in the West Indies stopped and examined some vessels under the American
flag, suspected of being slavers. This was resented by the American
Government, which sent war ships to the scene and took the British
Government to task. In Congress both parties joined in denunciation of
British aggression. The right of search, exercised by England for the
reclamation of her seamen from American vessels, had been one of the
grounds of war in 1812. It had been left unmentioned in the treaty of
peace, but England had silently relinquished the practice. Now, at the
demand of the United States, she expressly relinquished the right of
search in the case of supposed slave ships under the American flag,
unless the result should justify the suspicion. Thus the honor of the
Stars and Stripes was vindicated,--and the flag was made a great
convenience to slavers. The administration, however, bestirred itself
toward doing its own share in the work of sea-police, and several slave
ships were captured. The crew of one of these were acquitted, by a
Charleston jury, against the clearest evidence. There was some open talk
in the Southern papers of legalizing the traffic. But the trade was
destined to a discouraging check a year or two later, when President
Lincoln signed the first death warrant of the captain of a slaver.

After the Kansas troubles had subsided, John Brown sought some way to
make a direct attack on slavery. For many years he had brooded on the
matter, in the light of his reading of the Old Testament, and he felt
himself called to assail it as the Jewish heroes assailed the enemies of
Jehovah and his people. As early as 1847 he had disclosed to Frederick
Douglass, during a visit to Brown's home in Springfield, Mass., a plan
for freeing the slaves. He did not contemplate a general insurrection
and slaughter. But he proposed to establish a fugitive refuge in the
chain of mountains stretching from the border of New York toward the
Gulf. "These mountains," he said, "are the basis of my plan. God has
given the strength of the hills to freedom; they were placed here for
the emancipation of the negro race; they are full of natural forts,
where one man for defense will be equal to one hundred for attack; they
are full also of good hiding-places, where large numbers of brave men
could be concealed, and baffle and elude pursuit for a long time.... The
true object to be sought is, first of all, to destroy the money-value of
slave property; and