James Buchanan, Buchanan's administration on the eve of the rebellion

[62] sirs, and think about it, dream over it, and let us know how you feel to-morrow morning.

Such are specimens from the book indorsed and commended by the acknowledged leader of the Republican party, after having read it ‘with great attention,’ and by sixty-eight prominent Republican members of Congress In the midst of the excitement produced by this book, both North and South, occurred the raid of John Brown into Virginia. This was undertaken for the avowed purpose of producing a servile insurrection among the slaves, and aiding them by military force in rising against their masters.

John Brown was a man violent, lawless, and fanatical. Amid the troubles in Kansas he had distinguished himself, both by word and by deed, for boldness and cruelty. His ruling passion was to become the instrument of abolishing slavery, by the strong hand, throughout the slaveholding States. With him, this amounted almost. to insanity. Notwithstanding all this, he was so secret in his purposes that he had scarcely any confidants. This appears in a striking manner from the testimony taken before the Senate Committee.¹ Several abolitionists had contributed money to him in aid of the anti-slavery cause generally, but he had not communicated to them for what particular purpose this was to be employed. He had long meditated an irruption into Virginia, to excite and to aid a rising of the slaves against their masters, and for this he had prepared. He had purchased two hundred Sharp's carbines, two hundred revolver pistols, and about one thousand pikes, with which to arm the slaves. These arms he had collected and deposited in the vicinity of Harper's Ferry. When the plot was ripe for execution, a little before midnight on Sunday evening, the 16th of October, 1859, he, with sixteen white and five negro confederates, rushed across the Potomac to Harper's Ferry, and there seized the armory, arsenal, and rifle factory belonging to the United States. When the inhabitants awoke in the morning they found, greatly to their terror and surprise, that these places, with the town itself, were all in possession of John Brown's force. It would be a waste of time to detail the history of this