The Battle of Principles Part 4

A Universalist in his religious faith, Horace Greeley believed that right was stronger than wrong, good more powerful than evil, and that there will be in eternal ages no endless perdition for the evil ones of earth, but that G.o.d and all the resources of His power and love will here or there compel every knee to bow and every will surrender to the will divine. He earned the right to say at the end of his n.o.ble career, "I have been spared to see the end of giant wrongs that I once deemed invincible in this country, and to note the silent upspringing and growth of principles and influences which I hail as destined to root out some of the most flagrant and pervading influences that remain. So, looking calmly, yet humbly, for that close of my mortal career which cannot be far distant, I reverently thank G.o.d for the blessings vouchsafed me in the past; and with an awe that is not fear, and a consciousness of demerit which does not exclude hope, await the opening before my steps of the gates of the Eternal World."

VI

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE; JOHN BROWN: THE CONFLICT PRECIPITATED

About 1850, as the result of the long agitation of the editors and orators, preachers and poets, the people of this country entered upon a heated mood, when excitement dwelt like fire in the intellect and conscience. For thinking men, it was becoming clear that civil war was inevitable, and that commercial relations between North and South would soon be broken off. But the North had goods to sell, and the South had money with which to buy; so the word was pa.s.sed that every one must keep silence about slavery, lest discussion bring on a financial panic. It was the era of imprisoned moral sense. In the ocean, some waves are tidal waves, and on land sometimes the soil is heaved by an earthquake; at this time G.o.d began to heave the conscience of the people as the full moon heaves the sea. And although we now see that G.o.d was behind the movement, foolish men then tried to stay these moral forces. Northern merchants and politicians cried, "Peace!" and the Southern successors of Calhoun lifted the old club, the threat of secession; but the agitation went on all over the North. Toombs, the Southern senator, tried sheer bombast, and said he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill monument. Timid men in the North began to cry: "Conciliate, conciliate!" But there can be warfare, and only warfare between darkness and light, between sickness and health, between wrong and right. At length Phillips and Greeley took up the cry: "Let the South go!" But the answer was: "Shall a strong man who has hold of a mad dog let the beast go into a crowd of little children?" Compromise did something for a time, as a safety valve, relieving men's pent-up feelings. But G.o.d had His own counsels. Plainly, "every drop of blood shed by the lash was to be paid for by blood shed by the sword," for "the judgments of G.o.d are true and righteous altogether."

During those heated days of 1850, when the men of light and leading began to see their way clearly, the ma.s.ses were still timid, hesitant and vacillating in their judgments on slavery. Scholars and thinking men had already been reached by poets, authors and editors, while the preachers and lecturers had driven their message home to the conviction of the ruling cla.s.ses. Later on was to come the revival of 1857 that should stir the conscience, but preparatory to that movement it was necessary to inform the intellect and rouse the affections of the millions. Then it was that G.o.d raised up an author to touch the heart of the people.

Wonderful the power of the novel in social reform! The novels of "Oliver Twist," and "Dombey and Son," were what roused the English people to a realization of the woes and wrongs of chimney sweeps, of children in the factories and mines of Great Britain. It was a novel, "All Sorts and Conditions of Men," that later built People's Palace in the Whitechapel district of London. And it was a novel, named "Uncle Tom's Cabin," that created the atmosphere of sympathy in which the flowers of self-sacrifice and heroism unfolded.

The auth.o.r.ess was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, who had seven sons and four daughters, each one of whom was either a preacher or reformer in some field. His daughter, Harriet, married Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, where, on the border between the free soil of Ohio and the slave soil of Kentucky, people were in a state of constant excitement and upheaval. The old Blue Gra.s.s State exhibited slavery in its very best condition and also in its worst form. The harrowing tales and incidents that were afterwards worked up into literary form by the gifted auth.o.r.ess were all matters of observation, conversation and experience. One of the earliest incidents of the Stowes' life in Cincinnati was an experience of Professor Stowe with one of the Beecher boys. While travelling in Kentucky, the two young men witnessed the flight of a negro woman, who was running away with her little child, whom they helped across the Ohio River, to be sent on by the Underground Railway to Oberlin, on the sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie. And the similar incident, Eliza's flight across the ice, her son Charles[1]

writes in his recent story of her life, "was an actual occurrence. She had known and had often talked with the very man who helped Eliza up the bank of the river."

Later during their Cincinnati residence, Mrs. Stowe conducted a small private school and made a practice of allowing a few coloured children to attend it. One evening the mother of one of these coloured children came to the Stowes' house in a frenzy of terror, saying that her little girl had been seized and carried to the river, to be sold as a slave in Kentucky. Mrs. Stowe raised the money to ransom the beautiful child.

It was during this period that the Kentucky editor, Bailey, moved across the river and began to publish a paper in Cincinnati. One night the editor knocked at the door of the Stowe home, seeking refuge from a mob that had smashed in his doors and windows, looted his printing-office, and flung his type into the river.

On another occasion a Kentuckian named Van Zandt freed his slaves and carried them across the river into Ohio. His old friends counted him a traitor, and charges were trumped up that he had used his new home in Ohio as an underground station for the receiving of runaway slaves.

Professor Stowe was asked to a.s.sist in Van Zandt's defense. When other lawyers were afraid of the mob spirit, a young attorney named Salmon P.

Chase volunteered his services without pay. As the courts were then entirely under the influence of the Fugitive Slave law, young Chase lost his case; but that no dramatic note might be wanting, this young attorney later became chief justice of the United States Supreme Court and wrote a decision that reversed the former action. All these and many other facts and events went into Mrs. Stowe's mind as raw silk, and came out tapestry and brocade. The fuel of events fed the flames of enthusiasm. It was a great age, when men had to speak. The time was ripe, the soil was ready, G.o.d gave the good seed of liberty, and the sower went forth to sow.

Mrs. Stowe tells us how she came to write the last chapter of the book, the death of "Uncle Tom." She had a coloured woman in her family whose husband was a slave, living in Kentucky. This black man had invented a simple tool, was a good salesman, and was permitted to travel from town to town, and even to cross the river into the Ohio, under no bond save his solemn pledge to his master not to run away. Mrs. Stowe wrote the letters for her servant, to this black man in Covington, Ky. One day, while visiting his wife, in the Stowe home, he said that he would rather cut off his right hand than break the word he had given to his master.

What white man could boast a more delicate sense of truth? How keen and delicate the conscience! What weight of manhood in a slave! What reserves of morality! What latent heroism! The slave's story captured the imagination of the auth.o.r.ess, and kindled her mind into a creative mood.

Out of the incident Mrs. Stowe evolved the character of "Uncle Tom." One Sunday morning, as she sat at the communion table, the picture of Tom's death rose and pa.s.sed before her mind. "At the same time," writes her son, "the words of Jesus were sounding in her ears: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.' It seemed as if the crucified but now risen and glorified Christ were speaking to her through the poor black man, cut and bleeding under the blows of the slave whip." Long afterwards some one asked Mrs. Stowe how she came to write the death of Uncle Tom, and she answered that she did not write it, that G.o.d gave it to her in a vision, that she saw the overseer flog him to death, and heard his dying words, and merely wrote down the vision as she saw it. At the time, she had no idea of writing more: it was a year later when she began the tale of which this incident became the crisis.

For nearly two years the story ran in the _National Era_, published in Was.h.i.+ngton. The book was completed on March 20, 1852, and in spite of Mrs. Stowe's despondency and apprehension of failure, it sold 3,000 copies the first day, 10,000 in a week, and 300,000 in a year. Save "Pilgrim's Progress" alone, perhaps no book ever had a wider circulation, the Bible, of course, and "The Imitation of Christ," by a Kempis, always excepted. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was translated into German, French, Italian and Spanish, and later appeared in almost every known language. Written for the people at large, the book struck a chord of universal human nature, and aroused the learned as well as the simple.

Soon letters began to pour in from the most distinguished men in foreign countries. Charles d.i.c.kens wrote that he had read "Uncle Tom's Cabin"

with the deepest interest and sympathy. Lord Carlisle sent a message of "deep and solemn thanks to Almighty G.o.d, who has enabled you to write this book." Charles Kingsley expressed the judgment that the story would take away the reproach of slavery from the great and growing nation. Men like Shaftesbury, Arthur Helps, women like George Sand and Frederika Bremer added their tribute of praise. Eighteen different publis.h.i.+ng houses in England were issuing the book at one time, and a million and a half copies were sold in Great Britain.

Even Heinrich Heine, the poet, the cynic, who carried more power of sarcasm and irony than any man of his generation, was so moved by the book that he seems to have returned to the reading of the Bible, and to Christ the Consoler, in the hour when night and death were falling.

"Astonis.h.i.+ng! That after I have whirled about all my life, over all the dance floors of philosophy, and yielded myself to all the orgies of the intellect, and paid my addresses to all possible systems, without satisfaction, like Messalina after a licentious night, I now find myself on the same standpoint where poor Uncle Tom stands--on that of the Bible. I kneel down by my black brother in the same prayer. What a humiliation! With all my sense I have come no farther than the poor ignorant negro who has just learned to spell. Poor Tom indeed seems to have seen deeper things in the holy book than I, but I, who used to make citations from Homer, now begin to quote the Bible as Uncle Tom does!"

Praise can go no farther than this, that "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has shown how the love of G.o.d can support a slave, under the lash, in the hour when he is flogged to death, and fill his heart with pity while he cries, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!" It was this that conquered the intellect of the scholar, and broke his heart, and flooded his eyes with tears.

Perhaps the most striking testimony to the influence of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" grew out of a suggestion of Lord Shaftesbury's that the women of England and Europe send their signatures to a testimonial to be presented to Mrs. Stowe, for, when this testimonial came in, it filled twenty-six thick folio volumes, solidly bound in morocco, and it held the names of 562,448 women, representing every rank, from the throne of England to the wives of the humblest artisans in Wales or the peasants in Italy.

The message of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is so simple that he who runs may read. It was not written for literary critics, for scholars or for college graduates. George Eliot wrote her "Romola" with the historian and the philosopher and the editor of reviews ever in mind. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for farmers, factory men, merchants and clerks, the miscellaneous ma.s.s that make up the millions, to rouse them to the wrongs of slavery.

In it she tried to prove two things. First, that slavery, as a system, reacted upon the loftiest natures, distorting and injuring them. Witness the Kentucky gentleman, Mr. Shelby. His wife was a patrician, the very embodiment of courtesy and good-will, affection and sympathy. Her husband was a man of honour, a representative of the bluest blood of the old Lexington families, with a heart so gentle that the sight of a young bird that had fallen out of the nest in the tree moved him to tears; but, little by little, pressed by his necessities and hardened by the spectacle of slaves bought and slaves sold, he himself sells the woman who has been a nurse to his children, and Uncle Tom who has been like a saviour to his own boys in the hour of their peril in forest and river, sends both of the slaves into the cotton plantations of Louisiana, breaking his solemn pledge to his wife and his family, in the hope that he could escape from debt, that like a millstone weighed him into the abyss.

Then, the book tries to show how slavery develops the worst men, of the stamp of Simon Legree, the brutal overseer. Legree pours out the vials of his wrath upon the slaves about him, debauching a young octaroon to the level of his mistress, hunting his slaves with bloodhounds, killing them without trial before a jury. Power is dangerous; there is the czar spirit in every man. Slavery made a brute still more brutal--made the sensual man more sensual, and finally debased Legree to the level of the demon.

It is a book full of pathos and tears. Remembering that the book was written for the miscellaneous millions, to rouse the nation at large to moral indignation, it is doubtful whether any book was ever more perfectly adapted to the end aimed at. Literary artists have criticized "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and contrasted it with "Henry Esmond," "Vanity Fair" and "Adam Bede." But if Thackeray, d.i.c.kens and George Eliot achieved unique success in creating books that should reach their set, one thing is certain,--the boys, who afterwards became the soldiers of the Civil War, read "Uncle Tom's Cabin" with dim eyes and indignant hearts, because the book found their judgment and their conscience, and lifted them to the point where they were made ready in the day of G.o.d's power, to fight the battle for freedom.

When all the school children had read the death of little Eva and of Uncle Tom, and all the farmers and working men--the dwellers in city and country, from seaboard to mountains and prairie--had followed the career of these slaves to the end, and the people of the North were fully awake to the horror of the slave traffic, the mult.i.tudes began to look with questioning eyes into each other's faces, asking, "What can be done?

What is the next step?" And then it was that a fanatic entered the scene.

His name was John Brown, descended from Peter Brown, a Pilgrim of the _Mayflower_. He had been cattle-drover, tanner and wool-merchant. When about forty years of age he was living in Springfield, Ma.s.sachusetts.

One night, in 1849, a runaway slave knocked at his door and told Brown the story of his flight, of the weeks he had spent hiding in the swamps, of his escape to the fastnesses of the mountains, of his life in the forest, and how he finally reached New York and Springfield. It was a story of starvation, hunger, cold, blows and piercing anguish. Long after the children had gone to bed at midnight, while the slave was sleeping in a blanket beside the fire, John Brown sat musing over the national infamy. All the next day and night the conference continued with this runaway, who was also a negro preacher. The following night John Brown a.s.sembled his sons. He closed the door and told his family his decision. He was a tall man, over six feet, straight and lithe, slightly gray, with thin lips and smooth face. The Bible was almost the only book in the house, and no sound was so familiar as the voice of prayer. Brown was lifted into the prophetic mood. He told his family that he had decided to give himself, and to consecrate them, to righting the wrongs of the slaves; that he had heard a voice calling him to the work of the deliverer; that he would be killed, and that they must expect also to die the martyr's death, and that henceforth they must expect only crusts, wounds, bitter enmity, and finally martyrdom. A little later and Brown had moved the younger children of his family to North Elba, in the Adirondack woods, that the slaves on the underground route might be able to hide in the forest, in the event of the pursuers overtaking them. Brown then began to travel along Mason and Dixon's line from the city of Was.h.i.+ngton through to Topeka, Kan. From time to time he would cross the line, take charge of a little group of slaves, and hiding by day and travelling by night, carry them from one underground station to another. It was said that he had personally conducted runaway slaves along every route for a thousand miles from East to West, between the Atlantic and the Missouri River.

One of the friends of Brown's childhood was the Hon. James B. Grinnell, who founded the town and college in Iowa. This congressman loved to tell the story of the night when John Brown knocked at his door. Outside was a wagon, packed with slaves, whom Brown had carried across the line from Missouri. He had driven four horses at their limit of speed for a hundred miles and had no defenders, save two or three men and as many guns. "I am a dealer in wool," said the stranger, "and my name is Captain John Brown of Kansas." The first thing Mr. Grinnell did was to find a shelter for these slaves, with food and beds. The next thing was to hide the wagon and the horses in the thick grove near by. Early the next morning the news spread like wild-fire, and the settlers began to pour in. John Brown made a speech to the farmers and justified his act.

The villagers were terrified lest the pursuers come any moment and burn their houses. The three Congregational ministers offered prayers, asked for help, and started out to raise money. When the night fell the slaves were rushed to the terminus of the railway and carried through to Chicago, being s.h.i.+pped in a freight car as sheep, to distinguish their woolly heads from the goats, named white men.

In 1855 John Brown led his five sons and their families into Kansas, to help preempt the State for freedom. When at length the free state voters won an election and enthroned their governor, two thousand pro-slavery men from Missouri crossed the State line, burned the little town of Lawrence, and at the point of the pistol compelled the State officials to resign; issued writs for a new election, put in a slavery governor, captured the government, and started back into Missouri. On their way they pa.s.sed through Pottawatamie. It was a guerrilla warfare.

When John Brown reached his son's cabin, he found the settlers preparing for flight. He denounced them as cowards, and when one urged caution, answered, "I am tired of that word Caution. It is nothing but cowardice!" Either the border ruffians had to go, or else the settlers must leave without striking a single blow in defense of their homes. A man's cabin was his castle. Without waiting for the next attack to be made, John Brown pointed the settlers to the smoking ashes of cabins already burned and to the bodies that the Missouri guerrillas had left on the ground, and took the aggressive himself. He seized five of the outlaws and killed them for their crime.

The deed fired Kansas, some say freed Kansas, while others think it opened the Civil War. Withdrawing to the forest, hiding in the cottonwood swamps, John Brown organized his company. A reporter of the _New York Tribune_ finally penetrated the thicket. "Near the edge of the creek a dozen horses were tied, already saddled for a ride for life. A dozen rifles were stacked against the trees. In an open s.p.a.ce was a blazing fire with a pot above it. Three or four armed men were lying on red and blue blankets on the gra.s.s. John Brown himself stood near the fire with his s.h.i.+rt sleeves rolled up and a piece of pork in his hand.

He was poorly clad, and his toes protruded from his boots. The old man received me with great cordiality, and the little band gathered about me. He respectfully, but firmly, forbade conversation on the Pottawatamie affair. After the meal, thanks were returned to the bountiful Giver. Often, I was told, the old man would retire to the densest solitudes to wrestle with his G.o.d in prayer. He said he was fighting G.o.d's battles for his children's sake: 'Give me men of good principles, G.o.d-fearing men, men who respect themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose a hundred such men as these border ruffians.' I remained in the camp about an hour. Never before had I met such a band of men. They were not earnest, but earnestness incarnate."

After several years of b.l.o.o.d.y conflict and political struggles between the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties, in 1859 the Const.i.tution prohibiting slavery was pa.s.sed, and freedom had won in Kansas. In January of that year John Brown returned to the mountains of Virginia, and "The Great Black Way," and the dark shadows of the night following the North Star to liberty. For many years he had been planning an uprising of the slaves, and an attack upon Virginia. Some biographers think he conceived the plan as early as 1849. Away back in 1834 Brown wrote to his brother his determination to war on slavery; but at first only through educating the blacks. As time went on he came into sterner conflict with it.

Brown, in fact, became a fanatic who really believed that the millions of slaves would rise at his call, and that he could lead his host as a new Moses, out of the land of bondage. He intended to operate in the Blue Ridge Mountains, because the paths into the black belt of slavery were easily followed. Men like Douglas and other escaped slaves who were living in the North did not see their way clear to join the movement.

On Sunday, October 16, 1859, John Brown, with sixteen men, started out to capture Harper's Ferry and redeem three million slaves. Brown rode in a one-horse wagon, that held provisions, pikes, one sledge-hammer and one crowbar; his sixteen men, with guns, followed on foot. Without a single shot they captured the armoury and the rifle factory, and at daylight, without the snap of a gun or any violence whatsoever, they were in possession of Harper's Ferry. On Monday morning the panic spread like wild-fire. The rumour went abroad of an uprising of all the slaves of the South. In a few hours the governor called out the militia, Jefferson guards marched down the Potomac, and two local companies took positions on the heights. The a.s.sault began in the afternoon. One by one Brown's handful were killed, his two sons, Oliver and Watson, were shot down, and Brown, badly wounded, was captured.

The trial and examination of the old fanatic makes a fascinating story.

At noon of Tuesday, the governor of Virginia bent over him as he lay wounded and blood-stained upon the floor. "Who are you?" asked the governor. "My name is John Brown; I have been well known as old John Brown of Kansas. Two of my sons were killed here to-day, and I am dying too. I came here to liberate slaves, and was to receive no reward. I have acted from a sense of duty, and am content to await my fate. I am an old man. If I had succeeded in running off slaves this time, I could have raised twenty times as many men as I have now for a similar expedition; but I have failed."

Then Governor Wise said, "The silver of your hair is reddened by the blood of crime. You should think upon eternity."

John Brown replied, "Governor, I have not more than fifteen or twenty years the start of you to that eternity, and I am prepared to go. There is an eternity behind and an eternity before, and this little speck in the centre is but a minute. The difference between your time and mine is trifling, and I therefore tell you--be prepared. I am prepared--you have a heavy responsibility. It behooves you to prepare, and more than it does me."

Friends in the North tried to secure Brown's release, but he answered them: "I think I cannot now better serve the cause I love so much than to die for it, and in my death I may do more than in my life. I believe that for me, at this time, to seal my testimony for G.o.d and humanity through my blood will do vastly more towards advancing the cause I have earnestly endeavoured to promote than all I have done in my life before."

When the court asked Brown if he had any reason why he should not be hung, he answered: "This court acknowledges the validity of the law of G.o.d. I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible. That book teaches me to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavoured to act up to that instruction. I believe that to interfere as I have done, in behalf of G.o.d's poor, was not wrong, but right. I am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country, whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel and unjust enactments, I submit. So let it be done."

On the morning of his hanging he visited his doomed companions, and then kissed his wife good-bye. A thousand soldiers stood round about his scaffold. "This is a beautiful land," said Brown, as he rode, looking across the landscape. As he climbed the steps of the scaffold a negro child stood between some black men, and some say he stooped and kissed the child. And this was his prayer:

"My love to all who love their neighbours. I have asked to be spared from having any weak or hypocritical prayers said over me when I am publicly murdered, and that my only religious attendants be poor, little, dirty, ragged, bareheaded, and barefooted slave boys and girls, led by some gray-headed slave mother.... Farewell, farewell." He died in the spirit of the letter written the day before, when he said, "I think I feel as happy as Paul did when he lay in prison, for men cannot chain or hang the soul."

His deed puzzled the world. For mult.i.tudes it is still an enigma. To many, John Brown seems not only a fanatic but a lunatic. To others, now that long time has pa.s.sed, this white-haired old man, weltering in his blood, which he had spilled for a broken and despised race, seems right, and he seems to have died, not as a fool dies, but as martyrs die. That his enterprise was doomed to failure in advance, all knew.

That it was not the wisest plan, Brown's best friends must grant. But that its fanaticism was overruled by G.o.d to release the great South from the incubus of slavery, Brown's friends and Brown's enemies alike must concede.

What other men had been writing about, John Brown did in action. The attack on Harper's Ferry was the first blow struck during the Civil War.

Other men and women a.s.sembled the explosives, but John Brown dropped the spark in the magazine, which finally blew up that hindrance to progress, slavery--the h.e.l.l Gate obstruction in the pa.s.sageway of the South and of all civilization.

VII

LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS: INFLUENCE OF THE GREAT DEBATE