General Washington, was wounded;
but few took notice of names in that first onset of the Civil War or
thought of the common history of the sections. Governor Wise, of
Virginia, hastened the militia to the scene, and Captain Robert E. Lee
led a small force of United States troops to the relief of the
endangered community. Brown failed in his efforts to arouse the negroes,
who were not the restless and resentful race they were thought to be. He
was soon surrounded and captured. A few people were killed, but the
institution of slavery was not touched.

But the noise of the attack was heard around the world. In the North men
of the highest standing proclaimed Brown a hero. At the time of his
execution in December so thoughtful a man as Emerson compared Brown's
gallows to the cross of Jesus of Nazareth. For a time the social
conscience of the East, at least, sensed this attack as a blow against
the common _Erbfeind_, as the Germans say of the French. It was the
"arrogant South" that had been struck. But when the Congressional
investigation was held, Republican leaders and religious organizations
everywhere insisted that they had never known the man, though there was
a widespread feeling that it would be wise for the Governor of Virginia
not to visit the death penalty upon the "deluded" prisoner.

Governor Wise was not the man to forgive an assault on the Old Dominion,
and he never thought of granting a pardon. He urged Virginia to
reorganize her militia, and he filled the state armory with some of the
weapons which were used with fatal effect at First Bull Run. Other
Southern States followed the example of Virginia and laid in supplies
for a conflict which many thought inevitable. Nor was it without
significance that new military companies and regiments were organized
and drilled in many parts of the North during the year 1860.

After months of angry and useless debates in Washington, the leaders of
the Democratic party gathered in Charleston in April, 1860, to nominate
their candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency. No other town
in the United States was more unfriendly to the cause of the leading
candidate, Douglas. As the delegates gathered, it was seen that every
delegation from every Northwestern State was instructed to vote as a
unit for Douglas, and it became evident that a safe majority would
insist on his nomination. The enthusiasm of the followers of the "Little
Giant" surpassed all similar demonstratio