lately, taking advantage of a furlough which a slight wound obtained, the writer recommenced the task which he had engaged to perform.
Becoming interested in a subject, an investigation of which disclosed so much which related to the causes and objects of the present war, he has somewhat enlarged upon his first plan and indulged in a slight glance at some of the interesting features of the second as well as the first rebellion against the majesty of an established compact.
Hoping, in the language of all authors, that the Confederacy and mankind may derive no little blessing from this effort of his genius, he beseeches the compassion a generous public.
The boyhood of great men is the most universally interesting period of their lives. The mystery of greatness does not then hide nature. Then their characters may be seen written out, as it were, in boyish folly or precocious virtuous action, and, in the transparent experience of that age, something discovered of the impulses and springs of natures that soared above the masses of mankind.
The "pomp and circumstance" which usually encircles triumphant manhood is apt to conceal from common view those master motives and secret thoughts which reveal the sources of greatness. But in early youth this impenetrable halo is not yet formed, and the veins and nerves of undeveloped heroism lie patent to the vulgar gaze. Hence it is that all men love to study the boyhood of the great.
The same is true of great revolutions. Within the narrow and intelligible outlines of their small beginnings, it is often possible to contemplate the principal agencies of a commotion that is destined to change the direction of human progress. However petty they seem in their smallness, they are yet important from the representative causes which participate in them, and hence interesting.
It is pleasant, too, to discover the connection between the great and small events of history; to find the keys, as it were, to great mysteries. For there is always much mystery about great revolutions. The ignorant and the learned alike find them hard to comprehend, and though the latter may entertain
their vanity with compiling records of inexplicable combinations, coincidence, and sequences, they will neither enlighten nor amuse the less patient masses. Indeed, the philosophers themselves are apt to lose their way amid the world of moral phenomena that envelopes them at every step.
The numberless moral forces which concur in producing the bewildering chaos of such historic periods, obscure the main causes of the general change, and when out of the confusion there finally arises new ideas and institutions which, by methods known only to God, are worked out as its legitimate fruits, philosophic ingenuity is exercised rather to find out the direct causes of these than the master causes of the revolution. The very multitude of the events that crowd in such periods, without considering their causal relations, is sufficient to defy human analysis. And then the all-absorbing torrent of exciting incidents, the trifling, perhaps, overshadowing the more important, lighting up with the splendor of glorious action the incomprehensible vast theatre upon which endless lines of battle stretch, form a complex picture of history which dazzles and confounds the deepest philosophers. Reason is lost amid the thousand labyrinths it is called upon to wind, and the imagination captivated with the grand efforts of military genius or the sublimity of individual heroism. Hence it is difficult to comprehend the meaning and character of a great revolution by surveying it when arrayed in all the pride and strength of maturity. It is far better to regard it in its first openings, when the buddings of its vital principles are visible and the innumerable auxiliaries have not yet come forth to plunge all in confusion. Or, to use another figure, it is more profitable to sail up the apparently shoreless stream of human events, which represent the course of a great revolution, until we can behold its banks and determine its general direction.
The stranger who rides in a solitary bark upon the placid waters of a majestic river, where, with viewless banks, it debouches into the sea, strains his eyes in vain to obtain some conception of the nature and origin of the stream upon which he floats. Chance may direct his course until, in his ascent, he beholds, on either side, lining the horizon, the distant shores; and still the wide expanse which stretches out before him baffles his vision and confounds his judgment.
He must still ascend to where the neighboring banks, with outstretched arms meeting in the distance, bound in the rushing tide, ere he can form any idea of the character of the
stream. Here, if he pauses on this inland lake, contemplating the well-defined scene of a beautiful river, kissing with its silver waves the rock-bound shores, notwithstanding the little bays and creeks which occasionally interfere with a correct apprehension of the landscape, he will soon form a clear idea of the origin, nature, and direction of the stream upon which he looks.
If he proceeds still further, and passing in his upward course the broad valleys, fertile meadows, and winding vales, through which its gradually diminished volume ascends, he will, in time, find himself threading dark hollows and romantic gorges, through which the river, now become a brook, with mimic roar or trembling music, winds its fitful and capricious course.
Once more he is involved in confusion as to the general direction of the stream. The unsatisfactory vastness of a shoreless sea he has exchanged for the sunless and perplexing gloom of mountain forests, and, bewildered with the mazes he has trodden, he regards the brawling rivulet at his feet, and can neither tell whence it comes nor whither it goes.
Thus is it with one who explores the stream of events that make up a great revolution. If he strolls along the edges of rivulets which, successively uniting, form its head-waters, he can learn no more concerning its geographical course and general characteristics than where, with apparently boundless volume, it stretches on to mingle its crystal waves with the blue billows of the ocean. Those small beginnings which, far back in the hills of time, barely suggest the mighty tide which they will one day help to swell, can scarcely be said to foreshadow the character of events which, from their magnitude and novelty, are destined to astonish nations. And, likewise, when the full-blown grandeur of its fierce maturity is reached, when the authority of custom is rejected and the accumulated wisdom of generations despised, and millions of armed men fill a continent with the pomp, din, and horror of war, the same mystery surrounds the secret of its birth and progress.
So that to obtain a few clear ideas concerning the causes and general characteristics of a great revolution, it is necessary to contemplate it at some point of its development where neither the obscurity of its dawn nor the impervious grandeur of its meridian brightness is encountered. One must select that period when the laws of its nature are just clearly unfolded, and the scale upon which they are exhibited admits of a determination of their tendency.
Now, it seems to me that that part of the present revolution which corresponds to this is that embraced in the length and breadth of the Harper's Ferry insurrection. It constitutes the first rebellion against the compact of peace and mutual interest, which at first was gradually formed by independent States within themselves, and afterwards was increased by the addition of a confederate superstructure.
It has an individuality distinct from the second rebellion of '61, though it may be regarded as a precocious and premature manifestation of their common causes. It preceded and prefigured the second rebellion, and is of interest, not only as forming an essential part of the development of the latter, but as furnishing in its petty outlines a photographic image of its prominent features. Upon its narrow stage was acted a small drama, typical of the great tragedy which now fills a continent, and in its single actors one sees personified those human passions which have animated the respective portions of the rebel masses at the North, in their insane attempt to dethrone the majesty of established laws and institutions.
Regarding the outbreak upon the Virginia border, in 1859, in such a character, we propose to embrace, in an investigation of its various causes and in a brief narrative of their practical development, an analysis also of those moral principles which, budding, blooming, and fructifying at the North, have at length resulted in producing the present terrible war.
The insurrectionary outbreak, known as the John Brown raid, belongs to that peculiar class of events which are denominated by an astonished public as extraordinary and unaccountable, but which subsequent developments prove to have been the first indication of a new state of things, or the beginning of a period of change and revolution.
John Brown was the first practical exponent of a radical system of ideas, that, for some time before his emeute, had almost entirely subjugated the northern intellect. What had been preached by others and received by the majority, he put
in practice. Revolutions of ideas always precede those of action, but are never acknowledged to have occurred until discovered in the new forms of commonplace events.
That change of opinion which, in logical order, preceded this insurrectionary outbreak, is older than the American Republic. It may be discovered in almost any period of our colonial history. Indeed, it began with the first Puritan sect who confounded the idea of a free and equal salvation with wild notions of political equality.
The peculiar sins of the founders of the Puritan religion, and which have been faithfully transmitted to their descendants, were self-righteousness, covetousness, love of power, and envy of their superiors. While these, no doubt, are to be found among the back-sliders of all denominations, yet nowhere do they grow with such rank luxuriance, as in the soil of a bad Puritan's heart. There they flourish in the wildest wantonness, and are conspicuous among the host of smaller sins which ever attend them.
Now, with these evil propensities belonging to natures obstinate and energetic, as all Puritans are, it may be conjectured that a designing, wicked intelligence, could perform much mischief in the world.
Their overweening pride, their envy of the powers that be, and their utter contempt for that spirit of consideration for others which produces social peace and harmony, was a great temptation to the Devil to use them for the purpose of setting christendom by the ears. And this seems to have been effected by him upon more than one occasion since the origin of the sect.
The moral consequences, in their case, seem to have been according to the law that made Satan himself pre-eminent among the fallen. As he was the brightest of all who ministered around the heavenly throne, so when overcome by pride and envy he fell, he became the most active, energetic and efficient, of all the fallen spirits to plot and to do evil.
Now, perhaps it may be said with propriety, that the Puritans aimed at a higher standard of excellence than any of the reformers. Certainly the standard which they professed to have attained, was far above that which others reached. Hence, it seems, that as their virtues were of primal excellence their sins were the most diabolical, and likewise, as the qualities of faith, veneration, and obedience, seem to have made the Jews the favorite people of the Almighty, so those of
pride, love of power, and envy, seem to have made the Puritans the pet darlings of Satan. Their palm of infamy is undisputed; the judgment of history has pronounced upon their merits, and "by their fruits ye shall know them," is the equitable statute that convicts this people, before an impartial world, of a pre-eminence in evil.
Much of the history of the world has never been written, and that which has had the most skillful delineators, is but little understood. The fathomless depths of human motive, escape the penetration of the historian, and the mysterious influence of trifling events is ill comprehended. But, if the history of the Devil's administration among the armies of evil could be written in a book, it would aid greatly in dispelling the obscurity that surrounds the past. And the history of the Puritans since the origin of their religion, if faithfully depicted, would, in all probability, constitute an important chapter of the book.
The Puritans have always maintained two apparently contradictory cardinal doctrines. First, that as Jesus Christ died for all men, and salvation is offered free to all, so men are equal in all things. Second, that to the saints belong the government of the world, and, they being the saints, are the divinely commissioned lords of creation.
The first assumed an importance in their practical life that did not attach to it from its natural significance, in their system of moral truths, so much as from the social condition of its advocates from the beginning.
They were all men of vulgar origin, and of that pestilent, envious class of low people, who readily receive any theory of religion or politics, whiah brings down the great, the intellectual, and the good, to their own level. They found society recognizing the fact that they had social superiors, and so they the more readily believed and inculcated the doctrines of equality. They found themselves without that taste and refinement of the heart, and incapable of that chivalry of disposition, which belonged to their superiors, and so they proscribed these with the other sins which they professed to abhor. And thus it happens, to the surprise and disgust of enlightened mankind, that from the very foundation of their order, it has been a part of their transmitted system to despise and denounce those soft and refining qualities of the heart which, in all ages, have been recognized as the essential qualifications of gentlemen.
The second cardinal doctrine mentioned, ignores and disavows that equality which the first proclaims. It does not, however, interfere with the advantages of the first, by intruding itself in a painful proximity to it. Like two faithful sentinels, these doctrines relieve each other, never both remaining on duty at the same time. The first is always preached when the saints are of the governed, the second they have the wisdom to keep silent about, except when they get the reins of government in their own hands.
There are three periods in their history when they proclaimed the second; and during the time of its ascendency, the first was forgotten. When Cromwell, like an exhalation in the evening, excited the astonishment and wonder of mankind; when New England rejoiced in a religious persecution of all disbelievers in Puritan perfection; and now when, upon the backs of black republican masses, they have exhalted their opinions and their priests into federal power. Yet, in the several intervals between these periods, they have exhausted the powers of their rhetoric and the vehemence of their vindictive passions, in denouncing what they term the unequal asperities of the social and political surface.
It is their fate to be always busy. Like the wretched wandering Jew of romance, their lease of life rests upon a ceaseless activity. Progress, whether towards evil or good, seems to be a necessity of their restless energetic natures, and, with their propensities, some conjecture may be formed, from the very nature of the case, what an amount of evil these Puritans have accomplished. They are of that class whom the sacred writer thus describes: "The wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt."
While other denominations have frequently merited the charge of bigotry, it has been their peculiar, privilege to illustrate fanaticism. They have always been fanatical and extremists in all things. The error that was committed in making their standard unnatural and overdrawn, distorted their views and petrified and deformed what little of nature they had in the beginning. In the light of their system, genuine charity is an ever retreating phantom of the brain that they neither practice nor understand, and those who are supposed to possess it differ from their fellows only in being either less covetous or more politic. For charity of heart, a forgiving disposition, and tenderness for the wretched, are virtues that
never grow spontaneously in Puritan soil, and even when transplanted, have
but the perishable beauty of the exotic, and soon disappear. For these Christian
qualities, whose importance is so frequently dwelt upon in holy writ, they,
imposing upon their imaginations, substitute an artificial sentimental sympathy
for the remotely distant oppressed of the human race, artfully deluding their
consciences by pretending to feel for the oppressed, when the emotion is really
hatred of the prosperous oppressor. In this Way "They compound for sins they are
inclined to, By damning those they have no mind to."
And so profitable do
they find this kind of moral exercise, that, by their devotion to it, they
invariably succeed in mistaking the beams in their own eyes for spots upon their
neighbor's character.
With such general propensities as these, it is not surprising that they have played the chief part in the destruction of the American edifice of civil and religious freedom. In mercy to the interest and the hopes of the American nation, Providence seems to have cast them upon the cold and bleak hills of New England. But their rebellious natures were not to be starved or chilled into a decent submission to the Divine will. And the Devil, who never forsakes his friends, converted the very hardness of their lot into the means of their destruction. From the barren rocks of New England, they regarded with wishful eyes the fertile fields and comfortable homes of their southern brethren. In their abundance, and happy lots, they discovered a partiality on the part of Deity, which made them, like Cain, rebellious against God and anxious to slay their brethren. And, meditating upon their comparative penury and the luxurious wealth of their brethren, they surrendered themselves up to an envy and hatred, which prompted them to attempt the ruin of the South. That such was their object, they did not of course admit to themselves; but, for the gratification of their own consciences, as well as to conceal their purposes, they called their antagonism to the South the antipathy of free to slave labor. It may be true, and perhaps is, that they disapprove of southern institutions. But it was the corroding cankers of unchristian envy and personal hatred, that made them at first the unconscious, and afterwards the avowed, enemies of the southern people.
Their hostility was first manifested in their orations and their writings. But when they found their arguments disregarded, and their officious counsel indignantly spurned, they abandoned the use of moral force against a stiff-necked people; and, in the depths of their fraternal solicitude and affection, proclaimed a crusade against their political brethren and advocated the military modes of rescuing people from the consequences of their own mad follies.
If it were possible to state in one word the origin of the Brown movement, and the subsequent sectional conflict of which it was an integral part, that one word would be Puritanism. Not that it was the only cause; but the principal one. Nor even that it caused it by directly making war upon the Union, and arraying itself as a sect in irrepressible conflict against it.
It was rather because it perverted other moral forces which were the spontaneous productions of northern soil, and directed them in hostility against the Union. From those evil propensities which ever characterize the Puritan nature, which germinated and flourished and fructified with great prolificacy, under the fructifying beams of the northern sun of liberty, came the baleful influence that withered the conservative principles of virtue in northern society and converted the radicalism which it helped to create into a sort of politico-religious antagonism to southern institutions.
Puritan ideas have long since subjugated the northern mind. They cannot claim any dominion except what their intellectual conquests have given them. But by means of this they have acquired some power over the northern heart.
The people of the South possess the qualities of the old cavaliers, not so much that they are all descendants of cavaliers as because the cavaliers have always been, from the beginning, the influential class. From the earliest colonial settlement they have always held the social power, and hence have given laws to all who aimed at honor or distinction.
In the North, the same is true of the Puritans; with this difference: the influence exercised by the cavalier in the South has been principally social, and, through that as a means, politics and religion have, in some measure, been effected. The influence exerted by the Puritans in the North, has been, on the other hand, principally religious, and through that, political and social.
Now, the history of mankind indisputably shows that religion, when it strays from its proper sphere, and interferes with the political or social relations, has a tendency to corrupt and degrade what it designs to improve; while social influence over politics and religion has always been, on the average, beneficial.
And thus it is that the influence of the cavalier in the South has had a tendency to produce those virtues of charity and self- respect and honor, which soften the acerbities of the political, and adorn even the religious life; while the influence of the Puritans in the North has had quite the opposite effect. For the political and social influence of sects is generally exercised by the worst of their members; while the political and religious influence exerted by a social class is generally derived from the best of its members.
Hence it is the Puritanic sinners of the North, and the most courtly gentlemen of the South, who have had to do with the civilizations of their respective sections. The result might have been easily anticipated.
Lust of power, malice, envy and covetousness, the staple sins of the Puritans, have produced in the North their legitimate fruits. By the help and direction of Satan, these Puritanic sins, animating and impelling a respectable body of well-washed, white-cravatted orators and statemen have, after a desperate struggle of eight generations, finally succeeded in vitiating the wholesome public sentiment of the North, and converting a nation of intelligent persons into a half crazed mass of malignant fiends.
It cannot be denied that there were, in the North, many monstrous isms, which aimed at the downfall of order and the rights of property, with the origin of which Puritanism had nothing to do. Many were imported from Europe, while many more were of that same radical brood, which the license of free society produces in all ages and countries. These aimed at anarchy under the name of equality. And for these the Puritans are not responsible. Indeed, it cannot be said of them that they are enemies to order.
They do not writhe under the restraint of mere governmental authority; because they are always confident of converting the laws that impose such into the means of establishing their own power. They do not so much desire freedom from control, as they desire to control.
Hence, they cannot be charged with the radicalism of the North though many of their sect are of that calling. But the crime they have to answer for is, that they, with an art super-Satanic, poured in the crucible of their envious hearts, all the radicalisms of the North, and, mingling with these their own evil propensities, produced the amalgam abolitionism. Perhaps it would be a more appropriate figure of speech to speak of abolitionism as a hybred of miscegen, being the unnatural offspring of Puritanism and radicalism. The monster realized in its promise every unholy expectation, every wicked desire, that reigned at its inception. There was nothing at which either parent aimed, but what the common progeny gave promise of being the appropriate means of accomplishment. Puritanism saw in it the means of unlimited power as well as an instrument of gratifying its pride and malice, and hence cherished it with more than paternal fondness.
Radicalism dreamed dreams of plunder and spoliation, robbery and revenge, and Puritanism with a metaphysical subtlety, sharpened by a long and successful practice upon its own conscience, soon convinced its ally of the ability of the progeny to gratify all of its bloody desires. "No slavery," was the cry of the new party, and the fiercest passions of which men are capable, agitated the masses who took up that watchword.
It was in vain people of common sense and contented dispositions pointed to the bible, and from its sacred pages read the condemnation of the new-born monster: The Devil was always on hand, in the person of some distinguished, wise, and reverend Puritan, to pervert and darken the meaning of holy writ, and to grow eloquent and shed tears of enthusiasm over some meaningless proposition about the rights of man.
Once again was heard in the world, and this time on the western hemisphere those stimulating pćans of freedom, those profane apostrophes to liberty, those disgusting invocations of the vengeance of Deity upon all aristocrats, and those maxims of agrarianism, that ever madden when they inspire the assassins of their beloved idol. It was the mournful music that always heralds the downfall of order and civil liberty. It was the same that had reverberated among the
graceful monuments of Athenian art, just before the popular lust of power and gold banished freedom forever from the city. It was the same that resounded through the Roman forum at the foundation of the empire, or was heard in nasal cadence around Whitehall as the grand preliminary chorus to Cromwell's accession to absolute power. The red was exchanged for the black banner of republicanism, and the old story of republics was repeated --the masses blinded by hatred, envy and love of plunder, digging, under the very altars of freedom, its everlasting grave.
It was not only in the pulpit and the legislative chambers that the unholy alliance of radicalism and Puritanism made war upon the southern people. Every possible channel of communication with the popular mind was seized with military precision, and made an avenue of attack. Such was the admirable disposition and skillful massing of the moral, or rather immoral forces, to capture and irritate the northern mind, that any one who reviews their successful expeditions against truth and virtue, is obliged to conclude that the Devil himself, with a complete corps of military advisers mapped out the plans and conducted the campaign in person. Newspapers and pamphlets, schoolbooks and histories, poems and romances, psalms and ballads, works on law and theology, jurisprudence and religion, moral and natural science, astronomical and gastronomical subjects, phrenology and animal magnetism, almanacs, travelling companions, city directories and advertisements of quack medicines, were all impressed to serve the purposes of Satan in propagating and spreading abolitionism.
The operations of the enemy were not confined to America, though, perhaps, the field headquarters may be said to have been established in Boston for a long time. In Europe, however, his heaviest columns were found, though these were not so actively engaged as those in America. Then, radicalism was the eldest, though perhaps not the most native to the soil; while Puritanism, under one name or another of the different ascetic offshoots of Catholicism, had existed in Europe for centuries.
Abolitionism was a God-send to the radicalists particularly, but, in some degree, to the politicians of all classes in Europe.
Radicalism needed a subject, the ventilation of which furnished a fine field for the display of their social dogmas; something to serve as an insidious means of attack, without compelling an open opposition to the existing institutions[.]
From the "uncivilized homes" of slavery the monarchical politicians were delighted to draw parallels that reflected credit
upon the benign despotisms of their own country. Connecting the institution and its well known character as a necessary concomitant of republicanism in America, upon that they founded an argument that commended feudal despotism to all lovers of order and mankind.
The liberals and conservatives were no less pleased with the new-fangled idea. They were delighted to find a subject upon which, in sweet fraternal harmony, they could join with the radicalists in their passionate denunciations of oppression.
While abolitionism was thus acceptable to the violent and the designing of all political parties, it was no less so to the vain babblers and fanatics of religion. They welcomed a theme, in the discussion of which their vanity and their selfishness was gratified by a contemplation of the wickedness of their fellow- creatures, while they were pleased with the opportunity which it afforded of gratifying their pet sins of pride and malice. In this way anti-slavery sentiments became first popular, and then fashionable. It made its way everywhere. It entered the hut and the palace alike. It was toasted with enthusiasm over the bumpers of home-brewed, and proclaimed by the most distinguished at the festive boards of the great. All classes of society adopted it with a zeal that was akin to fanaticism; and such was its prevalence that it finally took possession of the very thrones. Its profession became the evidence of philanthropy, the touchstone of humanity, and the test of European civilization. To be without it was to be barbarous and to be a slaveholder was, in the opinion of Europe, to be guilty of an unpardonable crime against universal progress.
Never, since the days of Peter the Hermit, had Europe found itself so agitated by a single emotion, so united in a single animosity. The forum, the pulpit, the court and the press, met upon the platform of anti-slavery, and recognised their fraternity in their common hatred of the slaveholder.
America and Europe acted and reacted upon each other, either, each time, gaining strength in its antipathy to slavery. And thus it was, that the last generation of the Christian world, with the exception of that of the Confederate States, were bred and educated in an abhorrence of slavery and slaveholders. Public opinion had everywhere yeilded to the energetic invasion of abolition, so far as their speculative conclusions were solicited. Nay, the South itself, at one time, tottered upon the brink of gradual emancipation. The cunning sophistries of nasal philosophers and sensational humanitarians, had at one time made serious inroads
upon the southern belief in the morality of their institutions; and their insidious attacks, through pamphlets, magazines, and school-books, had well-nigh carried the citadel of their strength before its unsuspecting sentinels were alarmed.
The work of exposing the finely spun web of abolition fallacies, was by no means difficult, however, for the South, when the necessity appeared, and the unequivocal admission of the morality of slavery by the first Christian apostles, gave weight to the arguments in its favor among a people who had not yet, like those of the North, felt the need of an anti-slavery bible.
Yet while it was easy to expose their fallacies and refute their reasoning, it was a much more serious undertaking to eradicate the prejudices which had been implanted in the soil of the youthful hearts, by their despicable school-books and histories, and had entwined themselves almost indissolubly with youth's noblest dreams of usefulness.
And, hence, though the efforts of abolition served but to illuminate and unite the southern mind, in regard to slavery, yet they did not fail to make some few converts to their doctrines out of those southern intellectual imbeciles, who confounded the obscure suggestions of early prejudices with the conclusions of their reason.
When abolitionism thus failed in its intellectual attempts upon the rights of the South, mad with disappointed malice, it abandoned itself to those bloody-minded Puritans who from the first had preached extermination of the slaveholder. In their eyes, gangrened with rancorous hate, envy, and unholy ambition, the destruction of the slaveholder became the sacred duty of every righteous lover of freedom. Under the influence of the madness that possess them, murder and robbery and arson were transferred from the list of crimes and registered among the abolition virtues. Falsehood, which had always been held by the Puritans a species of virtue when told for the benefit of the faith, was now legitimized and esteemed a most excellent accomplishment; and every description of little, low, and mean action became respectable, when performed against the slaveholder. There was no obligation of religion or humanity that did not yield to the divinely imposed necessity of exterminating the slaveholder.
Even the cardinal virtues of the Puritans, frugality, sobriety, and religious worship, all of which claimed their main influence upon the habits of the laymen, from the tendency of their practice to gratify their pride and covetousness, even these were neglected in their mad idolatry of the new God.
And, now, that they had surrendered themselves up to the delightful emotions of fanatical hate and envy, from one single stand-point of moral vision they viewed everything, and even went so far as to repudiate and denounce the obligation of obedience to both human and Divine law. Such is the history of the intellectual revolution which radicalism and Puritanism effected in conjunction, and such was the iniquitous conception in which their wicked desires culminated.
John Brown was a full-blooded Puritan. According to the statements of his worshippers, he was a lineal descendant of a saint of the same name who came across the Atlantic in the ever-memorable vessel of history, known as the May Flower. Upon the barren rook of Plymouth, this paternal ancestor and founder of an illustrious line, landed with the rest of his noble compatriots. What his especial calling was in the new colony, is buried in oblivion; but it may safely be conjectured, that, like the rest of his brethren, he devoted most of his time to tilling his farm, making butter and cheese, preaching, burning witches and hanging other less obnoxious heretics. This, indeed, may be said of most of John's ancestors, who flourished in those good old times.
The biographers of John seem to take great pleasure in asserting, with much emphasis, that all of his paternal ancestors were remarkable for their piety and firmness. This is the language of all the school-books in speaking of the character of the New England Puritans; and it should be properly understood. There were, beyond a doubt, certain virtues which the cold climate and sterile soil imposed as absolute necessities upon all New England people; and these, perhaps, flourished in the Brown family in much luxuriance. They were, in all probability, industrious and sober and frugal. Most Puritans are. But, whether these habits of life were entitled to the name of virtues, is to be determined by the motives which prompted
their practice. This is the test before a tribunal a little more reliable than the historiographer of abolitionism. People are not permitted to make virtues of their necessities and then get par estimates for them on the heavenly record. There the gold is seperated from the alloy before it is weighed, and the counterfeits are rejected altogether. One of John Brown's ancestors was a revolutionary soldier, and, "from him," say his biographers, "he inherited that indomitable courage for which he was ever distinguished."
The Puritans, as a class, are not cowards. Being extremists, on account of their overdrawn standard, they fight with the certain assurance that they are the favorites of God or the Devil. Those who doubt whether the angel of the Lord encamps about them, are perfectly sure that Satan has spared some of his household guards for that purpose. Still their courage never deserves the descriptive indomitable, but should more properly, be called dogged. For, if they have any in addition to that fanatic zeal which, in some form or other, generally possesses them, it is of that character which the bull dog has, who, once having fixed his fangs in his enemy's vitals, is so intoxicated with the charm of inflicting misery, that he forgets his own dangers.
John Brown was born in Essex county, New York, (so it is said.) From his earliest infancy he displayed those qualities of the heart and mind, which gave promise of his singular future. He was a serious, solemn child. Those sports and innocent pastimes, which children usually take so much delight in, had no charms for him. He was continually meditating upon plans of action which he never told, and which can only be inferred from his subsequent career. His ruminations took a contemplative turn. His ideas were always entirely original and singular. And, even when a child, he was ahead of his age in his apprehension of the dignity of his species. His thoughts took a metaphysical turn, rather than philosophical, as those of most children do; and while yet a mere boy, he reflected upon those mysterious things called rights. For, while other boys are always quick to recognise the existence of such things, they generally busy themselves with applying the popular notions in regard to their own case, without investigating the truth or falsity of the same. But John, as occasionally boys will do, questioned the truth of those dogmas of mankind, whenever he discovered that their proper application interferred with his interest or convenience. With a
childish precocity in logic, that invariably produces a foolish man, he disputed every rule of life that the wisdom of mankind had sanctioned, which did not agree with his abstract notions of right. Egotistical, vain and obstinate, and withal dreamy, his early speculations were in all probability, exceedingly interesting and radical. With little veneration for the wisdom of mankind, among whom, no doubt, his venerable parents were included, he yet paid great respect to what he imagined were the opinions of the Almighty. And those which he discovered coincided pretty much with his own he silently cherished, in despite of the thrashings which they doubtless frequently got for him. Given thus up to personal musing and contemplation, he very soon began to think that there were few persons in the world besides himself who ought to be proud of their existence; and, the fact that he concealed this truth in a great measure from other people, was satisfactory evidence to him that he was a perfect pattern of humility.
His first desire seems to have been to acquire wealth. This master propensity never failed to assert its supremacy in youth or old age. And, even upon the occasions when he professed to be most deeply imbued with those humanitarian notions, which never left him, he never failed to take advantage of an opportunity to make a little money.
During the war of 1812, in the days of blue lights and Hartford conventions, when the sturdy and industrious and virtuous Puritan fathers preferred peace with disgrace, to honorable war with pecuniary loss, John Brown was yet a boy. His father, no doubt, sharing in that feeling of disapprobation of the war which prevailed in New England, instead of indulging in the infamous blue-light method of aiding his country's enemies, preferred the profitable treason of selling cattle to the British and pocketing their gold.
John, it seems, according to his admiring biographer (Redpath,) being a lad of great energy, materially assisted his father in this treasonable business. It was here that he first displayed those qualities of self-reliance and boldness, which afterwards he exhibited in such a remarkable degree. It was here, too, he first displayed a more than usual ability in taking advantage of the topography of a country, to avoid or escape from a dangerous foe. His biographer does not say what other remarkable natural qualities he here, for the first time, displayed. But it is reasonable to suppose, from the character of his business,
that he here displayed, though it may be not for the first time, an unusual talent for successfully appropriating the property of others, for which he was, upon more than one occasion afterwards, quite remarkable.
"It was here," says Redpath, "that he contracted that horror of war which never afterwards left him." It is certainly not singular that a member of the human family with rational faculties, should have a natural horror of war without waiting to contract it; much less that one should do so who witnesses it. But, it does seem that, if there is any occasion when one is called on to praise war and esteem it a blessing, it is when he is not expected to fight, but is permitted to engage in an unlawful trade that the existence of war renders exceedingly profitable. There were, no doubt, moments during this period of treasonable traffic with the enemy, when the youthful John conceived a "horror for war." Sometimes, perhaps, when higgling over the price of a Connecticut bull with a British commissary, and finding his Yankee pertinacity outdone by British obstinacy; perhaps when shot at by American pickets, or relieved of his unlawful earnings by remorseless guerrillas; but certainly not when just having effected a successful run, did the sentimental John conceive his ineradicable "horror of war." It was, perhaps, with the profits accummulated in this business, that the father of John purchased the paternal estate upon which he afterwards lived, and the memory of whose broad acres ever stimulated the enterprising youth to become a landholder.
His education seems to have been limited, though from specimens of his composition, he appears to have picked up, at some time during his life, a vigorous, though executive, style of writing. His books were few, his time being pretty much occupied between the labors of the farm and the intellectual recreations which the long-winded Puritan preachers afforded. He is said to have been a young man of piety, and very attentive at Sabbath service. The latter no doubt was true, but the former must be received with a few grains of allowance. No doubt he was a punctual attendant at divine worship, and occupied a good deal of his time in meditating upon the sermons that he heard. But, he was of that peculiar class of minds, that receive nothing as truth but what contributes, in some measure, to the gratification of an inordinate vanity. This seems to have been the case at quite an early age. He was one of those children, who always know better than anybody
else, and what they do not know is not worth knowing. They have their plans in life, and they intend to carry them out. If what is preached to them does not interfere with their grand programme, it is approved and laid by for more mature consideration. If it does, the preacher is a fool, and his notions are beneath the notice of men of sense.
Now, John seems to have always felt the binding force of those virtues, industry, sobriety, and frugality. Perhaps when yet a child, with his mind still a tabula rasa, and with an original propensity to hold on with tenacity to first impressions, the propriety of possessing these virtues was indelibly impressed upon his memory. They are certainly the first that are taught to the child in all Puritan families, and frequently the only ones. The latter seems to have happened with regard to John. But it is difficult to say whether they occupied his youthful heart, to the exclusion of every other, from the want of sufficient instruction, or, because, being the first comers, they so chimed in with his personal propensities that he formed with these a charming programme of life which he could not bear to have broken. Perhaps each had something to do with his apparent ignorance of all the other virtues, besides these three cardinal ones of the Puritan faith. Certainly it is not to be presumed that he learned much about charity, and the multitude of minor virtues that follow in its train, from a father who made most of his money by supplying beef to the enemies of his country.
To an inordinate desire of wealth, John added a more than ordinary love of power and notoriety. That he was ambitious, the whole history of his life demonstrates; but his ambition seems first to have spent itself in an effort to acquire property. It was this passion which, as in the case of most all Puritan youths, possessed him entirely at first. This is proved more by his reputation for stinginess than by any unusual success. For it does not appear that he was skillful, but only anxious to make money. He lacked judgment and capacity rather than energy; and this is discoverable in his whole life. He was one of those unfortunate beings who are agitated with desires and aspirations disproportionate to their capacities. All his life he found himself overreached and disappointed. Hence it was natural for him, when finally frustrated in all his plans of aggrandizement, to resort to any desperate chance that offered itself. Natures like his, with a similar experience, are certain to terminate a career of misfortune in crime, if not restrained
by a strength of moral principle proportionate to the strength of their propensities; and this John did not have. He was, it is said, a scrupulous adherent to his theory of duty. But he got his theory from a heart prompted by sinful passion. That Puritan illusion of confounding covetousness with innocent thrift, miserly abstemiousness with temperance, and hypocritical cant with the language of real devotion, made an early victim of the ambitious John. He was none the less, however, an exemplary member of the Puritan church. Indeed, he is spoken of by his admirers as having always been a pattern of Puritan purity.
While still a youth, no doubt, he began to hear those moral lectures about human rights and human capabilities, which have generally constituted the sermons of Puritan ministers. From these he first learned to apply his radical ideas to the apprehension of the oppressed condition of the Africans of the South. It does not appear, however, that John Brown at an early period of his life, was troubled with more than a mere feeling of disapprobation of slavery, and this, no doubt, existed alongside of similar opinions with regard to existing institutions at the North. It was not until circumstances of adversity had filled his heart with the bitterness of disappointment that he turned for consolation to his speculative opinions, and, under the influence of the orators of abolitionism and his own bad passions, found a dernier resort in becoming a practical abolitionist.
This was not the usual mode by which abolitionism entered the Puritan mind. Abolitionism, generally, enters the Puritan mind from the propensity of the Puritan nature, or character, to substitute sentiment for practical religion, and from the cherishing of a constant desire to extenuate its own frailties by magnifying those of others. The natural consequence of the indulgence of these propensities is to supplant any possible feelings of love, which is goodness, by feelings of hatred and all uncharitableness, which is wickedness. And when this is accomplished, the singular illusion is found to exist of people going through all the forms and using all the language of earnest devotion, and imagining while they do it that the sinful feelings which animate their hearts are those of charity and love. Thus, it will be seen, that to satisfy a Puritan's conscience, who, like the rest of our fallen race, is always trying to patch up some kind of compromise with the troublesome monitor within, all that is necessary is to give him something that asks
for his love and hate at the same time--hatred for the sinner and love for his victim. It is all he wants to work out his own salvation, without "fear and trembling." For, he will nurse his wrath with a miser's care, imagining that from it may be derived that charity of heart and love of mankind which every man needs. So, that it may be truly said, there is an aching void in the Puritanic heart for something to hate. They like to practice the divine habit of being angry with the wicked every day. They feel that they are better and stronger when they have in their minds' eye some apparently awful sinner, upon whom they can pour out all the vials of their sacred wrath; just as the devotion of the Pharisee, in the parable, was heightened by the presence of the Publican; and, when this needful sinner does not turn up of his own accord, like his pet sin, they are sure to find him out; and they will not let him alone when once they have found him. For though, like Ephraim, he may be joined to his idols, they will not let him alone. They will expostulate and reason; they will threaten and bully, and never seem to got tired of trying to make him think as they do, while, all the time, they do not desire what they are, apparently, so anxious to bring about.
First it was the anti-christ and woman of Babylon, that furnished the fruitful theme for exhortation and self-gratulation; then came the Amalekitish people of Old England. They never tired of dwelling upon the horrible crimes of these, and of refreshing their minds with the pleasant scenes of torment and misery, that they knew were prepared for such vile sinners. Then came the witches and quakers and other miserable heretics of New England. The quakers and other heretics, who fell into their hands, were mercifully allowed the privilege of being hung; but, for those incorrigible old women, a more horrible fate was reserved. With a sense of propriety, that would only suggest itself to fiendish natures, they destroyed them in the element with which they were supposed to be most familiar, and gave them, while yet in human form, a foretaste of that punishment which they were believed to be helping Satan to prepare for others. After the witches and the quakers, came first one thing and then another; but nothing permanent or lasting. All the sources of consolation and of edification of the church seemed to have dried up; and it is probable that during this interregnum, as it were, of Satan, divisions and lukewarmness sprung up in the church. Soon, however, African slavery was introduced. But, for some time, the subject was not ventilated, on account of
many of the most prosperous elders being slaveholders and slavedealers themselves. They, speedily got rid of their property, which had always proved unprofitable, and which now threatened to be more so.
These pillars of the church having disposed of their "human chattels," to the highest bidder, and, perhaps, having put a little of the proceeds of the sale in the coffers of the saints, the storm of wrath began its mutterings against the damable crime of slavery.
Never were the dews of heaven more grateful to a parched and thirsty soil, than was the inexhaustible subject of the sins of slavery to the self-righteous Puritan mind. From its discussion were wrought miracles of reform. It served as the golden cord of brotherhood and the magic wand that melted the very heart of the people, and restored the lost feelings of fraternity and love. In the congenial ardor of a common disapprobation, a common hate, and a common envy, a fellowship was formed which the Puritans mistook for Christian fraternity.
Never had a subject elicited so much interest before; and, in a short time it became the most popular and the most profitable aversion that the priests of the faith had yet discovered. The more it was examined into, the more perfectly bewitching and agreeable it was found to be. And while it has became a proverb that, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church of God," in the case of the Puritans it was the imagined shedding of African blood that gave unity and strength to their sect. Slavery being, essentially, an institution so opposite in its practical character to every Puritan idea of the dignity of their species, they were not slow to credit, as belonging to it, every horrible quality conceivable; while their hatred and envy of the slaveholder, made them dwell upon and exaggerate all the extravagant things they heard.
It was the thing of all things which they needed to leaven the whole Puritan camp. At last their desire had been gratified, and a field of iniquity had been found from which a prurient fancy could gather a dish of horror whenever the dyspeptic soul of the afflicted needed it. It is true that the showing up of the "hideous thing" was as full of falsehood as rhetoric; but that was no difference, their end was gained. With a sensation of delight, they studied the theme as one would polish a flattering mirror to contemplate the excellent beauties of their own countenance. Romance and history were ransacked for illustrative parrallels of the iniquitous deeds of slavery. The machines of
torture of the Spanish inquisition, the ingenious living tombs of the Roman emperors, the thumb-screws of Queen Mary, and the awful contrivances of the blood-thirsty despots of Turkey, China, Japan, and the Sandwich Islands, were mere harmless toys compared to those inconceivable engines of cruelty which every southern planter kept in his back parlor. But, it was not the inhuman cruelties or the irreclaimable viciousness of the slaveholder that provoked the holy Puritan so much as his unpardonable arrogance in holding men as property.
This was the most heinous of his sins. Had he limited himself to his blood hounds, his cat-o-nine-tails, his thumb-screws, and other like instruments of torture, the sinner had not been past praying for. But when he dared to degrade the dignity of the human species, by buying and selling men like cattle, this was an insult to the human family, and the saints, feeling themselves to be the most distinguished members of the same, could not but regard such conduct as personally offensive. That was the capital crime of slavery, in the judgement of the Puritan. For, to hold men as property, because their skins were black, was to imply that, if they, by any chance, should be caught and blackened, they, the saints, might be knocked down to the highest bidder; and this was an idea inconceivably horrible.
But, while they hated, with an undisguised bitterness, the slaveholding class as traffickers in human flesh, the envy of their worldly prosperity, their contented spirits, and their social privileges, soon converted this feeling of antipathy to a class into one of personal hostility to every individual member of it. Moreover, those qualities, too, of courage, chivalrous forgetfulness of self and a high sense of honor, which the Puritan might take advantage of, but could never possess, made the slaveholder of the South still more hateful. Like Shylock, who hated Antonio because his generous consideration for the unfortunate brought down "the rate of usance in Venice," the Puritan hated the southerner because his chivalrous traits of character, by contrast, made his miserly maxims of conduct less respectable in the eyes of the nation and, hence, his success less profitable.
Such is the process of the formation of abolitionism in the minds of Puritans generally. But John Brown's abolitionism was of not so malignant a character in its origin. It had a less sinful origin and, hence, when developed, was more dangerous. It was due more to the force of his metaphysical conclusions about human rights, than to any uncontrollable propensity to hate something. Taking for his premises those "glittering generalities" about the
inalienable rights of man, which, for forty years, have excited more interest find attention in the North than the laws of Moses or the precepts of our Saviour, he very soon satisfied himself of the wrong of slavery. He was, no doubt, assisted and helped along his way by the much preaching which it was his habit to hear. No doubt, most of the sermons that he heard related much more to the glory of liberty and equality and the dignity of the human species than to the propriety of humility and lowliness in this world. It is reasonable to suppose that he listened, with plea- sure and a grateful sense of belief, to the flattering dissertations about the great things of which his unfettered and unrestrained nature was capable. Egotistical and ambitious as he was, he drank in the pleasing tributes with eagerness, and never tired of hearing those encomiums upon the capacities of human nature that northern preachers so liberally indulge in. For, strange to say, while people in the South go to church to hear the awful reckoning of the extent of their wickedness, they, in the North, go to the same place in order to increase their knowledge of their own excellence. So that, it is quite evident that church-going is much more pleasant in one section than it is in the other; and it should not be a matter of surprise that it is more popular at the North.
As John Brown grew apace, and his mind expanded and his opinions became more fixed, it is probable that he was an original thinker upon more subjects than one. His attention, however, must have been especially given to the nature and extent of human rights.
If it were possible to enter into his most secret thoughts, we would find him, in all probability, applying those principles he had learned to the solution of the difficulties which first intruded themselves upon his attention.
He must certainly have been engaged in the puzzling task of reconciling, with his theory, the legitimacy of the despotic authority
exercised by his father in the home circle. What right his father had, to appropriate the profits of his labor, to control his movements, infringe upon his personal liberty, and even touch him up occasionally with a birch, or a strap, or a wagon whip, whichever was the handiest, must have been a hard question for John to answer in the light of his theory of human equality. Or why, his mother, no doubt, a rational, grown up woman of sense and experience, should be confined, in her sphere of duties, to the mysteries of housewifery, deprived of a voice in the county elections, and be made to obey her husband, a cross-grained old man, in all things, was another metaphysical lion in his path.
Perhaps, too, in the meanderings of his discursive faculty, he discovered an unreasonable oppression in the law that forbid him at twenty, an intelligent young man, of superior endowment and with natural capacity far ahead of all the people of his own age, from exercising the right of choosing his own political representatives. Certainly, the validity of his objection to the law was not diminished in his eyes, when he saw the privilege which he was denied granted to his father's stupid ploughman and the ignorant Dutch tailor that lived in vicinity.
Such were the kind and character of the difficulties that must have beset the youthful John in his metaphysical pilgrimage in search of truth. And, if we are to infer anything from the prompt manner, in which he adopts logical conclusions, without regard to the practical difficulties in the way, discoverable in the writings and speeches of his after life, we may reasonably conclude that he was convinced, while yet a youth, of the need of great changes in the social and political institutions of the American world.
In the first period of manhood when the love of truth is strong and reason establishes her conclusions in our speculative world with the undisputed authority of a sovereign, the youthful mind is not apt to permit the prompting of interest or passion to affect its abstract conclusions. The hopeful heart refuses to construct its dream of usefulness according to the laws of the world around it, but rather according to the apparently more equitable laws of a world of its own creation. It is then, if ever, if our system of belief has been adopted, that its logical results are stared full in the face, and truth, stripped of all extraneous covering, is seen in its native beauty.
Now, John Brown was, all his life, troubled with a moral fearlessness about accepting rational or rather irrational conclusions. He did not, as most of the cunning professors of his faith do,
hold on to the premises of his system and only adopt those logical consequences of the same which were agreeable to his interest and convenience. So that, it may well be supposed, in early manhood, when the will and faculties alike are not yet made captive by the desires and apetites, he was a believer in all of the absured and ridiculous conclusions that follow necessarily from the radical premises he had adopted. That was the difference between him, at that period, and his philosophical and religious brethren. And, when afterwards, his attention was drawn to slavery and circumstances acting upon his bad passions influenced a poor judgement and a mind given up by habit to the contemplation of unattainable objects, be became, more than any of them, a practical abolitionist.
The truth is that, until that period arrived, he was exercised so much with the business of this life that, during his more practical period of manhood, his attention was more directed to the qualities of stock and the state of the markets than to the condition of the oppressed of any country.
It was not till afterwards, when misfortune and disappointment had overtaken him and its repeated blows had rendered him desperate, that, like the murderer in Macbeth,
"Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world
Had so incensed, that he was reckless what he did
To spite the world,"
he became prepared for any scheme that promised wealth
or power, and more especially if there were not wanting arguments which, in the
light of his speculative opinions, either drowned or misinterpreted the
whisperings of conscience.
It was not till then that he became the dupe of the more wicked abolitionists and began a career of crime and murder which terminated on the gallows at Charlestown.
Soon after reaching years of maturity John Brown took unto himself a wife and settled down into the interesting routine of a New England farmer's life. In this capacity, he employed those energies of mind and body, which fate had not yet revealed to him were intended for nobler uses. Occupied with the cares of a family, he devoted himself to the various modes of accumulating worldly gain that are known only to a Puritan Yankee.
That necessity, which has been frequently called the mother of invention, filled his mind, no doubt, with a continual round of notions about turning pennies. His active brain, stimulated by a desire for wealth, and an egotism which might be called impracticable, wrought out original plans of farming without number. Thus, deviating too far from the beaten track of his forefathers, he ploughed and he sowed a great deal more than he reaped and mowed. There was an enterprising dash about all his agricultural cultural arrangements, which was not in keeping with the rules of New England thrift. No amount of economy, frugality, or industry, could wring from the cold-hearted Ceres of the North that prosperity which his soul panted for. It was equally impossible to propitiate the divinities that watch over the welfare of flocks and herds. For, in addition to the failure of his crops, his stock died or were stolen; or, what was still more unfortunate as well as disreputable were swapped out of him. His efforts at financering were not more successful than attempts at plain farming, and he found himself, after years of indefatigable activity, more and more involved in a labyrinth of mortgages, bonds, and promises to pay. It was in vain that he endeavored to reform his system and retrieve his fortune. His egotism and his self-confidence made him despise that caution in business which every man must have who would not starve in New England; while his love of achieving new things and his uncontrollable desire to seem a man of original powers made him adopt unusual methods of farming that were uniformly unsuccessful. As he lost money he lost credit, and he was finally reduced to the extremity of struggling for a bare subsistence.
Tired, at length, with an ungrateful soil that denied him a living, and a community that in exchange for his property had left him nothing but its contempt, he determined to seek his fortune elsewhere. So, gathering up the remnants of his property that had survived the wreck, and obtaining some assistance from his relations, he emigrated with his family, about the year 1836, to the State of Ohio.
There, finding a more generous climate and soil and a people less grasping and close in their business transactions, the idiosyncracies of his character did not for some time interfere with his worldly prosperity. He soon, by dint of energy and a little wisdom derived from his former experience, increased his possessions. Fortune seemed at last to have been conciliated, and he began to cherish his old dreams of great wealth. When once he had given up himself to the fatal passion again, he murmured at the homely but abundant comforts that surrounded rounded him, and,
"Like a miser, who still pants for more,
Pined amid his earthly store."
Dissatisfied with a fate that confined him to
the humble spheres of human action, and with the slow road to wealth and power
that he had chosen, he again became the victim of his vanity and his overleaping
ambition. This time the blow was more fell and sweeping. Confident in a judgment
which, his own experience had taught, could barely be relied on, he tasted of
the infatuating waters of western speculation. The small success that rewarded
his first efforts, thrilled him with inexpressible emotions of pleasure, as he
thought he saw near at hand the enchanted elysium of his distempered
imagination, and the golden goal of his hopes. So, with increased confidence
that was the more fatal as it was blind, he risked his all in a speculation and
was reduced to penury.
The blow was the more severe as it was unexpected. This time, he had not lost his property piece by piece and descended from competence to poverty by slow and gentle stages. The fall was sudden and complete. From the heights of prosperity, by his own mad folly, he had been precipitated, as it were, to the lowest depths of adversity. From the abyss of his despair, he could not but turn and gaze with wistful eyes upon the pleasant fields which he had left to climb the dizzy heights beyond, and sigh, for one time in his life, for a restoration of those comforts of life which he had in his folly despised.
The occasion was one that demanded all the philosophy of common sense and the unbending resolution of a heart armed with honesty. The trial was terrible for a nature like his, and its severity was not diminished by the consciousness that it was self-inflicted. Under such circumstances, a man, however erring in judgment, if imbued with correct principles and a proper self-respect, would have emerged from the ordeal wiser and more determined. Undaunted by pecuniary misfortune in enterprising America, he would have recalled the past, only to profit by it, and entered the battle of life, if not with new hope, with new resolution. Such would have been the heroism of common sense joined to ordinary honesty; a heroism that the world never notices, but is always ready to apologize for the want of.
But John Brown was not of that class of unfortunates who, on account of their modesty and their number, are unobserved. He rather belonged to a class of the opposite quality who, not so much on account of their paucity as on the account of their performances, attract the notice of others. The overweening self- confidence which, failure after failure could not shake, the morbid love of wealth and power, which no reverses could diminish, began to work their legitimate results in his self-perverted nature. The lessons of experience which he had learned in the bitter school of adversity, viewed in the light of an offended vanity and a disappointed ambition, were disregarded or misconstrued. The chastisements he had received were considered as ill deserved, and he began to question an arrangement of things that denied success to talents like his, while the efforts of his inferiors were crowned with triumph. Such honesty, such sagacity, and such judgment as his, why could they all not force success? Did he not know that in regard to smartness, he was behind none, while in activity and energy, his superiority was admitted? Where, then, was the success which he deserved? He could not approve of, or rather he was determined not to approve of, any system of society, that, by its legitimate workings, condemned him to poverty. He could not see why others should succeed and he always fail. It never once occurred to him that his ill regulated passions were the cause; he preferred to attribute it to some defect in the arrangement of things.
There was but one explanation of the mystery satisfactory to his mind, now filled with the suggestion of an offended vanity and a disappointed ambition; and that was, that he and the other poor were honest men, while all the rich were accomplished scoundrels. And, was he to tamely surrender all his
hopes of wealth and all his dreams of influence, because a sea of villains had gotten possession of the purse-strings of society and appropriated the wealth of the country to their own aggrandizment? Was it to be expected of a man, who felt himself capable of great achievements, if his active spirit of enterprise were repressed, to lie down like a dog and queitly resign himself to whatever fate the unprincipled sharks of society allotted. Did not a man owe it to the dignity of his species, and to the claims of a nature superior to that of base sharpers, to resist this social conspiracy to deprive him of his natural rights and reduce him to a state of social bondage?
These questions, though they might have appeared difficult to other people in a similar condition, were soon answered by John Brown. In the light of his revived radicalistic philosophy, which the expediency of a busy life had far a long time ignored, but which had, with intervals of quiescence, continually reappeared and become strengthened, he began to understand everything. The rich were oppressors and the poor were oppressed. The successful were villains and the unsuccessful were ill-treated and condemned innocents. The dominions of the wicked extended wherever there were dominions, and the richer the soil and the more abundant its yield, the greater was the iniquity of the owners. The world was possessed by the votaries of sin, and the righteous and the virtuous and the humble and the honest John Browns were robbed and pillaged and persecuted without mercy or remorse. Possessed with these opinions, it was not with much hope or expectation, that the unhappy and disconsolate John Brown surveyed the future. It could no longer have much interest for him, now that he was convinced that all his efforts would be unavailing as well as unprofitable. So, from this time, for a considerable period, he seems to have been wandering about, decided upon nothing and engaged in no settled vocation. His opinions were assuming more and more a practical tendency, and he began to approach a new and important period in his career. His continued penury and want, his increasing distate for all civil employment, and his constant habit of attending and participating in the abolition meetings which were then being held everywhere in the North, began to produce their legitimate fruits upon a mental and moral soil in which they had crowded out all plants of usefulness. His radicalism assumed an abolition hue, and his political theories took a gloomy fanatical turn. To his surprise, perhaps, he commenced acquiring new notions, in his idle meditations upon the mysteries
of his destiny; and, when all hope of a human employer had vanished, the startling idea flashed across his mental horizon that he was intended for the service of the Almighty. Thus did his unextinguishable vanity dissipate any lingering traces of remorse for his folly that had ruined him, and, from the very desolateness of his condition, he obtained the means of reviving his self-reliance and his fatal ambition. Now, when penniless, bad men lose the confidence of the public, and no longer have either the inclination or the opportunity to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brows, they generally take to supplying their wants out of the stores of their fellow men. The modes of doing this differ according to the capacity, the taste, the idiosyncracies of the thief and the nature of the society and government to which they for the time being belong.
In most countries they taker at first to pilfering or robbing on the highway. These strike the inexperienced rogue as the best, because they are the quickest and the simplest ways of gratifying his desires. But, as this kind of robbery is condemned by the laws of most all countries and disapproved of in nearly all social circles, the unfortunate ones who resort to it are apt to get a good share of infamy as well as rope. So, that it does not commend itself to a rogue in intent who desires not only to avoid the infliction of legal punishment and the condemnation of society in the practice of his thievery, but even to do it so skillfully as to excite the admiration and the sympathy of the world around him.
Perhaps, the unsophisticated reader would wonder what in the world he would follow to bring about these two apparently opposite results. A slight acquaintance with the organization of northern society, however, would soon silence his speculations upon that point. For, in the complex and ever varied structure of northern free society, the enterprising mind is not restricted to the generally received respectable avenues to fame and riches. It may abandon the usual roads of industry, and exercise its energies in one of the numerous novel ways to wealth and renown that are found only in the late United States. These ways all differ, but still are species of the same genus, and furnish every possible theatre of activity for the discontented and abandoned characters that swarm upon the turbid surface of northern society. The ordinary crimes, such as burglary, larceny and murder, are generally confined to the ignorant and vicious foreigners and negroes that infest the northern cities. They principally fill the chain- gangs, jails, and penitentiaries of the North. The native-born
villains, however, more especially those from New England who are far more deserving of such punishment, are generally well fed and dressed, and frequently the lions of society. They are gentlemen of leisure and means, voluble and insinuating knaves, and as full of fine sentiment as they are void of principle. They know a little about everything and everybody, and can entertain a crowd upon the mysteries of electricity, the immortality of the soul, or the last new reaping-machine. They are agents and secretaries of philanthropic societies, lecturers on spiritualism, mesmerists, electro-biologists, popular illustrators of natural science, quack doctors, vendors of wooden nutmeg and toothace medicine. They all belong to a class which, by general consent, is called humbugs. Not that they have a monopoly of the art, since it is well known that it is the main element of success in any business in the North, but because it is their vocation. Now, when John Brown concluded that he was incapable of winning wealth or renown in the ordinary spheres of activity, he cast about to find a new calling which would congenial to his taste and at the same time gratify his ambition and his love of money. His radical opinions and Puritan prejudices soon determined him to be a freedom-shrieker; more especially as this class were now beginning to put money in their pockets. And he took, a pleasure in justifying himself in his opinions by listening to every lunatic or knave that grew eloquent over the imaginary crimes of slaveholding. Each day that revealed to him the lucrativeness as well as popularity of his new profession, saw him more and more convinced that he had found his calling at last. And soon he added, to a settle determination, an enthusiasm that excited the admiration and confidence of the faithful. This unexpected promising state of affairs encouraged him to increase his own enthusiasm, and hence his profits and popularity. To do this, it was necessary to stifle conscience entirely; and he hesitated at nothing in proposed plans of making way with the slaveholder. This was easily done by conceiving himself to be a special instrument of Providence, who was to "slay and spare not."
His vanity and his despair, not to speak of his ambition, assisted by an abolitionism that obtained legitimacy from his radicalism and a holiness of character from the inherent malignancy of Puritanism, soon revealed the nature of his mission and, if he had any lingering doubts about the propriety of such a belief, they all vanished, when Gerrit Smith proposed to him to take charge of his negro colony at North Elba.
Gerritt Smith belonged to the least disreputable class of abolitionists. There were but two classes, the lunatics and the knaves. The lunatics lived upon the emotions of philanthropy which the sentimental achievements of the knaves excited; while the latter lived upon their per centage of the money which the former contributed in behalf of the suffering African. It was a mutual admiration society, and imbued with singular vitality. Now, Gerritt Smith was one of the wealthiest, and hence one of the most prominent members of the class. Endowed by nature, with a warm heart but a weak mind, he became an early victim to the abolition mania that was abroad in the North. The possessor of great wealth, he was too rich a prize to let slip when once he had been secured; so that it was difficult to disentagle him from the toils of the abolition knaves that surrounded him. Human vampires as they were, they heated his imagination with their well-drawn pictures of the misery of slaves and pocketed the gold which his benevolence contributed. Perpetually persecuted by them, and from "morn till dewy eve" exercised with their eloquence and their conversation, he became a blind votary of the god, and surrendered himself up to every mad scheme that could be suggested. Among these, there was none which excited more interest among the faithful, than the North Elba, scheme. This was a Utopian dream, tested in the crucible of human experience. It proposed to exhibit to the world the capacity of the African, when excluded from the malign influence of the white race, to be happy industrious, virtuous and prosperous. In the bosom of the Adirondacs. Which, with their bald and inhospitable peaks, surrounded a fertile basin of land, the colony was settled. Here, walled in from the visits of the strolling curious, or the adventurous vender of Yankee notions, the despised race were to enjoy that Arcadian repose so necessary for their intellectual and moral development. Nothing was wanting but some worthy and unselfish apostle of philanthropy to watch over their spiritual and carnal interest and point out the road to virtue and happiness.
For this sublime duty John Brown was selected. His activity and devotion to the cause had already attracted the attention of the insane humanitarian, and he determined to employ him as
the theocratic govenor of his Utopian republic.
Nothing more agreeable could have been proposed to the penniless champion of
humanity. It furnished a field for the exercise of his philanthropy, his love of
power, notoriety, and money. Here, shut out from the hateful world of white men
that had conspired to rob him of reputation and property, he could conduct a
government and organize a society according to his own ideas of perfection.
Perhaps, too, it would be the nucleus of a great settlement that, in the course
of time, would congregate there and astonish America with its prosperity, its
strength, and its virtue. And, of this new nation, he (glorious thought!) would
be regarded as the founder and idolized, by the citizens of the same, as the
father of their country. Even if these dreams were not realized, which candor
compel us to say had very little to do with John's readiness of acceptance,
still, there was the land and the labor, over which he had supreme control, and
the road to wealth and power was as "plain as a pike- staff." With such hopes
and expectations, he entered upon the undertaking. Now, at last, his judgment
was untrammeled and his means apparently without limit; and while he appeared to
be conducting an experiment of philanthropy, he was really engaged, most of the
time, in trying many pet ones of his own. So that the result, which any one of
sense might have anticipated, was not long deferred. Being his own executive
officer, secretary of the interior, and treasurer, and uniting in himself the
legislative, judical, and military functions of his
kingdom, his administration was soon attended with more than its usual
disastrous consequences. His proteges, in spite of his moral lectures and his
paternal expostulations, could neither appreciate the superiority of his
judgment, or the necessity of labor. They were lazy, filthy and thievish. They
would neither work, learn, or pray; but seemed to have an incurable propensity
for eating, sleeping, and lying. Their habits of filth and idleness and their
vicious indulgences, soon engendered diseases which, combining with less fatal
causes of depletion, gradually diminished the population of the Utopia, until
John Brown began to "Feel like one who treads alone a banquet hall
deserted."
It is as difficult, as it is unimportant, to decide whether the failure of the North Elba scheme was owing to the unfitness of the negro for a state of freedom or of John Brown for the office of their civil and religious governor. Both, however, had their full share in hastening the result, though the fact that John was the only survivor of the national wreck, and the only gainer by
the whole business, subjects him to the suspicion that in this case something more than incompetence might be charged. Whatever conclusions might have been drawn by other men from an experience similar to John Brown's, it only served to fortify his confidence in a belief, the cherishing of which had the rare charm of furnishing him the means of a livelihood. He soon became eager for new fields of activity; and so, living on the farm which his abolition sentiments had procured him, he became more and more extravagant in his advocacy of the new faith. As his enthusiasm increased and his will and faculties were given up more and more to the possession of a terrible animosity to the slaveholder, be became more fearlessly destructive in his abolition plans of reform. But be contemplated something more than mere intellectual warfare. While other champions found it a sufficiently remunerative business to cultivate the fertile fields of the popular credulity and reap crops of golden opinions with their keen-edged scythes of rhetoric, he knew that he was as incapable of successfully farming these as the barren fields of New England. So that, while these sleek and glossy priests were content with working on the productive moral vineyards of northern opinion, John Brown advocated a crusade against the South. Others had filled their pockets with money by simply filling buildings with eloquent exordiums and feeling perorations, or pamphlets and newspapers with their writings; but John had only profited by putting his own hand to the plough, and he wanted practical work to do.
A war of moral forces might do for others; but it did not suit him. He had neither taste, talent, nor time for it. A large family, as imprudent and thriftless as himself, was on his hands, and he wanted work to do that was profitable. And, so far as ambition had anything to do with his motives, these others might be the Aarons of the liberated race; for his part, he wanted to be the Moses or the Joshua. At this time, however, there was not yet a season for the full display of his plans. In the meantime, he was occupied in the most profitable and agreeable jobs of real work that the brotherhood had to let out at that time. No doubt, he exercised his philanthropy, for a, time, by running as one of the metaphorical conductors on the underground railroad. This, however, is not well ascertained; though, from the familiar business transactions which he was continually having with the principal abolition chiefs, he certainly was in their employ in some capacity. He certainly displayed, during the Kansas wars, a skill in stealing
negroes, that argued a wonderful natural ability for the business or else a long and profitable previous experience. But, it was not till the breaking out of that war that his career can be definitely traced, though there can be no doubt, from his conduct during that struggle, that he had prepared himself, in more ways than one, for the career of lawlessness that he there entered upon.
The history of the Kansas war is a part of the history of the country. It was the melancholy forerunner of the terrible sectional conflict that for the last three years has been desolating America. The fires of civil strife between the two sections, which had been so long smouldering, found first in the rich valleys and fruitful plains of Kansas a partial outlet for their volcanic fury. Upon her champaign fields and blooming prairies was the burning lava first discharged; and, from the desolate hearthstones and blackened ruins which then were seen, some conception might have been formed of the horrors reserved, when the whole land was to feel the effect of its wrath.
The struggle for power between the opposing political parties of the country had well nigh culminated, when a territorial government was established for Kansas, and each party was then, in its unscrupulous struggle for the spoils, beginning to reinforce their strength by pandering to the prejudices of the sections in which they respectively predominated. The administration, did not hesitate to take advantage of the sectional animosity which the agitation of slavery had excited at the South, while the opposition, composed now almost entirely of the Republican party, numbered in their ranks most of the anti- slavery elements in the North. The numerical power of the North at the polls, and the now almost general feeling of hostility to slavery among the masses, encouraged the ambitious office-seekers of the opposition to organize a sectional party.
This they unhesitatingly proceeded to do, using all the caution and judgment which success required. At first their platforms were equivocal, and they had the audacity to expect political assistance from the South. When there was no longer any reason for concealment, their hostility to slavery was avowed, and they declared their intention of inaugurating an irrepressible conflict. Before, however, this last step, which resulted in the famous Chicago platform, of 1860, could be taken, preparatory measures had to be adopted. It was necessary that blood should be shed and the two sections inflamed with mutual resentment before that degree of white heat could be attained which was to weld the different elements of opposition at the North in one solid mass. The struggle in Kansas between the northern and southern political ideas furnished a fine opportunity for doing this. The odium of the act, should a possible reaction take place in the public mind, prevented them, perhaps from assuming the responsibility; but they found able coadjutors and willing tools in the professional ministers of abolitionism. They, who had for years been plotting the downfall of every authority and institution that recognized slavery, made very little ado about kindling civil war in Kansas. If the cauldron did not boil, their infernal incantations would lose their charm. It was not "eye of newt and toe of frog" that satisfied the mysterious demands of their devilish art. Human blood, shed in the rage of fratricidal war, was the propitiatory sacrifice. And so, aided by the generous contributions of the Republican leaders and sustained by their political countenance and support, the powers of abolition lent all their energy to the bloody work. While efforts were made everywhere in the North, as also in the South, by individuals, and sometimes by communities, to stimulate emigration to the new territory, in order to secure it as an ally of either section, the abolitionists deliberately set to work to organize troops and ship them to the territory. This went on increasing, being boldly proclaimed and endorsed by respectable portion of the press, until it culminated in a Kansas Relief Association, whose duty was to furnish the men and money for the conduct of the contest in Kansas. This association armed and equipped, with all the materiel of war, an army, formidable at that time, and transported it to Kansas.
This army had a regular organization, with quartermasters and commissaries, and a commanding officer, subject to the instructions of a home council of priests and politicians. Their
invasion of Kansas, and their unlawful and unwarranted interference with the civil authorities of the territory, provoked a corresponding movement on the part of the Missourians on the western frontier of their State, and thus began the sectional conflict.
The attention of the Federal Government being called to the condition of Kansas, an effort was made, by the exertion of its military power, to quiet the civil disturbances. This was partially successful--all organized bands of any strength being dispersed or driven off. But the contest proved to be irrepressible, indeed, and, notwithstanding the presence of the Federal forces, a guerrilla contest was carried on between the two contending parties which every day increased in barbarity and cruelty. In vain, were the efforts of the Federal Government to restore order in Kansas, when the authors and instigators of the conflict shared in the councils of the nation. Every skirmish was a political event, every defeat a political misfortune, for one party, or the other. The abolitionists, and the more designing and unscrupulous of the Republicans, were the only clear gainers. Agitation and mutual resentment was what they desired, and they pushed on the conflict with all the energy of their diabolical natures. The fires of dissolution were kindled, and they knew it; and it was with fiendish delight they hailed the beginning of a general conflagration. As the contest for political supremacy in Kansas proceeded, and victory trembled in the balance, the pride of either section was excited and the feelings of the most moderate became enlisted. Each section was disposed to apologise for and palliate the violence of their respective champions, while there was too much eagerness to magnify the atrocities of their adversaries. Thus was increased that general feeling of sectional bitterness and hostility which the abolitionists took good care never to let die out. For they were the most untiring and the most active. As to the political result, they were perfectly indifferent, so that the general object of their wishes was approached. They wanted not so, much territorial supremacy for the free-state opinions as they wanted agitation. The Republicans wanted both; and so they besieged the northern mind with the most extravagant and exaggerated stories of southern barbarities. Thus was popular credulity abused and the northern heart inflamed, and the public mind prepared for the reception of the Republican doctrines of the 1860 platform. Indeed, so desperate were means they sometimes resorted to that
while, in one breath, they announced the inferiority of the southern race of white men, in the next, they inflamed the worst passions of the masses by artful allusions to northern cowardice and southern chivalry.
Among all the men whom they employed to harass and hunt down the pro-slavery settlers in Kansas, John Brown was the most merciless and cold-blooded. This is the verdict of his enemies and of most of his friends and admirers. Many of the Kansas free- state emigrants came to the territory for the purpose of settling or staying there long enough to assist by their votes in making it a free State. But many others came there, as mere hired mercenaries, to plunder and kill the pro-slavery men at will. Of the latter, John Brown was, from the first, the most conspicuous for the delight he took in planning and executing his expeditions of murder.
Most men came to Kansas with arms in their hands; but John Brown, at his coming, exhited a style of warlike display that could not but attract general notice, while it was received as a sort of declaration of his intentions.
His wagon was partially filled with ordnance of various descriptions, while the rifle-musket with the gleaming sword-bayonet and the naked sabre stood defiantly erected upon the sides of his vehicle.
Never did a bacchanalian devotee rush into the mad revels of the wine-god with more enthusiasm than John Brown did to the scenes of assassination and murder which Kansas then presented. Wild with delight at the prospect of a fit theatre of action for his bad and ambitious nature, before be had tasted of the oblivious sweets of slaughter, he astonished the most hardened villains of the precious brotherhood with his cruel plans of extermination. He was soon initiated into the mysteries of his order. An opportunity was not long wanting to one who watched its coming so eagerly. And it was but a short time, after having taken the plunge, before he surpassed all competitors
in the savageness of his animosity and the fiendishness of his deeds. His untiring energy and staunch devotion to the cause of abolition soon made him a leader for others who were equally unscruprulous, but less active and ardent. Adventurous if not brave, and without any of those passing qualms of conscience, that sometimes haunt the most blood-stained souls, he hesitated at the perpetration of no outrage, and shrank from no enterprise, because success was to be obtained by the use of the most atrocious means. Like a devouring wild beast he was to the families of all who did not put faith in his creed; and was as little turned from the accomplishment of his purposes by the prayers of the mother as by the srieks of the children. Busy, ever busy, with tracking and pursuing the pro-slavery man, he hunted him down with the pertinacity of a hound, and destroyed him, when found, with the ferocity of a tiger.
Such zeal and slavish devotion of time and energy to the cause of abolition could not fail to attract the admiration and confidence of its most influential priests throughout the North. Their philanthropic natures, though yet unfamiliar with scenes of blood, were no less gratified by "the heroic exploits of the stern old man." They could not but admire the courage which did not hesitate to do what the heart conceived; and though they could not reconcile his deeds of more than savage cruelty with their refined ideas of human obligation, they did not hesitate to approve of them, in consideration of the character and merits of the class upon which they were inflicted. Hence, John Brown rose rapidly in their estimation. His influence in their councils increased, and he finally came to be their most trustworthy and confidential partisan chief in the Kansas war. His popularity was by no means confined to them. The professional pirates of the free-state party thought a great deal of him. His military popularity among them, however, was due more to their estimate of his abilities as a brigand chief than as an abolition fanitic.
In the army of the free state men that the Kansas Relief Association had transported to the territory, there were few who mingled, with their motives of hostility to the slaveholder, much of that abstract devotion to the idea of freedom that the leading fanatics in the States professed. They were, for the most part, desperate bad men, whom necessity had driven to become the miserable tools of the timid, but more guilty abolition advocates of the east. Induced by the promise of pay and the hope of plunder, they had consented to engage in their bloody business,
more for the purpose of retreiving their fortunes than with the design of disseminating abolition doctrine. This was confined to those redoubtable parlor knights who, upon imaginary fields of action, frequently slay whole hecatombs of victims, but who, at the same time, are universally known to be constitutional cowards. It was the same then as now as now, with their inflammatory harrangues and tempting inducements held out, they filled their army with the poor dupes of their mercenary rhetoric. The only difference between that period and the one which commenced with Lincoln's accession to power, is, that then their influence was confined to a despicable and comparatively small class, while now, it extends over communities, cities and States.
Now, these Kansas free-state soldiers, "the cankers of a long peace and a calm world," discharged journeymen, and broken down tradesmen, unprincipled adventurers, professional roughs, and outcasts from society generally, found in their sainted John, a captain after their own heart, and a perfect prince of cut-throats. There was an apparent earnestness and consciousness of doing right about his acts of violence that gave stealing and murdering an air of legitimacy. To a love of blood and plunder, he joined a devilish cunning and an iron nerve, that made him as a marauder unusually successful. And, then, his hypocritical cant served, so well, to extinguish remorse and all disagreable reflections upon their crimes. His metaphysics were as efficient as his sword in promoting success. For every appeal of injured right he had a settling argument, and every prayer for mercy he drowned in a blasphemous denunciation of the unpardonable crime of slavery. So, John Brown became a great man in Kansas, even among the free-state men, and may be said to have exerted more influence in making a free State of that territory than perhaps any other of the partisan leaders. When the contest for supremacy was decided, and many of the free-state soldiers were rewarded with the farms of the slain or banished pro-slavery men, most of the conquerors laid down the sword and resigned themselves to the enjoyment of those homes which they had purchased with the blood of their former owners. John Brown, however, had tried farming more than once too often. He had found a business which he liked better and he determined to continue his efforts in that vineyard of his masters from which he could obtain both fame and money. He was not long unemployed[.] For, though the contest for supremacy in Kansas had been decided and victory perched upon the banners of the North, the insatiable juggernaut of abolition needed more victims. And
so, encouraged and employed by same agents who conducted the Kansas war, John Brown, with his band of cut-throats somewhat diminished, commenced a similar career of crime on the frontiers of Missouri that he had consummated with so much glory in Kansas.
Here, they continued their warfare upon slaveholders, carrying off horses, mules and slaves, until the established State authorities of Kansas and Missouri set their joint faces against the villain. The Governor of Missouri proclaimed him an outlaw, and offered a thousand dollars for his head. Many of his accomplices were also embraced in the proclamation of outlawry. The return of something like peace, followed by this proscription of old Brown and some of his associates, made his former confederates among the free-state men, rather cool in their treatment of him. Many, now that the stimulating period of conflict was over, sickened at the recollection of the villain's atrocities which once had created their applause and "began to heave the gorge," and deny his claims to either sympathy or admiration. Even some of his old bosom comrades, who, having obtained comfortable farms, were now desirous of becoming useful and respectable members of society, gave him the cold shoulder. Not so much because they did not relish the society of a wretch who was steeped in every crime, as because they had no idea of being annoyed with a disreputable, penniless old outlaw. For though his career of robbery and murder had been more bold and public and, perhaps, more outrageous than their own, the guilt was about equally balanced. Some conception, however, may be formed of the nature of the eccentric barbarities of the abolition champion, when men whose hands were yet red with the blood of the innocent, shuddered, it is said, at the sight of him, and studiously avoided his society.
Of all the atrocities which popular belief assigned to him, the murder of Doyle was the most horrible. The story of that deed of cruelty, like an evil spirit, haunted Brown wherever he went; and the images of horror which its relation called up, froze the blood of the most hardened villains.
According to the statements of the cotemporary newspapers, which were subsequently corroborated by testimony under oath, before an investigating committee of the then Federal Congress appointed to enquire into the facts of the committal of acts of violence in Kansas, the substantial account of that outrage is as follows:
John Brown, inflamed with resentment for some trifling ill-treatment
that one of his confederates had received at the hands of the pro- slavery men, determined to wreak his vengeance upon some one. Unable to reach the perpetrators of the injury or any of their friends or sympathizers, without running too much personal risk, he determined to gratify his now uncontrollable thirst for blood upon a man, whom every one knew was a neutral and perfectly inoffensive. John Doyle, who lived in a sort of neutral district, and who had never been known to participate in any way in the intestine struggle, was subject, however, to the damning suspicion of disbelieving in John Brown's divine right to exterminate the slaveholders. This was his crime, and now that the blood-thirsty monster was raging with disappointed malice and suffering for the want of a victim, this was enough. So, proceeding with the stealthiness of a panther upon the unsuspecting object of his wrath, and under cover of a darkness which a moonless midnight afforded, with a small party he surrounded Doyle's house and then entered it with violence. Doyle, disturbed from slumber by the noise of the entrance, demanded the meaning of the nocturnal visitation. The only reply was a demand for himself and family to surrender, followed by a rush of the villains who secured them all. It was in vain that Doyle cried out that he had never done anything, or said anything or thought anything of an unfriendly character towards Brown. In vain did his wife, on bended knees, with entreaties to which the anguish of despair and floods of tears lent eloquence, beg the poor boon of her husbands life. In vain did his little children and lisping infant, join their prayers with their mother and scream with grief at the feet of the iron-hearted pirate. A gloating look of triumph upon his grim countenance was the only answer to their petition, and the father was dragged from the embraces of his family to undergo the doom of death which Brown had already intended to inflict. Tearing him from his wife and children, who clung with the tenacity of despair, he dragged his shrieking victim out into the woods, and, within the hearing of his heart-broken wife, riddled him with bullets. Then, as if impelled by a spirit of slaughter which was as insatiable as it was pitiless, he again entered the house and seizing the two eldest boys, before their mother's eyes, carried them off and slew them as he had done their father. Left, at last, with a small remnant of her beloved family to mourn in drear helplessness the desolation of her heart and home, Maria Doyle searched for and found the reeking
corpses of her husband and children. There, by their side, the red ground and beneath the starlit heaven, she poured forth a prayer for mercy and vengeance, that only the unutterable anguish of a broken heart can inspire. Two years afterwards, when John Brown was closely immured in a felon's cell at Charlestown, Virginia, awaiting the execution of the doom which his crimes had more than once deserved, Maria Doyle wrote him a letter, of which the following is a copy:
"CHATTANOOGA, November 20, 1859.
"JOHN BROWN:
"SIR: Although vengeance is not mine, I confess that I do feel gratified to hear that you were stopped in your fiendish cause at Harper's Ferry with the loss of your two sons. You now appreciate my distress in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight, arrested my husband and two boys and took them out in the yard, and in cold blood, shot them dead in my hearing. You cannot say you done it to free our slaves, we had none and never expected to own one; but it has only made me a disconsolate widow with helpless children. While I feel for your folly, I do hope and trust you will meet your just reward. Oh, how it pained my heart to hear the dying groans of my poor husband and boys.
"Maria DOYLE."
Such is the story of the demoniac deed of cruelty, the narration of which through Kansas, made even the professional cut-throats of abolition shudder at the sight of Brown. His slaughter of an inoffensive man and his two boys, gave him a pre-eminence in crime that appalled the imaginations of the most blood-stained.
Yet this is the man who has since become a god and is almost adored by a party who hold in their hands the destiny of the northern States. The tongue of the orator and the pen of the poet preserve and magnify his heroic achievments in the cause of freedom. He is held up as a model for the religious as well as the patriotic, and the countless hosts of the North march into battle invoking in song the guardianship of his sanctified spirit.
While, however, many of the more fastidious villains did not conceal their aversion to Brown, and refused to associate with him, there were plenty left, whom the hope of plunder could easily blind to his horrible traits. They wanted profitable work to do, and, as they had long since sold themselves to Satan, they were not going to let a mere retching of the fancy deprive them of a successful leader. And there was never wanting, at any time, staunch supporters and enthusiastic admirers of the "hero of Ossawattomie," among the household and familiar priests of the abolition god. These confidential and domestic counsellors of the popular divinity, who conducted the mysterious rites of the interior altar, and whose secret councils were held behind the veil which limited the reach of public penetration, they, of course, never thought of abandoning such a profitable fanatic as old Brown. They knew the "service he had done the state," and, if they were not grateful, they were at least anxious to retain such a valuable servant[.] What had excited horror in others not so deeply dyed in villainy as themselves, only excited in them sentiments of esteem and affection. So, these venerated apostles of the faith, instead of snubbing the invaluable old murderer, gently stroked the silver hairs of the fierce old fellow, and, patting him on the back, called him by endearing names. They supplied his wants, gave him money, and revived his drooping spirits.
The prospect of more lucrative and agreeable employment, and the increasing certainty of an immunity from public scorn or interruption from the officers of the law, now that public opinion was every day yielding to the systematic attacks of abolition, caused Brown to entertain more extensive and more daring enterprises. Now, that he was outlawed in Missouri, abhored in Kansas, and persecuted by his creditors everywhere, it was more than ever necessary to do something. So, driven by despair and deluded by the whisperings of an ambition which, by this time, a vindictive malice inflamed, he listened to the flattering language of his artful employers, and, with their assistance, conceived the mad plan of invading the southern States and exciting a general servile war. His own experience in Missouri, where he found the slaves ever ready to become the dupes of any bold, positive person, made him imagine that they would fight for the emancipation
of their race, as quickly as they would run away from their masters, to enjoy what they were led to believe, was an elysium of bliss in the North where the glorious sun of freedom furnished its votaries food and raiment without money and without price. Doubtless, too, the infernal book of Helper, which did so much to poison and mislead the northern mind, excited no little influence, in determining his judgment, with regard to the practicability of arraying the non-slaveholding class against the slave holding. A bold spirit, a mind original and calm, with a small band of brave and well drilled men, was all that was wanting, he proudly imagined, to ignite the combustible elements of southern society and envelope the whole cursed section from the Potomac to the Rio Grande in one general conflagration. The first two of these indispensable requisites, he felt sure that he possessed; and his wily employers promised him the third as well as those sinews of war which he would need, to put on a war footing his army of black and white recruits. These astute mentors were perfectly aware of the madness of the scheme, and chuckled in their sleeves at Brown's gullability. They knew that there was not the slightest probability of success for Brown; but, nevertheless, their object would be gained. Agitation, agitation, was the source of their vitality, and this scheme, if attempted, no matter with what result attended, was certain to produce it. There is no doubt in the world that the grand plan was originally their own, and that Brown's expedition against Virginia was only a part of it. There was a vastness about it disproportionate to his ability as well as his command of resources. Indeed, their underground "railroad system," which had been progressing for years, formed an appropriate and natural culmination in the conception of the grand plan. For a long time previous, abolition emissaries and agents, under every conceivable disguise, had abused the hospitality and imposed upon the confidence of the southern people. And so John Brown was admitted among this army of secret spies, and for a time, clothed with some authority, over them. The grand plan was a widely organized scheme to excite a servile insurrection in many of the densely slave-populated districts of the South. These were selected according to their relative geographical contiguity and the character of their population. The United States census returns had been studied with a devilish discrimination, for the purpose of gaining the desired information. The number of whites and blacks, males and females, and adults of each race and sex, were ascertained and set down. As an evidence
that these insurrections were not expected to be immediately crushed, a connected line of these devoted districts was selected, extending from the South Carolina coast to the western frontier of Arkansas. Commencing at Georgetown and Beaufort, South Carolina, they stretched along the Savannah and through the interior of Georgia to the Chattahoochee river, in the western part of Georgia. From thence, the prospective hurricane of desolation was to sweep through contiguous and appropriate districts, in the neighborhood of the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, to the eastern border of Mississippi. Thence westward, across the river, to and along the Red river plantations to the western frontier of Arkansas, where, in all probability, a motley column of Indians, mulattos, negroes and white men, were to be precipitated from the redeemed plains of Kansas. This was the original plan which was prepared without much assistance from Brown. His particular business was to make a military diversion, about the same time, somewhere in Virginia, and thus generalize the sectional bitterness by involving the border as well as the cotton States.
In all probability, it was only some of the most deluded fanatics of the North who believed in even the temporary success of either effort; while the smart and more dangerous ones, who used their dupes, as all unprincipled men use their despised instruments of villainy, knew that most of the overt actors in the affair were likely to suffer death if caught; and so they