as Joshua's attack on
a walled city with trumpets and shouts, and as Gideon's band of
three hundred, armed only with trumpets, lamps, and pitchers in
its encounter with a great army. As Jericho's walls had fallen,
and Gideon's band had put to flight Midianites and Amalekites in
countless multitudes like grasshoppers, so, Brown expected, at
least fondly hoped and devoutly prayed, to see the myriads of
human slaves go free in America. He did not, however, expect a
general rising of the slaves.

He did not seek to San Domingoize the South, and against this he
provided penalties in his prepared provisional constitution.(99)

Brown had been encouraged and materially aided by Gerritt Smith,
Dr. Howe of Boston, Stearns, Sanborn, Frederick Douglass, Higginson,
Emerson, Parker, Phillips, and others of less renown; some, if not
all, of whom had neither understood nor approved of his plan of
attack.

The slaves did not rise, not did they in any considerable number
even know at the time the real purpose of their would-be liberator.

During the excitement of the first news Greeley prophetically wrote:

"We deeply regret this outbreak; but remembering if their fault
was grievous, grieviously have they answered for it, we will not
by one reproachful word disturb the bloody shrouds wherein John
Brown and his compatriots are sleeping. They dared and died for
what they felt to be right, though in a manner which seems to us
to be fatally wrong. Let their epitaphs remain unwritten until
the _not distant day_ when no slave shall clank his chains in the
shades of Monticello or by the graves of Mount Vernon."(100)

Brown's raid did not seriously, as was then expected, affect the
November elections of that year, and they were favorable to the
young, aggressive Republican party, formed to stay the extension
of slavery.

It is not the purpose here to write a detailed history of particular
events, only to name such as had a substantial effect on slavery;
yet John Brown's _fate_ should be recorded. He was captured October
18th; indicted on October 20th; arraigned and put on his trial at
Charlestown, in Jefferson County, Virginia, though his open wounds
were still bleeding; and on October 31, 1859, a jury brought in a
verdict finding him "Guilty of treason, and conspiring and advising
with slaves and others to rebel; and murder in the first degree."
Save in the matter of precipitation, his trial was fair, under all
the circumstances