it.

CHAPTER XLV.

JOHN BROWN'S INVASION OF VIRGINIA.

Assault on Harper's Ferry. - Conflicting opinions. - John Brown's birth, early life, and characteristics. — His deep philanthropy. — His life in Kansas. His great work. Meeting in Canada. - Plan of government. - Officers under Meeting in Central New York. - Hesitation. Final acquiescence. Secret committee. Brown visits Boston. - Letters from Forbes. Movement deferred. — Again visits Kansas. — Aids in the escape of slaves. Again visits Boston. - Aid furnished by committee. - Kennedy Farm. Letter to the Secretary of War. — Assault made. — Brown and party overpowered. Visited by Wise, Mason, and Vallandigham. His replies, and their influence. - Letters of Mrs. Child, and replies. — Trial and conviction. -Visit of Mrs. Brown.-Liberal action of Governor Wise. - Execution. — Body delivered. - Journey homeward. — Funeral. - Remarks of Wendell Phillips. Impression. - Voice of the press and of public meetings. — Estimate of his character and act.

THE raid on Harper's Ferry and its failure, the capture, trial, conviction, and execution of John Brown and his followers, startled and profoundly stirred the nation. The South was excited, furious, and unanimous. The North was hardly less excited, but regretful and divided. Antislavery men generally deplored and condemned the invasion, though they admired the stern devotion to principle and the heroism displayed therein, sympathized with its actors in their misfortunes, and mourned over its tragic results. Many, however, who admired and pitied the heroic old man and his hardly less heroic followers, felt that such a revolutionary movement compromised legitimate reforms and put in peril rightful opposition to slavery. Nor were they mistaken; for, at once and everywhere, proslavery men and presses sought to fix the odium of this lawless act upon antislavery organizations, and especially upon the Republican party. Although they signally failed in this, they did, for a time, greatly intensify the popular feeling against antislavery men and antislavery measures.

John Brown was a Puritan, and a lineal descendant of the Pilgrims. He inherited the spirit as well as the blood of his ancestry. Born in Connecticut, in the year 1800, he was taken by his father, at the age of five years, to the Western Reserve. Living in straitened circumstances in that pioneer home, he early exhibited those marked developments of character which distinguished him in after life. He was strictly conscientious and sternly religious. The Bible and the experimental writings of such men as Baxter and Bunyan were the chosen companions of his leisure hours. Principle and a nice and exacting sense of justice were the regal elements of his character, and unselfishness the resplendent virtue of his strange career. To relieve suffering, and to vindicate the rights of the injured and oppressed, were the leading objects of his life.

Recognizing no rightful claim of the master to his slave, the Underground Railroad early and ever found in him a practical and most efficient agent. Such relief of the oppressed, however, he deemed individual and of small account, and he looked for something more nearly adequate to the work to be accomplished. Despairing of a peaceful solution of the issue, the idea entered his mind that "perhaps a forcible separation of the connection between the slave and his master was necessary to educate the blacks for self-government." But, in common with his countrymen, he underestimated the strength and tenacity of the Slave Power, and underrated the difficulties in the way of the slave's redemption. Evidently, too, his wish was father to the thought, as he interpreted the probable designs of Providence towards removing the fearful evil. His reply, to one who informed him he had been marked by the Missourians for death, that "the angel of the Lord will camp round about me," revealed the secret conviction that his destiny was linked with that of the slave, and that he was a chosen instrument of the Lord to work out his deliverance. This thought unquestionably affords a key to his life, and explains many things which might otherwise seem inexplicable.

With such convictions, it is not strange that such a man. should be drawn to Kansas by the terrible scenes there enacted,

and that he should have taken a prominent part in that great struggle; though the immediate cause of his going there was a request for arms from his four sons, who had gone there to make for themselves homes. He hoped, too, to aid the struggling freemen there to rescue that fair territory from the polluting touch of slavery. Not to make for himself a home, but to aid others to build for coming generations, was this courageous, self-forgetful, and future martyr willing to encounter the hardships and to brave the dangers which were involved in such a purpose.

But he felt that his work, that for which he believed he was specially called of God, that over which his soul had brooded for nearly a generation, was not thus to be accomplished. He had done something, but it was only individual and fragmentary. He would relieve an enslaved race, and destroy the system that was crushing it. Combination and conference were needed, and early in the spring of 1858 he sent out a call from Chatham, Canada, for "a very quiet convention at this place" of the "true friends of freedom." Such a meeting was held; and one of its acts was the adoption of a paper, drafted by him, entitled "Provisional Constitution and Ordinances for the People of the United States." In this paper, designed to give shape and direction to the movement, it was provided that the offices of president and commander-in-chief should be held by different persons. Brown was elected commander-in-chief, Richard Realf was chosen secretary of state, and J. H. Kagi was made secretary of war.

There is much that is strange and inexplicable in all this; and it will ever remain a mystery, whatever explanations may be made, how sane men could hope to establish such an organization, with a constitution setting forth the three departments of government, legislative, judicial, and executive, defining crimes and their penalties, including death even, and yet affirm, as it is affirmed in the forty-sixth of the forty-eight articles, that" 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 we 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."

In the autumn of 1857 Brown began to organize a small body of men. For the purpose of giving them military instruction he employed Colonel Hugh Forbes, an English adventurer, who had fought with Garibaldi. The two, however, failed to see alike. The stern Puritan, who knew far more of Gideon than of Napoleon, and who looked upon war mainly in its providential aspects, had little in common with the mere adventurer, without convictions, and who looked upon war as a matter of science and a wise use of brute forces. They disagreed and separated. Immediately Forbes wrote letters. to Dr. Samuel G. Howe and Frank B. Sanborn of Massachusetts, complaining that Brown had not fulfilled his promises.

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In January, 1858, Brown left Kansas and went to the home of Frederick Douglass in Rochester, New York, where he wrote his plan of government. From this place he wrote to Theodore Parker, Mr. Sanborn, George L. Stearns, and T. Wentworth Higginson, asking them to aid him by raising a small sum of money to carry out " an important measure, in which the world had a deep interest." In these and other letters he spoke of important things he was intending to do, but gave no definite explanations. He wrote also to Sanborn, Stearns, and Howe, and requested them to meet him at the home of a friend in Central New York. Sanborn was, however, the only one to respond, reaching the place on the 22d of February. Here he met Brown and his own classmate, Edwin Morton, a native of Massachusetts, then a member of Gerrit Smith's family, afterward a lawyer of Boston. To this little company Brown explained his proposed constitution, indicated his plans, and specified the middle of May as the time to commence operations. For the purposes named he desired them to aid him by furnishing a thousand dollars. Recognizing the character, magnitude, and difficulties of his scheme, and the obvious inadequacy of the means, even what was asked for, to the end proposed, they endeavored to dissuade him from his purpose, or, at least, besought him to defer his attempt; but he was inflexible.

It was manifestly a moment and a case, like many that were constantly arising during the dreary reign of the Slave Power, when the best men were in a position where there seemed at least a conflict of duties, where, the more conscientious a man was the greater the difficulty in deciding, —and where, whatever the decision, there was at least some apparent infringement of admitted obligations. They listened late into the night and during the following day; and then, though still unconvinced by his arguments, they yielded to the potent and personal influence of the man. One well acquainted with the circumstances of that conference thus writes in the "Atlantic Monthly" of 1873: "As the sun was setting over the snowy hills of the region where they met, the Massachusetts delegate walked for an hour with the principal person in that little council of war. The elder of the two, of equal age with Brown and for many years a devoted abolitionist, said: "You see how it is; our old friend has made up his mind to this course of action, and cannot be turned from it. We cannot give him up to die alone; we must stand by him. I will raise so many hundred dollars for him; you must lay the case before your friends in Massachusetts, and see if they will do the same.'

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This he did, and at the suggestion of Theodore Parker Brown visited Boston in March. Howe, Sanborn, Stearns, and Higginson consulted with him. To them he communicated his proposed invasion of Virginia, though he spoke of his purpose in regard to Harper's Ferry only to Mr. Sanborn. A secret committee consisting of these gentlemen was formed to raise the necessary means. This was speedily accomplished; and it was decided to strike the first blow in the latter part of May. Arriving in Chatham, Canada, on the last of April, he learned that Forbes was in Washington, threatening to disclose his plans to Republican members and the government, unless, as he insisted in letters, written in April and May, to Howe and Sanborn, that Brown should be dismissed as leader, and himself installed in his place. These letters being submitted to the secret committee, it was finally agreed, Higginson dissenting, that the attack should be