Lot 54 email save

Only One Month Before Brown is Hanged

On the evening of Tuesday, November 1, 1859, Wendell Phillips delivered a lecture from the pulpit of Henry Ward Beecher's Church in Brooklyn, New York. The talk made the point that the majority of Americans did not live up to the principles they professed. They were accused of hiding behind the forms of Church, Government, Community Society, and so forth, but they did not in fact operate on the principles which these institutions stood for. John Brown was different, Phillips said. He, at least, was not afraid to act upon the truth. And having made his point, Phillips asserted that "John Brown has twice as much right to hang Governor Wise, as Governor Wise has to hang him." John Brown would hang the next month.

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