the other world, though not to represent you there. No, he was not our
representative in any sense. He was too fair a specimen of a man to
represent the like of us. Who, then, were his constituents? If you
read his words understandingly you will find out. In his case there is
no idle eloquence, no made, nor maiden speech, no compliments to the
oppressor. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness the polisher of
his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharp's rifles, while he
retained his faculty of speech- a Sharp's rifle of infinitely surer
and longer range.

  And the New York Herald reports the conversation verbatim! It does
not know of what undying words it is made the vehicle.

  I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the
report of that conversation and still call the principal in it insane.
It has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and
habits of life, than an ordinary organization, secure. Take any
sentence of it- "Any questions that I can honorably answer, I will;
not otherwise. So far as I am myself concerned, I have told everything
truthfully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk about his
vindictive spirit, while they really admire his heroism, have no
test by which to detect a noble man, no amalgam to combine with his
pure gold. They mix their own dross with it.

  It is a relief to turn from these slanders to the testimony of his
more truthful, but frightened jailers and hangmen. Governor Wise
speaks far more justly and appreciatingly of him than any Northern
editor, or politician, or public personage, that I chance to have
heard from. I know that you can afford to hear him again on this
subject. He says: "They are themselves mistaken who take him to be a
madman.... He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is but
just to him to say that he was humane to his prisoners.... And he
inspired me with great trust in his integrity as a man of truth. He is
a fanatic, vain and garrulous" (I leave that part to Mr. Wise), "but
firm, truthful, and intelligent. His men, too, who survive, are like
him.... Colonel Washington says that he was the coolest and firmest
man he ever saw in defying danger and death. With one son dead by
his side, and another shot through, he felt the pulse of his dying son
with one hand, and held his rifle with the other, and commanded his
men with the utmost composure, encouraging them to be firm, and to
sell their lives as dear as they could. Of the three white
prisoners, Brown, Stevens, and Coppoc, it was hard to say which was
most firm."

  Almost the first Northern men whom the slaveholder has learned to
respect!

  The testimony of Mr. Vallandigham, though less valuable, is of the
same purport, that "it is vain to underrate either the man or his
conspiracy.... He is the farthest possible removed from the ordinary
ruffian, fanatic, or madman."

  "All is quiet at Harper's Ferry," say the journals. What is the
character of that calm which follows when the law and the
slaveholder prevail? I regard this event as a touchstone designed to
bring out, with glaring distinctness, the character of this
government. We needed to be thus assisted to see it by the light of
history. It needed to see itself. When a government puts forth its
strength on the side of injustice, as ours to maintain slavery and
kill the liberators of the slave, it reveals itself a merely brute
force, or worse, a demoniacal force. It is the head of the
Plug-Uglies. It is more manifest than ever that tyranny rules. I see
this government to be effectually allied with France and Austria in
oppressing mankind. There sits a tyrant holding fettered four millions
of slaves; here comes their heroic liberator. This most hypocritical
and diabolical government looks up from its seat on the gasping four
millions, and inquires with an assumption of innocence: "What do you
assault me for? Am I not an honest man? Cease agitation on this
subject, or I will make a slave of you, too, or else hang you."

  We talk about a representative government; but what a monster of a
government is that where the noblest faculties of the mind, and the
whole heart, are not represented! A semihuman tiger or ox, stalking
over the earth, with its heart taken out and the top of its brain shot
away. Heroes have fought well on their stumps when their legs were
shot off, but I never heard of any good done by such a government as
that.

  The only government that I recognize- and it matters not how few are
at the head of it, or how small its army- is that power that
establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes
injustice. What shall we think of a government to which all the
truly brave and just men in the land are enemies, standing between
it and those whom it oppresses? A government that pretends to be
Christian and crucifies a million Christs every day!

  Treason! Where does such treason take its rise? I cannot help
thinking of you as you deserve, ye governments. Can you dry up the
fountains of thought? High treason, when it is resistance to tyranny
here below, has its origin in, and is first committed by, the power
that makes and forever re-creates man. When you have caught and hung
all these human rebels, you have accomplished nothing but your own
guilt, for you have not struck at the fountain-head. You presume to
contend with a foe against whom West Point cadets and rifled cannon
point not. Can all the art of the cannon-founder tempt matter to
turn against its maker? Is the form in which the founder thinks he
casts it more essential than the constitution of it and of himself?

  The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are
determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of