CHAPTER XIThe n*****s in New York and Brooklyn were not the only people in the North falling under the influence of the strange man who answered to the name of John Brown. There was something magnetic about him that drew all sorts and conditions of men.
The statesmen who still used reason as the guiding principle of life had no use for him. Henry Wilson, the new Senator from Massachusetts, met him and was repelled by the something that drew others. Governor Andrew was puzzled by his strange personality.
The secret of his power lay in a mystic appeal to the Puritan conscience. He had been from childhood afflicted with this conscience in its most malignant form. He knew instinctively its process of action.
The Puritan had settled New England and fixed the principles both of economic and p
