And the New York Herald reports the conversation verbatim! It does
not know of what undying words it is made the vehicle.
I have no respect for the penetration of any man who can read the
report of that conversation, and still call the principal in it insane.
It has the ring of a saner sanity than an ordinary discipline and
habits of life, than an ordinary organization, secure. Take any
sentence of it,--"Any questions that I can honorably answer, I
will; not otherwise. So far as I am myself concerned, I have told
everything truthfully. I value my word, sir." The few who talk
about his vindictive spirit, while they really admire his heroism,
have no test by which to detect a noble man, no amalgam to combine
with his pure gold. They mix their own dross with it.
It is a relief to turn from these slanders to the testimony of his
more truthful, but frightened jailers and hangmen. Governor Wise
speaks far more justly and appreciatingly of him than any Northern
editor, or politician, or public personage, that I chance to have
heard from. I know that you can afford to hear him again on this
subject. He says: "They are themselves mistaken who take him to
be madman.... He is cool, collected, and indomitable, and it is
but just to him to say, that he was humane to his prisoners.
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