In the pagan ages and in the more distant days of savagery, men were
individuals. They had no social imagination. They could stand by and
see another man writhe in tortures, and laugh at him. Civilization
has been developing social imagination; it has been breeding more and
more the type of human being who feels the suffering and injustice of
another as his own.
John Brown was perhaps born with this strain in him. In 1857, when he
had already plunged into his life-work, and was in the thick of bloody
fights in Kansas, he sat down to write a most charming and tender
letter to a little boy who was the son of one of his friends in the
east. Those who think of fighters like John Brown as possessed by only
a lust for battle, ought to read this letter. It reveals how soft was
his heart under the grim mask of the Kansas warrior.
The letter is autobiographical. It tells how John Brown first became
acquainted with the horrors of slavery, and what effect it had on his
imagination.
This letter is so touching, and so remarkable for the picture it gives
of John Brown’s early years, also for the picture of the man’s mature
character as revealed by his own words, that I am tempted to give it in
full. I shall give only parts of it, however.