Secession Era Editorials Project

No Title.

Frankfort, Kentucky, Commonwealth [Opposition]

(24 October 1859)

We are pleased to observe that the Northern press, without the distinction of party, express the most unqualified condemnation of the wicked and insane projects of Brown and his hairbrained associates. The great mass of the Northern people, including the most inveterate Republicans, regard such schemes with as much abhorrence as they do any other conspiracy to murder by wholesale, and it is not going too far to assert that in case there had been any necessity for their aid, thousands of true men in the North would have promptly taken up arms in behalf of the Southern slaveholder against the brutality and of the slave. Throughout the entire North but few such desperate and incendiary wretches as Brown and Cook can be found, and when they are they certainly meet with little encouragement from the Northern people. Their acts have been emphatically repudiated by every Republican paper we have yet seen, and we doubt if even Lloyd Garrison, who is himself rejected by the Republicans as a political teacher, will justify it. The foul plot has been nipped in the bud, and those engaged in it who have not already been slain, will probably adorn the topmost branches of the loftiest pines the Blue Ridge can furnish. It is to be hoped that the lesson will be salutary, and cause many Republicans to pause in the dangerous course they are pursuing. By the confession of Brown it appears that the slaves were not parties to the plot, which, however, was concocted with the expectation that they would rise by thousands, and join in it as soon as the first blow was struck; in which hope the conspirators were signally disappointed. For one, we do not believe that many even of the most radical Abolitionists were encouraged in it.