their command to stand. Finding words of no avail, the outlaws fired upon the fugitive, and brought him to the ground. Upon examining their victim, they discovered that he was a mulatto and mortally wounded.

About three o'clock in the morning, the Baltimore train arrived. This was halted for two or three hours, and finally, after much expostulation, allowed to pass. The news soon reached Washington; and Col. Robert E. Lee, then lieutenant-colonel of the Second Cavalry, was despatched to command the regular troops concentrating at Harper's Ferry. Accompanied by his aid, Lieut. J. E. B. Stuart-afterward the world-renowned cavalry chief of Lee's Army of Northern Virginia-he set out on a special train, and sent a telegraphic despatch to the U. S. Marines, in advance of him, directing them what to do. Other troops-the militia from Virginia and Maryland-had promptly reached the scene, and when Col. Lee arrived during the night, were awaiting his orders to act. He immediately placed his command within the armory grounds, so as to completely surround the fire-engine house where the insurgents had taken refuge. In it, Brown and his party had confined Col. Washington, Mr. Dangerfield, and some other citizens whom they had surprised and captured the night before; and therefore to use the cannon upon it now would be to endanger the lives of friends as well as foes.

Accordingly, at daylight, Col. Lee took measures to attempt the capture of the insurgents, if possible, without bloodshed. At seven in the morning he sent his aid, Lieut. Stuart, to summon them quietly to surrender, promising only protection from violence and a trial according to law. Brown refused all terms but those which he had more than once already asked for, namely: "That he should be permitted to pass out unmolested with his men and arms and prisoners, that they should proceed unpursued to the second toll-gate, when they would free their prisoners, and take the chances of escape." These concessions were, of course, refused.

At last, perceiving all his humane efforts to be of no avail, Col. Lee gave orders for an attack. A strong party of marines advanced by two lines quickly on each side of the door. When near enough, two powerful men sprung between the lines, and, with heavy sledge-hammers, attempted to batter down the doors, but failed. They then took hold of a ladder some forty feet long, and, advancing on a run, brought it with tremendous effect upon the door. At the second blow it gave way, and immediately the marines rushed to the breach as a volley from within came right upon them. One man, in the front, fell mortally wounded, and sharp and rapid was the firing from within from the insurgents, now driven to desperation. The next moment the gap was widened, and the marines poured in. As Lieut. Stuart entered the door, a voice cried out, "I surrender." Brown said, "One man surrenders, give him quarter!" and at the same

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time fired his piece. The next moment Stuart's sword had entered his skull, and the desperate outlaw was stretched bleeding. The other insurgents were quickly secured; and the liberated citizens, who had held up their hands to designate themselves to the marines, and thus escape their fire, were hailed with shouts of congratulation as they passed out of the building.

While suffering from a wound supposed to be mortal, Brown made the following admissions to Governor Wise of Virginia: "I never had more than twenty-two men about the place at one time; but had it so arranged, that I could arm, at any time, fifteen hundred men with the following arms: two thousand Sharp's rifles, two hundred Maynard's revolvers, one thousand spears. I would have armed the whites with the rifles and revolvers, and the blacks with the spears; they not being sufficiently familiar with other arms. I had plenty of ammunition and provisions, and had a good right to expect the aid of from two to five thousand men, at any time I wanted them. Help was promised me from Maryland, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Virginia, and Canada. The blow was struck a little too soon. The passing of the train on Sunday night did the work for us; that killed us. I only regret that I have failed in my designs; but I have no apology to make or concession to ask now. Had we succeeded, when our arms and funds were exhausted by an increasing army, contributions would have been levied on the slaveholders, and their property appropriated to defray expenses and carry on the war of freedom."

On the 2d of December, 1859, having been tried at Charleston, Virginia, and condemned, Brown was conducted to the gallows, and there, in sight of the beautiful country, a portion of which he had hoped one day to possess, he suffered the extreme penalty of the law. He died with the unnatural firmness of a fanatic-but as many in the North interpreted it, with the exalted courage of a martyr.

It had been said in some Northern newspapers that the John Brown raid and its expiation would have a good effect in opening the eyes of the people to the crime and madness of Abolition doctrines. But subsequent events were quite to the contrary. The Northern elections of the next month showed no diminution in the Black Republican vote. The manifestations of sympathy for John Brown could not be contained, and took place openly in many of the Northern cities and towns. Upon the day appointed for his execution, a motion for adjournment, out of respect to the sacredness of the day, was lost in the State Senate of Massachusetts by only three votes; while in many of the towns the bells of the churches were tolled, and congregations assembled to consecrate the memory of their hero. The body was carried to North Elba in New York, and after it was consigned to the grave, many of the New England clergy allotted

John Brown an apotheosis, and consigned his example to emulation as one not only of public virtue, but of particular service to God.

But a much graver series of events was to show the real sympathy of the North with John Brown's "plan of action," and to attest the rapid tendency of the Black Republican party to the worst schools of Abolition. At the meeting of Congress in December, 1859, the Black Republicans nominated to the speakership of the House Mr. Sherman of Ohio, who had made himself especially odious to the South, by publicly recommending, in connection with sixty-eight other Republican Congressmen, a fanatical document popularly known as "Helper's Book." This publication, thus endorsed by Black Republicans, and circulated by them in the Northerr. elections, openly defended and sought to excite servile insurrections in the South; and it was with reason that the entire Southern delegation gave warning that they would regard the election of Mr. Sherman, or of any man with his record, as an open declaration of war upon the institution, of the South; as much so, some of the members declared, as if the John Brown raid were openly approved by a majority of the House of Repr sentatives.

This book, which even Mr. Seward, the leader of the Black Republica party, had recommended, along with others, urged the North to exterm: nate slavery, and at once, without the slightest compensation, in language o which the following is a specimen, addressed to the Southerners: "Frown sirs; fret, foam, prepare your weapons, threaten, strike, shoot, stab, bring on civil war, dissolve the Union; nay, annihilate the solar system, if you will-do all this, more, less, better, worse-anything; do what you will sirs-you can neither foil nor intimidate us; our purpose is as fixed as the eternal pillars of heaven; we have determined to abolish slavery, and-so help us God-abolish it we will!"

Some other extracts from this infamous book we may place here to indicate its character, and the importance of the act of the Black Republican party in endorsing it as a campaign document: "Slavery is a great moral, social, civil, and political evil, to be got rid of at the earliest practicable period. Three-quarters of a century hence, if the South retains slavery, which God forbid! she will be to the North what Poland is to Russia, Cuba to Spain, and Ireland to England.

Our own banner is inscribed-No coöperation with slaveholders in politics; no fellowship with them in religion; no affiliation with them in society; no recognition of pro-slavery men, except as ruffians, outlaws, and criminals. We believe it is, as it ought to be, the desire, the determination, and the destiny of the Republican party to give the death-blow to slavery. In any event, come what will, transpire what may, the institution of slavery must be abolished. We are deter mined to abolish slavery at all hazards-in defiance of all the opposition,

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of whatever nature, it is possible for the slaveocrats to bring against us. Of this they may take due notice, and govern themselves accordingly. It is our honest conviction that all the pro-slavery slaveholders deserve to be at once reduced to a parallel with the basest criminals that. lie fettered within the cells of our public prisons. Compensation to slave-owners for negroes! Preposterous idea-the suggestion is criminal, the demand unjust, wicked, monstrous, damnable. Shall we pat the blood-hounds for the sake of doing them a favour? Shall we feed the curs of slavery to make them rich at our expense? Pay these whelps for the privilege of converting them into decent, honest, upright men?"

Such was the language, endorsed by sixty-eight Northern Congressmen, applied to the South: to that part of the Union indeed which was the superiour of the North in every true and refined element of civilization ; which had contributed more than its share to all that had given lustre to the military history of America, or the councils of its senate; which, in fact, had produced that list of illustrious American names best known in Europe: Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, Marshall, Clay, Calhoun, Scott, and Maury.

The fact was that insult to the South had come to be habitual through every expression of Northern opinion; not only in political tirades, but through its lessons of popular education, the ministrations of its church, its literature, and every form of daily conversation. The rising generation of the North were taught to regard the Southerner as one of a lower order of civilization; a culprit to reform, or a sinner to punish. A large party in the North affected the insolent impertinence of regarding the Union as a concession on the part of the North, and of taunting the South with the disgrace which her association in the Union inflicted upon the superiour and more virtuous people of the Northern States. There were no bounds to this conceit. It was said that the South was an inferiour part of the country; that she was a "plague-spot; " that the national fame abroad was compromised by the association of the South in the Union; and that a New England traveller in Europe blushed to confess himself an American, because nearly half of the nation of that name were slaveholders. Not a few of the Abolitionists made a pretence of praying that the Union might be dissolved, that they might be cleared, by the separation of North and South, of any implication in the crime of slavery. Even that portion of the party calling themselves Republicans, affected that the Union stood in the way of the North. Mr. Banks, speaker of the House in the Thirty-first Congress, was the author of the coarse jeer-" Let the Union slide;" and the New York Tribune had complained that the South "could not be kicked out of the Union."-We shall see in the light of subsequent events how this Northern affectation for disunion was a lie, a snare to the South, and a hypocrisy unparalleled in all the records of partisan animosity.

It would have been more or less than human nature if the South had not been incensed at expressions in which her people were compared with "mad-dogs" with "small-pox, as nuisances to be abated," or classed with gangs of "licensed robbers," "thieves," and "murderers." But it was not only the wretched ribaldry of the "Helper Book" that was the cause of excitement; the designs there declared of war upon the South, and recommended by an array of Black Republican names, were the occasion of the most serious alarm. It is true that Mr. Sherman, the "Helper Book" candidate for the speakership of the House, was finally withdrawn, and one of his party, not a subscriber to the book, elected. But the fact remained that more than three-fourths of the entire Northern delegation had adhered to Mr. Sherman for nearly two months in a factious and fanatical spirit. Such an exhibition of obstinate rancour could not fail to produce a deep impression on the South; and the early dissolution of the Union had now come to be a subject freely canvassed in Congress and in the country.

We have thus, in a rapid summary of political events from 1857 to 1860-the Kansas controversy, the John Brown raid, and the "Helper Book" imbroglio-enabled the reader to discover and combine some of the most remarkable indications of the coming catastrophe of Disunion. In the historical succession of events we shall see that occurrence rapidly and steadily advancing, until at last the sharp and distinct issue of a sectional despotism was forced upon the South, and war precipitated upon the country.

The Democratic party of the South had coöperated with the Democratic party of the North in the Presidential canvass of 1856, upon the principles of the platform adopted by the National Democratic Convention assembled in Cincinnati, in June of that year. They expressed a willingness to continue this coöperation in the election of 1860, upon the principles of the Cincinnati platform; but demanded, as a condition precedent to this, that the question of the construction of this platform should be satisfactorily settled. To this end, the Democratic party, in several of the Southern States, defined the conditions upon which their delegates should hold scats in the National Convention, appointed to meet at Charleston, on the 23d of April, 1860. The Democracy in Alabama moved first and adopted a series of resolutions, the purport of which was afterwards embodied in the instructions administered by some of the other Cotton States to their delegations to the National Convention.

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The most important of these resolutions were as follows:

Resolved, That the Constitution of the United States is a compact between sovereign and co-equal States, united upon the basis of perfect equality of rights and privileges. Resolved, further, That the Territories of the United States are common property, in

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