1859.

even so to them. It teaches me, further, to remember them CHAP. XIX. that are in bonds as bound with them.' I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done -- in behalf of his despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments — I submit: so let it be done!" 1

From Mr. Garrison's speech on the same evening, we select the passage distinguishing himself from the subject of his eulogy:

A word upon the subject of Peace. I am a non-resistant - Lib. 29:198. a believer in the inviolability of human life, under all circumstances; I, therefore, in the name of God, disarm John Brown, and every slave at the South. But I do not stop there; if I did, I should be a monster. I also disarm, in the name of God, every slaveholder and tyrant in the world. For wherever that principle is adopted, all fetters must instantly melt, and there can be no oppressed and no oppressor, in the nature of things. How many agree with me in regard to the doctrine of the inviolability of human life? How many non-resistants are there here to-night? (A single voice-'I.") There is one! Well, then, you who are otherwise, are not the men to point the finger at John Brown and cry 'traitor'- judging you by your own standard. Nevertheless, I am a non-resistant, and I not only desire, but have labored unremittingly to effect, the peaceful abolition of slavery, by an appeal to the reason and conscience of the slaveholder; yet, as a peace man an 'ultra' peace man I am prepared to say: 'Success to every slave insurrection at the South, and in every slave country.' And I do not see how I compromise or stain my peace profession in making that

1 For the text of this fragment of the address we have followed Sanborn's 'Life of John Brown,' p. 584, which is in substantial agreement with R. D. Webb's 'Life,' p. 216. Some slight variations may be noticed in the contemporary reports as published in the Liberator (29:175), in the 27th annual report of the American A. S. Society ('The Anti-Slavery History of the John Brown Year,' of which C. C. Burleigh was the author), p. 109, and in the pamphlet compiled by Thomas Drew, 'The John Brown Invasion' (Boston, 1860), p. 32.

Cf. Lib. 30:7.

CHAP. XIX. declaration. Whenever there is a contest between the oppressed 1859. and the oppressor,- the weapons being equal between the parties,― God knows that my heart must be with the oppressed, and always against the oppressor. Therefore, whenever commenced, I cannot but wish success to all slave insurrections. I thank God when men who believe in the right and duty of wielding carnal weapons, are so far advanced that they will take those weapons out of the scale of despotism, and throw them into the scale of freedom. It is an indication of progress, and a positive moral growth; it is one way to get up to the sublime platform of non-resistance; and it is God's method of dealing retribution upon the head of the tyrant. Rather than see men wearing their chains in a cowardly and servile spirit, I would, as an advocate of peace, much rather see them breaking the head of the tyrant with their chains. Give me, as a non-resistant, Bunker Hill, and Lexington, and Concord, rather than the cowardice and servility of a Southern slave-plantation.” し

Lib. 29: 198.

Lib. 29:177.

Ante, 1:409.

Their common human kindness and hatred of slavery, and their Old Testament inspiration, furnish grounds for an instructive parallel between Garrison and John Brown. "He was of the old Puritan stock," said the former at Tremont Temple; "a Cromwellian who 'believed in God,' and at the same time 'in keeping his powder dry?' He believed in the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,' and acted accordingly. Herein I differed from him. But, certainly, he was no 'infidel'-oh, no! How it would have added to the fiendish malignity of the New York Observer if John Brown had only been an infidel,' evangelically speaking!" On the other hand, Brown-in virtue of what, unless of bloodshed? — became at once a hero to clergymen who had long ago branded Garrison as an infidel because of his non-resistance. Both brought the Bible to bear against slavery; but the reformer who clung to the Christian doctrine of suffering, and laid the foundations of his policy in non-resistance, was reviled as the offscouring of earth by a Christian community. Again by way of contrast, we cannot imagine Garrison, in his attack upon slavery, going under assumed names, concealing his designs under false pretences, or shooting

CHAP. XIX.

1859.

innocent fellow-creatures in the dark. John Brown did this because there was a place in his Christianity for war, and such conduct is "fair in war." Both earned the name of fanatic, if only one the name of infidel. So far as fanaticism implies an inability to see things as they are, or to adapt one's means to one's ends, the epithet did not apply to Garrison. Had, moreover, the Liberator not preceded John Brown, the attempt on Harper's Ferry not only would have seemed the height of madness, but would have made hardly a ripple on the surface of American politics — exciting universal horror and reprobation in place of sentiments of pity and esteem. Had John Brown been, in action, a contemporary of Lovejoy, still more would the Austins have said of him, "He died as the fool Lib. 7:202. dieth." "The sympathy and admiration now so widely felt for him," said Mr. Garrison, "prove how marvellous has been the change effected in public opinion during thirty years of moral agitation—a change so great, indeed, that whereas, ten years since, there were thousands who could not endure my lightest word of rebuke of the South, they can now easily swallow John Brown whole, and his rifle into the bargain. In firing his gun, he has merely told us what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank God!"

Speech at Mass. A. S.

annual

meeting, Jan. 27,

1860; Lib.

30:26.

CHAP. XX.

1860.

Dec. 16, 1859; Lib. 29: 205.

Lib. 29:201,

207; 30:3,

6, II, 31, 185, 187. Lib. 29:201,

123, 137,151.

Lib. 29:201,

202,205,206;

30: 2, 5, 6,

10, 13, 14,

22, 25.

Lib. 30:63,

186.

CHAPTER XX.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.-1860.

THE lamentable tragedy at Harper's Ferry is clearly traceable" to the "unjustifiable attempt to force slavery into Kansas by a repeal of the Missouri Compromise." So thought and wrote, to a New York meeting of Union-savers, ex-President Fillmore, in the fortnight succeeding the hanging of John Brown. It was the historic truth; and the work of Nemesis had but begun.

Directly after the attack on Harper's Ferry, the South initiated disunion by fortifying itself against domestic insurrection, both by extra vigilance and armed police, by legislative measures to force its free negro population back into slavery or into removal, and by renewed strinin excluding Northern Republican papers from the gency 205; 30:71, mails. Moreover, the mobbing and expulsion of Northern residents or visitors was revived on an unparalleled scale, so that Mr. Garrison was led to compile a tract of 144 pages for publication by the Hovey Fund, called 'The New Reign of Terror,' and printed and distributed by thousands. These outrages grew with the aging year, and warranted a fresh compilation in November, when violence and suspicion, with the shadows of the impending civil 181, 183, 185. disruption, had brought about a white exodus — when Lib. 30:187, even, as in Georgia, Northerners coming by sea were kept from landing. Mr. Garrison, himself still in doubt whether the Southern menace of disunion was anything Lib. 30:186. more than vaporing and bluster, marvelled that the North could view tranquilly - without the least outward manifestation of feeling-this barbarous negation of the commonest right of Federal citizenship.

Lib. 30: 186. Lib. 30: 163, 30:163, 167,178, 179,

1860.

492.

On its face, however, the situation was not so much a CHAP. XX. crisis as a rather flagrant illustration of the "glorious Union" worshipped by all parties at the North. For a quarter of a century, with Government sanction, the Ante, 1:488, Southern mails had been closed to Northern ideas; with Government and State indifference, Northerners had been lynched or driven out. The lapse of time had left no excuse for spontaneous heat over such trifles, any more than over a slave-burning like that in Georgia in October, Lib. 30:171. or over the perennial fear of slave risings, such as infected Lib. 29:187, the whole South after Harper's Ferry, and in the summer and autumn of 1860 raged afresh, so that, as President Buchanan said, in his annual message to Congress, sense of security no longer exists around the family altar." All these things were symptomatic, not of disunion, but of Union.

Lib. 30: 137. 141, 146,149, 66 a 163,171,177, 179,185,199.

207, 211;

30:1, 3.

A genuine sign of revolution was the centripetal movement of Southerners, as in the case of the two hundred Lib. 29:206, medical students in Philadelphia who renounced Northern instruction and seceded to their homes. Governor Wise received them at Richmond as precursors of the break-up. Lib. 30: 1. The North bade them good-bye with a smile at their silliness, and turned an incredulous ear to the Southern echoes of Harper's Ferry in both Houses of Congress. Had not Frémont's possible election in 1856 been made the ground Ante, p. 435. of threats of secession? Why, then, pay heed to similar talk now in view of Seward's probable nomination and election by the Republican Party? Henry Wilson, in a speech in the Senate on January 25, 1860, put on record Lib. 30:17. what had already been said during the current session. Two examples will suffice. Senator Iverson of Georgia Lib. 30: 17. was ready to lead away the Southern delegation on the mere election of John Sherman to the speakership of the House—a contingency happily averted; and in any event saw but one path of safety for the South, but one mode of preserving her institution of domestic slavery, and that is, a confederacy of States having no incongruous and opposing elements." The election of a Black Republican

66

Lib. 30: 23.

Lib. 30: 17.