exultant she stands, and in the consciousness of having done a meritorious deed, by ridding the world of a monster and Humanity of its most malignant foe, she challenges the homage of all for what she has done, and in her pride of victory exclaims:—Sic semper tyrannis—"Thus always deal with slaveholders"—i.e., cut their heads off.
Thus Virginia, the State over which you are so proud to preside, says to your slaves, and to all slaves in the State, and in the United States, and in all the world—"Cut off your masters' heads." Not content with mere words, she pictures to them her own proud achievement, and calls on them to look at her in the very act of vanquishing her direst foe, and of beheading him; thus inciting them, by an appeal to the eye as well as to the ear, to resistance, to insurrection, and to blood.
In her Constitution, Virginia says to her slaves, "You are born as free as are your masters, and have the same God-given right to your earnings, to yourselves, your wives, husbands, children and homes as they have." She is ever sounding in the ears of the slaves—"Give me liberty or give me death!"—"Resistance to slaveholders is obedience to God." All the slaveholders and white men and women in Virginia are ever saying to the slaves, "If you, or any others, were to do unto us as we are daily and hourly doing unto you, we would kill, slay and destroy you. If we were in your places, we would kill every man, woman and child that should attempt to prevent us from getting and maintaining our freedom." Thus your State appeals to the slaves, to incite them to a bloody insurrection.
You, sir, make this appeal to the slaves, and to the people of the North. You flaunt this most ferocious and blood-thirsty prayer in their faces every time you set your official seal to a commission, a warrant, a draft, a law, or any document. By this act, your prayer to the slave is, "Arise! and cut off the heads of all slaveholders!"—and you invoke the North to come and help them. John Brown heard your prayer, and the prayer of Virginia. In answer to it, he came to Harper's Ferry. He there sought to rescue men and women from the condition of brutes and chattels, and to restore to them their God-given and State-acknowledged rights. He did not aim to do the bloody deed to slaveholders which
