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332   DOUGLASS’ MONTHLY.   SEPTEMBER, 1860
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at your meeting, and let us raise a monument to his memory that will rival in sold grandeur that old gray shaft on Bunker Hill.
   Very truly, yours for the oppressed,
              H. FORD DOUGLASS.
To Messrs. Hinton and Redpath, Committee.
  The following letter is from the Rev. J. Sella Martin, Pastor of the Eleventh Baptist Church, Boston.  He is an earnest and gifted young man, seeking to life his people in the scale of progress, and believing in [[italics]] acts [[/italics]] as well as [[italics]] words: [[italics]] –
     [[italics]] Boston [[/italics]], June 30, 1860. [[/set right in column]] 
   GENTLEMEN:—Your kind invitation to visit North Elba on the 4th of July has been duly received.  I return my thanks to you and the family of our sainted hero and martyr, John Brown.
   Nothing but other and imperative duties prevent me from being with you on that day—an occasion hereafter, I hope to mark anew the opening wider the era of anti-slavery warfare.  As a humble representative of the race for whom John Brown died, I regret that my tears cannot mingle with yours over his grave, nor my vows go up with those who are to carry on his work, that work shall be done in the fullness of that spirit which led the heroes of Harpers Ferry to cheerful sacrifice. In the shadows of the 'everlasting hills,' and above that lowly mound.  I hope fresh glory will go out and renewed strength be given.
  I rejoice, as a minister of God’s Word, in the Christianity of the martyr-chief. In an age when the lessons of God, writ in the Holy Scriptures, are mocked by a pro-slavery Church, John Brown believed and practised. In the spirit of the Savior’s divine words, he dared 'do unto others as he would they should do unto him.'— He dared do this in the face of a corrupt priesthood, a tyrannical government, and a fatally weak and careless nation. Imbued by the truths of the Bible, the Spirit of God upheld him, as, from the battle field to the scaffold, the path of his latter life became so glorious a psalm of praise to the Most High, making his name one of the dearest Humanity can hold in memory.
  May blessings rest upon all the surviving members of the family of our beloved friend, and upon those of his company who have escaped the Philistines. God grant a new spirit may go out from this meeting, and, armed in the truth of righteousness, may the friends of the slave go on conquering and to conquer, until not a fetter shames the limb of man, and the name of bondsman shall be among the things of the past, remembered only to warn and to teach.
   For universal freedom, fraternally yours,
        J. SELLA MARTIN.
  I have a letter from one who needs no further introduction that the words of Wendell Phillips, who spoke of him 'as the man whose words were bullets'—I mean James Redpath:
  [[italics]] Maiden [[italics]], Mass, July 2, 1860. 
  JOHN BROWN, JR.:  MY DEAR FRIEND:—Duties, imperative and that cannot be delayed, will prevent me from visiting North Elba on Wednesday.  Ere this week is over, I shall probably be sailing for Hayti. 
  I deeply regret that I cannot be with you, to unite in re-affirming an unwavering faith in the doctrines of the Declaration, and in the doctrines of the Declaration, and in the expediency of the agency of physical force for the liberation of the slaves in our Southern States.  A new party should be organized on this basis.
  Slavery must be abolished by force—either by insurrections, controlled by white men, or by the strong arm of the Federal Government. The slave quarter is the Achilles heel of slavery: wound it there, and it dies.  Washington City is the throat of the system: choke it there, and it dies also. Shall we strike, then, at its heel or its throat? I reply, STRIKE AT BOTH.  Let those of us who cannot aid in inciting insurrections, labor with untiring and SYSTEMATIC zeal to obtain the control of the Republican party. It is not half so difficult to abolitionize that party as most of us suppose.  The great majority of its voters, I believe, are already true-hearted anti-slavery men.  They support it only for want of a more radical organization. They do so, however, as if under protest, taking no really earnest interest in it. Hence we find in its present platform a resolution branding the martyr of Virginia as a criminal—which, although, as we are told, it was received 'without applause,' and 'with an ominous silence,' the politicians nevertheless managed to pass. But think you that the masses of the republicans regard your father as other than a man of most heroic soul and stainless integrity, who did what we all approved and silently were yearning to see done?  If I were with you, I would urge the organization of a party of Practical Abolitionists, whose   
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duty it shall be not to advocate the doctrines of the Declaration, (which is the office of our noble friends, the Garrisonians, and the Gerrit Smith men,) but to devise methods and policies of putting them into operation—of translating them into historical facts.
  For myself, I have finished, I believe, my advocacy of the DOCTRINES of the Declaration. Henceforth, I shall regard them as self-evident truths that require no argument to support them; and—heaven and fortune favoring—I shall now devote myself to the dissemination of METHODS of abolition, and also, I hope, to the work itself, when your father’s successor shall be called on to take the field. None of us may have the privilege that your father’s fate bestowed on him, of being martyred for the faith that is in us ; but all of us, at least, can resolve to so live that, although we may not share his mode of death, we may win the undisputed title of deserving it.
  Four victories were to be won, ere the American slave was to be freed—Bunker Hill, Harper’s Ferry, a successful insurrection in one State, and then liberty peacefully effected thro’-out all the land. Two have already been achieved: let us hasten forward to the third; and God speed the Pike!
   Ever and forever your friend,
              JAMES REDPATH.
  We have with us to day, in person, a man whom the United States Senate has chosen to honor by imprisonment in the national slave-pen in Washington.  He has proven that Endurance was her victories as well as Force.—In my hand I hold a communication from one who has also proven, in resisting by other means that same iniquitous mandate, that one man in the right is stronger than an organized wrong.  I allude to Thaddeus Hyatt, of New York, and Frank B. Sanborn, of Concord.—The first is here bodily; the second, spiritually, and has placed himself [[italics]] en rapport [[/italics]] with us by means of his letter:
 [[italics]] Concord [[/italics]], July 1, 1860.
  MY DEAR FRIEND:—If it were in any way convenient for me, I should certainly be present at your family gathering, and the appropriate celebration of the 4th of July at your father’s grave.  But I have so often been absent from my school during the past year, that now, in its last weeks, it requires my constant presence; and, with other interests, will detain me here till after the middle of the month. I would gladly join hands with you about the green mound of your father, whom I knew and loved so well; and it would especially please me to make acquaintance with yourself, since you have proved so well your right to inherit your father’s name. I trust that I may still have that pleasure, and that you will visit Concord before you return to Ohio; for Concord now claims, with your own Ashtabula County, the honor of protecting white men, at least, from Southern oppression; and you have many friends here who honor you, but have never seen you.  I should like, too, to see Owen, whom I met some years since; and Jason, who, like yourself, is a stranger to me. Indeed, any of your family are now as kinsmen of mine, for your father, I think, loved me almost as a son, and I am sure I honored and loved him as a father. I look upon your celebration of the day as well-nigh the only one that will be properly made in the whole country.  Most of us have no right to read the Declaration of Independence, for its magnificent periods are to us but 'glittering generalities,' as a New England sophist used to say; but to the family of John Brown, it is the true charter of liberty, to which your father has added some marginal notes. I wish I could write an ode worthy to be sung by you on that day, but you need for that the genius of Burns, or of the enthusiast who wrote and set to music the Marsailles Hymn of freedom. I may, however, offer you a sentiment for your public dinner:—
  [[italics]] Thomas Jefferson and John Brown [[/italics]]—The one came from Virginia to write the Declaration of Independence, and the other went there to publish the best commentary on it.  Posterity will forget neither, though Virginia forgets both.
   Truly yours,   F. B. SANHORN.
  The following vigorous and beautiful original hymn, written by Mr. Sanborn for this occasion, was also read by the Secretary, as it was not possible to arrange music for it at the time:—
  Eternal hills! that rise around
  To guard the consecrated ground;
   Ye ancient woods that o’er us wave
  Oh, hear us!  and for aye record, 
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  Till deeds redeem our plighted word,
   The vows we offer at the grave!

  We swear, by him who lies below—
  Whose death the justice, sure and slow,
   Of God’s great law shall yet repay—
  Ever to hold his memory dear,
  And follow him in that career
   Where he, unfaltering, showed the way.

  Be ours the slave’s neglected cause;
  No golden bribes, no godless laws,
   Shall taint our heart or cheek or hand;
  Firm to resist the tyrant’s power
  Swift to attack when dawns the hour,
   For righteous Liberty we stand.

  Too well we love our father’s fame,
  Too keenly feel our country’s shame.
   To vex with boasts this mountain air—
  With pride we tell our glories past,
  On Thee our fears and cares we cast,
   Just God! by Thee our oaths we swear.

   From a true friend of the cause I have the following:—
   [[italics]] Boston, [[/italics]] July 1, 1860.
  DEAR SIR:—I regret that pressing business engagements will prevent me from accepting your invitation 'in behalf of the family of John Brown to be present at North Elba on the Fourth, to celebrate the anniversary of American Independence, and unite in re-affirming, over the grave of the Martyr of Virginia.  the truth of the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence.'
  Yielding to no one in admiration and in veneration of the high moral and religious character, the self-sacrificing spirit, the heroic and unswerving devotion to the cause of freedom and humanity which marked the life of John Brown, it would afford me great pleasure to be present on the above occasion, and to lend at least the sanction of my presence to the great principles which he so faithfully and fearlessly defended, and in the maintenance of which he cheerfully surrendered his valuable life.
   Very truly yours,
         C. H. BRAINARD. 
  To James Redpath, Esq.
  MR. PRESIDENT:—There is another name to be spoken on this day—the name of one whose voice we had hoped to hear pour forth its burning utterances on this occasion. He is not with us; but in his place comes this missive, charged full of the fiery magnetism of his tropical nature. Among the first of the letters read, was one from a Douglass; the one I am about to read is from another of the same clan—not the Little Giant of Illinois, but the Black one on New York—Frederick Douglass:—
 [[italics]] Rochester, [[/italics]] June 29, 1860, 
  JAMES REDPATH, Esq.: My Dear Sir:—Your kind note, inviting me to meet with yourself and other friends on the 4th of July, at North Elba, came into my hands only yesterday. Had it reached me only a day or two earlier, I certainly should have complied with it. Very gladly would I assemble with you and others on that revolutionary day, to do honor to the memory of one whom I regard as THE man of this nineteenth century.  Little, indeed, can you and I do to add lustre to his deathless fame.—The principles of John Brown, attested by a life of spotless integrity and sealed by his blood, are self-vindicated. His name is covered with a glory so bright and enduring, as to require nothing at our hands to increase or perpetuate it. Only for our own sake, and that of enslaved and imbruted humanity, need we assemble. To have been acquainted with John Brown, shared his counsels, enjoyed his confidence, and sympathized with the great objects of his life and death, I esteem as among the highest privileges of my life.  We do but honor ourselves in doing honor to him, for it implies the possession of qualities akin to his.
  I have little hope of the freedom of the slave by peaceful means. A long course of peaceful slaveholding has placed the slaveholders beyond the reach of moral and humane considerations. They have neither ears not hearts for the appeals of justice and humanity. While the slave will tamely submit his neck to the yoke, his back to the lash, and his ankle to the fetter and chain, the Bible will be quoted, and learning invoked to justify slavery.  The only penetrable point of a tyrant is the FEAR OF DEATH. The outcry that they make, as to the danger of having their THROATS CUT, is because they know they deserve to have them CUT. The efforts of John Brown and his brave associates, though apparently unavailing, have done more to upset the logic and shake the security of        
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