Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[291] How God has blessed him! How truly he may say, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course.” Truly he has finished,--done his work. God granted him the privilege to look on his work accomplished. He said, “I will show the South that twenty men can take possession of a town, hold it twenty-four hours, and carry away all the slaves who wish to escape.” Did he not do it? On Monday night he stood master of Harper's Ferry, --could have left unchecked with a score or a hundred slaves. The wide sympathy and secret approval are shown by the eager, quivering lips of lovers of slavery, asking, “O, why did he not take his victory and go away?” Who checked him at last? Not startled Virginia. Her he had conquered. The Union crushed,seemed to crush him. In reality God said, “That work is done; you have proved that a Slave State is only fear in the mask of despotism; come up higher, and baptize by your martyrdom a million hearts into holier life.” Surely such a life is no failure. How vast the change in men's hearts! Insurrection was a harsh, horrid word to millions a month ago. John Brown went a whole generation beyond it, claiming the right for white men to help the slave to freedom by arms. And now men run up and down, not disputing his principle, but trying to frame excuses for Virginia's hanging of so pure, honest, high-hearted, and heroic a man. Virginia stands at the bar of the civilized world on trial. Round her victim crowd the apostles and martyrs, all the brave, high souls who have said, “God is God,” and trodden wicked laws under their feet. As I stood looking at his grandfather's gravestone, brought here from Connecticut, telling, as it does, of his death in the Revolution, I thought I could hear our hero-saint saying, “My fathers gave their swords to the oppressor,--the slave still sinks before the pledged force of this nation. I give my sword to the slave my fathers forgot.” If any