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.

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.

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.

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 worldHad so incensed, that he was reckless what he didTo 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.

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.

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:

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.

John Brown set about making the preparations for his part of the work with his usual diligence. The field of labor was congenial and gratifying. His vanity was tickled at the grandeur of the job, and his ambition and avarice were excited by the prospect of reward. Visions of fame, as the liberator of a despised race, mingled with his dreams of plunder, power, and vengeance. The very inception of the vast undertaking had intoxicated him with the emotions of the sublime. He felt his soul expand as he dwelt upon the glory of the attempt, and already, on the wings of imagination, heard the thundering plaudits of the emancipated milli