"Dear Friend: Although the hands of Slavery throw a barrier between you and me, and it may not be my privilege to see you in your prison-house, Virginia has no bolts or bars through which I dread to send you my sympathy. In the name of the young girl sold from the warm clasp of a mother’s arms to the clutches of a libertine or profligate (a completely immoral and shameless person), - in the name of the slave mother, her heart rocked to and fro by the agony of her mournful separations -- I thank you that you have been brave enough to reach out your hands to the crushed and blighted of my race. You have rocked the bloody Bastille (a famous prison stormed and liberated during the French Revolution in 1789); and I hope from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom. Already from your prison has come a shout of triumph against the giant sin of our country. We may earnestly hope that your fate will not be a vain lesson, that it will intensify our hatred of Slavery and love of Freedom, and that your martyr grave will be a sacred altar upon which men will record their vows of undying hatred to that system which tramples on man and bids defiance to God. . . You have rocked the bloody Bastille; and I hope that from your sad fate great good may arise to the cause of freedom. Already from your prison has come a shout of triumph against the giant sin of our country..."
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Frances Harper, letter to John Brown in prison (1859)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Brown_(abolitionist)
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John Brown (abolitionist)
John Brown (9 May 1800 – 2 December 1859) was an American abolitionist who advocated and practiced insurrection as a means to the abolition of slavery. First reaching national prominence for his radical abolitionism and fighting in Bleeding Kansas, he was eventually captured and executed for a failed incitement of a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry preceding the American Civil War.
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