o Virginia on the
evening of October 16, 1859, and seized the United States Armory at
Harper's Ferry. Although soon overpowered, captured, tried, and hanged
for his pains by the slave-power, the martyr had builded better than he
knew. For the blow struck by him then and there ended almost abruptly
the period of argument and ushered in the period of arms. The jar from
that battle-ax at the roots of the slave system hurled together in a
death struggle right and wrong, freedom and slavery, in the republic.

This attempt on the part of John Brown to liberate the slaves seemed to
Garrison "misguided, wild, and apparently insane, though disinterested
and well-intended." On non-resistant grounds he deplored this use of the
sword to effect emancipation, and condemned the leader. But, judging him
according to the standard of Bunker Hill and the men of 1776, he did not
doubt that Brown deserved "to be held in grateful and honorable
remembrance to the latest posterity, by all those who glory in the deeds
of a Wallace or Tell, a Washington or Warren."

The raid of Brown and his subsequent execution, and their reception at
the North revealed how vast was the revolution in public sentiment on
the slavery question which had taken place there, since the murder of
Lovejoy, eighteen years before. Lovejoy died defending the right of free
speech and the liberty of the press, yet the Attorney-General of
Massachusetts declared that "he died as the fool dieth." Brown died in
an invasion of a slave State, and in an effort to emancipate the slaves
with a band of eighteen followers, and he was acclaimed, from one end of
the free States to the other, hero and martyr. Mr. Garrison commenting
on this immensely significant fact, acutely and justly observed that:
"The sympathy and admiration now so widely felt for him, prove how
marvelous has been the change affected in public opinion during the
thirty years of moral agitation--a change so great indeed, that whereas,
ten years since, there were thousands who could not endure my lightest
word of rebuke of the South, they can now easily swallow John Brown
whole and his rifle into the bargain. In firing his gun, he has merely
told us what time of day it is. It is high noon, thank God!"

But there is another circumstance hardly less significant of another
change at the North even more momentous than the one just noted.

On December 2d, the day on which Brown was hung, solemn funeral
observances were h