not understand how all-powerful and all-pervading his religion was might think him blasphemous. His faith was like that of the Puritans, lacking the graces and amenities which the nineteenth century could have given it. Stern, uncompromising, narrow, perhaps, as all intense beliefs are liable to be, it was the faith of a warrior, not of a scholar. It flashed out in his battle cry, it upheld him and gave a sanctity to his life. When Ethan Allen was asked in whose name he demanded the surrender of Ticonderoga he replied, "In the name of the Lord Jehovah and the Continental Congress." When John Brown was asked by whose authority he had taken posession of the Armory at Harper's Ferry, he answered, "By the authority of God Almighty.' And the world, hearing it, recognized the spirit of the old Puritan speaking in a braver man, engaged in a more hopeless struggle.

These are scarcely the elements of character which one would expect to find in a "hot-headed demagogue." And, indeed, there never were words more widely misapplied. John Brown's power did not lie with the masses. His appeals were not made to them. He addressed himself chiefly to the abolitionists, and, at that time, abolitionist and American were not, even at the North, synonymous terms. It would be more consistent to accuse William Lloyd Garrison or Wendell Phillips of demagoguery than John Brown. For his project of conveying slaves from Missouri through to Canada, he asked no public aid. What came to him was from private individuals who were abolitionists of as long standing as himself. It is true that he spoke of his work in Kansas frequently and to large audiences; but his theme was not his plan for freeing the slaves, but the condition of Kansas. At that time the struggle between the Free-soil settlers and the pro-slavery Missourians for the posession of the state was the chief topic of public interest. It was the beginning of the struggle between the free and slave states, prophetic, perhaps, in the final victory of the Free-soilers, of the termination of the deadlier struggle

to come.

The raids of the Missourians into Kansas for the purpose of controlling elections, of burning and plundering settlements and killing Free-soil emigrants, these were the themes of John Brown's speeches. These were also the themes of discussion in Congress, by the press, in the pulpit, at the bar. If John Brown was a demagogue because he agitated this subject, then were Presidents Pierce and Buchanan, both Democratic presidents, Mr. English, of Indiana, Alex. H. Stephens, then the most prominent of American statesmen, John Sherman, of Ohio, all demagogues. The fact that John Brown was able to support his statements by relating his experiences in Kansas, made him a more effective speaker, but not a demagogue. He neither desired nor attempted to obtain the aid of the people in general in his project for freeing the slaves. He believed that one with God was a majority, and so firm was his faith, that with that majority, he would have dared attempt anything. The "rabble" which he lead rarely consisted of more than twenty men-men of like metal to himself, who could say with him, "It is nothing to die in a good cause, but an eternal disgrace to sit still in the presence of the barbarities of American slavery." Nor were his motives those of a demagogue. Personal gain or advancement he never sought. Revenge was a sentiment which never moved him. He was a good hater, it is true; but he poured out all his indignation upon the institution of slavery as an institution. His feeling toward its upholders was merely incidental. And the man who said, "I have waited for twenty years to accomplish my purpose," could hardly be called impetuous. When the time came to act, his action was as swift and deadly as the stroke of the lightning from the skies, but it was because he laid his plans so carefully, because he waited so patiently for his opportunity, that he was ready to act so quickly and fearlessly when opportunity offered. But such a scheme as his great one, however long it may have been in contemplation, would always seem, to its opponents, rash and ill-considered. It was, indeed, the

madness of an enthusiast; but it was the kind of madness which makes the world move. The crowning effort of John Brown's life was and always will be denounced as "hot-headed" by the conservative majority of mankind. But the conservative majority are not usually moved by motives of patriotism and self-sacrifice, the conservative mind is not the one that gives the impulse to keep the ball of progress rolling. To the Southern half of the country his was a progress toward revolution and anarchy. "Wild, reckless, and revolutionary measures, instigated and controlled by mischievous malcontents," that was what Southern statesmen thought of his plans. In direct opposition to law they certainly were, yet John Brown was not a traitor to his country. His offense was against a State, not against the nation, and by the strict logic of a portion of Southern law itself, his crime was merely theft. The negroes were counted as property, and he who takes property is not guilty of treason, but of theft. But the Southern planters set such value upon their ebony wares that they punished with severest laws and damning obloquy any attempts to tamper with them. John Brown believed the United States Government to be wrong in countenancing slavery, but he expressly disclaimed any intention to commit treason. One of the articles of the constitution of the secret league to which he and his followers belonged declared that the document should not be construed so as in any way "to encourage the overthrow of any State Government, or of the General Government of the United States." It looked "to no dissolution of the Union, but simply to amendment and repeal." And yet he attacked public property, by the laws of the State he was guilty of treason, and he gave a feeling of insecurity to the slave states which did much to hasten their secession from the Union. But the state law which he violated was itself a violation of the rights of humanity and one which half the nation denounced as wrong. He was not carrying out any idea which he held alone, which was without the sanc

tion of authority or experience. He repeated what England had declared through Wilberforce, that slavery was the "sum of all villainies." He was advocating the policy which England had adopted, which Russia has since adopted, and which met the approbation of the enlightened classes throughout all Europe, and of the Northern States of the Union. He trampled upon the law of the state, but he was obedient to a higher law of which that of the state was an open defiance. If every enthusiast who thought he could establish Utopia here below should attempt to carry out his ideas by force, we should live in a state of anarchy. It is but as a last resort that the citizen may draw his sword against his government. But if every other means fail, and he must either forswear his conscience or fight,-let him fight. If the Italian States had not fought for freedom from Austrian slavery, how long would it have been before Victor Emmanuel would have ruled over United Italy? The Puritan fathers traitorously took up arms against their government; but, if they had contented themselves with expostulating with George III., how soon would independence have been attained? The world has not yet reached. that point at which it yields readily to moral suasion. Muscular Christianity is still a powerful influence in civilization. Furthermore, it seems strangely inconsistent that, within a year after the treason of John Brown had aroused such indignation through the South, when no penalty was considered too heavy to be visited upon him, this same South should have attempted to carry out a kindred scheme on a larger scale, and should consider that she is injured by the suggestion that she incurred any penalty by her misconduct.

At the time of the raid John Brown was an old man, sixty years of age. For half a century he had seen the policy. of persuasion tried, and with but little apparent result. Slavery seemed as firmly rooted in the soil as ever. Feeling as deeply as one of his fervently religious nature would feel, the wickedness of the laws which bound the slaves, filled with a

disgust for the politicians who temporized over what he believed to be matters of vital interest, discouraged by the defeat of all anti-slavery bills in Congress, burning with indignation at the decrees of Roger Brooke Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, against the "unhappy. black race", and believing that not all the eloquence of the most eloquent abolitionists would effect as much for the cause he loved as one well delivered blow, he dared to strike that blow. And when asked what excuse he could give for his conduct, he pointed to the New Testament.

He tried and failed, and in failing succeeded beyond his greatest hope of success. It was a useless as well as an unlawful attempt? Slavery would have been abolished in spite of him and without his assistance? So will the millennium come; but we could hardly expect it to arrive the sooner if no one felt it incumbent upon him to practice the virtues of charity, temperance, justice. John Brown's raid had no influence? Lowell thinks differently.

"When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's aching breast
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to west;
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him climb
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime

Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of Time." That was what John Brown did. He thrilled the whole. country. The effect he produced was second only to that of the first gun fired upon Sumter. The people were startled. They were for a time benumbed with surprise. But as they realized what he had done and what he had meant to do, it would be hard to say which was the greater, the wrath of the South, or the admiration of the North. The first showed itself immediately in the measures for protection taken by the terror-stricken citizens of Virginia, and in his speedy trial and execution; the latter, more quietly and slowly, but as decisively, within the next year. John Brown's raid came at just the right time to be a powerful agent in influencing public sentiment. It crystalized public thought into public action.