The Harper's Ferry Riot.Nashville, Tennessee, Republican Banner and Nashville Whig [Opposition](24 October 1859)
We are at length enabled to lay before
our readers a connected and apparently
truthful, narrative of the late revolutionary
movement in and around Harper's Ferry. It
can no longer be doubted that the object
of the conspirators was the liberation of the
slaves in Virginia and Maryland. It is
gratifying to record that the energy of
President Buchanan and Governor Wise, the
activity of the soldiery and the zeal of the
citizens have crushed out the conspiracy
before it could attain the huge dimensions of a
revolution. But though the movement
resulted so disastrously to the insurgents and
met with so little sympathy from the negro
population, for whose benefit it was designed,
it will nevertheless prove a valuable
lesson to the people of the South, if they give
it that calm reflection and careful consideration
that it deserves.
This attempt to excite an insurrection
among the slaves is one of the natural
results of the agitation of the slavery question,
originated and so persistently kept up by
designing politicians, both of the North and
the South for partisan purposes. It can be
traced to no other cause, and unless the people
of both sections rise in the majesty of
their strength and put an end at once to this
mischievous agitation, the page that records
the bloody events of the last two days, will
be but a preface to the history of a civil war
in which the same scenes will be re-enacted
on a larger scale, and end in the dissolution
of our glorious Union.
In the language of the New York Herald,
"we have before us some of the ripening
fruits of that mischievous reopening of
the slavery agitation in 1854, commenced by
Douglas and Pierce as Presidential candidates
for the decisive vote of the South in
the Cincinnati Convention. There would
have been no invitation to them to fight out
the slavery issue, face to face, on the soil of
Kansas. And this man Brown was only a
discharged guerilla free State soldier from
the border ruffian scenes of that bloody
Territory. Flushed with the success of the war
for freedom there, and rendered daring, reckless,
and an abolition monomaniac, by the
scenes of violence and blood through which
he had passed, he believed the time at hand
for carrying the Kansas war for freedom into
the hearts of the Southern States."
The folly of the Southern people in their
incessant demand for more slavery legislation
is exhibited in a strong light by this
view of the subject, and should convince
them of the impolicy of further agitation.
By ceasing the agitation in the South, an end
will be put to the discussion of this subject
in the North. As long as we agitate the
North will do the same, and though only
seventeen men of the entire North were
engaged in the conspiracy, there is no telling
how many may engage in the next plot
unless the subject of slavery ceases to be a
matter of discussion among demagogues. The
people have the means in their hands of putting
an end to this evil, by resolutely refusing
to elevate men to political office who
seek to ride into power by incendiary
appeals to sectional prejudices.
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