The truth is, that a life of Brown was not now needed for those who already admired the stalwart nature of the man, even though they might deplore his course,—for those who had had their hearts touched and stirred by his manliness, his truth, his courage, and his unwavering fidelity to conscience and faith in God; but it was greatly needed for that much larger class,—the mass of the Northern community,-whose timidity had been startled at his rash attempt, whose sympathy had been more or less awakened by his bearing and his death, but who were and are in a painful state of perplexity, in the endeavor to reconcile their abhorrence, or at least their disapproval, of his attack on Virginia, with their sense of the admirable nature of the qualities he displayed. It was needed also for the very large class who received from the newspapers but a confused and imperfect account of the events which took place in Virginia from October to December, and who, according to their political predilections, condemn or applaud the course of Captain Brown. And, above all, it was needed for the men who have disgraced themselves by denying to Brown the possession of any virtues, and who have outstripped his Southern enemies in applying to him the most opprobrious and the falsest epithets. Now, none of these classes will Mr. Redpath's book reach with effect. Its tone is such, it is so violent, so extravagant, that it will offend all right-thinking men. Even those who have known how to hold a steady and clear opinion, in the midst of the confusion of the popular mind,—who have not applauded Brown's acts of violence, and have condemned his judgment, but who have, nevertheless, honored what was noble in him, and sympathized with him in his strong love of liberty,—who, while acknowledging him guilty under the law, mourned that the law should not be tempered with mercy,—and who have recognized in him at once the excellences and the errors of an enthusiast,—those who have most faithfully endeavored to find the truth concerning him, though they will obtain some interesting information from Mr. Redpath's book, will be the most dissatisfied with it.
It has always been among the offences of the out-and-out Abolitionists, to abuse the force of words, and to make exclusive pretensions to virtue and the love of liberty. This book is written in the spirit and style of an Abolition tract. In representing John Brown as little more than a mere hero of the Abolitionists, the author has done essential disservice to the cause of freedom, and to the memory of a man who was as free from party-ties as he was from personal ambitions.
Although John Brown's character was a simple one, a long time must pass before it will be generally understood, and justice be done to it. The passion and the prejudice which the later acts of his life have excited cannot die away for years. Mr. Redpath has done his best to perpetuate them. In seasons of excitement, and amid the struggles of political contention, the men who use the most extravagant and the most violent words have, for a time, the advantage; but, in the long run, they damage whatever cause they may adopt; and the truth, which their declamations have obscured or their falsehoods have violated, finally asserts itself. In our country, the worth and the strength of temperance and moderation of speech seem to be peculiarly forgotten. Words, which should stand for things, are too commonly used with no respect to their essential meaning. Political debates are embittered, personal feeling wounded, the tone of manners lowered, and national character degraded, by this disregard of words as the symbol and expression of truth. Moderation is brought into disrepute, and justice, fairness, and honesty of opinion tendered as rare as they are difficult of attainment. The manner in which John Brown has been spoken of affords the plainest illustration of these facts. Extravagance in condemnation has been answered by extravagance in praise of his life and deeds.
The most interesting and the most novel part of Mr. Redpath's book is the letter written by John Brown in 1857, giving some account of his early life. It is, in all respects, a remarkable composition. It exhibits the main influences by which his character was formed; it affords a key to the history of his life; it illustrates the nature of the social institutions under which such a man could grow up; and it shows his natural traits, before they had become hardened and trained under the discipline of later experience and circumstance. Nothing has been more marked in the various exhibitions of his character, as they have come successively to view, than their complete consistency. This letter, this account of his youth, squares perfectly with what we know of his manhood. The whole of it should be read by all who would understand the man, with his native faculty of command, with his mingled sternness and tenderness, with his large heart, his steadfast will. The base of his soul was truth; and the motive power of his life, faith in the justice of God.
He was a man of a rare type,—so rare in our times as to seem like a man of another age. He belonged to the same class with the Scottish Covenanters and the English Regicides. He belonged to the great company of those who have followed the footsteps of Gideon, and forgot that the armory of the Lord contained other weapons than the sword. He belonged to those who from time to time have adopted some cause,—the good old cause,—and have shrunk from no sacrifice which it required at their hands. "I have now been confined over a month," wrote John Brown to his children, in one of that most affecting series of letters from his prison, "with a good opportunity to look the whole thing as fair in the face as I am capable of doing, and I now feel most grateful that I am counted in the least possible degree worthy to suffer for the truth." "Suffering is a gift not given to every one," wrote one of the Covenanters, who was hanged in the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, in 1684,—"and I desire to bless God's name with my whole heart and soul, that He has counted such a poor thing as I am worthy of the gift of suffering."
That John Brown was wrong in his attempt to break up slavery by violence, few will deny. But it was a wrong committed by a good man,—by one who dreaded the vengeance of the Almighty and forgot His long-suffering. His errors were the result of want of patience and want of imagination, and he paid the penalty for them. He had faith in the Divine ordering of the affairs of this world; but he forgot that the processes by which evils like that of slavery are done away are thousand-year-long,—that, to be effectual, they must be slow,—that wrong is no remedy for wrong. He was an anachronism, and met the fate of all anachronisms that strive to stem and divert the present current by modes which the world has outgrown. But now that he and those dearest to him have so bitterly expiated his faults, both charity and justice demand that his virtues should be honored, and he himself mourned. It will be a gloomy indication of the poor, low spirit of our days, if fear and falsehood, if passion or indifference, should cause the lesson of John Brown's life to be neglected, or should check a natural sympathy with the noble heart of the old man. That lesson is not for any one part of the country more than another; that sympathy may be given by the South as well as by the North. It is not sympathy for his acts, but for the spirit of his life and the heroism of his death. The lesson of manliness, uprightness, and courage, which his life teaches, is to be learned by us, not merely as lovers of liberty, not as opponents of slavery, but as men who need more manliness, more uprightness, more courage and simplicity in our common lives.
All that is possible of apology for John Brown is to be found in his letters and in his speech to the court before his sentence. It is, perhaps, too soon to hope that these letters and this speech will be read with candor and a feeling of human brotherhood by those who now look with abhorrence or with indifference on his memory. But the time will come when they will be held at their true worth by all, as the expressions of a large, tender soul,—when they will be read with sympathetic pity, even by those who still find it difficult to forgive their author for his offence against society. These letters appeal to the better nature of every man and woman in America; and it will be a sad thing, if their appeal be disregarded.
We trust, that, before long, a fairer and fuller biography than that by Mr. Redpath will remove the obstacle which this book now presents to the general appreciation of the character and life of John Brown.
Poems. By SYDNEY DOBELL. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1860.
Many of Mr. Dobell's poems have passages which are musical, vigorous, and peculiar, and hardly in any part can he be justly charged with prolonging an echo. He is not one of the many mocking-birds that infest the groves at the foot of Parnassus. Though portions of his songs be wild, fitful, and incoherent, they gush with the force and feeling of a heart loyal to its intuitions, and thus many strains captivate and keep the tuneful ear. Yet such charming lines make conspicuous the want of that high appreciation of form and proportion without which any felicity of touch in the treatment of details will only cause the consummate master to grieve over glorious forms that have no effective grouping, and turn away from colors, however exquisite, that are strewn, as it were, on a palette, rather than wrought into picture and harmonized to the tone of life. The truth is, that the grandly designing hand is nowhere completely visible in the poetry of Young England. Many of her more youthful poets show a mass of rich materials, but they appear to have been upheaved by convulsions, half-blinding us with their splendor, while, like lava pouring from a volcano's crater, they take no prescribed channel, they flow into no immortal mould. It is this fiery gleam on the surface of matter hot from chaos, which the multitude honor as the highest manifestation of genius. But this is to desecrate a word which implies constructive power of the first order. Form is its highest expression. Without the shaping faculty, which artistically rounds to perfection, no glitter of decoration, nor even force and fire of expression, can keep the work from falling into ruins. If the beautiful, as Goethe said, includes in it the good, then perfect beauty alone is everlasting. This is a rigorous rule for anything which man has made, but it does not try "Othello" so severely as "Balder"; and "Balder" is not utterly crushed by it. There are scenes in this drama, and also in "The Roman," which will not soon lose their significance, or easily melt out of the memory.