Page:Anti-slavery and reform papers by Thoreau, Henry David.djvu/78

 A Plea for Captain John Brown. 6^ 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 think- ing 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 ra4iher see the statue of Captain:' Brown in the Massachusetts State-House yard, than that of any other man whom I know. I rejoice that I live in this age, that I am his contemporary.

What a contrast, when we turn to that political party which is so anxiously shuffling him- and his plot out of its wav, and lookinof around for some available slave- holder, perhaps, to be its candidate, at least for one who will execute the Fugitive Slave Law, and all those other unjust laws which he took up arms to annul! Insane ! A father and six sons, and one son-in-law, and several more men besides, — as many at least as twelve disciples, — all struck with insanity at once ; while the same tyrant holds with a firmer gripe than ever his four millions of slaves, and a thousand sane editors, his abettors, are saving their country and their bacon ! Just as insane Avere his efforts in Kansas. Ask the tvrant who is his most dangerous foe, the sane man or the insane ? Do the thousands who know him best, who have rejoiced at his deeds in Kansas, and have aff'orded him material aid there, think him insane ? Such a use