If there is any institution in the history of the world, the recollection of which should turn the cheek of humanity crimson with shame, it is the infamous institution of chattel slavery in the United States. (Applause.) There is no parallel to it in sheer, stark brutality in all the history of the world. You have never been given the facts; you never will be by the standard historians—they who represent the interests of the ruling class who subsidize and support them. You will never get that history until it is written by the working class itself. And some day it will be written. Some time American history will be reviewed. You never hear much about the people in history. You read about the exploits of the murderous military chieftains. All history glorifies them, but about the common people—the people who alone make history, how little reference is made to them! McMaster made a departure in his history and for the first time you now read about the lives of the common people in American history. Hitherto their achievements have not been deemed of sufficient importance to place upon record.
We come down to the final development of the institution of chattel slavery which culminated in the terrible war. The great majority, of course, upheld that brutal institution. And likewise the politicians and statesmen (so-called), the editors and the preachers—oh, how many there were who solemnly opened their Bibles and quoted passages to show that slavery had been ordained of God himself and that it was wicked to oppose it! Of the few heroic souls who declared it a crime Elijah Lovejoy was one of the first, and appealed to me in my earliest boyhood. I think I can almost hear him even now; “I have sworn eternal opposition to slavery and by the help of God, I will not turn back.” And then they murdered him! Garrison followed and then Wendell Phillips (applause); and the great towering, commanding intellectual and moral figure in that fierce struggle was Wendell Phillips. (Applause.) He saw it most clearly of all, faced it most courageously of all, and never once faltered in his devotion to the colored race. (Applause.) After chattel slavery had been abolished Garrison believed that the struggle was over—but he was mistaken—Wendell Phillips knew better, and some estrangement resulted on that account.
Wendell Phillips, with discerning and prophetic vision, said: “This is the prelude—just the prelude to the far greater struggle—the struggle that will involve not only the black slaves but all the slaves of the earth in the mighty movement for their common emancipation.” That is what Wendell Phillips said and he wrote the first Socialist platform ever written in the United States. Read the platform he wrote as far back as 1871 and see how uncompromisingly he faced the situation. They threatened him with the vengeance of the mob but he did not falter, he never wavered.
Wendell Phillips was a most wonderful combination of head and heart, soul and conscience (applause), and when the real truth is known about his commanding part in that historic struggle, the colored people will know that the real champion they had from first to last was Wendell Philips. (Great applause.)
I am not unmindful of the heroic part that William Lloyd Garrison took, or Theodore Parker, or Gerrit Smith who was driven insane by their brutal persecution; or Susan B. Anthony or Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Maria Childs, or any of those magnificent women who were in the forefront espousing the cause of their sex and at the same time the cause of the disfranchised Negro; who faced insult and persecution through many years. I have them all in mind and from my heart I pay the humble tribute of my gratitude and my admiration and love to them all.
But the greatest hero of them all was John Brown. (Thunderous applause.) I have taken time enough to go to Charlestown and to Harper’s Ferry, and I have walked in his footsteps all the way from the old engine house where he made his heroic stand until he gave up his noble life on the gallows—every step of the way. And I thought of his wondrous courage and consecration and of the majesty, the spiritual loftiness of a human being who could give up his life as freely as he did for a lowly and despised race that could not understand him. There were members of that race so subservient to the masters in their ignorance that they begged for the privilege of braining him while he was in prison; but they only excited his compassion because he knew it was due to the very institution of chattel slavery that they had been sunk to that bestial moral state.
John Brown, when the crisis came, stood forth almost alone and struck the blow—the immortal blow that put an end to that most infamous of human institutions. Victor Hugo from across the Atlantic protested: “Think of a republic murdering a liberator,” when they were about to put him to death; and after they had executed him for his heroism and his humanitarianism, Victor Hugo said: “The time will come when you Americans will realize that your John Brown was a greater liberator than your George Washington.” (Applause.)
I appreciate all these heroes and martyrs, including Lincoln, who was vilified as no other American statesman ever was by that cruel and relentless power that organized the Ku Klux Klan after the war, and which is now seeking to revive that fanatical institution for the persecution of the Negro.
I am on the colored man’s side as against all those that are attempting to keep him in servitude. (Applause.) And I am glad that the colored people are exercising self-restraint and facing this persecution with intelligence, which is commanding more and more respect. Let the Ku Klux spend its force. It consists of the self-appointed custodians of American liberty; but just let them alone; give them time and they will soon enough complete their round and close up their record. (Applause.)
I honor and appreciate all those who stood forth through the revolutionary conflict—through the struggle against chattel slavery—all who served and sacrificed to make it possible for me to stand on this platform to-night and to enjoy some degree of liberty and progress. I thank them all, and the only way I can repay them is by doing, as they did for me, what I can for those who are to come after us. And that is why I am here to-night.