Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/18

18 Of the list of "insurgents" given in Colonel Lee's report, (fourteen whites and five negroes,) Brown, Stevens, and Coppic, of the whites, with Shields Green and Copeland, of the negroes, captured at the storming of the engine-house, were subsequently executed in Virginia, after judicial trial; as were also John E. Cook and Albert Hazlett, who at first escaped, but were captured in Pennsylvania and delivered up for trial to the authorities of Virginia—making in all seven thus executed. It does not seem to have been very clearly ascertained how many of the party escaped. Brown stated that his party consisted of twenty-two in number. Seven were executed, ten were killed at the Ferry; thus leaving five to be accounted for. Four of these five, it is believed, were left on the Maryland side in charge of the arms when Brown crossed the river, and who could not afterwards join him; leaving but one, who, as it would appear, is the only survivor of the party who accompanied Brown across the bridge, and whose escape is not accounted for.

The committee, after much consideration, are not prepared to suggest any legislation, which, in their opinion, would be adequate to prevent like occurrences in the future. The only provisions in the Constitution of the United States which would seem to import any authority in the government of the United States to interfere on occasions affecting the peace or safety of the States, are found in the eighth section of the first article, amongst the powers of Congress, "to provide for calling for the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions;" and in the fourth section of the fourth article, in the following words: "The United States shall guaranty to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion, and, on the application of the legislature or of the executive, (when the legislature cannot be convened,) against domestic violence." The "invasion" here spoken of would seem to import an invasion by the public force of a foreign power, or (if not so limited and equally referable to an invasion by one State of another) still it would seem that public force, or force exercised under the sanction of acknowledged political power, is there meant. The invasion (to call it so) by Brown and his followers at Harper's Ferry, was in no sense of that character. It was simply the act of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political authority—distinguishable only from ordinary felonies by the ulterior ends in contemplation by them, and by the fact that the money to maintain the expedition, and the large armament they brought with them, had been contributed and furnished by the citizens of other States of the Union, under circumstances that must continue to jeopard the safety and peace of the Southern States, and against which Congress has no power to legislate.

If the several States, whether from motives of policy or a desire to preserve the peace of the Union, if not from fraternal feeling, do not hold it incumbent on them, after the experience of the country, to guard in future by appropriate legislation against occurrences similar to the one here inquired into, the committee can find no guarantee elsewhere for the security of peace between the States of the Union.

So far, however, as the safety of the public property is involved, the