milar
words were spoken. The situation was thrilling. An old man in the
center of an excited and angry crowd, far away from home, in an
enemy's country--with no friend near--overpowered, defeated, wounded,
bleeding--covered with reproaches--his brave companions nearly all
dead--his two faithful sons stark and cold by his side--reading his
death-warrant in his fast-oozing blood and increasing weakness as in
the faces of all around him--yet calm, collected, brave, with a heart
for any fate--using his supposed dying moments to explain his course
and vindicate his cause: such a subject would have been at once an
inspiration and a power for one of the grandest historical pictures
ever painted....

With John Brown, as with every other man fit to die for a cause, the
hour of his physical weakness was the hour of his moral strength--the
hour of his defeat was the hour of his triumph--the moment of his
capture was the crowning victory of his life. With the Alleghany
mountains for his pulpit, the country for his church and the whole
civilized world for his audience, he was a thousand times more
effective as a preacher than as a warrior, and the consciousness of
this fact was the secret of his amazing complacency. Mighty with the
sword of steel, he was mightier with the sword of the truth, and with
this sword he literally swept the horizon. He was more than a match
for all the Wises, Masons, Vallandinghams and Washingtons, who could
rise against him. They could kill him, but they could not answer him.

In studying the character and works of a great man, it is always
desirable to learn in what he is distinguished from others, and what
have been the causes of this difference. Such men as he whom we are
now considering, come on to the theater of life only at long
intervals. It is not always easy to explain the exact and logical
causes that produce them, or the subtle influences which sustain them,
at the immense heights where we sometimes find them; but we know that
the hour and the man are seldom far apart, and that here, as
elsewhere, the demand may in some mysterious way, regulate the supply.
A great iniquity, hoary with age, proud and defiant, tainting the
whole moral atmosphere of the country, subjecting both church and
state to its control, demanded the startling shock which John Brown
seemed especially inspired to give it.

Apart from this mission there was nothing very remarkable about him.
He was a wool-dealer, and a goo