ing that the death struggle between Slavery and Freedom was to
come in 1861, what a part in it must this grand old man have borne!
With his terrible earnestness and indomitable will, with his ability
to weld as it were, to himself all those who came under his influence,
what an avenger he would have been on the tracks of such _chivalrous_
Southerners as Quantrell of Lawrence-burning notoriety, and those who
at Fort Pillow and at Plymouth, N.C. carved out for themselves eternal
infamy. I cannot think of him as a general commander; but as a leader
of scouts, as the head of a band to hang on the skirts of an enemy, he
had been invaluable. All this, however was not to be. He was to do his
part; but it was as a hastener rather than a participant in the
struggle. To please the Southern Herodias his head lay gory in the
charger before the contest which he had preached began.

The contest came. We fought and won. The prime cause of all our woes
exists only as a page, a dark page of history; but on the margin of
that page, and on those of every subsequent page, methinks an unseen
hand writes in indelible characters the part sustained by that
unconquerable leader.

To this day there are those who have halted and hesitated as to the
Right in the War of the Rebellion. To me the question no more admits
of doubt than does the distinction between daylight and darkness. In
fact we were in darkness, and God said "Let there be light," and
immediately the darkness and gloom of oppression disappeared. Shall I,
then, hesitatingly say "_God_ knows which was right"? I will say it,
but with a different inflection; for not only does He know, but I
know, every one who has seen the wonderful change since the contest,
knows that God smiled on our cause. With this deep conviction, then,
in our hearts is it not meet that we should keep ever green the memory
of the man who more than any other, appreciated the exigencies of the
hour, who first fell in his devotion to the cause? In these
twenty-five years his spirit has been joined by those of Sumner,
Greeley, Garrison, Giddings, Phillips, Foster and the many, many
thousands who toiled for the wronged of whatever color. Truth, though
for a time crushed to earth, has risen again. Freedom reigns indeed in
the land of John Brown.

"His soul is marching on."

FOOTNOTE:

[A] B.K. Bruce of Mississippi, now Register of the Treasury, formerly
U.S. Senator

End of the Project Gutenberg E