F 546 
 .P48 
 Copy 2 
 
 3!n apemori? of 
 
 3oJn ^. aitgeD) 
 
 ^tiUredfit of 
 
 Clarmce ^. Barroto 
 
 at tl^e JFumral 
 
IN MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 John P. Altgeld 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 CLARENCE S. DARROW 
 
 AT THE FUNERAL 
 
 Chas. H. Kerr & Co. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
<:c.i'c 
 
 
IN MEMORY OF 
 
 JOHN P. ALTGELD 
 
 ADDRESS OF 
 
 CLARENCE S. DARROW 
 
 AT THE FUNERAL 
 
 IN the great flood of human life that is spawned upon 
 the earth, it is not often that a man is born. The 
 friend and comrade that we mourn to-day was 
 formed of that infinitely rare mixture that now and 
 then at long, long intervals combines to make a man. 
 John P. Altgeld was one of the rarest souls who ever lived 
 and died. His was a humble birth, a fearless life and a 
 dramatic, fitting death. We who knew him, we who loved 
 him, we who rallied to his many hopeless calls, we who 
 dared to praise him while his heart still beat, can not yet 
 feel that we shall never hear his voice again. 
 
 John P. Altgeld was a soldier tried and true ; not a 
 soldier clad in uniform, decked with spangles and led by 
 fife and drum in the mad intoxication of the battlefield; 
 such soldiers have not been rare upon the earth in any 
 land or age. John P. Altgeld was a soldier in the 
 everlasting struggle of the human race for liberty 
 and justice on the earth. From the first awakening of 
 his young mind until the last relentless summons came. 
 
he was a soldier who had no rest or furlough, who was 
 ever on the field in the forefront of the deadliest and most 
 hopeless spot, whom none but death could muster out. 
 Liberty, the relentless goddess, had turned her fateful 
 smile on John P. Altgeld's face when he was but a child, 
 and to this first, fond love he was faithful unto death. 
 
 Liberty is the most jealous and exacting mistress that 
 can beguile the brain and soul of man. She will have 
 nothing from him who will not give her all. She knows 
 that his pretended love serves but to betray. But when 
 once the fierce heat of her quenchless, lustrous eyes has 
 burned into the victim's heart, he will know no other smile 
 but hers. Liberty will have none but the great devoted 
 souls, and by her glorious visions, her lavish promises, 
 her boundless hopes, her infinitely witching charms, she 
 lures these victims over hard and stony ways, by desolate 
 and dangerous paths, through misery, obloquy and want 
 to a martyr's cruel death. To-day we pay our last sad 
 homage to the most devoted lover, the most abject slave, 
 the fondest, wildest, dreamiest victim that ever gave his 
 life to liberty's immortal cause. 
 
 In the history of the country where he lived and died, 
 the life and works of our devoted dead will one day shine 
 in words of everlasting light. When the bitter feelings 
 of the hour have passed away, when the mad and poison- 
 ous fever of commercialism shall have run its course, 
 when conscience and honor and justice and liberty shall 
 once more ascend the throne from which the shameless, 
 brazen goddess of power and wealth have driven her 
 away; then this man we knew and loved will find his 
 
rightful place in the minds and hearts of the cruel, unwil- 
 ling world he served. No purer patriot ever lived than 
 the friend w^e lay at rest to-day. His patriotism was not 
 paraded in the public marts, or bartered in the stalls for 
 gold ; his patriotism was of that pure ideal mold that 
 placed the love of man above the love of self. 
 
 John P. Altgeld was always and at all times a lover 
 of his fellow man. Those who reviled him have tried 
 to teach the world that he was bitter and relentless, that 
 he hated more than loved. We who knew the man, we 
 who had clasped his hand and heard his voice and looked 
 into his smiling face ; we who knew his life of kindness, 
 of charity, of infinite pity to the outcast and the weak; 
 we who knew his human heart, could never be deceived. 
 A truer, greater, gentler, kindlier soul has never lived and 
 died ; and the fierce bitterness and hatred that sought to 
 destroy this great, grand soul had but one cause — the fact 
 that he really loved his fellow man. 
 
 As a youth our dead chieftain risked his life for the 
 cause of the black man, whom he always loved. As a 
 lawyer he was wise and learned, impatient with the forms 
 and machinery which courts and legislatures and lawyers 
 have woven to strangle justice through expense and cere- 
 mony and delay; as a judge he found a legal way to do 
 what seemed right to him, and if he could not find a legal 
 way, he found a way. As a Governor of a great State, he 
 ruled wisely and well. A Governor elected by the great- 
 est personal triumph of any Governor ever chosen by the 
 State, he fearlessly and knowingly bared his devoted head 
 to the fiercest, most vindictive criticism ever heaped upon 
 
a public man, because he loved justice and dared to do 
 the right. 
 
 In the days now past, John P. Altgeld, our loving, 
 peerless chief, in scorn and derision was called John 
 Pardon Altgeld by those who would destroy his power. 
 We who stand to-day around his bier and mourn the 
 brave and loving friend are glad to adopt this name. If, 
 in the infinite economy of nature, there shall be another 
 land where crooked paths shall be made straight, where 
 heaven's justice shall review the judgments of the earth — 
 if there shall be a great, wise, humane judge, before 
 whom the sons of men shall come, we can hope for noth- 
 ing better for ourselves than to pass into that infinite 
 presence as the comrades and friends of John Pardon 
 Altgeld, who opened the prison doors and set the captive 
 free. 
 
 Even admirers have seldom understood the real char- 
 acter of this great human man. These were sometimes 
 wont to feel that the fierce bitterness of the world that 
 assailed him fell on deaf ears and an unresponsive soul. 
 They did not know the man, and they do not feel the 
 subtleties of human life. It was not a callous heart that 
 so often led him to brave the most violent and malicious 
 hate; it was not a callous heart, it was a devoted soul. 
 He so loved justice and truth and liberty and righteous- 
 ness that all the terrors that the earth could hold were 
 less than the condemnation of his own conscience for an 
 act that was cowardly or mean. 
 
 John P. Altgeld, like many of the earth's great souls, 
 was a solitary man. Life to him was serious and earnest 
 
— an endless tragedy. The earth was a great hospital 
 of sick, wounded and suffering, and he a devoted sur- 
 geon, who had no right to waste one moment's time, and 
 whose duty was to cure them all. While he loved his 
 friends, he yet could work without them, he could live 
 without them, he could bid them one by one good-bye, 
 when their courage failed to follow where he led ; and 
 he could go alone, out into the silent night, and, looking 
 upward at the changeless stars, could find communion 
 there. 
 
 My dear, dead friend, long and well have we known 
 you, devotedly have followed you, implicitly have trusted 
 you, fondly have loved you. Beside your bier we now 
 must say farewell. The heartless call has come, and we 
 must stagger on the best we can alone. In the darkest 
 hours we will look in vain for your loved form, we will 
 listen hopelessly for your devoted, fearless voice. But, 
 though we lay you in the grave and hide you from the 
 sight of man, your brave words still will speak for the 
 poor, the oppressed, the captive and the weak ; and your 
 devoted life inspire countless souls to do and dare in 
 the holy cause for which you lived and died. 
 

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