[74] John Brown an apotheosis, and consigned his example to emulation as one not only of public virtue, but of particular service to God. But a much graver series of events was to show the real sympathy of the North with John Brown's “plan of action,” and to attest the rapid tendency of the Black Republican party to the worst schools of Abolition. At the meeting of Congress in December, 1859, the Black Republicans nominated to the speakership of the House Mr. Sherman of Ohio, who had made himself especially odious to the South, by publicly recommending, in connection with sixty-eight other Republican Congressmen, a fanatical document popularly known as Helper's book. This publication, thus endorsed by Black Republicans, and circulated by them in the Northern elections, openly defended and sought to excite servile insurrections in the South; and it was with reason that the entire Southern delegation gave warning that they would regard the election of Mr. Sherman, or of any man with his record, as an open declaration of war upon the institutional of the South; as much so, some of the members declared, as if the John Brown raid were openly approved by a majority of the House of Representatives. This book, which even Mr. Seward, the leader of the Black Republican! party, had recommended, along with others, urged the North to exterminate slavery, and at once, without the slightest compensation, in language vs which the following is a specimen, addressed to the Southerners: “Frown sirs; fret, foam, prepare your weapons, threaten, strike, shoot, stab, bring on civil war, dissolve the Union; nay, annihilate the solar system, if you will-do all this, more, less, better, worse-anything; do what you will sirs-you can neither foil nor intimidate us; our purpose is as fixed as the eternal pillars of heaven; we have determined to abolish slavery, and — so help us God-abolish it we will!” Some other extracts from this infamous book we may place here to indicate its character, and the importance of the act of the Black Republican party in endorsing it as a campaign document:
Slavery is a great moral, social, civil, and political evil, to be got rid of at the earliest practicable period .... Three-quarters of a century hence, if the South retains slavery, which God forbid! she will be to the North what Poland is to Russia, Cuba to Spain, and Ireland to England .... Our own banner is inscribed-No cooperation with slaveholders in politics; no fellowship with them in religion; no affiliation with them in society; no recognition of pro-slavery men, except as ruffians, outlaws, and criminals. . .. . We believe it is, as it ought to be, the desire, the determination, and the destiny of the Republican party to give the death-blow to slavery. .... In any event, come what will, transpire what may, tho institution of slavery must be abolished. .... We are determined to abolish slavery at all hazards — in defiance of all the opposition,
