ignominious issue of the adventure; the tolling of bells and the firing of minute-guns, upon the occasion of Brown's funeral; the meeting-houses draped in mourning, as for a hero; the prayers offered, the sermons and discourses pronounced in his honor as for a saint-all are of a date too recent and are too familiarly known, to require more than this passing allusion.

Of course, a transaction so flagitious, with its attendant circumstances, affording such unmistakable proof of the spirit by which no small portion of the Northern population was actuated, could but produce the profoundest impression upon the people of the South. Here was open and armed "aggression;" whether clearly understood and encouraged beforehand, certainly exulted in afterwards, by persons of a very different standing from that of the chief actor in this bloody incursion into a peaceful State. Yet, notwithstanding the deep resentment manifested at the South, in a certain sense, the "raid" was a clear matter of triumph to that quarter. It plainly revealed the quiet and contented disposition of its slave population, a point so thoroughly confirmed by the uniform experience of the war, but which was supposed by many at the North to be always "pantingly" on the point of rising. It afforded, also, in the prominence of a fact so startling and atrocious, an unanswerable argument against the fanatical tendencies of the North. In the latter section, its influence was, also, in no small degree favorable to the common cause of the country. The publication of the "Impending Crisis of the South" had disgusted and checked some, if it had misled and stimulated others; but the "John Brown Raid," presented in all its living features of actual

U. S. troops, under Colonel Robert E. Lee, appears the following question and answer in regard to the affair:

"Question.-Did it excite any spirit of insubordination among your ne

groes?

"Answer. Not the slightest. If any thing, they were much more tractable than before."-Senate Report, p. 40.

MORBID RELIGIOUS SYMPATHY.

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enormity, seemed to bring a practical, visible crisis to the whole country nearer at hand. From such a contingency considerate men shrank with honest dread; and a sensible reaction took place, capable of being made to serve the best purposes, for the promotion and security of the common peace and welfare.

And

The character of this assault upon the military post of Harper's Ferry is to be judged of, however, not by the insignificance of the instruments, or by its inevitable failure to accomplish the end designed. It assumes importance, or otherwise, just in proportion to the countenance given to it by others than those immediately engaged in it; to the approbation subsequently bestowed by the public upon the actors, and to the numbers of those willing to become accessories after the fact to a deed of midnight murder, intended to be the inauguration of a servile insurrection, in the exercise of sufficient strength to give loose to all the atrocities and brutalities common to such a savage uprising. nothing was here wanting to insure a more wide-spread scene of horror and desolation than the world, perhaps, had ever before witnessed, except a totally different relation between the masters and their servants in the South, than that falsely imagined by the conspirators, and by those in sympathy with them, either before or after the fact. Of course, the reverend clergy, the good men and good women, who met in the sanc tuaries of the Father of Mercies, to celebrate an attempt so full of the omens of miseries unutterable, and to mourn over its ill success, must have seen this transaction through a very different medium from that by which questions not subject to the beguilements of casuistry ordinarily present themselves to a truly Christian mind. They rejoiced, in fact, that a supposed moral object had been sought by the commission of a deliberate crime, and, under an unhappily perverted sense of the right, supposed that the end aimed at justified the means. But, according to the degree in which it was met by the favorable response of the North-though in itself but the skirmish of an outpost, in its immediate incidents-it never

theless betokened predetermined enmity in one part of the Union against another part; was an overt act of hostility towards the Government, in the peace of which only could the Union stand secure, and was the signal and forerunner of war.

Indeed, at this moment, the conservative masses of the country possessed an immense superiority of physical and moral force over their opponents; and could that have been guided by prudence and patriotism, it must have resulted in the entire and permanent overthrow of the now concentrated elements of radicalism and discord. At the election for President, in the ensuing year, the Republican candidate, Mr. Lincoln, fell short of a majority by nearly a million of votes; while his plurality, in the free States alone, was considerably less than two hundred thousand.' It needed now, far more than upon the important occasion to which Mr. Benton referred in a note to the Debates in Congress, already cited in his volume, "the last words of the last great men of that wonderful time." There were many still upon the stage, inspired by as noble sentiments of patriotism as had ever animated the hearts of elder patriots; but the latter had left few or no successors to the powerful influence which they personally exerted, and which had been found hitherto able to compose the stormy passions by which the country had at times been agitated. But, although the multitude, under the whip applied by a very inferior order of men, was fast getting possession of the bit, to run the sort of helter-skelter race which usually occurs under such circumstances, it needed, after all, but a very little of that true spirit of conciliation, among persons of substantial influence, on both

1 Lincoln's vote was 1,857,611; the combined vote of Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell amounted to 2,804,560. In the free States, the Republicans cast 1,731,182 votes; the opposition, 1,544,218. In the five of the fifteen slaves States, which cast a certain number of votes for Lincoln, namely: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Virginia, the aggregate reached 26,430-principally cast in Missouri, namely, 17,028. In the same States, the sum of the votes for his opponents was 561,068.

THE DUTY OF CHRISTIAN PATRIOTS.

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sides, which should have marked the conduct of fellow-citizens, in an enlightened and Christian age, to avert that ter rible impending catastrophe, which, it is not to be supposed, that the great majority, upon either side, could have really desired to bring upon the common country.

CHAPTER XIII.

Want of Fidelity to the Constitution placed the Country in Circumstances tending to Open Rupture." Historicus."-The Necessity of Strict Adherence to Constitutional Provisions in a Republic.-The Danger still before the Country.-The South, in a Constitutional Point of View.-Ex-Governor Andrew before a Committee of the Senate.— The "People" did not bring about the War.-The Disunionists, in both Sections, to whom it was owing, few in Number.-Governor Banks willing to let theUnion slide." -A State Flag.-A Revolutionary Relic.-Mr. Quincy.-Red Republicans.-Mr. John P. Hale's Opinion of the Likelihood of Dissolution if Lincoln should not be elected.

IN the facts, thus imperfectly set forth in these pages, are to be found the positive causes of the war. These worked themselves out to the fatal hour of that decisive breach in the Democratic party, which opened the way to the "dishonest. victory" of the Republicans-dishonest, not because the election was not lawful and regular according to the forms of the Constitution; but that, in consequence of its accidental result by the divisions of the majority, it so thoroughly misrepresented the real state of sentiment in the country. In fine, want of fidelity to the Constitution-a long and devious aberration from the simplest fundamental principles of the Union-exhibited in such manifestations as have been described in this recapitulation, led directly to that unhappy state of mind, in both sections, which grew more and more embittered, until finally the die was cast.' Were it not so,

1 In a recently published letter of the distinguished English writer, known as "Historicus" (October 18th, 1865), appears the following passage, in reference to a judicial opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States:

"These are the words of a judgment (pronounced, be it remembered, by the Northern majority of the Court): 'This greatest of civil wars was not gradually developed by popular commotion, tumultuous assemblies, or local