Suppose that there is a society in this State that out of its own purse and magnanimity saves all the fugitive slaves that run to us, and protects our colored fellow-citizens, and leaves the other work to the government, so-called.Is not that government fast losing its occupation, and becoming contemptible to mankind?If private men are obliged to perform the offices of government, to protect the weak and dispense justice, then the government becomes only a hired man, or clerk, to perform menial or indifferent services.Of course, that is but the shadow of a government who existence necessitates a Vigilant Committee.What should we think of the Oriental Cadi even, behind whom worked in secret a vigilant committee?But such is the character of our Northern States generally;
Each has its Vigilant Committee.And, to a certain extent, these crazy governments recognize and accept this relation.They say,virtually, "We'll be glad to work for you on these terms, only don't make a noise about it."And thus the government, its salary being insured, withdraws into the back shop, taking the Constitution with it, and bestows most of its labor on repairing that.When I hear it at work sometimes, as I go by, it reminds me, at best, of those farmers who in winter contrive to turn a penny by following the coopering business.And what kind of spirit is their barrel made to hold?They speculate in stocks, and bore holes in mountains,but they are not competent to lay out even a decent highway.The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee.They have tunnelled under the whole breadth of the land.Such a government is losing its power and respectability as surely as water runs out of a leaky vessel, and is held by one that can contain it.
I hear many condemn these men because they were so few.When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?Would you have had him wait till that time came?--till you and I came over to him?The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes.His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster.
Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions;
Apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity;ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for so much by laymen as by ministers of the Gospel, not so much by the fighting sects as by the Quakers, and not so much by Quaker men as by Quaker women?
This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death,--the possibility of a man's dying.It seems as if no man had ever died in America before; for in order to die you must first have lived.
I don't believe in the hearses, and palls, and funerals that they have had.There was no death in the case, because there had been no life; they merely rotted or sloughed off, pretty much as they had rotted or sloughed along.No temple's veil was rent, only a hole dug somewhere.Let the dead bury their dead.The best of them fairly ran down like a clock.Franklin,--Washington,--they were let off without dying; they were merely missing one day.I hear a good many pretend that they are going to die; or that they have died, for aught that I know.Nonsense!I'll defy them to do it.
They haven't got life enough in them.They'll deliquesce like fungi, and keep a hundred eulogists mopping the spot where they left off.Only half a dozen or so have died since the world began.
Do you think that you are going to die, sir?No! there's no hope of you.You haven't got your lesson yet.You've got to stay after school.We make a needless ado about capital punishment,--taking lives, when there is no life to take.Memento mori!We don't understand that sublime sentence which some worthy got sculptured on his gravestone once.We've interpreted it in a grovelling and snivelling sense; we've wholly forgotten how to die.
But be sure you do die nevertheless.Do your work, and finish it.
If you know how to begin, you will know when to end.
These men, in teaching us how to die, have at the same time taught us how to live.If this man's acts and words do not create a revival, it will be the severest possible satire on the acts and words that do.It is the best news that America has ever heard.
It has already quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more and more generous blood into her veins and heart, than any number of years of what is called commercial and political prosperity could.How many a man who was lately contemplating suicide has now something to live for!
One writer says that Brown's peculiar monomania made him to be "dreaded by the Missourians as a supernatural being."Sure enough,a hero in the midst of us cowards is always so dreaded.He is just that thing.He shows himself superior to nature.He has a spark of divinity in him.
"Unless above himself he can Erect himself, how poor a thing is man!"
