Part 42 (1/2)

”Did you have _anything_ to do with the killing of those men?”

To his own he would not lie longer. It wasn't necessary. His reply was quick and unequivocal.

”I did not do it. But I approved it.”

”It was the work of a beast.”

”You cannot speak to me like that, sir!” the old man growled.

”And why not?”

”I am your father, sir!”

”That's why I tell you to your face that you have disgraced every child who bears your name--now--and for all time. What right had you to put this curse upon me? The devils in h.e.l.l would blush to do what you have done!”

The father lifted his hand as if to ward a blow and bored his son through with a steady stare.

”G.o.d is my judge--not you, sir!”

John Brown, Jr., sided with his brother in the attack but with less violence. His feebler mind was already trembling on the verge of collapse.

”It cuts me to the quick,” the old man finally answered, ”that my own people should not understand that I had to make an example of these men--”

Jason finally shrieked into his ears:

”Who gave you the authority of Almighty G.o.d to sit in judgment upon your fellow man, condemn him without trial and slay without mercy?”

The father threw up both hands in a gesture of disgust and walked from the scene. He spent the night without sleep, wandering through the woods and fields.

Three days later while Brown and his huntsmen were still hiding in the timber, the people of his own settlement at Osawatomie held a public meeting which was attended by the entire male population. They unanimously adopted resolutions condemning in the bitterest terms the deed.

When the old man heard of these resolutions he ground his teeth in rage.

He had thought to sweep the Territory with a Holy War in a Sacred Cause.

He expected the men who hated Slavery to applaud his Blood Offering to the G.o.d of Freedom. Instead they had hastened to array themselves with his foes.

Something had gone wrong in the execution of his divine vision. His mind was stunned for the moment. But he was wrestling again with G.o.d in prayer, while the avengers were riding to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

When the true history of man is written it will be the record of mind not the story of the physical acts which follow the mental process.

The dangers of society are psychological, not physical. The crucial moments of human history are not found in the hours in which armies charge. They are found in the still small voices that whisper in the silence of the night to a lone watcher by the fireside. They are found in the words of will that follow hours of silent thought behind locked doors or under the stars.

The story of man's progress, his relapses to barbarism, his victories, his failures, his years of savage cruelties, his eras of happiness and sorrow, must be written at last in terms of mental states.

John Brown's mind had conceived and executed the series of murders that shocked even a Western frontier. His mind enacted the tragedy days before the actual happening.

And it was the state of mind created by the deed that upset all his calculations. The reaction was overwhelming. He was correct in his faith that a blood feud once raised, all appeal to reason and common sense, all appeal to law, order, tradition, religion would be vain babble. But he had failed to gauge the moral sense of his own party. They had not yet accepted the theory which he held with such pa.s.sionate conviction.

Brown's moral code was summed up in one pa.s.sage from the Bible which he quoted and brooded over daily:

”WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS.”