Year: 1860

In his late speech before the Senate If the
United States, Mr.. Seward made the following
reference to the Harper's Ferry invasion


A canvass for a Presidential election, in some
respects more important, perhaps, than any since
1900, has recently begun. The House of Repre-
sentatves was to be organized by majority,
while no party could cast more than II plurality
of votes The gloom of the late tragedy in Nir-
ginja rested on the Capitol from the day when
Congress assembled. While the two great pot-
ical parties were peacefully, lawfully and consti-
tutionaly, though zealously conducting the great
national issue between free labor and capital la
Dor for the Territories to its proper solution,
through the trials of the ballot, operating direct
ly or indirectly on the various departments of
the Government, band of exceptional men,
coutemptuOus equally OF that great question and
of the parties to the controversy. and impatient
of the constitutional system which confines the
citizens of every State to political action by sui
rage in organized parties within their own bor-
Ter, inspired with an enthusiasm peculiar to


themselves, and exasperated by grievances and
wrongs that some of them had suffered by inroads
)t armed propagundists OF slavery in Kansas
unlawful as their own retaliation was, attempted
to subvert slavery in Virginia by conspiracy,
ambush, invasion and force. The method we
have adopted, of appealing to the reason and
Judgment of the people, to be pronounced by
suffrage, is the only one by which free govern
ment can be maiutained anywhere, aud the only
one as yet devised which is in harmony with the
spirit of the Christian religion. While generous
and charitable natures will probably concede
that John Brown and his associates acted on ear
nest though fatally erroneous convictions, yet all
good citizens, will nevertheless agree that this
attempt to execute an unlawful purpose IN Vlr-
gnia by invasion. involving servile war, waS an
act Of sediton and treason, aud criminal to Just
the extent that it affected the public peace, and
hmm
life. 1t is u painful reflection that, after 80 long
an experience of the heneticent working OF our
system as we have enjoyed, we have had these
new illustrations in Kansas aud Virginia oi the
existence among us of a class OF men so mlsgui-
ded and so desperate as to seek to enforce their
peculiar principles by the sword, drawing alter
it u need for the further illustration, by their
punishment, of that great moral truth, especially
applicable in II Republic, that they who take up
the sword as q weapon of controversy, shall per-
sh by the sword. In the latter case, the lament
ed deaths of so many citizens slain from an
ambush and by surprise--all the more lamentable
because they were Innocent victims OF frenzy
knded without their agency in TAR distant tires


the deaths even of the offenders themselves,
pitiabe, although necessary and just, because
they acted under dellrium, which blindea their
judgements to the real nature OF their criminal
enterprise the alarm and CONSERVATION natural


y awakened throughout the country, exciting
lOr Lne moment Jnc lear tndL our WHOlc Hy5beIni
with all its securities for life aud liberty was
coming to an end "A fear none the more endnra-
bic because continually aggravated by new chi
meras to which the great leading event lent an
air of probability ; surely all these constituted
IL sum of public misery which ought to have
satisfied the most morbid appetite for social hor-
rors But, rs in the case Of the gunpowder plot,
and the Salem witchcraft, and the New York
colonial negro plot, so now. The original ac tors
were swiftly followed by another aud kindred
class, who sought to prolong and widen the pub
lie distress by attempting to direct the lndlgna-
tion which it had excited against parties gniltless
equally OF completely and Of sympathy with the
Offenders.


Posterty will decide in all the recent cases
where political responsibility for public disasters
must fall /; and posterty will give little heed to
our Instructions. 1t was not until the gloomy
reign of Domitau had ended, aud liberty and
virtue had found assured refuge under the sway
of the mider Nerva, that the historian arose
whose narrative Of that period of tyranny and
terror has been accepted by mankind.