Page:Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892).djvu/557

Rh scarcely a murmur of disapprobation. I confess that as I looked out upon the scene before me and the towering heights around me, and remembered the bloody drama there enacted; as I saw the log-house in the distance where John Brown collected his men and saw the little engine-house where the brave old Puritan fortified himself against a dozen companies of Virginia Militia, and the place where he was finally captured by the United States troops under Col. Robert E. Lee, I was a little shocked at my own boldness in attempting to deliver in such presence an address of the character advertised in advance of my coming. But there was no cause of apprehension. The people of Harper's Ferry have made wondrous progress in their ideas of freedom, of thought and speech. The abolition of slavery has not merely emancipated the negro, but liberated the whites. It has taken the lock from their tongues and the fetters from their press, On the platform from which I spoke, sat Hon. Andrew J. Hunter, the prosecuting attorney for the State of Virginia, who conducted against John Brown, the cause of the State that consigned him to the gallows. This man, now well stricken in years, greeted me cordially and in conversation with me after the address, bore testimony to the manliness and courage of John Brown, and though he still disapproved of the raid made by him upon Harper's Ferry, commended me for my address and gave me a pressing invitation to visit Charlestown, where he lives, and offered to give me some facts which might prove interesting to me, as to the sayings and conduct of Captain Brown while in prison and on trial, up to the time of his execution. I regret that my engagements and duties were such that I could not then and there accept his invitation, for I could not doubt the sincerity with which it was given, or fail to see the value of compliance. Mr. Hunter not only congratulated me upon