the gallows and met his death. His fellow-prisoners were executed a few days later.

On the day on which John Brown was hanged, the church bells were tolled in Springfield, as in many another Northern town. Said the Republican, next morning:

"John Brown still lives. The great state of Virginia has hung his venerable body upon the ignominious gallows, and released John Brown himself to join the 'noble army of martyrs.' There need be no tears for him. Few men die so happily, so satisfied with time, place, and circumstance, as did he. A Christian man hung by Christians for acting upon his convictions of duty,-a brave man hung for a chivalrous and self-sacrificing deed of humanity—a philanthropist hung for seeking the liberty of oppressed men. No outcry about violated law can cover up the essential enormity of a deed like this."

When the Northern voice thus applauded John Brown, the South believed that the Northern heart fully approved the act. It discredited all disclaimers of such approval as insincere or half-hearted. If we can imagine a permanent alienation and hostility between the poorer and the richer classes of New England; the sympathy of the Western people given to the New England operatives, and their employers denounced as criminals, and a peaceful town like Springfield invaded by a band of armed men from the West, its citizens shot down, and its operatives called on to rise in arms;-if we can imagine the leader of the invaders treated by the Western people as a hero, and his execution as a judicial murder, though with disclaimers of any intention to follow his example,-we may then appreciate how the South was affected by the act of John Brown and by the spirit in which the North regarded it.

And in truth, John Brown's death went far to reveal to the North itself how irreconcilable was its hostility

to slavery. Its loftiest and serenest thinker, Emerson, said:

"Our blind statesmen go up and down, with committees of vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy. They will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its birth-place, and a very strong force to root it out. For the arch-Abolitionist, older than Brown, and older than the Shenandoah Mountains, is Love, whose other name is Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before slavery, and will be after it."

THE

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN.

HE session of the new Congress which followed close on the John Brown raid was full of wordy storms. The Southern members interpreted Republicanism in the light of that event. Their leading men declared that sooner than submit to the rule of the Republican party, their section would leave the Union. No great questions of practical legislation were under debate. In the House the chief text of discussion was the election of a Speaker, and a resolution condemning the approvers and indorsers of a noted book, Helper's "Impending Crisis," a vigorous exposition of the folly of the slave system, which had been used as an anti-slavery campaign document in the border states. The resolution was especially aimed at John Sherman, the Republican candidate for the speakership, who had given to the book a qualified approval. In the Senate, the main discussion was upon resolutions introduced by Jefferson Davis, and embodying the Southern ultimatum ;-the rebuke of all anti-slavery agitators, the enforcement of the fugitive slave law and repeal of the personal liberty laws, and the recognition of property in slaves as an indefeasible right of territorial settlers, entitled to congr ssional protection. The Senate finally adopted these resolutions, nearly by a party vote. Only six Republicans opposed

the resolution as to fugitive slaves. Douglas stood upon his Popular Sovereignty ground, but unsupported except by Senator Pugh of Ohio. He professed entire deference to the Supreme Court, but could find nothing conclusive in the Dred Scott decision, and declared that whenever a territorial legislature should prohibit slavery, and the prohibition be brought before the Court, the decision then pronounced as to its constitutionality should be final. He also introduced a bill to prevent invasions of one state from another; and on the whole steered the bark of his personal fortunes with wonderful skill amid the storms born of genuine convictions and passionate sentiments. In the House, meantime, the Republicans had left the talking mostly to their opponents, and had shown the discipline and tactics of a powerful young party, educated in opposition and confident in the near prospect of full victory. They at last exchanged Sherman for a candidate regarded as more conservative, William Pennington of New Jersey, and at once gained the necessary votes to elect him Speaker. The salient feature of the session in both houses was the emphatic declaration of Southern leaders that their constituents would never submit to the government of the country by the Republican party. They gave the loudest warning of impending secession and disunion, should Seward, or any man of like principles, be elected president. Most of the Republicans regarded this talk as mere bluster. Almost the only men at the North who treated it seriously were those who were in close political affiliation with the South. The New York Herald was fanning the flame of excitement. A Washington correspondent of the Republican-Mr. Bowles apparently-wrote, December 9:

"It is amusing to see the greed with which the Herald is snatched up and devoured on its earliest arrival here in the evening; and, what is worse, to see the simplicity of these VOL. I.-17

Southern fellows who seem to pin their whole faith upon it. Where Northern men look at it only for amusement, as they would look at Punch or Frank Leslie, Southern men swallow it gravely with a sigh and a knowing shake of the head."

The Republican declares, December 13, that the "Union meetings" held in the great Northern cities are worse than useless, because they are managed by an insignificant clique of men, whose aim-with a few patriotic exceptions such as Everett-is to save trade and make Democratic votes; and they mislead the South by representing that their little coteries have a monopoly of love of the Union in their section. At the North, said the paper, December 14, there are but two disunion papers, the Liberator in Boston and the Standard in New York,- and they advise a dissolution by the harmless means of staying away from the ballot-box. No politician, no Democratic or Republican paper, no caucus or convention, in the North raises a voice for disunion, while at the South disunion is rampant everywhere, and unrebuked.

The South was in deadly earnest, and gave ample proof of it. The proscription of anti-slavery men went on with such vigor as never before. From Berea, in Kentucky, a whole company of anti-slavery men were forcibly driven away. Cases of expulsion and violence all over the South were constantly reported during the winter. The exclusion of anti-slavery documents from the mails was enforced with new zeal, and with the assent of the Post Office Department at Washington. In many of the states, postmasters refused to deliver to subscribers papers like the Tribune and the Republican. John Brown had sent home to the "business and bosoms of millions, as a keen personal apprehension, ideas which had before been hardly more than the politicians' stock in trade.