CHAPTER XXXV
John Brown's body lay molderingin the grave but his soul was marching on. And his soul was a thousand times mightier than his body had ever been.
While living, his abnormal mind repelled men of strong personality. He had never been able to control more than two dozen people in any enterprise which he undertook. And in these small bands rebellions always broke out.
The paranoiac had been transfigured now into the Hero and the Saint through the worship of the mob which his insanity had created. His apparent strength of character was in reality weakness, an incapacity to master himself or control his criminal impulses. But the Jacobin mind of his followers did not consider realities. They only cherished dreams, illusions, assertions. The mob never reasons. It only believes. Reason is submerged in passion.
John Brown was a typical Jacobin leader. He was first and last a Puritan mystic. The God he worshipped was a fiend, but he worshipped Him with all the more passionate devotion for that reason. When he committed murder on the Pottawattomie he stalked his prey as a panther. He sang praises to his God as he paused in the brush before he sprang. His narrow mind, with a single fixed idea, was inaccessible to any influences save those which fed his mania. Nothing could loose the grip of his soul on this dream. He closed his glittering eyes and refused to consider anything that might contradict his faith.
He acted without reason, driven blindly forward by an impulse. When his cunning 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 it as a guide to conduct.
By the magic of mental contagion he had transferred from the scaffold this Jacobin mind to the soul of a nation. The contact of persons is not necessary to transfer this disease. Its contagion is electric. It moves in subtle thought waves, as a mysterious pestilence spreads in the night. The mob mind, once formed, is a new creation and becomes with amazing rapidity a resistless force. The reason for its uncanny power lies in the fact that when once formed it is dominated by the unconscious, not the conscious forces, of man's nature. Its credulity is boundless. Its passions dominate all life. The records of history are a sealed book. Experience does not exist.
Impulse rules the universe.
And this mob mind moves always as a unit. It devours individuality. Men who as individuals may be gentle and humane are swept into accord with the most beastly cry of the crowd. This mental unity grows out of the crushing power of contagion. Gestures, cries, deeds of hate and fury are caught, approved, repeated.
Any lie can be built into a religion if repeated often enough to a crowd by a mind on fire with its passions. Pirates have died as bravely as John Brown. The glorification of the manner of his dying was merely a phenomenon of the unity of the crowd mind. It was precisely the grip of his Puritan mysticism, his worship of the Devil, that gave to his insanity its most dangerous appeal.
For the first time in the history of the republic the mob mind had mastered the collective soul of its people. The contagion had spread both North and South. In the North by sympathy, in the South by a process of reaction even more violent and destructive of reason.
John Brown had realized his vision of the Plains. He had raised a
National Blood Feud.
No hand could stay the scourge. The Red Thought burst into a flame that swept 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. A fair specimen of this insanity appeared in the New York Independent:
"The mass of the population of the Atlantic Coast of the slave region of the South are descended from the transported convicts and outcasts of Great Britain. Oh, glorious chivalry and hereditary aristocracy of the South! Peerless first families of Virginia and Carolina! Progeny of the highwaymen, the horse thieves and sheep stealers and pickpockets of Old England!"
The fact that this paper was a religious publication, the outgrowth of the New England conscience, gave its columns a peculiar power over the Northern mind.
The South retorted in kind. De Bow's Review declared:
"The basic framework and controlling inference of Northern sentiment is Puritanic, the old Roundhead rebel refuse of England, which has ever been an unruly sect of Pharisees, the worst bigots on earth and the meanest tyrants when they have the power to exercise it."
When the Conventions met a few months later to name candidates for the Presidency and make a declaration of principles, leaders had ceased to lead and there were no principles to declare.
The mob mind was supreme.
The Democratic Convention met at Charleston, South Carolina, to name the successor of James Buchanan. Their constituents commanded a vast majority of the voters of the Nation. The Convention became a mob. The one man, the one giant leader left in the republic, the one constructive mind, the one man of political genius who could have saved the nation from the holocaust toward which it was plunging was Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. He could have been elected President by an overwhelming majority had he been nominated by this united convention. He was entitled to the nomination. He had proven himself a statesman of the highest rank. He had proven himself impervious to sectional hatred or sectional appeal. He was a Northern man, but a friend of the South as well as the North. He was an American of the noblest type.
But the radical wing of his party in the South were seeing Red. Old Brown's words to them meant the spirit of the North. They heard echoing and reechoing from every newspaper and pulpit:
"I, JOHN BROWN, AM NOW QUITE CERTAIN THAT THE CRIMES OF THIS GUILTY LAND WILL NEVER BE PURGED AWAY BUT WITH BLOOD."
If the hour for bloodshed had come they demanded that the South prepare without further words. And they believed that the hour had come. They heard the tread of swarming hosts. They were eager to meet them.
Reason was flung to the winds. Passion ruled. Compromise was a thing beyond discussion. Douglas was a Northern man and they would have none of him. He was hooted and catcalled until he was compelled to withdraw from the Convention.
The radical South named their own candidate for President. He couldn't be elected. No matter. War was inevitable.
Let it come.
The Northern Democratic Convention named Douglas for President. He couldn't be elected. No matter. War was inevitable. Let it come.
In dumb amazement at the tragedy approaching—the tragedy of a divided Union and a bloody civil war—the Union men of the party nominated a third ticket, Bell of Tennessee and Everett of Massachusetts. They couldn't be elected. No matter. War was inevitable. It had to come. They would stand by their principles and go down with them.
When the new Republican party met at Chicago they were sobered by the responsibility suddenly thrust upon them of naming the next President of the United States. Fremont, a mere figurehead as their candidate, had polled a million votes in the campaign before. With three Democratic tickets in the field, success was sure.
They wrote a conservative platform and named for their candidate Abraham Lincoln, the one man in their party who had denounced John Brown's deeds, the man who had declared in his debates with Douglas that he did not believe in making negroes voters or jurors, that he did not believe in the equality of the races, that he did not believe that two such races could ever live together in a Democracy on terms of political or social equality.
Their candidate was the gentlest, broadest, sanest man within their ranks. Unless the nation had already gone mad they felt that in his triumph they would be safe from the Red Menace which stalked through their crowded hall. Their radical leaders were furious. But they were compelled to submit and fight for his election. The life of their party depended on it. Their own life was bound up in their party.
There was really but one issue before the nation—peace or war. The new party, both in its candidate and its platform, sought with all its power to stem the Red Tide of the Blood Feud which John Brown had raised.
Their well-meant efforts came too late.
War is a condition of mind primarily. Its causes are always psychological—not physical. The result of this state of mind is an abnormal condition of the nervous system, in which the thoughts and acts of men are controlled by the collective mind—the mob mind. Indians execute their war dances for days and nights to produce this mental state. Once it had been created, the war cry alone can be heard.
This mind, once formed, deliberative bodies cease to exist. The Congress of the United States ceased to exist as a deliberative body at the session which followed John Brown's execution.
The atmosphere of both the Senate and the House was electric with hatred and passion. Men who met at the last session as friends, now glared into each other's faces, mortal enemies.
L. Q. C. Lamar, the young statesman from Mississippi, threw a firebrand into the House on the day of its opening.
"The Republicans of this House are not guiltless of the blood of John Brown, his conspirators, and the innocent victims of his ruthless vengeance."
Keitt of South Carolina shouted:
"The South asks nothing but her rights. I would have no more, but as God is my judge I would shatter this republic from turret to foundation stone before I would take a little less!"
Old Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania scrambled up on his club foot and with a face flaming with scorn replied:
"I do not blame gentlemen of the South for using this threat of rending God's creation from foundation to turret. They have tried it fifty times, and fifty times they have found weak and recreant tremblers in the North who have been affected by it, and who have retreated before these intimidations."
He turned to the group of conservative members of his own party with a look of triumphant taunting. He wanted war. He courted it. He saw its coming with a shout of joy.
The House was in an uproar. Members leaped from their seats and jammed the aisles, shouting, cheering, hissing, catcalling. The clerk was powerless to preserve order.
For two months the bedlam continued while they voted in vain to elect a Speaker. The new party was determined to have John Sherman. The opposition was divided but finally chose Mr. Pennington, a moderate of mediocre ability.
During these eight weeks of senseless wrangling the members began to arm themselves with revolvers. One of the weapons dropped from the pocket of a member from New York and he was accused of attempting to draw it for use against an opponent.
The sergeant at arms was summoned and pandemonium broke loose. For a moment it seemed that a pitched battle before the dais of the Speaker was inevitable.
John Sherman rose and made a remarkable statement—remarkable in showing how the mob mind will inevitably destroy the mind of the individual until its unity is undisputed. He spoke in tones of reconciliation.
"When I came here I did not believe that the Slavery question would come up; and but for the unfortunate affair of Brown's at Harper's Ferry I do not believe that there would have been any feeling on the subject. Northern members came here with kindly feelings, no man approving of the deed of John Brown, and every man willing to say so, every man willing to admit it an act of lawless violence."
It was true. And yet before that mad session closed they were Brown's disciples and he had become their martyr here. The mob mind devours individuality, and reduces all to the common denominator of the archaic impulse.
In the fierce conflict for Speaker four years before, when Banks had been chosen, Slavery was then the issue. Good humor, courtesy and reason ruled the contest which lasted three days longer than the fight over Sherman. Instead of courtesy and reason—hatred, passion, defiance, assertion were now the order of the day. Four years before a threat of disunion was made on the floor. The House received it with shouts of derision and laughter. Keitt's dramatic threat had thrown the House into an uproar which had to be quelled by the sergeant at arms. Envy, hate, jealousy, spite, passion were supreme. The favorite epithets hurled across the Chamber were:
"Slave driver!"
"Nigger thief!"
The newspapers no longer reported speeches as delivered. They were revised and raised to greater powers of vituperation and abuse. Instead of a convincing, logical speech, their champion hurled a "torrent of scathing denunciation," "withering sarcasm," and "crushing invective!"
At this historic session appeared the first suit of Confederate Gray, worn by Roger A. Pryor, the brilliant young member from Virginia.
Immediately a Northern member leaped to his feet. He had caught the significance of the Southern emblem. He gave a moment's silent survey to the gray suit and opened his address on the State of the Country by saying:
"Virginia, instead of clothing herself in sheep's wool, had better don her appropriate garb of sackcloth and ashes!"
The nation was already at war before Abraham Lincoln left Springfield for Washington to take his seat as President. It was deemed wise that he should enter the city practically in disguise.
In vain the great heart that beat within his lonely breast tried to stem the Red Tide in his first inaugural. With infinite pathos he turned toward the South and spoke his words of peace, reconciliation and assurance:
"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
His closing sentences were spoken with his deep eyes swimming in tears.
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
The noblest men of North and South joined with the new President, pleading for peace. They knew by the light of reason that a war of brothers would be a wanton crime. They proved by irresistible logic that every issue dividing the nation could be settled at the Council Table.
They pleaded in vain. They pitched straws against a hurricane. From the deep, subconscious nature of man, the lair of the beast, came only the growl of challenge to mortal combat.
The new President is but a leaf tossed by the wind. The Union of which our fathers dreamed is rent in twain. With tumult and shout, the armies gather, blue and gray, brother against brother. A madman's soul now rides the storm and leads the serried lines as they sweep to the red rendezvous with Death.