Such was the man--of the best New England blood, of the stock of the Plymouth Pilgrims, and bred up like them "in the nurture and admonition of the Lord"--who was selected by God, and knew himself to be so chosen, to overthrow the bulwark of oppression in America. He seems to have declared a definite plan of attacking slavery in one of its strongholds, by force, as early as 1839; and it was to obtain money for this enterprise that he engaged in land-speculations and wool-merchandise for the next ten or twelve years.... Other men might have been spared but Brown was indispensable.[496] Said Wendell Phillips: God makes him the text, and all he asks of our comparatively cowardly lips is to preach the sermon, and say to the American people that, whether this old man succeeded in a worldly sense or not, he stood as a representative of law, of government, of right, of justice, of religion, and they were pirates that gathered about him, and sought to wreak vengeance by taking his life. The banks of the Potomac are doubly dear now to History and to Man! The dust of Washington rests there; and History will see forever on that river side the brave old man on his pallet, whose dust, when God calls him hence, the Father of his Country would be proud to make room for beside his own. Mr. Higginson said: Such men as he needed are not to be _found_ ordinarily; they must be _reared_. John Brown did not merely look for men, therefore, he reared them in his sons. John A. Andrew, who did not believe that Brown was present or in any way connected with the robberies and murders on the Pottawatomie, said: Whatever may be thought of John Brown's acts, _John Brown himself was right_. The Rev. Theodore Parker, who believed in slave insurrections and their horrors, wrote: Let the American State hang his body and the American Church damn his soul. Still, the blessing of such as are ready to perish will fall on him, and the universal justice of the Infinitely Perfect God will make him welcome home. The road to heaven is as short from the gallows as from the throne. Mr. Emerson said: That new saint, than whom none purer or more brave was ever led by love of men into conflict and death--the new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross. Into a carnival of rhetoric so picturesque, Mr. John James Ingalls could not fail to enter the lists and compete for the prize. Poising his shining lance he delivered this thrust: