but resisted them as he was bid. For once we are lifted out of
the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and
manhood. No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and
effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a
man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he
was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer,
making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for
all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever
grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of
his peers, because his peers did not exist. When a man stands up
serenely against the condemnation and vengeance of mankind, rising
above them literally by a whole body,--even though he were of late
the vilest murderer, who has settled that matter with himself,--the
spectacle is a sublime one,--didn't ye know it, ye Liberators, ye
Tribunes, ye Republicans?--and we become criminal in comparison.
Do yourselves the honor to recognize him. He needs none of your
respect.

As for the Democratic journals, they are not human enough to affect
me at all. I do not feel indignation at anything they may say.

I am aware that I anticipate a little,--that he was still, at the
last accounts, alive in the hands of his foes; but that being the
case, I have all along found myself thinking and speaking of him
as physically dead.

I do not believe in erecting statues to those who still live in
our hearts, whose bones have not yet crumbled in the earth around
us, but I would rather see the statue of Captain Brown in the
Massachusetts State-House yard, than that of any other man whom I