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“If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man.”

Excerpt From: Henry David Thoreau. A Plea for Captain John Brown.

Who was Walker?

Question:

“If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say that Brown was the representative of the North. He was a superior man.”

Excerpt From: Henry David Thoreau. “A Plea for Captain John Brown.”

Who was Walker?

Short Answer:

Walker is David Walker a famous and influential abolitionist from North Carolina who left the south and moved to Boston five years before his death. Walker in leaving the south spoke of his discomfort being in the presence of slave holders and expressing concern for his own life if he had stayed in the south. Walker is known for his four part essay Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. David Walker who like John Brown called for slaves to violently resist slave holders, is credited with radicalizing the abolitionist movement through his writings and essays.
In the sentence given, Henry David Thoreau is about to proclaim John Brown most exceptional because he stayed endured the discomfort which Walker had retreated from and ultimately gave his life for his ideals. Thoreau does this not to diminish Walker, but to promote Brown; the subject of his essay.

Detailed Answer

First to clarify, Captain Brown refers to the militant abolitionist John Brown who lead a raid on the Federal armory at Harpers Ferry in what then was Virginia, in a failed attempt to start a slave rebellion. Brown was executed on December 2, 1859. Brown's raid was one of the harbingers of the American Civil War. Henry David Thoreau's in his essay, "A Plea for Captain John Brown" defends John Brown as an exceptional man to be placed above other exceptional men like Walker.

Walker is David Walker a famous and influential African American abolitionist who was from Wilmington North Carolina but who ultimately settled in Boston Ma, five years before he died 1830. David Walker wrote the influential Abolitionist essay Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World. This essay is credited by historians for radicalizing the northern Abolitionist movement.

Born a free man in North Carolina, David Walker chose to leave the South and contribute to the resistance, removed from the influences of the slave states.

David Walker

"If I remain in this bloody land, I will not live long...I cannot remain where I must hear slaves' chains continually and where I must encounter the insults of their hypocritical enslavers."

Walker like John Brown urged slaves to resist slavery through violent means. Thoreau was drawing a comparison between the two Abolitionists in the paragraph from the question. David Walker the well known respected influential abolitionist, and Brown who is about to be tried and executed, who Thoreau says is even more exceptional. Thoreau isn't trying to drag Walker down as to draw peoples attention to how exceptional John Brown is.

Saying John Brown was a superior man because he stayed, endured, and struggled against slavery. John Brown did not value his life above his ideals. John brown did not leave to make his life more comfortable but threw himself at the machinery of slavery. John Brown resisted unjust laws. Painting Brown as the more idealistic and pure of the two who ultimately was giving his life to his ideals.

If Walker may be considered the representative of the South, I wish I could say Brown was a the representative of the North. He was a superior man. He did not value his bodily life in comparison with ideal things. He did not recognize unjust human laws but resisted them as he was bid. For once we lifted out of the trivialness and dust of politics into the region of truth and manhood. No man in in American 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. H could not have been tried by a jury of his peers, because his peers did not exist."

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Encyclopedia Brown, John And Henry David Thoreau

Walker: David Walker (1785–1830), a black abolitionist who urged slaves to use violence to win freedom.

I don't know, but one possible candidate would be William Walker (1824-1860) who led several private military "filibustering" expeditions into Central America to establish new slave states for the USA. He made himself president of Nicaragua from 1856-1857.

He was born in Nashville Tennessee, and usually lived in the South, so he could be considered a southerner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Walker_(filibuster)1