It seems like small business when we
recollect the work that Seward and Sumner and Chase were doing
meanwhile.
It was the attack on Harper's Ferry that broke the spell at last, and
awoke Wendell Phillips to a higher and more useful life. It is difficult
to realize now, the courage that was required to appear before the
public in defence of what was generally considered the outrage of a
madman. It is easier for men to understand the differential calculus,
than that rebellion against government is either the greatest of crimes
or the highest of virtues. When government becomes so bad that honesty
and virtue cannot endure it, revolution is imminent. Phillips, Emerson
and Thoreau, John A. Andrew and Rev. J. M. Manning, pastor of the Old
South church, were the ones who asserted this. Andrew and his friends
called a meeting, nominally to obtain funds for the wife and daughters
of John Brown. The hall was crowded with a remarkably intelligent
looking class of people. Andrew presided, and claimed that whatever
might be thought of his Virginia raid, John Brown himself, considered
from his own standpoint, was in the right. Rev. Mr. Manning said, if
John Brown had consulted him in regard to inciting a slave insurrection
he should certainly have advised him not to do it, but he was far from
regretting that the attempt had been made. Phillips was the last
speaker, and treated his subject in the boldest revolutionary manner;
and before he had finished the applause was deafening.
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