JOHN BROWN.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIV, Issue 14482, 1 July 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

JOHN BROWN.

THE gallows that became a CKOSS." There seems 110 reason to suppose that. Jo9m Brown (the original 'of John Brown's body,," of whom Mr. os\vaid Garrison Villard has written a Hew and just biography), hud cherished from childhood h's _ ultimate idea . of forcible interference with slavery. As a boy he had indeed sworn "eternal war" upon the, institution, but this was 110 more than "thoußands of other. boys had done. Not until his thirty-fifth year does he seem ■fee- have recognised a serious mission in life, and even then his ideals were educative rather than military. Writing to bis brother in 1834, lie expresses what we may believe to have been Its highest hopes at that time. He Bays.

■' "We have agreed, to get at least one negro boy or youth, ami bring him Tip as we do our own—viz., give him a good English education, learn him what we can about the history of the world, about business, about general subjects, and, above all, try to teach him the fear of God. fre think of three ways to obtain one: First, to try to get some Christian slave-holder to release one to lis. Seeor-d, to get a. free one if no one will let us have one that is a slave. Third, if that does not succeed, we fcava sli agreed to submit to eonsider*hls jjrivation in order to buy one. 'l'his wo ere now using means in order to effect, in the conUdtent- expectation iliat God is about.to bring them all out of the house of bondage. "' By educating young blacks "ire Eight under God in that way do more towards breaking their yoke effectually than in any other." There was certainly no belligerent intention at talis ffjme. Even when administering the, cath to his famik- to do all in ■feeir power to "break t-ha jaws of the ■wicked and pluck tho spoil c -,it of his *cetlr' there Vas no hint of force. Tlnit. was to come later on when. Brown discovered that the Xorth was nearly as

strongly opposed to negro education as the South and that the abolitioniste confined their efforts to talk. There is no doubt tSiat Brown removed to Kansas because he discerned there a better field for his now incendiary ideas. The abolitionists intended to make Kansas free by filLnir it with anti-slavery men, and thev were quickly ready to adept force acraiust the. invasion of the slave-holders frciu. Missouri. John Briran naturally joined the estrenust= 3 and whatever natural repugnance to shed blued n:av hnve been fc-It by his a=soc;-,:es. there was certainly no such weaknrss- noon Jrs part. He was responsible for the cold-blooded murder of the five pro- £ r.--, on Pottawotonr? and sir. '"i'lovd n-.ckec. -i clear thrn ti. ■ word <-'-'.-''-'..:-:,."l :=. the on!-!- nrtible ere. _ 7-';,-.- -.-■■- .--„• jdod th.at the?.- 7-rn rf'-!-- '^ -'■','" duecd fi'*ali- : ? nnvnj t-r> -V: -.. 'i--.'. not ir .Ichn P--wn. It :"••■.- !-..- ■ ;- l; . ttflt the miirchri'd "o-n hrid T, 1 '";!!- eelrr- Tv-ei srnilty of thrrat-. but then Streets wers etirreni eo'n in these d-'y;

Threats, and threats to murder, had j certainly been made, and the author seems uncertain how far tliese were responsible, for the subsequent crimes. But Brown himself certain.y took no refuse behind a plea of seli'-cWl'em.e. lie savs he was "Gtxl-drhvn to tins direact because the Deity makes His will known in. advance to certain cho.-vn men and women, who iwrfonu it eonsciousiv or unconsciously'." Not only did he kill the live men, but he headed raids into Missouri and carried away slaves by force. He also carried away horses,' supplies, and money, taking the money on the ground that it represented wages dne to the slaves. In fact John Brown was already waging war, and with unusually savage concomitants : , "In the light of all the evidence now accumulated, the truth would i seem to bo that John Brown came to Kansas bringing arms and ammunition, eager to fight, and convinced that force alone would save Kansas. He was under arras at the polls within three da.vs of his arrival in Kansas, to abed blood to defend the voters, if need be, and ho was bitterly disappointed that the Wakavusa ' war ' ended without asingle conflict. Thereafter he believed that a collision was inevitable in the spring, and Junes and Donaldson proved him to be correct. Fired with indignation at the wrongs he witnessed on every hand, impelled "by the Covenanter's spirit that nuMe- hira so strange ■v, figure in the nineteenth century, and believing fully that there should lis an eve for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, he killed his men in the. conscientious belief that he. was a faithful servant of Kansas and of tlie Lord. He I killed not to kill, but to free; not to make wives widows and children fatherless, but. to attack on. its own ground 'the hideous institution of human slavery, against which his whole life was a protest." Retaliation became, of course, the order of the day. There was a reign of terror, and that Kansas became overwhelmingly -.free was not due to John Brown's raids, but in spite of them. Mi-. Villard admits that "the progress to freedom and prosperity, in Kansas was due to several causes, but. especially to an abandonment of the policy of carrying on an unauthorised war and of I meeting assassination with assassination." But Kansas certainly experienced strenuous times until this salutary resolution was reached: : 'Free Soilers in numbers were stopped and turned out of the Territory when caught near the border. One John A. Baillie was shot and badly injured, besides being robbed of his pos- ' sessions. A young man named Hill was similarly robbed, and then bound and barbarously gagged. Another victim of Boi-der Ruffian fury was strung ■ap, to a tree only to foe let down again. The list of BHirdc-rB runs all tlu-ough the summer. A young Free Soil Kentuoki.'m named Hopkins was deliberately Irillsd in I<awrence in June by a deputy sheriff uaniod Haine, or Haynau, a notorious bully. .William Gay, an Indian agent, was murdered two miles from AYestport, on June 21, by three stranger.?; who blazed, away at him «3 soon as they discovered, after drinking with him, that he was from Michigan. Laben Parker was shot; stabbed, and hanged, his dangling body being found July 24, eleven miles from . Tecumseh, with this placard upon it: 'Let all those who ore going to vote against slavery take warning 1' Major David S. Hoyt, formerly of Deorfield, MassaTfcuSetts, was lulled August 11/ on his return to Lawrence from the Georgian camp on "Washington Creek, which he had entered on a mission of pjace. A corrosive acid was thrown upon his face, and his body, half-buried., was torn by wild hea-sts. His object tad been to ask that the Georgians join the people of Lawrence in stopping just such crimes." Among the retaliatory measures was one to raid Osawatomfa by the Border Ruffians under John W. Pcid. The Free-Soilers were led by Brown and a formidable fiViit ensued.

"It is probuble that, fcJl.told, John Brown had cot more than 'thirty-eight nT forty men in lir.e, aside from Clinc's force. He himself said about thirty. They held tho ; r ground well, errn aft:r 2?eid brought hits cannon into pbiy. Kis grape-shot went too hir.'i into the trees, bringing down branches and adding to the discomfort of th:> Free Soil mon, but not actually iniur : r*<r mivbody. Next-, the Border-lipfnnns tV.xmounted. and. urged by Genera! "R-iH. who waved his sword and shouted loudly, advanced toward the woods. At once Brown's men began to retreat,, followiug the stream . and keeping in the protection of the timber until tliev had gone some distance down town id the saw-mill. 'When they were on thebank, all suddenly turned as. if an order had been given and jumped into the river. It was the Border Kuifiaiiv opportunity. In a skirmish or in real warfare, to have an unfordable river at one's back is the worst of tactics. For t)iis Jolm Brown must not lie censured, since it was the only ijiaee where be could have made a. stand, unless lie had clscsen to fight in the. settlement itself and risked the lives of the women and children there. 5 '

Brown was eoiv fully embarked vrpoc his campaign of violence., and his ideas | continually grew larger. Nothing ices i than <jpen war uiwn tiic slave States I would now content him and lie seems to jlisre had an esirmji'diniiry power of } enforcing his views upon others and of ! securine; support from the most imi likely persons. He drew up a constitution, for the government of the territory chat he might rescue from shivery, [and 110 doubt Ira had already fixed ! upon Harper's Ferry as tfio must favourable spot for a"bee;.\nnin»:. Callins together a convention. Brown unfolded his plans for a campaign somcwhere in slave territory east, of the Allcejhanies, and ho rra'd to them the ainaziiiH constitution' that most, of ail seems to throw doubt upon h's sanity: ■•Amazing proposition that it was. Brown's auditors save him respectful attention until alter midnight, " '-mor.f>?:'ii<r objections and raising difficulties: but nothing could shake the purpose of the old Puritan."-' He was able in some fash:ou to meet every criticism of his plans, to suirc-ost a. plausible wav <mt of fverj difficulty, while to the chief objection., the slender means for i:nderta)c : n<r a. v.;ar upon the clominatinir American instituton, he opposed merely a Serinhiral text: 'lf God ho for us. who can be against us?' He ■vantf J to own his camrcuVn ''n the "sprintr: all he needed was rive hundred or ci"fit hundred dollars, f. >• he nr.w had all the arms and sufficient mm could a r v»f,t "ver nriil tbe next dav :"* am.' •'■ n„> TVolivrdin.?r= of the voutui- 'd--•-'t-th" y<r •••■;? wl, : chlo -■ -iv ": ■'' 2''"-' "'-' t!--' .=tron:7-=t ;„- ■[■-■ . ' I. - : - i-:ni|y, j : ; s H -il| •veyn:U-d. }f- did noi .it tV-; fVe Mr S-rbom snoah S! - ■-■n.-T! v 0 f *.n'iisiit.Hsrtcrs.F:-i!i or tnfcbrr

the arsenal; the point of departure, was lull/ vague, but the general outlines were !il«iut .-.a he had described them to Forbes. Hack of it all, in Ins head, was the purpose of sotting the South, afire and precipitating a conflict. Brown confidently oxpwtcd that the slaves would -lock at once fo his standard of revolt, and here ho made Ida .supreme mistake of suoposiii;/ that black- men could ho relied'upon to act, like- while men. Mis success in appealing to the slaves would of course hura produced a conflict- too hideous for the imagination, but of tibia ho seems never to have thought. J-lo easih- seized the railway bridge at Harper's"Ferry, but when a train appeared ho allowed it, to pass. Troops iveiv quickly on tho move, but Brown remained triuiquilly nn guard with his .sixteen white nieii and five negroes. The engine house in which Brown had fortified himself was tnko.l with the utmost ease. And so ended a business that was bopelossly foolish from the start. Tliat Brown's tiial was expedited, perhaps midnlv so, oould have made no difference to the re.'-ult. Only on the ground of insanity could he huve escaped, and h-'s insanity was never of "the pronounced type that would involve irre-spf.-nsiblity. Bvrau was executed on Ccooir.ber 2, 18D9: " The painful silence that followed was broken by Colonel Preston's solemnly de-larin'g: 'So oerish all such enemies of Virginia.! All such enemies of tbo 'Union; All such foes of the human Tace" It was said without a shade of animosity., without a note of exultation; but the blind man wa.<; not lie who swung from the rope above. For his eyes had seen, long before his light bad failed, the cominn; of the blue-clad masses of the North. who were to make a. mockery of Colonel Preston's words and sl-r.ke down the destroying tyranny of slavery, to fro© Virginia from the most fateful of selfimposed bonds. As the troops now solemnly tramped away, with all decorum and without any ctemonstiratioas, in. far-off Albany they were firing one hundred Runs as the dirge of the martyr. And mean-while John. Brown's eoul was marching on, and all in 4ihe North who had a conscience and a heart knew that John A. Andrew voiced the truth when he declared that ' whether the enterprise of John Brown and his associates in Virginia was wioe or foolish, right or wrong; I only Icno-w that, whether the enterprise itself was one or the other, John Brown himself j 13 right.' "

The author's concluding words may be taken as the keynote of the spirit that porrades his book: " Andl as, wherever there ia battling against injustice and oppression, the Charle«town callows that became a cross will help men to live and die. The story of John Brown will ever confront the spirit of despotism, when men aro struggling to throw off , the shackles of social or political or physical slavery. His own country, while adimitting; his, mistakes without undue palliation or excuse, will forever acknowledge the divine that was in him by the side of what was human aii'd faulty, and blind and wrong. It will cherish the memory of the prisoner of Charlestown in 1539 as at once a sacred, a, solemn and an inspiring American heritage." Mr. Villard makes no effort to represent John Brown as an ideal charactor, nor does his book suggest that he was a le.ader whose spirit is to be .revered.- But. we do seem to see in him an incarnation of consoihee. but of conscience misled by a disordered mind.—San Francisco "Argonaut."