ent
for the benefit of his fellow-man; it may be doubted if there were as
many more their equals in the country; for their leader, no doubt, had
scoured the land far and wide, seeking to swell his troop. These alone
were ready to step between the oppressor and the oppressed. Surely
they were the very best men you could select to be hung! That was the
greatest compliment their country could pay them. They were ripe for
her gallows. She has tried a long time; she has hung a good many, but
never found the right one before.

"When I think of him and his six sons and his son-in-law enlisted for
this fight, proceeding coolly, reverently, humanely to work, for
months, if not years, summering and wintering the thought, without
expecting any reward but a good 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 had any journal advocating his cause, any organ monotonously
and wearisomely playing the same old tune and then passing around the
hat, it would have been fatal to his efficiency. If he had acted in
such a way 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.

"This event advertises me that there is such a fact as death, the
possibility of a man's dying. It seems as if no man had ever died in
America before. If this man's acts and words do not create a revival,
it will be the severest possible satire on words and acts that do.

"It is the best news that America has ever heard. It has already
quickened the feeble pulse of the North, and infused more generous
blood in her veins than any number of years of what is called political
and commercial prosperity. How many a man who was lately contemplating
suicide has now something to live for!

"I am here to plead his cause with you. I plead not for his life, but
for his character, his immortal life, and so it becomes your cause
wholly, and it is not his in the least.

"Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified; this morning,
perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of the chain
which is not without its links. He is not Old Brown any longer; he is
an angel of light. I see now that it was necessary that the bravest
and humanest man in all the country should be hung. Perhaps he saw it
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