The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1859-10-19
The Virginia Abolition Insurrcction-Its
Causes and Probable Consequences.

The Virginia Abolition Insurrcction-Its
Causes and Probable Consequences.
Our readers will perceive, from the intelli-
gence on the subject which We publish this
morning, that our FIRST startling reports of an
abolition conspiracy and instruction at Har-
per's Ferry, Virginia, were substantially cor
rect. The plot, the outbreak, and its sup
preston within a few hours, have become
matters Of history. The conspiracy, itappears,
was the work of that notorious Kansas free
State abolition mailman known as Ossawa-
tonne Brown, and comprehended the madman,s
idea Of the extinction of slavery in Virginia
and Maryland by force of arms, beginning with
the seizure of the United States Arsenal at Har-
per's Ferry as the shortest method of pro-
curing the weapons of war.
The inevitable consequences have followed
instantly upon the heels of this reckless expert
mcnt of an insane Kansas abolitionist and his
deluded followers, whites and blacks. Yet
there was something Of method in their mad
ness. Harper's Ferry, on the river boundary
between Virginia and Maryland, is surrounded
by slaveholding community, with number
of counties on the Virginia side possessing
each a large slave population such asJ Jefferson,
Clarke and Frederick. From any of these
counties the free State Of Pennsylvania may be
reached by fugitive slave, in forced march,
in the course Of forty-eight hours, by crossing
over the thin partition Of Maryland. Hence the
frequent escapes Of slaves from all that region,
from which Brown may have received bis first
impressions Of a general disaAection of the resi-
dent slave population.
The labyrinth Of mountains and their intri
cate valleys, covered with forests and under
brush, which mark the country between Har-
per's Ferry and Pennsylvania, afford many
advantages to fugitive slayes-advantages
which doubtless suggested themselves to
the conspirators in anticipation Of running
guerrilla system Of military operations. The
seizure Of the government arsensal, too, at
Harpers Ferry, it was doubtless calculated
would not only furnish arms for the powerful
nucleus Of general servile rebellion, but
would also rally at once the slave population,
far and near, to the rescue.
Such, we conclude, were the calculations Of
the conspirators; and it is probable that, hit or
miss, they may have also taken into their esti-
mates that larger calculation of the moral effect
Of this terrible enterprise in the work of re-
kindling the waning fires of the slavery agita-
tion At all events, the inevitable effect of this
abolition instruction in the midst of the un-
suspecting slaveholding community around Har-
per's Ferry will be, throughout the Southern
States, highly exasperated feeling ofhostilityto
all the slavery agitators at the North, not only
including w. II. Seward and his followers to IAN
irrepressible conflict with the South, but even
Mr.. Douglas and his disciples Of popular sove-
reignty" in the Territories. Not many days,
we apprehend, will elapse before the conse-
quences upon the Southern mind of this despe-
rate experiment of abolition treason in Virginia
will be recognized in the North as pregnant
with danger to the Union.
We have thus before us some Of the ripening
fruits of that mischievous reopening of
the slavery agitation in 1854, commenced
by Douglas and Pierce as Presidential
candidates for the decisive vote of the
South in the Cincinnati Convention.
There would have been no border war in
Kansas between Southern pro. slavery adven-
turers and Northern anti-slayery emigrant aid
societies had there been no invitation to them
to tight out the slavery issue, face to face, on
the soil OF Kansas. And this man Brown was
only discharged guerrilla free State soldier
from the border rufian scenes Of that bloody
Territory. Flushed with the success of the
war for freedom there, and rendered daring
reckless, and an abolition monomaniac by the
scenes Of violence and blood through which
he had passed, he believed the time at hand for
carrying the Kansas war for freedom into the
heart of the Southern States. He has met with
the fate which he courted; but his death and
the punishment of all his criminal associates
will be as feather in the balance against the
mischievous consequences which will probably
follow from the rekindling of the slavery ex-
citement in the South
We trust, however, that something of good
will result from this wild and fanatical aboli-
ton explosion at Harper's Ferry and its