Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/354

342 deeds, when they that knew them necessary cowered and held their hands. Brown's was not the only hand that freed Kansas, but his hand was indispensable, and not the first time, nor the last, has a cool and skilful politician, like Robinson, climbed to power on the heads of those helpers of his, whose half-realized ideals he bartered for present possibilities—human freedom for statehood. For the Abolitionist of the Garrison type Brown had a contempt, as undeserved as it was natural to his genius. To recognize an evil and not strike it was to John Brown sinful. "Talk, talk, talk," he said derisively. Kor did he rightly gauge the value of spiritual as contrasted with physical blows, until the day when he himself struck the greatest on the Charleston scaffold.

But if John Brown failed rightly to gauge the movement of the Abolitionists, few of them failed to appreciate him when they met him. Instinctively they knew him as one who grasped the very pith and kernel of the evil which they fought. They asked no proofs or credentials; they asked John Brown. So it was with Gerrit Smith. He saw Brown and believed in him. He entertained him at his house. He heard his detailed plans for striking slavery a heart blow. He gave him in all over a thousand dollars, and bade him Godspeed! Yet when the blow was struck, he was filled with immeasurable consternation. He equivocated and even denied knowledge of Brown's plans. To be sure, he, his family, his fortune were in the shadow of