ry for a long time. Whoever much fears or much
hopes for such an event will be alike disappointed....

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.
It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in
which the slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd
that the slaves, with all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it
could not succeed. That affair, in its philosophy, corresponds
with the many attempts related in history, at the assassination of
kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a
people till he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate
them. He ventures the attempt, which ends in little else than his
own execution. Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon, and John
Brown's attempt at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy,
precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England in
the one ease, and on New England in the other, does not disprove
the sameness of the two things.

[Sidenote] "Tribune Almanac," 1860.

The aggravation of partisan temper over the Harper's Ferry incident
found a manifestation in a contest over the Speakership in the House
of Representatives as prolonged and bitter as that which attended the
election of Banks. In the Congressional elections of 1858, following
the Lecompton controversy, the Democrats had once more lost control of
the House of Representatives; there having been chosen 113
Republicans, 93 Administration Democrats, 8 anti-Lecompton Democrats,
and 23 South Americans, as they were called; that is, members, mainly
from the slave-States, opposed to the Administration.

[Sidenote] "Globe," December 5, 1859, p. 3.

This Thirty-sixth Congress began its session three days after the
execution of John Brown, and the election of a Speaker was the first
work of the new House of Representatives. The Republicans, not having
a majority, made no caucus nomination; but John Sherman, of Ohio, had
the largest following on the first ballot, and thereafter received
their united efforts to elect him. At this point a Missouri member
introduced a resolution declaring: "That the doctrines and sentiments
of a certain book called 'The Impending Crisis of the South--How to
Meet It,' purporting to have been written by one Hinton R. Helper [of
North Carolina], are insurrectionary and hostile to the domestic peace
and tranquillity of the country, and that