Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/21

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 * SENATE.
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 * 1st Session.
 * No. 278.
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 * 1st Session.
 * No. 278.
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The treasonable conspiracy of John Brown and his associates, and its fatal development at Harper's Ferry, in Virginia, in October last, has become matter of history, and all its details are too well known to require recapitulation.

While the excitement, alarm, and suspicion were rife in the public mind, the Senate adopted the resolutions raising the committee of inquiry in relation thereto. Their only legitimate purpose was to inquire whether anything had transpired which required further legislation by Congress for future security. Though drawn in very general and undefined terms, in some part almost implying the exercise of judicial inquisition, yet from an unwillingness to incur the imputation of embarrassing full investigation, no one objected to their adoption. In the exercise of the same feeling we have made no objection to the great latitude of inquiry taken by the committee. We, however, distinctly understand, that if the resolutions and their peculiar phraseology were drawn or are used for any other purpose than that of furnishing to the Senate information for its own legislative action, it is a perversion and departure from the only justifiable purpose of their adoption.

The objects of inquiry, as stated in the resolutions, are the following, which are stated, not in the order of the resolutions, but in the order of their consecutive relation, for the purpose of their more orderly answer, to wit:

First. The facts in relation to the invasion and seizure of the armory and arsenal at Harper's Ferry.

Second. Whether it was in pursuance of an organization, and the nature and purpose thereof.

Third. The arms and munitions there possessed by the insurgents, and where and how obtained.

Fourth. Were any citizens, not present, implicated in, or accessory thereto, by contributions of arms, money, ammunition, or otherwise.

In relation to the first inquiry, the testimony taken before the committee discloses no material facts but such as appeared on the trial of the conspirators, and have been long since published and are fully known. They are briefly as follows: