Page:John Brown (W. E. B. Du Bois).djvu/271

Rh of arousing the people of the North from the stupor they were in on this subject. He seemed to think such sacrifice necessary to awaken the people from the deep sleep that had settled upon the minds of the whites of the North. He well knew that the sacrifice of any number of Negroes would have no effect. "What he intended to do, so far as I could gather from his conversation, from time to time, was to emulate Arnold Winkelried, the Swiss chieftain, when he threw himself upon the Austrian spearmen, crying, 'Make way for Liberty. Delaney in his own bold, original way assumed that Brown intended another Underground Railway terminating in Kansas. Delaney himself was on his way to Africa and could take no active part in the movement.

The constitution adopted by the convention was an instrument designed for the government of a band of isolated people fighting for liberty. The preamble said:

"Whereas slavery, throughout its entire existence in the United States, is none other than a most barbarous, unprovoked and unjustifiable war of one portion of its citizens upon another portion—the only conditions of which are perpetual imprisonment and hopeless servitude or absolute extermination—in utter disregard and violation of those eternal and self-evident truths set forth in our Declaration of Independence: