E 451 
 Copy ^ 
 
 The Death of John Brown 
 
 A Discourse Preached on the 
 
 Occasion of His Public Execution 
 
 delivered at the 
 
 Free Congregational Qiurch 
 
 Bloomington, 111. 
 
 Dec. 4, 1859 
 
 Reprinted in connection with the 
 
 Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary 
 
 of the Founding of the Church 
 
 OCTOBER 1909 
 
■/r:^C^/ 
 
[From the Daily Pantagraph, Dec. 9, 1 859] 
 
 CORRESPONDENCE 
 
 To the Rev. C. G. Ames, Pastor of the Free Congregational 
 Society of Bloomington : 
 The undersigned, having heard with much interest your 
 funeral discourse of yesterday on the death of John Brown, 
 and believing that the cause of Truth will be subserved by a 
 wider circulation of the views therein set forth, do very re- 
 spectfully request that you will furnish us with a copy of the 
 same for publication. 
 
 Jesse W. Fexl, Elisha Wakefiei^d, 
 
 K. H, Fell, Robt. Thompson, 
 
 B. F. Hains, T. J. Donahue, 
 
 J. H. WiCKizER, Wm. M. Richardson, 
 
 James Allin, Jr., J. F. Rees, 
 
 R. W. Dibble, V. Fell, 
 
 S. D. Rounds, Thomas Fell, 
 
 John Marble, Wm. F. Flagg, 
 
 E. Barber, W. W. Orme, 
 
 J. N. Larrimore, R. M. Benjamin, 
 
 Joseph Baker, James H. Smith, 
 
 W. H. Hanna, Wm. B. Allyn. 
 
 Samuel Willard, 
 December 5th, 1859. 
 
 [REPLY] 
 
 To J. W. Fell, Esq., Dr. S. Willard, and Others— Gentlemen : 
 
 Your note of 5th inst., requesting a copy of my last Sab- 
 bath's discourse for publication, is received. 
 
 I comply with your request, not unwilling that any words 
 which you have heard with approval should reach a yet wider 
 audience. 
 
 Yours for Humanity, Charles G. Ames. 
 
 Bloomington, Dec. 7, 1859. 
 
 (1)* 
 

 
 f 
 
The Death of John Brown 
 
 A Discourse Preached on the Occasion of His Public 
 Execution, Delivered at Bloomington, III., Dec. 4, 1 859 
 
 By Charles Gordon Ames 
 
 Minister of the Free Congregational Society 
 
 Text. — "Judge not according to appearance; but judge righteous 
 judgment." — John VII: 24. 
 
 On any topic of such absorbing public interest 
 as to set all other tongues in motion, a Christian 
 minister has no right to be silent. Every event 
 which excites the feelings and rouses the thought 
 of the people must deeply affect their moral char- 
 acter and spiritual life. Events are our teachers. 
 If we rightly interpret them, we grow wiser; if 
 we misinterpret them, they do but lead us astray. 
 If we gather useful instruction from any event, 
 it must be because we see it in the clear light of 
 some moral principle. The minister, whose high 
 mission it is to deal with moral principles, must 
 never hide their light under a bushel, when some 
 event is passing by which the people are half 
 afraid to look in the face. That light has a right 
 to shine ; and whatever cannot bear that light con- 
 fesses itself to be evil. 
 
 There are two ways in which the pulpit may 
 abuse its power; two ways in which a minister 
 
may dishonor his position. One is by speaking 
 what ought not to be spoken ; the other is by not 
 speaking what ought to be spoken— rashness and 
 cowardice. If a minister falls into the evil cur- 
 rent of party spirit, and lends himself to a narrow, 
 fanatical love of agitation, pandering to passion 
 and to a morbid craving for excitement, or to sec- 
 tarian and party ends— that is a shame ! Let him 
 bear the indignation of an injured public. Preach- 
 er though he be, he is a pestilent fellow. We have 
 no use for such. The sooner he quits the church 
 and the world, the better for both. 
 
 But the pulpit is hardly less disgraced by the 
 minister who betrays his trust through the timid, 
 temporizing policy of withholding the fitting truth 
 because it may be unwelcome to his hearers. He 
 sees the truth, but dares not utter it. He knows 
 the right, but dares not defend it. He will not at- 
 tack the wrong, because it is still popular. He 
 will not espouse the right, because it is still in a 
 small minority. When it is evident that victory 
 is to turn on Zion's side, you shall find him in the 
 forefront of the battle, a bold leader of the hosts 
 of the elect. But he has not faith enough in God 
 to feel quite safe in taking sides with Him, nor 
 love enough for the true and the right to stand by 
 them in their hour of seeming weakness. He is 
 ''a dumb dog," a speaker of smooth things, false 
 to God and man. There are no baser men than 
 those who use holy words to hide an unfaithful 
 and cowardly spirit, and who let all forms of wick- 
 edness find an undisturbed refuge in the very folds 
 of the altar cloth. 
 
Now, if a man rests in an easy-going conserva- 
 tive religion, which prides itself in standing aloof 
 from all passing events, he will naturally regard 
 a deaf and dmnb clergyman as a model of fidelity ; 
 and so, taking such an one as a standard, he will 
 condemn every faithful testimony against public 
 wrong, and every pulpit discourse on an unusual 
 topic, as loose, dangerous, and fanatical. But no 
 man ought to venture on the duties of the Chris- 
 tian ministry until he can look the world in the 
 face, and say from his heart with Paul: *'It is a 
 small thing that I should be judged of you, or of 
 man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the 
 Lord." It may do for politicians to determine all 
 questions by mere rules of expediency, which slide 
 here and there with ever-changing circumstances ; 
 but the prophet of God must point steadily to the 
 eternal principles of truth and right. 
 
 Yet the most faithful and honest minister is 
 fallible, like other men. His judgment on any 
 matter may be good or bad, or partly of both. If 
 what he may say does not seem true and wise to 
 you, let it be as if he had not spoken. But, if his 
 words help you to "judge righteous judgment," 
 he is your benefactor. You and he may rejoice to- 
 gether. 
 
 The events which are exciting such a deep and 
 painful interest in all parts of the country, and 
 which found their climax forty-eight hours ago 
 in the public execution of John Brown, will be 
 differently regarded by different men. There will 
 be honest differences of opinion according to our 
 previous habits of thought and the extent and cor- 
 
rectness of our information. The man who re- 
 gards hmiian slavery as "the sum of all Yillainies" 
 will see the affair at Harper's Ferry with other 
 eyes than those of that other man who thinks the 
 institution is ordained and approved of God. On 
 these matters of difference let us not deal violent- 
 ly nor uncharitably with each other. ''Let every 
 man be fully persuaded in his own mind;" but let 
 no man withhold the expression of his views sim- 
 ply because they are unlike those of any or all his 
 neighbors. To speak freely and without fear on 
 any and all subjects is one of the dearest of all 
 our privileges; nor is that a desirable country to 
 live in where men speak with bated breath as if 
 afraid of their own thoughts. 
 
 I am to speak to-day not as a prosecuting of- 
 ficer to prove John Brown guilty of a capital 
 crime, nor yet as his defending counsel, to make 
 out, by any special pleading, a case in his favor. 
 But I am to join with you in seeking to find a just 
 verdict — the calm, impartial verdict which history 
 will render, when the exciting passions and bitter 
 prejudices of this stormy time shall have passed 
 away forever. *'I go into eternity but a few years 
 before you!" said John Brown to the Governor 
 of Virginia ; and so he might have said to all of 
 us who sit here, as it were to hold an inquest over 
 his dead body. What interest have we in deceiv- 
 ing ourselves, when the exact truth will serve our 
 purpose better ? Let us forget party, dismiss bias, 
 and hush our passions, that we may not hastily 
 judge according to appearances, but "judge right- 
 eous judgment." 
 
 6 
 
Two hundred and thirty-nine years ago this 
 month the Mayflower brought to the coast of Mas- 
 sachusetts Bay a little band of Puritans— brought 
 with it the seeds of our Revolution, and brought 
 also in some sense the seeds of the recent outbreak 
 at Harper's Ferry. For those Puritans were men 
 who loved liberty religiously, if not always wisely; 
 and one of them was Peter Brown, the great- 
 grandfather of John Brown's grandfather. And 
 from the old Puritan ancestor down to himself the 
 whole line of six generations was composed of 
 farmers-doubtless, like himself, men of sinewy 
 muscle, robust constitution, and strong will believ- 
 ing in the Bible as John Calvin explained it, and 
 behevmg in Jehovah as the God of battles; hat- 
 mg oppression, but loving their country. John 
 Brown's father was a soldier in the last war with 
 England, and both father and son were present at 
 Hull's surrender. 
 
 John Brown was early inclined to ''do some- 
 thmg for the benefit of mankind"; and, being dis- 
 posed to piety as well as benevolence, he commenc- 
 ed to study for the ministry, I think of the Pres- 
 byterian denomination, of which he remained a 
 member till his death. But inflamed eyes put a 
 stop to his theologic studies, and he went back to 
 the farm. During an active life for many years 
 m Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New 
 York, he seems to have been regarded as a man 
 of unusual energy in business and of incorrupt- 
 ible integrity. 
 
 The armed invasion of Kansas, and the pol- 
 lution of its ballot boxes by proslavery ruffians 
 
from Missouri, roused his spirit; and, though, 
 growing gray, he started with several of his sons 
 for the field of strife — already a ' ' dark and bloody 
 ground," though the Free State men, still trust- 
 ing to the defense of the federal government, had 
 not yet learned to defend themselves, much less 
 to deal back those destructive blows by which John 
 Brown afterward taught the invaders such salu- 
 tary lessons. ^Avoiding public meetings, and de- 
 spising the men who dealt in talk, resolutions, and 
 the machinery of political conventions and par- 
 ties, he gathered a small band of trusty men, in- 
 spired them with something of his own bravery 
 and confidence and then performed such daring 
 exploits as made his name a terror to evil doers/ 
 Once with a party of forty men he held a position 
 in the woods against one hundred and fifty pro- 
 slavery men for five hours, and finally obliged them 
 to retire with a loss of thirty-one killed and thirty 
 wounded, while he lost but two killed and one 
 wounded. 
 
 It is doubtful whether any man contributed so 
 largely to break the force of proslavery violence 
 and open the way for Kansas to become a Free 
 State as did John Brown./ And the general tes- 
 timony is that through all those terrible scenes 
 he maintained a spirit of humane thoughtfulness 
 for the welfare of even his enemies, and a relig- 
 ious devotion as profound and strict as that of 
 Cromwell, rigidly prohibiting all profanity, and 
 offering prayer in his camp every night and morn- 
 ing. I know there are charges of wanton cruelty 
 brought against hun; but it would be unjust not 
 
 8 
 
to remark that most of the witnesses against him 
 are men who have forfeited all claim upon public 
 credit. Yet it would be strange if in those days 
 of confusion and excitement any man in the heat 
 of the conflict could act a part in every respect 
 free from censure; nor is it my part, with but 
 limited information, to justify, excuse, or condemn 
 by the wholesale the part enacted by John Brown 
 in Kansas. It is not the less safe to say that the 
 worst men who ever set foot in that territory will 
 be among the most clamorous of all who rejoice 
 over his sad fate. 
 
 For the past twenty or thirty years, according 
 to the statements of his wife and others, John 
 Brown had been revolving in his mind projects 
 for the overthrow of slavery in the United States. 
 Whether he has always thought that violent meth- 
 ods were best I cannot say. But it is probable 
 that what he saw in Kansas destroyed all hope that 
 the slaveholder would ever let go his victim peace- 
 fully, and all expectation of a righteous use of the 
 powers of the government; and his experience 
 there gave him a high degree of confidence — per- 
 haps amounting to conceit— in his ability as a mil- 
 itary leader. And so for the last two years he 
 seems to have been diligently engaged in organ- 
 izing the rash expedition which cost his life. 
 
 Now, what did he mean? What were his prin- 
 ciples, as he understood them ? What were his mo- 
 tives and plans ? Now he is dead, we can at least 
 afford to do him justice ; and, in order to do this, 
 we want so far as possible to understand the man. 
 We shall find him transparent— no mystery in him. 
 
 9 
 
I think I never read of a man so easily compre- 
 hended — a man whose motives stood out so clear- 
 ly, and whose principles and conduct required so 
 little explanation to reconcile. 
 
 John Brown's view of slavery, of his own duty, 
 and of the ends to be accomplished by his Harper's 
 Ferry enterprise, will be best understood from his 
 own words. When he was visited and questioned 
 by Senator Mason and others, after his arrest and 
 imprisonment, in the course of his conversations, 
 he used the following words : 
 
 "I think you are guilty of a great wrong 
 against God and humanity. It would be perfectly 
 right for any one to interfere with you, so far as to 
 free those you willfully and wickedly hold in bond- 
 age. I think I did right and that others will do 
 right who interfere with you at any time and at all 
 times. I hold that the Golden Rule [quoting it] 
 applies to all who would help others gain their 
 liberty. It is in my opinion the greatest service 
 a man can render his God. I pity the poor in 
 bondage. That is why I came here. It is not to 
 gratify any personal animosity, or feeling of re- 
 v-enge, or vindictive spirit. It is my sjrmpathy 
 with the oppressed and wronged, who are as good 
 as you in the sight of God. I want you to under- 
 stand, gentlemen, that I respect the rights of the 
 poorest and weakest of the colored people just as 
 much as I do those of the most wealthy and pow- 
 erful. That is the idea that has moved me, and 
 that alone. We expected no reward. We expect- 
 ed to do for them in distress— the greatly oppress- 
 ed—as we would be done by. The cry of distress, 
 
 10 
 
and of the distressed, is my reason, and the only 
 one that impelled me. I did it secretly, because 
 I thought it necessary for success, and for no oth- 
 er reason. I don't think the people of the slave 
 states will ever consider the subject of slavery in 
 its true light until some other argument is resorted 
 to than moral suasion." 
 
 When asked if he expected to bring about a 
 general rising of the slaves in case he had succeed- 
 ed, he replied: ''No; nor did I wish it. I expect- 
 ed to gather strength from time to time; then I 
 could set them free. * * * You people of the 
 South had better all of you prepare for a settle- 
 ment of this question. You may dispose of me 
 very easily. I am nearly disposed of. But this 
 question is still to be settled — the negro question, 
 I mean. The end is not yet.'* 
 
 All this is John Brown's plain, honest thought; 
 and it lets us see into his heart. He loved liberty 
 for himself ; and he had Christian feeling enough 
 to love it for others. He thought of slavery as you 
 think of piracy, and he thought of the slaves as 
 you would think of your own brothers imprisoned 
 by pirates, and living only by permission of pirate 
 law — law for which he felt no respect, simply be- 
 cause it rests on the brutal lie which underlies all 
 despotism, viz., that might makes right. 
 
 "The cry of distress," he says, impelled him. 
 He heard, or thought he heard, a sound of woe 
 from nearly four millions of hiunan beings, whose 
 rights he tells us he regarded as equally sacred 
 with those of the rich and powerful. He goes to 
 their relief at the risk of his life, just as he would 
 
 11 
 
plunge into a burning building when be bears tbe 
 piteous sbriek of a cbild. He acted under tbe au- 
 spices of an organization bolding it as a self-evi- 
 dent truth that ''whenever a bunian being is set 
 upon by a robber, ravisber, murderer, or tyrant of 
 any kind, it is tbe duty of tbe bystander to go to 
 bis or ber rescue, by force, if need be." 
 
 In perfect keeping with tbe language already 
 given from bis conversations in prison are bis 
 memorable words uttered in court, wben be stood 
 up to receive tbe sentence of deatb. After admit- 
 ting distinctly bis intention of "freeing tbe slaves 
 on a large scale," be added tbese words of denial: 
 
 "I never did intend murder, or treason, or tbe 
 destruction of property, or to incite tbe slaves to 
 rebellion, or to make insurrection." 
 
 Tben follow words wbicb are destined to be- 
 come a part of tbe everlasting literature of lib- 
 erty: 
 
 "It is unjust that I should suffer such a pen- 
 alty. * * * Had I so interfered in behalf of 
 tbe rich and powerful, tbe intelligent, tbe so-called 
 great, or in behalf of their friend, either father 
 or mother, brother or sister, wife or children, or 
 any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed wba+ 
 I have in this interference, it would have been all 
 right, and every man in this court would have 
 deemed it worthy of reward rather than iDmiish- 
 ment. * * * I have endeavored to act up to 
 these instructions [of the Bible]. I am yet too 
 young to understand that God is any respecter of 
 persons. I believe that to have interfered as I 
 have done, and as I have always freely admitted 
 
 12 
 
that I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, 
 ^Yas no wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed nec- 
 essary that I should forfeit my life for the fur- 
 therance of the ends of justice, and mingle my 
 blood further with the blood of my children, and 
 with the blood of the millions in this slave country 
 whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and 
 imjust enactments, I submit! So let it be done!" 
 I have quoted thus freely to show exactly his 
 principles and the sentiments of his heart. It will 
 be said that they show a morbid interest in the 
 freedom of the slave and an utter f orgetfulness of 
 the safety and welfare of the white population of 
 the South. But there are positive evidences that 
 his very regard for the whites and his aversion to 
 shedding blood was one of the prime causes why 
 he failed in his enterprise. He detained a train 
 of cars for a while, and then, concluding it was 
 hard to put the passengers to such inconvenience, 
 let them go on and give information against him- 
 self. He had forty of the citizens of Harper's 
 Ferry in his power as prisoners for many hours; 
 but not one of them suffered the least indignity 
 or discourtesy — not one of them even had his 
 hands tied ; and when the engine-house, where they 
 were confined with him and his handful of men, 
 was being fired upon by the soldiery, he obliged 
 them to lie down under shelter, lest they should 
 be exposed to the balls. In Cook's confession we 
 are told that, before striking a blow. Brown called 
 his men together and addressed them on the im- 
 portance of conducting their hazardous enterprise 
 as peacefully as possible, saying: *'You all know 
 
 13 
 
how dear life is to you. Eemember that it is equal- 
 ly dear to others. Fire on no one who does not 
 bear arms against ns; but, if you do fire, make 
 sure work of it." 
 
 In a public speech at Richmond, after visiting 
 Brown in jail, Gov. Wise testified thus : 
 
 **He is a man of clear head, courage, fortitude, 
 and simple ingenuousness. He inspired me with 
 great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. He 
 is a fanatic, vain and garrulous, but firm, truthful, 
 and intelligent." 
 
 Singular qualities in a felon! The curse of 
 God and man be on the institution whose safety 
 calls for the death of a man like this. 
 
 Brown had no thought of plunder. In the ar- 
 mory he had seized were $17,000 of public funds. 
 He took the arms to be used for his purpose, but 
 the money was untouched. One of the railway 
 passengers, with $10,000 on his person, was search- 
 ed for weapons ; but the money was not meddled 
 with. 
 
 But while all these things, and many more like 
 them, furnish ample evidence of John Brown's hu- 
 manity and unselfishness, they cannot relieve hun 
 from the charge of wrong-headedness. His very 
 humanity and zeal infatuated him— in the same 
 sense as we are all infatuated by too ardent desire 
 —so that he underestimated difficulties and overes- 
 timated his own strength and tact. What folly for 
 twenty-two men to seize upon a town and public 
 arsenal, in the very neighborhood of Washington 
 and Baltimore! What folly to suppose that the 
 ignorant and brutal crowd of slaves whom he hop- 
 
 14 
 
ed to draw to his standard, and to furnish with 
 arms, could be restrained from the violent and re- 
 vengeful use of their newly-gained liberty, laiow- 
 ing as they would that no effort would be spared 
 to reduce them again to bondage, and that no mer- 
 cy could be exj^ected ! What folly to suppose there 
 would be no civil war, when the mass of the whites 
 would be exasperated to the highest pitch of frenzy 
 by the presence of a Northern invader, raising 
 openly the standard of compulsory emancipation! 
 And what utter blindness led that humane hearted 
 old man to imagine that no innocent persons would 
 suffer through the general and violent disorgan- 
 ization of society, and the explosive outbreak of 
 all the mad passions and rankling hates, engen- 
 dered for ages by the false and bitter relations of 
 slavery ! He seems to have supposed that all these 
 terrific forces of wild volcanic fury could be con- 
 trolled by his authority, harnessed tamely into the 
 service of freedom, and made to work with the 
 precision of machinery, like the ready obedience 
 of his own little band of Spartans ! 
 
 A gentleman who sat with us three or four Sab- 
 baths since writes me from Memphis that on 
 Thanksgiving Day he heard a clergyman of that 
 city give thanks that the fuse lighted by the fires 
 of fanaticism had been extinguished before it 
 reached the mine and produced a disastrous ex- 
 plosion. So do I give thanks to God that John 
 Brown has failed; for I believe the only success 
 which, under the circumstances, was possible to 
 him, would have draAvn after it consequences at 
 which his own kind heart would have revolted. 
 
 15 
 
His wisdom was like that of the man who puts a 
 match to a magazine of powder, hoping to con- 
 trol, regulate, and graduate the explosion with his 
 hand. 
 
 Perhaps, however, it may yet appear that he 
 foresaw that all these direful consequences were 
 possible, but thought them entirely improbable, 
 and thought, also, that, should matters come to the 
 worst, the responsibility would rest on those who 
 refused to *4et the oppressed go free," and there- 
 by invited the retribution on their own heads, even 
 as Jelf erson had taught him in words of trembling 
 confession that, in case of a struggle between the 
 slaves of Virginia and their masters, no attribute 
 of the Almighty could take sides with the masters. 
 What Brown's real views on these points were we 
 shall doubtless know from the document he has 
 been preparing during the last week of his earth- 
 ly life — unless, indeed, the authorities of Virginia 
 should be as fearful of his word as of his deeds. 
 I think it will be seen that his real plan was to do 
 one of two things, according as circiunstances 
 should favor : Either to arm such slaves as might 
 come to him, and march them in a body to Canada, 
 acting strictly on the defensive; or, if he should 
 have power to gain a strong position among the 
 mountains, establish a kind of temporary commu- 
 nity under what is called his Provisional Constitu- 
 tion, and encourage fugitives to come to him from 
 all quarters. He believed it right to take the prop- 
 erty of the masters for the benefit of the slaves; 
 and he hoped thus to keep up an increasing system 
 of harassings, with little bloodshed, but having the 
 
 16 
 
effect to produce a chronic panic, so that slavery 
 would waste itself away with fever. By forcing 
 the slaveholders to dwell ''in the midst of alarms"; 
 by making them feel more deeply than ever the 
 wretched insecurity of their system and of prop- 
 erty; by making all labor irregular and uncertain, 
 and so preventing both seedtime and harvest ; by 
 thus increasing the public burdens, while destroy- 
 ing the public credit— by these means he may have 
 hoped to make slavery unprofitable, and to force 
 the millions of nonslaveholders to resume their 
 manhood, and to say at length to the three him- 
 dred and fifty thousand slaveholders: "We will 
 not bear this yoke for your sakes any longer ! Ei- 
 ther consent to emancipation, or watch your own 
 property, and take care of your own lives." (For 
 it is plain that no slaveholder can maintain unaid- 
 ed his authority over ten slaves— the average to 
 each master.) Whether such was John Brown's 
 plan or not, it seems certain to become the real or- 
 der of things at the South, just as fast as the bond- 
 men become more intelligent and more restless, 
 and just as soon as the self -degraded nonslavehold- 
 ing whites come to appreciate their position and 
 power. 
 
 But if such was Brown's real object, it seems 
 to me unwise ; for the inauguration of this state 
 of things should be the work of the slaves them- 
 selves, the result of their own keen inward discon- 
 tent, the outbirth of their own keen sense of wrong, 
 and not the work of a premature and meddling 
 band from abroad. These evil results of slavery 
 and retributive remedies ought to be left to work 
 
 17 
 
themselves out ; and they will be hard enough to 
 bear, both for master and slave, without being ag- 
 gravated and embittered by rankling hatreds, im- 
 ported from other sections. Nor do I believe the 
 welfare of the slave would in the end be promoted 
 so well by a liberty gained under the sudden stim- 
 ulus of foreign and violent aid as if gained by the 
 slower and more peaceful methods, which God 
 grant may not prove impossible ! 
 / And so I condemn John Brown's method, while 
 I praise his motives. I find fault with his head, 
 while I honor his heart. I regret his blundering 
 haste, and his rash and foolish violence ; but I love 
 
 ^ and glory in the cause for which he died. He is 
 ^0 selfish robber, or bloodthirsty assassin, but an 
 unpretending, honest-hearted philanthropist, de- 
 luded to the overdoing of his duty, and misguided 
 by the wrong application of right principle, for 
 which he may be no more blameworthy than we all 
 are for our errors of judgment in the less impor- 
 tant concerns of everyday life. The qualities 
 which lived in him to excess were noble qualities, 
 more honored in his failure than they would have 
 
 y-been by his success. For his own sake, for the 
 pleasantness of his memor}^, as well as for the sake 
 of the cause he loved so well, and for the sake of 
 the whole country, I am glad he failed; because 
 I am forced to conclude that mider the circum- 
 
 ^. stances the only success which he could have gain- 
 ed would have been a greater failure. If he could 
 have succeeded in the broadest and deepest sense, 
 succeeded according to his own high and generous 
 ideal, of liberating many thousands of slaves with 
 
 18 
 
but little bloodshed, such success as that would 
 have made him the nation's benefactor, and I 
 would have rejoiced in his triumph. But that was 
 out of the question; his means were unequal to 
 the accomplishment of what his great heart covet- 
 ed; he could only have kindled a conflagration 
 which would have scorched and consumed those 
 whom he sought to rescue ; and he himself would 
 prefer to die. He would heartily join in the lan- 
 guage of one of his comrades in arms, who is soon 
 to follow him up the gallows ladder to a scaffold 
 of glory : *'Ten thousand or million deaths if I canN 
 by that means benefit the cause!" What hero of 
 the Eevolution could say more? 
 
 Let us ''judge righteous judgment." What 
 John BroAvn did was on his part a sad mistake; 
 but what he meant in his inmost thought was nei- 
 ther treason nor murder, but duty, humanity, and 
 patriotism. And sooner or later he will get the 
 credit of it. The best thought which ever crossed 
 the mind of your great historic military heroes, 
 Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, was far below the 
 worst thing we know of Brown. Had his army 
 of twenty-two swelled to a hundred thousand, he 
 would never knowingly have touched your liberty 
 or mine, nor that of any other hmnan being, ex- 
 cept that he might make it more secure. He would 
 never have disturbed willfully one foundation 
 stone of the Union, unless to pluck away the 
 bloody cement, that he might bind these states 
 more firmly together in the love of justice and in 
 the spirit of mutual regard. Men tallv of his 
 scheme for a "Provisional Government" as though 
 
 19 
 
it were intended by hini to overthrow and supplant 
 the federal Union. Such a charge might be 
 brought with equal reason against the organiza- 
 tions formed in the early history of Illinois for the 
 suppression of horse stealing, when there was not 
 law enough to protect the people. John Brown's 
 ''Constitution" was only intended for temporary 
 use, and expressly provided that nothing in it con- 
 tained should be construed to encourage the over- 
 throw of existing state or federal governments. 
 It was poorly enough planned for its own objects, 
 and shows much more familiarity with matters of 
 moral reform than with legislation. 
 
 There may be technical treason in John 
 Brown's acts, but there is no treason in his spir- 
 it. Treason, indeed ! Do we forget that it is hard- 
 ly four years since the present governor of Vir- 
 ginia declared that he would seize this same fed- 
 eral arsenal at Harper's Ferry, in case of the elec- 
 tion of a President opposed to the extension of 
 slavery? John Brown has only done for freedom 
 what Governor Wise pledged himself to do for 
 slavery! We pardon everything to the Southern 
 propaganda ; we can pardon nothing to the spirit 
 of liberty. 
 
 They are the traitors, who have perverted jus- 
 tice and prostituted the powers of the govermnent, 
 so that it is made an instrument for the perpetra- 
 tion of crimes so foul that they drive the purest- 
 hearted men to madness ! That will be a sad day 
 for our country when no citizen feels his spirit 
 roused, and his ''sinews change to steel," when 
 the gates of justice are slammed in the faces of 
 
 20 
 
men simply because they are poor and weak, and 
 wear a skin of such color as their Maker gave 
 them; a sad day when we can all look on calmly 
 and see the government gradually transformed in- 
 to a conspiracy for the punishment of innocent 
 men as cruninals, and the giving of honor to the 
 greatest knaves— a conspiracy in which the true 
 objects of government get so utterly confounded 
 that villainy sits on the bench of justice to give 
 sentence against virtue. Let us thank God that 
 we are not yet incapable of feeling shame and in- 
 dignation at the spirit of real treason, sedition, 
 and murder which strides the land, and which has 
 made the upholding of slavery the main object for 
 which our government now exists. 
 
 And there is no more hopeful symptom than 
 the widespread sympathy awakened throughout 
 the country— which I doubt not is as deep and ex- 
 tensive in the South as in the North, like fire un- 
 der the turf— in behalf of the true-hearted but 
 wrong-headed hero whose life has paid the forfeit 
 of his noble error. Men condemn his conduct, but 
 they admire his manhood, and secretly or openly 
 respect the cause he sought to serve. 
 
 Had he succeeded in doing all he wished, suc- 
 ceeded in that broad sense already described, he 
 would have been hailed as a deliverer— like that 
 William of Orange who drove the tyrant James 
 II out of the English throne; like that general 
 who went to Algiers to rescue white Americans 
 from Algerine slavery; like Garibaldi, who has 
 rendered such service to Italian liberty; or like 
 that Moses, who led out of Egypt some three mil- 
 
 21 
 
lions of fugitive slaves no v^hit better prepared 
 for liberty than our own, so poorly prepared that 
 they went towards their Canaanitish Canada 
 grumbling because of their hard fare in the wilder- 
 ness, longing for the fleshpots of Egypt, and mur- 
 muring against the man who under God had brok- 
 en their chains. But William of Orange, and the 
 American general at Algiers, and Garibaldi, and 
 Moses succeeded. John Brown has failed. So 
 they wear laurels of honor, and he goes to the gib- 
 bet. So Louis Kossuth failed to deliver Hungary, 
 and only saves his head by voluntary exile. 
 
 Between "George Washington, first in war, 
 first in peace, and first in the hearts of his coun- 
 trjrmen," and George Washington, hanged as a 
 bloody insurrectionist and traitor to his lawful 
 sovereign, there is one word which fills up all 
 the broad space — "Success!" So between John 
 Brown, the murderous conspirator, hooted into 
 eternity from the top of a scaffold, and John 
 Brown, standing proudly on a moniunent of brok- 
 en chains, crowned with the tearful gratitude of 
 thousands of delivered slaves, and with the admir- 
 ing applause of hundreds of thousands of white 
 freemen who now condemn him, there is one word 
 which fills all the space— "Failure!" For I think 
 that no man, who will examine with care and can- 
 dor all the accounts given us of his whole career 
 by friends and enemies, can doubt for a moment 
 that his inmost motives were as pure, and the ob- 
 jects which he soTight as they lay in his own mind 
 and heart were as holy, as the motives and objects 
 of William of Orange, Kossuth, Garibaldi, Wash- 
 
 22 
 
ington, or Moses, all of whom accomplished their 
 work at immense sacrifice of life, and with the ex- 
 ception of Moses by an appeal to the sword. 
 
 Nor will Jolm Brown's gross errors of judg- 
 ment and his mistaken method of promoting a 
 righteous cause prevent his being regarded in 
 coming ages according to his real character and 
 objects. The Christian missionary, who throws 
 away his life in a vain attempt to introduce the 
 Gospel among the cannibals, and whose zeal yields 
 no obvious fruits, except to excite in them a han- 
 kering after more human flesh, is not the less can- 
 onized as a martyr. The church does not stay to 
 inquire about his want of prudence, his needless 
 self-exposure, the folly of his method. He dies 
 for Christ— he dies for man; and that fact be- 
 comes a halo of glory around his head as he passes 
 up to shine among the stars of God. And the 
 world will glorify the memory of John Brown be- 
 cause he died for liberty. History wiU not deal 
 in careful criticisms upon his personal infirmities, 
 his errors of judgment, his conceit and talkative- 
 ness. His heroism, his self-forgetfulness, his sim- 
 plicity of character, his ''bearing the yoke of the 
 oppressed as upon his own neck for thirty years," 
 his honest zeal outrunning all prudence, his manly 
 bearing and high religious faith and self-posses- 
 sion before the court— not excelled since our Elder 
 Brother stood before the unjust bar of Pilate— 
 aU those will be faithfully studied and duly hon- 
 ored. For, be it remembered, the future will have 
 no interest in slavery, and its highest honors will 
 be reserved for those who have openly hated and 
 
 23 
 
opposed it in the days of its arrogance and power, 
 when the very names of the Virginian governor, 
 judge, and hangman will be forgotten like those 
 of Pharaoh's generals. For the names of the too 
 ardent lovers of liberty are a part of the world's 
 richest treasures; and the h^Tuns of freedom in 
 all countries do perpetually and exultingly teach 
 us that 
 
 "Whether upon the gallows high, 
 
 Or in the battle's van, 
 The noblest death that man can die 
 
 Is when he dies for man." 
 
 I think there are three scenes in the tragedy 
 at Harper's Ferry which will live in the picture 
 galleries of the world. 
 
 One of them will represent the stalwart old 
 man, with gray hair and white beard, hemmed in 
 bv United States marines, vour soldiers and mine, 
 with his few remaining companions still true to 
 their captain, with his crowd of unfettered pris- 
 oners crouching in the rear, while with the finger 
 of his left hand he feels the pulse of his dying boy, 
 and with his right poises the rifle to fire upon his 
 foes. 
 
 Another will portray that same old man, his 
 hair matted with blood and his face disfigured 
 with wounds, stretched upon a cot in a Virginia 
 court room, listening to the details of his own trial, 
 the calmest man in the room! Those wounds in 
 his head and face are cuts from the sword of Lieut. 
 Stuart, an officer the people of Illinois have help- 
 ed to arm and commission, and were inflicted after 
 
 24 
 
the old man had fallen, though the valorous lieu- 
 tenant declares he was "defending himself with 
 his gun." 
 
 And a third picture will reveal John Brown as 
 a prisoner in jail, with fire in his gray eye, as he 
 points to the door, and indignantly spurns the pro- 
 slavery clerg\Tnan, saying: "Go! You and I do 
 not worship the same God! I want nothing of 
 such as you!" 
 
 I saw John Brown once. It was at an anti- 
 slavery meeting in Boston, last May. Other men 
 were speaking words which made my pulses beat 
 quicker, and which moved the whole assembly. 
 He seemed almost indifferent. I understand it 
 now. He despised talk ; but he believed in action. 
 The moral agitators were engaged in what he 
 thought a hopeless task; for he believed the op- 
 pressor would never relax his grip upon the slave 
 till he was obliged to do it. And while they thun- 
 dered eloquent denunciations from afar, he was 
 saying in his heart: "I will go near to the old 
 Bastile of tjTancmj ; and in the strength of God I 
 will smite it with a blow that shall tell! Even if 
 I perish, my stroke will be felt. " And the old man 
 prayed Almighty God to help him strike hard, and 
 strike in the right place. And that God, whose 
 all-wise providence employs all such material as 
 is in its hand for the working out of unseen pur- 
 poses of beneficence, using alike the fighting man 
 and the man of peace, calling into His service our 
 errors as well as our little wisdom, heard and an- 
 swered his prayers, but not in the way which his 
 short-sighted wisdom looked for. He found him- 
 
 25 
 
self lying a helpless prisoner, with all his plans 
 frustrated, with his fellows killed or captured, 
 with the bodies of his children buried with dis- 
 honor by the hands of angry strangers, only to be 
 dug up and hurried to the dissecting room, there 
 to lie for hours naked and exposed to repeated in- 
 sults of cowardly enemies. His heart grew heavy 
 with the disappointment; and he blamed, never 
 his motives, but his generalship. But the hasty 
 trial came on, the sentence of death was pronounc- 
 ed, he saw the gallows not far distant, the near 
 prospect of eternity brought back his faith, and he 
 saw, what we may see, that the hand of that Wise 
 Providence would make his very failure better and 
 grander than success. He says: "I am worth in- 
 conceivably more to hang, than for any other pur- 
 pose. I have fought the good fight, and nearly fin- 
 ished my course. I am exceeding joyful in all my 
 tribulations. God has taken away my sword of 
 steel; but He has given me instead the sword of 
 the Spirit." 
 
 Never was such a hanging before! The very 
 deed of horror which places a seal upon his lips 
 forever becomes eloquent as the tongue of a proph- 
 et. Like that first gun of the Revolution, which, 
 as Emerson says, "was heard round the world," 
 so is the deed of John Brown. No other man, liv- 
 ing or dead, has ever struck a blow which so shook 
 the system of slavery to its foundations. God 
 grant it may never get over it, but go timibling to 
 its utter destruction. The panic which spreads 
 from the Potomac to the Rio del Norte is the re- 
 sult of the public and emphatic utterance of an 
 
 26 
 
idea — the idea that slavery itself is lawlessness, 
 and universal freedom alone is law and order. 
 The boiling and turmoil of political parties at the 
 North is comparatively a trifle. The terror of the 
 South means everything. It is a confession of 
 conscious weakness and conscious wrong. 
 
 I think there are three ways in which John 
 Brown has hastened the inevitable downfall of 
 slavery : By the effect of his strange deed on the 
 mind of the slave ; by its effect on the mind of the 
 slaveholder; and by its effect on the state of the 
 question before the nation. On each of these 
 points something must be said. 
 
 The slave can never be made free with imme- 
 diate advantage to himself till he has some sense 
 of the A^alue and uses of liberty. John Brown per- 
 haps did not fully understand that; but Provi- 
 dence did not the less employ him to bring forward 
 that very thing. The slave's great want is self- 
 respect — the feeling that he is really a man, with 
 rights and duties. Give him once the full idea of 
 what it is to be free, and he will straightway be- 
 gin to yearn after it and grow toward it. Now 
 the knowledge of what John Bro^^^l has done and 
 suffered, and the reason of it, will travel to the 
 remotest plantation. The slaves who are being 
 sold southward in such haste will carry startling 
 reports to the cotton fields and rice swamps. 
 There is no more mighty power than the power 
 of growth — the ]30wer of inward life forcing it- 
 self outwards, as of the seed germ pushing up 
 through the soil into the sunlight, or of treelife, 
 pressing all elements into its service and bursting 
 
 27 
 
into a thousand buds. And soul growth comes 
 from ideas quickening themselves into action. It 
 is easy to pass laws forbidding men to read ; but 
 no law can arrest the thought, or prevent the 
 growth of a living idea once fairly sprouted in the 
 soul. John Brown's blood, freely shed, will mois- 
 ten and warm into more vigorous germination, all 
 over the South, that idea of liberty which God has 
 planted in all souls, and surely not less in the 
 breast of the African than in that of the Anglo- 
 Saxon. Increased rigors and more vigilant police 
 will only sharpen inventive wit, making runaw^ays 
 more frequent and discontent more general. 
 
 Still more fatal to slavery is the increased tim- 
 idity of the slaveholder. Increased timidity, for 
 with all the bluster and high talk about the con- 
 tent and happiness of the slave, no slaveholding 
 community is ever entirely free from apprehen- 
 sion. The highest Southern authorities confess 
 it. Jefferson bases upon it his prophecy of evil. 
 Senator Foote portra3^ed it in vivid colors on the 
 floor of the Senate, and upbraided Northern men 
 as helping to stimulate insurrection. John Ran- 
 dolph once said: "The night bell never tolls for 
 fire in Richmond, but the mother clasps her babe 
 more closely in her arms." Josiah Quincy, Jr., 
 recently spoke of hearing a Southern gentleman 
 laugh at the idea of being afraid of slaves ; but he 
 adds that he afterward heard that same gentle- 
 man confess that he never slept without pistols 
 under his pillow. "The Southern powder house" 
 is a proverbial description of the institution and 
 its ever-present perils. 
 
 28 
 
But this unnatural and monstrous feature of 
 Southern life, and these elements of insecurity and 
 alarm brooding like a nightmare over the slave- 
 holding population, have never been so clearly 
 made manifest as by the event of Harper's Ferry. 
 John Brown has laid bare the weakest point of the 
 system to the eyes of the world. It is as if God 
 had let loose a great storm of wind upon the ocean, 
 tearing and lifting the waters into yawning 
 chasms, letting us look down to the bare and jag- 
 ged rocks at the bottom. The slave sees it. He 
 knows that his master fears him. Worst of all, 
 the master knows that the slave knows it. 
 
 True, the Southern press exults over the re- 
 port that the slaves would not join John Brown, 
 as an all-convincing proof of their satisfaction 
 and repose under the patriarchal rule. The Mem- 
 phis clergyman before mentioned gives thanks for 
 this new evidence that the servants are loyal to 
 those who have given them the blessings of Chris- 
 tian teaching? But all this is thinly veiled pre- 
 tense. Their words look one way, their conduct 
 another. 
 
 The slaves did not join John Brown ; but why ? 
 If because they were cowardly, or because they 
 preferred bondage to freedom, that is in itself the 
 most damning of all testimonies to the degrading 
 effect of slavery upon them. But it is likely that 
 the true reason why they did not join in the effort 
 for their own deliverance is because they were not 
 generally apprised of it; and that the outbreak 
 fortunately came to an end, or was in a fair way to 
 fail, before they understood its true nature. Cook 
 
 29 
 
had resided at Harper's Ferry for some months; 
 but in his confession he tells us that Brown had 
 given hun strict charge not to acquaint the slaves 
 with the plan, and to make no conversation with 
 them on the subject — a charge which he says he 
 obeyed to the letter, except that he once asked 
 some negroes if they desired liberty, to which they 
 replied that they thought they ought to be free, 
 but had little hope of it ; when he simply told them 
 to be of good courage, as there might be a good 
 time coming. Yet the South Carolina papers say 
 that the slaves on the estates did actually arm 
 themselves with rude weapons, and started stealth- 
 ily for Harper's Ferry, as is now supposed; but 
 their movements were watched, and their escape 
 prevented. 
 
 But if John Brown has satisfied the slavehold- 
 ers of the contentedness of their human chattels, 
 what means the general alarm ? Why are the peo- 
 ple of Virginia advised to remain at home and 
 watch their own affairs, on execution day? Why 
 is every Northern traveler turned back, and every 
 free-spoken antislavery man in the South driven 
 from his home or lynched? Why do all hearts 
 jjalpitate with every unusual stir among the 
 blacks? Why are the cities and villages govern- 
 ed by vigilance committees? Why do the very 
 screams of the night birds startle the sleeping peo- 
 ple, as though a destroying angel were ready to 
 pass through the land and smite all the first-born ? 
 
 There is but one cause for all this nervousness 
 and terror. Slavery blockades the whole South. 
 
 30 
 
The helpless, ignorant black man holds his proud 
 master in a state of perpetual siege. The sword 
 which Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily, always saw sus- 
 pended over his head by a single hair, hangs over 
 the household of every slaveholder. This is no 
 overdrawn picture. As I have already shown, it 
 is no more highly colored than those which South- 
 ern statesmen have drawn. The pleasant repre- 
 sentations of slave society and of the affection felt 
 for some masters are true in many cases, and I am 
 glad they are true; but this agreeable admission 
 does not affect the general fact, which John Brown 
 has made to stand out in bolder relief than ever, 
 that slavery throws the subject race into false, 
 bitter, and dangerous relations with the dominant 
 one. 
 
 Judge Jay quotes the Southern Religious Tele- 
 graph as saying : ' ' Hatred to the whites, with the 
 exception in some cases of attachment to the per- 
 son and family of the master, is nearly universal 
 among the black population. We have a foe cher- 
 ished in our very bosoms — a foe willing to draw 
 our life blood whenever the opportunity offers. '^ 
 And the Maysville Intelligencer speaks of an "in- 
 nate desire for liberty, ever ready to act itself out 
 in the bosom of every rational creature." 
 
 By just so much as John Brown has quickened 
 that desire for liberty, by just so much has he in- 
 creased the apprehensions of the master, and load- 
 ed his heart with anxiety and alarm. There is but 
 one possible peaceful remedy, but one possible 
 termination for this reign of terror, and that is 
 
 31 
 
Emancipation. Drop the lash system, and try the 
 cash system. 
 
 "Let the hand that tills the soil 
 
 Be like the wind that fans it— free." 
 
 Give the laborer an interest in his own indus- 
 try. Be simply honest with him. Pay him for 
 his work, and there is no danger that he will cut 
 the master's throat. Do him justice, treat him as 
 a man, and he will be a fast friend. Either this, 
 something like this, something looking toward 
 this, or ever-increasing dangers, converging to that 
 terrible crisis 
 
 "When vengeance shall her tocsin toll, 
 
 And insurrection's storm shall roll 
 Like the strong surgings of the deep," 
 
 involving master and slave in one common wide- 
 spread ruin. 
 
 And now I must speak of John Brown's great, 
 blundering blow as it affects the general state of 
 the question before the nation. We have striven 
 in vain to dodge the whole matter of our duty 
 by compromises, political tactics, and resolutions 
 against agitation. But John Brown has moved 
 the previous question, and forced us to vote. God 
 loves the nation too well. He loves the North and 
 the South, the slave and the master, too well, to 
 let us rest in peace under the shadow of our great 
 crime. He lets these awful events come to tell us 
 that we are to be holden to a strict account for our 
 action or inaction. He bids us "choose this day'' 
 which we Avill serve, freedom or slavery ; for, how- 
 ever we may desire it, neutrality is now out of 
 
 32 
 
the question. Every man's sympathies must be 
 either for or against the principle for which a 
 pure-minded man has bravely laid down his life. 
 
 More than that : We have been secretly think- 
 ing, or timidly saying: ''Slavery is unfit to live. 
 It is a sin and a shame. But it is like an unman- 
 ageable disease, a cancer, which it is dangerous to 
 touch and still more dangerous to let alone. We 
 will do what we can to keep it from spreading; 
 and leave it to Southern men to take care of it 
 themselves. It is none of our business." 
 
 But the slaveholder has been saying: "You 
 shall make it your business. It is not cancer or 
 disease. It is life, health, and beauty. It shall 
 live forever, and we will make this Union an in- 
 strument for preserving and extending it, or we 
 will overturn the Union. You shall be the 'jailers 
 and constables' of the institution. If a slave runs 
 away, you shall help us catch him, and the expense 
 of his capture shall be paid out of the common 
 treasury. If a number of slaves revolt, you shall 
 help us bring them under the yoke. Slavery shall 
 be the nation's concern, and you men of the North, 
 along with the mean whites of the South, shall be 
 its bodyguard. If the Union does not work for 
 this result, we want nothing of it." 
 
 And so, instead of being a nation of so many 
 millions of freemen, we have become simply a na- 
 tion of three hundred and fifty thousand slave- 
 holders. Not the negro alone, but the nonslave- 
 holding white man also, is without any rights 
 which the slaveholder feels bound to respect. If 
 you doubt it, go into a slave state and speak your 
 
 33 
 
mind concerning the institution. You will find it 
 true to your sorrow that the handful of slavehold- 
 ers constitute the nation. There is no power in 
 the land which will protect you from their fury. 
 The government is theirs. Congress meets for 
 them. Courts decree injustice for them. We 
 wage war for them. John Brown breaks the law 
 and sheds blood to deliver their bondmen, the fed- 
 eral government makes haste to snuff out the in- 
 surrection, and the mistaken old man goes hurry- 
 ing to the scaffold. But this very year some thou- 
 sands of human beings are violently kidnapped 
 from Africa, amid scenes of blood and horror com- 
 pared with which Harper's Ferry is as a drop in 
 the bucket. They are brought to Southern ports 
 and openly sold ; and, though the laws of this land 
 stamp this foreign slave trade as piracy, punish- 
 able with death, the government is helpless. Not 
 a slave trader can be convicted. High-handed law- 
 lessness goes scot free and finds ample advocacy, 
 when it is on the side of slavery ; but the lawless- 
 ness of too great zeal for liberty swings on the gal- 
 lows! 
 
 The question of the hour is, shall we cower 
 like slaves, and let John Brown's error frighten 
 us into easy acquiescence in all the monstrous de- 
 mands which are made upon us by the arrogance 
 of that system of utter lawlessness, fraud, and vio- 
 lence? On that momentous question it is not for 
 me now to enlarge. The events which are ripen- 
 ing upon us will give it emphasis enough to fix it 
 in the attention of every man who feels the grand 
 responsibilities of American citizenship. 
 
 34 
 
And let me here say to you, what I deeply feel, 
 that these are no times for passion, or uncalculat- 
 ing precipitancy of action. Let every man hold 
 his mind in sober, even balance, that the duties 
 which coming events may devolve upon us may 
 be discharged firmly and promptly, but in the high- 
 est spirit of wisdom. We can ill afford to lose 
 our wits in this double crisis of difficulty and dan- 
 ger. I believe that every person in the land, 
 whether he knows it or not, has a deep interest at 
 stake in the settlement of this exciting and trouble- 
 some question of slavery on the basis of natural 
 justice and right, so that it may stay settled for- 
 ever. Nor can it be desirable that excitement and 
 trouble should cease until we have conscience 
 enough to settle it on that righteous basis. 
 
 Equally deep is our common interest in settling 
 it without blood, and in healthful conformity with 
 those laws of social order by which God leads the 
 nations upward. We want no strife between the 
 North and South, nor between the black man and 
 the white. But it is both idle and foolish, if not 
 wicked, to seek tranquility while slavery exists. 
 The thought of peace and amity while that institu- 
 tion lives and sets up such atrocious pretensions is 
 as vain as to look for quiet in a whirlwind where 
 two storms meet. When the nationalization of 
 slavery became a settled purpose of the slavehold- 
 ing interest, a conflict was inevitable, if the North 
 retained any conscience whatever. So it is not agi- 
 tation which has brought us into this evil ; but this 
 evil has brought on the agitation. The man who 
 tells us there is an ''irrepressible conflict" between 
 
 35 
 
freedom and slavery does not produce that con- 
 flict by mentioning it. He only states what every 
 thoughtful man knows to be a fact ; a fact of his- 
 tory, and a fact of to-day; a fact which Harper's 
 Ferry onlj^ confirms and makes obvious to all eyes. 
 That conflict does not end with John Brown's life. 
 It only dee]3ens and darkens, as men ponder over 
 the details of his short and strange career and his 
 sad, but glorious, fate. 
 
 - It only remains for us to ask where we shall 
 stand and what we shall do in this unavoidable 
 struggle. Carnal weapons! They are not called 
 for, and God grant we may never have use for 
 them. War — red, savage, indiscriminate war, with 
 its garments rolled in blood, with its slaughter of 
 women and children, its heaps of gory, mangled 
 corpses, its devouring flames, leaping from rafter 
 to rafter of burning cities, with the unutterable 
 atrocities which mark its progress, and the black 
 and blasted track of desolation which it leaves be- 
 hind — ah! I cannot invoke these, even in aid of 
 human liberty. I think a man can be the friend 
 of the slave without being the enemy of the master. 
 Anarchy, disorder, violence, and bloodshed can 
 have no fascination for any heart in sympathy 
 with God's great law of love and his gospel of good 
 will. If these terrible ministers of vengeance ever 
 come, it will be because the slaveholder perversely 
 refuses to "let the oppressed go free," and so gets 
 ground to powder by insanely throwing himself 
 across the track of progress. If he is ever over- 
 whehned by the waves of ruin, it will be because 
 he follows the slaves into the Red Sea. 
 
 86 
 
Truth, Law, and Justice! these are weapons 
 mightier than the sword ; and if John Brown did 
 not well use them, he has taught us how to use 
 them, for he has fixed the nation's gaze on slavery, 
 and slavery cannot bear to be looked at. Wendell 
 Phillips has said—and to me it seems wiser than 
 some of his recent words : "Against the thought- 
 ful and determined gaze of twenty millions of 
 Christian men, no institution is wicked or power- 
 ful enough to stand ! " But, oh ! my friends, where 
 shall we find those twenty millions of Christian 
 men who are to look slavery out of countenance 
 and out of the light of the sun? 
 
 It was my duty to give you my exact thought 
 on these matters, so far as possible, without re- 
 serve and without exaggeration. I have done it— 
 not in vain confidence, but in simple frankness, 
 taking your candor for granted. Many of you 
 think differently from me. I recognize your right, 
 and do not question your honesty. I may be 
 wrong, and you right. Further developments may 
 confirm or disprove the opinions of John Brown 
 which you have heard to-day. If he were a bad 
 man— knave, hypocrite, and murderous cut-throat 
 —I have no more interest than you in hiding his 
 real character. And if, as I have no shade of 
 doubt, he were a true man, laying his life on the 
 holy altar of liberty from pure love of the injured 
 and oppressed, you have no more interest than I 
 in blackening his blessed memory with the charge 
 of crime. 
 
iLfiS?^"^ O*" CONGRESS 
 
 011 837 251 
 
 Nor does his personal character affect tJie mer- 
 its of the cause in which he suffered death. John 
 Brown's fame or infamy is not the great matter 
 at issue. Slavery is on trial for its life; and we 
 are in court, interested parties, likely to be ar- 
 raigned before God and the world as accomplices 
 in the guilt of upholding it, by the abuse of our in- 
 fluence, by our contempt for the colored man, by 
 our sympathy and countenance of his oppressors, 
 and by our criminal misuse of the power given us 
 as American citizens. God help us to wash our 
 hands in innocency of the great transgression, and 
 to serve our country by serving with our highest 
 wisdom the holy cause of Human Brotherhood 
 and Universal Justice— the cause of Liberty, 
 Equality, and Fraternity. 
 
 7 • 
 
 88 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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 011 837 251 7