d grounds to hold the
Republican party at large responsible for Brown's raid. They felt
obliged to report that they could not recommend any legislation to
meet similar cases in the future, since the "invasion" of Virginia was
not of the kind mentioned in the Constitution, but was "simply the act
of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political
authority." Collamer, of Vermont, and Doolittle, of Wisconsin,
Republican members of the committee, in their minority report,
considered the affair an outgrowth of the pro-slavery lawlessness in
Kansas. Senator Douglas, of Illinois, however, apparently with the
object of still further setting himself right with the South, and
atoning for his Freeport heresy, made a long speech in advocacy of a
law to punish conspiracies in one State or Territory against the
government, people, or property of another; once more quoting
Lincoln's Springfield speech, and Seward's Rochester speech as
containing revolutionary doctrines.

[Sidenote] Dec, 2, 1859.

[Sidenote] James Redpath, "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p. 41.

[Sidenote] George Willis Cooke, "Life of Emerson," p. 140.

In the country at large, as in Congress, the John Brown raid excited
bitter discussion and radically diverse comment--some execrating him
as a deservedly punished felon, while others exalted him as a saint.
His Boston friends particularly, who had encouraged him with voice or
money, were extravagant in their demonstrations of approval and
admiration. On the day of his execution religious services were held,
and funeral bells were tolled. "The road to heaven," said Theodore
Parker, "is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also,
as easy." "Some eighteen hundred years ago," said Thoreau, "Christ
was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These
are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links." Emerson,
using a yet stronger figure, had already called him "a new saint,
waiting yet his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the
gallows glorious like the cross."

[Sidenote] Lecture at Brooklyn, November 1, 1859.

[Sidenote] "Echoes of Harper's Ferry," p. 48.

[Sidenote] Letter to Committee of Merchants, December 20, 1859.
Ibid., p. 299.

Amid this conflict of argument, public opinion in the free-States
gravitated to neither extreme. It accepted neither the declaration of
the great orator Wendell Phillips, that "the lesson of the hour