Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/23

Rh thereto or otherwise, nor any proof that any others had any knowledge of the conspiracy or its purposes in the year 1859, though Realf, Forbes, and some very few may have understood it in 1858, when it failed of execution.

Although some of the testimony tends to show that some abolitionists have at times contributed money to what is occasionally called practical abolitionism—that is, in aiding the escape of slaves—and may have placed too implicit confidence in John Brown, yet there is no evidence to show, or cause to believe, they had any complicity with this conspiracy, or any suspicion of its existence or design, before its explosion.

There was no evidence tending to show that there ever was any conspiracy or design, by any one, to rescue John Brown or his associates from prison in Virginia.

The place and the boldness of this outbreak, the purpose it entertained, the deaths it involved, and the amount of arms and munitions with which it was supplied, combined to produce not only great alarm, but also a strong suspicion of extensive complicity. Time and investigation has happily dissipated much of such alarm and suspicion, and shown that this was but an offshoot from the extensive outrages and lawlessness in Kansas, commenced and continued there, by armed invasions of that Territory to control its own people, the elections, and the government, for the introduction and perpetuity of slavery in that Territory, on the one hand, and resistance or defense on the other. This invited there many men of desperation, and others became so by the irritations and excitements of those collisions. When comparative peace was restored there many, trained by such a school, were ready for new fields of lawless enterprise. It was from such elements that John Brown concocted his conspiracy, consisting of young men and boys, over whom he had entire control, many of them foreigners, and none of substance or position in the country.

By perverting the arms, ammunition, and clothing with which he had been intrusted, from the purpose for which he had received them, he secured his supplies.

It is almost astonishing that in a country like ours, laden with the rich experience of the blessings of security under the protection of law, there should still be found large bodies of men laboring under the infatuation that any good object can be effected by lawlessness and violence. It is the prostration of law, which is the only bond of security. It can, in its nature, beget nothing but resistance, retaliation, insecurity, and disaster. And yet, with all our intelligence and experience, we have most unfortunate and deplorable manifestations of such infatuations. They are dangerous in direct proportion to the extent of public countenance they receive. No object, however desirable, can justify them or prevent their disastrous example and consequences. The unpunished lawless invasions of our weak neighboring nations; the flagrant and merciless breaches of our laws against the African slave trade, "unwhipt of justice;" the lawless armed invasions of our own people in our own weak Territory of Kansas, not only unpunished, but justified, sustained, and even rewarded, all, it is believed, to extend and sustain slavery, tended strongly to suggest