"Friends: A brother lies before us, murdered by brothers' hands! Every heart present should swell up in deepest sympathy for the youth, who, apparently, is taking a calm slumber here, to recuperate a system which looks full of health and vigor. How can we realize that this is Death? No sickness has wasted his natural form, nor has an unforeseen accident laid him low. With the stamina of life about him to have lengthened his time to fourscore years and ten, the cord of life is rent asunder at twenty- four years. The violent hands of man have been laid upon him. His own words are, 'I am thankful that no one fell by my hands!' He, as one of old, fell among thieves, and though the good Samaritans were there to bind up his bleeding, mental wounds, his physical life was sacrificed, and he was murdered for a principle, and that principle was Freedom! On that broad and expanded brow, may be traced the lineaments of Liberty. Slavery has snatched, as it were, a birdling from our own dove- cote, a brother from our own fireside-what can she more?
The people of Virginia have manifested a great degree of hospitality towards the friends of the departed, who were with him; but what can they give equivalent to that which they have taken away? Can that mother, whose sight is almost obliterated, feel that she can be thus recompensed for so sad a bereavement? Every mother's heart that looks on the lifeless form before us, will feel that Virginia has not only done HER, but themselves, too, a grievous wrong. Would that I could this day summon Governor Wise and the Legislative body of Virginia here to let them gaze on the victim of their barbarous vengeance, and from thence direct it to the aged grandmother, over whose head the snows of four-score winters have passed, bowed with grief, that one so full of life, and so young in years must cross the valley of the shadow of Death before his time. I would have them gaze on the saddened faces, the falling tears of Other relatives and friends, and if they were not affected by this, need we wonder at the infamous deed they have committed.
Not one smiling face is here today. Sadness overhangs us like a pall! But this is only for the physical; mortality has put on immortality, and to him the physical is laid aside. He died, as died other martyrs before him, and the good and the true, among the present and coming generations, will feel that for him there is a crown of glory, where dungeon walls will not loom over him; where manacles cannot gall his limbs, and where that awful feature of barbarism, THE GIBBET, will not appall his soul. With the beautified throng of angels, we leave thee, Oh! our Brother! Thy physical form we consign to Mother Earth; thy soul to thy Father, God, who gave it."