Page:Report of Senate Select Committee on the Invasion of Harper's Ferry.pdf/24

24 acts of lawless violence to destroy it, especially in those who had witnessed and suffered by these collisions. They are, however, all without excuse, and they but add to the experience that no public peace or private security can be found but where every disregard of law meets with the most prompt public rebuke and effective punishment or correction.

While this act of violence and treason, and the alarm, suspicion, suffering, and death it involved are so deplorable, we cannot but see that the lessons which it teaches furnish many considerations of security against its repetition. Ages might not produce another John Brown, or so fortuitously supply him with such materials. The fatal termination of the enterprise in the death and execution of so large a part of the number engaged; the dispersion of the small remainder as fugitives in the land; the entire disinclination of the slaves to insurrection, or to receive aid for that purpose, which was there exhibited; the very limited number and peculiar character of the conspirators, all combine to furnish assurance against the most distant probability of its repetition.

The extent and freedom with which this investigation has been conducted has resulted in showing that the people of the free States have had no complicity with this atrocity; and, if viewed with candor, the evidence will remove the suspicion of extensive complicity which the possession of such a quantity of arms, unexplained, was likely to create, it now fully appearing they were never furnished for such a purpose. This investigation has its value, if its record be examined and treated with candor, as it fully shows that there is no such ground of suspicion and distrust as has been indulged amongst our people, and that lawless violence as to slavery, by efforts from beyond its border, has culminated in this disastrous and abortive experiment.

We have very succinctly stated the origin, agents, instruments, purposes, and result of this deplorable outrage, and briefly stated the reflections, we think, it suggests. The facts disclosed, viewed in the light in which they appear to us, and in which we have presented them, however much calling for reprobation and regret, may be, and we think should be, used and improved to allay excitement, quiet suspicion, and restore tranquillity.

The committee having come to the conclusion that no such facts have been disclosed as call for any congressional legislation, we should regard this as the termination of its duty; but, by its majority, the committee seems to have entertained a different view of the object of the resolutions and purpose of the inquiry. They give, as we suppose, a different construction from our understanding of those words of the resolutions which direct an inquiry "whether any citizens of the United States not present were implicated therein, or accessory thereto, by contributions of money, arms, munitions, or otherwise." We consider that no man can be properly said to be "implicated" in any transaction, or accessory thereto, who had no knowledge of its purpose, character, or existence; and the whole committee consider that there is no evidence that any citizen, not present, had any such knowledge of this. Yet the committee, by its majority, seem to regard it as their duty to inquire whether there are any citizens who,