Ilion, New York, November 24.
Dear Brother in Christ: How I would like to spend this night
with you in your cell, and converse for a season on the joys that await you
beyond this world of sin and sorrow. I have tried to spend this day in prayer
and thanksgiving to Almighty God for the many blessings received at His hand
the past year, but in spite of all my efforts in this direction, it has been a
sorrowful day to my soul, as my mind has dwelt almost constantly on your death
scene. I cannot be joyful; I mourn not so much for you, (for, like the hero of
Tarsus, you seem ready to be offered,) but I mourn for my country. I spent the
past winter in the South, spending four months in nine of the slave States; and
more than once I had to press my lips and clinch my fists, to keep back the
feelings of my soul. I saw Slavery in all its phases, and many a night I have
wet my pillow with my tears, as I called to mind the sufferings of the poor
slave. I had hard work to control my feelings, but did so, and cannot think but
it was the best course. Among the slaveholders I found some of the noblest men
I ever met with kind, obliging, hospitable, pious, and to all appearances
without a fault; so I returned to my home to hate the sin and not the men. I
made the acquaintance of Gov. Wise, and found that it was not Wise that killed
Cilley; it was not Wise that fought for Slavery at the South; it was his education
— for a nobler heart never filled the breast of man; and had he been favored
with a birthplace on the shores of Lake Champlain, and a home among the
Adirondack mountains, he might have been your general in this conflict, and
lying wounded by your side to night.* Would to God these brethren could read our
hearts. O, could they see how we love them; how we desire their present and
future happiness; what a change would at once take place in their feelings
towards us. Did Gov. Wise know Christ as did Paul when soundly converted, there
would not be power enough in all the military force of Virginia to hang John
Brown. But enough of this.
I have never believed that Virginia, for her own honor,
would hang you; but she may, (my heart is too full, my tears flow too fast to
write,) if she does, such a funeral as the sun never saw before, will follow.
Keep up good courage; a few more rising and setting suns,
and the struggle will be over; and the thrice welcome words will reach your
ears, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for
you."
I have been a resident of Washington County for thirty-eight
years; left Fort Edward, New York, May, 1858, and am sure I have met you, but
cannot tell where; but if faithful to the grace already given, I am sure I
shall meet you again, and I know where. Praise the Lord, on that blissful
shore, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are forever at rest.
You will not be permitted, like Moses, to return after forty years to engage
afresh in the struggle for freedom: but God will raise up others, in his own
good time, to carry forward the work.
Farewell, till we meet in Heaven; for, when we reach the
landing place,—
“In the realms of endless light,
We’ll bid this world of noise and show
Good night, good night, good night;
We’ll stem the storm,” &c.
Your unworthy friend and brother in the Lord,
J. M. B.
_______________
*What miserable cant! "Pious" trafficars in God's
children; "pious" robbers of God's poor; "pious" brokers in
the souls for whom Jesus died! "Kind, obliging, hospitable!" No doubt
of it! To compel men and women to work without reward, is so kind; to barter
for base gold the offspring of slave mothers, is so obliging; to rob a race of
every social, civil, political, matrimonial, paternal, filial right, is so
hospitable an act, that it is not surprising that the class who practise it
should be “to all appearance without a fault!" And Wise, the assassin of
Cilley, the representative murderer of John Brown, the laudator of the Slave
Pens, the acknowledged head and champion of the vilest Commonwealth that the
sun looks down on, of course, he deserves the eulogy bestowed on him, when the
writer says, that a “nobler heart never filled the breast of man." There
are no murderers, there are no assassins, there are no base, nor cowardly, nor
wicked men, if the philosophy of the writer be correct. It was not Judas, then,
but Judas's education?
SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of
Harper’s Ferry, p. 406-7