ricans, as manifested among ourselves,
--the courage created by desperate emergencies. Suppled by long
slavery, softened by mixture of blood, the black man seems to pass
at one bound, as women do, from cowering pusillanimity to the topmost
height of daring. The giddy laugh vanishes, the idle chatter is
hushed, and the buffoon becomes a hero. Nothing in history surpasses
the bravery of the Maroons of Surinam, as described by Stedman, or
of those of Jamaica, as delineated by Dallas. Agents of the
"Underground Railroad" report that the incidents which daily come to
their knowledge are beyond all Greek, all Roman fame. These men and
women, who have tested their courage in the lonely swamp against the
alligator and the bloodhound, who have starved on prairies, hidden
in holds, clung to locomotives, ridden hundreds of miles cramped in
boxes, head downward, equally near to death if discovered or deserted,
--and who have then, after enduring all this, gone voluntarily back
to risk it over again, for the sake of wife or child,--what are we
pale faces, that we should claim a rival capacity with theirs for
heroic deeds? What matter, if none, below the throne of God, can now
identify that nameless negro in the Tennessee iron-works, who, during
the last insurrection, said "he knew all about the plot, but would
die before he would tell? He _received seven hundred and fifty
lashes and died_." Yet where, amid the mausoleums of the world,
is there carved an epitaph like that?

The courage of blood, of habit, or of imitation is not necessarily a
very exalted thing. But the courage of self-devotion cannot be
otherwise than noble, however wasted on fanaticism or delusion. It
enters the domain of conscience. Yet, although the sublimest, it is
not necessarily the most undaunted form of courage. It is vain to
measure merit by martyrdom, without reference to the temperament,
the occasion, and the aim. There is no passion in the mind of man so
weak, said Lord Bacon, but it mates and masters the fear of death.
Sinner, as well as saint, may be guillotined or lynched, and endure
it well. A red Indian or a Chinese robber will dare the stake as
composedly as an early Christian or an abolitionist. One of the
bravest of all death-scenes was the execution of Simon, Lord Lovat,
who was unquestionably one of the greatest scoundrels that ever
burdened the earth. We must look deeper. The test of a man is not in
the amount of his endurance, but in its moti