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party that the slave leaders anticipated its accession to power at the then next Presidential election.
So certain were they in their forebodings of defeat that they set about in dead earnest to put their side of the divided house in order for the impending struggle for Southern independence.
Military preparations went forward with a vengeance, arms and munitions of war which were the property of the General Government began to move southward, to Southern military depots and posts for the defence of the United States South, when at last the word “disunion” should be pronounced over the Republic.
The Lincoln-Douglass debate augmented everywhere the excitement, fed the already mighty numbers of the new party.
More and more the public consciousness and conviction were squaring with Mr. Lincoln's oracular words in respect that the Union could not “endure permanently half slave and half free.”
The darkness and tumult of the rising tempest were advancing apace, when suddenly there burst from the national firmanent the first warning peal of thunder, and over Virginia there sped the first bolt of the storm.
John Brown with his brave little band, at Harper's Ferry, had struck for the freedom of the slave.
Tired of words, the believer in blood and iron as a deliverer, had crossed from Pennsylvania into Virginia on the evening of October 16, 1859, and seized the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry.
Although soon overpowered, captured, tried, and hanged for his pains by the slave-power, the martyr had builded better than he knew.
For the blow struck by him then and there ended almost abruptly the period
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