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approach of a little band of armed men, who have crept from their hiding place in the neighboring mountain and are noiselessly entering the town. Suddenly he is startled from his drowsy patrol; the lights of the town are rapidly extinguished; he hears the hurry of feet along the bridge, and in a moment he is a prisoner. The little group-seventeen white men and five negroes, with their leader-next take possession of the armory buildings; some return to the bridge to secure the first watchman's successor. They hail him. He runs, followed by a shot or two, and gives an alarm; but seems to arouse no one. At a quarter past one the western train arrives, and its conductor finds the bridge guarded by armed men, who present their rifles, as he attempts to walk across. Meanwhile, six of the men have proceeded to the house of Colonel Washington. They capture him, seize his arms and horses, and liberate his slaves. They repeat the process at one or two other houses, confining their victims and making prisoners, until between fifty and sixty citizens are locked into the armory. The leader informs them that they can be liberated by writing to their friends to send a negro apiece as ransom, and then first is the discovery made that this is not a strike of discontented laborers. At daybreak the train is allowed to speed on eastward, carrying alarm and panic to Virginia, Maryland and Washington. It leaves Harper's Ferry completely in the military possession of the insurgents. They hold, without dispute, the arsenal, with its offices, workshops and grounds; their sentinels guard the bridges and patrol the streets. By eight o'clock the number of prisoners is sixty odd, and still the work goes on. But, at last, the citizens are aroused to action. They form a band and obtain possession of a room overlooking the armory gates, whence they fire at the sentinels who are standing guard. Throughout the morn ing the insurgents are masters of the town. Half an hour after noon, however, a force of militia, one hundred strong, arrives from Charleston, and rapidly disperses itself to com

mand every exit from the town. They gain possession of the bridge, then of the rifle-works and all the houses around the armory buildings; more militia keep pouring in, and night finds the leader of the insurrection retreating to the engine house with three unwounded whites and one or two dying-all that remain of his band. Surrounded by fifteen hundred armed and maddened foes, he spends the night alternately caring for the wounded and encouraging the three who are unhurt to be firm and sell their lives as dearly as possible. But at seven in the morning the door of the engine-house is broken open; one of the defenders is shot; the leader is knocked down and twice run through with a bayonet. The revolt is at an end! All Virginia, including her governor, now rush to Harper's Ferry, and the bleeding survivors of the deed are subjected to most searching inquiries. Their purpose they firmly state as a strike for universal freedom. After a day or two, in which no valuable information of complicitypolitical or otherwise-can be gained from the prisoners, they are conveyed under an armed escort to Charleston and there consigned to jail. This was John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, October 17, '59-his blow at the abolition of slavery, over which he had dreamed from his boyhood up, for which he had been living and planning more than twenty years! The plan, the fulfillment of the plan, the raid, were remarkably characteristic of their author-visionary and ill-calculated as they were.

The little John Brown had been independent, self-reliant beyond his years. He was entrusted with tasks and responsibilities which are generally committed to older men; and, from the nature of the case, he was early possessed of a consciousness of power to carry out his designs. He was a boy of set, even stubborn purpose, a boy who dreamed of great plans. If we can give credence to the interpretations of phrenologists, in John Brown the man we shall look for several qualities, as the natural development of his boyish tenden

cies, a determination to "go the whole figure or nothing", a love of great schemes, the desire to be leader of these schemes, and an inclination towards somewhat visionary plans. Early in life the seeds of abolition doctrine were sown on a fertile soil; and ultimately his legitimate business, his hopes of making a home for his old age-everything was sacrificed to an engrossing determination to free slaves. He seemed, as I have said, to live for this. In the atmosphere of his passions, his sons and sons-in-law became, perforce, imbued with much of his feeling; and four of them, in 1854, left their pleasant Ohio homes and removed to Kansas, there to aid in fighting for freedom. The following year they sent to their father, begging him to join them and bring such arms as he could procure. He needed no second bidding. Here was the very opportunity for which he had longed ever since he could remember. Ere he reached Kansas with the supply of firearms which had been granted him by some convention of abolitionists, he vividly pictured himself and his doings. To establish a camp for guerilla warfare on the southern part of the state

a little later, to drill into a company after his own heart such as had embraced his famous doctrines, and were thus deemed fit to aid his attack on the Harper's Ferry arsenal-all seemed easy, reputable, and eminently satisfying. Quite of one piece with Brown, though perhaps hardly as reckless, was the well known Kagi; and, between them, they concocted a plan hard to equal in point of impracticability or lawlessness. The mountains of Virginia offered a fine hiding-place for such followers as these two schemers could gather together. Canadian refugees and Virginia slaves, officered by intelligent whites, were to form the assaulting corps; and who but John Brown should be in general command, for was he not commander-in-chief under the provisional constitution drawn up by himself and his accomplice? A slave stampede, in which planters pursuing their chattels, and state militia defending the planters, should alike be defeated-this was that "small

quiet looking movement," proposed to introduce a greater and more terror-bearing attack, which should cause every slaveholder in the land to tremble. The arms of the Harper's Ferry arsenal, when seized, would come "just in the nick of time" to be placed in the hands of those slaves who could be decoyed into joining the plan. The cutting of telegraph wires and tearing up of railroad tracks seemed the work of but a few hours, and then-did not the rest lie in a nut-shell? With the enemy's continuous chain of posts filling the mountains, could Virginia but yield? And Virginia having yielded, would other states dare withstand this "conquering hero"? All was planned for the night of the 24th of October; but Brown, suspecting a Judas in his company, struck his blow seven days earlier. This was consistent. The framer of so extensive a sedition now thought it best to guard against the treachery of one man, though by his hastened movement he should forfeit the co-operation of all his allies from Kansas and New England, though he should imperil the very foundation of his plan the uprising of the slaves, felt to be the greatest fear of their masters. He thought it wise to oppose, with a score of men, an entire commonwealth of by no means inferior powers. The poor, ignorant negroes were surprised into an utter failure to do their part; and the quiet "drawing off of slaves to the mountains" was supplanted by an attack of a band of skirmishers upon a United States arsenal, followed by a seizing of the persons and property of Virginia citizens. The radical movement of a radical leader was a complete failure; the slave-holders held their slaves with renewed tenacity. John Brown, the leader of this famous plan, was lodged in jail, awaiting the trial of a United States court. His stubborn will bent not one whit beneath his crushing failure or his impending doom. The factious agitator had staked and lost! Who can but admire his pluck, his cheerful acceptance of his deserts, though his lawlessness stand forth never so boldly! Little wonder is it that the North, incapable of appreciating

the Southern hatred of an abolitionist, made a hero of the man who so warmly advocated his daring scheme, and then, by the sacrifice of himself and his own children, showed that he was willing--yes, glad to die for his principles. I hate to cite the flimsy, illogical, fanatical defense of John Brown, made by his worshipper, Thoreau; but, extravagant as it is, it serves to indicate the sentiments of the North at that time. John Brown's raid certainly gave John Brown a great distinction; but the radical, in his over-reaching, ever merits our pity-our disgust; it is the cool-headed thinker who wins our respect, admiration and love. And we are not surprised to find Brown indifferent as to a trial. First, he declared that he wished for no such mockery of a trial as would be given him by Virginians on Virginia soil, and said that, had his unlawful intercession been in behalf of the rich, he would have been exalted by his present accusers. Perhaps this man, hating all slave-holders, yet asked to accept one of their number as his defender, pictured to himself a trial among Northerners-just now his worshippers-a Northern abolitionist to plead for his life. The contrast between the real and the imaginary was by no means encouraging; but he might also have contrasted the real and an appalling possibility, for lynch-law for John Brown was near the heart of many a Virginian. The populace would have liked to tear him in pieces. But he was guarded by the hand of the law and forced to legal trial, charged with "feloniously conspiring to make an abolition insurrection", with "open war upon the commonwealth of Virginia ", with "murder". Virginia has been harshly censured for refusing Brown the extra time which he now asked. But if we are to appreciate the feeling in the North, is it not fair to regard the attitude of these Southerners, seized, confined in a guard-house, robbed of their chattels-and all this by a band of armed men, with no more authority than a posse of Irish emigrants! Though the state of Virginia had protected this man from lynching, she was still the state of Virginia, invaded, attacked,

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