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
