Victor Hugo

Name: Letter to the London News regarding John Brown
Author: Victor Hugo

Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

Summary

“Letter to the London News regarding John Brown”, published in 1859, is a work by Victor Hugo. It explores elements such as John Brown, humanity and crime.

Quotes from Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (Victor Hugo)

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ All of us, no matter who we may be, who are bound together as compatriots by the common tie of a democratic creed, feel ourselves in some measure compromised. If the scaffold should be erected on the 16th of December, the incorruptible voice of history would thenceforward testify that the august Confederation of the New World, had added to all its rites of holy brotherhood a brotherhood of blood, and the fasces of that splendid Republic would be bound together with the running noose that hung from the gibbet of Brown! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ It is possible that the execution of Brown might establish slavery on a firm basis in Virginia, but it is certain that it would shake to its centre the entire fabric of American democracy. You preserve your infamy, but you sacrifice your glory. Viewed in a moral light, it seems to me that a portion of the enlightenment of humanity would be eclipsed, that even the ideas of justice and injustice would be obscured on the day which should witness the assassination of Emancipation by Liberty. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ Such things cannot be done with impunity in the face of the civilized world. The universal conscience of humanity is an ever-watchful eye. Let the judges of Charlestown, and Hunter and Parker, and the slaveholding jurors, and the whole population of Virginia, ponder it well: they are watched! They are not alone in the world. At this moment, America attracts the eyes of the whole of Europe.
John Brown, condemned to die, was to have been hanged on the 2d of December—this very day. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ In the Southern States of the Union there are slaves; and this circumstance is regarded with indignation, as the most monstrous of inconsistencies, by the pure and logical conscience of the Northern States. A white man, a free man, John Brown, sought to deliver these negro slaves from bondage. Assuredly, if insurrection is ever a sacred duty, it must be when it is directed against Slavery. John Brown endeavored to commence the work of emancipation by the liberation of slaves in Virginia. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ As for myself, though I am but a mere atom, yet being, as I am, in common with all other men, inspired with the conscience of humanity, I fall on my knees, weeping before the great starry banner of the New World ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ The more one loves, the more one admires, the more one venerates that Republic, the more heart-sick one feels at the contemplation of such a catastrophe. A single State ought not to have the power to dishonor all the rest, and in this case there is an obvious justification for a federal intervention. Otherwise, by hesitating to interfere when it might prevent a crime, the Union becomes a participator in its guilt. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ When we reflect on what Brown, the liberator, the champion of Christ, has striven to effect, and when we remember that he is about to die, slaughtered by the American Republic, the crime assumes an importance co-extensive with that of the nation which commits it—and when we say to ourselves that this nation is one of the glories of the human race ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ Pious, austere, animated with the old Puritan spirit, inspired by the spirit of the Gospel, he sounded to these men, these oppressed brothers, the rallying cry of Freedom. The slaves, enervated by servitude, made no response to the appeal. Slavery afflicts the soul with weakness. Brown, though deserted, still fought at the head of a handful of heroic men ”

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Source: Wikisource

Victor Hugo, Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (1859)

“ It is not until the 16th that he is to die. The interval is a brief one. Before it has ended, will a cry of mercy have had time to make itself effectually heard?
No matter! It is our duty to speak out. ”

Victor Hugo

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Quotes from Letter to the London News regarding John Brown (Victor Hugo)

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