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[187]

Chapter 1: Whetting the sword.

Thus far John Brown's action has been exclusively defensive; even according to the usual but unjust definition of the word. He had never struck a blow but in defence of a threatened party. He had fought against the invaders of Free Soil, but never yet invaded a slave country.

We are now to see him acting as an aggressor — if we accept the popular interpretation of the phrase. Rather, in truth, we are now to see him as a defender of the faith delivered to the fathers. For error is always an innovator — ever an aggression. It has supplanted and fills the place that God intended for the truth. Hence the radical reformer is the only conservative; and the monomaniac is the man who supports any untrue thing, whether creed, party, church, or civil institution.

The North says that slavery is a wrong. Why not, then, destroy it? The Constitution, the Union, Federal laws, State rights, it answers; refusing to believe that no real good can be gained by nourishing a gigantic wrong.

Thayer and Eldridge, 1860.

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