Wendell Phillips to Senator Charles Sumner, 1852

I congratulate you most sincerely on the happy issue or your efforts for Drayton and Sayres. You have earned your honors.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 278

No Union With Slaveholders!

KISSING THE CHAIN!

Shall Massachusetts stand erect no longer,

But stoop in chains upon her downward way,

Thicker to gather on her limbs, and stronger,

Day after day?’

In our last number, we gave a brief account of the ridiculous, spasmodic and inconsistent action of the House of Representatives of this State on the presentation of petitions, asking for a Convention of the People to devise measures for a peaceable secession of Massachusetts from the Union, for the intolerable grievances there in set forth; first, how those petitions were precipitately laid on the table by an overwhelming majority, and thus denied the courtesy of a reference; and how, the Whigs taking the alarm on seeing Mr. BOUTWELL (the ostensible leader of the Democratic party in the House) rise on his seat to object to such a course of action as a virtual denial of the right of petition, that vote was almost instantaneously reconsidered, and the petitions were referred to the Committee on the Judiciary. What has since transpired, up to the time our paper goes to press, we proceed to inform our readers.

On Friday last, the Committee with hot haste (forty-eight hours after receiving the petitions) reported that the petitioners have leave to withdraw. Thus no time was afforded for the presentation of a large number of similar petitions still circulating for signatures, and no opportunity was given the petitioners to be heard in behalf of the object prayed for. Hitherto, for several years past, petitions of this nature have been regularly sent to the Legislature, and in every instance received without hesitancy, duly referred, deliberately considered, and repeatedly supported by counsel before the Committee, even the hall of the House of Representatives being granted on several occasions for a hearing. By the rules of the House, the report of the present Committee was laid over for that day; but, as if anxious to make a special display of ‘patriotism,’ and to exonerate the Free Soil movement from every suspicion of ‘fanaticism,’ Mr. Wilson, of Natick, the proprietor of the Boston Republican, moved that the rules be suspended, and that the vote on the report of the Committee be taken by yeas and nays, that no time be lost to signify to the country and the world where Massachusetts stands in regard to this ‘glorious Union’!! The motion prevailed, and the report was accepted—Yeas, ALL except 1—Mr. TOLMAN, (Free Soiler,) of Worcester. In common with a multitude of others, we are astonished and indignant at the conduct of Mr. WILSON in this matter—of one who has displayed, on so many occasions in the House, both as a Whig and as a Free Soiler, a manly front on the subject of slavery, and at all times received at the hands of the abolitionists his full share of the credit. What his motive was for thus precipitating action, we leave him to explain. If it was with any hope of personal or party advantage, he will assuredly find that he has ‘reckoned without his host.’ If, in his conscience, he really believes that an active and willing support of the Union involves nothing of criminality—if he believes that the Union is promotive of liberty and equality, instead of chains and slavery—why then we could not reasonably expect that he would sanction a movement for its dissolution. Nevertheless, it is none the less extraordinary—especially in view of all he has said and done respecting the aggressions of the Slave Power—that he should be eager to outstrip both Whig and Democrat in his zeal to do an act which he knew would give special pleasure to the Southern brokers in the trade of blood, and gain nothing for Massachusetts but there fresh contempt for her disgusting servility.

One man—only one man of the two hundred and fifty who voted—was found willing or able to stand erect in the HOUSE on a question of justice, to say nothing of liberty; and while a single member retains his manhood, we will not despair of the old Bay State! Mr. TOLMAN, by his solitary vote, had displayed an independence as rare as it is commendable, and a fearlessness of consequences which indicates the man of integrity immeasurably above the party politician. Let the time-serving sneer at him, and the vile and malignant abuse him; it shall only place in stronger contrast his worth and their baseness. Of course, we are not commending him as a disunionist—for he is not, otherwise he would not be found in the Legislature; but only for his sense of justice, and of what constitutes fair treatment. As a member of the Judiciary Committee, he objected to its hasty report as equally unwise and unnecessary,—the subject presented for their consideration being one of the gravest character and greatest solemnity, justifying a patient hearing in its elucidation. He dissented not from the conclusion of the report, that the petitioners have to withdraw their petitions, but only from the haste with which intentionally made, so to give no opportunity to their signers to vindicate their course. This is all he meant to imply in giving his negative in the House; and for this he deserves the approbation of all decent, fair-minded, honorable men. He is no trading politician, but a working-man, a mechanic, of great integrity of character and lively conscientiousness, and must respected by those who know him. As a proof of his moral firmness, it deserves to be stated to his credit, in this connection, that he refused some profitable offers to furnish government wagons to be used in the Mexican war, regarding that war as he did as most wicked and inexcusable. It is so rare a thing for conscience to be stronger than the love of gain, that every instance like this is an oasis in the desert. It is evident that Mr. Tolman is not a man to be sneered or frowned down. In the House, he stood actually in the majority, for he was in the right and the right is with God, who is more than multitudinous.

Mr. BOUTWELL, in contending for a reference of the petitions, as due to a just regard for the right of petition, pursued a course for which we intended to accord him our thanks and all due credit; but his subsequent behavior has vitiated an otherwise meritorious act. On Tuesday, as one of the committee, we requested him to present to the House sundry petitions from Boston and other places, numerously and respectably signed, on the subject of disunion, similar to those already presented; and also a remonstrance signed by FRANCIS JACKSON and others against the precipitate action of the Committee and the House on the petitions, and asking for a hearing as a matter of Justice. Much to our surprise, but more to his own discredit, Mr. BOUTWELL positively declined complying with the request! On the question of the Union he was eminently patriotic—very conscientious; he could never think, for one moment, of presenting such petitions. ‘But is it a matter of conscience, or a rule of action with you,’ we asked, ‘never to present a petition, except you can give it your sanction?’ He could not say it was. ‘Why, then, the present refusal? Do you believe there is any one, either in this Commonwealth or out of it, who would suppose that you were in favor of a dissolution of the Union merely from the fact of your presenting these petitions?’ He did not suppose there was. ‘you can make as many disclaimers as you may think proper; to these we do not object; these we are prepared to expect; but we still desire these petitions and this remonstrance to be laid before the House.’ He should prefer that some other person would present them. ‘But the same excuse that you make might be made by every other member; and where then would be the right of petition? If a memorial relating to the liberty of the people of Massachusetts, and to the millions in this country who are groaning in bondage, couched in respectful and solemn phraseology, is to be denied a presentation, so may all others of an inferior nature if the petitions are in error as to the form or substance of their request, is it not obviously the true way to allay popular agitation for the Legislature to show wherein they err?’ He had no doubt that the dissolution of the Union would be the abolition of slavery; but he went for the Union as the lesser of two evils! Humane man—upright moralist—profound logician! To cease ‘striking hands with thieves and consenting with adulterers’—to refuse any longer to join in the enslavement of three millions of the people of this country—would certainly give liberty to the oppressed, and put an end to all the woes and horrors of the slave system, but it would be injurious to ourselves!! How disinterested the action, how exact the calculation! See what folly it is to obey God by remembering them that are in bonds as bound with them, and loving our neighbors as ourselves! See how safe, profitable and. expedient it is to commit sin, perpetrate robbery, and exercise tyranny, on a gigantic sale! ‘The end sanctifies the means—I am for doing evil that good may come’—is the moral philosophy of this leader of the Democratic party.

Mr. BOUTWELL may reconcile—if he can—the consistency of his acts in refusing to present a disunion petition to the House; and then, after its presentation by other hands, protesting against its being summarily laid upon the table as a virtual denial of the right of petition, and advocating its reference to the Judiciary Committee. We are unable to reconcile discrepancies so glaring.

We admonished him—as we would admonish all politicians—that this great and solemn question is not to be dodged, crowded down, or shuffled out of sight, with impunity—that those who are pressing it are not lacking in intelligence or spirit, neither are they to be discouraged by defeat or intimidated by censure—that it is the religious element, it its purest and most disinterested manifestation, by which they are impelled—a dread of sin, a hatred of tyranny, a sacred love of liberty, and a sentiment of obedience to God, overriding all party ties and all constitutional requirements—and therefore not to be trifled with.

On Wednesday forenoon, Mr. TOLMAN presented the remonstrance of Francis Jackson and others, against the action of the House on Friday last, as follows:

To the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

The undersigned, petitioners ‘for a Convention of the People of this Commonwealth to devise measures for a peaceful Secession of Massachusetts from the Union,’ respectfully ask for a reconsideration of the vote of the House, on Friday last, by which those petitioners had leave to withdraw their petition—basing their request and their remonstrance against the action of the house on the following grounds:—

1. That the petitioners had no opportunity to be heard before your Committee in support of the object prayed for; the action both of the Committee and the House manifesting, in the judgment of the undersigned, precipitancy, and being without any good precedent.

2. That if a patient hearing is cheerfully conceded to petitions touching matters of the smallest pecuniary interest, much more does the same, of right, belong to questions involving the welfare, honor and liberty of millions.

3. That while your petitioners are subjected, by the Constitution and laws of the United States, and therefore of this Commonwealth, to heavy fines for obeying the law of God, and refusing to deliver up the fugitive slave, or giving him aid and protection, they feel that they have a right to be heard in asking to be relieved from such immoral obligations.

4. That while citizens of this Commonwealth, on visiting Southern States, are seized, thrust into privation, condemned to work with felons in the chain-gain, and frequently sold on the auction block as slaves;—and while the governments both of the United States and of the Southern States have refused, or made it penal, to attempt a remedy—and while this Commonwealth has given up all effort to vindicate the rights of its citizens as hopeless and impracticable, under the present Union—it is manifestly the duty of the Commonwealth, as a Sovereign State, to devise some other measure for the redress and prevention of so grievous a wrong, which your petitioners are profoundly convinced can be reached only by a secession from the present union.

5. That while the matter touched on in said petitions has attracted so much attention, and awakened so deep an interest in all parts of the country, it is clearly the duty of the legislature, in the opinion of the undersigned, either to hear the reasons on which the petitioners found their request, or, at least, to make a plain statement of the petitioners’ mistake as to the form or substance of the remedy prayed for.

6. That on a subject so momentous, the precipitate rejection of a petition, without reason given therefore, or opportunity offered to the petitioners to support their request, is a virtual denial of the right of petition.

FRANCIS JACKSON,

WM. LLOYD GARRISON,

EDMUND QUINCY,

WENDELL PHILLIPS,

WM. I. BOWDITCH,

JOHN ROGERS,

EDMUND JACKSON,

CHARLES F. HOVEY,

CHARLES K. WHIPPLE,

SAMUEL MAY, JR.,

JOHN M. SPEAR,

ROBERT F. WOLLCUT,

BOURNE SPOONER.

Mr. Tolman made a few sensible remarks, defining his own position, and expressing his conviction that the petitioners had not been fairly treated. He therefore moved that the remonstrance he referred to the Committee of the Judiciary.

Mr. Codman, of Boston, moved that the remonstrants have leave to withdraw their remonstrance; and on this the yeas and nays were ordered—41 to 125.

Mr. Earle, of Worcester, moved to refer the remonstrance to the Special committee on Slavery, and supported his motion in some earnest and forcible remarks. A long debate ensued—Messrs. Earle and Tolman, Griswold of Greenfield, Branning of Tyringham, and Wilson of Natick, supporting the commitment, and Messrs. Codman, Schouler and Kimball of Boston, Hoar of Concord, and Smith of Enfield, (the last named an orthodox deacon, in appearance ‘a sleek oily man of God,’) opposing it.

Mr. Williams, of Taunton, demanded the previous question, which was ordered, thus cutting off the motion to commit.

The yeas and nays were then taken on Mr. Codman’s motion to give the remonstrants leave to withdraw, and the motion was carried—yeas 192, nays 63—Mr. Boutwell, of Groton, voting in the affirmative.

It is due to Mr. Wilson of Natick, to say that his course on this occasion was manly, explicit and commendable. In explanation of his vote on Friday, he said he was not aware that the petitioners desired a hearing: if he had been, he would not have voted that they should have leave to withdraw their petitions until they had been fully and fairly heard. We accept the explanation, and so would mitigate the severity of our censure; at the same time wondering that he should have supposed that he should have been the first to hasten the action of the House on this subject. Well, this is our defence—

‘Though we break our fathers’ promise, we have nobler duties first:

The traitor to Humanity is the traitor most accurst!

Man is more than Constitutions—better rot beneath the sod,

Than be true to Church and state while we are doubly false to God!’

SOURCE: “No Union With Slaveholders!” The Liberator, Boston, Massachusetts, Friday, February 22, 1850, p. 2, cols. 5-6

Theodore Parker, December 24, 1859

ROME, December 24, 1839.

What a stormy time you are having in America! Your cradle was rocked in the Revolution, and now in your old age you see the storm of another Revolution beginning: none knows when and where it shall end. Yesterday, the telegraph brought us the expected intelligence that the Slaveholders had hung Captain John Brown! Of course I knew from the moment of his capture what his fate would be; the logic of Slavery is stronger than the intellect or personal will of any man, and it bears all Southern politicians along with it. No martyr whose tragic story is writ in the Christian books ever bore himself more heroically than Captain Brown; for he was not only a martyr, any bully can be that, but also a SAINT—which no bully can ever be. None ever fell in a more righteous cause:— it has a great future, too, which he has helped bring nearer and make more certain. I confess I am surprised to find love for the man, admiration for his conduct, and sympathy with his object, so wide-spread in the North, especially in New England, and more particularly in dear, good, old Boston! Think of the Old South on the same platform with Emerson and Phillips! Think of sermons like Wheelock's, Newhall's, Freeman Clarke's, and Cheever's Thanksgiving sermon at New York-an Orthodox minister of such bulk putting John Brown before Moses! The New York Herald had an extract from ———’s sermon. It was such as none but a mean soul could preach on such an occasion; but we must remember that it taxes a mean man as much to be mean and little, as it does a noble one to be grand and generous. Every minister must bear sermons after his kind; "for of a thorn men do not gather figs, nor of a bramble-bush gather they grapes." I rather think the Curtises did not fire a hundred cannon on Boston Common when they heard that John Brown was hung, as they did when the Fugitive Slave Bill passed. There has been a little change since 1850, and men not capable of repentance are yet liable to shame and if they cannot be converted, may yet be scared.

Well, things can never stand as they did three months ago. On the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, at day-break, Old England and New—Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies were one nation. At sunrise, they were two. The fire of the grenadiers made reconciliation impossible, and there must be war and separation. It is so now. Great events tarn on small hinges, and let mankind march through. How different things happen from what we fancy! All good institutions are founded on some great truth of the mind or conscience; and, when such a truth is to be put over the world's highway, we think it must be borne forward on the shoulders of some mighty horse whom God has shod strong all round for that special purpose, and we wonder where the creature is, and when he will be road-ready; and look after his deep footprints, and listen for his step or his snorting. But it sometimes happens that the Divine Providence uses quite humble cattle to bear his most precious burdens, both fast and far. Some 3000 or 4000 years ago, a body of fugitives — slaves — poor, leprous, ill-clad, fled out of Egypt, under the guidance of a man who slew an Egyptian. He saw a man do a vile thing to one of his slaves, and lynched him on the spot then ran for it.

Those fugitive slaves had a great truth. The world, I think, had not known before "The Oneness of God;" at least, their leader had it, and for hundreds of years did this despised people keep the glorious treasure which Egypt did not know which Greece and Rome never understood. Who would have thought the ark of such salvation would have been trusted to such feeble hands!

Some 1800 or 1900 years ago, who would have looked to a Jewish carpenter of Galilee, and a Jewish tent-maker of Tarsus in Cilicia, with few adherents fishermen—obscure people—unlearned and ignorant men, who would have looked to such persons for a truth of religion which should overturn all the temples of the old world, and drive the gods of Olympus from their time-honored thrones of reverence and power? The Rome of the Popes is, no doubt, as Polytheistic as the Rome of the Cæsars-but the old gods are gone, and men worship the Fisherman and the Tent-maker.

It was the Augustinian Monk who broke the Roman Hierarchy to atoms. Tough in the brains, tough in the bones, mighty also by his love of the people and his trust in God, he did what it seemed only the great councils of the learned could accomplish-he routed the Popes, and wrested the German world from their rude and bloody gripe.

At a later day, when the new Continent which God had kept from the foundation of the world—a virgin hid away between the Atlantic and the Pacific seas— was to be joined to Humanity, in the hopes of founding such a Family of Men as the world had never seen, was there any one who would have thought that the Puritan, hated in his British home, and driven out thence with fire and sword, would be the Representative of Humanity, and claim and win that Bride, and wed her too, with nuptials now so auspicious? Yet so it turns out; and the greatest social and political achievement of the human race is wrought out by that Puritan, with his Bride— whose only dower was her broad lands. Really, it seems as if God chose the small things to confound the great. But when we look again, and study carefully the relation which these seemingly insignificant agents bear to the whole force of Humanity, then it appears they were the very agents most fit for the work they did. I think it will turn out so in the case of Captain Brown. What the masterly eloquence of Seward could not accomplish, even by his manly appeal to the Higher Law, nor the eloquence of Phillips and Sumner, addressed to the conscience and common sense of the people, seems likely to be brought to pass by John Brown—no statesman, no orator, but an upright and downright man, who took his life in his hand, and said, "Slavery shall go down even if it be put down with red swords!" I thanked God for John Brown years ago: he and I are no strangers, and still more now his sainthood is crowned with martyrdom. I am glad he came from that Mayflower company that his grandfather was a captain in the Revolutionary war:—the true aristocratic blood of America runs in such veins. All the grand institutions of America, which give such original power to the people, came from that Puritan stock, who trusted in God, and kept their powder dry—who stood up straight when they prayed, and also when they fought. Yes, all the grand original ideas, which are now on their way to found new institutions, and will make the future better than the past or present they come from the same source.

Virginia may be the mother of Presidents, (she yet keeps the ashes of two great ones, only their ashes, not their souls,) but it is New England that is mother of great ideas. God is their Father mother also of communities, rich with intelligence and democratic power.

John Brown came from a good lineage; his life proves it and his death. It is not for you or me to select the instruments wherewith the providence of mankind has the world's work done by human hands; it is only for us to do our little duty, and take the good and ill which come of it.

When the monster which hinders the progress of Humanity is to be got rid of, no matter if the battle-axe have rust on its hilt, and spots, here and there, upon its blade-mementoes of ancient work; if its edge have but the power to bite, the monster shall be cloven down, and mankind walk triumphantly on, to-morrow, to fresh work and triumphs new.

But I did not mean to write you such a letter as this it wrote itself, and I couldn’t help it. I cannot sleep nights, for thinking of these things. I am ashamed to be sick and good for nothing in times like these, but can't help it, and must be judged by what I can do, not can't and don't.

It is curious to find the slaves volunteering to go to shoot men (in buckram) who are coming "a thousand at a time, to rescue Captain Brown"! The African is as much superior to the Anglo-Saxon in cunning and arts of hypocrisy — except the ecclesiastical as he is inferior in general power of mind. Didn't a negro in Savannah tell a Northern minister, "I no want to be free! I only 'fraid to be slave of sin! dat's it, massa, I's fraid of de Debil, not of massa!" What a guffaw he gave when with his countrymen alone! and how he mimicked the gestures of the South-side, white-choked priest, who bore "his great commission in his work"!

But I end as I began — what a stormy time is before us! There are not many men of conscience like John Brown, but abundance of men of wrath; and the time for them-I know not when it is.

Farewell!

Theo. Parker

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 88-92

Lecture of Wendell Phillips: “The Lesson of the Hour,” Delivered at Brooklyn, New York, Tuesday Evening, November 1, 1859

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: Of course I do not expect—speaking from this platform, and to you— to say any thing on the vital question of the hour, which you have not already heard. But, when a great question divides the community, all men are called upon to vote, and I feel to-night that I am simply giving my vote. I am only saying "ditto" to what you hear from this platform day after day. And I would willingly have avoided, ladies and gentlemen, even at this last moment, borrowing this hour from you. I tried to do better by you. Like the Irishman in the story, I offered to hold the hat of Hon. Thomas Corwin, of Ohio, (enthusiastic applause,) if he would only make a speech, and, I am sorry to say, he declines, most unaccountably, this generous offer. (Laughter.) So I must fulfil my appointment, and deliver my lecture myself.

"The Lesson of the Hour?" I think the lesson of the hour is insurrection. (Sensation.) Insurrection of thought always precedes the insurrection of arms. The last twenty years have been an insurrection of thought. We seem to be entering on a new phase of this great American struggle. It seems to me that we have never accepted, as Americans, we have never accepted our own civilization. We have held back from the inference which we ought to have drawn from the admitted principles which underlie our life. We have all the timidity of the old world, when we think of the people; we shrink back, trying to save ourselves from the inevitable might of the thoughts of the millions. The idea on the other side of the water seems to be, that man is created to be taken care of by somebody else. God did not leave him fit to go alone; he is in everlasting pupilage to the wealthy and the educated. The religious or the comfortable classes are an ever-present probate court to take care of him. The Old World, therefore, has always distrusted the average conscience—the common sense of the millions.

It seems to me the idea of our civilization, underlying all American life, is, that men do not need any guardian. We need no safeguard. Not only the inevitable, but the best, power this side of the ocean, is the unfettered average common sense of the masses. Institutions, as we are accustomed to call them, are but pasteboard, and intended to be against the thought of the street. Statutes are mere milestones, telling how far yesterday's thought had travelled; and the talk of the sidewalk to-day is the law of the land. You may regret this; but the fact stands; and if our fathers foresaw the full effect of their principles, they must have planned and expected it. With us, Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm living public opinion. Let that die or grow indifferent, and statutes are waste paper—lack all executive force. You may frame them strong as language can make, but once change public feeling, and through them or over them rides the real wish of the people. The good sense and conscience of the masses are our only title-deeds and police force. The Temperance cause, the Anti-Slavery movement, and your Barnburner party prove this. You may sigh for a strong government, anchored in the convictions of past centuries, and able to protect the minority against the majority; able to defy the ignorance, the mistake, or the passion, as well as the high purpose, of the present hour. You may prefer the unchanging terra firma of despotism; but still the fact remains, that we are launched on the ocean of an unchained democracy, with no safety but in those laws of gravity that bind the ocean in its bed—the instinctive love of right in the popular heart—the divine sheet-anchor, that the race gravitates towards right, and that the right is always safe and best.

Somewhat briefly stated, such is the idea of American civilization; uncompromising faith—in the average selfishness, if you choose—of all classes, neutralizing each other, and tending towards that fair play that Saxons love. But it seems to me that, on all questions, we dread thought; we shrink behind something; we acknowledge ourselves unequal to the sublime faith of our fathers; and the exhibition of the last twenty years and of the present state of public affairs is, that Americans dread to look their real position in the face.

They say in Ireland that every Irishman thinks that he was born sixty days too late, (laughter,) and the world owes him sixty days. The consequence is, when a trader says such a thing is so much for cash, the Irishman thinks cash means to him a bill of sixty days. (Laughter.) So it is with Americans. They have no idea of absolute right. They were born since 1787, and absolute right means the truth diluted by a strong decoction of the Constitution of '89. They breathe that atmosphere; they do not want to sail outside of it; they do not attempt to reason outside of it. Poisoned with printer's ink, or choked with cotton dust, they stare at absolute right, as the dream of madmen. For the last twenty years, there has been going on, more or less heeded and understood in various States, an insurrection of ideas against the limited, cribbed, cabined, isolated American civilization, interfering to restore absolute right. If you said to an American, for instance, any thing in regard to temperance, slavery, or any thing else, in the course of the last twenty years—any thing about a principle, he ran back instantly to the safety of such a principle, to the possibility of its existing with a particular sect, with a church, with a party, with a constitution, with a law. He had not yet raised himself to the level of daring to trust justice, which is the preliminary consideration to trusting the people; for whether native depravity be true or not, it is a truth, attested by all history, that the race gravitates towards justice, and that making fair allowance for differences of opinion, there is an inherent, essential tendency to the great English principle of fair play at the bottom of our natures. (Loud applause.) The Emperor Nicholas, it is said, ordered his engineers to lay down for him a railway from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and presently the engineers brought him a large piece of card-paper, on which was laid down, like a snake, the designed path for the iron locomotive between the two capitals. "What's that?" said Nicholas. "That's the best road," was the reply. "What do you make it crooked for?" Why, we turn this way to touch this great city, and to the left to reach that immense mass of people, and to the right again to suit the business of that district." "Yes." The emperor turned the card over, made a new dot for Moscow, and another for St. Petersburg, took a ruler, made a straight line, and said, "Build me that road." (Laughter.)

"But what will become of this depot of trade?—of that town?" "I don't know; they must look out for themselves." (Cheers.) And omnipotent democracy says of Slavery, or of a church, "This is justice, and that is iniquity; the track of God's thunderbolt is a straight line from one to the other, and the Church or State that cannot stand it must get out of the way. (Cheers.) Now our object for twenty years has been to educate the mass of the American people up to that level of moral life, which shall recognize that free speech carried to this extent is God's normal school, educating the American mind, throwing upon it the grave responsibility of deciding a great question, and by means of that responsibility, lifting it to a higher level of intellectual and moral life. Responsibility educates, and politics is but another name for God's way of teaching the masses ethics, under the responsibility of great present interest. To educate man is God's ultimate end and purpose in all creation. Trust the people with the gravest questions, and in the long run you educate the race; while, in the process, you secure not perfect, but the best possible, institutions. Now scholarship stands on one side, and, like your Brooklyn Eagle, says, "This is madness!" Well, poor man, he thinks so! (Laughter.) The very difficulty of the whole matter is, that he does think so, and this normal school that we open is for him. His seat is on the lowest end of the lowest bench. (Laughter and applause.) But he only represents that very chronic distrust which pervades all that class, specially the timid, educated mind of these Northern States. Anacharsis went into the forum at Athens, and heard a case argued by the great minds of the day, and saw the vote. He walked out into the streets, and somebody said to him, "What think you of Athenian liberty?" "I think," said he, "wise men argue causes, and fools decide them." Just what the timid scholar two thousand years ago said in the streets of Athens, that which calls itself the scholarship of the United States, says to-day of popular agitation, that it lets wise men argue questions, and fools decide them. But that unruly Athens, where fools decided the gravest questions of polity, and right, and wrong, where it was not safe to be just, and where property, which you had garnered up by the thrift and industry of to-day, might be wrung from you by the prejudices of the mob to-morrow; that very Athens probably secured the greatest human happiness and nobleness of its era, invented art, and sounded for us the depths of philosophy; God lent to it the noblest intellects, and it flashes to-day the torch that gilds yet the mountain peaks of the old world; while Egypt, the hunker conservative of antiquity, where nobody dared to differ from the priest, or to be wiser than his grandfather; where men pretended to be alive, though swaddled in the grave clothes of creed and custom as close as their mummies in linen, is hid in the tomb it inhabited; and the intellect which Athens has created for us digs to-day those ashes to find out what hunkerism knew and did. (Cheers.) Now my idea of American civilization is, that it is a second part, a repetition of that same sublime confidence in the public conscience and the public thought that made the groundwork of Grecian Democracy.

We have been carrying on this insurrection of thought for thirty years. There have been various evidences of growth in education; I will tell you of one. The first evidence that a sinner, convicted of sin, and too blind or too lazy to reform, the first evidence he gives that his nature has been touched, is, that he becomes a hypocrite; he has the grace to pretend to be something. Now, the first evidence that the American people gave of that commencing grace of hypocrisy was this: in 1831, when we commenced the Anti-Slavery agitation, the papers talked about Slavery, Bondage, American Slavery, boldly, frankly, and bluntly. In a few years it sounded hard; it had a grating effect; the toughest throat of the hardest Democrat felt it as it came out. So they spoke of the "patriarchal institution," (laughter,) then of the "domestic institution," (continued laughter,) and then of the "peculiar institution," (laughter,) and in a year or two it got beyond that. Mississippi published a report from her Senate, in which she went a stride further, and described it as "economic subordination." (Renewed laughter.) A Southern Methodist bishop was taken to task for holding slaves in reality, but his Methodist brethren were not courageous enough to say "slaves" right out in meeting, and so they advised the bishop to get rid of his "impediment," (loud laughter;) and the late Mr. Rufus Choate, in the last Democratic Canvass in my own State, undertaking and obliged to refer to the institutions of the South, and unwilling that his old New England lips, that had spoken so many glorious free truths, should foul their last days with the hated word, phrased it "a different type of industry." Now, hypocrisy—why, "it is the homage that vice renders to Virtue." When men begin to weary of capital punishment, they banish the gallows inside the jail-yard, and let nobody see it without a special card of invitation from the sheriff. And so they have banished Slavery into pet phrases and fancy flash-words. If, one hundred years hence, you should dig our Egyptian Hunkerism up from the grave into which it is rapidly sinking, we should need a commentator of the true German blood to find out what all these queer, odd, peculiar, imaginative paraphrases mean in this middle of the Nineteenth Century. This is one evidence of progress.

I believe in moral suasion. The age of bullets is over. The age of ideas is come. I think that is the rule of our age. The old Hindoo dreamed, you know, that he saw the human race led out to its varied fortune. First, he saw men bitted and curbed, and the reins went back to an iron hand. But his dream changed on and on, until at last he saw men led by reins that came from the brain, and went back into an unseen hand. It was the type of governments; the first despotism, palpable, iron; and the last our government, a government of brains, a government of ideas. I believe in it—in public opinion.

Yet, let me say, in passing, I think you can make a better use of iron than forging it into chains. If you must have the metal, put it into Sharpe's rifles. It is a great deal better used that way than in fetters; types are better than bullets, but bullets a thousand times rather than a clumsy statue of a mock great man, for hypocrites to kneel down and worship in a state-house yard. (Loud and renewed cheers, and great hissing.) I am so unused to hisses lately, that I have forgotten what I had to say. (Laughter and hisses.) I only know I meant what I did say.

My idea is, public opinion, literature, education, as governing elements.

But some men seem to think that our institutions are necessarily safe, because we have free schools and cheap books, and a public opinion that controls. But that is no evidence of safety. India and China had schools for fifteen hundred years. And books, it is said, were once as cheap in Central and Northern Asia, as they are in New York. But they have not secured liberty, nor a controlling public opinion to either nation. Spain for three centuries had municipalities and town governments, as independent and self-supporting, and as representative of thought, as New England or New York has. But that did not save Spain. De Tocqueville says that fifty years before the great revolution, public opinion was as omnipotent in France as it is to-day, but it did not make France free. You cannot save men by machinery. What India, and France, and Spain wanted, was live men, and that is what we want to-day; men who are willing to look their own destiny, and their own responsibilities, in the face. "Grant me to see, and Ajax asks no more," was the prayer the great poet put into the lips of his hero in the darkness that overspread the Grecian camp. All we want of American citizens is the opening of their own eyes, and seeing things as they are. The intelligent, thoughtful, and determined gaze of twenty millions of Christian people, there is nothing—no institution wicked and powerful enough to be capable of standing against it. In Keats's beautiful poem of "Lamia," a young man had been led captive by a phantom girl, and was the slave of her beauty, until the old teacher came in and fixed his thoughtful eye upon the figure, and it vanished.

You see the great commonwealth of Virginia fitly represented by a pyramid standing upon its apex. A Connecticut born man entered at one corner of her dominions, and fixed his cold gray eye upon the government of Virginia, and it almost vanished in his very gaze. For it seems that Virginia, for a week, asked leave "to be" of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. (Cheers and applause.) Connecticut has sent out many a schoolmaster to the other thirty States; but never before so grand a teacher as that Litchfield born schoolmaster at Harper's Ferry, writing as it were upon the Natural Bridge in the face of nations his simple copy: "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." (Loud cheers.)

I said that the lesson of the hour was insurrection. I ought not to apply that word to John Brown of Osawatomie, for there was no insurrection in his case. It is a great mistake to call him an insurgent. This principle that I have endeavored so briefly to open to you, of absolute right and wrong, states what? Just this: "Commonwealth of Virginia!" There is no such thing. Lawless, brutal force is no basis of a government, in the true sense of that word. Quæ est enim civitas? asks Cicero. Omnis ne conventus ettam ferorum el immanium? Omnis ne etiam fugitivorum ac latronum congregata unum in locum multitudo? Certe negabis. No civil society, no government, can exist except on the basis of the willing submission of all its citizens, and by the performance of the duty of rendering equal justice between man and man.

Whatever calls itself a government, and refuses that duty, or has not that assent, is no government. It is only a pirate ship. Virginia, the commonwealth of Virginia! She is only a chronic insurrection. I mean exactly what I say. I am weighing my words now. She is a pirate ship, and John Brown sails the sea a Lord High Admiral of the Almighty, with his commission to sink every pirate he meets on God's ocean of the nineteenth century. (Cheers and applause.) I mean literally and exactly what I say. In God's world there are no majorities, no minorities; one, on God's side, is a majority. You have often heard here, doubtless, and I need not tell you the ground of morals. The rights of that one man are as sacred as those of the miscalled commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia is only another Algiers. The barbarous horde who gag each other, imprison women for teaching children to read, prohibit the Bible, sell men on the auction-blocks, abolish marriage, condemn half their women to prostitution, and devote themselves to the breeding of human beings for sale, is only a larger and blacker Algiers. The only prayer of a true man for such is, "Gracious Heaven! unless they repent, send soon their Exmouth and Decatur." John Brown has twice as much right to hang Gov. Wise, as Gov. Wise has to hang him. (Cheers and hisses.) You see I am talking of that absolute essence of things that lives in the sight of the Eternal and the Infinite; not as men judge it in the rotten morals of the nineteenth century, among a herd of States that calls itself an empire, because it raises cotton and sells slaves. What I say is this: Harper's Ferry was the only government in that vicinity. Look at the trial. Virginia, true to herself, has shown exactly the same haste that the pirate does when he tries a man on deck, and runs him up to the yard-arm. Unconsciously she is consistent. Now, you do not think this to-day, some of you, perhaps. But I tell you what absolute History shall judge of these forms and phantoms of ours. John Brown began his life, his public life, in Kansas. The South planted that seed; it reaps the first fruit now. Twelve years ago the great men in Washington, the Websters and the Clays, planted the Mexican war; and they reaped their appropriate fruit in Gen. Taylor and Gen. Pierce pushing them from their statesmen's stools. The South planted the seeds of violence in Kansas, and taught peaceful Northern men familiarity with the bowie-knife and revolver. They planted nine hundred and ninety-nine seeds, and this is the first one that has flowered; this is the first drop of the coming shower. People do me the honor to say, in some of the western papers, that this is traceable to some teachings of mine. It is too much honor to such as me. Gladly, if it were not fulsome vanity, would I clutch this laurel of having any share in the great resolute daring of that man who flung himself against an empire in behalf of justice and liberty. They were not the bravest men who fought at Saratoga and Yorktown, in the war of 1776. O, no! it was rather those who flung themselves, at Lexington, few and feeble, against the embattled ranks of an empire, till then thought irresistible. Elderly men, in powdered wigs and red velvet, smoothed their ruffles, and cried, "Madmen!" Full-fed custom-house clerks said, "A pistol shot against Gibraltar!" But Captain Ingraham, under the stars and stripes, dictating terms to the fleet of the Cæsars, was only the echo of that Lexington gun. Harper's Ferry is the Lexington of to-day. Up to this moment, Brown's life has been one unmixed success. Prudence, skill, courage, thrift, knowledge of his time, knowledge of his opponents, undaunted daring he had all these. He was the man who could leave Kansas, and go into Missouri, and take eleven men and give them to liberty, and bring them off on the horses which he carried with him, and two which he took as tribute from their masters in order to facilitate escape. Then, when he had passed his human proteges from the vulture of the United States to the safe shelter of the English lion, this is the brave, frank, and sublime truster in God's right and absolute justice, that entered his name in the city of Cleveland, "John Brown, of Kansas," advertised there two horses for sale, and stood in front of the auctioneer's stand, notifying all bidders of — what some would think — the defect in the title. (Laughter.) But he added, with nonchalance, when he told the story, "They brought a very excellent price." (Laughter.) This is the man who, in the face of the nation, avowing his right, and laboring with what strength he had in behalf of the wronged, goes down to Harper's Ferry to follow up his work. Well, men say he failed. Every man has his Moscow. Suppose he did fail, every man meets his Waterloo at last. There are two kinds of defeat. Whether in chains or in laurels, Liberty knows nothing but victories. Soldiers call Bunker Hill a defeat; but Liberty dates from it, though Warren lay dead on the field. Men say the attempt did not succeed. No man can command success. Whether it was well planned, and deserved to succeed, we shall be able to decide when Brown is free to tell us all he knows. Suppose he did fail, in one sense, he has done a great deal still. Why, this is a decent country to live in now. (Laughter and cheers.) Actually, in this Sodom of ours, twenty-two men have been found ready to die for an idea. God be thanked for John Brown, that he has discovered or created them. (Cheers.) I should feel some pride, if I was in Europe now, in confessing that I was an American. (Applause.) We have redeemed the long infamy of sixty years of subservience. But look back a bit. Is there any thing new about this? Nothing at all. It is the natural result of Anti-slavery teaching. For one, I accept it; I expected it. I cannot say that I prayed for it; I cannot say that I hoped for it. But at the same time, no sane man has looked upon this matter for twenty years, and supposed that we could go through this great moral convulsion, the great classes of society crashing and jostling against each other like frigates in a storm, and that there would not come such scenes as these.

In 1835 it was the other way. Then it was my bull that gored your ox. Then ideas came in conflict, and men of violence, men who trusted in their own right hands, men who believed in bowie-knives—such sacked the city of Philadelphia; such made New York to be governed by a mob; Boston saw its mayor suppliant and kneeling to the chief of a broadcloth mob in broad daylight. It was all on that side. The natural result, the first result of this starting of ideas, is like people who get half awaked, and use the first weapons that lie at hand. The first show and unfolding of national life, were the mobs of 1835. People said it served us right; we had no right to the luxury of speaking our own minds; it was too expensive; these lavish, prodigal, luxurious persons walking about here, and actually saying what they think. Why, it was like speaking loud in the midst of the avalanches. To say "Liberty" in a loud tone, the Constitution of 1789 might come down—it would not do. But now things have changed. We have been talking thirty years. Twenty years we have talked every where, under all circumstances; we have been mobbed out of great cities, and pelted out of little ones; we have been abused by great men and by little papers. (Laughter and applause.) What is the result? The tables have been turned; it is your bull that has gored my ox now. And men that still believe in violence, the five points of whose faith are the fist, the bowie-knife, fire, poison, and the pistol, are ranged on the side of Liberty, and, unwilling to wait for the slow but sure steps of thought, lay on God's altar the best they have. You cannot expect to put a real Puritan Presbyterian, as John Brown is—a regular Cromwellian dug up from two centuries—in the midst of our New England civilization, that dare not say its soul is its own, nor proclaim that it is wrong to sell a man at auction, and not have him show himself as he is. Put a hound in the presence of a deer, and he springs at his throat if he is a true bloodhound. Put a Christian in the presence of a sin, and he will spring at its throat if he is a true Christian. Into an acid we may throw white matter, but unless it is chalk, it will not produce agitation. So, if in a world of sinners you were to put American Christianity, it would be calm as oil. But put one Christian, like John Brown of Osawatomie, and he makes the whole crystallize into right and wrong, and marshal themselves on one side or the other. God makes him the text, and all he asks of our comparatively cowardly lips is to preach the sermon, and say to the American people that, whether that old man succeeded in a worldly sense or not, he stood a representative of law, of government, of right, of justice, of religion, and they were a mob of murderers that gathered about him, and sought to wreak vengeance by taking his life. The banks of the Potomac, doubly dear now to History and to Man! The dust of Washington rests there; and History will see forever on that river-side the brave old man on his pallet, whose dust, when God calls him hence, the Father of his country would be proud to make room for beside his own. But if Virginia tyrants dare hang him, after this mockery of a trial, it will take two more Washingtons at least to make the name of the State any thing but abominable in time to come. (Applause and hisses.) Well, I say what I really think, (cheers, and cries of "good, good.") George Washington was a great man. Yet I say what I really think. And I know, ladies and gentlemen, that, educated as you have been by the experience of the last ten years here, you would have thought me the silliest as well as the most cowardly man in the world, if I should have come, with my twenty years behind me, and talked about any thing else to-night except that great example which one man has set us on the banks of the Potomac. You expected, of course, that I should tell you my real opinion of it.

I value this element that Brown has introduced into American politics. The South is a great power—no cowards in Virginia. (Laughter.) It was not cowardice. (Laughter.) Now, I try to speak very plain, but you will misunderstand me. There is no cowardice in Virginia. The South are not cowards. The lunatics in the Gospel were not cowards when they said, "Art thou come to torment us before the time?" (Laughter.) They were brave enough, but they saw afar off. They saw the tremendous power that was entering into that charmed circle; they knew its inevitable victory. Virginia did not tremble at an old gray-headed man at Harper's Ferry; they trembled at a John Brown in every man's own conscience. He had been there many years, and, like that terrific scene which Beckford has drawn for us in his Hall of Eblis, where the crowd runs around, each man with an incurable wound in his bosom, and agrees not to speak of it; so the South has been running up and down its political and social life, and every man keeps his right hand pressed on the secret and incurable sore, with an understood agreement, in Church and State, that it never shall be mentioned, for fear the great ghastly fabric shall come to pieces at the talismanic word. Brown uttered it; cried, "Slavery is sin! come, all true men, help pull it down," and the whole machinery trembled to its very base.

I value this movement for another reason. Did you ever see a blacksmith shoe a restless horse? If you have, you have seen him take a small cord and tie the upper lip. Ask him what he does it for, he will tell you to give the beast something to think of. (Laughter.) Now, the South has extensive schemes. She grasps with one hand a Mexico, and with the other she dictates terms to the Church, she imposes conditions on the State, she buys up Webster with a little or a promise, and Everett with nothing. (Great laughter and applause.) John Brown has given her something else to think of. He has turned her attention inwardly. He has taught her that there has been created a new element in this Northern mind; that it is not merely the thinker, that it is not merely the editor, that it is not merely the moral reformer, but the idea has pervaded all classes of society. Call them madmen if you will. Hard to tell who's mad. The world says one man is mad. John Brown said the same of the Governor. You remember the madman in Edinburgh. A friend asked him what he was there for. "Well," cried he, "they said at home that I was mad; and I said I was not; but they had the majority." (Laughter.) Just so it is in regard to John Brown. The nation says he is mad. I appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober; I appeal from the American people, drunk with cotton, and the New York Observer, (loud and long laughter,) to the American people fifty  years hence, when the light of civilization has had more time to penetrate, when self-interest has been rebuked by the world rising and giving its verdict on these great questions, when it is not a small band of Abolitionists, but the civilization of the nineteenth century, in all its varied forms, interests, and elements, that undertakes to enter the arena, and discuss this last great reform. When that day comes, what will be thought of these first martyrs, who teach us how to live and how to die?

Has the slave a right to resist his master? I will not argue that question to a people hoarse with shouting ever since July 4, 1776, that all men are created equal, that the right to liberty is inalienable, and that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." But may he resist to blood— with rifles? What need of proving that to a people who load down Bunker Hill with granite, and crowd their public squares with images of Washington; ay, worship the sword go blindly that, leaving their oldest statesmen idle, they go down to the bloodiest battle field in Mexico to drag out a President? But may one help the slave resist, as Brown did? Ask Byron on his death-bed in the marshes of Missolonghi. Ask the Hudson as its waters kiss your shore, what answer they bring from the grave of Kosciusko. I hide the Connecticut Puritan behind Lafayette, bleeding at Brandywine, in behalf of a nation his rightful king forbade him to visit.

But John Brown violated the law. Yes. On yonder desk lie the inspired words of men who died violent deaths for breaking the laws of Rome. Why do you listen to them so reverently? Huss and Wickliffe violated laws, why honor them? George Washington, had he been caught before 1783, would have died on the gibbet, for breaking the laws of his sovereign. Yet I have heard that man praised within six months. Yes, you say, but these men broke bad laws. Just so. It is honorable, then, to break bad laws, and such law breaking History loves and God blesses! Who says, then, that slave laws are not ten thousand times worse than any those men resisted? Whatever argument excuses them, makes John Brown a saint.

Suppose John Brown had not staid at Harper's Ferry. Suppose on that momentous Monday night, when the excited imaginations of two thousand Charlestown people had enlarged him and his little band into four hundred white men and two hundred blacks, he had vanished, and when the gallant troops arrived there, two thousand strong, they had found nobody! The mountains would have been peopled with enemies; the Alleghanies would have heaved with insurrection! You never would have convinced Virginia that all Pennsylvania was not armed and on the hills. Suppose Massachusetts, free Massachusetts, had not given the world the telegraph to flash news like sunlight over half the globe. Then Tuesday would have rolled away, while slow-spreading through dazed Virginia crawled the news of this event. Meanwhile, a hundred men having rallied to Brown's side, he might have marched across the quaking State to Richmond and pardoned Governor Wise. Nat Turner's success, in 1831, shows this would have been possible. Free thought, mother of invention, not Virginia, baffled Brown. But free thought, in the long run, strangles tyrants. Virginia has not slept sound since Nat Turner led an insurrection in 1831, and she bids fair never to have a nap now. (Laughter.) For this is not an insurrection; this is the penetration of a different element. Mark you, it is not the oppressed race rising. Recollect history. There never was a race held in actual chains that vindicated its own liberty but one. There never was a serf nor a slave whose own sword cut off his own chain but one. Blue-eyed, light-haired Anglo-Saxon, it was not our race. We were serfs for three centuries, and we waited till commerce, and Christianity, and a different law, had melted our fetters. We were crowded down into a villanage which crushed out our manhood so thoroughly that we had not vigor enough left to redeem ourselves. Neither France nor Spain, neither the Northern nor the Southern races of Europe have that bright spot on their escutcheon, that they put an end to their own slavery. Blue-eyed, haughty, contemptuous Anglo-Saxons, it was the black the only race in the record of history that ever, after a century of oppression, retained the vigor to write the charter of its emancipation with its own hand in the blood of the dominant race. Despised, calumniated, slandered San Domingo is the only instance in history where a race, with indestructible love of liberty, after bearing a hundred years of oppression, rose up under their own leader, and with their own hands wrested chains from their own limbs. Wait, garrulous, ignorant, boasting Saxon, till you have done half as much, before you talk of the cowardice of the black race!

The slaves of our country have not risen, but, as in most other cases, redemption will come from the interference of a wiser, higher, more advanced civilization on its exterior. It is the almost universal record of history, and ours is a repetition of the same drama. We have awakened at last the enthusiasm of both classes—those that act from impulse, and those that act from calculation. It is a libel on the Yankee to think that it includes the whole race, when you say that if you put a dollar on the other side of hell, the Yankee will spring for it at any risk, (laughter;) for there is an element even in the Yankee blood that obeys ideas; there is an impulsive, enthusiastic aspiration, something left to us from the old Puritan stock; that which made England what she was two centuries ago; that which is fated to give the closest grapple with the Slave Power to-day. This is an invasion by outside power. Civilization in 1600 crept along our shores, now planting her foot, and then retreating; now gaining a foothold, and then receding before barbarism, till at last came Jamestown and Plymouth, and then thirty States.

Harper's Ferry is perhaps one of Raleigh's or Gosnold's colonies, vanishing and to be swept away; by and by will come the immortal one hundred, and Plymouth Rock, with "manifest destiny" written by God's hand on their banner, and the right of unlimited "ANNEXATION" granted by Heaven itself.

It is the lesson of the age. The first cropping out of it is in such a man as John Brown. Grant that he did not measure his means; that he was not thrifty as to his method; he did not calculate closely enough, and he was defeated. What is defeat? Nothing but education—nothing but the first step to something better. All that is wanted is, that our public opinion shall not creep around like a servile coward, corrupt, disordered, insane public opinion, and proclaim that Governor Wise, because he says he is a Governor, is a Governor; that Virginia is a State, because she says she is so.

Thank God, I am not a citizen. You will remember, all of you, citizens of the United States, that there was not a Virginia gun fired at John Brown. Hundreds of well-armed Maryland and Virginia troops rushed to Harper's Ferry and—went away! You shot him! Sixteen marines, to whom you pay eight dollars a month—your own representatives. When the disturbed State could not stand on her own legs for trembling, you went there and strengthened the feeble knees, and held up the palsied hand. Sixteen men, with the Vulture of the Union above them—(sensation)— your representatives! It was the covenant with death and agreement with hell, which you call the Union of thirty States, that took the old man by the throat with a pirate hand; and it will be the disgrace of our civilization if a gallows is ever erected in Virginia that bears his body. "The most resolute man I ever saw," says Governor Wise, "the most daring, the coolest. I would trust his truth about any question. The sincerest!" Sincerity, courage, resolute daring, beating in a heart that feared God, and dared all to help his brother to liberty—Virginia has nothing, nothing for those qualities but a scaffold! (Applause.) In her broad dominion she can only afford him six feet for a grave! God help the Commonwealth that bids such welcome to the noblest qualities that can grace poor human nature! Yet that is the acknowledgment of Governor Wise himself! I will not dignify such a horde with the name of a Despotism; since Despotism is sometimes magnanimous. Witness Russia, covering Schamyl with generous protection. Compare that with mad Virginia, hurrying forward this ghastly trial.

They say it cost the officers and persons in responsible positions more effort to keep hundreds of startled soldiers from shooting the five prisoners, sixteen marines had made, than it cost those marines to take the Armory itself. Soldiers and civilians both alike—only a mob fancying itself a government! And mark you, I have said they were not a government. They not only are not a government, but they have not even the remotest idea of what a government is. (Laughter.) They do not begin to have the faintest conception of what a civilized government is. Here is a man arraigned before a jury, or about to be. The State of Virginia, as she calls herself, is about to try him. The first step in that trial is a jury; the second is a judge; and at the head stands the Chief Executive of the State, who holds the power to pardon murder; and yet that very Executive, who, according to the principles of the sublimest chapter in Algernon Sydney's immortal book, is bound by the very responsibility that rests on him, to keep his mind impartial as to the guilt of any person arraigned, hastens down to Richmond, hurries to the platform, and proclaims to the assembled Commonwealth of Virginia, "The man is a murderer, and ought to be hung." Almost every lip in the State might have said it except that single lip of its Governor; and the moment he had uttered these words, in the theory of the English law, it was not possible to impannel an impartial jury in the Commonwealth of Virginia; it was not possible to get the materials and the machinery to try him according to even the ugliest pattern of English jurisprudence. And yet the Governor does not know that he has written himself down non compos, and the Commonwealth that he governs supposes itself still a Christian polity. They have not the faintest conception of what goes to make up government. The worst Jeffries that ever, in his most drunken hour, climbed up a lamp-post in the streets of London, would not have tried a man who could not stand on his feet. There is no such record in the blackest roll of tyranny. If Jeffries could speak, he would thank God that at last his name might be taken down from the gibbet of History, since the Virginia Beach has made his worst act white, set against the blackness of this modern infamy. (Applause.) And yet the New York press daily prints the accounts of the trial. Trial! In the names of Holt and Somers, of Hale and Erskine, of Parsons, Marshall, and Jay, I protest against the name. Trial for life, in Anglo-Saxon dialect, has a proud, historic meaning. It includes indictment by impartial peers; a copy of such indictment and a list of witnesses furnished the prisoner, with ample time to scrutinize both; liberty to choose, and time to get counsel; a sound body and a sound mind to arrange one's defence; I need not add, a judge and jury impartial as the lot of humanity will admit; honored bulwarks and safeguards, each one the trophy and result of a century's struggle. Wounded, fevered, lying half unconscious on his pallet, unable to stand on his feet, the trial half finished before his first request for aid had reached his friends,—no list of witnesses or knowledge of them till the crier, calling the name of some assassin of his comrades, wakes him to consciousness; the judge a tool, and the prosecutor seeking popularity by pandering to the mob; no decent form observed, and the essence of a fair trial wholly wanting, our History and Law alike protest against degrading the honored name of Jury Trial by leading it to such an outrage as this. The Inquisition used to break every other bone in a man's body, and then lay him on a pallet, giving him neither counsel nor opportunity to consult one, and wring from his tortured mouth something like a confession, and call it a trial. But it was heaven-robed innocence compared with the trial, or what the New York press call so, that has been going on in crazed and maddened Charlestown.

I wish I could say any thing worthy of the great deed which has taken place in our day—the opening of the sixth seal, the pouring out of the last vial but one on a corrupt and giant Institution. I know that many men will deem me a fanatic for uttering this whosesale vituperation, as it will be called, upon a State, and this indorsement of a madman. I can only say that I have spoken on this Anti-slavery question before the American people thirty years; that I have seen the day when this same phase of popular feeling—rifles and force—was on the other side. You remember the first time I was ever privileged to stand on this platform by the magnanimous generosity of your clergyman, when New York was about to bully and crush out the freedom of speech at the dictation of Capt. Rynders. From that day to this, the same braving of public thought has been going on from here to Kansas, until it bloomed in the events of the last three years. It has changed the whole face of the sentiment in these Northern States. You meet with the evidence of it every where. When the first news from Harper's Ferry came to Massachusetts, if you were riding in the cars, if you were walking in the streets, if you met a Democrat, or a Whig, or a Republican, no matter what his politics, it was a singular circumstance that he did not speak of the guilt of Brown, of the atrocity of the deed, as you might have expected. The first impulsive expression, the first outbreak of every man's words was, "What a pity he did not succeed! (Laughter.) What a fool he was for not going off Monday, when he had all he wanted! How strange that he did not take his victory, and march away with it!" It indicated the unconscious leavening of a sympathy with the attempt. Days followed on; they commenced what they called their trial; you met the same classes again; no man said he ought to be hung; no man said he was guilty; no man predicated any thing of his moral position; every man voluntarily and inevitably seemed to give vent to his indignation at the farce of a trial, indicative again of that unheeded, potent, unconscious, but widespread sympathy on the side of Brown.

Do you suppose that these things mean nothing? What the tender and poetic youth dreams to-day, as Emerson says, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is to-morrow the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the charter of nations. The American people have begun to feel. The mute eloquence of the fugitive slave has gone up and down the highways and byways of the country; it will annex itself to the great American heart of the North, even in the most fossil state of its hunkerism, as a latent sympathy with its right side. This blow, like the first gun at Lexington, "heard around the world,"—this blow at Harper's Ferry reveals men. Watch those about you, and you will see more of the temper and unconscious purpose and real moral position of men than you would imagine. This is the way nations are to be judged. Be not in a hurry; action will come soon enough from this sentiment. We stereotype feeling into intellect, and then into statutes, and finally into national character. We have now the first stage of growth. Nature's live growths crowd out and rive dead matter. Ideas strangle statutes. Pulse-beats wear down granite, whether piled in jails or Capitols. The people's hearts are the only title-deeds after all. Your Barnburners said, "Patroon titles are unrighteous." Judges replied, "Such is the law." Wealth shrieked, "Vested rights!" Parties talked of Constitutions; still, the people said, "Sin." They shot a sheriff. A parrot press cried, "Anarchy!" Lawyers growled, "Murder!"—still, nobody

was hung, if I recollect aright. To-day, the heart of the Barnburner beats in the statute-book of your State. John Brown's movement against Slavery is exactly the same. Wait a while, and you'll all agree with me. What is fanaticism today is the fashionable creed to-morrow, and trite as the multiplication table a week after.

John Brown has stirred those omnipotent pulses—Lydia Maria Child’s is one. She says, "That dungeon is the place for me," and writes a letter in magnanimous appeal to the better nature of Gov. Wise. She says in it, "John Brown is a hero; he has done a noble deed. I think he was all right; but he is sick; he is wounded; he wants a woman's nursing. I am an Abolitionist; I have been so thirty years. I think Slavery is a sin, and John Brown a saint; but I want to come and nurse him; and I pledge my word that if you will open his prison door, I will use the privilege, under sacred honor, only to nurse him. I enclose you a message to Brown; be sure and deliver it." And the message was, "Old man, God bless you! You have struck a noble blow; you have done a mighty work; God was with you; your heart was in the right place. I send you across five hundred miles the pulse of a woman's gratitude." And Gov. Wise has opened the door, and announced to the world that she may go in. John Brown has conquered the pirate. (Applause.) Hope! there is hope every where. It is only the universal history:

“Right forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne;

But that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 43-66

Mary Ann Day Brown to John Brown, November 29, 1859

NEAR PHILADELPHIA, Nov. 29.

My dear Husband: I have just received your letter to Mr. M., saying that you would like to have me stay here until you are disposed of. I felt as if I could not go any further away until that sad event. You are the gainer, but we are the losers; but God will take care of us all. I am with Mrs. Lucretia Mott. . . . I find warm friends every where I go. I cannot begin to tell you the good this Sacrifice has done, or is likely to do, for the Oppressed. O, I feel it is a great Sacrifice; but hope that God will enable us to bear it. . . . I went to hear Mrs. Mott preach to-day, and heard a most excellent sermon; she made a number of allusions to you, and the preaching you are doing, and are likely to do. I expect to hear Wendell Phillips tomorrow night. Every one thinks that God is with you. I hope he will be with you unto the end. Do write to me all you can. I have written to Governor Wise for your body and those of our beloved sons. I find there is no lack of money to effect it if they can be had. Farewell, my dear, beloved husband, whom I am never to see in this world again, but hope to meet in the next.

From your most affectionate wife,

Mary A. Brown.

SOURCE: James Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, p. 428

Charles Sumner to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, January 24, 1850

[January 24, 1850.]

DEAR HENRY,

Whittier is here on a short visit. I go to-night with Miss Bremer to hear Wendell Phillips, and to-morrow evening dine out, or I should insist upon taking him [Whittier] to you. He is staying at the Quincy Hotel, in Brattle Street.

I regret the sentiments of John Van Buren about mobs, but rejoice that he is right on slavery. I do not know that I should differ very much from him in saying that we have more to fear from the corruption of wealth than from mobs. Edmund Dwight once gave, within my knowledge, two thousand dollars to influence a single election. Other men whom we know very well are reputed to have given much larger sums. It is in this way, in part, that the natural antislavery sentiment of Massachusetts has been kept down; it is money, money, money, that keeps Palfrey from being elected. Knowing these things, it was natural that John Van Buren should say that we had more to fear from wealth than from mobs. He is a politician,—not a philanthropist or moralist, but a politician, like Clay, Winthrop, Abbott Lawrence; and he has this advantage, that he has dedicated his rare powers to the cause of human freedom. In this I would welcome any person from any quarter.

SOURCE: Edward L. Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. 3, p. 212

Diary of Gideon Welles: October 21, 1865

Have been unable to write daily. The President has released A. H. Stephens, Regan, Trenholm, and others on parole, and less dissatisfaction has manifested itself than I expected.

The Episcopal convention at Philadelphia is a disgrace to the church, to the country, and the times. Resolutions expressing gratification on the return of peace and the removal of the cause of war have been voted down, and much abject and snivelling servility exhibited, lest the Rebels should be offended. There are duties to the country as well as the church.

Montgomery Blair made a speech to a Democratic meeting at Cooper Institute, New York. As much exception will be taken to the audience he selected as to his remarks. Although he has cause for dissatisfaction, it is to be regretted that he should run into an organization which is hostile to those who have rallied for the Union. True, they profess to support the President and approve his course. This is perhaps true in a degree, but that organization was factious during the War, and was in sympathy with the Rebels prior to hostilities. Their present attitude is from hatred of the Republicans more than sympathy with the President. Those of us who are Democrats and who went into the Union organization ought to act in good faith with our associates, and not fly off to those who have imperilled the cause, without fully reflecting on what we have done, and are doing. Perhaps Blair feels himself justified, but I would not have advised his course.

Wendell Phillips has made an onset on the Administration and its friends, and also on the extremists, hitting Banks and Sumner as well as the President. Censorious and unpractical, the man, though possessed of extraordinary gifts, is a useless member of society and deservedly without influence.

Secretary Seward has been holding forth at Auburn in a studied and long-prepared speech, intended for the special laudation and glory of himself and Stanton. It has the artful shrewdness of the man and of his other half, Thurlow Weed, to whom it was shown, and whose suggestions I think I can see in the utterances. Each and all the Departments are shown up by him; each of the respective heads is mentioned, with the solitary exception of Mr. Bates, omitted by design.

The three dernier occupants of the Treasury are named with commendation, so of the three Secretaries of the Interior and the two Postmasters-General. The Secretary of the Navy has a bland compliment, and, as there have not been changes in that Department, its honors are divided between the Secretary and the Assistant Secretary. But Stanton is extolled as one of the lesser deities, is absolutely divine. His service covers the War and months preceding, sufficient to swallow Cameron, who is spoken of as honest and worthy. Speed, who is the only Attorney-General mentioned, is made an extraordinary man of extraordinary abilities and mind, for like Stanton he falls in with the Secretary of State.

It is not particularly pleasing to Seward that I, with whom he has had more controversy on important questions than with any man in the Cabinet, — I, a Democrat, who came in at the organization of the Lincoln Cabinet and have continued through without interruption, especially at the dark period of the assassination and the great change when he was helpless and of no avail, it is not pleasing to him that I should alone have gone straight through with my Department while there have been changes in all others, and an interregnum in his own. Hence two heads to the Navy Department, my Assistant's and mine. Had there been two or three changes as in the others, this remark would probably not have been made. Yet there is an artful design to stir up discord by creating ill blood or jealousy between myself and Fox, whom they do not love, which is quite as much in the vein of Weed as of Seward. I have no doubt the subject and points of this speech were talked over by the two. Indeed, Seward always consults Weed when he strikes a blow.

His assumptions of what he has done, and thought, and said are characteristic by reason of their arrogance and error. He was no advocate for placing Johnson on the ticket as Vice-President, as he asserts, but was for Hamlin, as was every member of the Cabinet but myself. Not that they were partisans, but for a good arrangement.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 382-4

Diary of Gideon Welles: December 1, 1865

It is some weeks since I have had time to write a word in this diary. In the mean time many things have happened which I desired to note but none of very great importance. What time I could devote to writing when absent from the Department has been given to the preparation of my Annual Report. That is always irksome and hard labor for me. All of it has been prepared at my house out of the office hours, except three mornings when I have remained past my usual hour of going to the Department.

My reports are perhaps more full and elaborate than I should make them; but if I wish anything done I find I must take the responsibility of presenting it. Members of Congress, though jealous of anything that they consider, or which they fear others will consider, dictation, are nevertheless timid as regards responsibility. When a matter is accomplished they are willing to be thought the father of it, yet some one must take the blows which the measure receives in its progress. I therefore bring forward the principal subjects in my report. If they fail, I have done my duty. If they are carried, I shall contend with no one for the credit of paternity. I read the last proof pages of my report this evening.

Members of Congress are coming in fast, though not early. Speaker Colfax came several days since. His coming was heralded with a flourish. He was serenaded, and delivered a prepared speech, which was telegraphed over the country and published the next morning. It is the offspring of an intrigue, and one that is pretty extensive. The whole proceeding was premeditated.

My friend Preston King committed suicide by drowning himself in the Hudson River. His appointment as Collector was unfortunate. He was a sagacious and honest man, a statesman and legislator of high order and of unquestioned courage in expressing his convictions and resolute firmness in maintaining them. To him, a Democrat and Constitutionalist, more than to any other one man may be ascribed the merit of boldly meeting the arrogant and imperious slaveholding oligarchy and organizing the party which eventually overthrew them. While Wendell Phillips, Sumner, and others were active and fanatical theorists, Preston King was earnest and practical. J. Q. Adams and Giddings displayed sense and courage, but neither of them had the faculty which K. possessed for concentrating, combining, and organizing men in party measures and action. I boarded in the same house with King in 1846 when the Wilmot Proviso was introduced on an appropriation bill. Root and Brinkerhoff of Ohio, Rathbun and Grover and Stetson [sic]¹ of New York, besides Wilmot and some few others whom I do not recall, were in that combination, and each supposed himself the leader. They were indeed all leaders, but King, without making pretensions, was the man, the hand, that bound this sheaf together. From the day when he took his stand King never faltered. There was not a more earnest party man, but he would not permit the discipline and force of party to carry him away from his honest convictions. Others quailed and gave way but he did not. He was not eloquent or much given to speech-making, but could state his case clearly, and his undoubted sincerity made a favorable impression always.

Not ever having held a place where great individual and pecuniary responsibility devolved upon him, the office of Collector embarrassed and finally overwhelmed him.

Some twenty-five years ago he was in the Retreat for the Insane in Hartford, and there I knew him. He became greatly excited during the Canadian rebellion and its disastrous termination and the melancholy end of some of his townsmen had temporarily impaired his reason. But it was brief; he rapidly recovered, and, unlike most persons who have been deranged, it gave him no uneasiness and he spoke of it with as much unconcern as of a fever. The return of the malady led to his committing suicide. Possessed of the tenderest sensibilities and a keen sense of honor, the party exactions of the New York politicians, the distress, often magnified, of those whom he was called upon to displace, the party requirements which Weed, who boarded with him, and others demanded, greatly distressed him, and led to the final catastrophe.

King was a friend and pupil of Silas Wright, with whom he studied his profession; was the successor of that grand statesman in both branches of Congress. Both had felt most deeply the bad faith and intrigue which led to the defeat of Van Buren in 1844, and to the ultimate downfall of the Democratic party, for the election of Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan were but flickering efforts to rekindle the fires of the old organizations. Confidence and united zeal never again prevailed, and parties subsequently took a sectional or personal character.

_______________

¹ There was no Stetson in Congress at the time. Perhaps Wheaton of New York, who was one of the supporters of the Proviso, was the man whom Mr. Welles had in mind.

SOURCE: Gideon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy Under Lincoln and Johnson, Vol. 2: April 1, 1864 — December 31, 1866, p. 384-7

Diary of Caroline Cowles Richards: March 4, 1862

John B. Gough lectured in Bemis Hall last night and was entertained by Governor Clark. I told Grandfather that I had an invitation to the lecture and he asked me who from. I told him from Mr. Noah T. Clarke's brother. He did not make the least objection and I was awfully glad, because he has asked me to the whole course. Wendell Phillips and Horace Greeley, E. H. Chapin and John G. Saxe and Bayard Taylor are expected. John B. Gough's lecture was fine. He can make an audience laugh as much by wagging his coat tails as some men can by talking an hour.

SOURCE: Caroline Cowles Richards, Village Life in America, 1852-1872, p. 139-40

Frederick Douglass to Theodore Tilton, October 15, 1864

Rochester, Oct. 15, 1864.

My Dear Mr. Tilton:

I am obliged by your favor containing a copy of your recent speech in Latimer hall. I had read that speech in the Tribune several days ago, and in my heart thanked you for daring thus to break the spell of enchantment which slavery, though wounded, dying and despised, is still able to bind the tongues of our republican orators. It was a timely word wisely and well spoken, the best and most luminous spark struck from the flint and steel of this canvass. To all appearance we have been more ashamed of the negro during than those of '56 and '60. The President's "To whom it may concern," frightened his party and his party in return frightened the President. I found him in this alarmed condition when I called upon him six weeks ago — and it is well to note the time. The country was struck with one of those bewilderments which dethrone reason for the moment. Every body was thinking and dreaming of peace — and the impression had gone abroad that the President's antislavery policy was about the only thing which prevented a peaceful settlement with the Rebels. McClellan was nominated and at that time his prospects were bright as Mr. Lincoln's were gloomy. You must therefore, judge the President's words in the light of the circumstances in which he spoke. Atlanta had not fallen; Sheridan had not swept the Shenandoah —and men were ready for peace almost at any price. The President was pressed on every hand to modify his letter “To whom it may concern,” — how to meet this pressure he did me the honor to ask my opinion. He showed me a letter written with a view to meet the peace clamour raised against him. The first point made in it was the important fact that no man or set of men authorized to speak for the Confederate Government had ever submitted a proposition for peace to him. Hence the charge that he had in some way stood in the way of peace fell to the ground. He had always stood ready to listen to any such propositions. The next point referred to was the charge that he had in his Niagara letter committed himself and the country to an abolition war rather than a war for the union, so that even if the latter could be attained by negotiation, the war would go on for Abolition. The President did not propose to take back what he had said in his Niagara letter but wished to relieve the fears of hit peace friends by making it appear that the thing which they feared could not happen and was wholly beyond his power. Even if I would, I could not carry on the war for the abolition of slavery. The country would not sustain such a war and I could do nothing without the support of Congress. I could not make the abolition of slavery an absolute prior condition to the re-establishment of the union. All that the President said on this point was to make manifest his want of power to do the thing which his enemies and pretended friends professed to be afraid he would do. Now the question he put to me was "Shall I send forth this letter?" To which I answered "Certainly not." It would be given a broader meaning than you intend to convey — it would be taken as a complete surrender of your antislavery policy — and do yon serious damage. In answer to your Copperhead accusers your friends can make this argument of your want of power — but you cannot wisely say a word on that point. I have looked and feared that Mr. Lincoln would say something of the sort, but he has been perfectly silent on that point and I think will remain so. But the thing which alarmed me most was this: The President said he wanted some plan devised by which we could get more of the slaves within our lines. He thought that now was their time— and that such only of them as succeeded in getting within our lines would be free after the war is over. This shows that the President only has faith in his proclamations of freedom during the war and that he believes their operation will cease with the war. We were long together and there was much said—but this is enough.

I gave my address, To the People of the U. S., to the Committee appointed to publish the Minutes of the Convention. It is too lengthy for a newspaper article though of course I should be very glad to see it noticed in the Independent. You may not be aware that I do not see the Independent now-a-days. It was discontinued several months ago. If you were not like myself taxed on every hand both by your own disposition to give and the disposition of others to ask I should ask you to send me the Independent for one year on your own account.

We had Anna Dickinson here on Thursday night. Her speech made a profound impression. Nothing from Phillips, Beecher or yourself could have been more eloquent, and in her masterly handling of statistics she reminded one of Horace Mann in his palmiest days. I never listened to her with more wonder. One thing however I think you can say to her, if you ever get the chance, for it ought to be said and she will hear it and bear it from you, as well or better than from most other persons, and that is Stop that waiting. She walked incessantly — back and forth — from one side the broad platform to the other. It is a new trick and one which I neither think useful or ornamental but really a defect and disfigurement. She would allow me to tell her so, I think, because she knows how sincerely I appreciate both her wonderful talents and her equally wonderful devotion to the cause of my enslaved race.

I am not doing much in this Presidential Canvass for the reason that Republican committees do not wish to expose themselves to the charge of being the "Niggar" party. The negro is the deformed child which is put out of the room when company comes. I hope to speak some after the election, though not much before, and I am inclined to think I shall be able to speak all the more usefully because I have had so little to say during the present canvass. I now look upon the election of Mr. Lincoln as settled. When there was any shadow of a hope that a man of more decided antislavery convictions and policy could be elected, I was not for Mr. Lincoln, but as soon as the Chicago convention my mind was made up and it is made up still. All dates changed with the Domination of McClellan.

I hope that in listening to Mr. Stanton's version of my visit to the President you kept in mind something of Mr. Stanton's own state of mind concerning public affairs. I found him in a very gloomy state of mind, much less hopeful than myself, and yet more cheerful than I expected to find him. I judge from your note that he must have imparted somewhat of the hue of his own mind to my statements. He thinks far less of the President's honesty than I do, and far less of his antislavery than I do I have not yet come to think that honesty and politics are incompatible.

SOURCE: Buffalo Public Library, Descriptive Catalogue of the Gluck Collection of Manuscripts and Autographs in the Buffalo Public Library, p. 35-7