lled the South with consternation. The prompt
condemnation of it by many Republican leaders did not offset, in the
minds of Southerners, the fury of praise accorded by others. The South
had a ghastly tradition derived chiefly from what is known as Nat
Turner's Rebellion in Virginia, a tradition of the massacre of white
women and children by negroes. As Brown had set opt to rouse a slave
rebellion, every Southerner familiar with his own traditions shuddered,
identifying in imagination John Brown and Nat Turner. Horror became rage
when the Southerners heard of enthusiastic applause in Boston and of
Emerson's description of Brown as "that new saint" who was to "make the
gallows glorious like the cross." In the excitement produced by remarks
such as this, justice was not done to Lincoln's censure. In his speech
at Cooper Institute in New York, in February, 1860, Lincoln had said:
"John Brown's effort...in its philosophy corresponds with the many
attempts related in history at the assassination of kings and emperors.
An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people, until he fancies
himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt
which ends in little else than in his own execution." A few months
afterwards, the Republican national convention condemned the act of
Brown as "among the gravest of crimes."

An immediate effect of the John Brown episode was a passionate outburst
from all the radical press of the South in defense of slavery. The
followers of Yancey made the most of their opportunity. The men who
voted at Vicksburg to reopen the slave trade could find no words to
measure their hatred of every one who, at this moment of crisis, would
not declare slavery a blessing. Many of the men who opposed the slave
traders also felt that, in the face of possible slave insurrection,
the peril of their families was the one paramount consideration.
Nevertheless, it is easy for the special pleader to give a
wrong impression of the sentiment of the time. A grim desire for
self-preservation took possession of the South, as well as a deadly fear
of any person or any thing that tended directly or indirectly to incite
the blacks to insurrection. Northerners of abolitionist sympathies were
warned to leave the country, and in some cases they were tarred and
feathered.

Great anger was aroused by the detection of book-agents who were
distributing a furious polemic against slavery, "The Impending Crisis
of the S