"The garlands wither on his brow:
Then boast no more his mighty deeds,
Upon death's purple altar now,
See where the victor victim bleeds.
All heads must come
To the cold tomb,
Only the actions of the just
Smell sweet and blossom in the dust."
If he could speak to us from his present position, methinks he would say: Countrymen and friends! You see how little it availed you to agitate the land and put a little man in a great place. It is not the hurrah of parties that will "save the Union," it is not "great men." It is only Justice. Remember that Atheism is not the first principle of a Republic; remember there is a law of God, the higher law of the universe, the Everlasting Right; I thought so once, and now I know it. Remember that you are accountable to God for all things; that you owe justice to all men, the black not less than the white; that God will demand it of you, proud, wicked nation, careful only of your gold, forgetful of God's high law! Before long each of you shall also come up before the Eternal. Then and there it will not avail you to have compromised truth, justice, love, but to have kept them. Righteousness only is the salvation of a State; that only of a man.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The above was written in July, 1851. Since then the ground of hope has wholly vanished; the ground for fear remains alone. The following statement may suggest a thought the other side of the ocean, if no shame on this side among politicians and their priests:
Elisha Brazealle, a planter of Jefferson county in the State of Mississippi, was taken sick, and as he lay oppressed with a loathsome disease, a slave of his, a bright mulatto or quadroon, nursed him, and, as was believed, through her nursing, saved him from death. He was a man of feeling and did not forget her kindness, but took her to Ohio and there educated her. She made rapid progress, and soon became his wife. He made or caused to be made a legal and sound deed of emancipation, and had it legally and formally recorded in Ohio and Mississippi. Lawyers, in both States, said she was free, safe, and that no power in the South, or elsewhere, could legally deprive her or her children of freedom.
Mr. Brazealle returned to Mississippi with his wife; they had a son, and named him John Munroe Brazealle. After some years Mr. Brazealle sickened and died, leaving a will in which he recited the deed of emancipation, declared his intention to ratify it, and devised all his property to his son, acknowledging him in the will to be such.
Some poor and distant relations of his in North Carolina, whom he did not know, and for whom he did not care, hearing of his death, went on to Mississippi and claimed the property devised by Mr. Brazealle to his son. They instituted a suit for the recovery of the property. The case came before William L. Sharkey, "Chief Justice of the High Court of Errors and Appeals" for that State. It is reported in Howard's Mississippi Reports, Vol. II. p. 837, et seq. Judge Sharkey declared the act of emancipation "An offence against morality, pernicious and detestable as an example," set aside the will, gave to those distant relations the property which Mr. Brazealle had devised to his son, and in addition declared that son and his mother to be slaves. Here is his own language:—
"The state of the case shows conclusively that the contract had its origin in an offence against morality, pernicious and detestable as an example."... "The consequence [of the decision] is, that the negroes John Munroe and his mother, are still slaves, and a part of the estate of Elisha Brazealle." "John Munroe being a slave cannot take the property as devised; and I apprehend it is equally clear that it cannot be held in trust for him."
While these volumes are in the press, I learn that Mr. Fillmore has appointed Judge Sharkey to the honorable and lucrative post of Consul to Havana.