The Story of John Brown
The Story of the Invasion of a Slave State, told by Henry Ward Beecher
Adapted Passages from “The Life and Work of Henry Ward Beecher” published in 1887
In 1859 occurred the unlawful invasion of a Slave State for the avowed purpose of liberating its slaves, by John Brown (abolitionist) and his associates an attempt, though really insignificant from a numerical point of view, which aroused and embittered the entire South against the North, for pro-slavery men thereupon naturally concluded that Brown was secretly encouraged and abetted by the Abolitionists of the North. The false nature of these accusations was clearly demonstrated in a sermon entitled “ The Nation’s Duty to Slavery,” in which Brown’s entire career was reviewed by the Abolitionist preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, and from which some extracts are here presented :
“An old man, kind at heart, industrious, peaceful, went forth, with a large family of children, to seek a new home in Kansas. That infant colony held thousands of souls as noble as ever liberty inspired or religion enriched. A great scowling Slave State, its nearest neighbor, sought to tread down the liberty-loving colony, and to dragoon slavery into it by force of arms. The armed citizens of a hostile State crossed the State lines, destroyed the freedom of the ballot box, prevented a fair expression of public sentiment, corruptly usurped law-making power, and ordained by fraud laws as infamous as the sun ever saw ; assaulted its infant settlements with armed hordes, ravaged the fields, destroyed harvests and herds, and carried death to a multitude of cabins. The United States Government had no marines for this occasion! No Federal troops posted by the cars by night and day for the poor, the weak, the grossly wronged men of Kansas. There was an army there that unfurled the banner of the Union, but it was on the side of the wrongdoers, not on the side of the injured.
“ It was in this field that Brown received his impulses. A tender father, whose life was in his son’s life. He saw his first-born seized like a felon, chained, driven across the country, crazed by suffering and heat, beaten like a dog by the officer in charge, and long lying at death’s door! Another noble boy, without warning, without offence, unarmed, in open day, in the midst of the city, was shot dead ! No justice sought out the murderers; no United States attorney was despatched in hot haste; no marines or soldiers aided the wronged or weak!
“ The shot that struck the child’s heart crazed the father’s brain. Revolving his wrongs, and nursing his hatred to that deadly system that breeds such contempt of justice and humanity, at length his phantoms assume a slender reality, and organize such an enterprise as one might expect from a man whom grief had bereft of judgment. He goes to the heart of a Slave State. One man and with sixteen followers, he seizes two thousand brave Virginians, and holds them in duress!
“ When a great State attacked a handful of weak colonists, the Government and nation were torpid, but when seventeen men attack a sovereign State, then Maryland arms, and Virginia arms, and the United States Government arms, and they three rush against seventeen men.
“ Travellers tell us that the Geysers of Iceland those irregular boiling springs of the north may be transported with fury by plucking up a handful of grass or turf and throwing it into the springs. The hot springs of Virginia are of the same kind! A handful of men was thrown into them, and what a boiling there has been!
“ But, meanwhile, no one can fail to see that this poor, child-bereft old man is the manliest of them all. Bold, unflinching, honest, without deceit or evasion, refusing to take technical advantages of any sort, but openly avowing his principles and motives, glorying in them in danger and death, as much as when in security that wounded old father is the most remarkable figure in the whole drama. The Governor, the officers of the State, and all the attorneys are pygmies compared with him.
“ I deplore his misfortunes. I sympathize with his sorrows. I mourn the hiding or obscuration of his reason. I disapprove of his mad and feeble schemes. I shrink from the folly of the bloody foray, and I shrink likewise from all anticipation of that judicial bloodshed which doubtless erelong will follow; for when was cowardice ever magnanimous?
“ If they kill the man, it will not be so much for treason as for the disclosure of their cowardice!
“ Let no man pray that Brown be spared. Let Virginia make him a martyr. Now, he has only blundered. His soul was noble, his work miserable. But a cord and a gibbet would redeem all that, and round up Brown’s failure with heroic success.”
Boyd B. Stutler Collection, West Virginia State Archives
“ Because it [slavery] is a great sin, because it is a national curse, it does not follow that we have a right to say anything or do anything about it that may happen to please us. We certainly have no right to attack it in any manner that may gratify men’s fancies or passions. It is computed that there are four million colored slaves in our nation. These dwell in fifteen different Southern States, with a population of ten million whites. These sovereign States are united to us not merely by federal ligaments, but by vital interests, by a common national life. And the question of duty is not simply what is duty toward the blacks, not what is duty toward the whites, but what is duty to each and to both united. I am bound by the great law of love to consider my duties toward the slave, and I am bound by the great law of love also to consider my duties toward the white man, who is his master ! Both are to be treated with Christian wisdom and forbearance. . . .
“We must keep in mind the interest of every part. . . . It is harder to define what would be just in certain emergencies than to establish the duty, claims, and authority of justice. . . .
“We have no right to treat the citizens of the South with acrimony or bitterness, because they are involved in a system of wrongdoing. Wrong is to be exposed. But the spirit of rebuke may be as wicked before God as the spirit of the evil rebuked. … If we hope to ameliorate the condition of the slave, the first step must not be taken by setting the master against him. . . .
“ The breeding of discontent among the bondmen of our land is not the way to help them. Whatever gloomy thoughts the slave’s own mind may brood, we are not to carry disquiet to him from without. . . . The evil is not partial. It cannot be cured by partial remedies. Our plans must include a universal change in policy, feeling, purpose, theory, and practice in the whole nation.
“ No relief will be afforded to the slaves of the South, as a body, by any individual ; or by any organized plan to carry them off, or to incite them to abscond. . . .
“ We have no right to carry into the midst of slavery exterior discontent. . . . It is short-sighted humanity, at best, and poor policy for both blacks and whites.
“ Still less would we tolerate anything like insurrection and servile war. It would be the most cruel, hope- less, and desperate of all conceivable follies to seek emancipation by the sword and by blood.”
Mr. Beecher created a great sensation by an address he delivered at the Broadway Tabernacle in New York City. The chains that had bound John Brown in his captivity were placed on the desk before him, and inspired him to one of his most eloquent and thrilling appeals in behalf of human liberty. In the frenzy of his eloquence he seized the clanking irons and hurled them to the floor, and stamped upon them, and awakened a sentiment in his vast audience that filled the place in every part, that was lasting, and which took flight across the whole anti-slavery section of the country.
Fragmentary reports of Mr. Beecher’s sermons appeared in the daily papers, but in his flights of eloquence the average reporter could not follow him, and often he was misrepresented or garbled to an exasperating degree. Mr. T. J. Ellinwood, a stenographer who was found to be able to follow him, was accommodated with a desk, and thenceforth until his death always reported him.
