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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Plea for Captain John Brown, by Henry David Thoreau
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: A Plea for Captain John Brown
+
+Author: Henry David Thoreau
+
+Release Date: March, 2001 [eBook #2567]
+[Most recently updated: January 21, 2022]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Jason Filley and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN ***
+
+
+
+
+ A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN 
+
+
+
+ By Henry David Thoreau 
+
+
+[Read to the citizens of Concord, Mass.,
+
+Sunday Evening, October 30, 1859.]
+
+
+
+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 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 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.
+
+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 cock-pit, “the gamest man he 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 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?
+
+“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 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.
+
+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 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.
+
+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, Stephens, 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 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.
+
+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 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?
+
+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
+these men 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
+savior 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 willfully
+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.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PLEA FOR CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN ***
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