Henry Clarke Wright

“ She is ever sounding in the ears of the slaves—"Give me liberty or give me death!"—"Resistance to slaveholders is obedience to God." All the slaveholders and white men and women in Virginia are ever saying to the slaves, "If you, or any others, were to do unto us as we are daily and hourly doing unto you, we would kill, slay and destroy you. If we were in your places, we would kill every man, woman and child that should attempt to prevent us from getting and maintaining our freedom." Thus your State appeals to the slaves, to incite them to a bloody insurrection. ”

“ Let the North cut loose from their bloody alliance with slaveholders, imitate John Brown, and form a league of offence and defence with the slaves against their enslavers. Let them do in defence of freedom to the slaves whatever they would do in defence of their own freedom. Let the North use all their power to give liberty to the slaves, which they would use to secure freedom to themselves. If they would use the torch and sabre to obtain and secure freedom to themselves, let them use the same weapons to give freedom to the slaves of Virginia. ”

“ Thirty years ago, the entire North, in its domestic, social, religious, political, commercial and military life, was in the same state of abject subserviency to slaveholders. The people seemed not only to have lost the power to resist them, but actually to feel honored that slave-breeders and slave-catchers counted them worthy to do their work of shame and infamy. The very life of their souls to resist seemed to have become extinct. So far as insurrection against them was concerned, the nation was dead and buried in an ignominious grave of servile submission. ”

“ He sought to arouse the soul of this nation, the intellect, the conscience, the sympathy and will, to a state of resistance, rebellion, insurrection against slaveholders, and against every law. Constitution, Bible or religion that sanctions and sustains them in turning men, women, and children into beasts and chattels. He sought to accomplish this chief end of his existence by running off slaves or by death. He has triumphed by the gallows! The blood of John Brown appeals to God and Humanity against slaveholders and their confederates in crime. ”

“ Sir, the unceasing labor he has given to the cause of liberty and humanity for these twenty past years will cause his name and his memory to be cherished and revered ages after the stone which shall lie upon his grave shall crumble and mingle with the dust. [Hear! hear!] And when that great day comes, as surely it will come,—for God reigns,—when three millions of men, held in slavery in this republic, shall be free, the friends of liberty will acknowledge, what many now deny, the patriotism of William Lloyd Garrison. ”

“ The blessings of the God of the oppressed rest upon you! This is the prayer of thousands who have known you for years, and entirely sympathize with you in the one great object of your life—i.e., to arouse this nation to look the sin, the shame and danger of slavery in the face. We have felt the deepest interest in your plans and movements, as we have known and watched them the last four years; and we have wondered that those who hold to armed resistance to tyrants have not more cheerfully and numerously gathered around your standard of insurrection against slaveholders. ”

“ You, dear friend, whose memory will ever be precious, as that of the slaveholder will ever be detested, have kept your anti-slavery faith; you have fought a good fight, and may say, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me in the day when the last slave shall be free. Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Millions will follow thee, weeping, to the gallows. ”

“ To John Brown it says, "Hasten to Harper's Ferry; incite the slaves to run away, and help them to exterminate all who shall attempt to impede their exodus!"
Thus, in the very death-warrant under which Brown is hung, you and Virginia pronounce him innocent of all evil, and justify the very deed for which you hang him. In every way, you pronounce him guiltless. Yet, you have hung him! Are you not a murderer? Yes! Henry A. Wise and Virginia being witnesses. Yes! the heart, the conscience, the reason and history of the nation being witnesses. ”

“ Four millions of slaves, this day, are, by reason of the influence that is brought to bear upon them, made to believe and feel that the greatest sin they can commit, the sin most sure to make them liable to the vengeance and lash of their oppressors, and to all "the miseries of this life, to the wrath of God and the pains of hell forever," is that of insurrection and resistance against slaveholders, in thought, word or deed. Their will-power to resist is gone. They have no will of their own! ”

“ The whole power of the Church is wielded to overawe the souls of the people, and bring them submissively and abjectly to yield to the authority of their creed, and without one resisting or rebellious thought or feeling to do its behests, however inhuman they may be, even to turning men and women into chattels, or hanging them on a gallows. The Bible, the only authority in religious faith and practice, and insurrection against it a sin unto eternal death—this is the sentiment and history of the American Church. ”

“ They say the North sympathizes with Brown and his deeds, and in so doing seeks to incite insurrection, rebellion, and resistance among their slaves. It is true. Their fears are well founded. Why seek to lull them into security till the storm shall burst upon them in a way they dream not of,—as it surely will, and deluge their homes and their plantations with blood, unless they escape by repentance and emancipation? Why should you seek to quiet their guilty consciences and awakened terrors?
The masses of the North are in sympathy with Brown and his deeds. ”

“ As to armed or military resistance to slaveholders, or to any evil-doers, my soul has ever resisted it, and ever must, as inexpedient, unjust and inhuman. Life or liberty can never be protected by killing men. Man-killing is the basis of man-stealing. Human liberty can never be made sacred by the taking of human life. Respect for liberty can never result from contempt for life. Liberty will be safe, only as life is reverenced. The inviolability of life is the only foundation of absolute safety to liberty. ”

“ The highest honor Virginia or the Union can bestow on the champion of liberty, and the living resistant of slavery, is a gallows. From this day, let the friends of the slave march forth to battle with slavery, whether the conflict be on the domestic, social, religious, political or military arena, under the symbol of the gallows, with the martyr and champion of liberty hanging on it. ”

“ You must die, as to your corporeal existence. Your visible, tangible presence will no more inspire and urge us on to the conflict; but John Brown, the MAN, the defender of liberty, the assailant of slavery, and the friend of the slave, will live and be with us, to inspire us, to incite us, to spur us up and lead us on to a still closer and more resolute and deadly assault upon slaveholding. ”

“ The people of the North, in the family and social circle, in the church, at the ballot-box, in the market, and in all places where they think it their right and duty to live, were to be made to regard and treat slaveholders as they do burglars, thieves, robbers, murderers, midnight assassins, and ravishers of helpless innocence, and to feel that, as such, they have no right to breathe God's air, to see his light, or to live in his universe; that, as slaveholders, they have no rights which any man is bound to respect. ”

“ Better to die a traitor to Virginia, than to live a traitor to yourself and your God. This nation of twenty-five millions will kill your body for treason against them; but had you not done as you have, you would have died a living death for treason against God, as he spoke to you in the depths of your own soul. ”

“ They have as good a right to perpetrate robbery, murder, rape and rapine upon you and your confederates in slave-breeding and slave-trading, and upon your wives and children, as you have to perpetrate like outrages upon them. They have as good a right to defend themselves and families against you and your associates in plunder and rapine, as you have to defend yourselves against them. ”

“ If they will persist in turning men and women into brutes and chattels, they must abide the results of their inhuman deeds. Their reward is sure and terrible. The bayonets of the North will not much longer defend them. I would that you and your associates in Congress were as true to liberty as the South is to slavery; that you would, in every department of life, as truly embody resistance to slavery, as they do resistance to liberty. ”

“ In whatever relations they live, we would incite them to embody liberty as the South does slavery. Death to slavery should, and will, ere long, be the watchword of every domestic and social circle, of every political and religious party, and of every literary and commercial establishment, in the North. ”

“ Before God and eternal justice and truth, whatever it is right for the white enslavers to do to black slaves and their wives, daughters, mothers and sisters, it is right for black slaves to do to their white enslavers and their wives, daughters, mothers and sisters. Whatever the people of the North would help the white slaveholders to do to their black slaves, they should, and will, one day, help the black slaves to do to the white slaveholders. ”

“ John Brown and him hanged will be the inspiration and slogan of the aroused slaves and their friends, till the four millions, now held and used as chattels, bought and sold and herded together in concubinage as brutes, punished with death for every attempt to raise themselves to the condition of men and women, and compelled to feel after God and immortality amid beasts and creeping things, shall be regenerated and redeemed. ”

“ Redemption is to come to the slave and his oppressors, not by the Cross of Christ, as it is preached among us, but by the gallows of Brown. The Cross of Christ—as borne aloft before this nation—has been and now is a bulwark of defence, a tower of strength, a munition of rocks,—the Gibraltar of American slaveholders ”