John Brown’s life is a grand, simple epic that should inspire one to
heroism. No one asks for dates and minute details on hearing the life
of Jesus or Socrates. There are men who have proved their superiority
to the pettiness of life, and who seem almost divine. John Brown is one
of them. I think he was almost our greatest American. I know that he
was the greatest man the common people of America have yet produced.
He did not become a President, a financier, a great scientist or
artist; he was a plain and rather obscure farmer until his death.
That is his greatness. He had no great offices, no recognition
or applause of multitudes to spur him on, to feed his vanity and
self-righteousness. He did his duty in silence; he was an outlaw. Only
after he had been hung like a common murderer, and only after the Civil
War had come to fulfill his prophecies, was he recognized as a great
figure.
But in his life he was a common man to the end, a hard-working, honest,
Puritan farmer with a large family, a man worried with the details of
poverty, and obscure as ourselves. Now we are taught as school-children
that only those who become Presidents and captains of finance are the
successful ones in our democracy. John Brown proved that there is
another form of success, within the reach of everyone, and that is to
devote one’s life to a great and pure cause.
John Brown was hung as an outlaw; but he was a success, as Jesus and
Socrates were successes. Some day school-children will be taught that
his had been the only sort of success worth striving for in his time.
The rest was dross; the personal success of the beetle that rolls
itself a huger ball of dung than its fellow-beetles, and exults over it.
John Brown is a legend; but I still see him in the simple, obscure
heroes who fight for freedom today in America. That is why I am telling
his story. It is the story of thousands of men living in America now,
did we but know it. John Brown is still in prison in America; yes, and
he has been hung and shot down a hundred times since his first death.
For his soul is marching on; it is the soul of liberty and justice,
which cannot die, or be suppressed.