Alas, there is no banner for a man like Howe to fight under. He must weave his own banner. For his own philanthropic work, Dr. Howe had done this; but he could not do it for politics. The anti-slavery problems came to him on top of his multitudinous activities. He was already superhumanly active, but he was a man incapable of refusing work which was offered to him. He took on the abolition duties in addition to his regular work. His health broke down almost immediately; but there was no leisure for him to attend to his health. His solution of all problems was by work, work, work. He was not, it must be remembered, of a thoughtful nature. His thinking was usually done for him by the energy of his temperament, which handed him a list of agenda each morning and at night sent him to the slumbers of fatigue. Thus there was no very distinct philosophy underlying his course of action in regard to slavery--no historic point of view, or reasoned theory, no illumination. It is very terrible to see Howe making journeys to Kansas at a time when he should have been in bed with a sick-nurse beside him. Pegasus at the plow is good; but this was not exactly the right plow for Howe. The sight is a sublime one, all the same. The old buccaneer retains an instinctive belief in force. “Force is not yet eliminated from the means employed by God, bloodshed is necessary, bloodshed will come. But when, but how?--Under what circumstances may we resort to it?” This is the burden of many letters. In the meantime he and his vigilance committee were getting into deeper water all the time with the fugitive slave law, and with the still fiercer Kansas-Nebraska problems, until finally matters were brought to a crisis by John Brown’s raid, of which I must say a few words here. It is wrong to compare John Brown with Joan of Arc, as is so often done. John Brown’s name is stained with massacre. He is a spirit of a far lower heaven than Joan of Arc. And yet he is to be classified under Joan of Arc; because he is an example of the symbolism inherent in human nature and in human society. Everyone understands both Joan of Arc and John Brown, but nobody can explain them. It takes an epoch, it takes the whole of a society, it takes a national and religious birthpang to produce either Joan of Arc or John Brown. Everyone living at the time takes some part in the episode; and thereafter, the story remains as a symbol, an epitome of the national and religious idea, which was born through the crisis. John Brown and his raid are an epitome, a popular summary of the history of the United States between the Missouri Compromise and the Gettysburg celebration. Not a child has been born in the country since his death to whom John Brown does not symbolize the thing that happened to the heart and brain of the American people between 1820 and 1865. He is as big as a myth, and the story of him is an immortal legend--perhaps the only one in our history.