Existing comment:
On all subjects but one -- slavery and the possibility of ending it by a sudden blow which would provoke a broadening wave of slave uprisings as a rock thrown into a pond sends forth widening ripples -- he [John Brown] was sane .... But on this special question of the readiness of slavery to crumble at a blow, his monomania... or his paranoia... rendered him irresponsible.
-- Allan Nevins, the Emergence of Lincoln, 1950 |