Alfred S. Roe

“ Popular prejudice, the strongest barrier possible, is rapidly yielding; and the bayonet, the ballot and the spelling book, have wrought wonders. With all professions open to the colored man, with equal rights before the law, with millions of property accumulated since the war, who shall say that the soul of John Brown is not marching on? ”

“ Amidst soldiers and civilians, both friends and foes, the central figure is that of a man scarcely more than thirty years of age. He has all the attributes, in form and features, of true manliness. A disinterested judge has just declared that he finds nothing amiss in him; but the rabble cry out, all the more, "crucify him." While ardently loved by a devoted few in that tumultuous crowd, he is, to all the rest, an object of severest scorn, the butt of ribald jest. Wearing his crown of thorns, he is made to bear, till he faints under his burden, the very instrument of his torture. ”

“ There is no true man that does not feel his bosom swell with indignation and grief, and pray that God will watch over this land with his especial care. For Virginia has, to-day, executed a man, who, by the judgment of this community, is guilty of no moral crime; but for his fidelity to the principles which his own soul told him were truths and duty. And we are met to hear the words of our best and most eloquent men, and to tender our aid [18] and sympathy to the family—that family in whose veins flows the blood of the martyr, Brown. ”

“ I doubt whether the people of Worcester were the very strictest interpreters of the law in the days when the life of John Brown was [12] in the balance. Of the technicalities of his offence it is not ours to judge. The people of the North who had made haste to rid themselves of slavery, had viewed for years the aggressive unrest of the South. While civilized countries other than ours had forever abolished the wretched system, our country, led by its Southern minority, had again and again done its best to bolster and uphold it. ”

“ The war with Mexico, the annexation of Texas, the Fugitive Slave Law, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, were only successive sops thrown to the insatiable monster. The repeal of the Compromise opened the Territory of Kansas to both Slavery and Anti-Slavery, and henceforth Massachusetts speaks with no uncertain voice. John Brown and Charles Sumner simultaneously spring into renown and immortality. Both of Bay State antecedents, their history is largely hers. One on the plains of Kansas fights for what he believes to be the right. ”

“ What think ye of John Brown? Have the widely separated opinions of twenty-five years ago approached or are they even more divergent? Of course, the active thinkers and workers of that day have joined the great majority. A younger and later generation has the conduct of affairs. In the main, those who hated him then hate him now. Those who thought him a martyr then are sure of it now. ”

“ The John the Baptist of salvation to the Negroes, he died a death excelled in sublimity only by that of the Saviour of men. Both died for men; one, for all mankind, the other willing to risk all that he might open the prison door to those confined, and to strike off the bands of those in bondage. ”

“ Roget de Lisle, amid the terrible scenes of the French Revolution, and stung almost to madness by the terrible events about him, in a single night gave expression to a hymn that, in power, has been approached by only one other, that of "John Brown's Body." Are there not points of resemblance? Both stir the soul in the chorus. The "Aux armes, Aux armes," of the Frenchman's song is reproduced in our "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!" No man will take either hymn off by himself to learn it. They are in his mind already; but he is never [22] conscious of them till the proper moment draws them forth. ”

“ Never had men a grander theme nor more sympathetic listeners. The Rev. Mr. Shippen, among other glowing passages, said: "John Brown felt as [19] Cromwell felt that he was commissioned by God to fight against the wrong. Believing in that eternal judgment based upon the law more lasting than the temporary statutes of to-day, he acted in accordance with the spirit of the Gospel, as he in his conscience understood it." Hon. D.F. Parker was glad to honor John Brown because he dared, upon slave soil, to strike the blow he did. ”

“ Well shotted cannon turn their open and angry mouths upon this one poor mortal. The bravest man there, he gazes upon the array before him, without a trace of emotion. The eye that shed tears at the sight of human misery is undimmed by what man can do against him. ”

“ A bishop in the freedom-loving state of Vermont was, twenty-five years ago, finding scripture argument for the maintenance of Negro slavery. Across the Connecticut River, in New Hampshire, the head of her chief educational institution was teaching the young men under his care that slavery was of Divine origin, and, of course, as such must not be disturbed. In New York City, one of her foremost lawyers, Charles O'Conor, announced to his audience that Negro slavery not only was not unjust, "But it is just, wise and beneficent." ”

“ During these weeks the condemned man is visited by large numbers of people, both friends and foes; but before no one does he for a moment weaken in his constant declaration of the correctness of his cause. Some of the verbal shot that his proslavery interlocutors received were as hot as those which he fired from his musket into their midst on that terrible Monday—for instance, he told Col. Smith, of the Virginia Military Institute, that he would as soon be escorted to his death by blacklegs or robbers as by slave-holding ministers. ”

“ The vail of the Temple is rent in twain; but upon the trembling earth the cross stands firm; from the consequent darkness it shines forth, resplendent by the halo of its precious burden. The Saviour of men is taken thence to lie in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea ”

“ Imagine if you can the astonishment of the student a hundred years hence, when he reads that the highest judicial tribunal in the land, voiced through its aged though not venerable chief, said in the year of our lord, 1857, and in the year of American Independence the eighty-first, that three millions of people, at that time represented in Congress through an infamous scheme of apportionment, had no rights that a white man was bound to respect. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Even now there is no distinction of color in our schools, and at the High School in this city, a colored girl has graduated whose foster father was a slave in Danville, Virginia, while the head master of the school was held there a prisoner of war. Side by side they sit in our schools of all grades, and, graduating from our Normal Schools, become teachers in the schools themselves. ”

“ In 1839, in this city was tried the famous Holden Slave Case, where a native of Worcester County had brought to her early home from her more recent Southern one, a specimen of human property in the shape of a black girl fourteen years old, by name Anne. By special enactment of Massachusetts no one could be held in bondage thus unless perfectly willing, and certain citizens of Holden, knowing that the treatment which the girl received could not be borne except under duress, secured her person, and bringing her to the Heart of the Commonwealth, made her "Free indeed." ”

“ As to the South, it is far too early to expect other than the most rancorous feeling towards him. More than many of us are willing to admit, we are the creatures of our surroundings, men, thinking and acting as we have been reared. John Brown put himself in direct opposition to all that made the South distinctive ”

“ I can, myself, appreciate to some extent what must have been the feelings of the prisoner at the religious ministrations offered him; for I well remember with what a skeptical air I heard the prayer and the words of a Rebel clergyman who visited the prison in which I was confined in 1865. I knew he was daily praying God to bring defeat to my comrades in arms, to increase the number of prisoners, in fine, for the triumph of the Confederate cause. ”

“ George Allen, who in the same year offered to a meeting in Worcester, the most famous resolution of the whole ante-bellum period. Catching the spirit of his brother's words, he said: "Resolved, That Massachusetts wears no chains and spurns all bribes; that Massachusetts now, and will ever go, for free soil and free men, for free lips and a free press, for a free land and a free world." This was a good key-note, and when, six years later, in 1854 a slave-catcher came to this same city of Worcester, the citizens proved that they could raise the tune most readily ”

“ We had empty stomachs, and till they were filled all creeds were alike illusory. Preaching to hungry men was not a success, and he came but seldom—indeed I remember only once. Dead men were carried out daily, but they went unattended by religious rites. ”

“ It sufficed for them to know that he was to harry the Institution, leaving to him the perfecting and executing of details. The telegraphic dispatches on that Monday morning of October 17th, carried consternation into other homes than those of the South. It seemed reasonable to the Government that men who had contributed in any way to the support of John Brown must have been privy to his plans. However much we may pride ourselves now that such and such men assisted the movement, then the barest suspicion of complicity made many households look to their hearths. ”

“ Even if we grant that he was technically wrong we must accord to him the meed of perfect sincerity. Whatever his failings he had not that of lying. "Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends." John Brown fulfilled the highest interpretation of this Scriptural maxim. The edict once published, and all over the North there was a feeling of the deepest sympathy. There was nothing that could be done. People must wait and meditate. ”

“ Put in one sum the times the name of Lincoln, the Martyred President, and Grant, the Peerless General have been uttered, and it would not make a hundredth part the number that represents the utterance of John Brown's name in this song. Some one will say it cannot be a National Hymn unless sung by all parts of our people. Millions of people in the South, true of dusky faces, sung it, and how they sung it. It is more than sentiment, it is life to them ”

“ The colored people generally closed their places of employment, and engaged in appropriate religious exercises in Zion's Church in the afternoon. Earlier than had been advertised Mechanics Hall was thronged to its utmost capacity, in the vast audience there being as many women as men. ”

“ It closed not then; for to-day, after our lapse of a quarter of a century, it is the tune of all others that fires the Nation's heart. Ziska's drum head is immortal. Early in the War a large prize was offered for competition, to those who would try to write a National Hymn. ”

“ Socrates, awaiting the death which slowly creeps from his extremities to his heart converses not more quietly and resignedly to those about him than does this decided old man of Harper's Ferry. One, a Stoic, discourses on Death and Immortality ”