white man is bound to respect, together with all the other people degraded by the laws thereof, do, for the time being, ordain and establish for ourselves the following provisional Constitution and ordinances, the better to protect our people, property, lives, and liberties, and to gov

ern our actions.

"Art. I. Qualifications of Membership.—All persons of mature age, whether proscribed, oppressed, and enslaved citizens, or of proscribed and oppressed races of the United States, who shall agree to sustain and enforce the provisional Constitution and ordinances of organization, together with all minor children of such persons, shall be held to be fully entitled to protection under the same.”

“Art. XXVIII. Property.-All captured or confiscated property, and all property the product of the labor of those belonging to this organization and of their families, shall be held as the property of the whole equally, without distinction, and may be used for the common benefit, or disposed of for the same object. And any person, officer or otherwise, who shall improperly retain, secrete, use, or needlessly destroy such property, or any property found, captured, or confiscated, belonging to the enemy, or shall willfully neglect to render a full and fair statement of such property by him so taken or held, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction, shall be punished accordingly.

"Art. XXIX. Safety or Intelligence Fund.-All money, plate, watches, or jewelry captured by honorable warfare, found, taken, or confiscated, belonging to the enemy, shall be held sacred, to constitute a liberal safety or intelligence fund; and any person who shall improperly re

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tain, dispose of, hide, use, or destroy such money or other articles above named, contrary to the provisions and spirit of this article, shall be deemed guilty of theft, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished accordingly. The treasurer shall furnish the commander-in-chief at all times. with a full statement of the condition of such fund and its nature."

Art. XXXIII. Volunteers.-All persons who may come forward, and shall voluntarily deliver up slaves, and have their names registered on the books of this organization, shall, so long as they continue at peace, be entitled to the fullest protection in person and property, though not connected with this organization, and shall be treated as friends, and not merely as persons neutral.

"Art. XXXIV. Neutrals.-The persons and property of all non-slaveholders, who shall remain absolutely neutral, shall be respected so far as circumstances will allow of it, but they shall not be entitled to any active protection."

"Art. XXXVI. Property confiscated.-The entire personal and real property of all persons known to be acting, either directly or indirectly, with or for the enemy, or found in arms with them, or found willfully holding slaves, shall be confiscated and taken, wherever and whenever it may be found, in either free or slave states."

"Art. XLVI. These Articles not for the Overthrow of Government. The foregoing articles shall not be construed so as in any way to encourage the overthrow of any state government or of the general government of the United States, and look to no dissolution of the Union, but simply to amendment and repeal; and our flag

shall be the same that our fathers fought under in the Revolution."

It is exceedingly difficult to tell what would have been the wisest course for the government of Virginia to pursue at this conjuncture. Brown and his confederates had all unquestionably forfeited their lives, and neither the justice nor legality of putting them to death could be denied. Under the light of subsequent events, it seems to me at present that it would have been more politic to spare the lives of these guilty offenders, than by an exciting trial and public execution, under such circumstances as were connected with the occasion, to convert them, in the estimation of thousands of the ignorant and the fanatical, into martyrs. Certain it is that, anterior to the death of Brown, there were no striking indications of awakened sympathy to be found in any part of the North. I well remember being called to Cincinnati, Ohio, during the month of December, 1859 (in which month Brown suffered the penalties of the law), for the delivery of a lecture on the value of the Federal Union, and containing admonitory warnings of the dangers which seemed to my mind to be connected with the coming presidential election. This lecture was pronounced before the Mercantile Association of Cincinnati, on the night before Brown's mortal career was to be closed at Charlestown, Virginia On the very day of his execution, I was journeying to Evansville for the purpose of there repeating the lecture! referred to; on the next day I was on my way to Indianapolis for a similar purpose; and still, on the succeeding one, with a like duty before me, to be performed in the eity of St. Louis. I had a most ample opportunity of

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testing the condition of the popular mind in regard to Brown and his attempted achievements, and I do now conscientiously aver that, in the whole course of my journeyings, I did not meet with one single man, one single woman, or one single child who appeared to have the least respect or sympathy for John Brown.

The actings of this fierce and bloody monster must, I suppose though, be now recognized as one of a series of events predestined to occur from the foundation of the world, as part and portion of an "irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces ;" and we must be content to look back upon the same as matters which belong not to the ordinary concerns of earth, chargeable either to discretion and virtue, or to the want of these attributes, but to the mysterious ordinations of Divinity, entitled to challenge our unqualified respect and homage. The storm of sectional hostility began by this time to rage most furiously all over the land; for

"Every mountain now had found a voice,
And Jura answered from her misty shroud
Back to the joyous Alps who called to her aloud!"

CHAPTER XIV.

Other Causes of sectional Excitement at this Period.-The Helper Book, and its unfortunate Discussion in Congress. -Resolutions forced through the Senate, mainly though the Agency of Mr. Davis, of Mississippi, having in View the double Object of destroying Mr. Douglas, and dragging the Democratic Party into an unnational and aggressive Attitude.-Movements of William L. Yancey in the Year 1859, and early in the Year 1860, having in View the breaking up of the Federal Union in the event of a Republican President being elected.-Efforts in the South to bring about the Election of Mr. Lincoln, in order to obtain the desired Object.-Democratic Conventions at Charleston and Baltimore reviewed.-Leading Incidents of the Presidential Canvass of 1860 and its Results.-Sketch of William L. Yancey.

WE now nearly approach the momentous presidential election of 1860, upon the result of which so much of the weal or woe of the republic was fated to depend. The session of Congress immediately preceding that contest was more than ordinarily marked with excitement. The fierce discussion of the merits of a foolish fanatical book (issued a short time before by an obscure and ignorant person in North Carolina) in the House of Representatives, so unwisely and unprofitably brought on at the instance of Mr. Clarke, of Missouri, and the debate upon : the Brown conspiracy, allusions to which have alreads been made, were but preliminary to still more fervid: controversies in the Democratic Presidential Convention. and before the people in their primary capacity. Sever al movements besides, having no great importance but s