OLD JOHN BROWN THE MAN WHOSE SOUL IS MARCHING ON by WALTER HAWKINS PREFACE This book is for busy people who have not the time to read at large upon the subject. Those who would adequately master all the bearings of the story here briefly told must read American history, for which facilities are rapidly increasing. As to John Brown himself, his friend F. B. Sanborn's LIFE AND LETTERS is a mine of wealth. To its pages the present writer is greatly indebted, and he commends them to others. W. H. Kilburn, May 1913. CONTENTS I. WHY WE WRITE OUR STORY II. CHILDWOOD AND THE VOW III. THE LONG WAITING-TIME IV. HOW THE CALL CAME V. BIBLE AND SWORD VI. THE UNDERGROUND RAILWAY VII. HARPER'S FERRY VIII. THE HALT OF THE BODY AND THE MARCH OF THE SOUL CHAPTER I WHY WE WRITE OUR STORY There are few who have not a dim notion of John Brown as a name bound up with the stirring events of the United States in the period which preceded the Civil War and the emancipation of the slave. Many English readers, however, do not get beyond the limits of the famous couplet, John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave, But his soul is marching on. That statement is authentic in both its clauses, but it is interesting to learn what he did with the body before it commenced a dissolution which seems to have been regarded as worth recording. Carlyle says in his grimly humorous way of the gruesome elevation of the head of one of his patriotic heroes on Temple Bar, 'It didn't matter: he had quite done with it.' And we might say the same of the body which was hanged at Charlestown in 1859. In his devoutly fatalistic way John Brown had presented his body a living sacrifice to the cause of human freedom, and had at last slowly reached the settled opinion that it was worth more to the cause dead than alive. Such a soul, so masterful in its treatment of the body, was likely to march on without it. And it did in the years that followed, This Abolitionist raider, with a rashness often sublime in its devotion, precipitated the national crisis which issued in the Civil War and Emancipation.