Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/77

 66 Aiiti- Slavery and Reform Papers.

their iguorance^ that he acted ^^on the principle of revenge/^ They do not know the man. They must enlarge themselves to conceive of him. I have no doubt that the time will come when they will begin to see him as he was. They have got to conceive of a man of faith and of religious principle^ and not a politician or an Indian ; of a man who did not wait till he was personally interfered with, or thwarted in some harmless business before he gave his life to the cause of the oppressed.

If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the represent- ative of the Xorth. /He was a superior man. iHe did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things.

He did not recognize unjust human laws, 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)b In that sense he was the most American of us a]^ 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 asfainst the condemnation and veno^eance of mankind, rising above them literally In] a icliole both/, — 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 liejmhlicans ? — and we become criminal in