After Harper's Ferry, the _Springfield Republican_
(which judged him very favorably), speaking partly from personal
knowledge gained during his residence in Springfield, said: "He is so
constituted that when he gets possessed of an idea he carries it out
with unflinching fidelity to all its logical consequences, as they seem
to him, hesitating at no absurdity and deterred by no unpleasant
consequences to himself personally. He is a Presbyterian in his faith,
and feels that it is for this very purpose that God has reared him up."

When a man is so possessed by the conviction that he is God's instrument
as to set himself outside of ordinary human morality, he is presumably
on the verge of shipwreck. The _Republican_, while emphasizing the
popular estimate of John Brown as "a hero," coupled with this the
characterization of him as "a misguided and insane man."

The project he was now pressing--the establishment of a mountain refuge
for fugitive slaves, working toward the depreciation of slave property,
and the ultimate extinction of the system--had a certain superficial
plausibility; and it seemed to avoid the inhumanity of general
insurrection. But it was at the best hardly more than a boy's romance,
and at the last moment Brown abandoned it for a still more impracticable
plan.

On the morning of October 17, 1859, the little town of Harper's Ferry,
on the upper Potomac, awoke to the amazing discovery that in the night
the buildings of the United States armory had been seized and held by a
company of armed men, white and black; that they had gathered in a
number of prisoners, including some prominent citizens; and that their
design was to free the slaves. Brown had struck his blow. With eighteen
faithful associates, including three of his sons, he had lurked near the
town till all was ready; then in the night he had marched in and seized
the armory, and brought in as prisoners some of the neighboring planters
who were told they were held as hostages. Other citizens were captured
almost without resistance in the early morning hours, till the prisoners
were twice the number of their captors. But there was no rising of the
negroes. Brown, after his first easy success, stayed still as if
paralyzed. Either he had no further plan, or his judgment and will
failed him at the crisis. His complete failure to improve his
first advantage--whether the weakness lay in his plan or the
execution--indicated the radical unsoundness which