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Show JOHN BROWN. Fifty years after the end of the stormy career of John Brown of Kansas, the controversy which raged violently for many years after his condemnation condemna-tion and execution by the Virginia authorities shows sufficient vitality to once more spring into more or less prominence. It was in the fall of 189 that Brown, with a party of twenty-two men, suddenly sud-denly descended upon the government arsenal at Harper's Ferry, captured and held the place for a couple of days, and was finally captured and turned over with six of his companions to the Virginia authorities, tried, condemned- and hanged. The popular conception of Brown is that he was a martyr mar-tyr and liberator, and his name has been immortalized immortal-ized in the song, "John Brown's body lies mouldering moulder-ing in the grave." This is the view expressed by Professor F. B. Sanford of Concord. Mass., who was associated with Brown previous to the Harper's Har-per's Ferry episode, and who recently delivered an address in which he told his hearer3 that Brown blazed the path which Lincoln was compelled by force of circumstances to follow; that as early as 1856 the only practicable road to emancipation had been marked out. Professor Sanborn pronounced Brown and Lincoln the trreat martyrs of American history. All the bitter conflicts resulting from the passage of the. Douglas Kansas-Nebraska bill by Congress, the rush of the anti-slavery and pro-slavery advocates to Kansas, the organization of the rival state governments and the civil war which broke out between the factions, are recalled by the passing of this fiftieth anniversary of John Brown's death. Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, a descendant of William Lloyd Garrison, the great abolitionist, takes another view of Brown. Mr. Villard says he has new information upon which he bases his estimate esti-mate of Brown's character. It is difficult to arrive, at a just estimate of this man, who is held by some to have been a midnight assassin and horsethief, and by others to have been a martyr to the great principle of personal liberty. The people on the scene of Brown'g activities in Kansas were all more or less prejudiced and swayed by the principles of their political party, either the Free Soilers or the Know-Nothings. Mr. Villard in his estimate of Brown, says the truth lies between the two extremes. ex-tremes. He says it is a fact no longer disputed that John Brown ordered the execution of five pro-slavery settlers in Kansas, and that the crime precipitated precipi-tated the conflict which gave the Sunflower state the name of "bleeding Kansas." Mr. Villard i3 convinced con-vinced by his study that John Brown's acts in Kansas Kan-sas in no sense decided the fate of the state on the slavery question, but only served to intensify the bitterness of the conflict. What with the testimony of Professor Sanborn, who was associated with Brown, and the estimate of Mr. Villard, who has made a close study of Brown's career, and the widely diverging analyses of the man, the effect is to add to the confusion in the minds of those who would know the truth about one of the leaders in the troublous times which led . up to the ffreat civil war of the '60s. That he wa3 a prominent figure ia tliat momentous period of our history is admitted, but whether he should be hailed as a martyr and hero or denounced as a traitor trai-tor and pernicious agitator, it is impossible to decide de-cide from the estimates we have cited. |