MR. CHAIRMAN AND
FELLOW-CITIZENS: I share the sympathy and sorrow which have brought us
together. Gentlemen who have preceded me have well said that no wall of
separation could here exist. This commanding event, which has brought us
together—the sequel of which has brought us together, eclipses all others which
have occurred for a long time in our history, and I am very glad to see that
this sudden interest in the hero of Harper's Ferry has provoked an extreme
curiosity in all parts of the Republic, in regard to the details of his
history. Every anecdote is eagerly sought, and I do not wonder that gentlemen
find traits of relation readily between him and themselves. One finds a
relation in the church, another in the profession, another in the place of his
birth. He was happily a representative of the American Republic. Captain John
Brown is a farmer, the fifth in descent from Peter Brown, who came to Plymouth
in the Mayflower, in 1620.1 All the six have been farmers. His
grandfather, of Simsbury, in Connecticut, was a captain in the Revolution.2
His father, largely interested as a raiser of stock, became a contractor to
supply the army with beef, in the war of 1812, and our Captain John Brown, then
a boy, with his father, was present, and witnessed the surrender of General
Hull.3 He cherishes a great respect for his father, as a man of
strong character, and his respect is probably just. For himself, he is so
transparent that all men see him through. He is a man to make friends wherever
on earth courage and integrity are esteemed—(applause)—the rarest of heroes, a
pure idealist, with no by-ends of his own. Many of you have seen him, and every
one who has heard him speak has been impressed alike by his simple, artless
goodness, joined with his sublime courage. He joins that perfect Puritan faith
which brought his fifth ancestor to Plymouth Rock, with his grandfather's ardor
in the Revolution. He believes in two articles—two instruments shall I say?—the
Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence; (applause) and he used this
expression in conversation here concerning them, "Better that a whole
generation of men, women, and children should pass away by a violent death,
than that one word of either should be violated in this country." There is
a Unionist—there is a strict constructionist for you! (Applause and laughter.)
He believes in the Union of the States, and he conceives that the only
obstruction to the Union is Slavery, and for that reason, as a patriot, he
works for its abolition. The Governor of Virginia has pronounced his eulogy in
a manner that discredits the moderation of our timid parties. His own speeches
to the court have interested the nation in him. What magnanimity, and what innocent
pleading, as of childhood! You remember his words “If I had interfered in
behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the so-called great, or any
of their friends, parents, wives, or children, it would all have been right. No
man in this court would have thought it a crime. But I believe that to have
interfered as I have done, for the despised poor, I have done no wrong, but
right."
It is easy to see
what a favorite he will be with history, which plays such pranks with temporary
reputations. Nothing can resist the sympathy which all elevated minds must feel
with Brown, and through them the whole civilized world; and, if he must suffer,
he must drag official gentlemen into an immortality most undesirable, and of
which they have already some disagreeable forebodings. (Applause.) Indeed, it
is the reductio ad absurdum of
Slavery, when the Governor of Virginia is forced to hang a man whom he declares
to be a man of the most integrity, truthfulness, and courage he has ever met.
Is that the kind of man the gallows is built for? It were bold to affirm that
there is within that broad Commonwealth, at this moment, another citizen as
worthy to live, and as deserving of all public and private honor, as this poor
prisoner.
But we are here to
think of relief for the family of John Brown. To my eyes, that family looks
very large and very needy of relief. It comprises his brave fellow-sufferers in
the Charlestown jail; the fugitives still hunted in the mountains of Virginia
and Pennsylvania; the sympathizers with him in all the States; and I may say,
almost every man who loves the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence,
like him, and who sees what a tiger's thirst threatens him in the malignity of
public sentiment in the Slave States. It seems to me that a common feeling
joins the people of Massachusetts with him. I said John Brown was an idealist.
He believed in his ideas to that extent that he existed to put them all into
action; he said "he did not believe in moral suasion; he believed in
putting the thing through." (Applause.) He saw how deceptive the forms
are. We fancy, in Massachusetts, that we are free; yet it seems the Government
is quite unreliable. Great wealth,—great population, men of talent in the
Executive, on the Bench,—all the forms right, and yet, life and freedom are not
safe. Why? Because the Judges rely on the forms, and do not, like John Brown,
use their eyes to see the fact behind the forms.
They assume that the
United States can protect its witness or its prisoner. And, in Massachusetts,
that is true, but the moment he is carried out of the bounds of Massachusetts,
the United States, it is notorious, afford no protection at all; the
Government, the Judges, are an envenomed party, and give such protection as
they give in Utah to honest citizens, or in Kansas; such protection as they
gave to their own Commodore Paulding, when he was simple enough to mistake the
formal instructions of his Government for their real meaning. (Applause.) The
State Judges fear collision between their two allegiances; but there are worse
evils than collision; namely, the doing substantial injustice. A good man will
see that the use of a Judge is to secure good government, and where the
citizen's weal is imperilled by abuse of the Federal power, to use that arm which
can secure it, viz., the local government. Had that been done on certain
calamitous occasions, we should not have seen the honor of Massachusetts
trailed in the dust, stained to all ages, once and again, by the ill-timed
formalism of a venerable Bench. If Judges cannot find law enough to maintain
the sovereignty of the State, and to protect the life and freedom of every
inhabitant not a criminal, it is idle to compliment them as learned and
venerable. What avails their learning or veneration? At a pinch, they are of no
more use than idiots. After the mischance they wring their hands, but they had
better never have been born. A Vermont Judge Hutchinson, who has the
Declaration of Independence in his heart, a Wisconsin Judge, who knows that
laws are for the protection of citizens against kidnappers, is worth a court
house full of lawyers so idolatrous of forms as to let go the substance. Is any
man in Massachusetts so simple as to believe that when a United States Court in
Virginia, now, in its present reign of terror, sends to Connecticut, or New
York, or Massachusetts, for a witness, it wants him for a witness? No; it wants
him for a party; it wants him for meat to slaughter and eat. And your habeas
corpus is, in any way in which it has been, or, I fear, is likely to be used, a
nuisance, and not a protection; for it takes away his right reliance on
himself, and the natural assistance of his friends and fellow-citizens, by
offering him a form which is a piece of paper. But I am detaining the meeting
on matters which others understand better. I hope, then, that in administering
relief to John Brown's family, we shall remember all those whom his fate
concerns, all who are in sympathy with him, and not forget to aid him in the
best way, by securing freedom and independence in Massachusetts.
R. W. Emerson.
_______________
*Delivered in
Tremont Temple, on Saturday evening, November 18, at a meeting held for the
relief of the family of John Brown.
1 Blog Editor’s Note: This statement is
inaccurate. Mayflower Passenger Peter Brown, had four documented children, by
his first wife Martha he had two daughters, Mary and Priscilla, and by his
second wife Mary he had a daughter, Rebecca, and a child of unidentified sex
born before 1633 and had died by 1647. Mary married Ephraim Tinkham and by him
had nine children, Priscilla married William Allen, they had no known children,
and Rebecca married William Snow and had eight children. Neither the Tinkham
nor Snow surnames appear in John Brown’s early New England ancestry, Therefore
John Brown could not have been a descendant of Mayflower passenger Peter Brown.
See Robert S. Wakefield, Editor, Mayflower
Families Through Five Generations, Vol. 7: Peter Brown, Second Edition, p.
3-8 & Robert Charles Anderson, The
Great Migration Begins, Immigrants to New England 1620-1633, Vol. 1,
p.259-61.
2 Blog Editor’s Note: John Brown’s paternal grandfather,
John Brown, was a Captain in the Eighth Company, Eighteenth Regiment of
Connecticut Militia during the Revolutionary War and died while on duty in New
York. His maternal grandfather, Gideon Mills was a Minute Man at the Lexington
Alarm and subsequently became a Lieutenant of the Connecticut Militia during
the Revolutionary War. See Louise Pearsons Dolliver, Historian General, Lineage Book of the Charter Members of the
Daughters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Vol. 22, p. 92 and Elizabeth
Gadsby, Historian General, Lineage Book National Society of the
Daughters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Vol. 27, p. 198-9
3 Blog Editor's Note: “In the War of 1812, Owen Brown contracted
to furnish beef to Hull's army, which with his boy John he followed to or near
Detroit. Though John was but twelve years old, in after years he recalled very
distinctly the incidents of the long march, the camp life of the soldiers and
the attitude of the subordinate officers toward their commander. From
conversations that he overheard he concluded that they were not very loyal to
General Hull. He remembered especially General Lewis Cass, then a captain, and
General Duncan McArthur. As late as 1857 he referred to conversations between
the two and among other officers that should have branded them as mutineers.
How much of this has foundation in fact and how much is due to erroneous
youthful impression, must of course remain a matter of conjecture.” See Fred J.
Heer, Publisher, Ohio Archaeological and
Historical Publications, Vol. 30, p. 218
SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s
Ferry, p. 67-71;
