A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN
By Henry David Thoreau
I TRUST that you will pardon me for being here. I do not wish to force my
thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I
would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers,
and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us
nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of,
him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.
First, as to his history. I will endeavor to omit, as much as possible, what you
have already read. I need not describe his person to you, for probably most of
you have seen and will not soon forget him. I am told that his grandfather, John
Brown, was an officer in the Revolution; that he himself was born in Connecticut
about the beginning of this century, but early went with his father to Ohio. I heard
him say that his father was a contractor who furnished beef to the army there, in
the War of 1812; that he accompanied him to the camp, and assisted him in that
employment, seeing a good deal of military life- more, perhaps, than if he had
been a soldier; for he was often present at the councils of the officers. Especially,
he learned by experience how armies are supplied and maintained in the field- a
work which, he observed, requires at least as much experience and skill as to
lead them in battle. He said that few persons had any conception of the cost,
even the pecuniary cost, of firing a single bullet in war. He saw enough, at any
rate, to disgust him with a military life; indeed, to excite in him a great abhorrence
of it; so much so, that though he was tempted by the offer of some petty office in
the army, when he was about eighteen, he not only declined that, but he also
refused to train when warned, and was fined for it. He then resolved that he
would never have anything to do with any war, unless it were a war for liberty.
When the troubles in Kansas began, he sent several of his sons thither to
strengthen the party of the Free State men, fitting them out with such weapons as
he had; telling them that if the troubles should increase, and there should be need
of him, he would follow, to assist them with his hand and counsel. This, as you all
know, he soon after did; and it was through his agency, far more than any other's,
that Kansas was made free.
For a part of his life he was a surveyor, and at one time he was engaged in
wool-growing, and he went to Europe as an agent about that business. There, as
everywhere, he had his eyes about him, and made many original observations. He
said, for instance, that he saw why the soil of England was so rich, and that of
Germany (I think it was) so poor, and he thought of writing to some of the
crowned heads about it. It was because in England the peasantry live on the soil
which they cultivate, but in Germany they are gathered into villages at night. It is a
pity that he did not make a book of his observations.
I should say that he was an old-fashioned man in his respect for the Constitution,
and his faith in the permanence of this Union. Slavery he deemed to be wholly
opposed to these, and he was its determined foe.
He was by descent and birth a New England farmer, a man of great common
sense, deliberate and practical as that class is, and tenfold more so. He was like
the best of those who stood at Concord Bridge once, on Lexington Common,
and on Bunker Hill, only he was firmer and higher-principled than any that I have
chanced to hear of as there. It was no abolition lecturer that converted him. Ethan
Allen and Stark, with whom he may in some respects be compared, were
rangers in a lower and less important field. They could bravely face their
country's foes, but he had the courage to face his country herself when she was in
the wrong. A Western writer says, to account for his escape from so many perils,
that he was concealed under a "rural exterior"; as if, in that prairie land, a
hero
should, by good rights, wear a citizen's dress only.
He did not go to the college called Harvard, good old Alma Mater as she is. He
was not fed on the pap that is there furnished. As he phrased it, "I know no more
of grammar than one of your calves." But he went to the great university of the
West, where he sedulously pursued the study of Liberty, for which he had early
betrayed a fondness, and having taken many degrees, he finally commenced the
public practice of Humanity in Kansas, as you all know. Such were his
humanities, and not any study of grammar. He would have left a Greek accent
slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.
He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most part,
see nothing at all- the Puritans. It would be in vain to kill him. He died lately in the
time of Cromwell, but he reappeared here. Why should he not? Some of the
Puritan stock are said to have come over and settled in New England. They were
a class that did something else than celebrate their forefathers' day, and eat
parched corn in remembrance of that time. They were neither Democrats nor
Republicans, but men of simple habits, straightforward, prayerful; not thinking
much of rulers who did not fear God, not making many compromises, nor
seeking after available candidates.
"In his camp," as one has recently written, and as I have myself heard him
state,
"he permitted no profanity; no man of loose morals was suffered to remain there,
unless, indeed, as a prisoner of war. 'I would rather,' said he, 'have the
small-pox, yellow fever, and cholera, all together in my camp, than a man without
principle.... It is a mistake, sir, that our people make, when they think that bullies
are the best fighters, or that they are the fit men to oppose these Southerners.
Give me men of good principles- God-fearing men- men who respect
themselves, and with a dozen of them I will oppose any hundred such men as
these Buford ruffians.'" He said that if one offered himself to be a soldier under
him, who was forward to tell what he could or would do if he could only get sight
of the enemy, he had but little confidence in him.
He was never able to find more than a score or so of recruits whom he would
accept, and only about a dozen, among them his sons, in whom he had perfect
faith. When he was here, some years ago, he showed to a few a little manuscript
book- his "orderly book" I think he called it- containing the names of his
company in Kansas, and the rules by which they bound themselves; and he stated
that several of them had already sealed the contract with their blood. When some
one remarked that, with the addition of a chaplain, it would have been a perfect
Cromwellian troop, he observed that he would have been glad to add a chaplain
to the list, if he could have found one who could fill that office worthily. It is easy
enough to find one for the United States Army. I believe that he had prayers in
his camp morning and evening, nevertheless.
He was a man of Spartan habits, and at sixty was scrupulous about his diet at
your table, excusing himself by saying that he must eat sparingly and fare hard, as
became a soldier, or one who was fitting himself for difficult enterprises, a life of
exposure.
A man of rare common sense and directness of speech, as of action; a
transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles- that was what
distinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but carrying out
the purpose of a life. I noticed that he did not overstate anything, but spoke
within bounds. I remember, particularly, how, in his speech here, he referred to
what his family had suffered in Kansas, without ever giving the least vent to his
pent-up fire. It was a volcano with an ordinary chimney-flue. Also referring to the
deeds of certain Border Ruffians, he said, rapidly paring away his speech, like an
experienced soldier, keeping a reserve of force and meaning, "They had a perfect
right to be hung." He was not in the least a rhetorician, was not talking to
Buncombe or his constituents anywhere, had no need to invent anything but to tell
the simple truth, and communicate his own resolution; therefore he appeared
incomparably strong, and eloquence in Congress and elsewhere seemed to me at
a discount. It was like the speeches of Cromwell compared with those of an
ordinary king.
As for his tact and prudence, I will merely say, that at a time when scarcely a
man from the Free States was able to reach Kansas by any direct route, at least
without having his arms taken from him, he, carrying what imperfect guns and
other weapons he could collect, openly and slowly drove an ox-cart through
Missouri, apparently in the capacity of a surveyor, with his surveying compass
exposed in it, and so passed unsuspected, and had ample opportunity to learn the
designs of the enemy. For some time after his arrival he still followed the same
profession. When, for instance, he saw a knot of the ruffians on the prairie,
discussing, of course, the single topic which then occupied their minds, he would,
perhaps, take his compass and one of his sons, and proceed to run an imaginary
line right through the very spot on which that conclave had assembled, and when
he came up to them, he would naturally pause and have some talk with them,
learning their news, and, at last, all their plans perfectly; and having thus
completed his real survey he would resume his imaginary one, and run on his line
till he was out of sight.
When I expressed surprise that he could live in Kansas at all, with a price set
upon his head, and so large a number, including the authorities, exasperated
against him, he accounted for it by saying, "It is perfectly well understood that I
will not be taken." Much of the time for some years he has had to skulk in
swamps, suffering from poverty, and from sickness which was the consequence
of exposure, befriended only by Indians and a few whites. But though it might be
known that he was lurking in a particular swamp, his foes commonly did not care
to go in after him. He could even come out into a town where there were more
Border Ruffians than Free State men, and transact some business, without
delaying long, and yet not be molested; for, said he, "no little handful of men were
willing to undertake it, and a large body could not be got together in season."
As for his recent failure, we do not know the facts about it. It was evidently far
from being a wild and desperate attempt. His enemy Mr. Vallandigham is
compelled to say that "it was among the best planned and executed conspiracies
that ever failed."
Not to mention his other successes, was it a failure, or did it show a want of
good management, to deliver from bondage a dozen human beings, and walk off
with them by broad daylight, for weeks if not months, at a leisurely pace, through
one State after another, for half the length of the North, conspicuous to all
parties, with a price set upon his head, going into a court-room on his way and
telling what he had done, thus convincing Missouri that it was not profitable to try
to hold slaves in his neighborhood?- and this, not because the government
menials were lenient, but because they were afraid of him.
Yet he did not attribute his success, foolishly, to "his star," or to any magic.
He
said, truly, that the reason why such greatly superior numbers quailed before him
was, as one of his prisoners confessed, because they lacked a cause- a kind of
armor which he and his party never lacked. When the time came, few men were
found willing to lay down their lives in defence of what they knew to be wrong;
they did not like that this should be their last act in this world. But to make haste
to his last act, and its effects.
The newspapers seem to ignore, or perhaps are really ignorant, of the fact that
there are at least as many as two or three individuals to a town throughout the
North who think much as the present speaker does about him and his enterprise.
I do not hesitate to say that they are an important and growing party. We aspire
to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history
and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.
Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five
negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this
might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth?
They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they did
not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States
would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tacties.
Though we wear no crape, the thought of that man's position and probable fate is
spoiling many a man's day here at the North for other thinking. If any one who
has seen him here can pursue successfully any other train of thought, I do not
know what he is made of. If there is any such who gets his usual allowance of
sleep, I will warrant him to fatten easily under any circumstances which do not
touch his body or purse. I put a piece of paper and a pencil under my pillow, and
when I could not sleep I wrote in the dark.
On the whole, my respect for my fellow-men, except as one may outweigh a
million, is not being increased these days. I have noticed the cold-blooded way in
which newspaper writers and men generally speak of this event, as if an ordinary
malefactor, though one of unusual "pluck"- as the Governor of Virginia is
reported to have said, using the language of the cockpit, "the gamest man be ever
saw"- had been caught, and were about to be hung. He was not dreaming of his
foes when the governor thought he looked so brave. It turns what sweetness I
have to gall, to hear, or hear of, the remarks of some of my neighbors. When we
heard at first that he was dead, one of my townsmen observed that "he died as
the fool dieth"; which, pardon me, for an instant suggested a likeness in him dying
to my neighbor living. Others, craven-hearted, said disparagingly, that "he threw
his life away," because he resisted the government. Which way have they thrown
their lives, pray?- such as would praise a man for attacking singly an ordinary
band of thieves or murderers. I hear another ask, Yankee-like, "What will he gain
by it?" as if he expected to fill his pockets by this enterprise. Such a one has no
idea of gain but in this worldly sense. If it does not lead to a 'surprise' party, if he
does not get a new pair of boots, or a vote of thanks, it must be a failure. "But he
won't gain anything by it." Well, no, I don't suppose he could get
four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but then he stands a
chance to save a considerable part of his soul-and such a soul!- when you do
not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a
quart of blood, but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to.
Such do not know that like the seed is the fruit, and that, in the moral world,
when good seed is planted, good fruit is inevitable, and does not depend on our
watering and cultivating; that when you plant, or bury, a hero in his field, a crop
of heroes is sure to spring up. This is a seed of such force and vitality, that it does
not ask our leave to germinate.
The momentary charge at Balaklava, in obedience to a blundering command,
proving what a perfect machine the soldier is, has, properly enough, been
celebrated by a poet laureate; but the steady, and for the most part successful,
charge of this man, for some years, against the legions of Slavery, in obedience to
an infinitely higher command, is as much more memorable than that as an
intelligent and conscientious man is superior to a machine. Do you think that that
will go unsung?
"Served him right"- "A dangerous man"- "He is undoubtedly
insane." So they
proceed to live their sane, and wise, and altogether admirable lives, reading their
Plutarch a little, but chiefly pausing at that feat of Putnam, who was let down into
a wolf's den; and in this wise they nourish themselves for brave and patriotic
deeds some time or other. The Tract Society could afford to print that story of
Putnam. You might open the district schools with the reading of it, for there is
nothing about Slavery or the Church in it; unless it occurs to the reader that some
pastors are wolves in sheep's clothing. "The American Board of Commissioners
for Foreign Missions," even, might dare to protest against that wolf. I have heard
of boards, and of American boards, but it chances that I never heard of this
particular lumber till lately. And yet I hear of Northern men, and women, and
children, by families, buying a "life-membership" in such societies as these. A
life-membership in the grave! You can get buried cheaper than that.
Our foes are in our midst and all about us. There is hardly a house but is divided
against itself, for our foe is the all but universal woodenness of both head and
heart, the want of vitality in man, which is the effect of our vice; and hence are
begotten fear, superstition, bigotry, persecution, and slavery of all kinds. We are
mere figure-heads upon a bulk, with livers in the place of hearts. The curse is the
worship of idols, which at length changes the worshipper into a stone image
himself; and the New Englander is just as much an idolater as the Hindoo. This
man was an exception, for he did not set up even a political graven image
between him and his God.
A church that can never have done with excommunicating Christ while it exists!
Away with your broad and flat churches, and your narrow and tall churches!
Take a step forward, and invent a new style of out-houses. Invent a salt that will
save you, and defend our nostrils.
The modern Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the
liturgy, provided you will let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly afterward.
All his prayers begin with "Now I lay me down to sleep," and he is forever
looking forward to the time when he shall go to his "long rest." He has
consented
to perform certain old-established charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not
wish to hear of any new-fangled ones; he doesn't wish to have any supplementary
articles added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. He shows the whites of
his eyes on the Sabbath, and the blacks all the rest of the week. The evil is not
merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit. Many, no doubt, are well
disposed, but sluggish by constitution and by habit, and they cannot conceive of a
man who is actuated by higher motives than they are. Accordingly they
pronounce this man insane, for they know that they could never act as he does,
as long as they are themselves.
We dream of foreign countries, of other times and races of men, placing them at
a distance in history or space; but let some significant event like the present occur
in our midst, and we discover, often, this distance and this strangeness between
us and our nearest neighbors. They are our Austrias, and Chinas, and South Sea
Islands. Our crowded society becomes well spaced all at once, clean and
handsome to the eye- a city of magnificent distances. We discover why it was
that we never got beyond compliments and surfaces with them before; we
become aware of as many versts between us and them as there are between a
wandering Tartar and a Chinese town. The thoughtful man becomes a hermit in
the thoroughfares of the market-place. Impassable seas suddenly find their level
between us, or dumb steppes stretch themselves out there. It is the difference of
constitution, of intelligence, and faith, and not streams and mountains, that make
the true and impassable boundaries between individuals and between states.
None but the like-minded can come plenipotentiary to our court.
I read all the newspapers I could get within a week after this event, and I do not
remember in them a single expression of sympathy for these men. I have since
seen one noble statement, in a Boston paper, not editorial. Some voluminous
sheets decided not to print the full report of Brown's words to the exclusion of
other matter. It was as if a publisher should reject the manuscript of the New
Testament, and print Wilson's last speech. The same journal which contained this
pregnant news was chiefly filled, in parallel columns, with the reports of the
political conventions that were being held. But the descent to them was too steep.
They should have been spared this contrast- been printed in an extra, at least. To
turn from the voices and deeds of earnest men to the cackling of politicial
conventions! Office-seekers and speech-makers, who do not so much as lay an
honest egg, but wear their breasts bare upon an egg of chalk! Their great game is
the game of straws, or rather that universal aboriginal game of the platter, at
which the Indians cried hub, bub! Exclude the reports of religious and political
conventions, and publish the words of a living man.
But I object not so much to what they have omitted as to what they have
inserted. Even the Liberator called it "a misguided, wild, and apparently
insane-effort." As for the herd of newspapers and magazines, I do not chance to
know an editor in the country who will deliberately print anything which he knows
will ultimately and permanently reduce the number of his subscribers. They do not
believe that it would be expedient. How then can they print truth? If we do not
say pleasant things, they argue, nobody will attend to us. And so they do like
some travelling auctioneers, who sing an obscene song, in order to draw a crowd
around them. Republican editors, obliged to get their sentences ready for the
morning edition, and accustomed to look at everything by the twilight of politics,
express no admiration, nor true sorrow even, but call these men "deluded
fanatics"- "mistaken men"- "insane," or "crazed." It
suggests what a sane set of
editors we are blessed with, not "mistaken men"; who know very well on which
side their bread is buttered, at least.
A man does a brave and humane deed, and at once, on all sides, we hear people
and parties declaring, "I didn't do it, nor countenance him to do it, in any
conceivable way. It can't be fairly inferred from my past career." I, for one, am
not interested to hear you define your position. I don't know that I ever was or
ever shall be. I think it is mere egotism, or impertinent at this time. Ye needn't
take so much pains to wash your skirts of him. No intelligent man will ever be
convinced that he was any creature of yours. He went and came, as he himself
informs us, "under the auspices of John Brown and nobody else." The Republican
Party does not perceive how many his failure will make to vote more correctly
than they would have them. They have counted the votes of Pennsylvania & Co.,
but they have not correctly counted Captain Brown's vote. He has taken the
wind out of their sails- the little wind they had- and they may as well lie to and
repair.
What though he did not belong to your clique! Though you may not approve of
his method or his principles, recognize his magnanimity. Would you not like to
claim kindredship with him in that, though in no other thing he is like, or likely, to
you? Do you think that you would lose your reputation so? What you lost at the
spile, you would gain at the bung.
If they do not mean all this, then they do not speak the truth, and say what they
mean. They are simply at their old tricks still. "It was always conceded to
him,"
says one who calls him crazy, "that he was a conscientious man, very modest in
his demeanor, apparently inoffensive, until the subject of Slavery was introduced,
when he would exhibit a feeling of indignation unparalleled."
The slave-ship is on her way, crowded with its dying victims; new cargoes are
being added in mid-ocean; a small crew of slaveholders, countenanced by a large
body of passengers, is smothering four millions under the hatches, and yet the
politician asserts that the only proper way by which deliverance is to be obtained
is by "the quiet diffusion of the sentiments of humanity," without any
"outbreak."
As if the sentiments of humanity were ever found unaccompanied by its deeds,
and you could disperse them, all finished to order, the pure article, as easily as
water with a watering-pot, and so lay the dust. What is that that I hear cast
overboard? The bodies of the dead that have found deliverance. That is the way
we are "diffusing" humanity, and its sentiments with it.
Prominent and influential editors, accustomed to deal with politicians, men of an
infinitely lower grade, say, in their ignorance, that he acted "on the principle of
revenge." They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive
of him. I have no doubt that the time will come when they will begin to see him as
he was. They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle,
and not a politician or an Indian; of a man who did not wait till he was personally
interfered with or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to
the cause of the oppressed.
If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say
that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man. He did
not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize
unjust human laws, but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of
the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man
in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of
human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all
governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no
babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match
for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can
create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did
not exist. When a man stands up serenely against the condemnation and
vengeance of mankind, rising above them literally by a whole body- even though
he were of late the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself- the
spectacle is a sublime one- didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye
Republicans?- and we become criminal in comparison. Do yourselves the honor
to recognize him. He needs none of your respect.
As for the Democratic journals, they are not human enough to affect me at all. I
do not feel indignation at anything they may say.
I am aware that I anticipate a little- that he was still, at the last accounts, alive in
the hands of his foes; but that being the case, I have all along found myself
thinking and speaking of him as physically dead.
I do not believe in erecting statues to those who still live in our hearts, whose
bones have not yet crumbled in the earth around us, but I would rather see the
statue of Captain Brown in the Massachusetts State-House yard than that of any
other man whom I know. I rejoice that I live in this age, that I am his
contemporary.
What a contrast, when we turn to that political party which is so anxiously
shuffling him and his plot out of its way, and looking around for some available
slaveholder, perhaps, to be its candidate, at least for one who will execute the
Fugitive Slave Law, and all those other unjust laws which he took up arms to
annul!
Insane! A father and six sons, and one son-in-law, and several more men
besides- as many at least as twelve disciples- all struck with insanity at once;
while the same tyrant holds with a firmer gripe than ever his four millions of
slaves, and a thousand sane editors, his abettors, are saving their country and
their bacon! just as insane were his efforts in Kansas. Ask the tyrant who is his
most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane? Do the thousands who know
him best, who have rejoiced at his deeds in Kansas, and have afforded him
material aid there, think him insane? Such a use of this word is a mere trope with
most who persist in using it, and I have no doubt that many of the rest have
already in silence retracted their words.
Read his admirable answers to Mason and others. How they are dwarfed and
defeated by the contrast! On the one side, half-brutish, half-timid questioning; on
the other, truth, clear as lightning, crashing into their obscene temples. They are
made to stand with Pilate, and Gessler, and the Inquisition. How ineffectual their
speech and action! and what a void their silence! They are but helpless tools in
this great work. It was no human power that gathered them about this preacher.
What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to
Congress for, of late years?- to declare with effect what kind of sentiments? All
their speeches put together and boiled down- and probably they themselves will
confess it- do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the
few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harper's Ferry
engine-house- that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world,
though not to represent you there. No, he was not our representative in any
sense. He was too fair a specimen of a man to represent the like of us. Who,
then, were his constituents? If you read his words understandingly you will find
out. In his case there is no idle eloquence, no made, nor maiden speech, no
compliments to the oppressor. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher
of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he retained his
faculty of speech- a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer and longer range.
And the New York Herald reports the conversation verbatim! It does not know
of what undying words it is made the vehicle.
I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the report of that
conversation and still call the principal in it insane. It has the ring of a saner sanity
than an ordinary discipline and habits of life, than an ordinary organization,
secure. Take any sentence of it- "Any questions that I can honorably answer, I
will; not otherwise. So far as I am myself concerned, I have told everything
truthfully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk about his vindictive spirit,
while
they really admire his heroism, have no test by which to detect a noble man, no
amalgam to combine with his pure gold. They mix their own dross with it.
It is a relief to turn from these slanders to the testimony of his more truthful, but
frightened jailers and hangmen. Governor Wise speaks far more justly and
appreciatingly of him than any Northern editor, or politician, or public personage,
that I chance to have heard from. I know that you can afford to hear him again on
this subject. He says: "They are themselves mistaken who take him to be a
madman.... He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but just to him to say
that he was humane to his prisoners.... And he inspired me with great trust in his
integrity as a man of truth. He is a fanatic, vain and garrulous" (I leave that part
to
Mr. Wise), "but firm, truthful, and intelligent. His men, too, who survive, are like
him.... Colonel Washington says that he was the coolest and firmest man he ever
saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead by his side, and another
shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son with one hand, and held his rifle
with the other, and commanded his men with the utmost composure, encouraging
them to be firm, and to sell their lives as dear as they could. Of the three white
prisoners, Brown, Stevens, and Coppoc, it was hard to say which was most
firm."
Almost the first Northern men whom the slaveholder has learned to respect!
The testimony of Mr. Vallandigham, though less valuable, is of the same purport,
that "it is vain to underrate either the man or his conspiracy.... He is the farthest
possible removed from the ordinary ruffian, fanatic, or madman."
"All is quiet at Harper's Ferry," say the journals. What is the character of
that
calm which follows when the law and the slaveholder prevail? I regard this event
as a touchstone designed to bring out, with glaring distinctness, the character of
this government. We needed to be thus assisted to see it by the light of history. It
needed to see itself. When a government puts forth its strength on the side of
injustice, as ours to maintain slavery and kill the liberators of the slave, it reveals
itself a merely brute force, or worse, a demoniacal force. It is the head of the
Plug-Uglies. It is more manifest than ever that tyranny rules. I see this government
to be effectually allied with France and Austria in oppressing mankind. There sits
a tyrant holding fettered four millions of slaves; here comes their heroic liberator.
This most hypocritical and diabolical government looks up from its seat on the
gasping four millions, and inquires with an assumption of innocence: "What do
you assault me for? Am I not an honest man? Cease agitation on this subject, or I
will make a slave of you, too, or else hang you."
We talk about a representative government; but what a monster of a government
is that where the noblest faculties of the mind, and the whole heart, are not
represented! A semihuman tiger or ox, stalking over the earth, with its heart taken
out and the top of its brain shot away. Heroes have fought well on their stumps
when their legs were shot off, but I never heard of any good done by such a
government as that.
The only government that I recognize- and it matters not how few are at the head
of it, or how small its army- is that power that establishes justice in the land,
never that which establishes injustice. What shall we think of a government to
which all the truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between it
and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be Christian and
crucifies a million Christs every day!
Treason! Where does such treason take its rise? I cannot help thinking of you as
you deserve, ye governments. Can you dry up the fountains of thought? High
treason, when it is resistance to tyranny here below, has its origin in, and is first
committed by, the power that makes and forever re-creates man. When you
have caught and hung all these human rebels, you have accomplished nothing but
your own guilt, for you have not struck at the fountain-head. You presume to
contend with a foe against whom West Point cadets and rifled cannon point not.
Can all the art of the cannon-founder tempt matter to turn against its maker? Is
the form in which the founder thinks he casts it more essential than the
constitution of it and of himself?
The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to
keep them in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of the confederated
overseers to prevent their escape. Such are not all the inhabitants of
Massachusetts, but such are they who rule and are obeyed here. It was
Massachusetts, as well as Virginia, that put down this insurrection at Harper's
Ferry. She sent the marines there, and she will have to pay the penalty of her sin.
Suppose that there is a society in this State that out of its own purse and
magnanimity saves all the fugitive slaves that run to us, and protects our colored
fellow-citizens, and leaves the other work to the government, so called. Is not
that government fast losing its occupation, and becoming contemptible to
mankind? If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to
protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired
man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services. Of course, that is but the
shadow of a government whose existence necessitates a Vigilant Committee.
What should we think of the Oriental Cadi even, behind whom worked in secret
a Vigilant Committee? But such is the character of our Northern States generally;
each has its Vigilant Committee. And, to a certain extent, these crazy
governments recognize and accept this relation. They say, virtually, "We'll be glad
to work for you on these terms, only don't make a noise about it." And thus the
government, its salary being insured, withdraws into the back shop, taking the
Constitution with it, and bestows most of its labor on repairing that. When I hear
it at work sometimes, as I go by, it reminds me, at best, of those farmers who in
winter contrive to turn a penny by following the coopering business. And what
kind of spirit is their barrel made to hold? They speculate in stocks, and bore
holes in mountains, but they are not competent to lay out even a decent highway.
The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the
Vigilant Committee. They have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land.
Such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs
out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one that can contain it.
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the
good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time
came?- till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or
troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes.
His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass
muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a
picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of
principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any
moment for the benefit of his fellow-man. It may be doubted if there were as
many more their equals in these respects in all the country- I speak of his
followers only- for their leader, no doubt, scoured the land far and wide, seeking
to swell his troop. These alone were ready to step between the oppressor and
the oppressed. Surely they were the very best men you could select to be hung.
That was the greatest compliment which this country could pay them. They were
ripe for her gallows. She has tried a long time, she has hung a good many, but
never found the right one before.
When I think of him, and his six sons, and his son-in-law, not to enumerate the
others, enlisted for this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, for
months if not years, sleeping and waking upon it, summering and wintering the
thought, without expecting any reward but a good conscience, while almost all
America stood ranked on the other side- I say again that it affects me as a
sublime spectacle. If he had had any journal advocating "his cause," any organ,
as
the phrase is, monotonously and wearisomely playing the same old tune, and then
passing round the hat, it would have been fatal to his efficiency. If he had acted in
any way so as to be let alone by the government, he might have been suspected.
It was the fact that the tyrant must give place to him, or he to the tyrant, that
distinguished him from all the reformers of the day that I know.
It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force
with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are
continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent
death of the slaveholder, but no others. Such will be more shocked by his life
than by his death. I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who
quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I
prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither
shoots me nor liberates me. At any rate, I do not think it is quite sane for one to
spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter, unless he is
continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A man may have other affairs to
attend to. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in
which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called
peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the
policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at
the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of
this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain
slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use
that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when
we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with
them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were
employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use
them.
The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will clear it
again. The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in which you use it. No
man has appeared in America, as yet, who loved his fellow-man so well, and
treated him so tenderly. He lived for him. He took up his life and he laid it down
for him. What sort of violence is that which is encouraged, not by soldiers, but by
peaceable citizens, not so much by laymen as by ministers of the Gospel, not so
much by the fighting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men
as by Quaker women?
This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death- the possibility of a
man's dying. It seems as if no man had ever died in America before; for in order
to die you must first have lived. I don't believe in the hearses, and palls, and
funerals that they have had. There was no death in the case, because there had
been no life; they merely rotted or sloughed off, pretty much as they had rotted or
sloughed along. No temple's veil was rent, only a hole dug somewhere. Let the
dead bury their dead. The best of them fairly ran down like a clock. Franklin-
Washington- they were let off without dying; they were merely missing one day. I
hear a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for
aught that I know. Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They haven't got life enough
in them. They'll deliquesce like fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the
spot where they left off. Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
Do you think that you are going to die, sir? No! there's no hope of you. You
haven't got your lesson yet. You've got to stay after school. We make a needless
ado about capital punishment- taking lives, when there is no life to take.
Memento mori! We don't understand that sublime sentence which some worthy
got sculptured on his gravestone once. We've interpreted it in a grovelling and
snivelling sense; we've wholly forgotten how to die.
But be sure you do die nevertheless. Do your work, and finish it. If you know
how to begin, you will know when to end.
These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to
live. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest
possible satire on the acts and words that do. It is the best news that America
has ever heard. It has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and
infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart than any number
of years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could. How many a
man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!
One writer says that Brown's peculiar monomania made him to be "dreaded by
the Missourians as a supernatural being." Sure enough, a hero in the midst of us
cowards is always so dreaded. He is just that thing. He shows himself superior to
nature. He has a spark of divinity in him.
"Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"
Newspaper editors argue also that it is a proof of his insanity that he thought he
was appointed to do this work which he did- that he did not suspect himself for a
moment! They talk as if it were impossible that a man could be "divinely
appointed" in these days to do any work whatever; as if vows and religion were
out of date as connected with any man's daily work; as if the agent to abolish
slavery could only be somebody appointed by the President, or by some political
party. They talk as if a man's death were a failure, and his continued life, be it of
whatever character, were a success.
When I reflect to what a cause this man devoted himself, and how religiously, and
then reflect to what cause his judges and all who condemn him so angrily and
fluently devote themselves, I see that they are as far apart as the heavens and
earth are asunder.
The amount of it is, our "leading men" are a harmless kind of folk, and they
know
well enough that they were not divinely appointed, but elected by the votes of
their party.
Who is it whose safety requires that Captain Brown be hung? Is it indispensable
to any Northern man? Is there no resource but to cast this man also to the
Minotaur? If you do not wish it, say so distinctly. While these things are being
done, beauty stands veiled and music is a screeching lie. Think of him- of his rare
qualities!- such a man as it takes ages to make, and ages to understand; no mock
hero, nor the representative of any party. A man such as the sun may not rise
upon again in this benighted land. To whose making went the costliest material,
the finest adamant; sent to be the redeemer of those in captivity; and the only use
to which you can put him is to hang him at the end of a rope! You who pretend
to care for Christ crucified, consider what you are about to do to him who
offered himself to be the saviour of four millions of men.
Any man knows when he is justified, and all the wits in the world cannot enlighten
him on that point. The murderer always knows that he is justly punished; but
when a government takes the life of a man without the consent of his conscience,
it is an audacious government, and is taking a step towards its own dissolution. Is
it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong? Are laws
to be enforced simply because they were made? or declared by any number of
men to be good, if they are not good? Is there any necessity for a man's being a
tool to perform a deed of which his better nature disapproves? Is it the intention
of law-makers that good men shall be hung ever? Are judges to interpret the law
according to the letter, and not the spirit? What right have you to enter into a
compact with yourself that you will do thus or so, against the light within you? Is it
for you to make up your mind- to form any resolution whatever- and not accept
the convictions that are forced upon you, and which ever pass your
understanding? I do not believe in lawyers, in that mode of attacking or defending
a man, because you descend to meet the judge on his own ground, and, in cases
of the highest importance, it is of no consequence whether a man breaks a human
law or not. Let lawyers decide trivial cases. Business men may arrange that
among themselves. If they were the interpreters of the everlasting laws which
rightfully bind man, that would be another thing. A counterfeiting law-factory,
standing half in a slave land and half in a free! What kind of laws for free men can
you expect from that?
I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for his
character- his immortal life; and so it becomes your cause wholly, and is not his in
the least. Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning,
perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is
not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is an angel of light.
I see now that it was necessary that the bravest and humanest man in all the
country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it himself. I almost fear that I may yet
hear of his deliverance, doubting if a prolonged life, if any life, can do as much
good as his death.
"Misguided!" "Garrulous!" "Insane!" "Vindictive!"
So ye write in your easy-chairs,
and thus he wounded responds from the floor of the armory, clear as a cloudless
sky, true as the voice of nature is: "No man sent me here; it was my own
prompting and that of my Maker. I acknowledge no master in human form."
And in what a sweet and noble strain he proceeds, addressing his captors, who
stand over him: "I think, my friends, you are guilty of a great wrong against God
and humanity, and it would be perfectly right for any one to interfere with you, so
far as to free those you wilfully and wickedly hold in bondage."
And, referring to his movement: "It is, in my opinion, the greatest service a man
can render to God."
"I pity the poor in bondage that have none to help them; that is why I am here;
not to gratify any personal animosity, revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my
sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are as good as you, and as
precious in the sight of God."
You don't know your testament when you see it.
"I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the poorest and weakest of
colored people, oppressed by the slave power, just as much as I do those of the
most wealthy and powerful."
"I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the South,
prepare yourselves for a settlement of that question, that must come up for
settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The sooner you are prepared the
better. You may dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now; but this
question is still to be settled- this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not
yet."
I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome
for a subject; the poet will sing it; the historian record it; and, with the Landing of
the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence, it will be the ornament of some
future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more
here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown. Then, and not till
then, we will take our revenge.