Showing posts with label Henry David Thoreau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henry David Thoreau. Show all posts

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Henry David Thoreau: A Plea for Captain John Brown,* October 30, 1859

I TRUST that you will pardon me for being here. I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

First, as to his history. I will endeavor to omit, as much as possible, what you have already read. I need not describe his person to you, for probably most of you have seen and will not soon forget him. I am told that his grandfather, John Brown, was an officer in the Revolution; that he himself was born in Connecticut about the beginning of this century, but early went with his father to Ohio. I heard him say that his father was a contractor who furnished beef to the army there, in the war of 1812; that he accompanied him to the camp, and assisted him in that employment, seeing a good deal of military life, more, perhaps, than if he had been a soldier, for he was often present at the councils of the officers. Especially, he learned by experience how armies are supplied and maintained in the field—a work which, he observed, requires at least as much experience and skill as to lead them in battle. He said that few persons had any conception of the cost, even the pecuniary cost, of firing a single bullet in war. He saw enough, at any rate, to disgust him with a military life; indeed, to excite in him a great abhorrence of it; so much so, that though he was tempted by the offer of some petty office in the army, when he was about eighteen, he not only declined that, but he also refused to train when warned, and was fined for it. He then resolved that he would never have any thing to do with any war, unless it were a war for liberty.

When the troubles in Kansas began, he sent several of his sons thither to strengthen the party of the Free State men, fitting them out with such weapons as he had; telling them that if the troubles should increase, and there should be need of him, he would follow to assist them with his hand and counsel. This, as you all know, he soon after did; and it was through his agency, far more than any other's, that Kansas was made free.

For a part of his life he was a surveyor, and at one time he was engaged in wool-growing, and he went to Europe as an agent about that business. There, as every where, he had his eyes about him, and made many original observations. He said, for instance, that he saw why the soil of England was so rich, and that of Germany (I think it was) so poor, and he thought of writing to some of the crowned heads about it. It was because in England the peasantry live on the soil which they cultivate, but in Germany they are gathered into villages, at night. It is a pity that he did not make a book of his observations.

I should say that he was an old-fashioned man in his respect for the Constitution, and his faith in the permanence of this Union. Slavery he deemed to be wholly opposed to these, and he was its determined foe.

He was by descent and birth a New England farmer, a man of great common sense, deliberate and practical as that class is, and tenfold more so. He was like the best of those who stood at Concord Bridge once, on Lexington Common, and on Bunker Hill, only he was firmer and higher principled than any that I have chanced to hear of as there. It was no abolition lecturer that converted him. Ethan Allen and Stark, with whom he may in some respects be compared, were rangers in a lower and less important field. They could bravely face their country's foes, but he had the courage to face his country herself, when she was in the wrong. A Western writer says, to account for his escape from so many perils, that he was concealed under a "rural exterior;" as if, in that prairie land, a hero should, by good rights, wear a citizen's dress only.

He did not go to the college called Harvard, good old Alma Mater as she is. He was not fed on the pap that is there furnished. As he phrased it, "I know no more of grammar than one of your calves." But he went to the great university of the West, where he sedulously pursued the study of Liberty, for which he had early betrayed a fondness, and having taken many degrees, he finally commenced the public practice of Humanity in Kansas, as you all know. Such were his humanities, and not any study of grammar. He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.

He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most part, see nothing at all—the Puritans. It would be in vain to kill him. He died lately in the time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Why should he not? Some of the Puritan stock are said to have come over and settled in New England. They were a class that did something else than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat parched corn in remembrance of that time. They were neither Democrats nor Republicans, but men of simple habits, straightforward, prayerful; not thinking much of rulers who did not fear God, not making many compromises, nor seeking after available candidates.

"In his camp," as one has recently written, and as I have myself heard him state, "he permitted no profanity; no man of loose morals was suffered to remain there, unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. 'I would rather,' said he, ‘have the small-pox, yellow fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without principle. * * * It is a mistake, sir, that our people make, when they think that bullies are the best fighters, or that they are the fit men to oppose these Southerners. Give me men of good principles,—God-fearing men,—men who respect themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose any hundred such men as these Buford ruffians.'" He said that if one offered himself to be a soldier under him, who was forward to tell what he could or would do, if he could only get sight of the enemy, he had but little confidence in him.

He was never able to find more than a score or so of recruits whom he would accept, and only about a dozen, among them his sons, in whom he had perfect faith. When he was here, some years ago, he showed to a few a little manuscript book, his "orderly book " I think he called it, containing the names of his company in Kansas, and the rules by which they bound themselves; and he stated that several of them had already sealed the contract with their blood. When some one remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a chaplain to the list, if he could have found one who could fill that office worthily. It is easy enough to find one for the United States army. I believe that he had prayers in his camp morning and evening, nevertheless.

He was a man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about his diet at your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat sparingly and fare hard, as became a soldier or one who was fitting himself for difficult enterprises, a life of exposure.

A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles, that was what distinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. I noticed that he did not overstate any thing, but spoke within bounds. I remember, particularly, how, in his speech here, he referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas, without ever giving the least vent to his pent-up fire. It was a volcano with an ordinary chimney-flue. Also referring to the deeds of certain Border Ruffians, he said, rapidly paring away his speech, like an experienced soldier, keeping a reserve of force and meaning, "They had a perfect right to be hung." He was not in the least a rhetorician, was not talking to Buncombe or his constituents any where, had no need to invent any thing, but to tell the simple truth, and communicate his own resolution; therefore he appeared incomparably strong, and eloquence in Congress and elsewhere seemed to me at a discount. It was like the speeches of Cromwell compared with those of an ordinary king.

As for his tact and prudence, I will merely say, that at a time when scarcely a man from the Free States was able to reach Kansas by any direct route, at least without having his arms taken from him, he, carrying what imperfect guns and other weapons he could collect, openly and slowly drove an ox-cart through Missouri, apparently in the capacity of a surveyor, with his surveying compass exposed in it, and so passed unsuspected, and had ample opportunity to learn the designs of the enemy. For some time after his arrival he still followed the same profession. When, for instance, he saw a knot of the ruffians on the prairie, discussing, of course, the single topic which then occupied their minds, he would, perhaps, take his compass and one of his sons, and proceed to run an imaginary line right through the very spot on which that conclave had assembled, and when he came up to them, he would naturally pause and have some talk with them, learning their news, and, at last, all their plans perfectly; and having thus completed his real survey, he would resume his imaginary one, and run on his line till he was out of sight.

When I expressed surprise that he could live in Kansas at all, with a price set upon his head, and so large a number, including the authorities, exasperated against him, he accounted for it by saying, "It is perfectly well understood that I will not be taken." Much of the time for some years he has had to skulk in swamps, suffering from poverty and from sickness, which was the consequence of exposure, befriended only by Indians and a few whites. But though it might be known that he was lurking in a particular swamp, his foes commonly did not care to go in after him. He could even come out into a town where there were more Border Ruffians than Free State men, and transact some business, without delaying long, and yet not be molested; for said he, "No little handful of men were willing to undertake it, and a large body could not be got together in season."

As for his recent failure, we do not know the facts about it. It was evidently far from being a wild and desperate attempt. His enemy, Mr. Vallandingham, is compelled to say, that “it was among the best planned and executed conspiracies that ever failed."

Not to mention his other successes, was it a failure, or did it show a want of good management, to deliver from bondage a dozen human beings, and walk off with them by broad daylight, for weeks if not months, at a leisurely pace, through one State after another, for half the length of the North, conspicuous to all parties, with a price set upon his head, going into a court room on his way and telling what he had done, thus convincing Missouri that it was not profitable to try to hold slaves in his neighborhood?—and this, not because the government menials were lenient, but because they were afraid of him.

Yet he did not attribute his success, foolishly, to "his star," or to any magic. He said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him, was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause a kind of armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were found willing to lay down their lives in defence of what they knew to be wrong; they did not like that this should be their last act in this world.

But to make haste to his last act, and its effects.

The newspapers seem to ignore, or perhaps are really ignorant of the fact, that there are at least as many as two or three individuals to a town throughout the North, who think much as the present speaker does about him and his enterprise. I do not hesitate to say that they are an important and growing party. We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in. Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics. Though we wear no crape, the thought of that man's position and probable fate is spoiling many a man's day here at the North for other thinking. If any one who has seen him here can pursue successfully any other train of thought, I do not know what he is made of. If there is any such who gets his usual allowance of sleep, I will warrant him to fatten easily under any circumstances which do not touch his body or purse. I put a piece of paper and a pencil under my pillow, and when I could not sleep, I wrote in the dark.

On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a million, is not being increased these days. I have noticed the cold-blooded way in which newspaper writers and men generally speak of this event, as if an ordinary malefactor, though one of unusual "pluck,” as the Governor of Virginia is reported to have said, using the language of the cock-pit, "the gamest man he ever saw," — had been caught, and were about to be hung. He was not dreaming of his foes when the governor thought he looked so brave. It turns what sweetness I have to gall, to hear, or hear of, the remarks of some of my neighbors. When we heard at first that he was dead, one of my townsmen observed that “he died as the fool dieth;" which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw his life away," because he resisted the government. Which way have they thrown their lives, pray?—Such as would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary band of thieves or murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by this enterprise. Such a one has no idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a "surprise" party, if he does not get a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he won't gain any thing by it." Well, no, I don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but then he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul and such a soul!—when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.

Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world, when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does not ask our leave to germinate.

The momentary charge at Balaclava, in obedience to a blundering command, proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that, as an intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that will go unsung?

"Served him right" — "A dangerous man" — "He is undoubtedly insane." So they proceed to live their sane, and wise, and altogether admirable lives, reading their Plutarch a little, but chiefly pausing at that feat of Putnam, who was let down into a wolf's den; and in this wise they nourish themselves for brave and patriotic deeds some time or other. The Tract Society could afford to print that story of Putnam. You might open the district schools with the reading of it, for there is nothing about Slavery or the Church in it; unless it occurs to the reader that some pastors are wolves in sheep's clothing. "The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions" even, might dare to protest against that wolf. I have heard of boards, and of American boards, but it chances that I never heard of this particular lumber till lately. And yet I hear of Northern men, women, and children, by families, buying a "life membership" in such societies as these; a life-membership in the grave! You can get buried cheaper than that.

Our foes are in our midst and all about us. There is hardly a house but is divided against itself, for our foe is the all but universal woodenness of both head and heart, the want of vitality in man, which is the effect of our vice; and hence are begotten fear, superstition, bigotry, persecution, and slavery of all kinds. We are mere figure-heads upon a hulk, with livers in the place of hearts. The curse is the worship of idols, which at length changes the worshipper into a stone image himself; and the New Englander is just as much an idolater as the Hindoo. This man was an exception, for he did not set up even a political graven image between him and his God.

A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it exists! Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches! Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses. Invent a salt that will save you, and defend our nostrils.

Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly afterward. All his prayers begin with "Now I lay me down to sleep," and he is forever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his "long rest." He has consented to perform certain old established charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not wish to hear of any new-fangled ones; he doesn't wish to have any supplementary articles added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. He shows the whites of his eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week. The evil is not merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. Many, no doubt, are well disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does, as long as they were themselves.

We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at a distance in history or space; but let some significant event like the present occur in our midst, and we discover, often, this distance and this strangeness between us and our nearest neighbors. They are our Austrias, and Chinas, and South Sea Islands. Our crowded society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and handsome to the eye, a city of magnificent distances. We discover why it was that we never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before; we become aware of as many versts between us and them as there are between a wandering Tartar and a Chinese town. The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in the thoroughfares of the market-place. Impassable seas suddenly find their level between us, or dumb steppes stretch themselves out there. It is the difference of constitution, of intelligence, and faith, and not streams and mountains, that make the true and impassable boundaries between individuals and between states. None but the like-minded can come plenipotentiary to our court.

I read all the newspapers I could get within a week after this event, and I do not remember in them a single expression of sympathy for these men. I have since seen one noble statement, in a Boston paper, not editorial. Some voluminous sheets decided not to print the full report of Brown's words to the exclusion of other matter. It was as if a publisher should reject the manuscript of the New Testament, and print Wilson's last speech. The same journal which contained this pregnant news, was chiefly filled, in parallel columns, with the reports of the political conventions that were being held. But the descent to them was too steep. They should have been spared this contrast, been printed in an extra at least. To turn from the voices and deeds of earnest men to the cackling of political conventions! Office-seekers and speech-makers, who do not so much as lay an honest egg, but wear their breasts bare upon an egg of chalk! Their great game is the game of straws, or rather that universal aboriginal game of the platter, at which the Indians cried hub, bub! Exclude the reports of religious and political conventions, and publish the words of a living man.

But I object not so much to what they have omitted, as to what they have inserted. Even the Liberator called it "a misguided, wild, and apparently insane-effort." As for the herd of newspapers and magazines, I do not chance to know an editor in the country who will deliberately print any thing which he knows will ultimately and permanently reduce the number of his subscribers. They do not believe that it would be expedient. How then can they print truth? If we do not say pleasant things, they argue, nobody will attend to us. And so they do like some travelling auctioneers, who sing an obscene song in order to draw a crowd around them. Republican editors, obliged to get their sentences ready for the morning edition, and accustomed to look at every thing by the twilight of politics, express no admiration, nor true sorrow even, but call these men "deluded fanatics" — "mistaken men" "insane," or "crazed." It suggests what a sane set of editors we are blessed with, not "mistaken men"; who know very well on which side their bread is buttered, at least.

A man does a brave and humane deed, and at once, on all sides, we hear people and parties declaring, "I didn't do it, nor countenance him to do it, in any conceivable way. It can't be fairly inferred from my past career." I, for one, am not interested to hear you define your position. I don't know that I ever was, or ever shall be. I think it is mere egotism, or impertinent at this time. Ye needn't take so much pains to wash your skirts of him. No intelligent man will ever be convinced that he was any creature of yours. He went and came, as he himself informs us, "under the auspices of John Brown and nobody else." The Republican party does not perceive how many his failure will make to vote more correctly than they would have them. They have counted the votes of Pennsylvania & Co., but they have not correctly counted Captain Brown's vote. He has taken the wind out of their sails, the little wind they had, and they may as well lie to and repair.

What though he did not belong to your clique! Though you may not approve of his method or his principles, recognize his magnanimity. Would you not like to claim kindredship with him in that, though in no other thing he is like, or likely, to you? Do you think that you would lose your reputation so? What you lost at the spile, you would gain at the bung.

If they do not mean all this, then they do not speak the truth, and say what they mean. They are simply at their old tricks still.

"It was always conceded to him," says one who calls him crazy, "that he was a conscientious man, very modest in his demeanor, apparently inoffensive, until the subject of Slavery was introduced, when he would exhibit a feeling of indignation unparalleled."

The slave-ship is on her way, crowded with its dying victims; new cargoes are being added in mid ocean; a small crew of slaveholders, countenanced by a large body of passengers, is smothering four millions under the hatches, and yet the politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained, is by "the quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity," without any "outbreak." As if the sentiments of humanity were ever found unaccompanied by its deeds, and you could disperse them, all finished to order, the pure article, as easily as water with a watering-pot, and so lay the dust. What is that that I hear cast overboard?

The bodies of the dead that have found deliverance. That is the way we are "diffusing" humanity, and its sentiments with it.

Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance, that he acted "on the principle of revenge." They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him. I have no doubt that the time will come when they will begin to see him as he was. They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle, and not a politician nor an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed.

If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole body, — even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself, the spectacle is a sublime one, — didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans? — and we become criminal in comparison. Do yourselves the honor to recognize him. He needs none of your respect.

As for the Democratic journals, they are not human enough to affect me at all. I do not feel indignation at any thing they may say.

I am aware that I anticipate a little, that he was still, at the last accounts, alive in the hands of his foes; but that being the case, I have all along found myself thinking and speaking of him as physically dead.

I do not believe in erecting statues to those who still live in our hearts, whose bones have not yet crumbled in the earth around us, but I would rather see the statue of Captain Brown in the Massachusetts State-House yard, than that of any other man whom I know. I rejoice that I live in this age— that I am his contemporary.

What a contrast, when we turn to that political party which is so anxiously shuffling him and his plot out of its way, and looking around for some available slaveholder, perhaps, to be its candidate, at least for one who will execute the Fugitive Slave Law, and all those other unjust laws which he took up arms to annul!

Insane! A father and six sons, and one son-in-law, and several more men besides, as many at least as twelve disciples, — all struck with insanity at once; while the sane tyrant holds with a firmer gripe than ever his four millions of slaves, and a thousand sane editors, his abettors, are saving their country and their bacon! Just as insane were his efforts in Kansas. Ask the tyrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane. Do the thousands who know him best, who have rejoiced at his deeds in Kansas, and have afforded him material aid there, think him insane? Such a use of this word is a mere trope with most who persist in using it, and I have no doubt that many of the rest have already in silence retracted their words.

Read his admirable answers to Mason and others. How they are dwarfed and defeated by the contrast! On the one side, half brutish, half timid questioning; on the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into their obscene temples. They are made to stand with Pilate, and Gesler, and the Inquisition. How ineffectual their speech and action! and what a void their silence! They are but helpless tools in this great work. It was no human power that gathered them about this preacher.

What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years? —to declare with effect what kind of sentiments? All their speeches put together and boiled down, — and probably they themselves will confess it, — do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown, on the floor of the Harper's Ferry engine house; — that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there. No, he was not our representative in any sense. He was too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of us. Who, then, were his constituents? If you read his words understandingly you will find out. In his case there is no idle eloquence, no made, nor maiden speech, no compliments to the oppressor. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharpe's rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech, a Sharpe's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.

And the New York Herald reports the conversation "verbatim"! It does not know of what undying words it is made the vehicle.

I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the report of that conversation, and still call the principal in it insane. It has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and habits of life, than an ordinary organization, secure. Take any sentence of it—"Any questions that I can honorably answer, I will; not otherwise. So far as I am myself concerned, I have told every thing truthfully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk about his vindictive spirit, while they really admire his heroism, have no test by which to detect a noble man, no amalgam to combine with his pure gold. They mix their own dross with it.

It is a relief to turn from these slanders to the testimony of his more truthful, but frightened, jailers and hangmen. Governor Wise speaks far more justly and appreciatingly of him than any Northern editor, or politician, or public personage, that I chance to have heard from. I know that you can afford to hear him again on this subject. He says: "They are themselves mistaken who take him to be a madman. . . He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but just to him to say, that he was humane to his prisoners. And he inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. He is a fanatic, vain and garrulous," (I leave that part to Mr. Wise,) "but firm, truthful, and intelligent. His men, too, who survive, are like him. Colonel Washington says that he was the coolest and firmest man he ever saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead by his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand, and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm, and to sell their lives as dear as they could. Of the three white prisoners, Brown, Stephens, and Coppic, it was hard to say which was most firm."

Almost the first Northern men whom the slaveholder has learned to respect!

The testimony of Mr. Vallandingham, though less valuable, is of the same purport, that "it is vain to underrate either the man or his conspiracy. . . He is the farthest possible remove from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic, or madman."

"All is quiet at Harper's Ferry," say the journals. What is the character of that calm which follows when the law and the slaveholder prevail? I regard this event as a touchstone designed to bring out, with glaring distinctness, the character of this government. We needed to be thus assisted to see it by the light of history. It needed to see itself. When a government puts forth its strength on the side of injustice, as ours to maintain Slavery and kill the liberators of the slave, it reveals itself a merely brute force, or worse, a demoniacal force. It is the head of the Plug Uglies. It is more manifest than ever that tyranny rules. I see this government to be effectually allied with France and Austria in oppressing mankind. There sits a tyrant holding fettered four millions of slaves; here comes their heroic liberator. This most hypocritical and diabolical government looks up from its seat on the gasping four millions, and inquires with an assumption of innocence, "What do you assault me for? Am I not an honest man? Cease agitation on this subject, or I will make a slave of you, too, or else hang you."

We talk about a representative government but what a monster of a government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind, and the whole heart, are not represented. A semi-human tiger or ox, stalking over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot away. Heroes have fought well on their stumps when their legs were shot off, but I never heard of any good done by such a government as that.

The only government that I recognize,—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army, is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice. What shall we think of a government to which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!

Treason! Where does such treason take its rise? I cannot help thinking of you as you deserve, ye governments. Can you dry up the fountains of thought? High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by the power that makes and forever recreates man. When you have caught and hung all these human rebels, you have accomplished nothing but your own guilt, for you have not struck at the fountain head. You presume to contend with a foe against whom West Point cadets and rifled cannon point not. Can all the art of the cannon-founder tempt matter to turn against its maker? Is the form in which the founder thinks he casts it more essential than the constitution of it and of himself?

The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape. Such are not all the inhabitants of Massachusetts, but such are they who rule and are obeyed here. It was Massachusetts, as well as Virginia, that put down this insurrection at Harper's Ferry. She sent the marines there, and she will have to pay the penalty of her sin.

Suppose that there is a society in this State that out of its own purse and magnanimity saves all the fugitive slaves that run to us, and protects our colored fellow-citizen?, and leaves the other work to the Government, so-called. Is not that government fast losing its occupation, and becoming contemptible to mankind? If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services. Of course, that is but the shadow of a government whose existence necessitates a Vigilant Committee. What should we think of the oriental Cadi even, behind whom worked in secret a vigilant committee? But such is the character of our Northern States generally; each has its Vigilant Committee. And, to a certain extent, these crazy governments recognize and accept this relation. They say, virtually, "We'll be glad to work for you on these terms, only don't make a noise about it." And thus the government, its salary being insured, withdraws into the back shop, taking the constitution with it, and bestows most of its labor on repairing that. When I hear it at work sometimes, as I go by, it reminds me, at best, of those farmers who in winter contrive to turn a penny by following the coopering business. And what kind of spirit is their barrel made to hold? They speculate in stocks, and bore holes in mountains, but they are not competent to lay out even a decent highway. The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee.

They have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land. Such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one that can contain it.

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came? — till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him, would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man. It may be doubted if there were as many more their equals in these respects in all the country-I speak of his followers only for their leader, no doubt, scoured the land far and wide, seeking to swell his troop. These alone were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely they were the very best men you could select to be hung. That was the greatest compliment which this country could pay them. They were ripe for her gallows. She has tried a long time, she has hung a good many, but never found the right one before.

When I think of him, and his six sons, and his son-in-law, — not to enumerate the others, enlisted for this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, for months, if not years, sleeping and waking upon it, summering and wintering the thought, without expecting any reward but a good conscience, while almost all America stood ranked on the other side, I say again, that it affects me as a sublime spectacle. If he had had any journal advocating "his cause," any organ, as the phrase is, monotonously and wearisomely playing the same old tune, and then passing round the hat, it would have been fatal to his efficiency. If he had acted in any way so as to be let alone by the government, he might have been suspected. It was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him, or he to the tyrant, that distinguished him from all the reformers of the day that I know.

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say, that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me. At any rate, I do not think it is quite sane for one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter, unless he is continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A man may have other affairs to attend to. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharpe's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharpe's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will clear it again. The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it. No man has appeared in America, as yet, who loved his fellow-man so well, and treated him so tenderly. He lived for him. He took up his life and he laid it down for him. What sort of violence is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers but by peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by ministers of the gospel, not so much by the fighting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men as by Quaker women?

This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death the possibility of a man's dying. It seems as if no man had ever died in America before, for in order to die you must first have lived. I don't believe in the hearses, and palls, and funerals that they have had. There was no death in the case, because there had been no life; they merely rotted or sloughed off, pretty much as they had rotted or sloughed along. No temple's vail was rent, only a hole dug somewhere. Let the dead bury their dead. The best of them fairly ran down like a clock. Franklin — Washington — they were let off without dying; they were merely missing one day. I hear a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They haven't got life enough in them. They'll deliquesce like fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot where they left off. Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began. Do you think that you are going to die, sir? No! there's no hope of you. You haven't got your lesson yet. You've got to stay after school. We make a needless ado about capital punishment — taking lives, when there is no life to take. Memento mori! We don't understand that sublime sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone once. We've interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense; we've wholly forgotten how to die.

But be sure you do die, nevertheless. Do your work, and finish it. If you know how to begin, you will know when to end.

These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America has ever heard. It has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart, than any number of years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could. How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!

One writer says that Brown's peculiar monomania made him to be "dreaded by the Missourians as a supernatural being." Sure enough, a hero in the midst of us cowards is always so dreaded. He is just that thing. He shows himself superior to nature. He has a spark of divinity in him.

"Unless above himself he doth erect himself,

How poor a thing is man!"

Newspaper editors argue also that it is a proof of his insanity that he thought he was appointed to do this work which he did that he did not suspect himself for a moment! They talk as if it were impossible that a man could be "divinely appointed" in these days to do any work whatever; as if vows and religion were out of date as connected with any man's daily work, as if the agent to abolish Slavery could only be somebody appointed by the President, or by some political party. They talk as if a man's death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of whatever character, were a success.

When I reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself, and how religiously, and then reflect to what cause his judges and all who condemn him so angrily and fluently devote themselves, I see that they are as far apart as the heavens and earth are asunder.

The amount of it is, our "leading men" are a harmless kind of folk, and they know well enough that they were not divinely appointed, but elected by the votes of their party.

Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung? Is it indispensable to any Northern man? Is there no resource but to cast these men also to the Minotaur? If you do not wish it, say so distinctly. While these things are being done, beauty stands veiled and music is a screeching lie. Think of him — of his rare qualities! such a man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand; no mock hero, nor the representative of any party. A man such as the sun may not rise upon again in this benighted land. To whose making went the costliest material, the finest adamant; sent to be the redeemer of those in captivity; and the only use to which you can put him is to hang him at the end of a rope! You who pretend to care for Christ crucified, consider what you are about to do to him who offered himself to be the saviour of four millions of men.

Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience, it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution. Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of men to be good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man's being a tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves? Is it the intention of law-makers that good men shall be hung ever? Are judges to interpret the law according to the letter, and not the spirit? What right have you to enter into a compact with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the light within you? Is it for you to make up your mind to form any resolution whatever — and not accept the convictions that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your understanding? I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases. Business men may arrange that among themselves. If they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws which rightfully bind man, that would be another thing. A counterfeiting law-factory, standing half in a slave land and half in a free! What kind of laws for free men can you expect from that?

I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his character- his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links.

He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.

I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I may yet hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much good as his death.

"Misguided"! "Garrulous"! "Insane"! Vindictive"! So ye write in your easy chairs, and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the Armory, clear as a cloudless sky, true as the voice of nature is: "No man sent me here; it was my own prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master in human form."

And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his captors, who stand over him: "I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God and humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you so far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage."

And referring to his movement: "It is, in my opinion, the greatest service a man can render to God."

"I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here; not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God."

You don't know your testament when you see it.

"I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of colored people, oppressed by the slave power, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful."

"I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled—this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet."

I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of Slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till then, we will take our revenge.

_______________

*A Plea for Captain John Brown; read to the citizens of Concord, Mass., Sunday evening, October 30, 1859; also as the Fifth Lecture of the Fraternity Course, in Boston, November 1.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 17-42

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Services for John Brown at Concord, Massachusetts, December 2, 1859

The martyrdom of John Brown was most worthily celebrated at Concord, Massachusetts. The town which inaugurated the first American "Insurrection" was faithful to its traditions in doing honor to the first martyr of the second and the grander Revolution; and, unlike other towns, equally zealous for justice, and equally desirous of doing honor to the merits and memory of John Brown, it possessed more men by nature fit for the occasion, than any other community of the same population in the Union.

The meeting at Concord assembled in the Town Hall at two o'clock in the afternoon, Dec. 2d, and was called to order by the Hon. Simon Brown, who said that on this day Virginia had inflicted on herself a worse blow than all her enemies had ever done or could do; she had, under the forms of law, murdered her truest friend.

Rev. E. H. Sears, of Wayland, offered up the following

PRAYER.

Our Father who art in heaven, we desire at this hour to gather ourselves closer within thine omnipotence and mercy; for when a sense of this world's oppressions and wrongs hangs heavily upon us, to whom shall we go but unto thee? Thou dost unite us to thyself by ties of filial love, and to our fellow-men by the ties of a common brotherhood, for thou hast given us all one human heart. Look down at this hour from thy holy heavens, and extend thy protecting providence another by the hand of Away from the dismal around one who is passing from this world to violence, and from the midst of cruel men. surroundings, away from the scaffold, away from the scoffings and the strife of tongues, open, we beseech thee, a clear pathway to that world where there is no hatred and wrong; where the wicked cease from troubling, and the slave is free from his master. And remember, we pray thee, those whose hearts are now made to break and to bleed those who at this hour are called to widowhood and orphanage; fold them tenderly in the arms of thy providence, and lead them and preserve them. And remember the race who have been trodden down for ages under the heel of oppression and wrong, and let their redemption come. Let those who have passed on through fire and blood, plead for them with thee. Let the blood of all thy martyrs for liberty, from ancient times down to this hour, cry to thee from the ground till the slave rises from his thraldom into the full glory of manhood. And when that day shall come, let it not be through the chaos of revolutions, not by staining this fair earth with the blood of brothers, but let thy spirit descend in its gentleness, and change the heart of the master, and melt off the fetters of the slave. And O, at this dark hour, give us a new consecration of ourselves to the cause of humanity By Him who came from heaven and clothed himself in our nature, the nature of the humblest man that lives, that he might raise it up and glorify it; by him who took up into his experience all the wants and woes of our common humanity; by him who speaks from all thy lowly ones, "Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these, ye did it unto me," — by all these motives may we take with fresh zeal the vow of self-devotion to the cause of God and man. And to thee, in Jesus Christ, be all the glory forever. Amen.

This hymn was then sung by a choir, accompanied by the music of an organ, which had been placed in the Hall for this occasion:

HYMN.

 

Go to the grave in all thy glorious prime,

    In full activity of zeal and power;

A Christian cannot die before his time;

    The Lord's appointment is his servant's hour.

 

Go to the grave; at noon from labor cease;

    Best on thy sheaves; the harvest task is done;

Come from the heat of battle, and in peace,

    Soldier, go home; with thee the fight is won.

 

Go to the grave; for there thy Saviour lay

    In death's embrace, ere he arose on high;

And all the ransomed, by that narrow way

    Pass to eternal life beyond the sky.

 

Go to the grave; no, take thy seat above;

    Be thy pure spirit present with the Lord;

Where thou for faith and hope hast perfect love,

    And open vision for the written word.

 

MR. THOREAU'S REMARKS.

Henry D. Thoreau then rose and said: So universal and widely related is any transcendent moral greatness, and so nearly identical with greatness every where and in every age,—as a pyramid contracts the nearer you approach its apex,— that, when I now look over my commonplace book of poetry, I find that the best of it is oftenest applicable, in part or wholly, to the case of Captain Brown. Only what is true, and strong, and solemnly earnest, will recommend itself to our mood at this time. Almost any noble verse may be read, either as his elegy or eulogy, or be made the text of an oration on him. Indeed, such are now discovered to be the parts of a universal liturgy, applicable to those rare cases of heroes and martyrs for which the ritual of no church has provided. This is the formula established on high—their burial service to which every great genius has contributed its stanza or line. As Marvell wrote:

When the sword glitters o'er the judge's head,

And fear has coward churchmen silenced,

Then is the poet's time; 'tis then he draws,

And single fights forsaken virtue's cause;

He, when the wheel of empire whirleth back,

And though the world's disjointed axle crack,

Sings still of ancient rights and better times,

Seeks suffering good, arraigns successful crimes.

 

The sense of grand poetry, read by the light of this event, is brought out distinctly like an invisible writing held to the fire:

 

All heads must come

To the cold tomb, —

Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

 

We have heard that the Boston lady1 who recently visited our hero in prison, found him wearing still the clothes, all cut and torn by sabres and by bayonet thrusts, in which he had been taken prisoner; and thus he had gone to his trial; and without a hat. She spent her time in prison mending those clothes, and, for a memento, brought home a pin covered with blood.

What are the clothes that endure?

The garments lasting evermore

Are works of mercy to the poor;

And neither tetter, time, nor moth

Shall fray that silk or fret this cloth.

 

The well-known verses called "The Soul's Errand," supposed, by some, to have been written by Sir Walter Raleigh, when he was expecting to be executed the following day, are at least worthy of such an origin, and are equally applicable to the present case. Hear them: 

THE SOUL'S ERRAND.

 

Go, soul, the body's guest,

    Upon a thankless arrant;

Fear not to touch the best;

    The truth shall be thy warrant:

        Go, since I needs must die,

        And give the world the lie.

 

Go, tell the Court it glows

    And shines like rotten wood;

Go, tell the Church it shows

    What's good, and doth no good;

        If church and court reply,

        Give church and court the lie.

 

Tell potentates they live

    Acting by other's actions;

Not loved unless they give,

    Not strong but by their factions:

        If potentates reply,

        Give potentates the lie.

 

Tell men of high condition,

    That rule affairs of state,

Their purpose is ambition,

    Their practice only hate;

        And if they once reply,

        Spare not to give the lie.

 

Tell Zeal it lacks devotion;

    Tell Love it is but lust;

Tell Time it is but motion;

    Tell Flesh it is but dust;

        And wish them not reply,

        For thou must give the lie.

 

Tell Age it daily wasteth;

    Tell Honor how it alters;

Tell Beauty how she blasteth;

    Tell Favor how she falters;

        And, as they shall reply,

        Give each of them the lie.

 

Tell Fortune of her blindness;

    Tell Nature of decay;

Tell Friendship of unkindness;

    Tell Justice of delay;

        And if they dare reply,

        Then give them all the lie.

 

And when thou hast, as I

    Commanded thee, done blabbing,

Although to give the lie

    Deserves no less than stabbing,

        Yet, stab at thee who will,

        No stab the soul can kill.

 

"When I am dead,

    Let not the day be writ,"

Nor bell be tolled;2

    "Love will remember it"

When hate is cold.

 

Mr. Thoreau also read these passages, selected for the occasion by another citizen of Concord:

 

COLLINS.

 

How sleep the brave, who sink to rest,

By all their country's wishes blest!

When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,

Returns to deck their hallowed mould,

She there shall dress a sweeter sod

Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

 

By Fairy hands their knell is rung,

By forms unseen their dirge is sung;

There Honor comes, a pilgrim gray,

To bless the turf that wraps their clay,

And Freedom shall awhile repair,

To dwell a weeping hermit there.

 

SCHILLER.

 

He is gone, he is dust;

He the more fortunate; yea, he hath finished;

To him there is no longer any future;

His life is bright — bright without spot it was,

And cannot cease to be. No ominous hour

Knocks at his door with tidings of mishap.

Far off is he, above desire and fear;

No more submitted to the change and chance

Of the unsteady planets. O, 'tis well

With him; but who knows what the coming hour,

Veiled in thick darkness, brings for us?

 

WORDSWORTH.

May we not with sorrow say,

A few strong instincts, and a few plain rules,

Among the serdsmen of the hills, have wrought

More for mankind at this unhappy day,

Than all the pride of intellect and thought?

 

TENNYSON.

 

Ah, God! for a man with heart, head, hand,

Like some of the simple great ones gone

        Forever and ever by;

One still strong man in a blatant land,

Whatever they call him what care I,—

Aristocrat, democrat, autocrat,—one

Who can rule, and dare not lie.

 

GEORGE CHAPMAN.

 

There is no danger to a man who knows

Where life and death is; there's not any law

Exceeds his knowledge, neither is it needful

That he should stoop to any other law;

He goes before them, and commands them all.

That to himself is a law rational.

 

SHILLER.

 

                                      At the approach

Of Extreme peril, when a hollow image

Is found a hollow image, and no more,

Then falls the power into the mighty hands

Of nature, of the spirit giant-born

Who listens only to himself, knows nothing

Of stipulations, duties, reverences,

And, like the emancipated force of fire

Unmastered, scorches, ere it reaches them,

Their fine-spun webs.

 

WOTTON.

 

How happy is he born and taught

    Who serveth not another’s will,

Whose armor is his honest thought,

    And simple truth his utmost skill—!

Whose passions not his masters are,

    Whose soul is still prepared for death,

Not tied unto the world with care

    Of princes’ ear  or vulgar breath;—

Who hath his life from rumors freed,

    Whose conscience is his strong retreat,

Whose state can neither flatterers feed,

    Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who envies none whom chance doth raise,

    Or vice; who never understood

How deepest wounds are given with praise;

    Nor rules of state, but rules of good; —

This man is freed from servile bands

    Of hope to rise or fear to fall;

Lord of himself, though not of lands,

    And having nothing, yet hath all.

TACITUS.3

You, Agricola, are fortunate, not only because your life was glorious, but because your death was timely. As they tell us who heard your last words, unchanged and willing you accepted your fate; as if, as far as in your power, you would make the emperor appear innocent. But, besides the bitterness of having lost a parent, it adds to our grief, that it was not permitted us to minister to your health, . . . to gaze on your countenance, and receive your last embrace; surely, we might have caught some words and commands which we could have treasured in the inmost part of our souls. This is our pain, this our wound. . . . You were buried with the fewer tears, and in your last earthly light, your eyes looked around for something which they did not see.

If there is any abode for the spirits of the pious; if, as wise men suppose, great souls are not extinguished with the body, may you rest placidly, and call your family from weak regrets, and womanly laments, to the contemplation of your virtues, which must not be lamented, either silently or aloud. Let us honor you by our admiration, rather than by short-lived praises, and, if nature aid us, by our emulation of you. That is true honor, that the piety of whoever is most akin to you. This also I would teach your family, so to venerate your memory, as to call to mind all your actions and words, and embrace your character and the form of your soul, rather than of your body; not because I think that statues which are made of marble or brass are to be condemned, but as the features of men, so images of the features, are frail and perishable. The form of the soul is eternal; and this we can retain and express, not by a foreign material and art, but by our own lives. Whatever of Agricola we have loved, whatever we have admired, remains, and will remain, in the minds of men, and the records of history, through the eternity of ages. For oblivion will overtake many of the ancients, as if they were inglorious and ignoble : Agricola, described and transmitted to posterity, will survive.

MR. CHARLES BOWERS followed Mr. Thoreau, and read the celebrated protest of Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, third President of the United States, a Virginian, a historian of Virginia, and the predecessor of Governor Wise in the gubernatorial chair of that State; in which, it will be seen, he seems to have anticipated something like what has lately occurred:

PROTEST OF JEFFERSON.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. . . . The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. And with what execration should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one half the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into despots and these into enemies—destroys the morals of the one part, and the amor patriæ of the other! And can the liberties of a nation be deemed secure, when we have removed their only firm basis—a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? that they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just that his justice cannot sleep forever; that, considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute that can take side with us in such a contest.

HON. John S. Keyes said: In order to give this assembly a picture of the event now taking place in Virginia, I propose to read to you an account of a scene in some respects similar, which occurred in Edinburgh some two hundred years ago:

 

THE EXECUTION OF MONTROSE.4

 

They brought him to the Watergate,

    Hard bound with hempen span,

As though they held a lion there,

    And not a venceless man.

They set him high upon a cart—

    The hangman rode below—

They drew his hands behind his back,

    And bared his noble brow.

Then as a hound is slipped from leash,

    They cheered the common throng,

And blew the note with yell and shout,

    And bade him pass along.

 

It would have made a brave man's heart

    Grow sad and sick, that day,

To watch the keen, malignant eyes

    Bent down on that array.

Then stood the Whig south country lords

    In balcony and bow;

There sat their gaunt and withered domes,

    And their daughters all a-row;

And every open window

    Was full as full might be

With black-robed Covenanting carles,

    That goodly sport to see!

 

But when he came, though pale and wan.

    He looked so great and high,

So noble was his manly front,

    So calm his steadfast eye,

The rabble rout forbore to shout,

    And each man held his breath,

For well they knew the hero's soul

    Was face to face with death.

And then a mournful shudder

    Through all the people crept,

And some that came to scoff at him

    Now turned aside and wept.

 

But onward — always onward

    In silence and in gloom,

The dreary pageant labored,

    Till it reached the place of doom.

 And then uprose the great Montrose

    In the middle of the room-

"I have not sought in battle-field

    A wreath of such renown,

Nor dared I hope, on my dying day,

    To win the martyr's crown.

 

"There is a chamber far away

    Where sleep the good and brave,

But a better place ye have named for me

    Than by my father's grave.

For truth and right, 'gainst tyrants' might

    This hand hath always striven,

And ye raise it up for a witness still

    In the eye of earth and heaven.

Then nail my head on yonder tower

    Give every town a limb-

And God, who made, shall gather them;

    I go from you to Him!"

 

The morning dawned full darkly,

    The rain came flashing down,

And the jagged streak of the levin-bolt

    Lit up the gloomy town:

The thunder crashed across the heaven,

    The fatal hour was come;

Yet aye broke in, with muffled beat.

    The 'larum of the drum.

There was madness on the earth below,

    And anger in the sky;

And young and old, and rich and poor,

    Came forth to see him die.

 

Ah, God! that ghastly gibbet!

    How dismal 'tis to see

The great, tall, spectral skeleton,

    The ladder and the tree!

Hark! hark! it is the clash of arms

    The bells begin to toll — 

"He is coming! He is coming!"

    "God's mercy on his soul!"

One last, long peal of thunder —

    The clouds are cleared away,

And the glorious sun once more looks down

    Amidst the dazzling day.


"He is coming! he is coming!"

    Like a bridegroom from his room,

Came the hero from his prison

    To the scaffold and the doom.

There was glory on his forehead,

    There was lustre in his eye,

And he never walked to battle

    More proudly than to die;

There was color in his visage,

    Though the checks of all were wan,

And they marvelled as they saw him pass,

    That great and goodly man!

 

He mounted up the scaffold,

    And he turned him to the crowd;

But they dared not trust the people,

    So he might not speak aloud.

But he looked upon the heavens,

    And they were clear and blue,

And in the liquid ether

    The eye of God shone through;

Yet a black and murky battlement

    Lay resting on the hill,

As though the thunder slept within

    All else was calm and still.


The grim Geneva ministers

     With anxious scowl drew near,

As you have seen the ravens flock

    Around the dying deer.

He would not deign them word nor sign,

    But alone he bent his knee,

And veiled his face for Christ's dear grace,

    Beneath the gallows tree.

Then radiant and serene he rose,

    And cast his cloak away;

For he had ta'en his latest look

    Of earth, and sun, and day.

 

A beam of light fell o'er him

    Like a glory round the shriven,

And he climbed the lofty ladder

    As it were the path to heaven.

Then came a flash from out the cloud,

    And a stunning thunder-roll;

And no man dared to look aloft;

    Fear was on every soul.

There was another heavy sound,

    A hush, and then a groan;

And darkness swept across the sky —

    The work of death was done!

A. Bronson Alcott then offered these sentences from

PLATO.

An upright man is a perpetual magistrate.

Jupiter, fearing for our race, lest it should entirely perish, by reason of injuring one another from not possessing the political art, but only the military, sent Hermes to carry Shame and Justice to men, that they might be ornaments of cities and bonds to cement friend,hip. Hermes, therefore, asked Jupiter in what manner he was to give Shame and Justice to men. "Whether, as the arts have been distributed, so shall I distribute these, also? For they have been distributed thus: one man who possesses the medicinal art is sufficient for many not skilled in it. And so with other craftsmen. Shall I thus dispense Shame and Justice among men, or distribute them to all?" "To all," said Jupiter, "and let all partake of them; for there would be no cities if a few only were to partake of them, as of other arts. Moreover, enact a law in my name, that whoever is unable to partake of Shame and Justice, shall be put to death as a pest of a city."

The next exercise was the recital of the following original

ODE.

 

O Brother, brave, and just, and wise!

    Whose death unjust we mourn to-day,

Thy name shall live till Freedom dies;

    No tyrant can thy spirit slay!

 

The Hero's page, the Martyr's scroll,

    Since men for truth and virtue bled,

Bears record of no manlier soul

    Than thine that even now has fled.

 

Unworthy land that knew thee not!

    That bade her best and bravest die!

Be hers the shame thy glorious lot

    Admits thy soul to God's free sky.

 

His constant voice inspired thy deed.

    His clear command thy heart obeyed,

His hand shall give thy deathless meed

    When thou and we in dust are laid.

 

The prattling child shall lisp thy praise,

    The aged sire thy cause approve;

Forbidden to prolong thy days,

    Our love shall yet thy shame remove.

 

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that the part assigned to him in the services of the day, was to read portions of the conversations, speeches, and letters of John Brown—an obscure Connecticut farmer, who, taking the Gospel in earnest, and devoting himself to the uplifting of a despised race, had suddenly become the most prominent person in the country. He then read extracts from the conversation between Senator Mason and John Brown, and from Captain Cook's Confession; the last speech of John Brown in Court; his letter to Rev. Mr. Vaill, of Litchfield, Connecticut; his "letter to a Christian Conservative," and a passage from his reply to Mrs. Child.5

Mr. Alcott then read the

SERVICE FOR THE DEATH OF A MARTYR.

In introducing this new and worthy liturgy, he said that on occasions like the present, when the heart and the conscience are so deeply moved, silence seems better than speech. Yet some voice must be found for the sentiment so universal today; and accordingly I now read to you these leaves of wisdom from

 

JESUS CHRIST.

 

    Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.

    Whether it is lawful to obey God or man, judge ye.

SOLOMON.6

The ungodly said, reasoning with themselves, but not aright, Our life is short and tedious, and in the death of a man there is no remedy; neither was there any man known to have returned from the grave.

Let us oppress the poor righteous man; let us not spare the widow, nor reverence the ancient gray hairs of the aged.

Let our strength be the law; for that which is feeble is found to be nothing worth.

Therefore let us lie in wait for the righteous; because he is not for our turn, and he is clean contrary to our doings: he upbraideth us with our offending the law.

He professeth to have the knowledge of God; and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. He was made to reprove our thoughts.

He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, his ways are of another fashion.

We are esteemed of him as counterfeits; he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness; he pronounceth the end of the just to be blessed, and maketh his boast that God is his father.

Let us see if his words be true, and let us prove what shall happen in the end of him.

For, if the just man be the Son of God, He will help him, and deliver him from the hand of his enemies.

Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture, that we may know his meekness and prove his patience.

Let us condemn him with a shameful death; for by his own saying he shall be respected.

Such things they did imagine and were deceived; for their own wickedness had blinded them.

They, the people, stood up, and the rulers took counsel together against the Lord and against his Anointed.

They cast their heads together with one consent, and were confederate against him.

He heard the blasphemy of the multitude, and fear was on every side, while they conspired together against him to take away his life.

They spake against him with false tongues, and compassed him about with words of hatred.

They rewarded him evil for good.

They took their counsel together, saying, God hath forsaken him: persecute him and take him, for there is none to deliver.

Let the sentence of guiltiness proceed against him, and now that he lieth, let him rise up no more.

False witnesses, also, did rise up against him; they laid to his charge things that he knew not.7

Then shall the righteous man stand in great boldness before the face of such as have afflicted him and made no account of his labors.

"For the sins of the people and the iniquities of the rulers they shed the blood of the just. In their anger they slew a man; the man whom Thou hadst made so strongly for Thine Own Self." — Lamentations.

He, being made perfect, in a short time fulfilled a long time.

For his soul pleased the Lord; therefore, hasted He to take him away from among the Wicked.

This the People saw and understood it not, neither laid they up this in their minds that His grace and mercy is with His saints, and that He hath respect unto His Chosen.

When they see it they shall be troubled with terrible fear, and shall be amazed at the strangeness of his salvation, so far beyond all that they looked for.

And they, repenting and groaning for anguish of spirit, shall say within themselves, This was he whom we had sometime in derision and a proverb of reproach.

We, fools, accounted his life madness and his end to be without honor. How is he numbered among the children of God, and his lot is among the saints!

What hath pride profited us? or what good hath riches with our vaunting brought us?

All those things are passed away like a shadow, and as a post that hasteth by ;

And as a ship that passeth over the waves of the water;

Or as when a bird hath flown through the air;

Or, like as when an arrow is shot at a mark, it parteth the air, which immediately cometh together again, so that a man cannot know where it went through;

Even so we, in like manner, as soon as we were born, began to draw to our end, and had no sign of virtue to show; but were consumed in our own wickedness.

But the righteous live forevermore; their reward, also, is with the Lord; and the care of them is with the Most High.

Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom and a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand; for with his right hand shall he cover them, and with his arm shall he protect them.

Great are Thy Judgments, and cannot be expressed; therefore unnurtured souls have erred.

For, when unrighteous men thought to oppress the righteous one, they, being shut up in their houses, the prisoners of darkness, and fettered with the bonds of a long night, lay there exiled from the Eternal Providence.

For while they supposed to lie hid in their secret sins, they were scattered under a dark veil of forgetfulness, being horribly astonished and troubled with strange apparitions.

For neither might the corner that held them keep them from fear; but noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about them; and sad visions appeared unto them with heavy countenances.

No power of the fire might give them light; neither could the bright flames of the stars endure to lighten that horrible night.

Only there appeared unto them a fire kindled of itself, very dreadful; for, being much terrified, they thought the things which they saw to be worse than the sight they saw not.

Yea, the tasting of death touched the righteous also.

For then the blameless man made haste, and stood forth to defend them, and bringing the shield of his proper ministry, even prayer and the propitiation of incense, set himself against the wrath, and so brought the calamity to an end, declaring that he was Thy Servant.

So he overcame the destroyer, not with the strength of body or force of arms, but with a word subdued he him that punished, alleging the oaths and covenants made with the Fathers.

For, in all things, O Lord, Thou didst magnify Thy Servant and glorify him; neither didst Thou lightly regard him, but didst assist him in every time and place.

The souls of the righteous are in the hands of God, and there shall no torment touch them.

In the sight of the unwise he seemed to die: and his departure is taken for misery, and his going from us to be utter destruction; but he is in peace.

For though he be punished in the sight of men, yet is his hope full of Immortality.

And, having been a little chastised, he shall be greatly rewarded; for God proved him and found him worthy for himself.

He shall judge the nations and have dominion over the people, and his Lord shall reign forever.

The following original verses, by a gentleman of Concord, were then read by Mr. Brown, and sung by the congregation standing:

DIRGE.

To-day beside Potomac's wave,
    Beneath Virginia's sky,
They slay the man who loved the slave,
    And dared for him to die.

The Pilgrim Fathers' earnest creed,
    Virginia's ancient faith,
Inspired this hero's noblest deed,
    And his reward is — Death!

Great Washington's indignant shade
    Forever urged him on —
He heard from Monticello's glade
    The voice of Jefferson.

But chiefly on the Hebrew page
    He read Jehovah's law,
And this, from youth to hoary age,
    Obeyed with love and awe.

No selfish purpose armed his hand,
    No passion aimed his blow;
How loyally he loved his land
    Impartial Time shall show.

But now the faithful martyr dies;
    His brave heart beats no more;
His soul ascends the equal skies;
    His earthly course is o'er.

For this we mourn, but not for him:
    Like him, in God we trust;
And though our eyes with tears are dim,
    We know that God is just.

_______________

1 The wife of Judge Russell.

2 The selectmen of the town, not knowing but they had authority, refused to allow the bell to be tolled on this occasion.

3 Translated by Mr. Thoreau.

4 From Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers."

5 I do not wish to repeat the same quotations in any of my books; and, as all the passages read by Mr. Emerson appear in my Life of John Brown, in the chapters entitled "The Political Inquisitors," "Condemned to die," "Lying in Wait," and "The Conquering Pen," I omit them here.

6 Chiefly from the "Wisdom of Solomon."

7 The last eight verses are from the Psalter.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 437-54