Chapter II (3)

So let us leave him for one moment, surrounded by the children of his adoption, submitting to their gratitude as Hercules might have submitted, if humanity had recognized him on his return to the scene of an earthly exploit,--let us leave him, I say, thus posed for the monument that should express his whole life’s work, while we consider what manner of man he was.

At whatever point you examine him, you find a man of remarkable energy and benevolence, of a practical turn of mind, devoid of mysticism or philosophic curiosity, a man to whom the word is a very plain proposition, whose eyes see what they see with the power of microscopes, and are blind to all else. Dr. Howe’s work in Greece gives a specimen, a prophetic summary, of his whole life-work, that is to say, it was _practical aid to those laboring under disability_. The devastation of Greece at that time was incredible. The peasants were living in caves and hiding their food under ground from the guerillas. Dr. Howe goes with his hands full of supplies and distributes them, turning the starving wretches into human beings again, through his methods, and through his power of organization. One is reminded by turns of Benjamin Franklin and of Prometheus, in reading of the astute shifts of this benevolent despot, who deals with men as if they were children, coercing them into thrift and decency. Of course the circumstances were extraordinary, or Howe’s peculiar genius could not have showed itself so early. A man of genius he was, but the limitations of this remarkable man’s mind are as clear cut as his features, which had the accuracy of bronze.

Within the field of his peculiar activity he is a great genius. Outside of that field he was not a genius at all--as will appear by his political course in 1859. His mission was to deal with persons laboring under a disability, with criminals, paupers, young people--blind or deaf people, idiots, the maimed in spirit, the defective--the people who have no chance, no future, no hope. These were the persons to whom his life was to be devoted: the Greek sufferers were merely the earliest in the series of persons whom Howe pitied.

He has left behind voluminous papers and reports, and in them lives his creed. He can hardly open his mouth without saying something of universal application to all defective persons in all ages. From the statement of abstract principles to the details of ward management--whether he is writing advice to an anxious mother or addressing the legislature--there is no side of the subject on which he is not great. His attitude toward defectives and his point of view about them form a splinter of absolute truth; religion, morality, practical wisdom, and the divinest longings of the spirit are all satisfied by it. The sight of any of these persons aroused in him such a passion of benevolence, such a whirlwind of pity, that he could do whatever was necessary. He lifted them in his arms and flew away with them like an angel. It made no difference that the cause was hopeless. He would labor a year to improve the articulation of an adult idiot, and rejoice as much over a gain of two vowels as if he had given a new art to mankind.

As has been seen, Howe was originally attracted to the Greek cause through its romantic and historic appeal; but the poetry and the patriotism of the Greek Revolution were, for him, soon merged in philanthropy. His work in the Greek cause and the books and papers and speeches he had written had brought him into the world’s eye. He returned to America a famous man. He was still under thirty years of age, an unambitious man, unaware that he was in any way remarkable. He did not take up the cause of the blind because he felt within him a deep desire, a God-given calling to help the blind, but because the cause of the blind was brought to his notice by Dr. John D. Fisher, and other gentlemen in Boston, who had been studying the methods of the Abbé Haüy in Paris, and who contemplated founding a school for the blind in Boston. It was a happy hour in which they met Howe; for he was a man whose response to any call for help was automatic.

He was one of those singular men in whom we can trace no course of development. Such as they are in early manhood, so they remain. It is interesting to bring together two passages, one from the beginning and the other from the latter half of his life, to show the identity of their intellectual content.

The following is from Howe’s First Report of the Blind Asylum: “Blindness has been in all ages one of those instruments by which a mysterious Providence has chosen to afflict man; or rather it has not seen fit to extend the blessing of sight to every member of the human family. In every country there exists a large number of human beings, who are prevented by want of sight from engaging with advantage in the pursuits of life, and who are thrown upon the charity of their more favored fellows.”...

The following is from the monumental justification of his ideas as put forth in the Second Report to the Massachusetts State Board of Charities in 1866:--

“Finally, they (the board) have dwelt upon the importance of knowing and obeying all the natural laws, because they are ordained by our beneficent God and Father, to bind together by bonds of mutual interest and affection all the children of His great human family; and to prepare them here, for his good will and pleasure hereafter.”

The thought in each of these passages is the same. Blindness, deficiency, in fact evil, are to be accepted as part of the divine will. This thought, taken in conjunction with the conception of the unity of human nature, form the whole of Howe’s philosophy. The conventional language of piety in which Howe generally expresses himself, may perhaps conceal from some persons the first-hand power of his nature. He seems only to be saying what everybody knows; but the difference is that Howe sees the truth as a fact. It is not so much a philosophic reality or abstraction as a first-hand visual perception, always new, always reliable.

The different specific reforms with which Howe is to be credited are neither deductions from theory, nor the summary of experiments made by him; but simply things seen in themselves to be true. They can all of them be grouped under almost any one of Christ’s sayings. I shall return to this subject after speaking of Laura Bridgman, who has been waiting too long.

The early history of the Boston Blind Asylum is like a great mediæval romance--voluminous, glowing, many-sided. That history is recorded in multitudinous documents and papers, letters, arguments, reports, anecdotes--the whole mass of them being illumined by the central figure of Howe who looms through the story like Launcelot or Parsifal. Overpowering indeed is this literature, and it ought not to be condensed. One should wander, and explore and browse in it. If I make a few extracts from the story, it is not as a summary, but rather as an advertisement. There are certain events that you cannot summarize, but only introduce. The texture of them is greater than any condensation can make it.

The New England Institution for the Education of the Blind began its work in 1832. Howe, having neither house nor fortune of his own, received a few blind children at his father’s house in Boston. Within a very few years, however, the school was properly housed and supported, and it remained ever a favorite with the public. It was not until 1837 that news was brought to Howe of the existence of Laura Bridgman, a blind deaf-mute aged seven, then living with her parents on a New Hampshire farm. He made a journey to New Hampshire to visit her, and through good fortune was accompanied by Longfellow, Rufus Choate, George Hilliard, and Dr. Samuel Eliot. The friends waited at Hanover while Howe visited the Bridgman farmhouse in quest of his prize. “He won it, and came back to the hotel triumphant,” says Dr. Eliot, “I perfectly recollect his exultation at having secured her, and the impression he made on me of chivalric benevolence.”

Laura Bridgman had lost her sight and hearing at the age of two, through scarlet fever; and when she reached the school in Boston was blind, deaf, dumb, and “without that distinct consciousness of individual existence which is developed by the exercise of the senses.” She was, nevertheless, a very remarkable being, sensitive, passionate, and highly organized. Upon being transferred to the school “she seemed quite bewildered at first, but soon grew contented, and began to explore her new dwelling. Her little hands were continually stretched out, and her tiny fingers in constant motion, like the feelers of an insect. She was left for several days to form acquaintance with the little blind girls, and to become familiar with her new home.”

Within two months Howe was able to write to Laura’s father--“I have succeeded in making her understand several words in raised print, and I am very sanguine in the hope that she will learn to read, and perhaps to express her wants in writing.”... Such were the beginnings of that remarkable intimacy which was fraught with so much consequence to the world.

The process by which Laura Bridgman was taught the alphabet was in principle the same as that now often employed in teaching ordinary children; that is to say, certain words are first given to the child as unities, and the child is led to discover the letters by thereafter himself dissolving the words into component letters. “I had to trust, however, to some chance effort of mine, causing her to perceive the analogy between the signs which I gave her, and the things for which they stood.... The first experiments were made by pasting upon several common articles, such as keys, spoons, knives, and the like, little paper labels on which the name of the article had been printed in raised letters. The child sat down with her teachers and was easily led to feel these labels, and examine them curiously. So keen was the sense of touch in her tiny fingers that she immediately perceived that the crooked lines in the word KEY, differed as much in form from the crooked lines in the word SPOON as one article differed from the other.

“Next, similar labels, on detached pieces of paper, were put into her hands, and now she observed that the raised letters on these labels resembled those pasted upon the articles....

“The next step was to give a knowledge of the component parts of the complex sign, BOOK, for instance. This was done by cutting up the labels into four parts, each part having one letter upon it. These were first arranged in order, b-o-o-k, until she had learned it, then mingled up together, then rearranged, she feeling her teacher’s hand all the time, and eager to begin and try to solve a new step in this strange puzzle.

“Slowly and patiently, day after day, and week after week, exercises like these went on, as much time being spent at them as the child could give without fatigue. Hitherto there had been nothing very encouraging; not much more success than in teaching a very intelligent dog a variety of tricks. But we were approaching the moment when the thought would flash upon her that all these were efforts to establish a means of communication between her thoughts and ours.”...

“The poor child had sat in mute amazement, and patiently imitated everything her teacher did; but now the truth began to flash upon her, her intellect began to work, she perceived that here was a way by which she could herself make up a sign of anything that was in her own mind, and show it to another mind, and at once her countenance lighted up with a human expression; it was no longer a dog or parrot--it was an immortal spirit, eagerly seizing upon a new link of union with other spirits! I could almost fix upon the moment when this truth dawned upon her mind, and spread its light to her countenance; I saw that the great obstacle was overcome, and that henceforward nothing but patience and persevering, plain and straightforward efforts were to be used.”...

The visit of Laura’s mother to her daughter at the Institution must be chronicled, not only because of the singular beauty of Dr. Howe’s description; but because it shows an attitude on his part of welcome toward the parent, reverence for home influence, which is seldom found in managers of institutions. The school-teacher and the director in a reformatory generally regard the parent as their enemy. But with Howe it was different. He seems really to have been able to shed a domestic atmosphere through his Institution. He merged his own family life into the Institution’s life, and yet enriched his own hearth thereby. This is an accomplishment which can neither be understood nor imitated. It was a gift.

“During this year and six months after she had left home, her mother came to visit her, and the scene of their meeting was an interesting one. The mother stood some time gazing with overflowing eyes upon her unfortunate child, who, all unconscious of her presence, was playing about the room. Presently Laura ran against her, and at once began feeling of her hands, examining her dress, and trying to find out if she knew her; but not succeeding in this, she turned away as from a stranger, and the poor woman could not conceal the pang she felt at finding that her beloved child did not know her.

“She then gave Laura a string of beads which she used to wear at home, which were recognized by the child at once, who, with much joy, put them around her neck, and sought me eagerly to say she understood the string was from home. The mother tried to caress her, but poor Laura repelled her, preferring to be with her acquaintances.”...

“The distress of the mother was now painful to behold; for, although she had feared that she should not be recognized, the painful reality of being treated with cold indifference by a darling child was too much for woman’s nature to bear.

“After a while, on the mother taking hold of her again, a vague idea seemed to flit across Laura’s mind that this could not be a stranger; she therefore felt of her hands very eagerly, while her countenance assumed an expression of intense interest. She became very pale, and then suddenly red; hope seemed struggling with doubt and anxiety, and never were contending emotions more strongly painted upon the human face. At this moment of painful uncertainty, the mother drew her close to her side and kissed her fondly; when at once the truth flashed upon the child, and all mistrust and anxiety disappeared from her face, as with an expression of exceeding joy she eagerly nestled to the bosom of her parent, and yielded herself to her fond embraces.”...

“I had watched the whole scene with intense interest, being desirous of learning from it all I could of the workings of her mind; but I now left them to indulge unobserved those delicious feelings which those who have known a mother’s love may conceive, but which cannot be expressed.”...

Laura’s progress was so rapid that she became a world wonder and took Howe in her wake into a new province of fame. It must not be thought that Laura Bridgman was Howe’s only preoccupation. In 1841 Laura formed a strong friendship with Oliver Caswell, a blind deaf-mute of eight who was brought to the Asylum.

“Another important friendship of her childhood,” says Mrs. Richards, “was that which she formed with Oliver Caswell, a blind deaf-mute boy whom my father discovered and brought to the Institution in 1841. He was then eight years old, a comely and healthy child, blind and deaf from early infancy, and had received no special instruction.”... “Laura herself,” says Dr. Howe, “took great interest and pleasure in assisting those who undertook the tedious task of instructing him. She loved to take his brawny hand with her slender fingers, and show him how to shape the mysterious signs which were to become to him keys of knowledge and methods of expressing his wants, his feelings, and his thoughts.... Patiently, trustingly, without knowing why or wherefore, he willingly submitted to the strange process. Curiosity, sometimes amounting to wonder, was depicted on his countenance, over which smiles would spread ever and anon; and he would laugh heartily as he comprehended some new fact, or got hold of a new idea.

“No scene in a long life has left more vivid and pleasant impressions upon my mind than did that of these two young children of nature helping each other to work their way through the thick wall which cut them off from intelligible and sympathetic relations with all their fellow-creatures. They must have felt as if immured in a dark and silent cell, through chinks in the wall of which they got a few vague and incomprehensible signs of the existence of persons like themselves in form and nature. Would that the picture could be drawn vividly enough to impress the minds of others as strongly and pleasantly as it did my own! I seem now to see the two, sitting side by side at a school desk, with a piece of pasteboard, embossed with tangible signs representing letters, before them and under their hands. I see Laura grasping one of Oliver’s stout hands with her long graceful fingers, and guiding his forefinger along the outline while, with her other hand, she feels the changes in the features of his face, to find whether, by any motion of the lips or expanding smile, he shows any sign of understanding the lesson: while her own handsome and expressive face is turned eagerly toward his, every feature of her countenance absolutely radiant with intense emotions, among which curiosity and hope shine most brightly. Oliver, with his head thrown a little back, shows curiosity amounting to wonder; and his parted lips and relaxing facial muscles express keen pleasure, until they beam with that fun and drollery which always characterize him.”...

It is Howe, the former buccaneer, who thus sits watching the children. He is now forty years of age and has still thirty-five years of incessant activity ahead of him--activity in every field of practical education.

The brilliancy of the Laura Bridgman episode has a little dimmed the rest of his work. The supposed philosophical importance of the thing, and its picturesque, pathetic aspect made it almost like the discovery of America or communication with Mars. We can to-day hardly remember or imagine what emotion the teacher of Laura Bridgman called forth all over the world. Looked at in retrospect, this brilliant achievement is enmeshed in a whole life-work of activity for the dependent classes, much of which is almost as remarkable as the Bridgman episode. Prison reform, school reform, care of the insane, care of paupers, reformatories for the young, trade schools for the blind, every possible effort of a man to help his less fortunate brother--these are the subjects to which Dr. Howe devoted his life.

The episodes of conflict, of legislative struggle, of school-board clash and educational campaign of which that life was made up, all have the enduring interest that clings to scenes which are lighted up by a true light--things which have been seen in their passage by the eye of genius. Not by their own virtue, but by this vision do they live. Howe’s central thesis is thus given in his own words by Sanborn, being quoted from a report of the Massachusetts State Board of Charities, 1866:--

“The attempt to reduce to its lowest point the number of the dependent, vicious and criminal classes, and tenderly provide for those who cannot be lifted out of them, is surely worthy the best effort of a Christian people. But that the work may be well done, it must be by the people themselves, directly, and in the spirit of Him who taught that the poor ye shall always have with you--that is, near you--in your heart and affections, within your sight and knowledge; and not thrust far away from you, and always shut up alone by themselves in almshouses, or reformatories, that they may be kept at the cheapest rate by such a cold abstraction as a state government. The people cannot be absolved from these duties of charity which require knowledge of and sympathy with sufferers; and they should never needlessly delegate the power of doing good. There can be no vicarious virtue; and true charity is not done by deputy.”...

Almost any passage quoted from Howe’s reports has the same quality. It is written by a Christian missionary, who is also, within his own field, a scientific man. He is exuberant, he is triumphant, he is inexhaustible. No matter how familiar be the theme, it is always new in his hands. Turn almost at random to his letters or papers; “Do not prevent your blind child from developing, as he grows up, courage, self-reliance, generosity, and manliness of character, by excessive indulgence, by sparing him thought and anxiety and hard work, and by giving him undeserved preference over others. If he lounges in a rocking-chair or on the sofa cushions, don’t pat him and say, ‘the poor dear child is tired’; but rout him out and up just as you would do with any boy who was contracting lazy habits.”...

The following is from a report upon some cases of arrested development: “It is true that these children and youth speak and read but little, and that little very imperfectly compared with others of their age; but if one brings the case home, and supposes these to be his own children, it will not seem a small matter that a daughter, who, it was thought, would never know a letter, can now read a simple story, and a son, who could not say ‘father,’ can now distinctly repeat a prayer to his Father in heaven.”... Or take some words from a private letter:--

“The great lesson--the hard lesson--your son has first to learn is--_to be blind_; to live in the world without light; to look upon what of existence is yet vouchsafed him as a blessing and a trust, and to resolve to spend it gratefully, cheerfully, and conscientiously, in the service of his Maker and for the happiness of those about him.”

It was a matter of accident that the blind should have engrossed Howe’s attention earlier than the feeble-minded, for whom he began his labors in 1846, and for whom a State school was, through his efforts, established in Massachusetts, in 1852. This institution was quite as exclusively Howe’s creation as was the School for the Blind, and over it also he extended his domestic influence. “He passed like light through the rooms. Charley Smith, gentlest of fifty-year-old children, would leave his wooden horse to run to him. They loved him, the children whom he had rescued from worse than death. When he died they grieved for him after their fashion, and among all the tributes to his memory, none was more touching than theirs: ‘He will take care of the blind in heaven. Won’t he take care of us too?’”

It is not because of any one thing that he has done or said that Howe is important. It is because he was by nature endowed with an unconscious, spontaneous vision of truth in regard to the defective classes. When dealing with them, he sees society as a whole and these classes as parts of it. He saw that the whole of society must be used in order to work out this problem. The state and the individual, the influence of Christ and the value of money; in fact all social factors are, in Howe’s mind, viewed as elements in that solid mesh and transparent unity of suffering force--humanity. When he deals with an institution, or a theory of criminal reform, he deals with it as an agent of the invisible. It is to him no more than a device or a symbol. Now, when we remember that he was, above all things, a practical man, a man of means to ends, a man of experience and of the counting house, we are prepared to realize the magnitude of his intellect.

It was, however, only when Howe was thinking and scheming over the fate of the dependent classes that his mind worked in this transcendent way. In other matters he was an ordinary man, a man of headaches and irritability, a man of doubts and errors.

I know of nothing that so marks the inscrutability of human nature as does the history of Dr. Howe’s relation to the slavery question. That question had been in active eruption ever since 1830. Dr. Howe, one of the most sensitive philanthropists known to history, lived in daily contact with the question for many years before he became effectively interested. Here was a dependent class indeed--the slaves: here was a question of human suffering compared to which the sorrows of his deaf-mutes and half idiots were trifling accidents, the inevitable percentage of pain that fringes all civilization. Compared to the horrors of slavery the evils which excited Dr. Howe’s compassion were imperceptible. Hardly ever have more telling exhibitions been unrolled before benevolent people than those which were within the daily repertory of the abolitionists, after Garrison had begun his work. Nevertheless, for Dr. Howe the hour had not yet struck.

At last he became drawn into the slavery question and, in fact, almost killed himself over it. There remains a great difference, however, between his slavery work and his other work. When it comes to slavery, Dr. Howe’s devotion is the same, his labors are the same; but his genius is not the same. It was not given to any man to understand the slavery question in the way that Howe understood the cause of the blind or the idiotic. Indeed, slavery was not a question, but a condition, an atmosphere, a thing so close and clinging, so inherent and ingrown that, like the shirt of Nessus, it brought the flesh with it when it was removed. Poor or great, sinner or saint, every man stood on an equality before the moral problems of slavery, and underwent either conversion or corruption when the wave smote him.

It was not until 1846 that Dr. Howe’s conversion took place. For seventeen years the abolitionists had been dancing like dervishes before him; and as late as February 3, 1846, he wrote a note declining Dr. H. I. Bowditch’s invitation to an anti-slavery meeting, in such terms of polite deprecation as might have been employed by George Ticknor:--“My duties at home will prevent my joining you at eleven o’clock....

“I carefully cultivate my few social relations with slave-holders, because I find I can do so, and yet say to them _undisguisedly_ that slavery is the great _mistake_, as well as the great _sin_ of the age. Now, do what they may, they cannot prevent such words from a friend making some impression upon their hearts, which are as hard as millstones to denunciations from an enemy. It is not enmity and force, but love and reason, that are to be used in the coming strife.”...

Then comes a sudden illumination, a break, a discovery, a cry of anguish, and the curse of slavery has leaped like a wild-cat upon the conscience of Dr. Howe. He runs up and down with pain:--“Indeed, I for one can say that I would rather be in the place of the victim whom they are at this moment sending away into bondage--I would rather be in his place than in theirs! Ay! through the rest of my earthly life I would rather be a driven slave upon a Louisiana plantation than roll in their wealth and bear the burden of their guilt.”... “I feel as though I had swallowed a pepper corn, when I think that no one _dares_ to be made a martyr of in the cause of humanity.”... “Government must be regarded as a divine institution! Ay! and so must right and justice be regarded as divine institutions; older, more sacred, more imperative; and when they clash, let the first be as the potsherd against the granite.”... “O! for a man among our leaders who fears neither God, man nor devil, but loves and trusts the first so much as to fear nothing but what casts a veil over the face of truth. We must have done with expediency; we must cease to look into history, into precedents, into books for rules of action, and look only into the honest and high purposes of our own hearts; that is, when we are sure we have cast out the evil passions from them.”... “Would to God I could begin my life again or even begin a new one from this moment, and go upon the ground that no fault or error or shortcoming should ever be covered up from my own eyes or those of others.”...

His words, just quoted, are the words of a prophet; and yet he was destined, in practical politics, to become an adherent of half-measures, and a make-weight for self-seekers. It was as the result of one of the fugitive slave cases and in the year 1846 that Dr. Howe became immersed in the anti-slavery cause. He helped to edit the “Commonwealth,” the organ of the Conscience Whigs: he ran for office, and he became the head of a vigilance committee, whose activity continued down to the outbreak of the war. Now, as everyone knows, vigilance committees are called into being in cases when law has broken down. The object of such committees is to do things which are necessary, but illegal; hence their doings are secret. It was one of the strange features of the life of that period that the most beautiful natures of the age, the most tender, the most unselfish, the most romantic, felt called upon to do violent, lawless and bloody work. To threaten bad men with condign punishment, to organize the rescue of prisoners, to condone theft, perjury and manslaughter when committed by their own partisans--such were the duties of a vigilance committee.

The beginning of this vigilance work was the underground railroad which existed all over the North, and even to some extent in the border slave states. To help fugitive slaves on their way to freedom became a passionate occupation of young and old, however, only after Garrison’s doctrines had given a religious sanction to the practice. Social conditions in America, at this time, led to a confusion of moral ideas and sometimes to a perversion of the moral sense. We are familiar with the perplexities that distressed tender-hearted people in the border free states. In the border slave states moral questions were equally complex. There is a page or two in Huckleberry Finn in which Mark Twain has depicted the feelings of a boy, living in the border slave state Missouri, as to the ethics of helping a runaway slave to escape. Surely the passage is among the greatest pages which that great author ever penned....

I says; “All right; but wait a minute. There’s one more thing--a thing that nobody don’t know but me. And that is, there’s a nigger here that I’m trying to steal out of slavery, and his name is Jim--old Miss Watson’s Jim.”

He says: “What! Why Jim is--” He stopped and went to studying.

I says: “I know what you’ll say. You’ll say its dirty, low-down business; but what if it is? _I’m_ low down; and I’m going to steal him and I want you to keep mum and not let on. Will you?”

His eye lit up, and he says: “I’ll _help_ you steal him!”

Well, I let go all holts then, like I was shot. It was the most astonishing speech I ever heard--and I’m bound to say Tom Sawyer fell considerable in my estimation. Only I couldn’t believe it. Tom Sawyer a _nigger stealer_!...

Well, one thing was dead sure, and that was that Tom Sawyer was in earnest, and was actually going to help steal that nigger out of slavery. That was the thing that was too many for me. Here was a boy that was respectable and well brung up; and had a character to lose, and folks at home that had characters; and he was bright and not leather-headed; and knowing and not ignorant, and not mean, but kind; and yet here he was, without any more pride, or rightness, or feeling, than to stoop to this business, and make himself a shame, and his family a shame, before everybody. I _couldn’t_ understand it no way at all. It was outrageous, and I knowed I ought to just up and tell him so; and so be his true friend, and let him quit the thing right where he was and save himself. And I _did_ start to tell him; but he shut me up and says: “Don’t you reckon I know what I’m about?” “Yes.” “Didn’t I say I’d steal him?” “Yes.” “Well, then.” That’s all he said and that’s all I said....

That the angel-minded Dr. Howe should have headed a vigilance committee was no more extraordinary than many other strange and terrible things in that epoch. Dr. Howe was perhaps by nature and early experience fitted to head such a committee; but nothing could be farther removed from such work than the twenty years of peaceful work in philanthropy which had followed his stormy youth; above all, he was no longer young. At forty-five a man cannot learn a new trade. Howe could not meet the world on a political basis or express himself through political agencies--whether through the constitutional vehicles of legislature, party, and public meeting--or through the improvised vehicles of vigilance committee and underground railroad. His activity in both of these fields was splendid, yet lame; it was the work of a man who only half understood his own function. In his own work, the only realities for him are metaphysical realities. But in politics, he has the mind of an ordinary man; his thought creeps from point to point, treats human institutions with respect, and subordinates itself to the opinions of other people. It is positively amazing to find Howe, the pioneer, the fire-brand--or rather the torch-bearer--in one department of thought, becoming a mere linkboy in another and nearly allied department.

Howe’s incapacity for leadership in politics was first shown during the Freesoil movement. The “Coalition” which the Freesoilers made with the Democrats in Massachusetts, soon after Webster’s defection in 1850, was one of those political unions which are nowadays called “deals.” Persons of conflicting principles join together in order to defeat a common opponent, and, of course, to divide the offices. Some people object to such deals on the ground that there is always an element of betrayal, a lie, a debauchery of conscience somewhere and somehow involved in them.

The coalition which Dr. Howe’s associates entered into was very famous at the time and thereafter. I will not attempt to define its immorality; but I will only say that it was, as Richard H. Dana Jr. notes in his diary, “an error in moral science.” Dr. Howe did not, in political matters, understand his own nature sufficiently to keep clear of this coalition. He plunged into it. He was never happy thereafter. It violated his conscience and plagued him for years. He could never forgive the leaders of the Freesoil party, nor forget the treason. He writes to Sumner in 1852: “I have always had an instinct in me which I have never been able to body forth clearly--which tells me that all this manœuvring and political expediency is all wrong, and that each man should go for the right regardless of others.”

And again in 1853: “Now every element in my nature rises up indignantly at the thought of our principles being bartered for considerations of a personal and selfish nature; and all my feelings bid me do what my reason forbids--that is, make open war, cause a clean split, appeal to the Conscience Whigs who formed the nucleus of our party, and march out of the ranks with a banner of our own.” He makes moan throughout six years over this coalition. As late as 1857 he still grinds his teeth. “Not even Sumner’s election was worth the price paid by the coalition.”

This is all admirable; but it is not enough. Had Howe understood reform politics as he understood philanthropy, had he had an early training in reform politics, he would have taken a sledge-hammer and battered the coalition in public. If the matter had occurred in philanthropy, Howe would have cleared the air. If, for instance, Dr. Howe had returned from Europe and found Charles Sumner giving Laura Bridgman dogmatic religious instruction, he would have stopped it; yes, even if he had been obliged to placard the town against the Sumner. But in politics he was helpless. As to the Whigs, he says: “I have done what I could, for where else can I go? Under what organization can I fight in this terrible emergency?”

Alas, there is no banner for a man like Howe to fight under. He must weave his own banner. For his own philanthropic work, Dr. Howe had done this; but he could not do it for politics. The anti-slavery problems came to him on top of his multitudinous activities. He was already superhumanly active, but he was a man incapable of refusing work which was offered to him. He took on the abolition duties in addition to his regular work. His health broke down almost immediately; but there was no leisure for him to attend to his health. His solution of all problems was by work, work, work. He was not, it must be remembered, of a thoughtful nature. His thinking was usually done for him by the energy of his temperament, which handed him a list of agenda each morning and at night sent him to the slumbers of fatigue. Thus there was no very distinct philosophy underlying his course of action in regard to slavery--no historic point of view, or reasoned theory, no illumination.

It is very terrible to see Howe making journeys to Kansas at a time when he should have been in bed with a sick-nurse beside him. Pegasus at the plow is good; but this was not exactly the right plow for Howe. The sight is a sublime one, all the same. The old buccaneer retains an instinctive belief in force. “Force is not yet eliminated from the means employed by God, bloodshed is necessary, bloodshed will come. But when, but how?--Under what circumstances may we resort to it?” This is the burden of many letters. In the meantime he and his vigilance committee were getting into deeper water all the time with the fugitive slave law, and with the still fiercer Kansas-Nebraska problems, until finally matters were brought to a crisis by John Brown’s raid, of which I must say a few words here.

It is wrong to compare John Brown with Joan of Arc, as is so often done. John Brown’s name is stained with massacre. He is a spirit of a far lower heaven than Joan of Arc. And yet he is to be classified under Joan of Arc; because he is an example of the symbolism inherent in human nature and in human society. Everyone understands both Joan of Arc and John Brown, but nobody can explain them. It takes an epoch, it takes the whole of a society, it takes a national and religious birthpang to produce either Joan of Arc or John Brown. Everyone living at the time takes some part in the episode; and thereafter, the story remains as a symbol, an epitome of the national and religious idea, which was born through the crisis. John Brown and his raid are an epitome, a popular summary of the history of the United States between the Missouri Compromise and the Gettysburg celebration. Not a child has been born in the country since his death to whom John Brown does not symbolize the thing that happened to the heart and brain of the American people between 1820 and 1865. He is as big as a myth, and the story of him is an immortal legend--perhaps the only one in our history.

The relation which the anti-slavery people bore to the John Brown episode is that of a chorus: they hailed the coming of the Lord. It is also that of a client: they backed him with money and arms. They are the link between the myth and the fact. They lived inside the swirl of rhapsody which was bearing Brown across the horizon. The progress of righteous-minded law-breaking, which began as soon as Garrison had explained the iniquity of the Federal Constitution, was very rapid after the passage of the fugitive slave law in 1850. To help fugitive slaves escape was a good training for those who were to supply anti-slavery swords and guns to the private war in Kansas. Criticism stands dumb before this situation: no man can tell what he himself would have done under the circumstances. The anti-slavery scholars and saints regarded themselves as the representatives of law and order in fomenting this carnage; and perhaps they were.

But the mind of John Brown took one more stride, and imagined a holy war to be begun through a slave insurrection. Nobody could have stopped Brown: he was wound up: he was going to do the thing. He naturally came to his Eastern partisans for support, and of course obtained a different degree of support from each individual to whom his horrifying scheme was disclosed. The people who would listen sifted themselves down by natural law to half a dozen, and among this half-dozen was Dr. Howe. Brown moved about under assumed names, and his accomplices corresponded in cryptic language, raising money and arms. The natural power and goodness of the man cast a spell over many who met him. It was more than a spell, it was the presence and shadow of martyrdom. And it fell upon the imagination of enthusiasts who had spent years of their lives in romantic, sacrificial law-breaking. More than this: John Brown was the living embodiment of an idea with which the anti-slavery mind was always darkly battling--the idea of atonement, of vicarious suffering. Howe and his associates somehow felt that they would be untrue to themselves--false to God--if they did not help John Brown, even if he were going to do something that would not bear the telling. John Brown thus fulfilled the dreams of the abolitionists; he was their man. He portended bloodshed--salvation through bloodshed. It was to come. Brown himself hardly knew his own significance or he would have demanded personal service, not money, from his patrons. Suppose John Brown had said to Gerrit Smith, and to Sanborn and Howe and Higginson and Stearns: “I do not want your money, but come with me. And if you will not come now, yet next year you will come--and the year after--you, and your sons by the thousand. You will follow me and you will not return, as I shall not return.”

Brown did not say this, but the truth of it was in the sky already, and when the raid occurred at Harper’s Ferry men shuddered not only with horror, but with awe. The raid took place. It took place, not in Kansas, a long way off, but within a few miles of Washington. Innocent men were killed. No one could tell whether a slave insurrection was to follow. A wave of panic swept across the South, and of something not unlike panic across the North. The keynote was struck. There was no doubt about that, anywhere. The conspirators, that is to say Brown’s secret committee, fled to Canada, with the exception of Gerrit Smith who went into an asylum--and of Higginson who went about his business as usual. They burnt their papers and look legal advice as to the law concerning conspiracy and armed rebellion. Dr. Howe, under the belief that his doing so would somehow shield Brown, published a card disclaiming knowledge and complicity in the raid.

It is interesting to note the various reasons which moved the conspirators to flight, at least to contrast the reasons which they afterward gave for their several sudden disappearances. Sanborn ran away because he feared that if the conspirators were arrested, their personal insignificance might damage the cause. It seemed to him “very important that the really small extent of any movement should be concealed and its reach and character exaggerated.” But Howe published his disclaimer for the very opposite reason. He wished that the smallness of extent and reach of the movement should be thoroughly well exposed to the public. This, he thought, would “rather help Brown than otherwise, because if he were shown to be an isolated individual acting for himself and not the agent of others, the affair would be less formidable and the desire for vengeance less strong.” Perhaps anyone implicated in a terrible crime is apt to discover some reason why his own temporary disappearance will serve the cause of righteousness. At any rate, it is too much to expect the humor of the situation to appear very strongly in the correspondence of the secret committee. Dr. Howe afterward went to Washington to testify in the investigation which followed, partly, no doubt, that he might rectify the impression created by his card, which had led people to believe that he knew less of Brown’s plans than was the case.

This momentary concern for their own safety a little tarnishes the heroic glamor that hangs about the conspirators, and which in another age would have been quickly restored by their execution. But they were really safe. All that the South had hoped for was to implicate the leaders of the Republican party in the raid, and in this it failed. The panic which seized all the conspirators except Higginson was a natural reaction in men who were dominated by another man’s idea, sustained above themselves by another man’s will and thought. They believed they understood; but they did not understand. When the climax came--a climax proper to that will and thought--they were thrown to the ground. They forsook him and fled. This does not mean that when their own hour shall come these same men will not die cheerfully at the stake or on the cross.

One word must be added as to the effect of casuistry upon the intellect of those enthusiasts who backed Brown while begging him to be gentle. Dr. Howe writes to Theodore Parker: “And I sent him a draft of fifty dollars as an earnest of my confidence in him and faith of his adhesion to what he so often assured me was his purpose--to avoid bloodshed and servile insurrection.” Now Brown’s previous history and avowed intentions made bloodshed an integral part of his scheme; and no one knew this better than the secret committee. But destiny endows each man with so much blindness as enables him to fulfil his part in the drama of history. It was necessary for Dr. Howe to support John Brown. His nature required it of him. In order to do so, it was necessary for Howe to undergo a slight mental obfuscation; and lo, how easily it was accomplished! He gives Brown a pistol and begs him not to use it; he seriously remonstrates with Brown as to the stealing of horses, even when done in aiding slaves to escape. This is not humbug but hallucination.

It should no more be counted against Howe that he could not express himself through the medium of politics than it is counted against Goethe that he could not paint. To have mastered one vehicle is enough for one man in this world. To have seen life from a point of view which unifies contradictions, merges thought with feeling, identifies religion and common sense, is enough to give a man a niche in the temple of humanity--yes, even though this power of vision is accorded to him only at moments, or when he is dealing with a particular subject, or when he has a violin or a paint-brush in his hand.

It is the man that makes this unity--this stained-glass window through which truth shines. The artists have had a monopoly of logic, and are the only people who get the credit of being expressive. Yet now and then a philosopher like Kant draws together a lot of old junk, and thinks over it, and arranges it till it becomes--to anyone who can follow the reasoning--a sort of cathedral of logic. Or again, a man who is the very antipodes of Kant--a man of action who arranges nothing, but whose thought and conduct are arranged for him by nature--becomes so polarized and at one with himself that he sheds a sort of glow about him; but whether this glow comes out of his words or from his conduct and words taken together we hardly know. The vehicle is nothing; the man is all. Such unitary natures are rare enough; and Howe, within his own limitations, and while standing over his own tripod with his own peculiar lyre in his hand, is one of them.

The outbreak of the war put an end to all those conditions which had been turning human nature inside out during the fifties. It was no longer necessary for idealism to seek its outlet in crime, nor for half-good men to be turned into devils because they had not in them the stuff that makes martyrs. When the war came, the average man found the sacrifice prepared for him in a form which he could understand. He gave himself freely. He gave all he had. There followed such an outpouring of virtue and heroism that the crimes of all humanity might seem to have been wiped out by it; and at the end of the war the United States resumed her place among modern nations, and took up the conventional problems of modern life.

During the war Dr. Howe was a member of the Sanitary Commission; and during the remainder of his life he continued to be the greatest authority on everything that concerned organized charity, and probably the most active individual who had ever taken part in such things in the United States.

In this sketch there has not been time to touch upon the international side of Howe’s life; his relation to the liberals and philanthropists of Europe, from Lafayette to Kossuth. I omit the picturesque episodes which that relation gave rise to, as, for instance, Howe’s imprisonment in Prussia in 1832, and his being chosen, at a later date, as the depository for the stolen crown jewels of Hungary. “When the jewels were recovered,” writes Mr. W. J. Stillman in his autobiography, “they were to be hidden in a box of a conserve for which that vicinity was noted, and then carried to Constantinople, from which point I was to take charge of them and deliver them in Boston to Dr. S. G. Howe, the well-known Philhellene.” The jewels were recovered by the Austrian Government before they could be transferred to America, and this was, no doubt, a fortunate outcome for all concerned. Dr. Howe’s liberalism remained at the same temperature throughout his life. It led him in 1867 to revisit Greece for the last time, as a distributor of supplies to the insurgent Cretans. It led him in 1871 to favor the Annexation of Santo Domingo to the United States.

Howe died in 1876. The rapid cycle of social revolutions in the United States which followed the Civil War, heightened the contrast between the veteran and the new age, and strengthened the romance that had always hung about him. To have taken part in the Greek Revolution seemed, in 1870, almost the same thing as to have been present at the siege of Troy. The mantle of Byron and the Isles of Greece never quite fell from his shoulders.

Dr. Howe seems to have been one of those nimble, playful, light-footed natures who are as strong as steel and can be as stern as steel upon occasion. His physical endurance was so great that it led to his habitually overtaxing himself. His excitability made him a hard man to live with; and he was occasionally hasty, harsh, and exacting. This irritability of Dr. Howe’s is deeply related to his whole mind and being. He was constitutionally deficient in the power to rest. The blind headaches which clouded the last third of his life were probably the convulsions through which outraged nature resumed her functions. He supposed them to be the residuum of Grecian malaria; but anyone reading of Howe’s daily life would look for breakdown somewhere. There is a gleaming elfin precocity about him which the human machine cannot support forever. He was ever in action: as he so wonderfully says of himself, “he prayed with his hands and feet.”