. . . in what respect that deluded, crazed fanatic John Brown, who
undertook to revolutionize Virginia and liberate the slaves, is more guilty
than the rebels now waging relentless, cruel and barbarous warfare within the
United States with the purpose of overthrowing the Government and establish
upon its ruins a Great Slave Confederacy?
Brown, morbidly sensitive to the wrongs of the African race and the
enormity of African slavery, smarting under wrongs visited upon him by the
murder of his sons in Kansas, foolishly and wickedly attempted to create an
insurrection in Virginia which entirely failed.
The purse-proud vain and conceited slave-holders, who having grown rich
and insolent upon the labor of an abject race, despising Republican institutions,
and particularly that feature which makes our Government the rule of the
majority and gives a man who earns his bread and sweat of his face just as much
weight in directing public affairs as he who owns a thousand negroes – despising
this democratic feature in our Government, claiming superiority of race and
blood, scorning laboring men as no better [than] slaves, these vain, conceited
would be gentry conspired to overthrow our Government bringing upon us the
horrors of civil war. A more infamous
conspiracy never came to a head in any country. – The purpose of it is
abhorrent to every sense of justice and Christianity. The mode in which it has been conducted is
barbarous in the extreme. The actors in
it have violated their oaths, proved false the trusts that had [been] reposed
in them, repudiated their honest debts and robbed all who would not unite with
them in their wicked rebellion. The
conspiracy of Absalom against the Government of his father was not more base
and unnatural. Yet those who clamored
for the blood of John Brown are now making excuses for Southern Rebels. They must not only not suffer punishment in
their persons but their property must be spared.
– Published in The
Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 2
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