[Sidenote] Dec, 2, 1859.

  [Sidenote] James Redpath, “Echoes of Harper’s Ferry,” p. 41.

  [Sidenote] George Willis Cooke, “Life of Emerson,” p. 140.

In the country at large, as in Congress, the John Brown raid excited bitter discussion and radically diverse comment—­some execrating him as a deservedly punished felon, while others exalted him as a saint.  His Boston friends particularly, who had encouraged him with voice or money, were extravagant in their demonstrations of approval and admiration.  On the day of his execution religious services were held, and funeral bells were tolled.  “The road to heaven,” said Theodore Parker, “is as short from the gallows as from a throne; perhaps, also, as easy.”  “Some eighteen hundred years ago,” said Thoreau, “Christ was crucified; this morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung.  These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links.”  Emerson, using a yet stronger figure, had already called him “a new saint, waiting yet his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross.”

  [Sidenote] Lecture at Brooklyn, November 1, 1859.

  [Sidenote] “Echoes of Harper’s Ferry,” p. 48.

  [Sidenote] Letter to Committee of Merchants, December 20, 1859. 
  Ibid., p. 299.

Amid this conflict of argument, public opinion in the free-States gravitated to neither extreme.  It accepted neither the declaration of the great orator Wendell Phillips, that “the lesson of the hour is insurrection,” nor the assertion of the great lawyer Charles O’Conor, that slavery “is in its own nature, as an institution, beneficial to both races.”

This chapter would be incomplete if we neglected to quote Mr. Lincoln’s opinion of the Harper’s Ferry attempt.  His quiet and common-sense criticism of the affair, pronounced a few months after its occurrence, was substantially the conclusion to which the average public judgment has come after the lapse of a quarter of a century: 

  [Sidenote] Lincoln, Cooper Institute Speech, Feb. 27, 1860.

Slave insurrections are no more common now than they were before the Republican party was organized.  What induced the Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper’s Ferry?  You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclusion that Southampton was “got up by Black Republicanism.”  In the present state of things in the United States, I do not think a general or even a very extensive slave insurrection is possible.  The indispensable concert of action cannot be attained.  The slaves have no means of rapid communication; nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it.  The explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither are nor can be supplied the indispensable connecting trains.

Much is said by Southern people about