Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/13

Rh "Answer. It was. I answer these questions out of courtesy to the Chairman, but I must think they are rather wide."

Of these three witnesses, one, Giddings, represented a district in the House of Representatives from Ohio for a long series of years, and is known to the country as an intelligent man; another, Dr. Howe, holds the highest professional and social position in the city of Boston. The other, Mr. Stearns, is a merchant in the same city, of wealth and with all the influence usually attending it. With such elements at work, unchecked by law and not rebuked but encouraged by public opinion, with money freely contributed and placed in irresponsible hands, it may easily be seen how this expedition to excite servile war in one of the States of the Union was got up, and it may equally be seen how like expeditions may certainly be anticipated in future whenever desperadoes offer themselves to carry them, into execution. In regard to the one here inquired into, it appears that Brown, after the dispersal of his convention at Chatham, proceeded to the eastern States to provide materials both of arms and money; and in reference to the ease with which the latter was obtained without scrutiny as to the uses to which it was to be put, it will stand upon the record as a remarkable fact, that a check for one hundred dollars given by Gerritt Smith to Brown was handed by him directly, in part payment, to the manufacturer of the pikes with which the slaves were to have been armed. This gentleman, Mr. Smith, is known to the country as a man of large wealth and a liberal contributor to this pretended "cause." By reason of his very infirm health he was not summoned as a witness before the committee; and the use of this particular check is not referred to as proof in any manner that its contributor knew definitely what was to be done with it, but it is referred to as a most persuasive proof of the utter insecurity of the peace and safety of some of the States of this Union, in the existing condition of the public mind and its purposes in the non-slaveholding States. It may not become the committee to suggest a duty in those States to provide by proper legislation against machinations by their citizens or within their borders destructive of the peace of their confederate republics; but it does become them fully to expose the consequences resulting from the present license there existing, because the peace and integrity of the Union is necessarily involved in its continuance.

It has been already stated in this report that Brown, learning, during or just after the adjournment of the convention at Chatham, that Forbes had betrayed his plot, made an effort through his emissary, Realf, to recover the correspondence between himself and Forbes, which, if exposed, would establish it. And it would appear that Forbes considered, by his revelations at Washington, in May, 1858, that he had done what Brown feared he would do. This is referred to in the testimony of Realf, at page 100, where the committee were endeavoring to trace the arms of the Massachusetts Kansas Committee to Brown's possession. The witness states:

"Within a day or two following the convention at Chatham, John Brown said to me that he had received a copy of a letter written by Senator Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, from Washington city, to Dr. Howe, of Boston," &c.