terms, and required that he should be permitted to march out with his "men and arms, taking the prisoners with them; that they should proceed unpursued to the second tollgate, when they would free their prisoners; the soldiers would then be permitted to pursue them, and they would fight if they could not escape." This proposition was, of course, rejected, and Colonel Lee at once gave the signal for making the attack. The door was battered down, an entrance was forced, and after a brief but sanguinary struggle all the surviving insurgents were made prisoners. John Brown was found to be severely wounded, but was expected to recover; one of his sons received a mortal wound. The prisoners were removed to Charleston jail, to await their trial on the double charge of murder and high treason. It was said that, in an interview with Governor Wise, Brown made a full confession, stating that the whole plot was well contrived and arranged as far back as 1856, and that he had reason to expect assistance of from 3000 to 5000 men-that he looked for aid from every state. The search of his house led to the discovery of a large number of rifles, pistols, and swords, and a great quantity of ammunition, together with various docu influential slaveholders, and these gentlemen | they afterwards confined as prisoners in the Armoury at Harper Ferry. Cook, at the head of the captured negroes, and accompanied by two white men, marched in the early morning up the mountain road in the direction of Pennsylvania, probably intending to incite the slaves of Maryland to rebellion. Old Brown, on the other hand, returned to the town, took possession of the Armoury, and stationed bodies of armed men at various points, so that when the inhabitants arose the next morning they found, greatly to their surprise, that their town was in a state of siege, and that the trains had been stopped and the telegraphic wires broken. A species of guerilla warfare then commenced between the insurgents and the townspeople, and in this way several lives were sacrificed. In the course of the day troops arrived from the neighbouring towns of Charleston, Shepherdstown, and Martinsburgh; but before the arrival of these troops the insurgents had entrenched themselves in the Armoury grounds, which they prepared to defend. In the meanwhile the news of these events had reached Washington and Baltimore, and had created some consternation in those cities, and in fact throughout the United States. Colonel Lee was immediately despatched by the war department at Wash-ments, one of which appointed Brown comington to take command of the troops, and to suppress the insurrection. He, together with a party of soldiers and marines from Baltimore, reached Harper Ferry in the course of the Monday night; and at once caused a number of the troops to surround the enginehouse, in which the insurgents had determined to make their final stand. Owing to the absence of windows from the building, and the impossibility of taking accurate aim through the holes which had been pierced through the walls and doors, the besieged could do but little mischief, while the besiegers, on their side, were afraid to use cannon lest they should injure the prisoners who were kept in confinement. Under these circumstances Colonel Lee at first refrained from an attack, but sent an officer with a flag of truce to demand of the enemy an unconditional surrender; but John Brown refused these mander-in-chief and specified the rank of his followers, while another purported to be a provisional constitution for the United States abolishing slavery, among other changes. In the fight six citizens and fifteen insurgents were killed, and several on both sides wounded. Brown was put upon his trial at Charleston on the 27th, ten days after he was taken prisoner, and notwithstanding that appeals were made on account of his physical condition, a postponement was refused. He was taken into court on a bed, as he was severely wounded in four places, and was unable to sit up without assistance, to listen to his arraignment. A Virginian counsel had been appointed by the court for his defence, but though he declared that he could have no confidence in this arrangement, considering the excited state of the public mind in Charleston and the hostility exhibited towards him, he was not granted two days' delay to enable him to procure legal aid from the Free States. The consequence was that the members of the Massachusetts and Ohio bar whom he employed did not make their appearance in court until all the evidence for the prosecution was in; and they were compelled to enter upon their duties without consultation with the prisoner, without any accurate knowledge of the facts, and little or none of the Virginian criminal code. On the Saturday night they had been without sleep for two nights-partly spent in travelling, partly in study-and pressed for an adjournment until Monday morning to enable them to recover from complete physical exhaustion. The prosecution fiercely opposed it, on the ground that all the women in Virginia "were harassed by alarm and anxiety as long as the trial lasted," and that the jurymen wanted to get home to their wives. The summing up was accordingly commenced after nightfall, and the prisoner's counsel only escaped having to address the jury through the extreme lateness of the hour. When, at the commencement of the trial, Brown was asked whether he had counsel, he addressed the court, saying: "Virginians, I did not ask for any quarter at the time I was taken. I did not ask to have my life spared. The Governor of the State of Virginia tendered me his assurance that I should have a fair trial; but under no circumstances whatever will I be able to have a fair trial. If you seek my blood you can have it at any moment without this mockery of a trial. I have had no counsel I have not been able to advise with any one. I know nothing about the feelings of my fellow-prisoners, and am utterly unable to attend in any way to my own defence. My memory don't serve me my health is insufficient, although improving. There are mitigating circumstances that I would urge in our favour, if a fair trial is to be allowed us; but if we are to be forced to put up with a mere form of trial-a trial for execution you might spare yourselves that trouble. I am ready for my fate--I do not ask a trial. I beg for no mockery of a trial-no insult-nothing but that which conscience gives, or cowardice would drive you to practise. I ask again to be excused from the mockery of a trial. I do not even know what the special design of this examination is. I do not know what is to be the benefit of it to the commonwealth. I have now little further to ask, other than that I may not be foolishly insulted only as cowardly barbarians insult those who fall into their power." The Democrats made strenuous efforts to show that Mr. Seward and the Republican party were implicated in Brown's attempt, but such a charge could not be sustained. At the same time men of influence and of pronounced opinions did not hesitate to declare sympathy with the prisoner, whose name was already becoming a watchword. "As to the plot itself," wrote William Lloyd Garrison, "it is evident that few or none were privy to it, except the little bard directly engaged in it; for though Captain Brown had many to sympathize with him in different parts of the country, in view of his terrible bereavements, perils, and sufferings in Kansas, in defence of the freedom of that territory against border ruffian invasion, and were disposed to contribute not only to relieve his necessities, but also to facilitate the escape of slaves through his instrumentality to Canada, still an enterprise so wild and futile as this could not have received any counteLance in that direction. "As to Captain Brown, all who know Lim personally are united in the conviction that a more honest, conscientious, truthful, brave, disinterested man (however misguided or unfortunate) does not exist; that he possesses a deeply religious nature, powerfully wrongit upon by the trials through which he has passed; and he sincerely believes himself to have been raised up by God to deliver the oppressed in this country in the way he Lal chosen, as did Moses in relation to the deliverance of the captive Israelites; that when le says he aims to be guided by the golden rule, it is no cant from his lips, but a vital application of it to his own soul, ‘remembering those that are in bonds as bound with them; 'that when he affirms that he had no other m st.ve for his conduct at Harper Ferry except to break the chains of the pre ad, by the BROWN'S DEFENCE-HIS EXECUTION-ITS EFFECTS. shedding of the least possible amount of human blood, he speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth;' and that if he shall (as he will speedily, beyond a peradventure) be put to death he will not die ignobly, but as a martyr to his sympathy for a suffering race, and in defence of the sacred and inalienable rights of man, and will, therefore, deserve to be held in grateful and honourable remembrance to the latest posterity by all those who glory in the deeds of a Wallace, a Tell, or a Washington. It will be a terrible, losing day for all slavedom when John Brown and his associates are brought to the gallows. It will be sowing seed broadcast for a harvest of retribution. Their blood will cry trumpettongued from the ground, and that cry will be responded to by tens of thousands in a manner that shall cause the knees of the Southern slavemongers to smite together as did those of Belshazzar of old." The Rev. Mr. Beecher, brother of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, said: "An old, honest, industrious man peacefully went to settle with his family in the west. His lot was cast in Kansas. A great slave state adjoining the territory marches her armed men in among the peaceful settlers to dragoon them to uphold slavery by force of arms. They cross the boundary and subvert the laws, and commence a civil war. They pollute the ballot-box and carry destruction among the harvests and death among the quiet cultivators of the soil. There were no marines, no militia, sent to oppose them. There were forces there, but they acted on their side-on the side of the wrong-doers, the invaders. It was here that Brown learned his first lesson on the slavery system-here that old man endured his first sufferings in the death of his first-born, who was dragged manacled across the country by the slaverymen in the heat of a broiling sun, and afterwards beaten by inhuman officers. Another son was shot down by them. Revolving the indignation in his mind against the system that would tolerate and countenance such cruelty and bloodshed, he is goaded by his own feelings to a mad but fixed determination to oppose it to the end of his life. And now, VOL. IV. 97 as he is in the depressing, the most trying circumstances, no one can fail to discover in this same old man a manly, straightforward, independent soul, which rises high above all those among whom he is at present, however insane he may be. I shrink from the folly of the bloody fray in which he was engaged; I shrink further from the bloody fray which will follow it: but while I do, I feel that by and by, when people will read the record of the whole tragic scene, they will wonder at and admire the bearing of the old man who, through all his misfortunes, woes, and suffering, maintained a dignity and independence, and a sentiment which only shines in full brilliancy when contrasted with the conduct of his accusers, who possess their reason." Brown was sentenced to death, and several of the others concerned in the insurrection were sentenced at the same time. When the verdict was pronounced Brown sat up in his bed and addressing the court, said: "I have, may it please the court, a few words to say. In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted-of a design on my part to free slaves. I intended certainly to have made a clean thing of that matter, as I did last winter when I went into Missouri, and there took slaves without the snapping of a gun on either side, moving them through the country, and finally leaving them in Canada. I designed to have done the same thing again on a larger scale. That was all I intended to do. I never did intend murder or treason, or the destruction of property, or to excite or incite slaves to rebellion or to make insurrection. I have another objection, and that is that it is unjust that I should suffer such a penalty. Had I interfered in the manner which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved-for I admire the truthfulness and candour of the greater portion of the witnesses who have testified in this case-had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, the socalled great, or in behalf of any of their friends, either father, mother, brother, sister, wife, or children, or any of that class, and suffered and sacrificed what I have in this interference, it 70 This would have been all right, and every man in this court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment. court acknowledges, too, as I suppose, the validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed, which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever that I would that men should do to me I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with me. I endeavour to act up to that instruction. I say I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done, on behalf of his despised poor is no 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 say let it be done. Let me say one word further. I feel entirely satisfied with the treatment I have received on my trial. Considering all the circumstances, it has been more generous than I expected. But I feel no consciousness of guilt. I have stated from the first what was my intention and what was not. I never had any design against the liberty of any person, nor any disposition to commit treason or excite slaves to rebel, or make any general insurrection. I never encouraged any man to do so, but always discouraged any idea of that kind. Let me say something also in regard to the statements made by some of those who were connected with me. I fear it has been stated by some of them that I have induced them to join me; but the contrary is true. I do not say this to injure them, but as regretting their weakness. No one but joined me of his own accord, and the greater part at their own expense. A number of them I never saw and never had a word of conversation with till the day they came to me, and that was for the purpose I have stated. Now I have done." Mr. Chilton, one of his counsel, proposed to stay judgment on the ground of errors in the indictment and in the verdict, but without effect. The laws of the state of Virginia would not allow the governor to pardon a person convicted of treason to the commonwealth except with the consent of the General Assembly declared by resolution. The legis lature did not interpose, and it is was believed that even if the governor had been disposed to commute the punishment and spare Brown's life, public feeling in Virginia would have been too strong to allow him to do so. Brown maintained the same unyielding and courageous bearing to the last. While he was in prison a Quaker lady wrote to him a letter of sympathy-telling him that though those who were non-resistants could not approve of bloodshed, yet they knew that he was animated by the most generous and philan thropic motives; that thousands prayed for him every day; that posterity would do him justice. He wrote a calm reply, declaring that he had acted under a conviction that a sword was put into his hand for the work he had to do, and God continued it so long as he saw best, and then kindly took it from him. He concluded by saying: "I always loved my Quaker friends, and I commend to their kind regard my poor bereaved, widowed wife, and my daughter and daughters-in-law, whose husbands fell at my side. One is a mother, and the other likely to become so soon. They, as well as my own sorrow-stricken daughter, are left very poor, and have much greater need of sympathy than I, who, through infinite grace and the kindness of strangers, am *joyful in all my tribulations.' Dear sister, write them at North Elba, Essex Co., N.Y., to comfort their sad hearts. Direct to Mary A. Brown, wife of John Brown. There is also another--a widow, wife of Thompson, who fe ! with my poor boys in the affair at Harper's Ferry, at the same place. I do not feel conscious of guilt in taking up arms; and had it been in behalf of the rich and powerful, the intelligent, the great-as men count greatness of those who form enactments to suit themselves and corrupt others, or some of their friends, that I interfered, suffered, sacrificed, and fell, it would have been doing very well But enough of this. These light afflicti es, SECEDING STATES-CONFEDERATION. which endure for a moment, shall work out for me a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. I would be very grateful for another letter from you. My wounds are healing. Farewell. God will surely attend to his own cause in the best possible way and time, and he will not forget the work of his own hand." On the 2d of December, 1859, Brown was executed at Charleston. He maintained the same confident and cheerful spirit to the end. Even his interview with his wife on the previous day did not shake him. They were both composed even at the moment of parting, after they had spoken of the education of their children and the death of his two sons, whose bodies the wife had endeavoured to recover. He was conveyed to the scaffold in a wagon containing a pine box, on which he sat. In the box was an oak coffin. An attempt at a rescue by armed bands of men from the free states had been suspected. The town was filled with strangers and with soldiers. The execution was the occasion of a military display in front of the jail and afterwards at the scaffold, where the men were marched and countermarched for ten minutes, during which the condemned man had to stand with the cap drawn over his face and the rope round his neck. Nothing shook his fortitude or broke the calm of his demeanour. Among his last utterances were kindly words to the jailer and the sheriff. Brown was hanged, and whatever may be thought of it otherwise, it was a mistakethe deed itself and the manner of it. It was reported that the rope to be used at the execution, was publicly exhibited at the sheriff's office, and was made of South Carolina cotton- -a fact which was mentioned with exultation, with the words "No Northern hemp shall help to punish our felons." This story may have been an invention, but there can be no doubt of the defiant and threatening attitude assumed on the occasion. In some of the Northern States there were significant counter demonstrations: minute guns were fired, flags hung half-mast high, and sympathy meetings were held. In the legislative assembly at Boston motions for adjournment were 99 made in the senate and in the house of representatives, and though the proposal was not carried, strong language was used. What Mr. Garrison had said became of great significance afterwards. Though some trivial or contemptuous verses about the execution of John Brown were sung by numbers of the Southerners, the time came, when the tide of success had turned, that the Federal troops marched to a kind of chant, poor enough in composition, but with a refrain to which the name of the chief insurgent of Harper Ferry gave an intensity of meaning as it spoke of his death and immortality. By that time, however, the war, which on the part of the North was declared to have been for the prevention of disunion, was distinctly directed to the immediate and complete extinction of slavery in all the states. The Harper Ferry insurrection has occupied much of our attention; but it will serve better than detailed reference to subsequent events, to indicate the conditions underlying the merely superficial aspects of the two parties, and the violent antagonism which so quickly led to the attempted disintegration of the republic. The states of Arkansas and Mississippi soon joined the Confederation, but the border slave states were uncertain. Mr. Buchanan, the president who preceded Mr. Lincoln, was, as we have seen, divided in his opinions, inclining, it was believed, towards Southern demands, and though he stopped short of any actual encouragement to secession, he gladly supported the proposal of Virginia to come to some sort of compromise. The terms presented for acceptance were ineffectual, and indeed no compromise was probable. The free states could not without dishonour stoop to the alternatives by which an agreement could have been arrived at; for the South had apparently determined in any case to use every effort to establish an independent government. By the end of May, 1861, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina had followed South Carolina. The complete confederation of seceded states was then formed, and though at the beginning of the year many |