[304] name of Emmett; we revere the name of Wallace....... of every virtuous man who has perished in unsuccessful attempts to achieve the independence of his country...... And therefore, if negro slavery be a thing so unjust and so wicked as my friends and their associates esteem it, I must admit that we cannot consistently refuse the same tribute to the recent abolition martyr, John Brown. He fell! So have many illustrious champions of justice. He failed! So did Emmett, and so did Wallace. His means were inadequate! So were theirs: the event proved it. He struggled indeed for the liberty of a distant people, who were not his kinsmen, who were not of his color, who had few claims upon his sympathy, and none upon his affections. That may be an argument against him with those who think that heroism and virtue should never be disinterested; but it has no real weight. We have not been in the habit of withholding our meed of praise from Kosciusko, Pulaski, De Kalb, or Lafayette, all of whom fought, and two of whom perished for us. We withheld not our tribute of admiration from Lafayette when, in his old age, he visited our country. No one asserted that he should have stayed at home, instead of coming in aid of a remote and distant people, and imperilling his life for their emancipation. No! we received him as the people's guest, and the whole American nation, from one end of our republic to the other, bowed down in heartfelt homage to his virtue. How can my learned friends, with their avowed principles, withhold from John Brown the tribute of their admiration, or from his deeds the sanction of their approval?That is the opinion of Charles O'Connor, the head of the New York Bar, the new-fledged orator of Democracy, and the counsel for Virginia in the Lemmon case. I expect to live to hear that sentence quoted in 1872, under the very dome of the Capitol, by some Senator anxious for a Presidential nomination! [Applause.] Do you doubt it? Why, it is not impossible that Virginia herself, clothed and in her right mind, may yet beg of
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