Historical voices

Men who live by robbing their fellowmen of their labor and liberty have forfeited their right to know anything of the thoughts, feelings, or purposes of those whom they rob and plunder.

The time for a full statement of what I know and of ALL I know of this desperate but sublimely disinterested effort to emancipate the slaves of Maryland and Virginia from their cruel taskmasters, has not yet come, and may never come.

I desire to be quite emphatic here, for of all guilty men, he is the guiltiest who lures his fellowmen to an undertaking of this sort, under promise of assistance which he afterwards fails to render.

The lightning when speaking for itself, is among the most direct, reliable, and truthful of things; but when speaking of the terror-stricken slaveholders at Harper’s Ferry, it has been made the swiftest of liars.

All who were supposed to have been any way connected with John Brown were to be hunted down and surrendered to the tender mercies of slaveholding and panic-stricken Virginia, and there to be tried after the fashion of John Brown’s trial…

A scream for vengeance came up from all sections of the slave States and from great multitudes in the North.

What in the tone of southern sentiment had been fierce before became furious and uncontrollable now.

Now, while this war of words--this conflict of doctrines-- was in progress, the portentous shadow of a stupendous civil war became more and more visible.

The practical operation of this doctrine would be to make all the future new States slaveholding States, for slavery once planted and nursed for years in a territory would easily strengthen itself against the evil day and defy eradication.

With men so few and odds against him so great, few captains ever surpassed him in achievements, some of which seem too disproportionate for belief, and yet no voice has yet called them in question.

Until the lives of tyrants and murderers shall become more precious in the sight of men than justice and liberty, John Brown will need no defender.

John Brown was therefore the logical result of slaveholding persecutions.

The question was not merely which class should prevail in Kansas, but whether free-state men should live there at all.

Deeply interested as “Ossawatamie Brown” was in Kansas he never lost sight of what he called his greater work--the liberation of all the slaves in the United States.

This brave old man and his sons were amongst the first to hear and heed the trumpet of freedom calling them to battle.

The men who went to Kansas with the purpose of making it a free State, were the heroes and martyrs.

With such odds against them, and only an idea--though a grand one--to support them, it will ever be a wonder that they succeeded in making Kansas a free State.

If every anti-slavery tongue in the nation were silent-- every anti-slavery organization dissolved--every anti-slavery periodical, paper, pamphlet, book, or what not, searched out, burned to ashes, and their ashes given to the four winds…

They do not deplore our misfortunes, but rather rejoice in them, since they prove that the two races cannot flourish on the same soil.

Evidently this society looks upon our extremity as their opportunity, and whenever the elements are stirred against us, they are stimulated to unusual activity.

If they cannot rise to the dignity of white men, they show that they can fall to the degradation of black men.

Our old employments by which we have been accustomed to gain a livelihood are gradually slipping from our hands: every hour sees us elbowed out of some employment to make room for some newly arrived emigrant from the Emerald Isle, whose…

The Irish, who, at home, readily sympathize with the oppressed everywhere, are instantly taught when they step upon our soil to hate and despise the negro.

For of all places in the world where an anti-slavery man needs the confidence and encouragement of his friends, I take Washington--the citadel of slavery--to be that place.