The Martyrdom
John Brown
of
SEMI-CENTENIAL ORATION
By
Rev. Reverdy C. Ransom, D. D.
DEC. 2, 1909
FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON, MASS.
livered on the Occasion of the Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of
the Public Murder of John Brown, Under the Auspices of the New Eng.
land Suffrage League and National Independent Political League, As¬
sisted By Auxiliary Committees of Woman's Clubs and of Citizens of
Greater Boston.
JOHN BROWN, MARTYR, SAINT.
"I believe in the Golden Rule, sir, and the Declaration of Independence. 1
think they both mean the same thing; and it is better that a whole generation
should pass off the face of the earth—men, women and children—by a violent death,
than that one jot of either should fail in this country. I mean exactly so, sir."
"The Martyrdom of John Brown"
All Address Delivered by Rev. Reverdy C. Ransom in Faneuil Hall,
Boston, Mass., Dec. 2, 1909.
On the occasion of the Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the
Hanging of John Brown by the New England Suffrage League and
National Idnependent Political League.
Citizens of Boston:—
We are assembled here tonight within the walls of Faneuil Hall, a
temple dedicated to liberty, to commemorate the Fiftieth Anniversary
of the execution of John Brown, a man who was legally put to death for
the crime of inciting an insurrection against the commonwealth of Vir¬
ginia. Have you no fear that this meeting will be suppressed by the
strong arm of the law? Do you not stand in awe of the courts? Will
not the newspapers hold you up to either censure or to ridicule? Upon
what grounds are we to justify our actions ?
As we look back across the battle fields of the past fifty years, in
the defeats and victories of the mighty duel of contending armies, in
the conflicts of statesmen in the halls of Congress, in the miraculous
change of public opinion, we see tonight, events of great historic mag¬
nitude, flow from the circumstances of which the execution of John
Brown was the climax.
We would not make this man a demi-god. We speak, we trust,
with all due reverence and solemnity. Once upon a time there was a
man, who, to make him a jest and burlesque for a king, was arrayed in
fantastic robes, a crown of thorns was placed upon his brow, for a
scepter, there was placed within his hands a reed. They mocked him,
they derided him, they put him to death upon a tree. But now since
almost two thousand years have rolled, increasing millions of the most
enlightened nations of earth, feel that they are reaching forward to the
highest development of the human spirit, when they enter into com¬
munion with him by celebrating his death and suffering. This man who
endured the shame of the cross, has now the highest civilizations that
the world has ever known, built upon the foundation stones of the prin¬
ciples for which he died.
It is/ thus tonight, in the presence of the event we celebrate, we
feel ourselves to stand on holy ground. With a feeling akin to rever¬
ence, we hail John Brown as a man sent from Godi to lift up the flood¬
gates, that the long restrained waters of liberty, justice and righteous¬
ness, might sweep away the refuge of lies in which the slave power and
its defenders had so long entrenched themselves, and permit the na¬
tion to stand forth purified by a new baptism of freedom.
What but the execution of John Brown could have caused the pen
of Julia Ward Howe to take fire as she wrote those immortal lines:
"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me;
And he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on."
The progress of civilization and the growth of liberty have been
bought with martyrdom. The martyr, whether saint, hero, thinker, sol¬
dier, or reformer can not be blinded by the darkness of the age in which
he lives. He has inward light which does not permit the surrounding
darkness to obscure his vision. The light that is in him strikes with
blindness those whose false position cannot abide the truth. In all ages
men have thought that the light of Reason, Faith, Liberty, Justice,
could be extinguished, by pressing the cup of hemlock to the lips of some
Socrates, by nailing) the Nazarene to a cross, by haling Galileo before
the Inquisition, by exiling Touissant L'Overture in France, by assassin¬
ating Abraham Lincoln the emancipator, by hanging John Brown upon
a tree.
Truth, justice, liberty, have died all deaths a thousand times, only
to forge for themselves red wings from the dying embers of their fun¬
eral pyre, and soar to some loftier eminence to proclaim the resurrec¬
tion of their deathless cause.
The enemies of liberty and justice, have been fortified in their po¬
sition, by the possession of instruments of power. They cannot be
awed by threats ; they cannot be convinced by logic; they cannot be won
by compromise. Each concession only makes them stronger to reduce
their victim to a state of helplessness. They fear only those weapons
which are able to strike them in a vital spot.
To successfully attack tyranny, injustice and wrong, assault must
be directed against their very citadel of power. They, are well satisfied-
to permit men to argue over non-essentials; they may even create a di¬
version in order to draw attention from the point which alone is vital to
the issue. *
While the best heart of the nation was devoting its highest talent
to the discussion of the slavery question with arguments which were
purely academic or controversial, John Brown did the thing which the
slave holding states most feared. He presented to them the spectacle
of a fearless and determined white man stepping across the very thresh¬
old of slavery, inciting the blacks to arise, flock to his standard, and
strike a blow for their own deliverance. His intelligence would be wis¬
dom for their ignorance, his discipline would be strength for their inex¬
perience, his leadership would be their north star pointing the way to
freedom.
The vital point at issue was not Fugitive Slave Bills, and Missouri
Compromises, but whether slavery or freedom should become triumph¬
ant in a nation founded on democracy. With the nation thoroughly
aroused there could be but one issue. It took an act—call it madness,
call it treason, call it folly if you will—but it took an act, rising above
the din of controversy and the fine spun web of compromise, to reveal
the true spirit of slavery to a nation suddenly awakened to its peril.
John Brown was the incarnation of the spirit of freedom. The
prayers, the tears, the groans, the yearnings of the slave, had entered in¬
to his very soul. The eloquence, the strength, the logic of the argu¬
ments of Garrison, Philips, Sumner, and that mighty host of pleaders,
were clearly comprehended by his brain, while in his veins flowed the
blood of the Puritan with all their hatred of tyranny and oppression.
Like some Elijah of the Gilead Forests, who appeared suddenly before
Ahab to denounce him for seeking to supplant the altars of Jehovah
by the altars Baal, so John Brown appeared suddenly from the moun¬
tains of West Virginia, to assail the South for polluting the altars of
freedom with slave holders as ministering priests.
It was the incarnation of the spirit of slavery that demanded the
execution of John Brown. The spirit that was in him, was as cour¬
ageous and determined, as the one which confronted him. When this
incarnation of the spirit of freedom and the spirit of slavery met, it
was as when, "Two black clouds come rattling o'er the Caspian to join
their dark encounter in mid-air". There could be no clearing of the
national skies until the storm had gathered, broken, spent its force, and
the lightnings of the sabre's flash had decided forever the triumph of
the one, and the utter ruin and defeat of the other.
The nation was not at ease over the Negro before the war of the
Rebellion, and it has had no peace concerning him since the close of
that war. The Negro question, is the one question, which has per¬
sisted since the foundations of the government were laid. Other ques-,
lions, concerning almost every phase of our national life, which* have
arisen from time to time throughout our history,4 have been met, faced
and settled; but this q-uestion persists despite all efforts to silence it.
It appeared in the Constitutional Convention, and had it not been for
the compromises growing out of the slavery question., the framers of
that instrument would not have been able in 1787 "to form a more per¬
fect union."
This question was with us in the Fugitive Slave Bill, the Missouri
Compromise, the agitation for emancipation, and was the impelling
cause which led to the out-break of the Rebellion. At the close of the
war it was with us in the adoption of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments. These Amendments were the legitimate fruit
©f the Abolitionists, the martyrdom of Elijah P. Lovejoy and John
Brown, and the crowning work of the statesmanship of Lincoln, the
generalship of Grant, and the patriotism of the Northern armies.
What has the Negro done for himself during- the fifty years since
the execution of John Brown ? One of his first acts, with the broken
chain of slavery still hanging to> his wrists, was to take up arms to fight
for the preservation of the Union and for freedom. The nation never
had a better soldier than its black regiments. In the face of danger
they showed no fear; their discipline was perfect, their bearing soldier¬
ly. When they could not carry the flag to victory they were always
willing to die beneath its folds.
Freed without a dollar or a foot of land, with the restraints of
master and overseer withdrawn, he indulged in no crimes or excesses.
He went to work. He instantly recognized "the sanctity of the marriage
relations; he established the family and the home; he erected churches
for the worship of God; eager for knowledge, he established schools
in every community and country side. . Throughout these years, the
Negro has gone steadily forward, increasing in wealth, in education, in
culture, and in strength of character.
He has entered all the learned professions, and has taken his place
with honor, in the colleges and universities of first rank. There is no
door of opportunity and progress) at which he has knocked. On 3II
questions that have arisen since his enfranchisement, he has always
voted for those measures that have met the approval and endorsement
of his most enlightened and patriotic fellow-countrymen. The bitter¬
est foe of the Negro, has yet to point to a single instance, where he has
ever voted, or even threatened to vote, for any man or measure that men¬
aced the peace, prosperity or safety of the nation.
Fifty years after John Brown, over one million Isfegro children are
in the public schools, while black men everywhere are palpitating with
ambition and desire to take a man's place in every avenue of the na¬
tion's life.
The Negro's cause never looked darker than it did the day John
Brown was hung. Out of the blackness of darkness, he has made a
progress in the last fifty years, to which no people can furnish a parallel
in the history of the world. Yet, despite all this, the Negro question is
as acute, barring slavery, in 1909 as it was in 1859.
It is no longer a question of property in human flesh, or of the
boundary lines of slavery. Todav it is subtle, complex, involved. Then
it struck men, now it strikes at manhood; then it chained the intellect,
now it removes the fetters from the mind, but sets bounds as to the
sphere of its exercise. As a slave, he was reasonably safe from law¬
less assault and violence; now he may be shot, hung, flayed alive, or
burned at the stake, by any mob that suspects him of crime, or when
neither accused nor suspected of crime, he may be put to death at the
whim of any lawless community which simply desires a victim on which
to satiate its brutish and savage instincts.
Then he was bound to the plantation, or to his master's domain;
now he may travel at will, but under such conditions of humiliation, in¬
sult and degradation, as to put him almost outside the pale of humanity.
Thee representation in Congress wast "based on counting three-fifths of
the blacks; now all Negroes are counted in enumeration for representa¬
tives in Congress, but laws have been so framed as to exclude them
from representation.
The 10,000,000 Negroes of the United States have no voice to
speak for them in the halls of Congress. The more than forty men who
hold their seats in that body as a result of their black constituency, are
there, not to speak for the Negro, but against him; they are there, not
to lift the Negro up, but to degrade him to the level of an inferior; they
are there, not to frame laws for his betterment, but to repeal, if in their
power, those laws which are the last safeguard for the protection of his
liberty.
Then it was a question of freedom or slavery; now it is a question
as to whether the black free man and citizen shall be permitted to rise to
the full stature of a main. Shall the Negro be permitted to work, to
produce according to his ability, and receive equal pay with others who
perform like service? It is no longer a question of free labor and slave
labor.
The question that confronts the Negro is, does this nation seek to
circumscribe htm as a toiler to those conditions which will keep Mfn 011
the borders of industry and in the position of a menial? Neither the
Negro nor the Negro's friends, ask the nation to take him on faith. He
asks to be taken on sight, for his intrinsic value as a citizen and his
worth as a man.
Standing in Faneuil Hall tonight, we ask, is Boston, which is the
heart of New England, willing to take its stand for justice and fair
play for the Negro? Has the spirit of liberty and justice flown, leav¬
ing it as cold and lifeless as the monuments it has reared to Garrison,
Sumner and Robert Gould Shaw? If, in the present state of public
opinion in regard to the Negro, Jesus Christ were some day to return
and take a walk through the Public Gardens, and across Boston Com¬
mon by the Crispus Attucks monument until he stood on Beacon Hill,
as the sweep of his eyes took in the burying ground of Park Street
Church and the surrounding monuments, crowned by Bunker Hill in
the distance, and St. Gaudens' masterpiece, the Shaw monument, rest¬
ing at his feet, he might be moved with the burning indignation that
burst from him, when he exclaimed to the recreant men of Jerusalem:
"Woe unto you, scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build
the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous."
The Negro question is not a Southern question, any more than
slavery was a Southern question. It is national. The wind had not
ceased to make sport with the ashes of the bonfires kindled throughout
the North, to celebrate the surrender at Appomattox, before a deter¬
mined effort was begun to rob the Negro of the fruits of victory won
in his behalf.
The decision of the Supreme Court affirming the unconstitutional¬
ity of the Civil Rights Bill, so dear to the heart of Sumner, was the en¬
tering wedge. Then came the withdrawal of Federal troops from the
South, followed by failure to pass and enforce a Federal election law
for the protection of the newly enfranchised citizens. This gave the
South a free hand for the passage of those laws for the disfranchise¬
ment of the Negro, which were conceived in deceit, and thinly veiled
evasion of the Fifteenth Amendment, and which are executed by fraud.
Having rendered the Negro politically helpless, the Jim Crow laws,
with their dehumanizing and shameless provisions!, were enacted as a
natural sequence. The next step will be an attempt, not to enforce,
but to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment. That this) is clear, the attitude
of President Taft, however benevolent his intentions, leaves little room
for doubt. He is the first man who ever sat in the seat of Lincoln to
declare, that he would appoint no man to office who was objectionable
to the community he had to serve, on no other ground than that of race
or color .
I will not charge the President with the betrayal of the trust of a con¬
fiding- people; but I will proclaim that which is known to all the world—
he could not have been nominated for the office he now holds, without
the votes of these black Republicans whose claim he now so frankly
disallows, and whose ambition to serve their country in places of dis¬
tinction he so ruthlessly repudiates.
That the leaders of the Republican party are seeking to prepare the
nation for this step, is made clear by a suggestion recently made by Sen¬
ator Shelby M. Cullom of Illinois. The Senator is said to resemble
Abraham Lincoln; he comes from the home of Lincoln. Yet it is be
who comes forward with a suggestion more atrocious, more shocking,
than has ever been uttered by the most rabid Southerner. The South,
whatever at heart may be its motives, justifies its course in disfranchise
ing the Negro, on the grounds of his ignorance, poverty, and incapacity.
But Senator Cullom brazenly suggests, that the Republican party
countenance a general disfranchisement of the Negro voters for no more
patriotic motive, than to win the support of Southern Congressmen and
presidential electors, to keep the Republican party in power. Yet no
one knows better than Senator Cullom, that the Republican party has
been kpt in power for more than a generation by the support of the
Negro whose constitutional rights he would now annul.
It is frankly stated that the thing desired is partisan advantage, in
exchange for industrial and commercial benefits. Party is placed above
patriotism and money is to be substituted for manhood.
Standing tonight within the lengthening shadows of the scaffold
from which John Brown stepped into immortality fifty years ago, what
should be the lesson of the hour? John Brown died in an attempt to
rally and inspire the blacks to arise and strike a blow in behalf of their
own freedom.. The Negroes today who are unwilling to stand up and
fight their oppressors foi* the full enjoyment of the fruits of liberty, are
unworthy to gather within the precincts of this sacred shrine, or else¬
where, to celebrate his martyrdom.
Do you ask me, "With what weapons shall we fight" ? My answer
is, with every weapon at your command, the pen, the printing press, the
pulpit, the rostrum, the courts, right of petition to Congress and state.
C. R. Cain.
legislatures; by educating our children, not as Negroes, but as men; by
earning a dollar wherever we can and keeping it, until we can spend
it where it will buy one hundred cents' worth of equal treatment, justice
and fair play; finally, by shaking ourselves forever free from the bond,
age of party thraldom, and using our ballot where it will make for the.
restitution of our rights and the full protection of our mauahood and
citizenship under the constitution and the flag. _
But you ask me—"Whom shall we fight ?" My answer is* our
etoemies, wherever found; whether it be a political party, a church; a*
business establishment; a corporation, a school, or university ; a city or
state gdvernraent, or the Congresis of the United States with the- Ptesi>
dent at its head, The garb of office, the badge of honor, the sanctioasr-
of authority and the seats of power, are no less deadly enemies, when
they seek to rob us of our birthright, which our fathers on these shores
have bought with toil, with patience and with blood.
We commemorate tonight the martyrdom of a man who struck a
blow to free us from; chattel slavery. Fifty years~hence our voices will
be hushed and silent. Be it so. But in pur day we should guard well
the interests of our posterity. We should repudiate all" leadership',
black or white, which would keep us silent in the face of outrage, or
submissive to oppression. When our rights are invaded, we should'
not retreat a single inch from the constitutional ground on which we
stand. We should spurn all assistance which is patronizing in its man¬
ner, and paternal in its method.
What we want is a man's chance. We ask for nothing more ; we
wilt be satisfied with nothing less. Within the next fifty years* it will'
be' definitely settled, what the Negro's place in this nation is to be;
whether one of degradation to a place of inferiority, or of elevation to
a sphere of equal opportunity.
The great jury of the American people is setting on the case of the'
equity of the Negro in this democracy. The resources of science, of
philosophy, and statesmanship, are being drawn upon to show why his
claim should be disallowed. The court admits all evidence tending to
blacken his character, to detract from? his merit, or to discredit his ca¬
pacity. When: the verdict is finally made up, from it there can be no
appeal We must present our case so strongly to this nation that the
evrderocein our favor will be overwhelming;
Wfe nrast do it by industry arrd thrift, by honesty and sobriety, by
enterprise and energy, by intelligence and character, by demonstrating
ceor capacity and displaying our ability, by patriotism and courage, and
by taking our place in the ranks of mien without losing step with the
-msuth- of progress.
Fifty years hence, I see a nation, long unwilling, coming to meet
us^ with a locfe of frieftdly recognition in its face. The attitude of con-
t^^ and prpu4 disdajn is gope. The hand that is extended has the
touch, of true; fraternity. I see our problem of race and color now dis¬
solved. The voice that hails us, greets us as a brother and a man.