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<html>
    <h1>
      A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN
    </h1>
    <p>
      <br />
    </p>
    <h2>
      By Henry David Thoreau
    </h2>
    <h4>
      [Read to the citizens of Concord, Mass., <br />Sunday Evening, October 30,
      1859.]
    </h4>
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <br /> <br />
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;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,&mdash;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 his 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 his, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      I should say that he was an old-fashioned man in 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      He was one of that class of whom we hear a great deal, but, for the most
      part, see nothing at all,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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,&mdash;God-fearing men,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;his "orderly book" I think he called it,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      A man of rare common-sense and directness of speech, as of action; a
      transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      executed conspiracies that ever failed."
    </p>
    <p>
      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?&mdash;and this, not because the government menials were
      lenient, but because they were afraid of him.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      But to make haste to his last act, and its effects.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 do
      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 tactics. 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,"&mdash;as
      the Governor of Virginia is reported to have said, using the language of
      the cock-pit, "the gamest man he ever saw,"&mdash;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?&mdash;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,&mdash;and such a
      soul!&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The momentary charge at Balaclava, 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?
    </p>
    <p>
      "Served him right,"&mdash;"A dangerous man,"&mdash;"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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 figureheads upon a hulk, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;been printed in an extra, at least.
      To turn from the voices and deeds of earnest men to the cackling of
      political 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;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,"&mdash;"mistaken
      men,"&mdash;"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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 &amp; Co.,
      but they have not correctly counted Captain Brown's vote. He has taken the
      wind out of their sails,&mdash;the little wind they had,&mdash;and they
      may as well lie to and repair.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;even though he were of late the vilest murderer, who has
      settled that matter with himself,&mdash;the spectacle is a sublime one,&mdash;didn't
      ye know it, ye Liberators, ye Tribunes, ye Republicans?&mdash;and we
      become criminal in comparison. Do yourselves the honor to recognize him.
      He needs none of your respect.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      I am aware that I anticipate a little,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 slave holder, 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!
    </p>
    <p>
      Insane! A father and six sons, and one son-in-law, and several more men
      besides,&mdash;as many at least as twelve disciples,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 Gesler, 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to
      Congress for, of late years?&mdash;to declare with effect what kind of
      sentiments? All their speeches put together and boiled down,&mdash;and
      probably they themselves will confess it,&mdash;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,&mdash;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,&mdash;a Sharp's rifle of
      infinitely surer and longer range.
    </p>
    <p>
      And the New York Herald reports the conversation verbatim! It does not
      know of what undying words it is made the vehicle.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;"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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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 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,
      Stephens, and Coppic, it was hard to say which was most firm."
    </p>
    <p>
      Almost the first Northern men whom the slaveholder has learned to respect!
    </p>
    <p>
      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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 semi-human 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.
    </p>
    <p>
      The only government that I recognize,&mdash;and it matters not how few are
      at the head of it, or how small its army,&mdash;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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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
      recreates 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?
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?&mdash;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&mdash;I speak of his followers only&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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&mdash;I say again that it affects me as a sublime spectacle. If he
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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?
    </p>
    <p>
      This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death,&mdash;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,&mdash;Washington,&mdash;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,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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!
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
                "Unless above himself he can
    Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"
</pre>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;of his rare qualities!&mdash;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 savior of four millions of men.
    </p>
    <p>
      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,&mdash;to form
      any resolution whatever,&mdash;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 free! What kind of
      laws for free men can you expect from that?
    </p>
    <p>
      I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but for
      his character,&mdash;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.
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      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 willfully and wickedly hold
      in bondage."
    </p>
    <p>
      And, referring to his movement: "It is, in my opinion, the greatest
      service a man can render to God."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      You don't know your testament when you see it.
    </p>
    <p>
      "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."
    </p>
    <p>
      "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,&mdash;this
      negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet."
    </p>
    <p>
      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.
    </p>
   </html>