Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/341

Rh and foiled before. There was scarcely any apprehension in the South of a negro uprising, and none of servile war. The act of a wretched rowdy, imbued with the spirit of hate which had been intensified in bloody Kansas, was turned into political account. It is scarcely credible, although true, that public meetings, composed of good patriotic citizens, were held, speeches made and resolutions passed in approval of the purpose, or at least the motive, of John Brown. Wendell Phillips, speaking in Mr. Beecher’s church, eulogized what he called the glorious deed. Clergymen compared the gallows of Brown with the Cross of Christ. A great audience crowded Tremont Temple on the day of the hanging in order to express a public sympathy. Meetings of like import were held in many other places and bells were tolled at the hour of execution. There was, in truth, no general indorsement by the people or the statesmen of the North of the insurrectionary designs of John Brown. There was no common Northern sentiment justifying the murderous act. His deeds were characterized as indefensible even by many who avowed their pity, but there were expressions, sufficiently strong and exasperating, to provoke the people of the South. The secret methods of the invader of Virginia reminded them of the covert proceedings of the emissaries who had occasionally in former times sought to distribute incendiary literature among the negroes. The manner of the attack, with weapons and ammunition sufficient for a thousand slaves, pointed out the bloody purpose of the assailant. Helper’s book, &quot;The Impending Crisis,&quot; recently pamphleted and indorsed by sixty-seven prominent Congressmen and scattered broadly over the land, had commended just such an act of war. The alarm in the South was certainly real, because it was based on the declared doctrines of the anti-slavery sectionalists, who were apparently growing in power and increasing in aggression. Their political fears were not allayed by any statement