d conscience, while almost all America stood
ranked on the other side--I say again that it affects me as a sublime
spectacle. If he had any journal advocating 'his cause,' any organ, as
the phrase is, monotonously and wearisomely playing the same old
tune, and then passing round the hat, it would have been fatal to his
efficiency. If he had acted in any way so as to be let alone by the
government, he might have been suspected. It was the fact that the
tyrant must give place to him, or he to the tyrant, that distinguished
him from all the reformers of the day that I know.

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere
by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree
with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to
be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.
Such will be more shocked by his life than by his death. I shall not
be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to
liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the
philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots
me nor liberates me. At any rate, I do not think it is quite sane for
one to spend his whole life in talking or writing about this matter,
unless he is continuously inspired, and I have not done so. A man may
have other affairs to attend to. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed,
but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be
by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by
deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and
handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain
of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of
this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and
maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the
only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is
to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to
hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think
that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a
righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

The same indignation that is said to have cleared the temple once will
clear it again. The question is not about the weapon, but the spirit in
which you use it. No man has appeared in Ameri