A Plea for Captain John Brown (1853) 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.
THE END
