No man in America has ever stood up so persistently and effectively for the dignity of human nature, knowing himself for a man, and the equal of any and all governments. In that sense he was the most American of us all. He needed no babbling lawyer, making false issues, to defend him. He was more than a match for all the judges that American voters, or office-holders of whatever grade, can create. He could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist.
Speaking these words from the vestry of the First Parish meetinghouse to the citizens of Concord, Massachusetts just two weeks after John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry, Henry David Thoreau saved his cause.
