Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/291

 Address of Major Graham Daves. 279

with money and supplies. Several citizens were killed in this das- tardly outrage, as were also members of Brown's party. No negroes of the neighborhood came to his assistance, and it is a pitiable com- mentary that the first person killed by his men was a negro, an employe of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Brown was promptly captured and brought to trial with several of his followers, all of whom were convicted and executed at Charlestown, Va. Promi- nent and principally instrumental in his capture was Lieutenant- Colonel Robert E. Lee, in command of a body of United States marines, who was assisted by Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart.

The connection with this event of these officers, afterwards so distinguished in the war between the States, is worthy of note. This action of a deluded fanatic, who paid the penalty of an infamous crime by a justly merited death, was the logical outcome of the teachings of the abolition party. It startled the whole country, and for the South had the gravest significance. Its real meaning was more fully demonstrated and emphasized at the time, and after, of Brown's execution. There was tolling of bells, minute guns were fired in many parts of the North. In church-services held in mem- ory of him, Brown was portrayed as a martyr, was compared to our Redeemer on Calvary, and that not by ignorant enthusiasts but by men as prominent as Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said "the new saint will make the gallows glorious like the cross." It was alarming, inconceivable that a miscreant whose previous career of crime in Kansas was well known, who was guilty of insurrection, rapine and murder, should, in consequence of his just punishment, be apotheosized and entitled " St. John the Just." It is difficult to realize the extent of the blind fanaticism that seemed to possess peo- ple otherwise sane. It aroused the deepest feeling throughout the South, and caused anxious thought to the most hopeful and conser- vative. It was, in truth, a dreadful thought, and one that gave every one pause, that so many of our fellow-countrymen could ap- prove and applaud such a man and his act, the effect of which might well have been the murder of men, women and children at the South, and the devastation of this fair land.

THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN.

In November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States by a sectional vote and upon strictly sectional issues. The platform of his party, upon which Mr. Lincoln stood, asserted that ' ' the normal condition of all the territory of the United States