Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/101

Rh hating war, and did not dream of Harper's Ferry; but he set his face toward the goal and whithersoever the Lord led, he was ready to follow. He still, too, had his living to earn—his family to care for. Slavery was not yet the sole object of his life, but as he passed on in his daily duties he was determined to seize every opportunity to strike it a blow.

This, at least it seems to me, is a fair interpretation of John Brown's thought and action from the evidence at hand. Some have believed that John Brown planned Harper's Ferry or something similar in 1839; others have doubted whether he had any plans against slavery before 1850. The truth probably lies between these extreme views. Human purposes grow slowly and in curious ways; thought by thought they build themselves until in their full panoplied vigor and definite outline not even the thinker can tell the exact process of the growing, or say that here was the beginning or there the ending. Nor does this slow growth and gathering make the end less wonderful or the motive less praiseworthy. Few Americans recognized in 1839 that the great central problem of America was slavery; and of that few, fewer still were willing to fight it as they knew it should be fought. Of this lesser number, two men stood almost alone, ready to back their faith by action—William Lloyd Garrison and John Brown.

These men did not then know each other—they had in these early days scarcely heard each other's names. They never came to be friends or