John Brown\'s body lay molderingin the grave but his soul was marchingon. And his soul was a thousand times mightier than his body had everbeen.
While living, his abnormal mind repelled men of strong personality.
He had never been able to control more than two dozen people in anyenterprise which he undertook. And in these small bands rebellionsalways broke out.
The paranoiac had been transfigured now into the Hero and the Saintthrough the worship of the mob which his insanity had created. Hisapparent strength of character was in reality weakness, an incapacity tomaster himself or control his criminal impulses. But the Jacobin mind ofhis followers did not consider realities. They only cherished dreams,illusions, assertions. The mob never reasons. It only believes. Reasonis submerged in passion.
John Brown was a typical Jacobin leader. He was first and last a Puritanmystic. The God he worshipped was a fiend, but he worshipped Him withall the more passionate devotion for that reason. When he committedmurder on the Pottawattomie he stalked his prey as a panther. He sangpraises to his God as he paused in the brush before he sprang. Hisnarrow mind, with a single fixed idea, was inaccessible to anyinfluences save those which fed his mania. Nothing could loose the gripof his soul on this dream. He closed his glittering eyes and refused toconsider anything that might contradict his faith.
He acted without reason, driven blindly forward by an impulse. When hiscunning mind used reason it was never for the purpose of finding truth.
It was only for the purpose of confounding his enemies. He never used itas a guide to conduct.
By the magic of mental contagion he had transferred from the scaffoldthis Jacobin mind to the soul of a nation. The contact of persons is notnecessary to transfer this disease. Its contagion is electric. It movesin subtle thought waves, as a mysterious pestilence spreads in thenight. The mob mind, once formed, is a new creation and becomes withamazing rapidity a resistless force. The reason for its uncannypower lies in the fact that when once formed it is dominated by theunconscious, not the conscious forces, of man\'s nature. Its credulity isboundless. Its passions dominate all life. The records of history are asealed book. Experience does not exist.
Impulse rules the universe.
And this mob mind moves always as a unit. It devours individuality. Menwho as individuals may be gentle and humane are swept into accord withthe most beastly cry of the crowd. This mental unity grows out of thecrushing power of contagion. Gestures, cries, deeds of hate and fury arecaught, approved, repeated.
Any lie can be built into a religion if repeated often enough to a crowdby a mind on fire with its passions. Pirates have died as bravely asJohn Brown. The glorification of the manner of his dying was merely aphenomenon of the unity of the crowd mind. It was precisely the gripof his Puritan mysticism, his worship of the Devil, that gave to hisinsanity its most dangerous appeal.
For the first time in the history of the republic the mob mind hadmastered the collective soul of its people. The contagion had spreadboth North and South. In the North by sympathy, in the South by aprocess of reaction even more violent and destructive of reason.
John Brown had realized his vision of the Plains. He had raised aNational Blood Feud.
No hand could stay the scourge. The Red Thought burst into a flame thatswept North and South, as a prairie fire sweeps the stubble of autumn.
_Uncle Tom\'s Cabin_ had prepared the stubble.
From the Northern press began to pour a stream of vindictive abuse. Afair specimen of this insanity appeared in the New York _Independent_:
"The mass of the population of the Atlantic Coast of the slave region ofthe South are descended from the transported convicts and outcasts ofGreat Britain. Oh, glorious chivalry and hereditary aristocracy of theSouth! Peerless first families of Virginia and Carolina! Progeny of thehighwaymen, the horse thieves and sheep stealers and pickpockets of OldEngland!"The fact that this paper was a religious publication, the outgrowth ofthe New England conscience, gave its columns a peculiar power over theNorthern mind.
The South retorted in kind. _De Bow\'s Review_ declared:
"The basic framework and controlling inference of Northern sentiment isPuritanic, the old Roundhead rebel refuse of England, which has everbeen an unruly sect of Pharisees, the worst bigots on earth and themeanest tyrants when they have the power to exercise it."When the Conventions met a few months later to name candidates for thePresidency and make a declaration of principles, leaders had ceased tolead and there were no principles to declare.
The mob mind was supreme.
The Democratic Convention met at Charleston, South Carolina, to namethe successor of James Buchanan. Their constituents commanded a vastmajority of the voters of the Nation. The Convention became a mob. Theone man, the one giant leader left in the republic, the one constructivemind, the one man of political genius who could have saved the nationfrom the holocaust toward which it was plunging was Stephen A. Douglasof Illinois. He could have been elected President by an overwhelmingmajority had he been nominated by this united convention. He wasentitled to the nomination. He had proven himself a statesman of thehighest rank. He had proven himself impervious to sectional hatred orsectional appeal. He was a Northern man, but a friend of the South aswell as the North. He was an American of the noblest type.
But the radical wing of his party in the South were seeing Red. OldBrown\'s words to them meant the spirit of the North. They heard echoingand reechoing from every newspaper and pulpit:
"I, JOHN BROWN, AM NOW QUITE CERTAIN THAT THE CRIMES OF THIS GUILTY LANDWILL NEVER BE PURGED AWAY BUT WITH BLOOD."If the hour for bloodshed had come they demanded that the South preparewithout further words. And they believed that the hour had come. Theyheard the tread of swarming hosts. They were eager to meet them.
Reason was flung to the winds. Passion ruled. Compromise was a thingbeyond discussion. Douglas was a Northern man and they would have noneof him. He was hooted and catcalled until he was compelled to withdrawfrom the Convention.
The radical South named their own candidate for President. He couldn\'tbe elected. No matter. War was inevitable.
Let it come.
The Northern Democratic Convention named Douglas for President. Hecouldn\'t be elected. No matter. War was inevitable. Let it come.
In dumb amazement at the tragedy approaching--the tragedy of a dividedunion and a bloody civil war--the union men of the party nominated athird ticket, Bell of Tennessee and Everett of Massachusetts. Theycouldn\'t be elected. No matter. War was inevitable. It had to come. Theywould stand by their principles and go down with them.
When the new Republican party met at Chicago they were sobered by theresponsibility suddenly thrust upon them of naming the next President ofthe United States. Fremont, a mere figurehead as their candidate, hadpolled a million votes in the campaign before. With three Democratictickets in the field, success was sure.
They wrote a conservative platform and named for their candidate AbrahamLincoln, the one man in their party who had denounced John Brown\'sdeeds, the man who had declared in his debates with Douglas that he didnot believe in making negroes voters or jurors, that he did not believein the equality of the races, that he ............