small farmers,
trafficking merchants, and mechanics did not possess bravery enough
to fight for _liberty_.

Justice Catron, especially, claimed that Napoleon I., by the
insertion of the third article of the treaty of cession of the
Louisiana Province, had forever fastened slavery on it. But of
this we have already spoken.(96)

It was slavery's last triumph. Dred Scott, his wife, and two little
girls were remanded to slavery, to be freed by the irresistible
might of divine justice, worked out through the expiating blood of
the long-offending white race, commingled on many fields with the
blood of their own race.

(92) 19th Howard (_U. S._), pp. 393-633.

(93) Con., Art. IV., Sec. 3, Par. 2.

(94) Con., Art. III., Sec. 2.

(95) Robert Toombs of Georgia in extravagant exuberance is reported
to have said: "I expect to call the roll of my slaves at the foot
of Bunker Hill."

(96) _Ante_, p. 43-5.

XX
JOHN BROWN RAID--1859

John Brown, of Kansas fame, eccentric, misguided, and intense in
his hatred of slavery, and of martyr stuff, encouraged by some of
the most influential anti-slavery men of the North, who were goaded
on by slavery's perennial aggressions, with a "_pike-pole_" at
Harper's Ferry (October 16, 1859) pricked the fetid pit of slavery,
causing a tremor to run through the whole body of it. He had with
him an _army of eighteen_, five of whom were free negroes.(97)
They had rifles and pistols for themselves, and a few pikes for
the slaves they hoped to free.

Brown had assembled his band at the Kennedy farm in Maryland, a
few miles distant from Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

He professed to believe he might succeed if he could take the latter
place, as it "would serve as a notice to the slaves that their
friends had come, and as a trumpet to rally them to his standard."
This he stated to Frederick Douglass, whom he urged in vain to join
his expedition.(98) His object was to free slaves, not to take
life.

This daring body seized the United States armory, arsenal, and the
rifle-works, all government property. By midnight Brown was in
full possession of Harper's Ferry. Before morning he caused the
arrest of two prominent slave owners, one of whom was Colonel Lewis
Washington, the great grandson of a brother of George Washington,
capturing of him the sword of Frederick the Great, and a brace of
pistols of Lafayette, presents from them, respectively, to General
Washington. It was Brown's s