The institution of slavery became both ridiculous and hateful to
multitudes because so good a man must be done to death to
preserve it. The verdict of Victor Hugo, 'What the South slew
last December was not John Brown, but slavery,' found an echo in
many minds. And when the long, fierce conflict, through which
Emancipation came, was begun, the quaint lines,

John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul is marching on,

became one of the mightiest of the battle-songs which urged the
Federal hosts to victory. His name kindled the flame of that
passion for freedom which made the cause of the North triumphant,
and there was awe mingled with the love they bore his memory.
Perhaps no man had been oftener called with plausible reason a
fool; but those who knew the single-hearted devotion to a great
cause of this ready victim of the gallows came reverently to
think of him as 'God's fool.' When they sang 'John Brown died
that the slave might be free' they were singing more than a
record of John Brown's generous motive; it was a record of one of
God's strange counsels. 'For God chose the foolish things of the
world that He might put to shame the things that are strong, and
the base things of the world, and the things that are despised,
did God choose, yea, and the things that are not, that He might
bring to nought the things that are, that no flesh should glory
before God.' Verily, then, it might seem worth while to set the
story of John Brown in such a plain, brief form as to make it
available for busy folk who have no time to read longer accounts
of him. If it sets some thinking of the ways of God rather than