purpose to plunder. To them John Brown and his men were
a gang of desperate robbers, who had learned by some means that
government had sent a large sum of money to Harper's Ferry to pay off
the workmen in its employ there, and they had gone thence to fill
their pockets from this money. The fact is, that outside of a few
friends, scattered in different parts of the country, and the
slave-holders of Virginia, few persons understood the significance of
the hour. That a man might do something very audacious and desperate
for money, power or fame, was to the general apprehension quite
possible; but, in face of plainly-written law, in face of
constitutional guarantees protecting each State against domestic
violence, in face of a nation of forty million of people, that
nineteen men could invade a great State to liberate a despised and
hated race, was to the average intellect and conscience, too monstrous
for belief. In this respect the vision of Virginia was clearer than
that of the nation. Conscious of her guilt and therefore full of
suspicion, sleeping on pistols for pillows, startled at every unusual
sound, constantly fearing and expecting a repetition of the Nat Turner
insurrection, she at once understood the meaning, if not the magnitude
of the affair. It was this understanding which caused her to raise the
lusty and imploring cry to the Federal government for help, and it was
not till he who struck the blow had fully explained his motives and
object, that the incredulous nation in any wise comprehended the true
spirit of the raid, or of its commander. Fortunate for his memory,
fortunate for the brave men associated with him, fortunate for the
truth of history, John Brown survived the saber gashes, bayonet wounds
and bullet holes, and was able, though covered with blood, to tell his
own story and make his own defense. Had he with all his men, as might
have been the case, gone down in the shock of battle, the world would
have had no true basis for its judgment, and one of the most heroic
efforts ever witnessed in behalf of liberty would have been confounded
with base and selfish purposes. When, like savages, the Wises, the
Vallandinghams, the Washingtons, the Stuarts and others stood around
the fallen and bleeding hero, and sought by torturing questions to
wring from his supposed dying lips some word by which to soil the
sublime undertaking, by implicating Gerrit Smith, Joshua R. Giddings,
Dr. S. G. Howe, G. L. Stearns, Edw