expecting the blow when it fell,—were in no haste to enlighten the public, or acknowledge their responsibility. But Brown became his own interpreter. The ubiquitous New York Herald reporter was instantly on the ground, and never were interviews more eagerly read and more impressive in their effect than Brown's replies to his various examiners. A prisoner, wounded, in the shadow of a felon's death, the old man bore himself with perfect courage and composure. Asked on what principle he justified his acts, he replied: "Upon the Golden Rule. I pity the poor in bondage, that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and wronged, that are as good as you and as precious in the sight of God." The Virginians recognized his sincerity and integrity. The Governor of the State, Henry A. Wisean extreme Southerner in his politics-visited Brown, and said publicly: "They are mistaken who take Brown to be a madman. He is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw,— cut and thrust and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuous

He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners, and he inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. He is a fanatic, vain and garrulous, but firm, truthful, and intelligent."

For Brown and his associates there could be but one conclusion to the business. They were put on trial for treason and murder. They had a fair trial, and indeed the case admitted of no doubt. They were sentenced to be hanged, and the sentence was carried out, within six weeks of their act.

At the North, Brown was widely honored as a hero and a martyr. No one defended his act,-a slave insur

rection, in whatever form, found no public justification. Probably a considerable majority of the community, including all the more conservative political elements, condemned the man and his deed, and perhaps justified his execution. But wherever anti-slavery feeling was strong, and with a multitude who, apart from such feeling, were sensitive to striking qualities of manhood, there was great admiration and sympathy for Brown and sorrow for his fate. John A. Andrew spoke a common feeling when he said: "Whatever may be thought of John Brown's acts, John Brown himself was right." Emerson eulogized him in daring words. If, he said, John Brown is hung, he will glorify the gallows as Jesus glorified the cross. On the day of his death the church bells were tolled in many a Northern town. Said the Springfield Republican the next morning: “There need be no tears for him. Few men die so happily, so satisfied with time, place, and circumstance, as did he.

A Christian man hung by Christians for acting upon his convictions of duty,-a brave man hung for a chivalrous and self-sacrificing deed of humanity, a philanthropist hung for seeking the liberty of oppressed men. No outcry about violated law can cover up the essential enormity of a deed like this."

Never was a man dealt with more generously by posthumous fame. In the Civil War, two lines of verse, fitted to a stirring melody, became the marching song of the Union armies:

John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the grave

His soul is marching on!

This was the last touch of the apotheosis. John Brown became to the popular imagination the forerunner and martyr of the cause of Union and freedom.

At the North, one immediate and lasting effect of the

tragedy was to intensify the conviction of the essential wrong of slavery. However mistaken was Brown's way of attack, it was felt that nothing short of an organized system of injustice and cruelty could have inspired such a man to such an attempt. The very logic of facts, which compelled Virginia in self-defense to hang him, showed the character of the institution which needed such defense. Yes, it was necessary to hang him, but what was the system that made necessary the sacrifice of such a life?

But Andrew's words "whatever may be thought of John Brown's acts"-call for further consideration. What were his acts, and what were their consequences? A part of the answer was seen in the bodies of men of Harper's Ferry, lying in the streets, peaceful men with wives and children, slain for resisting an armed invasion of their quiet little village. The first man to fall was a negro porter of a railway train, who, failing to halt when challenged by one of Brown's sentinels, was shot. The second man killed was a citizen standing in his own doorway. The third was a graduate of West Point who, hearing of trouble, came riding into town with his gun, and was shot as he passed the armory.

Among the letters that came to Brown in prison was one from the widow of one of the Pottawatomie victims, with these words: "You can now appreciate my distress in Kansas, when you then and there entered my house at midnight and arrested my husband and two boys, and took them out in the yard, and in cold blood shot them dead in my hearing. You can't say you did it to free our slaves; we had none and never expected to own one; but it only made me a poor disconsolate widow with helpless children."

Brown's first plan, of drawing off the slaves to a mountain fortress, peaceable only in semblance, and involving

inevitable fighting,-he exchanged at last for a form of attack which was an instant challenge to battle. In a conference with Frederick Douglass, on the eve of the event, Douglass vainly urged the earlier plan, but found Brown resolved on "striking a blow which should instantly rouse the country." On the day of his death, Brown penned these sentences and handed them to one of his guards: "I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. I had, as I now think vainly, flattered myself that without very much bloodshed it might be done." But no man so directly and deliberately aimed to settle the difficulty by bloodshed as he. It is thus that men make God responsible for what themselves are doing.

The Civil War when it came brought enough of suffering and horror. But it was mild and merciful compared to what a slave insurrection might have been. And it was essentially a slave insurrection that Brown aimed at. The great mass of the Northern people would have recoiled with abhorrence from a servile revolt. But who could wonder if the Southern people did not believe this, when they saw honors heaped on a man who died for inciting such an insurrection? How could they nicely distinguish between approval of a man's acts and praise for the man himself? If the North had one thinker who set forth its highest ideals, its noblest aims, that man was Emerson. Yet Emerson passed Brown's acts almost unblamed, and named his execution together with that on Calvary. Not all the disclaimers of politicians, the resolves of conventions, could reassure the South, after that day of mourning with which Northern towns solemnized John Brown's death. What wonder that an ardent Southerner like Toombs, speaking to his constituents a few months later, called on them to "meet the enemy at the door-sill." And what wonder

that the Southern people were inclined as never before to look upon the Northern people as their foes?

The more deeply we study human life, the more do we realize that as to individual responsibility "to understand is to forgive." Half a century after the event, we may well have forgiveness-not of charity, but of justice-for John Brown, and for the Governor who signed his deathwarrant; we can sympathize with those who honored and wept for him, and with those who shuddered at his deed. But, for the truth of history and for the guidance of the future, we must consider not only the intentions of men, but the intrinsic character of their deeds; not only John Brown himself, but John Brown's acts. And in that long series of deeds of violence and wrong which wrought mutual hatred and fratricidal war between the two sections of a people, that midnight attack on the peaceful Virginia village must bear its heavy condemnation. Hitherto aggression had been almost entirely from the South; this was a counter-stroke, and told with dire force against the hope of a peaceable and righteous settlement.

Probably most readers of to-day will wonder at the degree of admiration and praise which Brown received. It must be ascribed in part to some quality in his personality, which cast a kind of glamour on some of those who met him, and inspired such highly idealized portraiture as Emerson's. But there remains the extraordinary fact that men like Theodore Parker and Gerritt Smith and Dr. S. G. Howe gave countenance and aid to Brown's project. Before history's bar, their responsibility seems heavier than his; they, educated, intelligent, trained in public service; he an untaught, ill-balanced visionary, who at least staked his life on his faith. Their complicity in his plot illustrates how in some moral enthusiasts the hostility to slavery had distorted their perception of reality. Such men saw the