Year: 1865




The legitimate, although extreme, result
of political fanaticism is furnished in the
cases Off Ohm Wilkes Booth and John Brown.
Each Of these men is the natural effect of
extreme views; each had his origin in radi-
calism each was carried onward by like
causes each reached the climax Of his ca
reer under the same influences and in
spired by the same spirit, each committed
crimes that will forever link their names
with condemnation.


John Brown was the natural development
Of abolitionism, precisely as John Wilkes
Booth is the natural development of pro-
slaveryism. The former honestly believed
that, when he carried insurrection and mur-
der into Virginia, he was performing God $
service; the latter, perhaps. just as sincere.
ly, believed that he was Kidding the earth
Of tyrant when be placed bis pistol to the
head of Mr.. Lincoln. One is an example Of
what will result when abolitionism is carried
to its greatest possible length; and the other
is an example of what will result when de-
votion TO slavery is carried to excess


Notwithstanding that these two men are
each extreme representatives of antagonistic
systems, they are precisely alike. Nothing
can be more opposed to each other than
heat and cold, and yet piece of iron of ex-
tremely cold will produce the same effects as
if extremely hot Extremes meet, it is
popularly said, which is only another form
of expressing the fact that extremes are
alike in their effects. Thus two men may
start in their career as partisans of the ex-
actly opposite system Of religious belief and
irreligion. Let them advance in their re-
spective faiths, and at first they will move
in opposite direction. Let them continue
till they have reached extreme positions,
and they will find themselves face to face /;
the one murderer who is enforcing his re-
ligion with his sword, and the other mur-
derer because he possesses no moral re-
straints, and because a persistence in unbe-
lief and wickedness has brought him to a
point where the taking of life is the natural
result of unrestrained passions.


! 1t is precisely the same in politics. In
the beginning John Brown and John w.
Booth moved away from each other, the one
| going northward and the other southwark
the one pro-slavery disciple, the other an
advocate of anti-slavery doctrines. Then
pathways seemed to lead to points as direct
| ly opposite as are the antipodes But they
were like two vessels which should sail, the
one east and the other west, and which, thu
sailing, must eventually come together
They parted they moved away from eact
other; but each held persistently on his
course, and, like the circumnavigators of the
globe, they met at the same point, and tol
precisely the same purpose. The one, il
tho interest of his faith, was a murderer in
Virginia, and the other, for the interests Of
his faith, became amurdererinW Washington
These two murderers, then, are alike
| Both reached extremes both became perme
ated with the spirit of the faith which the.
adopted each carried this belief into hi
whole life, and brooded over it and nurse
it till it became the absorbing, controllin
idea and he a monomaniac and q murderer
To us the crime of Booth seems the great
er because of the prominence Of his victim
In the eyes of Heaven no such distinction
exists. Before the Tribunal of Omnisciehc
the palace and the hovel, the monarch anC
the beggar, are alike. lfit was an atrociou
crime to slay the president of this republic
it was no less an atrocious crime to kill the
humble men who fell before the rifles o
Brown at Harper Ferry. Both are purely
and simply murder, and as such must g
before the court ofHeaven.


There are men in the north who are bas(
enough to laud the homicide Brown as {
martyr and there are men in the south who
are base enough to laud the assassin Booth
as a patriot and a hero. The fanatics Of
both sections apotheosize assassination il
the persons of Booth and Brown; they jus
tify murder, and do honor to two men whose
memories deserve to be eternally execrated
and whose only paliation is that they were
monomaniacs, who had become thus through
the teachings of the extremists whose re
spective beliefs they represent, - Chicago