John Brown and his men had chosen to escape from Harper's Ferry, they could have gone away unmolested, and sought shelter in the mountains. Probably the leader constantly expected to see a force flocking to join him. But no such aid appeared. By noon, the first company of one hundred militia marched into the town, and John Brown's fate was sealed.

His men outside the armory who were guarding different posts about the town, were at once killed by the troops. Before evening there were 1,500 soldiers in Harper's Ferry, and the whole country rang with news of the astonishing insurrection. By night, the party inside the armory numbered seven men, the sole survivors of John Brown's army, only three of whom were unwounded. Shots from every side had poured into the arsenal, till night suspended for a season the attack. Through the night John Brown sat upon the floor between his two sons, one dead, the other mortally wounded and dying in slow agony, waiting for the day to break and put an end to the conflict. Next morning a ladder used as a battering-ram, broke down the arsenal door, the last defense between Brown and his assailants. The sixty prisoners inside hailed its fall as their signal of deliverance. When the army entered they confronted these formidable invaders; the old man between the bodies of his two sons, another dead body a little distant, and three others with guns thrown down in token of surrender. Before John Brown could speak, a lieutenant had struck him over the head with his sabre, and a soldier speared him in the side with a bayonet after he had fallen. One of his men was also stabbed by the soldiers, and the two others, mingling in the crowd, were borne off unhurt, as prisoners, the troop not recognizing them in the crowd as part of the insurgents. Such was the beginning and end of "John Brown's raid into Virginia." Of the excitement which it caused all over the United States, and especially in Virginia, I can give you no idea. Never did so small a party of men raise such fears, or require so much military paraphernalia to suppress them. The rest of the story is briefly told.

John Brown was tried by the State of Virginia for "murder, treason, and exciting insurrection among the slaves." He lay most of the time during his trial on a cot, from which his wounds did not permit him to rise, and lying there he heard the conclusive evidence against him. During the affray on Monday, several citizens of Harper's Ferry had been killed and wounded. This furnished the

evidence of murder. Treason and insurrection were no less fully proved. There could be no doubt about the verdict. The prisoner Brown, and Stevens, the companion who was tried with him, were found guilty, and sentenced to be hung by the neck till they were dead. On the 2d of December Brown was to suffer the penalty of his deeds.

When he was asked why sentence of death on him, John Brown made a brief speech.

from it.

should not be passed Here is one passage

"This court acknowledges, I suppose, the validity of the laws of God. I see a book kissed here, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least, the New Testament. That teaches me that all things 'whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them.' It teaches me further to remember those in bonds, as bound with them.' I endeavored to act upon these instructions. I believe that to have interfered as I have done in behalf of his despised poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country, whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I submit. So let it be done."

He spent the intervening time before the execution of his sentence, in writing and answering letters. He had many letters of sympathy, some even expressing admiration of his course. He left minute directions for his wife and children to follow, and wrote a careful will disposing of his simple effects. He read the Bible much, but would receive no Southern clergyman, because he declared no man could be a Christian who defended slavery, and he preferred to die unministered to rather than take the hand of any one in fellowship who could apologize for that which was to him the most monstrous of crimes.

On the 2d day of December, he made ready to ride to the gallows. As he walked out of the door of his jail with the step of a conqueror rather than that of a felon, he saw near the entrance a slave woman with a little black child in her arms, who looked at him wonderingly. He stooped and kissed the baby, and went quietly on. In the cart, going to the gallows, with the undertaker beside him, the latter said,

"You are more cheerful than I am, Mr. Brown."

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Why, yes," said the old man simply, "I ought to be."

"I have suffered far more from said. On the scaffold he was For ten minutes he waited im

Then he apologized for his calmness, as if he feared it looked like bravado, explaining that it had been characteristic with him from childhood not to feel fear of death. bashfulness than from fear," he blindfolded and led upon the drop. movable with the rope around his neck, while the military troops in attendance paraded gorgeously in the sun, till at length many voices cried "Shame! shame!" at the spectacle of that patient figure up there waiting his death signal. Then the drop was let fall, the body struggled and writhed till all was over and the dangling figure ceased to give evidence of life. The majesty of the law was vindicated, and John Brown's body was dead.

CHAPTER XXX.

LINCOLN ELECTED PRESIDENT.

Party Quarrels. The Story of Abraham Lincoln's Boyhood. - Feeling of the South. Threats to break up the Union. -Joy in South Carolina at Lincoln's Election. What is Treason? Difference between Northern and Southern Patriotism.

1

MR. BUCHANAN was president during this John Brown excitement, and in his administration other and still more exciting events were to follow. Already the country began to talk about the man who should be the next president, and never had the nation been divided into so many parties as in the fall of 1860, when the election was to take place. Before this time there had been two great parties, the "Democrats " and "Republicans." Now these were subdivided into four parties, each resolved on electing their candidate. The Democratic party had split in two. There were the "Southern Democrats," who had at their head John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky. There were the "Northern" or "Douglas Democrats," with Stephen A. Douglas, the author of the famous "Kansas-Nebraska Bill," as their leader. These two parties had quarreled because Douglas held that Kansas, or any other Territory, had the right to vote that slavery should not exist within its boundaries if the majority of the people did not want it. The Southern party now declared that slavery ought to go into the Territories and be recognized as an institution of the United States. Hence their quarrel with the Northern members of their party. The third party was called the "Union and Constitutional party," or the "Bell-Everetts," from

their leaders, John Bell and Edward Everett, for president and vicepresident. This party was very much troubled by the constant threats of Southern senators on the floor of Congress, that they were going out of the Union to make a new government of their own. The Union party" drew up an expression of their opinion (or what

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political parties call a "platform "), in which they begged all the people to stand by the Union and the national laws. The fourth party was the Republican; the same that had worked so hard for John C. Frémont four years before. This party had taken Abraham Lincoln for their leader. He was the fellow-statesman of Douglas in Illinois, and once before had had a contest with the "Little Giant," with their own State as the battle-ground.

Abraham Lincoln had had a severe struggle in life before he got far enough up above the crowd, so that people could see his homely, honest face above those of other men born in his own rank. He was the son of a Kentucky farmer, and in his youth had worked hard at the rudest kind of labor. He had hoed corn, driven oxen, helped to build the log-house which was the home of his family in Illinois, and had spent one whole season in the woods splitting rails

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for fences. From this, his opponents called him a vulgar railsplitter," an "ignorant boor, unfit for the society of gentlemen." But Abraham Lincoln had been early in the very best society. He was so poor that he could get only very few books in his boyhood and youth, but through the aid of his mother, who encouraged his love for reading, he got three volumes early into his hands. These were the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, and Esop's Fables. In their very excellent society he spent his leisure till he knew them by heart. To them, no doubt, he owed much of his ability to write clean, wholesome English, such as men write who have begun their education with a few good books. When Abraham Lincoln wrote a thing, you read what he meant. The meaning was not covered up under a heap of useless words. One thing was apparent in him from boyhood. This was his straightforward truthfulness and sincerity of purpose. No political experience ever twisted him; he ended life as he began it, an honest, sincere, trustworthy man. One of the great outcries against him by his opponents after he was elected was, "He is an uncouth, rough backwoodsman. He is no gentleman." It is true that he was very uncouth in face and figure; never handsome to look at, although the soul of the man sometimes shone through the plain features in a way that transfigured them, and his deep gray eyes were full of a great sadness, that seemed almost to prophesy his tragic fate. He had not the

manners of a court, but he did deeds from the promptings of a simple, månly heart that a king might have been proud to own, and if he was not a true gentleman, God does not make any nowadays. This was Abraham Lincoln, who stood before the people in the year 1860 as one of the candidates for the presidency.

As soon as he was announced as the choice of the party, the South were more furious than ever. And they declared through their senators in Congress, their newspapers, in their public meetings, in private meetings all over the South, that if the Republican party should elect their president, the "South would go out of the Union."

Now it is very plain that if the Southern Democrats had not quarreled with their Northern friends and refused to vote with them, they might altogether have outvoted the Republicans. But it seems quite clear that the South wanted a pretext for "secession," and really hoped Lincoln might be elected so that she could go off by herself and form a "Southern Confederacy" of slave-holding States, where, as one of her best and ablest leaders said, "she could