Once, toward the close of his too brief life, Thoreau "signed on"
again to an American ideal, and no man could have signed more
nobly. It was the cause of Freedom, as represented by John Brown
of Harper's Ferry. The French and Scotch blood in the furtive
hermit suddenly grew hot. Instead of renouncing in disgust the
"uncivil chaos called Civil Government," Thoreau challenged it to
a fight. Indeed he had already thrown down the gauntlet in
"Slavery in Massachusetts," which Garrison had published in the
"Liberator" in 1854. And now the death upon the scaffold of the
old fanatic of Ossawatomie changed Thoreau into a complete
citizen, arguing the case and glorifying to his neighbors the
dead hero. "It seems as if no man had ever died in America
before; for in order to die you must first have lived . . . . I
hear a good many pretend that they are going to die . . . .
Nonsense! I'll defy them to do it. They haven't got life enough
in them. They'll deliquesce like fungi, and keep a hundred
eulogists mopping the spot where they left off.
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