Page:The Natick resolution, or, resistance to slaveholders.djvu/7

Rh to you in the depths of your own soul. Acting in obedience to the dictates of your conscience and the behests of your God, you have rendered yourself worthy the honor and glory of a gallows at the hands of slaveholders, who live, not merely as pirates do, to plunder and kill, but for a purpose far more cruel and inhuman—i.e., to turn human beings into chattels.

Who would not thus render himself deserving a gallows at such hands? The highest honor Virginia or the Union can bestow on the champion of liberty, and the living resistant of slavery, is a gallows. From this day, let the friends of the slave march forth to battle with slavery, whether the conflict be on the domestic, social, religious, political or military arena, under the symbol of the gallows, with the martyr and champion of liberty hanging on it.

You must die, as to your corporeal existence. Your visible, tangible presence will no more inspire and urge us on to the conflict; but John Brown, the, the defender of liberty, the assailant of slavery, and the friend of the slave, will live and be with us, to inspire us, to incite us, to spur us up and lead us on to a still closer and more resolute and deadly assault upon slaveholding. You die, conscious that by the gallows you have triumphed, and answered the one great end of your life more effectually than you would have done had you run off thousands of slaves. You triumph by the gallows, not by running off slaves. The nation is aroused. It must now meet slavery face to face, and see it in its deformity and its results. In every department of life, it must meet it and fight it, till it dies, and liberty is "proclaimed throughout all the land, to all the inhabitants thereof."

You, dear friend, whose memory will ever be precious, as that of the slaveholder will ever be detested, have kept your anti-slavery faith; you have fought a good fight, and may say, "Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of glory, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me in the day when the last slave shall be free. Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Millions will follow thee, weeping, to the gallows. In pitying accents I hear thee say to them, "Friends of the slave! weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your country; for in this conflict with slavery, there is not an 1*