the second day, a force of fifteen hundred men
surrounded the arsenal, and, when the insurgents surrendered, it
was found that there had been but twenty-two in all. Four were
still alive, including their leader, John Brown.

JOHN BROWN AT HARPER'S FERRY.

Brown was a man of singular courage, perseverance, and zeal, but
was entirely misguided and misinformed. He had conceived the
utterly impracticable scheme of liberating the slaves of the South
by calling on them to rise, putting arms in their hands, and aiding
them to gain their freedom. He had borne a very conspicuous and
courageous part in the Kansas struggles, and had been a terror to
the slave-holders on the Missouri border. His bravery was of a
rare type. He had no sense of fear. Governor Wise stated that
during the fight, while Brown held the arsenal, with one of his
sons lying dead beside him, another gasping with a mortal wound,
he felt the pulse of the dying boy, used his own musket, and coolly
commanded his men, all amid a shower of bullets from the attacking
force. While of sound mind on most subjects, Brown had evidently
lost his mental balance on the one topic of slavery. His scheme
miscarried the moment its execution was attempted, as any one not
blinded by fanaticism could have from the first foreseen.

The matter was taken up in hot wrath by the South, with Governor
Wise in the lead. The design was not known to or approved by any
body of men in the North; but an investigation was moved in the
Senate, by Mr. Mason of Virginia, with the evident view of fixing
the responsibility on the Northern people, or, at least, upon the
Republican party. These men affected to see in John Brown, and
his handful of followers, only the advance guard of another irruption
of Goths and Vandals from the North, bent on inciting servile
insurrection, on plunder, pillage, and devastation. Mr. Mason's
committee found no sentiment in the North justifying Brown, but
the irritating and offensive course of the Virginia senator called
forth a great deal of defiant anti-slavery expression which, in
his judgment, was tantamount to treason. Brown was tried and
executed. He would not permit the plea of unsound mind to be made
on his behalf, and to the end he behaved with that calm courage
which always attracts respect and admiration. Much was made of
the deliverance of the South, from a great peril, and every thing
indicated