E451 Copy 2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS DDDD173flDDa <^ 4? .•win:* "^ V' •! --' ^ *, ^^ *•'--** ^^"^ V' •♦•<»- O *- ^«^ c^^ '^ '^0 ^* o THE LESSON OF THE HOUR. b LECTURE OF WENDELL PHILLIPS DELIVERED AT BUOOKLYN, N. Y., Tuesday Evening, November 1, 1859. Ladies and Gentlemen — I speak with the utmost sincerity when I say that I cannot expect — speaking from this phitform, and to you — to say anything on the vital question of the hour, M'hich you have not already heard. I should not, in that sense, willing- ly have come here ; but, when a great question di- vides the community, all men are called upon to vote, and I feel to-night that I am simply giving my vote. I am only saying ' ditto ' to what you hear from this platform day after day. And I would willingly have avoided, ladies and gentlemen, even at this last moment, borrowing this hour from you. I tried to do better bj you. Like the Irish- man in the story, I offered to hold the hat of Hon. Thomas Corvvin, of Ohio, (enthusiastic applause,) if he would only make a speech, and, most unac- countably, I am sorry to say, he declined this gener- ous offer. (Laughter.) So I must fulfil my ap- pointment, and deliver my little lecture myself. ' The Lesson of the Hour? ' I think the lesson of the hour is insurrection. [Sensation.] Insur- rection of thought always precedes the insurrection of arms. The last twenty years have been insurrec- tion of thought. VYe seem to be entering on a new phase of the great moral American struggle. It seems to me that wo have never accepted, as Amer- icans — we have never accepted our own civilization yVc have liekl back from the inference "which we ourisin up froir^ the grave into which it is rapidly sinking, we should have to get a com- mentator of the true German blood to find out what all these queer, odd, peculiar, imaginative paraphra- ses moan in this middle of the Nineteenth Century. That was one evidence of progress. I believe in moral suasion, I believe the age of bullets is over. I believe the age of ideas is come. I think that is the preaching of our countr3^ The old Hindoo dreamed, you know, that he saw the human race led out to its varied fortune. First, he saw men bitted anl curbed, and the reins went back to an iron hand. But his dream changed on and on, until at last he saw men led by reins that came from, the brain, and went back into an unseen hand. It was the type of governments ; the first a govern- ment of despotism, palpable iron ; and the last our government, a government of brains, a government of ideas. I believe in it — in public opinion. Yet, let me say, in passing, that I think you can make a better use of iron than forging it into chains. If you must have the metal, put it into Sharpe's rifles. It is a great deal better used that way than in fetters — a great deal better than in a clumsy statue of a mock great man, for hypocrites to kneel down and worship in a State-house yard. [Loud and renewed cheers and great hissing.] I am BO unused to hisses lately that 1 have forgotten what I had to say. [Laughter and hisses.] I only know I meant what I did say. My idea is, public opinion, literature, education, as governing elements. But some men seem to think that our institutions are necessarily safe because we have free schools and cheap books, and a public opinion that con- trols. But that is no evidence of safety. India and China have had schools, and a school system almost identical with that of Massachusetts, for fifteen hundred years. And books are as cheap in Central and Northern Asia as they are in New York. But they have not secured liberty, nor 8 secured a controlling public opinion to either na- tion. Spain for three centuries had municipalities and town governments, as inocpendcnt and sulf- supportino;, and as representative of thou;j;ht, as New England or New York has. But that did not save Spain. De Toqueville says that fifty years be- fore the great revolution, public opinion was as omnipotent in France as it is to-day, but it did not save France. You cannot save men by machinery. AYliat India and France and Spain wanted was live men, and that is what we want to-day ; men who are Avilling to look their own destiny, and their own functions, and their own responsibilities in the face. ' Grant mc to see, and Ajax asks no more,' was the prayer tliat the great poet put into the lips of his hero in the darkness that overspread the Grecian camp. All we want of American citizens is the opening of their own eyes, and seeing things as they are. To the intelligent, thoughtful and determined gaze of twenty millions of Christian people, there is nothing — no institution wicked and powerful enough to be capal>le of standing against it. In Keats's beautiful poem of ' Lamia,' a young man had been led captive by a phantom girl, and was the slave of her beauty," until the old teacher came in and fixed his thoughtful eye upon tlie figure, and it vanished, and tlie pupil started up himself again. You see the great Commonwealth of A'irginia fitly represented by a pyramid standing upon its apex. A Connecticut born man entered at one corner of her dominions, and fixed his cold grey eye upon the government of Yirginia, and it almost vanished in his very gaze. For it seems that Yirginia asked leave ' to be ' of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. (Cheers and applause.) Connecticut has sent out many a school-master to the other thirty States ; but never before so grand a teacher as that Lite! field-born school-master at Harper's 9 Ferry, writing npon the Natural Bridge in the face of nations his siuiplG copy : ' Resistance to Tyrants is oba(li(3nce to God.' (Loud cheers.) I said that the lesson of the hour was insurrec- tion. 1 ought not to apply that word to John Brown of Ossawatoraie, for tliere was no insurrec tion in his case. It is a great mistake to call him an insurgent. This principle that I have endeavor- ed so briefly to open to you, of absolute right and wrong, states what? Just this : ' Commonwealth of Virginia !' There is no such thing. No civil society, no government can exist, except on the basis of the willing submission of all its citizens, and by the performance of the duty of rendering equal justice between man and man. Everyt'iing that calls itseila Government, and re- fuses that dut}*, or has not that assent, is no Govern- ment. It is only a pirate ship. Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia ! She is only a chronic insurrection. 1 mean exactly what I say. I am weigliing my words now. She is a pirate ship, and John Brown sails the sea a Lord High Admiral of the Almighty, with his commission to sink every pirate he meets on God's ocean of the nineteenth century. (Cheers and applause.) I mean literally and exactly what I say. In God's world there are no majorities, no minorities ; one, on God's side, is a majority. You have often heard here, doubtless, and I need not tell you the ground of morals The rights of that one man are as sacred as those of the miscalled Commonwealth of Virginia. Virginia is only another Algiers. The barbarous horde who gag each other, imprison women for teaching cliil- dren to read, prohibit the Bible, sell men on the auction-blocks, abolish marriage, condemn half their women to prostitution, and devote themselves to the breeding of human baings for sale, is only a larger and blacker Algiers. The only prayer of a 10 true man for such is, ' Ciraoious Heaven ! unless they n'pirnt, send soon their Exuiouth and Decatur.' Jiihn lirown has twice as much ri;^hfc to hang Gov. AVisc as Gov. Wise has to hanp; him. (Cheers and liisses.) YoQ see I am talking of that al)solutc essence of things that lives in the night of tho Eternal and the Infinite : not as men judge it in the rotten morals of the nineteenth century, among a herd of States that calls itself an empire because it "weaves cotton and sells slaves. Wliat I say is this : Harper's Ferry was the only government in that vicinity. Respecting the trial, Virginia, true to herself, has shown exactly the same haste tiiat the pirate does when he tries a man on deck, and runs him up to the yard-arm. Unconsciously she is consistent. Now, you do not think tliis to-day, some of you, perhaps. But I tell you what absolute History shall judge of these forms and phantoms of ours. Jolin Brown began his life, his active life, in Kansas. The South phmted that seed ; it reaps the first fruit now. Twelve years ago, the great men in Washington, the Websters and the Clays, jilantcd the Mexican war; and they reaped their a[ipropriate fruit in Gen. Taylor and Gen. Pierce pushing them from their statesmen's stools. The Soutii planti.'d tlie seeds of violence in Kansas, and taught peaceful Northern men fannliarity with the bowie-knife and revolver. They ])lanted 091) seeds, a.nd this is the first one tliat has flowered ; this is the first drop of the coming shower. Peoide do me the honor to say, in some of the AVestern papers, that this is traceable to some teachings of mine. It is too much honor to such as mo. Gladly, if it were not fulsome vanity, would I clutch this laurel of having any share in tlie great resolute daring of that man who flung liimself against an empire in behalf of justice and liberty. Tliey were not the bravest men who fouglit at Saratoga and Yorktown 11 in the war of 177G. ! no ; it was ratlior those who flung themselves, at Lexington, few and feeble, against the embattled ranks of an empire till then thought irresistible. Elderly men in powdered v.'igs and red velvet smoothed their ruffles and cried ' mad- men.' Full-fed custom-house men said, ' A pistol- shot against Gibraltar!' But Capt. Ingrahara, under the stars and stripes, dictating terms to the fleet of the Csesars, was only the echo of that Lexington gun. Harper's Ferry is the Lexington of to-day. Up to this moment. Brown's life has been one unmixed success. Prudence, skill, cour- age, thrift, knowledge of his time, knowledge of his opponents, undaunted daring in the face of the nation — he had all these. He was the man who could leave Kansas, and go into Missouri, and take eleven men and give them to liberty, and bring them off on the horses which he carried with him, and two which he took as tribute from their masters in order to facilitate escape. Then, when he had passed his human proteges from the vulture of the United States to the safe shelter of the English lion, this is the brave, frank and sublime truster in God's right and absolute justice, that entered his name in the city of Cleveland, 'John Brown, of Kansas,' and advertised there two horses for sale, and stood in front of the auctioneer's stand, notify- ing all bidders of the defect in the title. (Laughter. ) But he added with nonchalance, when he told the story, ' They brought a very excellent price.' (Laughter.) This is the man who, in the face of the nation, avowing his right, and endeavoring by what strength he had in behalf of the wronged, goes down to Harper's Ferry to follow up his work. Well, men say he failed. Every man has hia M.)Scow. Suppose he did fail, every man meets his Waterloo at last. There are two 'kinds of defeat. Whether in chains or in laurels, Liberty knows 12 notliing hut victories. Bunker Hill soldier? call a dcfoiit ; 1)ut Liberty dates from it, though W'arron lay dead on the field. Men say the attempt did not succeed. No man can command success. Wiiether it was well planned, and deserved to succeed, we shall be able to decide when Brown is free to tell us all he knows. Suppose he did fail, he has done a great deal still. \Nhy, this is a decent country to live in now. (Laughter and cheers.) Actually, in this Sodom of ours, seventeen men have been found ready to die for an idea. God be thanked for Julm Brown, that he has discovered or created them. (Cheers.) I should feel some pride, if I was in Europe now, in confessing that I was an American. (Applause.) We have redeemed the long infamy of twenty years of subservience. But look back a bit. Is there anything new about this? Nothing at all. It is the natural result of anti-slavery teaching. For one, I accept it; I expected it. I cannot say that 1 prayed for it ; I cannot say that I ho])r-d for it. But at the same time, no sane man has looked upon this matter for twenty years, and supposed that we could go through this great moral convulsion, the great classes of society clashing and jostling against each other like frigates in a storm, and that there M'ould not be such scenes as these. Why, in 1835 it was the other way. Then it was my ])ull that gored your ox. Then ideas came in conflict, and men of violence, and men who had not made up their minds to wait for the slow con- version of conscience, men who trusted in their own right hands, men who l)elieved in bowie-knives — why, such sacked the city of I^hiladelphia, such made New York to be governed by a mob ; Boston saw its jMayor supjiliant and kneeling to the chief oi broad-cloth in !)road daylight. It was all on that side. The natural result, the first result of this starting of ideas, is like people who get half awaked, 13 and use the first weapons tliat appear to them. The first developinp; and unfohlinjr of national life were the mobs of 1835. People said it served us right, we had no right to the luxury of speaking our own minds ; it was too expensive ; these lavish, luxurious persons walking about here, and actually saying what they think ! Why, it was like speak- ing loud in the midst of the avalanches. To say •• Liberty ' in a loud tone, the Constitution of 1789 might come down — it would not do. But now things have changed. We have been talking thirty years. Twenty years we have talked everywhere, under all circumstances ; we have been mobbed out of great cities, and pelted out of little ones ; we have been abused by great men and by little papers. (Laughter and applause.) What is the result? The tables have been turned ; it is your bull that has gored my ox now. And men that still believe in violence, the five points of whose faith are the fist, the bowie- knife, fire, poison and the pistol, are ranged on the side of Liberty, and, unwilling to wait for the slow but sure steps of thought, lay on God's altar the best they have. You cannot expect to put a real Puritan Presbyterian, as John Brown is — a regular Cromwellian dug up from two centuries — in the midst of our New England civilization, that dare not say its soul is its own, nor proclaim that it is wrong to sell a man at auction, and not have him show himself as he is. Put a hound in the presence of a deer, and he springs at his throat if he is a true bloodhound. Put a Christian in the presence of a sin, and he will spring at its throat if he is a true Christian. And so into an acid we might throw white matter, but unless it is chalk, it will not pro- duce agitation. So, if in a world of sinners you were to put American Christianity, it would be calm as oil. But put one Christian like John Brown of Osawatomie, and he makes the whole 14 crjsfcalizG into right and wrong, and marshal thom- sjlve.s oil one sido or the other. And God makes him the text, and all he asks of our comparatively cowardly lips is to preach the sermon, and nay to tlio American people that, whether that old man Buccoeded in a worldly sense or not, he stood a representative of" law, of government, of right, of justice, of religit)n, and they were pirates that gathered about him, and sought to wreak vengeance by taking his life. The banks of the Potomac, doubly dear now to History and to ]Man ! The dust of Washington rests there ; and History will see forever on that river-side tlie brave old man on his pallet, whose dust, when God calls him hence, the Father of his country would be proud to make room for beside his own. But if Virginia tyrants dare hang him, after this mockery of a trial, it will take two more Washingtons at least to make the name of tiie State anything Init abominable to the ages that come after. (Applause and hisses.) Well, I say what I really think (cheers and cries of 'good,' 'good.') George Wasiiington was a great man. Yet I say what I really think. And I know, ladies and gentlemen, that, educated as you have been by the experience of the last ton years here, you would have thought me the silliest as well as the most cowardly man in the world if I should have come, with my twenty years be- hind me, and talked about anything else to-night except that great example which one man has set us on the banks of the Potomac. You ex- pected, of course, that I should tell you my opin- ion of it. I value this element that Brown has introduced into American politics for another reason. The South is a groat power — no cowards in Virginia. (Laugliter.) It was not cowardice. (Laughter.) Now, I try to speak very plain, but you will misun- 15 derstand me. There ia no cowardice in Virginia. The South are not cowards. The lunatics in the Gospel were not cowards when they said, ' Art thou come to torment us before the time? ' (Laughter.) They were brave enough, but they saw afar (>1F. — They saw the tremendous power that was entering into that charmed circle ; they knew its inevitiible victory. Virginia did not tremble at an old gray- headed man at Harper's Ferry ; they trembled at a John Brown in every man's own conscience. He had been there many years, and, like that terrific scene which Beckford has drawn for us in his Hall of Eblis, where all ran around, each man with an in- curable wound in his bosom, and agreed not to speak of it, so the South has been running up and down its political and social life, and every man keeps his right hand pressed on the secret and incurable sore, with an understood agreement, in Church and State, that it never shall be mentioned, for fear the great ghastly flibric shall come to pieces at tlie talis- manic word. Brown uttered it, and the whole ma- chinery trembled to its very base. I value that movement. Did you ever see a black- smith shoe a restless horse? If you have, you have seen him take a small cord, and tie his upper lip. If you ask him what he d(;es it for, he will tell you he does it to give the beast something to think of. — (Laughter.) Now, the South has extensive schemes. She grasps with one hand a Mexico, and with the other she dictates terms to Church, she imposes con- ditions on State, she buys up Webster with a little, and Everett with nothing. (Great laughter and applause.) John Brown has given her something else to think of. He has turned her attention in- wardly. He has taught her that there has been created a new element in this Northern mind ; that it is not merely the thinker, that it is not merely the editor, that it is not merely the moral reformer, 16 luit tlic idea luis porvadod all dapses of society, — Call them madmen if you will. Hard to tell who's mad. The world t^ays one man is mad. John Brown said the same of the Governor. You remember the madman in Edinburgh. A friend asked him what he was there lor. ' Well,' said ho, ' they said at home that I was mad ; and I said I vras not ; but tliey had the majority.' (Laughter.) Just so it is in regard to John Brown. The natitm says, He is mad. I appeal from Philip drunk to IMiilip so- ber ; I appeal from the American people drunk with cotton and the New York Observe}^ (loud and long laugiiter) to the American people filty years hence, when the light of civilization has had morj' time to penetrate, when self-interest has been rebuked by the world rising and giving its verdict on these great questions, when it is not a small band of Abolition- ists, but the civilization of the nineteenth century that undertakes to enter the arena, and discuss its last great reform. When that day comes, what shall be thought of these lirst martyrs, who teach us how to live and how to die? Suppose John Brown had not stayed at Harper's Ferry ; suppose on that momentous Monday night, wluni the excited imaginations of two thouscind Charlestown people had enlarged him and his little l)and into 400 white men and 200 blacks, he had vanishe 1, and when the gallant troops arrived there, 2000 strong, they had found nobody ! The moun- tains Would have been peopk-d with enemies; the Alleghanies would have heaved with insurrection ! You never would have convinced Virginia that all Pennsylvania was not armed and on the iiills. Vir- ginia has not slept sound since Nat Turner had an insurrection in 1831, and she bids fair never to have a nap now. (Laughter.) For this is not an insur- rection ; this is the penetration of a diftl-rent ele- ment. Mark you, it is not the oppressed race ris- 17 ing. Recollect history. There never -was a race held in chains that absolutely vindicated its own liberty biu one. There never was a serf nor a slave whose own sword cut off his own chain but one. — Blue-eyed, light-haired Anglo-Saxon, it was notour race. "We were serfs for three centuries, and we waited till commerce and Christianity, and a differ- ent law, had melted our fetters. We were crowded down into a villienage which crushed out our man- hood so thoroughly that we hadnU vigor enough to redeem ourselves. Neither did France, neither did Spain, neither did the Northern nor the Southern races of Europe have that bright spot on their es- cutcheon, that they put an end to their slavery. — Blue-eyed, haughty, contemptuous Anglo-Saxons, it was the black — the only race in the record of his- tory that ever, after a century of oppression, re- tained the vigor to write the charter of its emanci- pation with its own hand in the blood of the domi- nant race. Despised, calumniated, slandered San Domingo is the only instance in history where a race, with indestructible love of justice, serving a hundred 3'ears of oppression, rose up under their own leader, and with their own hands abolished slavery on their own soil. Wait, garrulous, vain- glorious, boasting Saxon, till we have done as much, before we talk of the cowardice of the black race. The slaves of our country have not risen, but, as in all other cases, redemption will come from the in- terference of a wiser, higher, more advanced civili- zation on its exterior. It is the universal record of history, and ours is a repetition of the same scene in the drama. We have awakened at last the en- thusiasm of both classes — those that act from im- pulse, and those that act from calculation. It is a libel on the Yankee to say that it includes the whole race, when you say that if you put a dollar on the other side of hell, the Yankee will spring for it at 18 any risk ; (laughter,) for there is an element even in tlic Yankee blood that obeys idi.'as — there is an im- jHiIsive, enthusiastic aspiration — somethinf;; left to us from the old Puritan stock — that whicli made EnLi;laiul Avhat she was two centuries ago — that which is fated to give tlie closest grapple with the Slave Power to-day. This is an invasion by outsido power. Civilization in 1000 crept along our shores, now planting her foot, and then retreating — now gaining a ibothold, and then receding before barba- rism — till at last came Jamestown and Plymouth, and then thirty States. Harper's Ferry is perhaps one of Raleigh's or Goswold's colonies, vanishing and to be swept away ; bye-and-bye will come the immortal one hundred and Plymouth Rock, with * MANIFEST DESTINY ' writtcu by.God's hand on their banner, and the right of unlimited ' annexation ' granted by heaven itself. It is the lesson of the age. The first cropping out of it is in such a man as John Brown. He did not measure his moans. He was not thrifty as to ills method; he did not calculate closely enough, and he was defeated. AV'hat is defeat? Nothing but education — nothing but the first step to some- thing better. All that is wanted is that this public opinion shall not creep around like a servile coward, and unbought, but corrupt, disordered, insane pub- lic opinion proclaim that Gov. AVise, because he soys he is a Governor, is a Governor, that Virginia is a State because she says she is so. Thank God, I am not a citizen. You will remem- ber, all of you, citizens of the United States, that there was not a Virginia gun fired at John Brown. Hundreds of well-armed Maryland and Virginia troops that went thqre, never dared to pull a trig- ger. You shot him ! Sixteen marines, to whom you pay $8 a month — your own representatives. — Wheu the disturbed State could not stand on her 19 own legs for trembling, you went tliore and strength- ened the feeble knees, and held up the palsied hand. Sixteen men, with the Vulture uf the Union above them (sensation) — your representatives! It was the covenant with death and agreement with hell, which you call the Union of thirty States, that took the old man by the throat with a pirate hand ; and it will be the disgrace of our civilization if a gal- lows is ever erected in Virginia that bears his body. ' The most resolute man 1 ever saw,' says Governor Wise ; ' the most daring, the coolest. I would trust his truth about any question. Thesincerest ! ' Sin- cerity, courage, resolute daring — Virginia has noth- ing, nothing for those qualities but a scaffold ! — (Applause.) In her broad dominion she can only afford him six feet for a grave ! God help the Com- monwealth that bids such welcome to the noblest qualities that can grace poor human nature ! Yet that is the acknowledgment of Gov. Wise himself! They say it cost the officers and persons in respon- sible positions more effort to keep hundreds of star- tled soldiers from shooting the five prisoners sixteen marines had made, than it cost those mttpines to take the Armory itself. Soldiers and civilians — both alike — only a mob fancying itself a govern- ment ! And mark you, I have said they were not a government. They not only are not a government,, but they have not even the remotest idea of what a government is. (Laughter.) They do not begin to have the faintest conception of wliat a civilized gov- ernment is. Here is a man arraigned before a jury, or about to be. The State of Virginia, as she calls herself, is about to try him. The first step in that trial is a jury ; the second is a judge ; and at the head stands the Chief Executive of the State, who is to put his hand to the death-warrant before it can be executed ; and yet that very Executive, who, ac- cording to the principles of the sublimest chapter in 20 Al;;ornon Sidney's immortal book, is bound by tho very resjx)n.sil)iiity tliut rests on him, to keep his mind impartiul ;is tu the guilt of the person ur- rai^ned, Imstens down to Richmond, hurries to the platform, and ]irochiims to the assembled Con)mon- ^vealth of Virginia, ' Tiie man is a murderer, and ought to be hung.' Almost every lip in the State might have said it except that single lip of its Gov- ernor ; and the moment he had uttered these ^Yords, in the theory of the English law it was not possible to impannel an impartial jury in the Commonwealth of Virginia ; it was not possible to get the materials and the machinery to try him according to even the ugliest pattern of English jurisprudence. And yet the Governor does not know that he has written himself down a non compos, and the Commonwealth that he governs supposes it is still a Christian polity. — They have not the faintest conception of what goes to make up government. The worst Jell'ries that ever, in his most drunken hour, climbed up a lamp-post in the streets of London, would not have tried a man who could not stand on his feet. Ttiere is no such record in the blackest roll of tyranny. If Jefiries could speak, lie would thank God that at last his name might be taken down from the gibbet of History, since the Vir- ginia Bench has made his worst act white, set against the blackness of this modern inftimy. (Applause.) And yet the New York press daily prints the accounts of the trial. Trial ! The In- quisition used to break every other bone in a man's body, and then lay him on a pallet, giving him neither counsel nor opportunity to consult one, and then wring from his tortured mouth something like a confession, and call it a trial. But it was heaven-robed innocence compared with the trial, or what the New York Press call so, that has been going on in startled, frightened 21 Charlcstown. I speak what I know, and I speak what is but the breath and whisper of the sum- mer breezes compared with the tornado of rebuke that will come back from the Press of Great Britain, when they hear that we affect to call that a jury trial, and blacken the names Jud(je and Jury by baptizing these pirate orgies with such honorable appellations. I wish I could say anything worthy of the great deed which has taken place in our day — the open- ing of the sixth seal, the pouring out of the last vial but one on a corrupt and giant institution. I know that many men will deem me a fanatic for uttering this wholesale vituperation, as it will be called, upon a State, and this endorsement of a mad- man. I can only say that I have spoken on this anti-slavery question before the American people twenty years ; that I have seen the day when this same phase of popular opinion was on the other side. You remember the first time I was ever pri- vileged to stand on this platform by the magnani- mous generosity of your clerg;yman, when New York was about to bully and crush out the freedom of speech at the dictation of Capt. Rynders. From that day to this, the same braving of public thought has been going on from here to Kansas, until it bloomed in the events of the last three years. It has changed the whole face of the sentiment in these Northern States. You meet with the evidence of it everywhere. When the first news from Harper's Ferry came to Massachusetts, if you were riding in the cars, if you were walking in the streets, if you met a Democrat or a Whig or a Republican, jio matter what his politics, it Avas a singular circum- stance that he did not speak of the guilt of Brown, of the atrocity of the deed, as you might have ex- pected. The first impulsive expression, the first outbreak of every man's words was, ' AVhat a pity he did not suecauf!i;l)ter.) What a foul lie was (or not going off Monday, -wlicn he had all he wanted ! llow strange that he did not take his victory, and march away with it!' It indicated the unconscioufcj leavening of a sympathy with the attempt. Days followed on ; they commenced what they called their trial ; you met the same classes again ; — no man said lie ought to be hung ; no man said he was guilty ; no man predicated anything of his moral position ; every man voluntarily and inevitably seemed to give vent to his indignation at the farce of a trial — indicative again of that un- heeded, unconscious, potent, but wide-spread sympa- thy on the side of Brown. Do you suppose that these things mean notliing? \Yhat the tender and poetic youth dreams to-day, and conjures up with inarticulate speech, is to- morrow the vociferated result of public opinion, and the day after is the charter of nations. The senti- ments we raise to intellect, and from intdlect to character The American peoj)le have begun to feel. The mule eloquence of the fugitive slave lias gone up and down the highways and liy-ways of the coun- try ; it will annex itself to the great American heart of the North, even in the most fossil state of its hunkf^rism, as a latent sympathy with its right side. This blow, like the first blow at Lexington, heard around the world — this blow at Harper's Ferry re- veals men. Watch those about you, and you will see more of the temper and unheeded purpose and real moral position of men than you would imag- ine. This is the way nations are to be judged, he not in a hurry ; it will come soon enough from this sentiment. We stereotype feeling into intellect, and then into statutes, and finally into national character. We have got the first stage of growth. 23 Nature's live growths crowd out arid rive dead mat- ter. Ideas strangle statutes. J^ilse-heats wear down granite, whether piled in jails or ca]iitol.s. Tlio people's hearts are the only title-deods, altur all. Your Barnburners said, ' Patroon titles arc unright- eous.' Judges replied, ' Such is the law.' Wealth shrieked, ' Vested Rights ! ' Parties talked of Con- stitutions — still, the people said, ' Sin.' They shot a sheriff. A parrut press cried, ' Anarchy I ' Law- yers growled, 'Murder!' — still, nobody was hung, if I recollect aright. To-day, the heart of tho Barnburner beats in the statute-book of your State. John Brown's movement against slavery is exactly the same. Wait awhile, and you'll all agree witli me. What is fanaticism to-day is the fushionable creed to-morrow, and trite as the multiplication- table a week after. John Brown has stirred those omnipotent pulses — Lydia Maria Child's is one. She says, ' That dun- geon is the place for me,' and writes a letter in mag- nanimous appeal to the better nature of Gov. AVise. She says in it, ' John Brown is a hero ; he has done a noble deed. 1 think he was all right ; but he is sick ; he is wounded ; he wants a woman's nursing. I am an Abolitionist ; I have been so thirty years. I think sla- very is a sin, and John Brown a saint ; but I want to come and nurse him ; and I pledge my word that if you will open his prison-door, I will use the pri- vilege, under sacred honor, only to nurse him. I enclose you a message to Brown ; be sure and de- liver it.' And tho message was, -Old man, Cod bless you ! You have struck a noble blow ; you have done a mighty work ; Cod was with you ; your heart was in the right place. T send you across five hundred miles the pulse of a woman's gratitude.' And Gov. Wise has opened the door, and announced to tho world that she may go in. 24 Jolin Brown has conquered tho pirato. (Applaiico.) Hope ! there is hope everywliere. It is only the universal history : ' Ilight forever on thcscafFold, Wrong forever on the throne ; But that seaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown Standeth (jod within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.' 54-- W