Secession Era Editorials Project

No Title.

New Orleans, Louisiana, Times-Picayune [Democratic]

(1 November 1859)

[Pointing Finger] Brown, the leader of the Harper's Ferry riot, lectured on Kansas at Hartford, Conn., in May, 1857. The Abolitionists got up a subscription to hole him, and the Black Republican paper vouched for him thus:

Brown is just the man we need in Kansas; and if every man who loves freedom and can spare a dollar or two, would put it into John Brown's purse, we will warrent they got their money's worth out of John Brown here after.

Brown got money somewhere, and with the money he got arms and ammunition for a seditious outbreak, and for that he is likely to be hanged. Is that his "money's worth?"

John E. Cook, the chief aid of Brown in his enterprise was also a lecturer at Hartford on Kansas affairs the year previous. He was a Connecticut lawyer, who emigrated to Kansas. He went back to Connecticut to raise a company of men to fight in Kansas. He appeared, by his own account, to have been a spy as well as ruffian. He said in his lectures that when he arrived in Kansas he passed himself off as "a Northern man, with Southern politics," got into the confidence of the Southern men, received a commission from them, attended their secret meetings; then went to Govs. Robinson and Reeder, and told them what he had learned. The Connecticut meeting voted "thanks" to Mr. Cook.

He has done further honor to the training for which they applauded him, and he turns up in Virginia in the improved character of a murderer and traitor, ingrafted upon that of a malcontent, ruffian and spy. These are the herald of Abolitionism, and if this man should be caught, and made to suffer the penalties of his crimes, we suppose he would be elevated to the rank of a "martyr" in the calendar of Abolitionism, where Marat, Couthon, and Robespierre ought to stand.