and insulted. Brown was convicted and sentenced to be hanged. The clergyman of the town visited his cell; but the prisoner refused to see this "heathen gentleman ","as he called him, saying that "he could not recognize as a minister of the God he worshipped any man who justified slavery "—hardly the broad mind of the far-sighted patriot, striving to carry forward so grand a scheme. He refused to receive the last ministrations of the holy gospel, because he who offered them lived among slave-holders. Indeed, I am disposed to cite John Brown's religion as but one more proof of his demagogism. Ever after abolition became his idol, his religion was tainted. It was no longer the religion of his fathers, puritanically rigid and severe; it was aggressive, a kind of Moloch. By force of arms, he drove swearing soldiers to their knees and the outward semblance of prayer, only to have them go away scoffing at his fanaticism. It was as radical as the man. It was his excuse and pack-horse, instead of the sacred center of all his movements. In his frequent blasphemous quoting of the Golden Rule, he forgot that divine command which bade him be "in obedience to his masters" and those who had authority over him. He forgot that the keeping of civil law is far from inconsistent with the keeping of God's law. He felt able to defy law and order by blazoning abroad precepts whose first principles he had failed to learn. Again, I call him radical! The time came for him to die; and, if ever a man "died game", it was John Brown. The soldiers about his scaffold were filled with admiration. But it was the simple "grit " of the man which thrilled them, as it did the North-aye-and the South! They admired John Brown the fearless, John Brown the bold-not the mad abolitionist. And was the heroism of his death prompted by the thought that his blow at abolition was a telling one? Did John Brown die thus triumphant? Perhaps so; and yet I doubt not that, the visionary part of his scheme once shattered by his failure, he was somewhat doubtful of the expediency of his unwarranted at

tack. Does not the judicial American citizen of to-day, looking with impartial eye back to the years preceding '59, and into the twenty years following, see a fulfillment of the aphorism, "Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time." The cause for which he died was too vital to be much influenced by this one man; and very soon both he and his endeavors were substantially forgotten. The country was agitated by an eruption of long standing-an eruption in which John Brown, like many another agitator, was but a volcanic fragment amidst the seething torrent of the burning crater. A large and powerful fragment, do you say? I answer, yes, on any other crater. We wish for him, for his glory, for his country, that his best qualities could have been turned into another channel. To have removed his fanatic madness would have been to give lawful scope to his determination, his natural power to command, his courage. He might then have been the veriest hero instead of the insurrectionist-the leader of a thoroughly illegal and fruitless raid. With the greatest admiration for his power and unbounded charity for his purpose, we can but gain afresh, at every turn, the conviction that so great an issue as the abolition of slavery-an issue vital to a whole nation-vital to civilization—could not be materially influenced by the unlawful interference of a man, worshipping his idol. For this issue was both old and important. Slavery itself, older than history, had its origin in war, when the thrift and clemency of a victor spared his prisoner and made him his servant, instead of wantonly killing him. This mild type of slavery had acquired respectability and stability-was an institution before Virginia, the first abiding colony of our country, was established. But it rapidly degenerated into a speculation, slave-trading; and, as early as 1772, Lord Mansfield pronounced judgment against it in the Somerset case-nearly a century before John Brown's time. Ever after the first discussion, the subject was constantly agitated. In the American Revolution, the colonists were weak, since one-sixth of the

population were slaves, who could run to British garrisons for protection; and abolition was felt to be a necessity. There was naturally opposition; for, as each state entered the Union, it could demand the right of owning slaves, that its neighbors might not have superior advantages. But the greatest thinkers, alike at North and South, saw fast-increasing evils in this "peculiar institution"; and very soon the whole country felt that some change must follow the powerful agitations everywhere existing. The North, with nothing to lose, could of course advocate abolition, heart and soul; the South naturally hoped for a change which would not impoverish and weaken itself; but equally, in both cases, was there discussion. The country was trembling with excitement over this very question when John Brown made his unexpected, independent, unauthorized raid upon Harper's Ferry. We have seen how he failed and died, leaving hardly a ripple on the surface of national politics; and what followed? Lincoln was nominated. His first cry was concerning the great subject of the day. In his opening speech, he said: "The Union cannot permanently endure, half slave and half free. We are now far into the fifth year, since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agitation. It will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached and passed." He did not make the Harper's Ferry raid a crisis or a centre of past and future action. Four months later, Governor Seward said, "These antagonistic systems are continually coming into closer contact and collision. Shall I tell you what this collision means? They who think it is accidental, unnecessary, the work of interested or fanatical agitators mistake the case altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict between two opposing and enduring forces; and it means that the United States must and will, sooner or later, become either entirely a slave-holding nation, or entirely a freelabor nation." These men merely echoed the sentiments which were the outgrowth of years of agitation, as Stephen

A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge foreshadowed the movement towards secession, which had come to be the hope of the South. At last, the storm whose clouds had been so long in gathering, burst with awful fury. The South was conquered. A nation had divided against itself to settle the long-impending question, and it was irrevocably decided! Now, no secret creeping of a score of men, from their hiding-place in a mountain-side; but an open, wide-spread, fatally general uprising a bloody struggle and a sentence passed, which should endure as long as our Republic! Was this John Brown's doing? Less truly far-sighted than the youngest drummer-boy who kept to his place in line of battle was this stern, unbending, stubborn old man, who knew no better way of showing his patriotism than by raising a turbulent sedition, in the country which he feigned to serve.

M. R. S., '82.

JOHN BROWN, THE FAR-SIGHTED PATRIOT.

Blessed be mediocrity, for it alone can live and die in peace! As long as there remain two sides to a question, so long will every one who stands above the happy average of humanity be the subject of criticism, of blame, of reproach. The stronger the light in which the figure stands, the darker will be the shadow cast on the other side. But whether we consider John Brown as a figure of darkness or of light, we can not help considering him. He stands out against the background of our national life, the most romantic figure in American history,

a man so audacious as to attack the ruling institution of his country, so foolish as to believe that one man could successfully oppose a nation, so devoted to his idea as to sacrifice home, children, and life itself to it, so fanatical as to believe that he was obeying a Divine command in stirring up this insurrection, so powerful as to accomplish his end—the enthusi

ast, the hero, the demagogue, the traitor. And yet the stock from which John Brown sprung was hardly such a one as we should expect to produce demagogues and traitors. His was the seventh generation, in regular descent, from Peter Brown, who came over in the Mayflower. His mother was the descendant of an emigrant from Holland. His ancestors on both sides served in the Revolutionary war. None of them were men given to light thinking or careless acting, and his uncompromising earnestness and his devotion to what he believed to be right were John Brown's lawful inheritance from his stern and warlike fore-fathers. His family were among the pioneers of Ohio, and as Thoreau says: "his education consisted of the study of the science of Liberty in the University of the West, and, having taken his degrees, he commenced the public practice of humanity in Kansas. He was a self-reliant boy. In one of his letters he speaks of his pride in being sent, when only twelve years old, for more than a hundred miles through the wilderness with "companies of cattle," and remarks that "he would have thought his character much injured had he been obliged to be helped in any such job." Thus early in life he received an impression so strong that it was the beginning of his crusade against slavery. His childish sympathies were aroused by the ill-treatment of a little negro boy of his own age, and then and there he was led to declare or swear eternal war with Slavery." And he never broke his oath. With a singleness of purpose of which we see but rare examples, he made everything in his life subordinate to his determination to root out the slavery which he believed to be so wicked in itself, and so harmful to the country. From infancy his children were taught the abolitionist's doctrines, and the bravery with which one after another laid down his life in support of those doctrines is sufficient proof of the intensity of their belief in them. If by saying that he made a pack horse of his religion is meant that everything in his life rested upon it, it is true. One who did