of the rights of individuals and society had put his life in forfeit, this sympathy for his boldness and misfortune came to him in large measure.  Questioned by Governor Wise, Senator Mason, and Representative Vallandigham about his accomplices, he refused to say anything except about what he had done, and freely took upon himself the whole responsibility.  He was so warped by his religious training as to have become a fatalist as well as a fanatic.  “All our actions,” he said to one who visited him in prison, “even all the follies that led to this disaster, were decreed to happen ages before the world was made.”  Perverted Calvinistic philosophy is the key which unlocks the mystery of Brown’s life and deeds.

He was convicted, sentenced, and hanged on the 2d of December.  Congress met a few days afterwards, and the Senate appointed an investigating committee to inquire into the seizure of the United States armory and arsenal.  The long and searching examination of many witnesses brought out with sufficient distinctness the varied personal plottings of Brown, but failed to reveal that half a dozen radical abolition clergymen of Boston were party to the conspiracy; nor did they then or afterwards justify their own conduct by showing that Christ ever counseled treason, abetted conspiracy, or led rebellion against established government.  From beginning to end, the whole act was reprehensible, and fraught with evil result.  Modern civilization and republican government require that beyond the self-defense necessary to the protection of life and limb, all coercive reform shall act by authority of law only.

  [Sidenote] Mason Report, p. 18.

Upon politics the main effect of the Harper’s Ferry incident was to aggravate the temper and increase the bitterness of all parties.  Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi; Mason, of Virginia; and Fitch, of Indiana, Democratic members of the Senate investigating committee, sought diligently but unsuccessfully to find grounds to hold the Republican party at large responsible for Brown’s raid.  They felt obliged to report that they could not recommend any legislation to meet similar cases in the future, since the “invasion” of Virginia was not of the kind mentioned in the Constitution, but was “simply the act of lawless ruffians, under the sanction of no public or political authority.”  Collamer, of Vermont, and Doolittle, of Wisconsin, Republican members of the committee, in their minority report, considered the affair an outgrowth of the pro-slavery lawlessness in Kansas.  Senator Douglas, of Illinois, however, apparently with the object of still further setting himself right with the South, and atoning for his Freeport heresy, made a long speech in advocacy of a law to punish conspiracies in one State or Territory against the government, people, or property of another; once more quoting Lincoln’s Springfield speech, and Seward’s Rochester speech as containing revolutionary doctrines.