What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives
to Congress for, of late years?--to declare with effect what kind of
sentiments? All their speeches put together and boiled down,--and
probably they themselves will confess it,--do not match for
manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual
remarks of crazy John Brown, on the floor of the Harper's Ferry
engine-house,--that man whom you are about to hang, to send to
the other world, though not to represent you there. No, he was not
our representative in any sense. He was too fair a specimen of a
man to represent the like of us. Who, then, were his constituents?
If you read his words understandingly you will find out. In his
case there is no idle eloquence, no made, nor maiden speech, no
compliments to the oppressor. Truth is his inspirer, and earnestness
the polisher of his sentences. He could afford to lose his Sharpe's
rifles, while he retained his faculty of speech,--a Sharpe's rifle
of infinitely surer and longer range.

And the New York Herald reports the conversation verbatim! It does
not know of what undying words it is made the vehicle.

I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the
report of that conversation, and still call the principal in it insane.
It has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and
habits of life, than an ordinary organization, secure. Take any
sentence of it,--"Any questions that I can honorably answer, I
will; not otherwise. So far as I am myself concerned, I have told
everything truthfully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk
about his vindictive spirit, while they really admire his heroism,
have no test by which to detect a noble man, no amalgam to combine
with his pure gold. They mix their own dross with it.