Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1883-08-17

gress and was positive in her party faith
in all save slavery, and both women were
of heroic mould. They many tines re-
preached themselves for not acting upon
their woman's intuition without waiting
to reason with man on the subject. Had
they done SO Cook would have been out
of prison, fleetly mounted and the morning
sun would have greeted him in the north
ern mountains. Their mission failed be-
cause forbidden when the escape OF the
prisoner by other means seemed IS certain
as anything could be in the future and the
illfated Cook lost his third chance for
liberty. Both his fair would-be rescuers
sleep the dieamless sleep of the dead and
the winds of tho same autumn sang their
requiem and strewed their fresh graves
with natures withered emblems of death.
About noon on the following day the
sheriff rushed into my Office, wild with ex-
citement and his eyes dimmed by tears,
and exclaimed Cooks taken away 7"
A thunderbolt from cloudless sky could
not have startled me more but the pain
full distress of the sheriff left NO doubt in
my mind that he had stated the truth.
He soon calmed down sufficiently to tell
me how q requisition for Cook had been
lying in Carlisle, only thirty miles distant
by railroad, whero it had been brought
some days before, when Hazlitt had been
arrested and was believed to be Cook. The
error bad been corrected when tho identity
of Hazlltt had been discovered and another
requisition forwarded, on which he had
been returned to Virginia :; but the Cook
requisitiOn remainded with the sheriff of
Cumberland. When Cooks arrest was
announced the requisition was brought
ON to Chambersburg in tho morning
train, and tho officer, fearing delay by
the sheriff sending for his counsel, called
on the president judge, who happened to
be in the town, and demanded his approval
of the regularity of his papers and his
command for the prompt rendition Of the
prisoner. The judge repaired to the
prison with the officer and performed his
plain duty under the law by declaring the
officer entitled to the custody of Cook. The
noon train bore the strangely, i'll fated
prisoner on his way to Virginia and to
death. No man in like peril seemed
to have had so many entirely
practicable opportunities for escape ;
but all failed, even with the
exercise of what would be judged as
the soundest discretion for his safety. His
return to the Charlestown Jail, his memor
able trial, his inevitable conviction, his
only cowardiy act of submitting to recap
ture when he had broken out of his cell
few hours before his execution with his
captive comrades are familiar to all. His
trial attracted more attention than that of
any of the others, because of the promi
nent men enlisted in his cause and OF the
special interest felt in him by the commu-
nifty in and about Harper's Ferry.
He had taught school there some
years before, had married there and
his return as one of John Browns
raiders to kindle tho flames of slave insur-
rection intensified the bitterness of the
people against him. From the 2Sth day
of October, 1859, when he was lodged in
the Charleston Jail, until the last act of the
tragedy, when he was executed, Cook ut
tracted the larger share of public interest
in Harpsr's Ferry, much rs Brown out
stripped him in national Or world wide
fame. Governor Willard, the Democratic
executive Of Indiana, appeared in person
Oa the scene and made exhaustive efforts
to save his wayward but beloved brother
in law. Daniel w. Voorhees,, now United
States senator from Indiana, was then at
tOrney general of his state, and his devo
ton to his party chief made him excel
every previous or later effort of his life in
pleading the utterly worthless cause OF the
brilliant little Virginia insurgent. 1t was
a grand legal and forensic battle but
there was not an atom Of law to aid the
defense, and public sentiment was yehe-
ment for the atOnemoDt