It is, perhaps, too late to bring slavery to an end by
peaceable means, — too late to vote it down. For many years I have feared, and
published my fears, that it must go out in blood. These fears have grown into
belief. So debanched are the white people by slavery that there is not virtue
enough left in them to put it down. If I do not misinterpret the words and
looks of the most intelligent and noble of the black men who fall in my way,
they have come to despair of the accomplishment of this work by the white
people. The feeling among the blacks that they must deliver themselves gains
strength with fearful rapidity. No wonder, then, is it that intelligent black
men in the States and in Canada should see no hope for their race in the
practice and policy of white men. . . . Whoever he may be that foretells the
horrible end of American slavery is held both at the North and the South to be
a lying prophet, — another Cassandra. The South would not respect her own
Jefferson's prediction of servile insurrection; how then can it be hoped that
she will respect another's? . . . And is it entirely certain that these
insurrections will be put down promptly, and before they can have spread far?
Will telegraphs and railroads be too swift for even the swiftest insurrections?
Remember that telegraphs and railroads can be rendered useless in an hour.
Remember too that many who would be glad to face the insurgents would be busy
in transporting their wives and daughters to places where they would be safe
from that worst fate which husbands and fathers can imagine for their wives and
daughters. I admit that but for this embarrassment Southern men would laugh at
the idea of an insurrection, and would quickly dispose of one. But trembling as
they would for beloved ones, I know of no part of the world where, so much as
in the South, men would be like, in a formidable insurrection, to lose the most
important time, and be distracted and panic-stricken.
SOURCE: Franklin B. Sanborn, The Life and Letters of
John Brown, p. 544
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