You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves.
We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown!!
John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate
a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any
member of our party is guilty in that matter, you know it or
you do not know it. If you do know it, you are inexcusable for
not designating the man and proving the fact. If you do not
know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and especially
for persisting in the assertion after you have tried and failed
to make the proof. You need not be told that persisting in a
charge which one does not know to be true, is simply malicious
slander.
Some
of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or encouraged
the Harper's Ferry affair; but still insist that our doctrines
and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We do not
believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make no declaration,
which were not held to and made by "our fathers who framed
the Government under which we live." You never dealt fairly
by us in relation to this affair. When it occurred, some important
State elections were near at hand, and you were in evident glee
with the belief that, by charging the blame upon us, you could
get an advantage of us in those elections. The elections came,
and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. Every Republican
man knew that, as to himself at least, your charge was a slander,
and he was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in your
favor. Republican doctrines and declarations are accompanied
with a continual protest against any interference whatever with
your slaves, or with you about your slaves. Surely, this does
not encourage them to revolt. True, we do, in common with "our
fathers, who framed the Government under which we live,"
declare our belief that slavery is wrong; but the slaves do
not hear us declare even this. For anything we say or do, the
slaves would scarcely know there is a Republican party. I believe
they would not, in fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations
of us, in their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves,
each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Republicanism;
and then, to give point to the charge, defines Black Republicanism
to simply be insurrection, blood and thunder among the slaves
. . . .
John
Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.
It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves,
in which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was
so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly
enough it
could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds
with the many attempts, relate? in history, at the assassination
of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression
of a people till ha fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to
liberate them.
He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his
own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy,
precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England
in one case and on New England in the other, does not disprove
the sameness of the two things.
And
how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of John
Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Republican
organization? Human action can be modified to some extent, but
human nature cannot be changed. There is a judgment and a feeling
against slavery in this nation, which cast at least a million
and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment and feeling
that sentiment by breaking up the political organization which
rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and disperse an
army which has been formed into order in the face of your heaviest
fire; but if you could, how much would you gain by forcing the
sentiment which created it out of the peaceful channel of the
ballot box into some other channel? What would that other channel
probably be? Would the number of John Browns be lessened or
enlarged by the operation?
