" 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 representative of the North. He
was a superior man. He 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. In that sense he was the most
American of us all. 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.
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