The non-political abolitionists were generally passed over in the search for Brown's accomplices which immediately began after Harper's Ferry—through the Democratic press, and then through the Senatorial investigating2 committee directed by Senator Mason. The Republican leaders, especially Seward, for his ‘irrepressible conflict,’3 were held responsible; and their organs were quick to repudiate the connection, and to shift the burden on to4 the Garrisonians. For the moment, their fears told them that John Brown had ruined their chances of success at the next Presidential election. In this state of mind Henry Wilson came, on the first tidings of the outbreak, to confer with Mr. Garrison at his home in Dix Place, and departed with cheering assurances that what had happened was all for the best.
To the editor, the presentation of the news of the hour—the recording, “as fully as possible, the amazing outpouring of public sentiment, pro and con, in relation to John Brown” Ms. Jan. 14, 1860, W. L. G. to S. J. May.—seemed, in the stirring interval between the émeute and the executions at Charlestown, of far more consequence than any extended comments of his own— had there been room for them in the Liberator.
‘As to Capt. Brown,’ he wrote in his paper of October 28,5
all who know him personally are united in the conviction that a more honest, conscientious, truthful, brave, disinterested man (however misguided or unfortunate) does not exist; that he possesses a deeply religious nature, powerfully wrought upon by the trials through which he has passed; that he as sincerely believes himself to have been raised up by God to deliver the
