The Public Record
Frederick Douglass was an American social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He was "the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century".
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.
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.