o could wonder if the Southern
people did not believe this, when they saw honors heaped on a man who
died for inciting such an insurrection? How could they nicely
distinguish between approval of a man's acts and praise for the man
himself? If the North had one thinker who set forth its highest ideals,
its noblest aims, that man was Emerson. Yet Emerson passed Brown's acts
almost unblamed, and named his execution together with that on Calvary.
Not all the disclaimers of politicians, the resolves of conventions,
could reassure the South, after that day of mourning with which Northern
towns solemnized John Brown's death. What wonder that an ardent
Southerner like Toombs, speaking to his constituents a few months later,
called on them to "meet the enemy at the door-sill." And what wonder
that the Southern people were inclined as never before to look upon the
Northern people as their foes?

The more deeply we study human life, the more do we realize that as to
individual responsibility "to understand is to forgive." Half a century
after the event, we may well have forgiveness--not of charity, but of
justice--for John Brown, and for the Governor who signed his
death-warrant; we can sympathize with those who honored and wept for
him, and with those who shuddered at his deed. But, for the truth of
history and for the guidance of the future, we must consider not only
the intentions of men, but the intrinsic character of their deeds; not
only John Brown himself, but John Brown's acts. And in that long series
of deeds of violence and wrong which wrought mutual hatred and
fratricidal war between the two sections of a people, that midnight
attack on the peaceful Virginia village must bear its heavy
condemnation. Hitherto aggression had been almost entirely from the
South; this was a counter-stroke, and told with dire force against the
hope of a peaceable and righteous settlement.

Probably most readers of to-day will wonder at the degree of admiration
and praise which Brown received. It must be ascribed in part to some
quality in his personality, which cast a kind of glamour on some of
those who met him, and inspired such highly idealized portraiture as
Emerson's. But there remains the extraordinary fact that men like
Theodore Parker and Gerritt Smith and Dr. S. G. Howe gave countenance
and aid to Brown's project. Before history's bar, their responsibility
seems heavier than his; they, educated, intelligent, trained in public
serv