This idea was later shown to be a fallacy, Brown having
made his own plans, and been financed by a few northern friends, headed
by Gerrit Smith of New York.
There has been a tendency in the North to make a saint of John Brown,
and in the South to make a devil of him. As a matter of fact he was a
poor, misguided zealot, with a wild light in his eye, who had set out to
do a frightful thing; for, bad though slavery was, its evils were not
comparable with the horrors which would have resulted from a slave
rebellion.
It must be conceded, however, that those who would canonize John Brown
have upon their side a strange and impressive piece of evidence. The
jail where he was lodged in Charles Town and the courthouse where he was
tried, still stand, and it is the actual fact that, when the snow falls,
it always miraculously melts in a path which leads diagonally across the
street from the one to the other. That this is true I have unimpeachable
testimony. _Snow will not stand on the path by which John Brown crossed
back and forth from the jail to the court-house._ There will be snow
over all the rest of the street, but not on that path; there you can see
it melting.
But, as with certain other "miracles," this one is not so difficult to
understand if you know how it is brought about.
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