liberty in their whole life. We would arouse the North to embody liberty and resistance to slavery in their whole life. Wherever the people of the South live, whether in domestic, social, ecclesiastical, political or commercial life, they embody death to liberty. We would stir up the people of the North to embody death to slavery wherever they live. In whatever relations they live, we would incite them to embody liberty as the South does slavery. Death to slavery should, and will, ere long, be the watchword of every domestic and social circle, of every political and religious party, and of every literary and commercial establishment, in the North.
The blessings of the God of the oppressed rest upon you! This is the prayer of thousands who have known you for years, and entirely sympathize with you in the one great object of your life—i.e., to arouse this nation to look the sin, the shame and danger of slavery in the face. We have felt the deepest interest in your plans and movements, as we have known and watched them the last four years; and we have wondered that those who hold to armed resistance to tyrants have not more cheerfully and numerously gathered around your standard of insurrection against slaveholders.
The government and God of this nation daily and hourly proclaim to the people of the North, and to the slaves of the South, their right and duty of armed resistance to slaveholders. You hastened to obey that call to duty made by your country and your God. Virginia herself called you to resist slaveholders, and to free the slaves, by arms and blood, if need be. Why should Virginia hang you? You have only done what she has exhorted you to do from the day of your birth. Why should the North call you a "fanatic," a "maniac," a "ruffian," a "marauder," a "murderer," an "assassin"? You have only done what the religion, the government and God of the nation, for seventy years, proclaimed to be your right and your duty.
Twelve days hence, Virginia will hang your body, but she will not hang John Brown. Better to die a traitor to Virginia, than to live a traitor to yourself and your God. This nation of twenty-five millions will kill your body for treason against them; but had you not done as you have, you would have died a living death for treason against God, as he spoke
