The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-12-01
SHAEP COMMENTS UPON HARPER'S
FERRY.
From the London Times of N9v. s.

FERRY.
From the London Times NOV. s.
Lord Macaulay describes Frederick the Great
with. luch humor, as fighting pitched battles
with ,rrosve sublimate pills in one pocket and
quE,1tity of bad verses in the other. The En-
peror s0tho's equipment for civil war, in which
were 10 be decided the fortunes of the whole
civilized world, was, according to Juvenal, a
pockt4 looking. glass. Sir Charles Napier de-
fined the outfit of good officer on hard duty
to CO isst of razor piece of soap, and one
clean shirt But in the New World, they man
age tsese things better. The Uidticum for
civil, ar rather a servile war, such as Spartacus
mi - have commanded, in the United States
is soI3ething very different, but quite as char
acteri tic of the land and the people as the
poison and bad verses of Frederick, the mirror
of OtsO, or the razor of Napier. A few despe-
rate o en- drew together, and, with views of which
al yet very imperfectly informed, seized
upon IN armory of the Government situated in
a rebelte and most picturesque region at the
conhe nce of two mighty rivers on the confines
of M 'yland and Virginia. They seem to be
provi I'd neither with arms nor numbers. We
hear ~ no concert between them and the ne
groesZ IF the surrounding districts. The place
which they have chosen for their operations is
not vSy distant from the great city of Balti-
more &c the seat of the Federal Government at
Washington. In all this we see little proof of
that care and deliberation which might be ex-
pected in a movement which has for It's object
nothing less than the overthrow Of the great
American Union, as established by law and
sanctioned by time. They only took one pre-
caution-they provided themselves with Con-
stitution. Some people might have thought
that, if the projected rising of the negroes sue
loA e,
ately supersede any attempt at regulating the
affairs of the instruction by means of writ
ten Constitution, and that, in the much more
probable event of failure, the law of the con-
queror would provide very efficiently for the
brief remainder of the lives of the vanquished.
There is something grotesque in the midst Of
the terrOrs of civil war to see the men who were
struggling to let loose upon their masters the
passions of hundreds of thousands of negroes
Infatuated by illusage, and brutalized by COM
pulsory ignorance, undertaking such task
with the idea that the turbulent elements which
they sought to let loose could be controlled bv
a few paragraphs beginning with the rights of
man and ending with declaration that the
foregoing articles should not be construed so as
in any way to encourage the overthrow of any
State Government, or of the General Govern
ment of the United States, and to look to no
dissolution OF the Union, but simply to amend.
ment and repeal.
To overthrow the whole framework upon
which, in the Southern States of America, the
fabric Of society rests, to place arms in the
hands of million of exasperated slaves, is,
according to these Missionaries, not civil or ser.
vile war, but simply moving an amendment,
and repeating an obnoxious statute We should
have thought, however, that such an assembly
as the insurgents at Harper'S Ferry contem-
IL II |.
something more than President and Vice
President, something more than division of
Government into executive, Legislative, and
judicial, and that martial law, or the will of
the General, would have been more useful to
curb the unquiet spirits which such crisis
must call FORTH than Constitution, based on a
Congress, consisting Of ten members, elected
by universal suffrage, and a chief Justice and
four pusne Judges appointed in the same man.
ner. The spirit of the Provisional Govern.
ment of Tuscany seems to have crossed the
Atlantic, and aligbted with outstretched wings
on the banks of the Shenandoah and the Pc
tomac. Just the Tuscan Government has
employed the brief leisure allowed it to organ
lie Italy Tor defence III proposing subjects for
statuary and Offering prizes for essays on the
art OF draining marshes, so the leaders of the
black instruction can find no more suitable
subject to occupy their minds on the eve of
their desperate enterprise than provisions that
the treaty OF peace, WHICH they were no doubt
about to compel the United States Government
to accept should be signed by the President
and Vice President, and the maiorite of the
Supreme Court, the Representatives of the
People, and the general officers, or a law that
marriage relations should be respected. for the
erection of schools and churches and the
proper observance OF Sunday. These are not
the words nor the topics that set mems blood
on fire, and push them forward to confront
numbers without counting them, and dangers
without regarding them. The proclamation
that calls to arms a nation not figuratively. but
literally enslaved, must go more home to the
hearts and passions of men than these cold alb
stractions this melancholy pedantry of order
and civilization in the midst of fire and slauoh
ter. We observe an allusion in this STRANGE
document, which would doubtless be EeRnfy
appreciated, 20 the necessity of reuniting scat
tered families; but we cannot see why the in
stitution of private property was to be aboI
lshed, and the proceeds of the labor and plum
der OF the community formed into a fund to be
distributed among the people, much after the
fashion which the Spaniards found existing
throughout the empire of Peru. To Judge bY
the provisions of this most extraordinary doom
ment, the conduct of revolution never fell
into hands more utterly unable to direct it. II
would seem that Mr.. Brown and his friends
had no conception of any manner of CARVING
on public business, except that WHICH thew
were familiar with in the Constitution of the
American States, and supposed that Demo-
cratic assemblies, Supreme Courts. and elect.
i've Presidents and Vice Presidents were a
machinery as indispensable for war as for
peace. We remark that, while they denounce
the carrying of concealed weapons, thew dis
tinctly declare that it shall be lawful to carry
weapons openly, as if they supposed that men
fighting for their lives and liberties would re-
quire distinct permission before they ven
tured to violate the law which forbids slaves
from carrying arms.
These occasional outbreaks are not peculiar
to American Slavery, but were the scourge of
all the nations of antiquity, and of none so
much as Rome in the very palmiest days of the
Republic. A servile war is a subject from
which history willingly averts her face, and the
outbreaks which from time to time have taken
place in America have been forgotten by the
European public as soon as they were quelled
In torture and in blood. But each of these insur-
rections, contemplate as they may appear in
numbers, in intelligence, and in organization,