Rome, November 24, 1859.
MY DEAR FRIEND: I
see by a recent telegraph which the steamer of November 2d brought from Boston,
that the Court found Captain Brown guilty, and passed sentence upon him. It is
said Friday, December 2d, is fixed as the day for hanging him. So, long before
this reaches you, my friend will have passed on to the reward of his
magnanimous public services, and his pure, upright, private life. I am not well
enough to be the minister to any Congregation, least of all to one like that
which, for so many years, helped my soul, while it listened to my words.
Surely, the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society in Boston needs a minister,
not half dead, but alive all over; and yet, while reading the accounts of the
affair at Harper's Ferry, and of the sayings of certain men at Boston, whom you
and I know only too well, I could not help wishing I was at home again, to use
what poor remnant of power is left to me in defence of the True and the Right.
America is rich in
able men, in skilful writers, in ready and accomplished speakers. But few men
dare treat public affairs with reference to the great principles of justice,
and the American Democracy; nay, few with reference to any remote future, or
even with a comprehensive survey of the present. Our public writers ask what
effect will this opinion have on the Democratic party, or the Republican party?
how will it affect the next Presidential election? what will the great State of
Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or New York say to it? This is very unfortunate for us
all, especially when the people have to deal practically and that speedily with
a question concerning the very existence of Democratic institutions in America;
for it is not to be denied that we must give up Democracy if we keep Slavery or
give up Slavery if we keep Democracy.
I greatly deplore
this state of things. Our able men fail to perform their natural function to
give valuable instruction and advice to the people; and, at the same time, they
debase and degrade themselves. The hurrahs and the offices they get are poor
compensation for falseness to their own consciences.
In my best estate, I
do not pretend to much political wisdom, and still less now while sick; but I
wish yet to set down a few thoughts for your private eye, and, it may be, for
the ear of the Fraternity. They are, at least, the result of long meditation on
the subject; besides, they are not at all new nor peculiar to me, but are a
part of the Public Knowledge of all enlightened men.
1. A man, held
against his will as a slave, has a natural right to kill every one who seeks to
prevent his enjoyment of liberty. This has long been recognized as a
self-evident proposition, coming so directly from the Primitive Instincts of
Human Nature, that it neither required proofs nor admitted them.
2. It may be a
natural duty of the slave to develop this natural right in a practical manner,
and actually kill all those who seek to prevent his enjoyment of liberty. For,
if he continue patiently in bondage: First, he entails the foulest of curses on
his children; and, second, he encourages other men to commit the crime against
nature which he allows his own master to commit. It is my duty to preserve my
own body from starvation. If I fail thereof through sloth, I not only die, but
incur the contempt and loathing of my acquaintances while I live. It is not
less my duty to do all that is in my power to preserve my body and soul from
Slavery; and if I submit to that through cowardice, I not only become a bondman,
and suffer what thraldom inflicts, but I incur also the contempt and loathing
of my acquaintance. Why do freemen scorn and despise a slave? Because they
think his condition is a sign of his cowardice, and believe that he ought to
prefer death to bondage. The Southerners hold the Africans in great contempt,
though mothers of their children. Why? Simply because the Africans are slaves;
that is, because the Africans fail to perform the natural duty of securing
freedom by killing their oppressors.
3. The freeman has a
natural right to help the slaves recover their liberty, and in that enterprise
to do for them all which they have a right to do for themselves. This
statement, I think, requires no argument or illustration.
4. It may be a
natural duty for the freeman to help the slaves to the enjoyment of their
liberty, and, as means to that end to aid them in killing all such as oppose
their natural freedom. If you were attacked by a wolf, I should not only have a
right to aid you in getting rid of that enemy, but it would be my duty to help
you in proportion to my power. If it were a murderer, and not a wolf, who
attacked you, the duty would be still the same. Suppose it is not a murderer
who would kill you, but a kidnapper who would enslave, does that make it less
my duty to help you out of the hands of your enemy? Suppose it is not a
kidnapper who would make you a bondman, but a slaveholder who would keep you
one, does that remove my obligation to help you?
5. The performance
of this duty is to be controlled by the freeman's power and opportunity to help
the slaves. (The Impossible is never the Obligatory.) I cannot help the slaves
in Dahomey or Bornou, and am not bound to try. I can help those who escape to
my own neighborhood, and I ought to do so. My duty is commensurate with my
power; and, as my power increases, my duty enlarges along with it. If I could
help the bondmen in Virginia to their freedom as easily and effectually as I
can aid the runaway at my own door, then I ought to do so.
These five maxims have
a direct application to America at this day, and the people of the Free States
have a certain dim perception thereof, which, fortunately, is becoming clearer every
year.
Thus, the people of
Massachusetts feel that they ought to protect the fugitive slaves who come into
our State. Hence come, first the irregular attempts to secure their liberty,
and the declarations of noble men, like Timothy Gilbert, George W. Carnes, and
others, that they will do so even at great personal risk; and, secondly the
statute laws made by the legislature to accomplish that end.
Now, if
Massachusetts had the power to do as much for the slaves in Virginia as for the
runaways in her own territory, we should soon see those two sets of measures at
work in that direction also.
I find it is said in
the Democratic newspapers that "Captain Brown had many friends at the
North, who sympathized with him in general, and in special approved of this
particular scheme of his; they furnished him with some twelve or twenty
thousand dollars, it would seem." I think much more than that is true of
us. If he had succeeded in running off one or two thousand slaves to Canada,
even at the expense of a little violence and bloodshed, the majority of men in
New England would have rejoiced, not only in the End, but also in the Means.
The first successful attempt of a considerable number of slaves to secure their
freedom by violence will clearly show how deep is the sympathy of the people
for them, and how strongly they embrace the five principles I mentioned above.
A little success of that sort will serve as priming for the popular cannon; it
is already loaded.
Of course, I was not
astonished to hear that an attempt had been made to free the slaves in a
certain part of Virginia, nor should I be astonished if another "insurrection"
or "rebellion" took place in the State of ——, or a third in or a
fourth in ——. Such things are to be expected; for they do not depend merely on
the private will of men like Captain Brown and his associates, but on the great
General Causes which move all human kind to hate Wrong and love Right. Such
"insurrections" will continue as long as Slavery lasts, and will
increase, both in frequency and in power, just as the people become intelligent
and moral. Virginia may hang John Brown and all that family, but she cannot
hang the Human Race; and, until that is done, noble men will rejoice in the
motto of that once magnanimous State "Sic semper Tyrannis!" "Let
such be the end of every oppressor."
It is a good
Anti-Slavery picture on the Virginia shield: a man standing on a tyrant and
chopping his head off with a sword; only I would paint the sword-holder black
and the tyrant while, to show the immediate application of the principle. The
American people will have to march to rather severe music, I think, and it is
better for them to face it in season. A few years ago it did not seem difficult
first to check Slavery, and then to end it without any bloodshed. I think this
cannot be done now, nor ever in the future. All the great charters of Humanity
have been writ in blood. I once hoped that of American Democracy would be
engrossed in less costly ink; but it is plain, now, that our pilgrimage must
lead through a Red Sea, wherein many a Pharaoh will go under and perish. Alas!
that we are not wise enough to be just, or just enough to be wise, and so gain
much at small cost!
Look, now, at a few
notorious facts:
I. There are four
million slaves in the United States violently withheld from their natural right
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, they are our fellow
countrymen yours and mine—just as much as any four million white men. Of
course, you and I owe them the duty which one man owes another of his own
nation the duty of instruction, advice, and protection of natural rights. If
they are starving, we ought to help feed them. The color of their skins, their
degraded social condition, their ignorance, abates nothing from their natural
claim on us, or from our natural duty toward them.
There are men in all
the Northern States who feel the obligation which citizenship imposes on them
the duty to help those slaves. Hence arose the Anti-Slavery Society, which
seeks simply to excite the white people to perform their natural duty to their
dark fellow-countrymen. Hence comes CAPTAIN BROWN'S EXPEDITION an attempt to
help his countrymen enjoy their natural right to life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.
He sought by
violence what the Anti-Slavery Society works for with other weapons. The two
agree in the end, and differ only in the means. Men like Captain Brown will be
continually rising up among the white people of the Free States, attempting to
do their natural duty to their black countrymen that is, help them to freedom.
Some of these efforts will be successful. Thus, last winter, Captain Brown
himself escorted eleven of his countrymen from bondage in Missouri to freedom
in Canada. He did not snap a gun, I think, although then, as more recently, he
had his fighting tools at hand, and would have used them, if necessary. Even
now, the Underground Railroad is in constant and beneficent operation.
By-and-by it will be an Overground Railroad from Mason and Dixon's line clear
to Canada: the only tunnelling will be in the Slave States. Northern men
applaud the brave conductors of that Locomotive of Liberty.
When Thomas Garrett
was introduced to a meeting of political Free-Soilers in Boston, as "the
man who had helped eighteen hundred slaves to their natural liberty," even
that meeting gave the righteous Quaker three times three. All honest Northern
hearts beat with admiration of such men; nay, with love for them. Young lads
say, "I wish that heaven would make me such a man." The wish will now
and then be father to the fact. You and I have had opportunity enough, in
twenty years, to see that this philanthropic patriotism is on the increase at
the North, and the special direction it takes is toward the liberation of their
countrymen in bondage.
Not many years ago,
Boston sent money to help the Greeks in their struggle for political freedom,
(they never quite lost their personal liberty,) but with the money, she sent
what was more valuable and far more precious, one of her most valiant and
heroic sons, who staid in Greece to fight the great battle of Humanity. Did
your friend, Dr. Samuel G. Howe, lose the esteem of New England men by that
act? He won the admiration of Europe, and holds it still.
Nay, still later,
the same dear old Boston Hunkers have never been more than rats and mice in her
house, which she suffers for a time and then drives out twelve hundred of them
at once on a certain day of March, 1776,—that same dear old Boston sent the
same Dr. Howe to carry aid and comfort to the Poles, then in deadly struggle
for their political existence. Was he disgraced because he lay seven-and-forty
days in a Prussian jail in Berlin? Not even in the eyes of the Prussian King,
who afterwards sent him a gold medal, whose metal was worth as many dollars as
that philanthropist lay days in the despot's jail. It is said, "Charity
should begin at home." The American began a good ways off, but has been
working homeward ever since. The Dr. Howe of to-day would and ought to be more
ready to help an American to personal liberty, than a Pole or a Greek to mere
political freedom, and would find more men to furnish aid and comfort to our
own countrymen, even if they were black. It would not surprise me if there were
other and well-planned attempts in other States to do what Captain Brown
heroically, if not successfully, tried in Virginia. Nine out of ten may fail —
the tenth will succeed. The victory over General Burgoyne more than made up for
all the losses in many a previous defeat; it was the beginning of the end.
Slavery will not die a dry death; it may have as many lives as a cat; at last,
it will die like a mad dog in a village, with only the enemies of the human
kind to lament its fate, and they too cowardly to appear as mourners.
II. But it is not
merely white men who will fight for the liberty of Americans; the negroes will
take their defence into their own hands, especially if they can find white men
to lead them. No doubt the African race is greatly inferior to the Caucasian in
general intellectual power, and also in that instinct for liberty which is so
strong in the Teutonic family, and just now obvious in the Anglo-Saxons of
Britain and America; besides, the African race have but little desire for
vengeance the lowest form of the love of justice. Here is one example out of
many: In Santa Cruz, the old slave laws were the most horrible, I think, I ever
read of in modern times, unless those of the Carolinas be an exception. If a
slave excited others to run away, for the first offence his right leg was to be
cut off; for the second offence, his other leg. This mutilation was not to be
done by a surgeon's hand; the poor wretch was laid down on a log, and his legs
chopped off with a plantation axe, and the stumps plunged into boiling pitch,
to stanch the blood, and so save the property from entire destruction; for the
live Torso of a slave might serve as a warning. No action of a court was
requisite to inflict this punishment; any master could thus mutilate his bondman.
Even from 1830 to 1846, it was common for owners to beat their offending
victims with "tamarind rods" six feet long and an inch in thickness
at the bigger end — rods thick set with ugly thorns. When that process was
over, the lacerated back was washed with a decoction of the Manchineel, a
poison tree, which made the wounds fester and long remain open.
In 1846, the negroes
were in "rebellion," and took possession of the island; they were
25,000, the whites 3000. But the blacks did not hurt the hair of a white man's
head; they got their freedom, but they took no revenge! Suppose 25,000
Americans, held in bondage by 3000 Algerines on a little island, should get
their masters into their hands, how many of the 3000 would see the next sun go
down?
No doubt it is
through the absence of this desire of natural vengeance, that the Africans have
been reduced to bondage, and kept in it.
But there is a limit
even to the negro's forbearance. San Domingo is not a great way off. The
revolution which changed its black inhabitants from tame slaves into wild men,
took place after you had ceased to call yourself a boy.
It shows what may be
in America, with no white man to help. In the Slave States there is many a
possible San Domingo, which may become actual any day; and, if not in 1860,
then in some other "year of our Lord." Besides, America offers more
than any other country to excite the slave to love of Liberty, and the effort
for it. We are always talking about "Liberty," boasting that we are
"the freest people in the world," declaring that "a man would
die, rather than be a slave." We continually praise our Fathers "who
fought the Revolution." We build monuments to commemorate even the
humblest beginning of that great national work. Once a year, we stop all
ordinary work, and give up a whole day to the noisiest kind of rejoicing for
the War of Independence. How we praise the "champions of liberty!"
How we point out the "infamy of the British oppressors!" "They
would make our Fathers slaves," say we, "and we slew the oppressor
Sic semper Tyrannis!"
Do you suppose this
will fail to produce its effect on the black man, one day? The South must
either give up keeping "Independence Day," or else keep it in a
little more thorough fashion. Nor is this all: the Southerners are continually
taunting the negroes with their miserable nature. "You are only half
human," say they, "not capable of freedom." "Hay is good
for horses, not for hogs," said the philosophic American who now
represents the great Democracy" at the court of Turin. So, liberty is good
for white men, not for negroes. Have they souls? I don't know that — non mi
ricordo. Contempt," says the proverb, "will cut through the shell of
the tortoise." And, one day, even the sluggish African will wake up under
the threefold stimulus of the Fourth of July cannon, the whip of the
slaveholder, and the sting of his heartless mockery. Then, if "oppression
maketh wise men mad," what do you think it will do to African slaves, who
are familiar with scenes of violence, and all manner of cruelty? Still more: if
the negroes have not general power of mind, or instinctive love of liberty,
equal to the whites, they are much our superiors in power of cunning, and in
contempt for death — rather formidable qualities in a service war. There
already have been several risings of slaves in this century; they spread fear
and consternation. The future will be more terrible. Now, in case of an
insurrection, not only is there, as Jefferson said, “no attribute of the
Almighty" which can take sides with the master, but there will be many
white men who will take part with the slave. Men like the Lafayettes of the last
century, and the Dr. Howes of this, may give the insurgent negro as effectual
aid as that once rendered to America and Greece; and the public opinion of an
enlightened world will rank them among its heroes of noblest mark.
If I remember
rightly, some of your fathers were in the battle of Lexington, and that at
Bunker Hill. I believe, in the course of the war which followed, every
able-bodied man in your town (Newton) was in actual service. Nowadays, their
descendants are proud of the fact. One day it will be thought not less heroic
for a negro to fight for his personal liberty, than for a white man to fight
for political independence, and against a tax of three pence a pound on tea.
Wait a little, and things will come round.
III. The existence
of Slavery endangers all our Democratic institutions. It does this if only
tolerated as an exceptional measure—a matter of present convenience, and still
more when proclaimed as an instantial principle, a rule of political conduct
for all time and every place. Look at this: In 1790, there were (say) 300,000
slaves; soon they make their first doubling, and are 600,000; then their
second, 1,200,000; then their third, 2,400,000. They are now in the process of
doubling the fourth time, and will soon be 4,800,000; then comes the fifth
double, 9,600,000; then the sixth, 19,200,000. Before the year of our Lord
nineteen hundred, there will be twenty million slaves!
An Anglo-Saxon with
common sense does not like this Africanization of America; he wishes the
superior race to multiply rather than the inferior. Besides, it is plain to a
one-eyed man that Slavery is an irreconcilable enemy of the progressive
development of Democracy; that, if allowed to exist, it must be allowed to
spread, to gain political, social, and ecclesiastical power; and all that it
gains for the slaveholders is just so much taken from the freemen.
Look at this!—there
are twenty Southern representatives who represent nothing but property in man,
and yet their vote counts as much in Congress as the twenty Northerners who
stand for the will of 1,800,000 freemen. Slavery gives the South the same
advantage in the choice of President; consequently the slaveholding South has
long controlled the federal power of the Nation.
Look at the recent
acts of the Slave Power! The Fugitive Slave bill, the Kansas-Nebraska bill, the
Dred Scott decision, the fillibustering against Cuba, (till found too strong,)
and now against Mexico and other feeble neighbors, and, to crown all, the
actual re-opening of the African slave-trade!
The South has
kidnapped men in Boston, and made the Judges of Massachusetts go under her
symbolic chain to enter the Courts of Justice. (!) She has burned houses and
butchered innocent men in Kansas, and the perpetrators of that wickedness were
rewarded by the Federal Government with high office and great pay! Those things
are notorious; they have stirred up some little indignation at the North, and
freemen begin to think of defending their liberty. Hence came the Free-Soil
party, and hence the Republican party; it contemplates no direct benefit to the
slave, only the defence of the white man in his national rights, or his
conventional privileges. It will grow stronger every year, and also bolder. It
must lay down principles as a platform to work its measures on; the principles
will be found to require much more than what was at first proposed, and, even
from this platform, Republicans will promptly see that they cannot defend the
natural rights of freemen without destroying that Slavery which takes away the
natural rights of a negro. So, first, the wise and just men of the party will
sympathize with such as seek to liberate the slaves, either peacefully or by
violence; next, they will declare their opinions in public; and, finally, the
whole body of the party will come to the same sympathy and the same opinion.
Then, of course, they will encourage men like Captain Brown, give him money and
all manner of help, and also encourage the slaves, whenever they shall rise, to
take their liberty at all hazards. When called to help put down an insurrection
of the slaves, they will go readily enough, and do the work by removing the
cause of insurrection: that is by destroying Slavery itself.
An Anti-Slavery
party, under one name or another, will before long control the Federal
Government, and will exercise its constitutional rights, and perform its
constitutional
duty, and
"guarantee a republican form of government to every State in the
Union." That is a work of time and peaceful legislation. But the short
work of violence will be often tried, and each attempt will gain something for
the cause of humanity, even by its dreadful process of blood.
IV. But there is yet
another agency that will act against Slavery. There are many mischievous
persons who are ready for any wicked work of violence. They abound in the City
of New York, (a sort of sink where the villany of both hemispheres settles
down, and genders that moral pestilence which steams up along the columns of
The New York Herald and The New York Observer, the great escape-pipes of
secular and ecclesiastical wickedness;) they commit the great crimes of
violence and robbery at home, plunder emigrants, and engage in the slave-trade,
or venture on fillibustering expeditions. This class of persons is common in
all the South. One of the legitimate products of her "peculiar
institution," they are familiar with violence, ready and able for murder.
Public opinion sustains such men. Bully Brooks was but one of their
representatives in Congress. Nowadays they are fond of Slavery, defend it, and
seek to spread it. But the time must come one day it may come any time. when
the lovers of mischief will do a little fillibustering at home, and rouse up
the slaves to rob, burn, and kill. Prudent carpenters sweep up all the shavings
in their shops at night, and remove this food of conflagration to a safe place,
lest the spark of a candle, the end of a cigar, or a friction-match should
swiftly end their wealth slowly gathered together. The South takes pains to
strew her carpenter's shop with shavings, and fill it full thereof. She
encourages men to walk abroad with naked candles in their hands and lighted
cigars in their months; then they scatter friction-matches on the floor, and
dance a fillibustering jig thereon. She cries," Well done! Hurrah for
Walker!" "Hurrah for Brooks!" "Hurrah for the bark Wanderer
and its cargo of slaves! Up with the bowie-knife!
“Down with justice
and humanity!" The South must reap as she sows; where she scatters the
wind the whirlwind will come up. It will be a pretty crop for her to reap.
Within a few years the South has burned alive eight or ten negroes. Other black
men looked on, and learned how to fasten the chain, how to pile the green wood,
how to set this Hell-fire of Slavery agoing. The apprentice may be slow to
learn, but he has had teaching enough by this time to know the art and mystery
of torture; and, depend upon it, the negro will one day apply it to his old
tormentors. The Fire of Vengeance may be waked up even in an African's heart,
especially when it is fanned by the wickedness of a white man then it runs from
man to man, from town to town. What shall put it out? The white man's blood!
Now, Slavery is a wickedness
so vast and so old, so rich and so respectable, supported by the State, the
Press, the Market, and the Church, that all those agencies are needed to oppose
it with those and many more which I cannot speak of now. You and I prefer the
peaceful method; but I, at least, shall welcome the violent if no other
accomplish the end. So will the great mass of thoughtful and good men at the
North: else why do we honor the Heroes of the Revolution, and build them
monuments all over our blessed New England? I think you gave money for that of
Bunker Hill: I once thought it a folly; now I recognize it as a great sermon in
stone, which is worth not only all the money it cost to build it, but all the
blood it took to lay its corner-stones. Trust me, its lesson will not be in
vain — at the North, I mean; for the Logic of Slavery will keep the South on
its lower course, and drive it on more swiftly than before. "Captain
Brown's expedition was a failure," I hear it said. I am not quite sure of
that. True, it kills fifteen men by sword and shot, and four or five men by the
gallows. But it shows the weakness of the greatest Slave State in America, the
worthlessness of her soldiery, and the utter fear which Slavery genders in the bosoms
of the masters. Think of the condition of the City of Washington, while Brown
was at work!
Brown will die, I
think, like a martyr, and also like a saint. His noble demeanor, his
unflinching bravery, his gentleness, his calm, religious trust in God, and his
words of truth and soberness, cannot fail to make a profound impression on the
hearts of Northern men; yes, and on Southern men. For "every human heart
is human," &c. I do not think the money wasted, nor the lives thrown
away. Many acorns must be sown to have one come up; even then the plant grows
slow; but it is an Oak at last. None of the Christian martyrs died in vain; and
from Stephen, who was stoned at Jerusalem, to Mary Dyer, whom our fathers
hanged on a bough of "the great tree" on Boston Common, I think there
have been few spirits more pure and devoted than John Brown's, and none that gave
up their breath in a nobler cause. Let the American State hang his body, and
the American Church damn his soul; still, the blessing of such as are ready to
perish will fall on him, and the universal justice of the Infinitely Perfect
God will take him welcome home. The road to heaven is as short from the gallows
as from a throne; perhaps, also, as easy.
I suppose you would
like to know something about myself. Rome has treated me to bad weather, which
tells its story in my health, and certainly does not mend me. But I look for
brighter days and happier nights. The sad tidings from America- my friends in
peril, in exile, in jail, killed, or to be hung-have filled me with grief, and
so I fall back a little, but hope to get forward again. God bless you and yours,
and comfort you!
SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 73-87
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