Staunton vindicator and general advertiser. (Staunton, Augusta County, Va.) 1858-1860, 1859-11-25

shall roll and the lightning fash. and when
the slaves shall rise in the South in imita-
ton Of the horrid scenes ia the West Indi-
es, when the Southern man shall turn pale
and trcmble, when your dwellings shall
smoke with the torch Of the incendiary, and
dismay sit on each countenance, he will
hail it as the approaching dawn Of that po-
litcal and moral millennium which he is
we'll assured will como upon the world. p
The atrosity of these sentiments chills the
blood of honest patriots. and no part of the
prisoners equals their bloody import.
Shall the old leader escape and the young
follower d.c? Shall the teacher whose doc
trines told the prisoner that what he did
was right, 60 unscathcd Of the lightning
which he has unclaimed? If so, Justice
has fed from her temples on earth, and
awaits us only on high to measure out what
is right between man and man. The men
who have miscd this boy to his ruin shall!
here receive my maedictions They shrink
back from him now in his hour Of calamity
They lift up their hands and say Amen to
the bloody spectacle which their internal or
gies have summoned up. You hear them
all over the land circulating through false,
pale, coward lips, "Thou canst not say l
did it" when their hands are reeking with
all the blood that has been shed and which
yet awaits the extreme penalty Of the law.
False, fleeing, perjured traitors; false to
| those who have acted upon your principles;
false to friends as we'll as country and per-
jured before the Constitution of the Repub-
lie ministers who profess to be Of God,
who told this boy here to carry Sharpe's
rifle to Kansas instead of his mothers BIZ
ble-shall this jury. this court, and this
country, forget their guilt and their infa-
my because victim to their precepts is
yielding up his life before you? May God
forget me if here, in the presence Of this
pale face, forget to denounce, with the with
ering, blighting, blasting power Of majestic
truth. the tall and stately criminals Of the
Northern States Of this Union.
The visionary mind of the prisoner heard
from member Of Congress from the
State of Massachusetts that new Consti-
tuition. new Bible, and new God,
we're to be iaaxgursted and possess the
country. They were to be new, because
they were to be anti-slavery, for the old
constitution, and the old Bible, and the
God Of our fathers. the ancient Lord God Of
Israel, the same yesterday, to-day and for
ever, were not GU the side of abolitionism.
Is there no mitigation for his doom in the
fact that he took his life in his hand, and
aimed at that which a coward taught him,
but dared not himself attempt? Base, pu-
sillanimous demagogues have led the pris-
oner to the oar but while be suffers-if
suffer he must-they, too, shall have their
recreant limbs broken on the wheel. I
will not leave the soil of Virginia, I will
not let this awful occasion pass into history
without giving voice and an utterance to
its true purport and meaning, without heap
ing upon its authors the load Of execration
which they are to bear henceforth and for
ever. Day after day and year after year
has the ba!eful simeon Of revolution, anar-
chy, discord, hostility to the South and her
institutions, swept over that section Of the
country in which the lot Of the prisoner has
been cast. That he has been poisoned by
its breath, should not cut him off from HUI
man sympathy rather should it render ev.
cry heart clement towards him. He never
sought place or station, but sought merely
to develope those doctrines which evil and
traitorous persons had caused him to believe
were true Ministers, editors, and politi-
clans Beecher, Parker, Seward, Giddings,
Sumner, Hale, and host Of lesser lights
of each class-who in this courtroom, who
in this vast country, who in the wide world
who shall read this trial, believes them not
guilty, as charged in the indictment in all
the counts, to deeper and far more fearful
extent than John Il. Cook ? Midnight
gloom is not more sombre in contrast with
the blazing light Of the meridian sun, than
is the guilt Of such men in comparison with
that which overwhelms the prisoner. They
put in motion the maelstrom which has en-
quilted him. They started the torrent which
has borne him over the precipice. They
called forth from the cayerns the tempest
which wrecked him on a sunken reef Be
fore God, and in the light of Eternal truth,
the disaster at Harper's Ferry is their act
and not his. May the ghost of each victim
to their doctrines Of disunion and abomina-
ton sit heavy on their guilty souls! May
the fate of the prisoner, whatever that may
be, disturb their slumbers and paralyze
their arms when they are again raised a.
gainst tbs peace Of the country and the lives
of it's citizens!
I know by the CLEAN Of each eye into
which I look in this jury-box, that if these
men could change places with young Cook,
you would gladly say to him, ''Go erring
and repentant youth, our vengeance shall
fall on those who paid their money, urged
on the attack, and guided the blow" Let
me appeal to you, gentlemen Of the jury, in
the name Of Eternal truth and everlasting
right, is nothing to be forgiven to youth, to
inexperience, to gentle, kind heart, to
wayward and peculiar though not vicious
character, strangely apt to be led by pres
ent influences! I have shown you what
those influences, generally and specially,
have been over the mind of the prisoner
/ have shown you the malign influence of
his direct leader. have shown you, also,
the ''false and malignant counsels' in be-
half Of this sad enterprise, emarating from
those in place, power, and position. It
might have been your prodig gal son borne
away and seduced by such counsels, as we'll
as my young client. Do with him as you
would have your own child dealt by under
like circumstances. He has been stolen
from the principles of his ancestors and be-