for seeing negroes freed. But, on the whole, the inhabitants of that line of country are disposed to cast in their lot with the North, whenever the time comes for a final decision of the question.
Such is the state of affairs when Old Brown — Old Ossawatomie, as he is called at home— appears upon the scene. A little time will show whether he may shake hands with Mum Bet over a lapse of ninety years, as a finisher of her work, or whether he has increased the difficulty of it by a grave mistake.
Brown is a “son of the Puritans” (as New England men call themselves), bearing a thorough likeness to his forefathers. He went forth into Kansas, with his train of sons, to fight for the freedom of the soil: and he, and such men as he, achieved it. Always armed, usually in the saddle, stern, calm, silent, except when he had to say burning words, he baffled and defeated the “Border Ruffians“ from over the frontier, with the loss of several sons, and to the confirmation of his interior persuasion that he was the destined liberator of American slaves.
He discovered that in Missouri, whence the “Border Ruffians” came, slavery was becoming unpopular; and that the majority of the inhabitants would be glad to begin, at any moment, paying wages to their negroes, and leaving them free to manage their own affairs. He found these citizens fully aware, too, that the value of slaves as capital is only nominal, — their supposed value passing into the land at the moment of the labourer becoming free. Land is valueless in the slave States, when there are no slaves upon it. The Missouri people showed their opinions and wishes by electing anti-slavery representatives. Then Brown began helping away the slaves of the opponents of a change. By his own account, he enabled a great number to reach Canada.
All this while it was well known that in Western Virginia the landowners, — farmers living on high table-land, — had always found slavery injurious, and had for many years petitioned and struggled for some form of emancipation. It was notorious also that the frontier State of Maryland could no longer retain its slaves, who were always running away: and that the Courts were inflicting the most ferocious punishments on seamen and others who were supposed to have favoured the escape of negroes. This ferocity, and various proposed severities towards free negroes, betrayed the sense of insecurity which existed in Maryland.
Harper’s Ferry is a singularly beautiful spot, at the entrance of the Alleghanies, where the two great rivers, the Potomac and the Shenandoah, form a junction, and treat the traveller with the last chorus of many waters before he enters upon the retreats of the mountain range. Thither come the farmers of Western Virginia, when they have to enter upon the lower world; and thither come the Maryland and Lower Virginian slaveholders when they want to pass westwards, or to seek a cool temperature in summer. It is just within the Virginian frontier, and precisely where Maryland is narrowest, so that Pennsylvania may be reached in a few hours.
Thither came old Brown, a year or more ago, after having buried his sons, and laid low his enemies in Kansas, and seen the soil safe from the intrusion of slavery, and put the Missouri people in the way of getting rid of what remained of the curse in their territory. It appears that he believed it to be the duty of his life to go wherever he could most effectually repeat this kind of effort. So he went to Harper’s Ferry, where, close upon Pennsylvania, where the free blacks are very flourishing, he could operate at once upon Maryland and Virginia. If he had wished to raise a servile war, he would have gone down into the cotton States: but, as he says, he had no desire to kindle such horrors. He wished to free the slaves without bloodshed; — that is, by running them off. For a year he has lived, with two or three coadjutors, at a farm near Harper’s Ferry, maturing his schemes, and collecting arms and other resources for holding the ground while the negroes ran. If he had consulted the abolitionists (properly so called), they would have tried to dissuade him; for they have never favoured such methods. But Brown is a man who takes his own course, as men who believe themselves heaven-directed must naturally do.
How far he has been deceived by himself, and how far by others, time will perhaps show. It is certain that he expected the negroes to be more ready to start, and many more whites to be at his command, than he actually found. The negroes there were not field-negroes, nor numerous, and they were afraid to stir. So some say; while others believe that the “stampede” has been a very large one. The great phenomenon in the case is, the intense terror which existed at Washington, eighty miles off, and through the slave States, when twenty-two men took possession of Harper’s Ferry on behalf of the negroes.
Wherever there was previous dissatisfaction with the worn-out “peculiar institution,“ it will surely be completely discredited now, as a cause of such penalties as the citizens of free States! never have to pay.
Between the frantic terror in the whole range of slave States, and the astonishment in the North at the disclosure of so feeble a constitution of society; between the fantastic notions in Virginia of the views and conduct of the leading citizens of New York and New England, and the mingled indignation and amusement of New Yorkers and New Englanders at the imputations thrown out against them, there must be either a better understanding, or a decisive breach. Either way, the wild and abortive attempt at Harper’s Ferry will probably be the proximate cause of the settlement of the great question of the existence of slavery in a democratic republic. The insti- tution itself may run its chance of existence in the separate States, in competition with the free labour which is entering the field at all points; but, as a national institution, slavery is, in the opinion of all well- judging men, approaching its end.
Old Brown’s enterprise has, most unexpectedly, so affected the elections in the North, as to render the chances of an anti-slavery President stronger than they ever were before. If such a choice