"The writer, Dr. G.W. Brown, in slip-shod and often ungrammatical English assails the memory of Old John Brown, charges him with active participation in various bloody crimes, and abuses his biographers and eulogists. Dr. Brown writes as an eye-witness of many of the things which he describes; but of his credibility we have no means of judging save so far as the bitterness of his tone casts suspicion on his veracity."
Happily we are able to tell just what Brown himself thought of his detractor, and of the paper that he conducted; for in July, 1858, writing to F.G. Sanborn, he says: "I believe all honest, sensible Free State men in Kansas consider George Washington Brown's _Herald of Freedom_ one of the most mischievous, traitorous publications in the whole country."
"A murderous fanatic and midnight assassin" is what the _Louisville Journal_ calls him. Just what the same paper calls Mr. Phillip Thompson, Member of Congress from Kentucky, I cannot state; but from the generally warped nature of its judgment I am not disposed to set much store by its opinion of him of Harper's Ferry.
"Without doubt he suffered the just recompense of his deeds," says one who twenty-five years ago was loud and eloquent in his denunciation of the "taking off." This man has since sat in Congress with hosts of Rebel brigadiers, has shaken by the hand Chalmers of Fort Pillow infamy, has listened to the reconstructed ex-Vice-President of the Confederacy on the floor of the House of Representatives. There is something wrong here, and I leave it to the lawyers to decide where. Brown had no malice against individuals, hence to have hung him for murder was wrong. If he suffered death for treason against the United States, then what a gigantic wrong has been done in admitting to the highest offices those who likewise were treasonable. For myself, I am ready to affirm that if the present status of affairs is right, there was most grievous wrong done Brown. The larger and more extended the treason only adds so much more to the crime. Perhaps had the "reconstruction" following his foray been associated with more ballots, or in other words, had conciliation been necessary to the proper maintenance of a particular party, perhaps, I say, he had been not only pardoned but elected to Congress.