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.