stood between two of his sons, one
dead and the other mortally wounded, refusing to surrender so long as
he could fight. After his capture, he said, coolly, in reply to a
question: "We are Abolitionists from the North, come to release and
take your slaves."

The trial, conviction, and execution of Brown and his captured
companions ended the episode, but its influence was destined to be
far-reaching. John Brown became idealised. His bearing as he stood
between his dead and dying sons, his truth-telling answers, and the
evidence of his absolute unselfishness filled many people in the North
with a profound respect for the passion that had driven him on, while
his bold invasion of a slave State and his reckless disregard of life
and property alarmed the South into the sincere belief that his
methods differed only in degree from the teachings of those who talked
of an irrepressible conflict and a higher law. To aid him in regaining
his lost position in the South, Stephen A. Douglas proclaimed it as
his "firm and deliberate belief that the Harper Ferry crime was the
natural, logical, and inevitable result of the doctrine and teachings
of the Republican party."[505]

[Footnote 505: _Congressional Globe_, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 553-4
(January 23, 1860).]

The sentimentalists of the North generally sympathised with Brown.
Emerson spoke of him as "that new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and
who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the
cross."[506] In the same spirit Thoreau called him "an angel of
light," and Longfellow wrote in his diary on the day of the execution:
"The date of a new revolution, quite as much needed as the old
one."[507] But the Republican leaders deprecated the affair,
characterising it as "among the gravest of crimes," and denying that
it had any relation to their party except as it influenced the minds
of all men for or against slavery.

[Footnote 506: James E. Cabot, _Life of Emerson_, p. 597.]

[Footnote 507: Samuel Longfellow, _Life of Longfellow_, Vol. 2, p.
347.]

William H. Seward was in Europe at the time of the raid. Early in May,
1859, his friends had celebrated his departure from New York,
escorting him to Sandy Hook, and leaving him finally amidst shouts
and music, bells and whistles, and the waving of hats and
handkerchiefs. Such a scene is common enough nowadays, but then it was
unique. His return at the close of December, after an absence of eight
months, was the