h when performed by
others; to more than this I do not presume. Allow me one other
personal word before I proceed. In the minds of some of the American
people I was myself credited with an important agency in the John
Brown raid. Governor Henry A. Wise was manifestly of that opinion. He
was at the pains of having Mr. Buchanan send his Marshals to Rochester
to invite me to accompany them to Virginia. Fortunately I left town
several hours previous to their arrival.

What ground there was for this distinguished consideration shall duly
appear in the natural course of this lecture. I wish however to say
just here that there was no foundation whatever for the charge that I
in any wise urged or instigated John Brown to his dangerous work. I
rejoice that it is my good fortune to have seen, not only the end of
slavery, but to see the day when the whole truth can be told about
this matter without prejudice to either the living or the dead. I
shall however allow myself little prominence in these disclosures.
Your interests, like mine, are in the all-commanding figure of the
story, and to him I consecrate the hour. His zeal in the cause of my
race was far greater than mine--it was as the burning sun to my taper
light--mine was bounded by time, his stretched away to the boundless
shores of eternity. I could live for the slave, but he could die for
him. The crown of martyrdom is high, far beyond the reach of ordinary
mortals, and yet happily no special greatness or superior moral
excellence is necessary to discern and in some measure appreciate a
truly great soul. Cold, calculating and unspiritual as most of us are,
we are not wholly insensible to real greatness; and when we are
brought in contact with a man of commanding mold, towering high and
alone above the millions, free from all conventional fetters, true to
his own moral convictions, a "law unto himself," ready to suffer
misconstruction, ignoring torture and death for what he believes to be
right, we are compelled to do him homage.

In the stately shadow, in the sublime presence of such a soul I find
myself standing to-night; and how to do it reverence, how to do it
justice, how to honor the dead with due regard to the living, has been
a matter of most anxious solicitude.

Much has been said of John Brown, much that is wise and beautiful, but
in looking over what may be called the John Brown literature, I have
been little assisted with material, and even less encouraged wi