ch, strong, sincere, and conservative, and had
a marked effect. It was intended, not only to influence the canvass then
pending, but to have an effect in controlling the National convention to
be held six months later. It was copied far and wide, and the success of
the State candidates whom Mr. Toombs supported showed that its
statesmanlike utterances were adopted overwhelmingly in Georgia.

CHAPTER XV.

JOHN BROWN'S RAID.

But events were moving fast and furiously. The times needed no new
Mirabeau. The people were slowly welding a revolution, which must sweep
statesmen from their feet and bear upon its fierce current the strong
and weak alike. It has been asserted, and with truth, that disunion was
precipitated by the people, not by the politicians--by the North as well
as by the South.

The raid of John Brown of Kansas into Virginia was not an event which
would have stirred the people in ordinary times. It was the wild foray
of a fanatic, who tried to stir up a slave insurrection. He was
captured, tried, convicted, and hanged. There were demoralized followers
and duped negroes with him, when he was overcome by Colonel Robert E.
Lee, with a detachment of marines, at Harper's Ferry. This affair
created a feverish excitement. The South did not know how far this
movement extended, nor by what authority it had been started. The
criminal was execrated at the South and intemperately defended at the
North. The man, who under normal conditions of society would have been
sent to the insane asylum, was sentenced speedily to the gallows and
mourned as a martyr by many at the North. Bells were tolled in his
honor. Following this remarkable episode, several free States passed
strong laws against the detention of fugitive slaves, and the Northern
press and pulpit teemed with new lessons and fresh morals. John Brown's
body, in the language of the sentimental dirge, "lay moldering in his
grave"; but the spirit of the Kansas boomer actually pervaded the land.

What the Dred Scott decision had wrought at the North, the Ossawatomie
raid awoke at the South. The main features of Buchanan's administration
to hasten the "irrepressible conflict" were the well-weighed words of
the Chief Justice and the wild invasion of a border ruffian. Strange
paradox, but such were the influences at work in those disordered times.
Men lost their moorings, and political parties abandoned settled
policies. Events crowded with remorseless impact up